Keeping Secrets (40 page)

When Sam had fallen asleep – and it took longer, these days to get him off – she had supper with the television and afterwards sat at her desk marking papers, preparing classes, yawning. Once upon a time, she thought, I had my books and no man. Then I had a man and my books and no baby; now I have my books and my baby and no man. There was a poem to be written out of this, but she couldn't find the last line.

She supposed it was time she asked Anya to babysit in the evenings occasionally, so she could go out and do something interesting: Lizzie, one of her part-timers, who ran a creative writing workshop on Wednesday afternoons, rang one night and suggested they went to see a film,
When Harry met Sally
, at the Screen on the Green in Islington. Hilda jumped when the telephone rang and said she was feeling too tired this week but another time she'd love to. Jane invited her over for supper – ‘You can bring Sam with you, he and Daisy can have a bath together' – and Hilda said she would, very soon. She knew she should invite Alice and Tony over, to repay all their hospitality at Christmas, but she couldn't quite face doing supper and found she couldn't quite face having them all for Sunday lunch, either. She went to bed earlier and earlier, and was woken, still, by Sam, at unpredictable hours, and sometimes more than once. Afterwards it was difficult to get back to sleep; when she eventually did so it became difficult to get up with the alarm.

‘You are looking terrible,' Anya told her one morning, as she handed Sam over in the hall. ‘It is too much for you, all this.'

Hilda shrugged. ‘What else am I supposed to do? I'll have a rest at the weekend.' Weekends were worse than anything. She dropped a kiss on Sam's head and turned the catch on the front door. A gust of wind blew it in towards her, unsteadying all of them. ‘Heavens.' She pushed it to again, leaving just a gap, and looked out cautiously. The trees in the square were swaying, dustbin lids rattled and banged.

‘It was on the forecast,' said Anya. ‘High winds. I will keep Sam indoors today.'

‘All right. Thanks. I think he's got a bit of a cold, anyway.' Hilda made her way down the steps, holding on to her black beret. It began to pour.

By two o'clock the wire mesh guards on the classroom windows were shaking; slates lifted from the roof and smashed on the tarmac below, and a pile of plywood stacked up against an outside wall came crashing down into the car park. The college secretaries were on the telephone, cancelling afternoon classes; Hilda and the other staff made their way out of the building, holding on to each other, laughing to keep their alarm at bay. She drove home slowly, feeling the car buffeted. Mounds of soaking wet cardboard boxes, put out by shopkeepers in the early morning for the dustcart, lifted and blew along the pavements; the whole of Hackney was awash with wet litter. Hilda parked two doors away from home and got out of the car cautiously.

Those houses in the square that had remained untouched by developers, the shut-up ones, the ones with dark windows, peeling front doors and crumbling porticos, where lonely old people took in meals on wheels and lonely young people took drugs, were, she realised now, not just sad but dangerous. Chimney pots lay shattered on the wet pavement, windows rattled. As she pushed her way along the few yards to her own front door, leaning into the wind and rain, the trees in the communal garden creaked menacingly. Hilda ran up the front steps, seeing Anya at the window, Sam in her arms. She came straight out into the hall.

‘Thank goodness. Come in, I must lock the door.'

In the sitting room, they stood at the french windows looking out on to the rainswept garden, watching the trellis, heavy with naked tendrils of honeysuckle and clematis, bend back and forth in the wind. Bits of painted wood and a piece of cardboard came sailing over from other, neglected gardens; at the far end the bare trees began to roar. ‘The cats have been terrified,' said Anya. They were crouched beneath the sofa, looking out with dark eyes.

‘I suppose the roof is all right,' said Hilda, turning Sam in her arms. His little hands banged on the window, against the driving rain.

‘The roof is very sound,' said Anya. ‘Josef made sure of it.'

There was a sudden, ugly, tearing noise from the end of the garden, and a branch ripped away, crashing down on to the trellis.

‘My God. I shall have to get in a man. They did not say it was going to be as bad as this.'

‘They never do,' said Hilda. ‘Look at '87.'

‘It was at night – we didn't feel it so much.'

