‘Your husband didn’t seem the kind,’ Norma began. ‘I mean, not that I knew him.’
‘No, he didn’t seem like that.’
‘I know what it feels like to be left, Mrs Lacy.’
‘It feels like nothing now.’
She smiled again, but her cheeks had become hot because the conversation was about her. When Norma had phoned a week ago, to ask if they could have a chat, she hadn’t known what to say. It would have been unpleasant simply to say no, nor was there any reason why she should take that attitude, but even so she’d been dreading their visit ever since. She’d felt cross with herself for not managing to explain that Betty could easily be upset, which was why Betty wasn’t in the house that afternoon. It was the first thing she’d said to them when she’d opened the hall door, not knowing if they were expecting to see the child or not. She’d sounded apologetic and was cross with herself for that, too.
All three of them drank tea while they talked. Bridget, who didn’t make cakes because Liam hadn’t liked them and she’d never since got into the way of it, had bought two kinds of biscuits and a Battenburg in Victor Value’s. Alarmed at the last moment in case there wouldn’t be enough and she’d be thought inhospitable, she had buttered some bread and put out a jar of apricot jam. She was glad she had because Norma’s husband made quite a meal of it, taking most of the ginger-snaps and folding the sliced bread into sandwiches. Norma didn’t eat anything.
‘I can’t have another baby, Mrs Lacy. That’s the point, if you get what I mean? Like after Betty I had to have an abortion and then two more, horrible they were, the last one a bit of trouble really. I mean, it left my insides like this.’
‘Oh dear, I’m sorry.’
Nodding, as if in gratitude for this sympathy, Norma’s husband reached for a ginger-snap. He said they had a nice flat, and there were other children living near by for Betty to play with. He glanced around the small living-room, which was choked with pieces of furniture and ornaments which Bridget was always resolving to weed out. In what he said, and in the way he looked, there was the implication that this room in a cramped house was an unsuitable habitat for a spirited four-year-old. There was also the implication that Bridget at forty-nine, and without a husband, belonged more naturally among the sacred pictures on the walls than she possibly could in a world of toys and children. It was Betty they had to think of, the young man’s concerned expression insisted; it was Betty’s well-being.
‘We signed the papers at the time.’ Bridget endeavoured, not successfully, to make her protest sound different from an apology. ‘When a baby’s adopted that’s meant to be that.’
Norma’s husband nodded, as if agreeing that that was a reasonable point of view also. Norma said:
‘You were kindness itself to me, Mrs Lacy, you and your husband. Didn’t I say so?’ she added, turning to her companion, who nodded again.
The baby had been born when Norma was nineteen. There’d been an effort on her part to look after it, but within a month she’d found the task impossible. She’d been living at the time in the house across the road from the Lacys’, in a bed-sitting-room. She’d had a bad reputation in the neighbourhood, even reputed to be a prostitute, which wasn’t in fact true. Bridget had always nodded to her in the street, and she’d always smiled back. Remembering all that when Norma had telephoned a day or two ago, Bridget found she had retained an impression of chipped red varnish on the girl’s fingernails and her shrunken whey-white face. There’d been a prettiness about her too, though, and there still was. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she’d said four years ago. ‘I don’t know why I’ve had this kid.’ She’d said it quite out of the blue, crossing the street to where Bridget had paused for a moment on the pavement to change the shopping she was carrying from one hand to the other. ‘I often see you,’ Norma had added, and Bridget, who noticed that she had recently been weeping and indeed looked quite ill, had invited her in for a cup of tea. Once or twice the sound of the baby’s crying had drifted across the street, and of course she’d been quite interested to watch the progress of the pregnancy. Local opinion decreed that the pregnancy was what you’d expect of this girl, but Bridget didn’t easily pass judgement. As Irish people in London, there was a politeness about the Lacys, a reluctance to condemn anyone who was English since they themselves were not. ‘I’ve been a fool about this kid,’ the girl had said: the father had let her down, as simple as that. He’d seemed as steady as a rock, but one night he hadn’t been in the Queen’s Arms and he hadn’t been there the next night either, in fact not ever again.
‘I couldn’t let Betty go,’ Bridget said, her face becoming hot again. ‘I couldn’t possibly. That’s quite out of the question.’
A silence hung in the living-room for a moment. The air seemed heavier and stuffier, and Bridget wanted to open a window but did not. Betty was spending the afternoon with Mrs Haste, who was always good about having her on the rare occasions when it was necessary.
‘No, it’s not a question of letting her go,’ the young man said. ‘No one would think of it like that, Mrs Lacy.’
‘We’d always like her to see you,’ Norma explained. ‘I mean, it stands to reason she’ll have got fond of you.’
The young man again nodded, his features good-humouredly crinkled. There was no question, he repeated, of the relationship between the child and her adoptive mother being broken off. An arrangement that was suitable all round could easily be made, and any offer of babysitting would always be more than welcome. ‘What’s needed, Mrs Lacy, is for mother and child to be together. Now that the circumstances have altered.’
‘It’s two years since my husband left me.’
‘I’m thinking of Norma’s circumstances, Mrs Lacy.’
‘I can’t help wanting her,’ Norma said, her lean cheeks working beneath her make-up. Her legs were crossed, the right one over the left. Her shoes, in soft pale leather, were a lot smarter than the shoes Bridget remembered from the past. So was her navy-blue shirt and her navy-blue corduroy jacket that zipped up the front. Her fingers were marked with nicotine, and Bridget knew she wanted to light a cigarette now, the way she had repeatedly done the first day she’d come to the sitting-room, six years ago.
‘We made it all legal,’ Bridget said, putting into different words what she had stated already. ‘Everything was legal, Norma.’
‘Yes, we do know that,’ the young man replied, still patiently smiling, making her feel foolish. ‘But there’s the human side too, you see. Perhaps more important than legalities.’
He was better educated than Norma, Bridget noticed; and there was an honest decency in his eyes when he referred to the human side. There was justice above the ordinary justice of solicitors’ documents and law courts, his decency insisted: Norma had been the victim of an unfair society and all they could do now was to see that the unfairness should not be perpetuated.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bridget said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t see it like that.’
Soon after that the visitors left, leaving behind them the feeling that they and Bridget would naturally be meeting again. She went to collect Betty from Mrs Haste and after tea they settled down to a familiar routine: Betty’s bath and then bed, a few minutes of The Tailor of Gloucester. The rest of the evening stretched emptily ahead, with Dallas on the television, and a cardigan she was knitting. She quite liked Dallas, J.R. in particular, the most villainous TV figure she could think of, but while she watched his villainy now the conversation she’d had with her afternoon visitors kept recurring. Betty’s round face, and the black hair that curved in smoothly on either side of it, appeared in her mind, and there was also the leanness of Norma and the sincerity of the man who wanted to become Betty’s stepfather. The three faces went together as if they belonged, for though Betty’s was differently shaped from the face of the woman who had given birth to her she had the same wide mouth and the same brown eyes.