Home Fires. Elizabeth Day
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the end, the service goes without a hitch. Max is extremely well behaved until the moment Caroline hands him over to the vicar, at which point his face screws up tightly and there is a dangerous semi-quaver of absolute silence while he breathes in, ominously gathering his strength before emitting the most gargantuan howl. The baby looks at them all, clenching his fists together and punching the air, simultaneously bewildered and disgusted that he should have been placed in such an undignified situation.
Andrew finds it rather gratifying to witness this unexpected streak of stubbornness developing in his son’s character. But Caroline, her face pale, immediately lurches forward from the pew, hand outstretched as though she fully intends to take her child back. Andrew grips her arm to stop her. ‘It’s fine,’ he murmurs in her ear. There is a silvery thread of sweat in the dimple of her chin. She has been panicky since Max’s birth, more than usually anxious. ‘He’s fine. Leave him be.’
Caroline does not acknowledge him, but shifts away to one side, releasing her arm from Andrew’s grasp. She sits perfectly still and Andrew is left feeling that he has done something wrong, that he is being reproached by her, silently. But then, when they stand to sing the next hymn, she turns and smiles at him and mouths ‘Thank you’ and the natural equilibrium between them is restored. He puts his arm round her waist, lightly, to let her know he loves her.
But the organist is thumping out the notes too loudly and a headache that has been plaguing him since morning thuds insistently back into life, pricking the tightness behind his eyes, so that by the time the small congregation emerges, blinking, into the midday light, Andrew feels untethered from the ground, as though he is viewing proceedings through a pool of shallow water, his ears muffled so that everyone’s speech sounds disjointed and slow.
He removes his sunglasses from his jacket pocket and slips them on. The crispness of the autumnal daylight is immediately softened by an overlay of sepia. He looks around and sees Caroline, standing underneath the spreading branches of a sycamore tree just in front of a cluster of faded and slanting gravestones. She is laughing, relieved to have her son back in her arms, able now to joke about the timing of his tears.
‘Typical,’ he hears her saying to the vicar. ‘He’s been good as gold all morning and then just at the moment . . .’
Good as gold, thinks Andrew. She never used to speak like that. It amuses him, this habit she has of picking up phrases like a magpie picks up glitter. She tries so hard to be someone else, something better and yet Andrew loves her exactly as she is. It doesn’t matter how much he tells her this. She has no faith in herself, he thinks as he walks towards her. No faith at all. ‘Happens all the time,’ the vicar is chuckling amiably. ‘I seem to have that effect on babies.’ His mother is standing next to the vicar in a smartly tailored two-piece suit in royal blue. She laughs, causing the feathers on her fascinator to tremble. ‘Our son was just the same,’ Elsa says. ‘You should have heard the fuss that Andrew made. Of course, he’s been compensating ever since by being so terribly sensible.’
Caroline giggles, arching her eyebrows to show she knows exactly what her mother-in-law means, that she gets the joke.
Andrew edges into the circle of conversation, giving a non-committal smile. He holds out his arms to take Max, overtaken by the need to hold him, to feel him close.
‘Are you all right?’ Caroline asks and he sees that instead of giving him the child, she has moved to one side so that Max’s face is obscured by the folds of her blouse, the silhouette of her hip.
‘Fine, fine,’ he says, putting his hands back into his pockets. ‘Just a bit of a headache.’
Elsa looks at him. Her face, still beautiful through the wrinkles, is impeccably made up: blended brushstrokes of crimson lipstick, brown-black mascara, grey eyeshadow at the corners of her lids, lighter brown on the inside. She smells lightly of tuberose. ‘Have you taken anything for it?’
He nods. Elsa pats him on the arm. ‘Some champagne will do you good,’ she says. ‘When we get back, you’ll sit down and I’ll bring you an ice-cold glass of fizz.’
He sees Caroline frowning and then he remembers: they haven’t bought any champagne. Caroline had thought sherry would be more ‘appropriate’.
‘But first, I insist on having a cuddle with my glorious grandson,’ Elsa is saying, moving towards Caroline with elegant arms outstretched, a discreet gold bracelet hanging from her left wrist. ‘Oh I could just eat him alive.’
The vicar gives a giant guffaw, arching his back so that his stomach protrudes over his waistband. ‘Grandparents have the best of both worlds, don’t they?’ he says. ‘They can always give the little blighters back at the end of the day!’
The vicar carries on talking, but Andrew is not listening. He is looking, instead, at the interaction between his mother and his wife. Elsa still has her arms outstretched, is still waiting for her grandson to be handed over. Perhaps it is the headache that makes it seem such an interminable wait, as though the ticking of time has slowed down until it is more pause than motion. But it seems to him as though Elsa waits for several long minutes, her arms gradually sagging and falling back down to her sides when she finally realises Caroline is not going to pass the baby over.
And in this new, slowed-down world his head is inhabiting, Andrew is able to see each minute sliver of reaction in perfect detail. He sees his wife give an almost inconspicuous shake of the head. He sees her smile become rubbery and false. And then he sees her tighten her grip around Max’s gown, lifting up the palm of one hand to his downy head, as though shielding him.
He sees Elsa, for the briefest of moments, look as if she has been slapped. And then, almost immediately, she masks her face with a blank politeness.
He is astonished by the clarity with which he notices all of this. When his thoughts click back into normal time, nothing appears to have happened. The vicar is still talking. Caroline is laughing easily again, saying apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, Elsa, I think he needs changing. I’ll just take him inside’ and then Elsa is tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, giving a meticulously understanding smile.
‘I’ll do it,’ Andrew says and he understands, as he is offering, that this is a test, that he is wondering how Caroline will react.
‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ she says. She walks off towards the vestry with Max squirming in her arms. ‘You know you can’t change nappies for toffee.’
For toffee. Another phrase that doesn’t fit.
He looks at her go, he hears the brisk clicking of her heels against the flagstones, the sway of her skirt as she moves.
He puts his sunglasses back in his jacket pocket and takes Elsa’s arm. ‘Come on, Mummy,’ he says. ‘Let’s make a start on wetting the baby’s head.’
She looks up at him, warmly.
‘Good idea.’
They say goodbye to the vicar and walk towards the car, where they sit in a charged kind of silence until Caroline comes back. He notices as she approaches the passenger window that her face is unreadable: a freshly polished piece of silver.
‘All done,’ she says, as she straps Max into the baby seat, giving him a small kiss on his brow before getting into the car.
The hem of Caroline’s dress catches in the door when she closes it. ‘Hang on,’ she says, opening the door and retrieving the dress, now stained with a smear of grease. ‘What a nuisance,’ Caroline says, tutting to herself. She clicks her seatbelt into place, then twists round to look at Andrew and gives his hand a squeeze.
‘No one will see it,’ he says automatically. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘You’re right. It’s not as if anyone will be looking at me, will they?’
‘No,’ he replies, turning the key in the ignition. ‘It’s all about Max from now on.’
As if on cue, Max gives a grizzly little whimper from the back seat. They all laugh, lightly.
Andrew