Heaven's On Hold Read online

  ‘Yes, Jean’s here.’

  ‘I’m an acquaintance, I wanted to say hello.’

  ‘She’s replacing stock in the children’s section.’

  He found her sitting on a tiny stool with a pile of picture books on the floor next to her.

  ‘I’m not following you,’ he said, ‘ I had some books to return and I remembered you said you worked here.’

  ‘No, it’s nice to see you.’ She got to her feet, heavily but with dignity. ‘I’ve probably seen you in here before without realising.’

  ‘Not necessarily, I’m not much of a library-user I’m afraid, but I do sometimes take out books about drawing.’

  ‘You’re an artist?’

  ‘No, I’m an estate agent.’ He hit her with the proscribed term but she didn’t flinch. ‘Drawing’s what I do purely for my own pleasure.’

  ‘We’re putting on an exhibition here in early November,’ she said. ‘You ought to take part.’

  ‘I doubt you’d have me.’

  ‘Not me, there’s a committee. Come.’

  She led him back to the desk and handed him a leaflet. ‘ Nothing ventured.’

  After the library he had a cappuccino at one of the faux-New York coffee bars in the Formby Centre. He’d brought survival kit for Freya in a bag on the buggy-shelf, but she remained quiet, gazing at her surroundings. It was while he sat there that it occurred to him to take her into Border and Cheffins. He wouldn’t make a big thing of it, just pop in at the front door as though he was passing anyway. It was no more than a ten-minute walk and he liked the idea of the receptionist, and Jackie and the other women clustering round admiringly as he’d seen them do with the new babies of other staff members.

  Leaving in the direction of the office, he passed the fountain, and saw the same rough quartet there: the unprepossessing girl with the lyrical voice, the two sad-eyed soaks with their patient dog lying alongside. This time the girl was singing. ‘The first time ever I saw your face’ and he was ensnared by the soaring longing of the tune, the romance of the words, the pathos of the singer herself … But Freya wasn’t so sure and began to grizzle, so he reluctantly moved on.

  Pamela on reception gave him the welcome of his dreams.

  ‘Oh, Mr Keating, is this her? Oh but she’s beautiful, you must be so proud! Hello darling – it’s Fiona, isn’t it?’

  ‘Freya.’

  ‘Freya!’ Pamela crouched by the buggy, showing an acreage of smart black leg beneath her tailored skirt. ‘A goddess, and quite right too – am I allowed a hold?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Aren’t you gorgeous,’ crooned Pamela. Basking, David stood back and let her get on with it. He was getting used to the idea that young, single women, especially attractive ones, whether unconsciously or no used babies as a sort of corsage – something fresh, alive and beautiful to enhance their own beauty.

  ‘Look!’ Pamela cried now as a trio of girls from admin, came down the stairs. ‘ Look who Mr Keating’s brought!’ And in no time there was a sweetly pretty flurry going on as Freya was fussed over and fawned on and passed from hand to hand. He suspected that Annet would have found the whole thing nauseating, but he was moved that these predatory, tight-skirted, modern girls should be so charmed by his daughter.

  Pamela favoured him with an almost flirtatious look. ‘Are you in charge then, Mr Keating?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What, all day?’

  ‘All week.’

  ‘Goodness!’ She made round eyes. ‘Your wife’s gone back to work then, I take it?’

  ‘Only yesterday. So it’s my turn for a few days, and our nanny arrives next Monday.’

  ‘Are you going up to see Jackie?’ she asked. ‘Only if not I’ll give her a buzz so she can come down?’

  ‘Well, if you think she won’t mind.’

  ‘Mind?’ Pamela laughed and waved her hands to show the sheer madness of that idea. ‘She’ll go ape if she finds out she’s missed you.’

  David couldn’t imagine Jackie going ape about anything, but no sooner had the admin, girls regretfully handed Freya back than she emerged from the lift: Pamela, back behind her desk, pointed.