‘No, but …' Clissold Park had been ravaged, whole trees uprooted. And she and Stephen, on a rare weekend together out of London, had driven through Surrey and seen decimation, as if the devil had stormed through woodland, bent on destruction. East Anglia had been spared, then – what about now? There were woods across the lane from Stephen's house, there were trees in the garden – he had described it all, in the old days. When we talked to each other, she thought bleakly; when we were friends. Now I don't know where he is. If he's gone back to Norfolk, if he's driving, out in this – people get killed in the country, trees fall on cars …

‘Hold Sam,' she said suddenly to Anya. ‘Please. I've just thought of – I must just make a phone call.'

She raced up the stairs to the telephone. She knew James and Klara's number by heart, although she rarely used it. Klara, without question, disapproved – no hide-out for illicit lovers there. But still. But now. She dialled, and waited, panting.

‘Hello?'

‘Klara. It's Hilda King.'

‘Oh. Hello.' Somewhere in the background, a querulous child.

‘I'm sorry to bother you, I just feel rather worried by this storm. I wondered if Stephen was still staying with you – he hasn't been in touch.'

‘No,' said Klara, ‘no, he isn't. He left here a couple of days ago.'

‘Oh.' Hilda felt her heart sink. ‘He's – he's in Norfolk, then.'

‘Presumably.' Klara's tone was unencouraging.

‘Well –' Hilda refused to be put off. She had to know, she had a right to know, for God's sake, Stephen wasn't just her lover, he was Sam's father. Did Klara know about Sam? ‘Well, do you know when he's coming down again?'

‘I'm afraid not.' The querulous child was more insistent. ‘Stop it! Mummy's on the phone.'

Perhaps Klara was sick of Stephen arriving, staying, announcing his marriage was over. If he couldn't go there, why didn't he come here? What was he thinking of, shifting his stuff about up and down the country?

‘Listen,' said Hilda. ‘I
have
to speak to him, it's important. I'm sorry if it's a nuisance, but there it is. Please can you ask him to phone me, as soon as you hear from him.'

‘Yes,' said Klara coldly. ‘I'll tell him you rang.'

‘Thank you.' She put down the phone and put her head in her hands.

Later, she and Anya sat watching the news, the scenes of devastation, hearing of school rooftops lifted into the air, children killed, lorries overturned, scaffolding torn away from buildings, people crushed to death in their cars.

‘My God,' said Anya again. ‘They should sue those weather men.' She got up stiffly. ‘I must telephone Liba, she is always driving somewhere.'

Hilda took Sam up to bed. When he had gone to sleep she lay down with the nightlight on, still in her clothes, willing herself not to go to the phone again. She couldn't phone Norfolk now, it was out of the question. Could she pretend to be someone else? Impossible.

Outside the house the wind had died down; it had roared away towards the south coast and left them unharmed. And what if they had been harmed? What if she and Sam had been out there this afternoon, if she had been like the mother in Brixton, crushed with her baby in a pushchair by a falling wall? They'd have been on the news then, and would
that
have made Stephen phone? By then it would be too late. At least she knew that he was safe – there was no one from Norfolk in the news. Just at the moment, torn between anger and relief, it seemed small comfort.

Next morning, Friday morning, Anya said: ‘My Liba has'flu. She is so naughty not to phone me, I only found out last night, she sounded dreadful. I am going down to Brighton to look after her.' She took Sam into her arms and he clutched at her spectacles. ‘No, darling, we will find you your toys.' She looked at Hilda, holding his hands away. ‘You will manage this weekend? You don't mind feeding the cats?'

‘Of course not, I always manage. I hope Liba's all right – I'll come back early if I can.'

She gave Sam a kiss and opened the front door, walking out to the car through a square filled with pieces of cardboard, litter, torn-off branches and twigs, broken glass. This last made her remember the time when Stephen's car window had been smashed. She stepped wearily over the debris, having slept very little last night, and tried not to think about the weekend.

A cry. Somehow, though she was in the depths of sleep, it didn't sound like an ordinary cry. She stumbled out of bed.

‘All right, Sam, I'm here.'

The nightlight stood on the chest of drawers by his cot, a little white owl with yellow feet. Even in its dim glow she could see that Sam's face was much too flushed; she lifted him out and he went on crying; she took him back to bed and he sucked at her indifferently, then turned his head away and began to cry again.

‘Oh, God. You're really not well, are you?' Hilda looked at the bedside clock: a quarter to two. Now what? She put her hand on his forehead and he twisted out of her reach, hot and damp. She unbuttoned his pyjamas and carried him to the bathroom; she changed him and he cried and cried.

