Keeping Secrets (29 page)

Afterwards, she walked Sam to the park. It was getting colder, and damp, and there was nothing for either of them, really, to do there. I expect next year we'll be here all the time, she thought, hearing cries from the playground, and pushed the pram over to the animal enclosure, propping Sam up so that he could see the rabbits, and the deer. Bantams scratched at the bare earth, disdaining cabbage stalks pushed by toddlers through the rusty netting; a peacock strutted and shrieked, suddenly spreading his tail.

‘Look, Sam, isn't that wonderful?'

But Sam was too young to look, the rabbits and guinea pigs were lost on him, and Hilda began to feel bleak, standing in the cold, talking to an unresponsive baby. Next year they might be feeding the ducks, pushing bread and lettuce through the netting for the animals, having a little go on the swings. But next year seemed like a century away, and what were they going to do now? God, thought Hilda, turning up her collar, how am I going to get through this winter?

A couple was approaching from the other side of the bridge on the stream, also with a pram, old and roomy. He was tall, wearing a long knitted scarf and Doc Martens, she was thin and fair, her cheeks red in the cold, pushing the pram with hands in striped woollen gloves. They looked very young, very Hackney; as they drew closer, they also looked familiar. They stopped on the bridge and threw down bread for the ducks from a plastic carrier bag; their breath streamed in the air. Hilda frowned, trying to place them. Then, as they moved on towards her, the woman waved.

‘Hello, I thought it was you.' She came up alongside, and bent over Sam. ‘Hello, Sam. Gosh, he's enormous!'

Hilda looked into Jane's battered old pram and smiled, seeing tiny Daisy fast asleep beneath a blanket of knitted squares. ‘Daisy would make anyone look enormous. Isn't she lovely? How are you?'

‘We're fine,' said Jane. ‘She's really good, really easy.' Daisy's father came up beside them, smiling, unobtrusive. ‘Did you meet Don?' Jane asked. ‘Don – Hilda. From hospital. And Sam.'

He smiled ‘Hi. Hello, Sam.'

Don was, Hilda saw instantly, the complete new man: helpful and considerate on principle, easygoing, pleased to take a back seat and talk to babies. Stephen, bending over Sam in his expensive raincoat, might look like the advertisement – this was the real thing. And he was different again from Tony, also kind and unselfish: Tony had an edge to him, fought battles where necessary. Don, Hilda felt, had no edge.

‘I've been meaning to ring you,' said Jane. ‘I've been wondering how you were getting on.'

‘Yes,' Hilda said. ‘Me, too.' She shook her head, making a face. ‘I'm really glad to see you; I was just beginning to feel a bit desperate.' And was amazed at herself: when, ever, before Sam, would she have told someone she barely knew how she was feeling?

‘Oh, I know,' said Jane. ‘You can get like that, can't you? I mean, Daisy's really good, but even so … sometimes Don has to take over, or I'd go mad.'

There was an awkward little pause, in which unspoken questions and answers about who took over when Hilda felt like that hung in the misty air. Don smiled, self-deprecating, understanding. Then Jane said: ‘Why don't you come back and have a coffee?'

‘Well, I …' More words unspoken – being in the way, intruding on a family morning, feeling desperate and in need of rescue.

‘Oh, go on. Don's on his way to sign on, that's why we're here, he's got to go down to the Job Centre. So it'll be just us and the babies.'

‘Okay,' said Hilda. ‘Thanks, I'd love to.' She watched Jane and Don saying their goodbyes; he bent into the pram and waggled his fingers. ‘Bye, Daisy, see you later.' He straightened up. ‘Bye, Hilda, Sam.' And then he was gone, long legs striding down the path past the bowling green. Hilda and Jane pushed their prams back over the bridge, and out of the park.

‘Are you on maternity leave?' asked Jane.

‘Yes, I'm going back at the end of January.' Hilda shook her head again, wonderingly. ‘Sometimes I really look forward to it – like today, I was just beginning to think I really needed something apart from Sam. But also – it seems years since I was teaching. I feel as if I've forgotten everything.' They had reached the main road, and weaved the prams in and out among the shoppers, and other prams and pushchairs, the wandering unemployed, and unattached. ‘What about you?' she asked, as they stood waiting to cross. ‘Are you going back to work?'

‘Depends what happens to Don,' said Jane. ‘He's a gardener, but there's not much private work in the winter. He's trying for a job with the council in the parks.'