  ‘There she is, isn’t she lovely?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jackie, taking one of Freya’s hands and wagging it gently. ‘Welcome, Freya.’ It was typical of her that she didn’t need reminding of his daughter’s name. ‘She looks like you,’ she added, the only person to have said so.

  ‘Most people think she’s like Annet.’

  Jackie nodded. ‘How is Mrs Keating?’

  ‘Fine. Back at work this week.’

  ‘By the way,’ Jackie let go Freya’s hand to signal something more businesslike. ‘A woman rang for you this morning and wanted to know if you were all right because she thought she saw your car broken down by the side of the road yesterday – I explained you weren’t in this week and that I didn’t know anything about it, but since you’re here I thought I’d mention it. We were cut off and she must have been on a mobile because I couldn’t call her back, so I’m afraid I don’t have her name.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said hurriedly, ‘it was nothing to worry about. Probably some acquaintance from the village.’

  ‘She was only young,’ added Jackie. ‘More of a girl, really.’

  As he left, Pamela called after him: ‘ I think you’re a bit too good at this. You won’t want to come back!’

  David considered this possibility as he walked back to the Formby Centre. Today, with the sun shining and Freya at her most amenable he could almost imagine being a full-time father, or at least (he corrected himself) a father in full-time attendance. But Jackie’s message and the attendant confused fears had taken some of the gloss off the day.

  Annet’s day had had no gloss to begin with. The autumn round so accurately predicted by Piers had begun to materialise with a vengeance, and Piers himself, not a stoic at the best of times, had developed a cold.

  ‘I shan’t come near you, never fear.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I’d never forgive myself if through my agency you carried back this vile infection to your new baby.’

  ‘I wouldn’t either, Piers.’

  ‘Should I go home, do you think?’

  ‘No! Just keep your distance.’

  He did, but his snuffling, coughing and nose-blowing almost drove her to distraction, as did the way he ostentatiously raised his voice to cover the cordon sanitaire being mantained between them.

  ‘Did Freya think her jacket was cool and groovy?’

  ‘She did. That was nice of you, you shouldn’t have.’

  ‘I told you no little friend of mine is going to be stylistically disadvantaged while there’s breath in my body …’ he swallowed painfully, ‘which may not be much longer.’

  There were days when Annet might have found these antics amusing, but this wasn’t one of them. It looked as if she was going to have to make at least two overseas trips in the next six weeks, one to Dusseldorf for the Graphics Fair and another to discuss a household energy symposium in the Hague. Both dull, both threeline whips. Even so, these trips used to be one of the perks of the job. She’d enjoyed the travelling, the meeting people, the buzz … Now she realised she was dreading them. And that was apart from Norwich, Glasgow, and Plumbing of the Future at the NEC.

  At lunchtime, Piers having decided that his cold would benefit enormously from a curry, she sat with a sandwich at her desk and phoned home. But there was no one there.

  David got back just after one to a clean, tidy house, and Annet’s voice, with a slight edge, on the answering machine:

  ‘Only calling to see how you were doing. I might ring again this afternoon but things are silly here so if I don’t speak to you I’ll see you later. Take care, I miss you.…’

  Before giving Freya her bottle he took her upstairs to change her. There was a pile of sweet-smelling folded washing on the bed in their room, courtesy of Karen, and the baby’s room ha
d also been subjected to her professional touch, with soft toys arranged more appealingly, the cot bedding freshly changed and the rag doll rug subtly repositioned to signal hoovering thoroughly done. In an unexpectedly poetic touch she’d laid a sprig of lavender at the head of the mattress.

  All this order and tranquillity, however, seemed not to agree with Freya, who turned increasingly crotchety. A couple of dud disposables which David could not persuade to stick did nothing to improve her humour, and although she sank her formula as though it were her last, most of it came back fifteen minutes later in a manner that redefined the term projectile.

