The Would-Begetter (17 page)

‘But it is, Wendy, it IS. Tell you what, let’s make a bargain. If Hector (the bastard) Mudgeley hasn’t proposed and got your wedding all arranged by the end of October, right? Then you’ll marry me in early December. Yes?’

‘But I don’t love you, Barry.’

‘It’ll grow,’ Barry assured her. ‘Do things my way, and you’ll be a proper married woman before the baby’s born. I’d even let you call it Morgan if it’s a boy. Morgan Poole – can’t say fairer than that now, can I?’ He felt about in his pocket and held the resulting packet up for inspection. ‘Ah, smokey bacon.’

‘You’d have to promise not to feed it on crisps?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

Wendy laughed. ‘You’re daft, you.’

‘Make you smile sometimes though, don’t I? Which is a damn sight more than handsome-is-as-Hector does.’

‘You’re a nice boy, Barry.’

‘I’d rather be a nice man.’

‘All right then, you’re a nice man. Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’

On 9 October Zillah’s second son was born. Hector, who had been telephoning the hospital daily for news on the pretext that he was her brother in New Zealand, finally learned to his joy that the baby had arrived and that he and his mother were both well. HE!

Hector was beside himself with excitement. He rushed out during his lunch hour and bought four blue sleep-suits in assorted sizes, a huge bunch of purple chrysanthemums and a congratulatory card with a stork on the front. He had to force himself to wait until visiting time, dreaming all the while of himself and Zillah in a little, white private room (like the one Caroline had had) surrounded by flowers, holding hands and gazing at their baby boy in mutual joy.

The reality was somewhat different. Zillah was in a large
NHS maternity ward, crowded with visitors and loud with babies. Hector couldn’t see her at all at first, and then at the far end he noticed, with a sinking heart, Clive’s ginger hair. He was clearly not abroad on business this time, but here, sitting by her bed.

‘Hell!’ Hector muttered, backing out again in order to consider his options. He decided to postpone the flowers and sleep-suits until a more private occasion, so he put them down carefully on a trolley in the corridor and entered the ward once more. This time he held the card in front of him like a passport, and walked the length of the room pretending to be another delighted dad, like all the others.

Zillah looked wonderful. She was sitting up in bed in a lacy nightdress with her long hair hanging down over her bare shoulders, holding the baby which was well wrapped in a small white cellular blanket. She was looking down at it, and she and Clive didn’t appear to be talking. Then Clive looked up and saw him.

‘Wotcher,’ Clive said, ‘if it isn’t the Good Samaritan! What brings you here then, as if I couldn’t guess?’

‘I’ve brought a card,’ Hector said. ‘Hello Zillah, how are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ Zillah said. ‘You open it Clive.’

‘Oh, another one of these,’ Clive said, tearing the envelope and pulling the card out. ‘That makes four so far. Must be the most popular design.’ He plonked it on the locker by the bed.

‘Thanks, Hector,’ Zillah said.

‘So,’ Hector said, craning to see, ‘how’s the little chap then?’

‘He’s terrific,’ Zillah said, smiling. She pulled the blanket aside a little, so that Hector could get a proper look at the baby. It was quite the ugliest infant that Hector had ever seen, and what hair it had, although wispy, was plainly and undeniably red.

‘Brill, eh?’ Clive demanded, leaning over and stroking the baby’s head with a huge hand. ‘Looks the image of my old Mum!’ and he grinned cheerfully at Hector and Zillah in turn.

Hector’s first reaction was one of wild disappointment, which he struggled manfully to conceal. He smiled gamely at the pink prune in the white blanket, and then turned away.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘best be off then. Just wanted to give you my good wishes. Glad you’re OK, Zillah. ‘Bye.’

‘Goodbye Hector,’ Zillah called after him, ‘and thanks.’

Hector was so upset that he quite forgot to retrieve his flowers and baby clothes from the trolley in the corridor, and by the time he had got to the front door, remembered them, and gone back again, they had disappeared. He walked slowly back down the stairs, and out into the car park. The weather was bright and sunny and unseasonably warm for October. Hector would have preferred it to be grey, with a chill nip in the air, in tune with his mood. He felt as though his greatest dream had been hopelessly blighted.

It wasn’t until he was more than halfway home, that he suddenly remembered something vitally important. According to his father’s family lore, Hector’s great-aunt (the second Gwladys, sister of Sir Morgan Caradoc), who had died tragically very young, had had beautiful, curly, flaming
red
hair!