‘What is it, Sam? Tummy?' She opened the cabinet, fumbling amongst the plasters and bottles of Savlon and TCP for the Calpol, which was running low. Calpol would bring down his fever and send him back to sleep – anything, so long as he went back to sleep, he'd woken this morning at five. ‘Please stop crying, Mummy's looking for the medicine.' God, where was it? She picked up a tube of toothpaste, and a bottle of aspirin crashed down into the basin; she jumped and Sam's screams grew even worse. ‘Stop it! Where
is
the bloody stuff?'

It wasn't there. It really wasn't. Then where – she had a sudden memory of Anya, with Sam in her arms: ‘He's teething a little, it's perfectly normal.' Of herself saying yesterday morning, ‘He's got a bit of a cold.' Anya must have come up here and taken it. Okay, then, she'd have to go downstairs.

‘Come on, Sam, we're going to Anya's.'

For a couple of minutes, as they made their way down, he stopped crying, distracted. It was cold, and she hadn't got slippers on; the house felt very empty. At Anya's door she realised she'd left the key upstairs. She carried Sam all the way up again, and he began to cry once more. She took the keys from her desk, went down, unlocked the door, feeling for the light switch. Now where would Anya have put the bottle? Probably the kitchen.

‘Prrt?' With a little sound the cats uncurled themselves from sofa and armchair, and followed her out of the room. They wound round her legs as she put on the light in the kitchen and looked round, shivering; they went to their dishes, set down on the worn linoleum.

‘Stop it! It's the middle of the night. Now – where's she put it?' There were shelves of yellowing cookbooks, half of them probably Josef's, collector's items. There were cupboards full of cat food, tinned peas and marmalade, a whole shelf for Sam's jars of strained fruit and packets of cereals; another cupboard full of ancient aluminium saucepans. There was no bottle of Calpol. In her arms Sam was yelling, beginning to struggle. ‘Please. Please!' She took him back to the sitting room, searching along the mantelpiece. No. Her bathroom? Possibly.

‘Wait there, Sam, I'm sorry, wait just a minute …' She put him down on the rug and left him screaming as she ran up the stairs again. Anya's bathroom was large and cold, with cracked white tiles and worn towels hanging on a clothes horse. Her medicine cabinet was locked. Hilda began to moan.

‘What am I going to do?' From downstairs Sam's cries sounded as if he were in agony. He obviously was. She raced back down to him again, and picked him up. ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, come on, let's go back up again, let's think.' She switched off the lights and shut the doors, pushing the curious cats back inside with her foot. ‘Move!' Perhaps that was a mistake, it might distract Sam if one of them came up too. Well, stuff it, she'd done it. ‘All right, all right, Sam. I think we'll have to …' Have to what? Call the doctor, what else could she do? Rarely ill herself, the bout of'flu the first time she'd been in bed for years, Hilda was the last person to think of calling out the doctor in the middle of the night – it felt like the kind of thing you did only when someone was dying. Sam wasn't dying, was he? She suddenly began to feel frightened – she was alone in this house, with no one nearby to call on, a sick baby. She carried Sam over to her desk, and flicked through her address book. ‘All right, all right,' she said for the hundredth time. ‘We're getting the doctor, you'll soon be better …' His screams were piercing. She dialled the number and put him back on the floor so she could hear when the surgery answered. The telephone rang and rang.

At last, an answerphone. Another number. She dialled that, too, and got a curt receptionist.

‘Can I help you?'

‘I'm sorry to bother you, but my baby's ill…'

‘Your name and address? Phone number?'

Hilda gave them. ‘How long do you think the doctor will be? It's not Dr Hepworth, is it?'

‘No, it's a locum, Dr Srivasti. I can't say, but we're having a very busy night. I'll bleep him now.'

‘Thank you.' She put down the phone and picked Sam up again. ‘There, the doctor's coming. Poor Sam, poor baby, what can I do for you?' Because she didn't know what to do, she carried him, screaming, all round the flat, looking wildly for the Calpol, just in case. It wasn't there, and she knew, suddenly, what had happened: Anya had taken it, finished it, meant to buy more and forgotten. And she hadn't noticed, or checked.