  Changing both her clothes and most of his own to an accompaniment of loud and furious crying, David reflected grimly that this was all it took to wipe the silly smile off one’s face. Time, in the shape of the afternoon, once more reared up before him like the north face of the Eiger. He had been doing so well, the day had been half over and matters pleasantly accomplished. Now the remainder of it seemed almost unimaginably long. He was not optimistic about the chances of Freya falling asleep, because she’d napped in the car on the way to town and on the way back. This particular bout of yelling would have to be seen out one way or another, the worst case scenario being that she would sleep later from sheer exhaustion, and then be unwilling to do so this evening when Annet returned, hyper and hassled, from the office.…

  He carried the protesting Freya into the garden and walked her round a few times to the tune of ‘All things bright and beautiful’ – another blast from the past that formed on his lips without apparent reference to memory. The singing, if you could call it that, was to calm him as much as his daughter. He wondered if the focused people of the world, the achievers and fast-laners like yesterday’s straying politician, would be so susceptible to infant moods, or whether part of their genetic inheritance was the ability to rise above such things.

  After a couple of circuits he sat down on the bench at the end of the lawn, and laid Freya down on his lap, her head on his knees, looking up at him, a position that often seemed to amuse her for a few moments. Not that on this occasion she did look at him, or at anything: her face was contorted and her cries were taking on the vibrato of real distress. David thought of grim press stories about lone parents holed up in tower blocks, and could clearly appreciate why such people might become desperate. Theirs was a situation which could spell utter loneliness: sole responsibility, without recourse, without rules and possibly without moral support. He had a car in the drive, cash in his pocket as well as in the bank, several efficient means of communication – and Annet, with whom he could at least share the trials of the day later on. And yet he had rarely felt more helpless than in the face of this incomprehensible micro-storm.

  He folded each of Freya’s small, bunched fists in his hands and swayed her gently to and fro, trying to slow the rhythm of her cries. As he did so he gazed back at the house. This was its most pleasing aspect. From the confines of the road, hemmed in by hedges and walls, it could seem frowning and narrow, the interior darker than it really was. From the garden, viewed across the undulating expanse of grass and the shallow step of terrace it looked wholly benign. He admired the robust brickwork which glowed pink in the early afternoon sun … the steep, twin gables and dignified chimneys … the stately garden doors with their shutters folded back like wings … the long, shining sash windows.…

  His eye ran along first the ground floor, then the first-floor windows, matching them to the rooms inside, thinking of the quiet and comfortable spaces inside which had seen many occupants, and now saw them, David and Annet Keating. The sense of continuity calmed him, and he realised at the same time that Freya had gone quiet. Almost frightened to look he glanced down and saw that her eyelids were drooping. He kept up the movement, not daring to breath. The garden was very quiet, too; and not simply quiet, but silent – still. David felt embraced by the stillness. The village with its solid old buildings, and the shallow hills that shielded it, seemed to hold their breath with him. His heartbeat was like the tick of a clock through a pillow. He could hear no birds, but in the blue above the chimneys a sparrow hawk trembled fiercely far above its prey. He watched it for a second until it simply disappeared, the speed of its descent seeming to snuff it out.

  His eyes moved back down to the house, and to the two small windows under the eaves. The one to the left was a box room, the place where they kept suitcases, and Annet’s skis, and boxes of as yet unhoused books and old vinyl LPs, and cans of paint so they could remember the names of the colours. He glanced across to the right. This was the room where his drawing things were: where he proposed to retreat and sketch his daughter as she slept.

  So far the room had remained almost empty – freshly painted, and with the floor sanded, but without either curtains or furniture apart from a trestle table and a rush chair. In truth they both rather liked it that way. David went up there occasionally not to draw but just to feel its airy lightness, and to look out of the window towards the hills, as he supposed some daydreaming maid or weary cook-housekeeper must have done during the house’s heyday.