After a week or so, this long-disregarded fact began to encourage Hector anew. Zillah’s baby wasn’t necessarily Clive’s. It
could
be his. It was undoubtedly off-putting that the baby was so ugly, but Hector had recently forced himself to watch a TV programme about childbirth (although he had been obliged to go and make a cup of coffee a couple of times, when it had got a bit much…) so he now understood that newborn babies were sometimes all red and wrinkled, and that it didn’t last.

Accordingly he decided to wait until Zillah was home from hospital, and then visit her again. He drove past the cottage a few times, only to discover, by the oversized presence of the lorry, that Clive seemed to be taking an unnecessarily long paternity leave. Hadn’t he got a job to do; money to earn? Hector was impatient to see the baby again and, if it were his, to bond with it as soon as possible, but it wasn’t until a couple of weeks had passed, that a chance presented itself.

He walked up the path and rang the bell. He could hear the baby crying, and the sound got louder and louder as Zillah came to the door with it in her arms. Its face was screwed up, mouth wide, gums bared, dribbling and bawling its head off. Zillah looked tired and harassed.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Not now Hector. Bad moment.’

‘What?’ Hector couldn’t hear a word she was saying.

‘I’m just about to feed him,’ Zillah shouted, beginning to shut the door in his face.

‘That’s fine by me,’ Hector said, putting a foot firmly over the threshold.

Zillah sighed and gave up, walking back into her scruffy living room and sitting herself down crossly amongst a litter of dirty mugs, crumpled clothes and cat hairs. Hector brushed off a chair with a fastidious hand and sat down opposite her, watching in fascination as she hitched a breast from under her jersey and popped the enlarged nipple into the child’s furious mouth. The ghastly noise ceased abruptly, and contented suckling began.

‘Phew!’ Hector said. ‘That’s better. I wonder how many decibels that was?’ Zillah didn’t answer. ‘Where’s Christian?’

‘At school.’

‘Oh yes, of course. How is this little chap then, apart from being hungry?’ It didn’t look any less ugly this time, Hector was dismayed to see.

‘He’s fine.’

‘Has he been christened yet?’

‘No, and he won’t be.’

‘So there’s still time to call him Morgan?’

‘You’ve got to be joking! His name is Florian.’

‘Oh come on…’ Hector chuckled, ‘you’re not serious?’

‘Perfectly,’ Zillah said coldly.

‘Hasn’t he got wonderful little fingernails?’ Hector said, changing the subject quickly. ‘Perfect miniatures; quite extraordinary’ The dust on the coffee table, he noticed, was thick enough to be aggregating into matted grey caterpillars.

‘So what d’you want?’ Zillah demanded.

‘We still haven’t established who’s baby he is,’ Hector explained. ‘My great-aunt had bright red…’

‘He’s Clive’s,’ Zillah said. ‘Any fool can see that!’

‘Not necessarily,’ Hector insisted. ‘Now if you and I and the baby were to get some tests done

‘Out of the question.’

‘But you suggested it in the first place!’

‘Well I’ve changed my mind. Clive’s been terrific with this baby. He wouldn’t hear of tests.’

‘Exactly, that’s the whole idea. If Clive doesn’t hear of them, then he won’t worry, will he?’

‘No,’ Zillah said flatly.

‘And you categorically refuse to call him Morgan?’

‘I most certainly do.’

‘Well that’s a great pity,’ Hector said, forgetting his recent resolutions all over again in his desire to win against Clive at all costs, ‘because I came over here especially to arrange to pay you regular maintenance for my son, but more than that, to ask you again to marry me.’

‘Oh well, we can always do with financial help,’ Zillah said, softening. ‘It’s very kind of…’

‘No marriage; then no money,’ Hector said firmly.

Zillah shifted the baby round to the other breast before answering. ‘Well that’s that then.’

‘Please
Zillah?’ Hector pleaded.

‘Sorry.’

‘Oh well, get lost!’ Hector jumped angrily to his feet and flounced out.

Driving back to work, still furious and disillusioned, Hector tried to count his blessings:

1) The baby most probably wasn’t his anyway.

2) Zillah, as well as being no cook, was clearly a slattern.

3) He hadn’t fancied the prospect of a showdown with Clive.

Ergo, it was all for the best. Oh Lord, he thought, Two down and only one to go. It seems only a moment ago when I had the choice of three! What if Wendy’s baby turns out to be another girl? He parked the car beside the
Chronicle
building and walked round to the front, and in through the swing doors.

Wendy was sitting behind the reception desk, and Barry was in front, leaning against it on one elbow. Their faces were close together and they were laughing. They stopped abruptly as he came in. Barry straightened up, smiling triumphantly, and said, ‘Ah Hector, I’d like you to be the first person to hear the good news. Wendy and I are getting married.’