She brushed her fine hair off her face in the gesture Hilda had seen many times in hospital. The intensity of those few days seemed also, now, to belong to another age. The traffic slowed, and they hurried across; Sam began to grizzle.

‘Not far now,' said Jane, speeding up. ‘I expect they're both a bit cold.'

‘And hungry,' said Hilda. ‘Sam's always hungry.'

Jane laughed. ‘Yes, I can remember.' And though it was said with nothing but affection, Hilda felt at once the same prickle of defensiveness which came with Alice, with Anya, with anyone who indicated for even a moment that Sam was anything but perfect. I've never felt like this before in my life, she thought, as Sam's grizzles grew more insistent, and remembered her last class with her group of Asian women. I was right: once you're a mother you're out in public; everyone feels they can put their oar in, and it
matters.
I wouldn't have thought it possible to be so raw.

‘Just down here,' said Jane, turning into a side street. They stopped outside a green front door, and she got out her keys. They left the prams outside, and Hilda picked up Sam, in full voice now, and carried him down a narrow hall with a bike in it.

‘Sorry about the mess. Come on, we're down here.' Jane led them past the bottom of the stairs and into a cluttered kitchen overlooking a square of garden. She pushed a ginger cat, just like Anya's, off a high-backed chair, and said kindly: ‘You go ahead and feed. I'll put the kettle on.'

‘Wonderful.' Hilda, still in her coat, sat on a cushion covered in cat hairs, and unbuttoned herself. ‘Come on, Sam, here we go.' He plugged in and she sat looking around, watching Jane, Daisy on her arm, fill the kettle and switch on the gas.

‘I never thought you could do so much with one hand, did you?'

‘Never,' said Jane. ‘I made an omelette like this the other night. Come on, Daisy, I expect you're hungry, too.' She hung her jacket on the back of a chair and sat down, pulling up a charity-shop sweater. Daisy began to whimper and pant. ‘There you are, there you are, darling.' She eased herself back against the chair, as her daughter began to suck. Used to Sam's ravenous guzzling, Daisy's feeding seemed to Hilda like delicate sips. Had Hettie and Annie been like that? She couldn't remember and, anyway, how could she really have known? Watching them she found herself thinking: Jane reminds me a little of Alice, perhaps that's why I found her interesting in hospital. I suppose it's just the way she looks, fair and a bit delicate; but the atmosphere felt companionable, as if they'd been friends for a long time, and she thought: I never feel like this with Alice. She heard herself saying:

‘Tell me the story of your life.'

Jane laughed. ‘There's an invitation.' Footsteps sounded, coming down the stairs into the hall. ‘That's Phil. He's staying.'

An enormous young man came into the kitchen, looking rumpled and recently asleep. ‘Hi.'

‘Hi, Phil, this is Hilda and Sam. Make us some coffee, will you?'

‘Sure.' He switched off the boiling kettle and spooned instant coffee into mugs from the draining board, leaving the top off the jar. ‘How do you like it, Hilda?'

‘White, no sugar, please.' Hilda, watching, felt as if she had recently landed from a far-off planet, and was blocking the kitchen. I don't belong here, I'm light years older, she thought, even if the babies are only days apart. I do not belong in a communal house, where people sign on and get up at lunchtime – but then, I never have. And thinking all this, she felt taken back to the old days, before Sam, before Stephen, when Alice had lived a life which was extravagantly dissolute – apparently unhappy but, nonetheless, a life of feeling – while Hilda had done nothing but work and told herself that feelings were not important. Now – they were everything.

‘There we go.' Phil put down two red mugs which looked as if they could have done with a second, more rigorous, wash and went to make toast. ‘Anyone else want some? I could do you both cheese on toast, if you like. Nursing mothers, and all that.'

‘Why not?' said Jane. ‘Hilda?'

‘Well …'

‘Oh, go on. And then go away, Phil, all right? We want to talk.'

‘I'm going anyway,' he said, putting bread under the grill. The cat wound itself round his legs. ‘Anyone fed this poor beast?'

‘I did,' said Jane. ‘Just because Daisy's here doesn't mean I'd let the cat starve. Have you got a cat?' she asked Hilda.

‘No,' said Hilda, ‘but Anya has two, they're her babies.'

‘Who's Anya?'