  It may have been the extreme quiet and stillness, or his solitude, or both, which made him at once aware of someone looking back at him – not simply gazing out of the window but staring fixedly in his direction. David remained motionless: the watcher too. Freya slept, he could scarcely feel her hands in his. The air around him was like a cobweb in which he was suspended. He narrowed his eyes, but the focus didn’t alter – the figure at the window was no clearer. He could make out the pale disc of the face, and curiously the eyes, or at least the intentness of the eyes, fixed on him. This was a presence – he would have said merely a presence, but that its force-field extended to where he and Freya were – androgyne and concentrated. While it stared, he believed himself unable to move. His body and limbs were not so much heavy as weightless, without the function provided by gravity: by normality. He tried to clear his throat, simply to be aware of himself, but the will to do so was not enough, his brain seemed to be uncoupled from the rest of him.

  How long this altered state lasted for he had no idea, but there came a point where Freya moved slightly in her sleep, and her foot nudged his thigh gently. At once it was as though his ears had popped. The sticky caul of unnatural silence gave way to the noisy peace of Newton Bury on a fine autumn afternoon – a bird twittered, a distant car droned, the whispering breath of vegetation and animal life flooded into his system like strong drink. And as if he’d taken a strong drink his eyes watered and the blood pulsed in his face. He had never felt more alive, which made him wonder if perhaps he had been dead.

  There was no longer anyone at the window. Freya slept on.

  He was less shaken than curious. When he looked at his watch he saw that no more than five minutes had gone by, and yet the afternoon ahead no longer seemed an insuperable obstacle. He was energised. Firmly, without anxiety, he picked up Freya and, carrying her in the crook of his arm, went into the house. Its utter normality was cheerful as band music. He climbed the main stairs, and then the short half-flight to the top floor. The door of the little room stood open. There was no atmosphere of any kind, except the clean smell of the sanded floorboards, and that of his paper and fixative. He went over to the window and opened it. The garden seat looked surprisingly far away, further than he’d thought.

  He stood for a moment, breathing in the sunny afternoon. Then he closed the window. As he did so he glanced down at Freya. To his surprise she was wide awake, her head turned slightly, her opaquely dark eyes fixed on some point behind him. She was completely relaxed on his arm.

  ‘Hello,’ he said aloud to her, to hear his own voice. ‘Back with us are you? Shall we go out and see what’s what?’

  In the doorway on the way out he thought he caught a whiff of some flowery fragrance, but it was gone before he could identify it.

  When he put Freya in her buggy she smiled at him, for the first time. A smile of such perfect confidentiality and delight t
hat it brought tears to his eyes.

  They went for a long walk, out of the village and along the footpath by the little River Nevitt – the ‘Newt’ in Newton. The footpath began as quite a tidy affair but even when it degenerated into a bumpy track Freya seemed not to mind. It may have been the smile, or simply that they had spent more time together, but he thought of her for the first time as real company, a person with a definite and individual presence. Once or twice as he pushed along he looked down and found her gazing up at him, but although he was tempted he didn’t, out of respect for this new turn in their relationship, try to make her smile again. Let her give her favours freely, he thought, and not in response to her father’s vanity.

  At the point where the flanking undergrowth – dock, dandelions, nettles and bramble – rendered the footpath impassable for the buggy even at this time of year, he turned back. They’d come a good mile, and the village was picture-book pretty ahead of them, a tumble of ancient roofs from which the church tower emerged, glinting like a stone periscope. He decided to go back that way – he liked the church, and the route would bypass the centre of the village with its clutter of school mums.

  When he did reach All Saints he found he was not alone. There was a truck parked by the gate and a couple of young men, the regular contractees, at work in the churchyard, one perched on a motor mower, the other, in a perspex mask, sweeping a strimmer back and forth around the edges of the older gravestones. Until recently this task had been performed by members of the congregation, but it was a sign of the times that the average age of those available on a weekday had risen, and this was a lot of grass to keep down … Hence R. D. A. Garden Services of King’s Newton.

  The two men, cut off by the noise of the machines, didn’t spare him so much as a glance as he walked up the path. In the porch he put the brake on the buggy and lifted Freya out, to give her a change. The main door was heavy and stiff and he had to push with his shoulder to budge it, but he closed it after him to shut the noise out.