Jess finally decided that Hector had made his bed and could therefore damn well lie in it. She moved the framed photograph which had stood on her mantlepiece ever since their photo session in Megan’s turret house nearly a year before, and looked about for somewhere less conspicuous to keep it. It showed Hector outside the big front door, head and shoulders only, one eyebrow raised ironically with the polished brass knocker gleaming behind his head like a halo. It was one of her best portraits yet. Jess put it into a drawer beside her bed and slid it sadly out of sight. Why is it, she thought, that whenever I get a really good photo of a man, it always seems to be a bad omen?

That reminded her. I’m twenty-four, she thought, and what sort of a love life have I had so far? One shortlived affair when I was twenty-three with a tennis player called Mike, to whom I lost my virginity, of whom I got the ultimate sporting-action shot, but with whom I shared nothing important. The best years of my life are galloping by, and leaving me behind. I should be
doing
something about it. Here I am at home at a loose end on a Saturday afternoon. I should be at a football match with some bloke, or hill-walking, or sharing DIY with him, birdwatching, talking,
anything
. I might be a good photographer, but as a human being I’m a total failure.

The telephone rang, and Jess went into her sitting room to answer it.

‘Hello?’

‘Jess? This is Vivian Powderham, Caroline’s friend, if you remember…?

‘Oh Vivian, yes of course I do. How are you?’

‘I’m well. I wondered whether you’d care to come out to dinner with me tonight?’

‘Me?’

‘You.’

‘Well… yes…’

‘Are you easy to find? Caroline gave me your phone number but not your address.’ Jess told him how to get to her flat. ‘Lovely. See you at seven thirty?’

‘Fine,’ Jess said. ‘Great. ‘Bye.’ She put the phone down and glanced at herself in the mirror above it. She saw a thin, untidy, androgenous sort of person with large glasses and a worried expression. Somehow, she thought, I’ve got to transform that scarecrow into the ideal dinner-date – feminine without being girly, elegant without being ostentatious, and sexy without being too explicit… God! If only it were that easy.

Vivian called for her at exactly half-past seven. He looked, Jess thought, understated but stylish. He was not handsome. His face was too thin, his nose too beaky and his hair too wavy, but he was scrupulously polite and attentive.

‘Lovely to see you again,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me, so I had this potted description of myself all ready in case.’

‘Tell me anyway,’ Jess said.

‘Friend of Caroline’s who looks like a cross between Bertrand Russell and Jeremy Paxman,’ he said. Jess laughed.

As the evening progressed Vivian displayed an attractively wry outlook on life. Jess barely noticed what she was eating; the conversation never flagged long enough. Vivian told her about his art gallery in Bath and the exhibition of portraits which he had mounted recently. He was flattering about those of her photographs he had seen and knowledgeable about the uncertainties of the freelance life, which he nevertheless encouraged her to consider.

‘You’re wasted on your little provincial newspaper,’ he said. ‘What do you mostly take pictures of in an average week: Women’s Institutes, flower shows, schoolchildren, amateur dramatics?’

‘That sort of thing, yes,’ Jess agreed, ‘and fundraising efforts for charity, local government and parish stuff, accidents, floods, crime, you name it.’

‘Doesn’t sound very challenging.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Jess said. ‘Every day is different. Suits me anyway.’

‘You must come to the gallery next month,’ Vivian said. ‘I’m having a specialist photographic exhibition on marine wildlife in all its forms. Quite fascinating; I’ve learned such a lot of biology.’ He leant forward to top up her wine glass and smiled at her. ‘But you know, you ought to exhibit some of your stuff. I’m sure it would sell. Caroline thinks so too.’

‘Nice idea,’ Jess said, smiling back. ‘By the way, how is Caroline? I haven’t had a chance to go up and see her and baby Hannah yet.’

‘I’ve been once,’ Vivian said, ‘but to be honest, I find that sort of hands-on parental stuff rather daunting. I’m sure she’s a lovely child, as babies go, and Caroline herself is absolutely transformed.’ He sipped his wine and looked thoughtful. ‘In fact, if I may use a zoological metaphor, it’s as though she’s metamorphosed into a different life-form altogether. I felt rather out of place as a matter of fact, as though I were still in some kind of irresponsible free-floating larval stage, when she’s suddenly become a fully formed adult limpet and stuck herself firmly to a high class rock. Her horizons seem to have shrunk so! We seem to have nothing in common any more.’