Hilda explained, and found herself also describing the conversation they'd had this morning, on the way to the shops, and thus explaining, too, her situation with – or rather, mostly, without – Stephen. Phil put down a large plate of cheese on toast, and left, taking his with him.

‘Bye, Hilda, bye Sam.'

‘Goodbye,' said Hilda, easing the baby away from her. ‘Thanks.' She laid Sam, now fast asleep, in the crook of her arm, and helped herself to toast, suddenly ravenous. ‘Well,' she said to Jane, ‘I asked you about your life and told you about mine.'

‘Good,' said Jane. ‘I was wondering. I remember Stephen, from the hospital; he's very good-looking, isn't he?'

‘Yes,' said Hilda, trying, and failing, to bring Stephen into this room, this house. Tony would find it interesting, she thought: he comes into contact with all sorts of people, he enjoys it.

‘His wife doesn't know?' said Jane.

‘Whose wife?'

‘How many fathers has Sam got?'

Hilda looked at her. ‘I was miles away for a minute, sorry. I was thinking about someone else. No, she doesn't. Of course she doesn't.' She looked away, and beyond the table to the window on to the garden. Bluetits and sparrows were feeding from a bag of nuts hung from the branch of a ragged elder. If you ignored the tower block of flats rising to the damp grey sky behind, it was almost like the country, where Miriam lived with Stephen. ‘At least,' she said slowly, ‘I'm pretty sure she doesn't. I try not to think about her, to be honest.'

There was a pause, in which she looked back at Jane, still feeding Daisy, whose little sips went on for ever. ‘What about you and Don?'

‘The story of my life,' said Jane, taking another slice of toast. ‘We met at school, can you believe it? We've been together for seven years. But we only got married when I was expecting Daisy, and that was really just for the parents. I don't think we'd have bothered otherwise. Well … perhaps we would, I think once we actually saw Daisy we would've, anyway. Everything changes with a baby, doesn't it? Overnight.'

‘Yes,' said Hilda, and fell silent again.

‘In the hospital,' said Jane, ‘I thought you were … disappointed. Do you mind me saying that? Everyone else looked fine – you know, tired and weepy, but buoyed up. You looked much more together than anyone else, but there was something missing. I thought you'd got post-natal depression.'

‘That's what the nurses said. I suppose I had. I wanted a girl. I couldn't believe it when he wasn't, and I couldn't … love him; I couldn't feel anything. Except guilt. Plenty of that.'

‘Is it all right now?' Jane asked carefully, and Hilda said: ‘Yes. Yes, it's fine now. Only this morning, in the park – I got frightened because I thought it was all coming back. I felt … cut-off, I suppose.' She felt a lump rise in her throat and put down the slice of toast.

Jane reached out and touched her arm. ‘Listen,' she said, ‘if ever you feel low, you can always come over, you know. Or I'll come to you. Just give us a ring.'

‘Thank you.' Hilda tried to swallow the lump away. From upstairs music thumped through the ceiling; outside the sky was darkening for the afternoon. Jane leaned over and switched on the table lamp. ‘Have another coffee.'

Hilda shook her head. ‘No, thanks, I ought to be going.'

‘Why?'

‘Well … I just don't want to linger, that's all.'

‘Oh, shut up. Go on, have another. I'll put the kettle on.' She got up, carrying Daisy, asleep now, too. ‘Someone told me the other day to make the most of the sleepy stage. I can't imagine them crawling about, can you?'

Hilda shook her head. While Jane went to put Daisy in her cot, she looked again round the kitchen, at the plants on the windowsill and on top of the secondhand fridge, the noticeboard which resembled the board from the concourse at college, full of community care. The cork tiles on the floor were scuffed and worn, like the cat, who sat at the door to the garden, waiting to be let out. ‘Come on, then,' said Hilda, getting up with Sam in her arms, needing something to do. She unlocked the door and watched the cat, tail erect, walk down the concrete path at the side of the grass. It was very cold, too cold for Sam. She closed the door again, hearing a lot of noise in the hall. When Jane came back, she said: ‘I've put Daisy down upstairs, and brought the prams in. D'you want to change Sam in the bathroom and put him down too?'

Hilda changed Sam on the floor of a large cold bathroom with more scuffed floor tiles and a shelf full of paperbacks on astrology and alternative medicine. Then she went down again, and tucked him into his pram. She hung up her coat in the hall, among a dozen others, and went back to the kitchen, hearing a sudden, welcome leap from the boiler, as the heating came on.