Later in the evening while Judy was taking a bath she said to him: ‘I’ll stay with her tonight. I think she needs me. Is that all right by you?’
He nodded.
18
When the baby was born Tom felt he was present at the birth of himself. Clara had described him, on his own first appearance, as having fine reddish hair matted on a fragile skull. Lips pouted and arms waved, and her small nose was like his mother’s on the photograph. They called her Rachel.
He had explored the antique shops in The Lanes for a cradle befitting the status of his daughter and firstborn, but finding nothing to suit, they had gone out together and bought a utilitarian new one from a department store.
While Pam was still in the hospital he had overheard Hilary say ‘Mum!’
‘What?’
‘Who do you love most – Pam, or Tom?’
He never heard the answer. He would have closed the door himself if she hadn’t slammed it, not wishing to know, or to pick up any evasions. No one should be called upon to answer such a question, though if children asked, then you had to find one. Children see everything. They had observed him go into Judy’s room a few nights ago, and though they had said nothing he knew that the question as to whom she loved most was their way of telling Judy that they weren’t as blind as she might in her new life have grown to believe and hope. It had been once only, and he had gone afterwards to his own bed. But one of the children had got up to get a drink of water, he supposed, and eternal curiosity had pulled at them. He had come back from the hospital, and Judy had put supper on the table.
‘How is she?’
‘A real live daughter. All sound in wind and limb.’
She didn’t seem joyful, or even much interested, and perhaps her mood made what followed even easier. ‘Another female in the house!’
‘Suits me,’ he said, ‘very much.’
‘Eat, then,’ she told him.
‘And you?’
She lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve had mine.’
But she sat close by, and when he poured wine she reached for his glass and drank. He stood up to get another glass from the cupboard, but she held his wrist firmly. ‘I’ll drink from yours, if you don’t mind.’
He refilled it. ‘I don’t.’
‘I haven’t thanked you yet,’ she said, ‘have I?’
He smiled at her strange mood. What could she mean? He had taken Hilary and Sam to look at ships in Shoreham harbour, and on recognizing an old face had been able to get them on board.
‘There’s no convincing you, is there?’ she said with a tenderness he had only seen her use with Pam.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But what do you think you have to thank me for?’
‘That’s better. You know very well what I mean.’ She crushed a piece of cheese on to some bread. ‘You’ve done such good things for me, and for the kids especially. I think you’re a nice person.’
He felt pleasure at this, till he realized it couldn’t be true. Then he thought he had better consider it as true enough, if only to be fair to her. ‘It makes me happy to hear you say so.’
‘I have to,’ she said, ‘for my own self-respect.’
‘Oh.’ He hoped she would let the matter go.
‘I mean it. You’re really all right.’
He couldn’t resist saying: ‘Even if I am a man?’
She laughed. ‘We live, and sooner or later learn.’
‘Yes, we certainly do that, if we try.’
‘From each other,’ she said, ‘but not all that much from ourselves, do we?’
‘You may be right.’ He drank half the wine, then passed the glass back to her. She stood up unsteadily in the overlit kitchen. He had made sure there were brilliant lights all over the place, every corner vividly seen. When she or Pam put only a couple of wall-lights on he became silent and sleepy. He thought she was about to fall, so he held her closer than he had intended, softened breasts against his shirt, and wine-tasting lips pressing at him.
Afterwards she said: ‘I like having a man come into me now and again.’
‘You came as well.’
‘I know. Who taught you how to do that?’
The bad dream made him sweat. He wondered how to get out of it. ‘I’m glad I was able to help.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry. We shan’t make a habit of it, though I wouldn’t need to think like this, and neither would you, if we were able to face the truth.’
He touched her full body, and stopped himself saying that he loved her. For the moment he did. But the truth was more complicated. It was like fire. You touched it at your peril. ‘I can’t be treacherous,’ he said. He already had, and knew it, but his mark of affection proclaimed innocence, which ordinary sense told him might be possible.
She guessed his inner debate. ‘It’s only a way of getting to know each other.’
He smiled, wanting to agree. He did so. He stroked her breast, as if his touch was sufficient to let her know he was near to her, and to explain all she might find puzzling about him.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ she asked.
‘I was wondering whether it’s possible to love two people at the same time.’
She pulled him close, and almost robbed him of breath. ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said between her sobs, ‘and don’t I know it?’ She was silent, and then: ‘Of course it bloody well is!’
19
Pam came home from the hospital, and no longer belonged to him. He had expected her not to, he said, at such a time. It ought not to be difficult to accept, she answered, because she never had. Belonged to him, she meant. She never had belonged to anybody. He laughed. It was only a manner of speaking, of course. Perhaps so, she said, but she was her own woman and he, she didn’t mind supposing, was his own man. If life was to go on, and for her part it certainly was, that’s how it would be.
Love was not a matter of belonging to anyone, he mused on one of his walks by the sea, but of mutual protection whenever necessary, which must never become onerous. Dependence grew, and obligations developed. They were bound to. There was responsibility, and no freedom except what was earned by unremitting though diffident attention. He could do no more, and sensed that she didn’t want him to do less, either.
She fed Rachel by the window that looked out to sea. The primal tug at her nipple was pleasant. The fine hand and warm fingers at the flesh of the breast, and the small face already so alert, made her own smile impossible to hold back. It was a smile such as no other could be.
The light calmed and fascinated Rachel, and after her first slake she would stare at any pattern that danced or dazzled. When they occasionally did not, her head turned back to resume feeding, but her eyes flickered around as if to make sure no bogyman or shadow would appear unbidden. Hilary held her finger, and Rachel took it while she fed, her hand gripping and relaxing as the milk went in.
‘I don’t know what you find to boggle at,’ Judy remarked when Sam looked on. ‘You’ll never be feeding a kid, and that’s for sure.’
‘I know I won’t.’ He had passed his eleven-plus, and went to the local grammar school. Hilary would follow the same path in a year, because Tom had worked it out that way. He took Sam to the barber every month so that his hair was kept short and parted. Sam polished his shoes every morning, and his clothes were neat. Maybe it won’t last, Tom thought, but let the future look after itself. Judy was amused at her son’s self-absorbed industriousness, only critical of Tom’s regime when Sam seemed less connected to her than in his former outspoken days. But she thought such a change would have come anyway.