Heaven's On Hold Read online

  Sadie was enchanted. ‘Can I push? Is it OK if I push her Uncle David?’

  He hesitated, not wanting to give offence but not sure it was such a good idea either. Mags came to his rescue.

  ‘When we get to the park. Hello champ,’ she kissed Luke. ‘OK? Good day?’

  ‘Fine.’ He said the one syllable long and bored, like a yawn.

  ‘I haven’t got the car, so we’ll go back via the swings.’

  ‘Yay!’ Can Sean come?’

  ‘Of course, is his mum here?’

  Mags and Luke went to extend this invitation. Sadie put the brake on the buggy and crouched down next to Freya, who at once beamed.

  ‘She smiled at me!’ Was that a proper smile?’

  ‘Definitely. She does quite a few of them these days. But not for everyone, she obviously likes you.’

  Sadie rewarded him with a look of delight, scrunched with delicious embarrassment. ‘ I like her. I want to be a nanny when I’m older.’

  ‘Do you remember Luke when he was a baby?’

  ‘Yes but he was really gross.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was really ugly. And he cried all the time.’

  ‘They all cry sometimes.’ He was picking up the jargon. ‘There isn’t much else for them to do.’

  ‘I picked her up when she cried at your house, at your party,’ said Sadie. ‘ But I didn’t put her on the grass.’

  David’s heart skipped a beat. ‘No, you said. You said my friend did that.’

  Whether she would have responded to this he couldn’t tell, because Mags and Luke returned with the friend Sean, a tough-looking character with a ledge haircut. They set off for the park with David pushing the buggy, and Sadie walking alongside with one hand resting on the metal shaft. The boys alternately scuffled behind them and charged in front, while Mags kept up a barrage of warnings and instructions. ‘Look out, look what you’re doing, there are other people – I’m so sorry, they don’t look – stop at the road! Did you hear what I said? That is dangerous, wait for me at the road. Press the button, well he’s done it now, you press it the next time. Now we’ve got the green man, now we can go across. Sean – not a good idea. Yes, but only one tube each and not if there’s any more fighting.…’

  ‘They’re a pain,’ confided Sadie to David.

  ‘They’re just boys,’ he suggested, adding: ‘You may find this hard to believe but I was a boy once.’

  She gave him another of her squeezed-with-delight grins. ‘With my dad.’

  ‘With your dad, exactly. And little horrors we were.’ He wasn’t sure how true this was – Tim had been a rumbustious child full of devilment and explosive energy, but he himself had been cautious and quiet. ‘It would have been nice to have a sister.’ he said.

  ‘I’m a sister,’ said Sadie. ‘ I’ve got two brothers.’

  ‘Too bad,’ he agreed.

  They paused at the sweetshop for something called Big Blasters (‘ they’re on the telly’ Mags explained) and then went on to the park. Once through the gates Sadie took charge of the buggy and the boys hurtled away, yelling at the tops of their voices.

  Mags pulled a cringing, apologetic face. ‘ Why must they do that?’

  ‘Because they must …?’

  At the play area they found a seat. David took Freya out of the buggy and Sadie sat with them holding her for a while, before the urge to let off steam overcame her.

  ‘Is it OK if you take her now?’ she asked David.

  ‘Of course. Off you go.’

  Mags held out her arms. ‘ My turn, may I?’

  He handed Freya over. Although she was quiet at the moment, lulled by the fresh air, the noise and the activity, Mags held her up against the side of her face, cradling her head with one hand and rocking slightly back and forth. There was an easy grace and tenderness about her dealings with the baby which was missing most of the time. He remembered reading something about women dividing into mothers and lovers. If that were true there wasn’t much doubt which Mags was, but it still occurred to David that it was herself that she was soothing as she rocked.

  When they got back he declined tea in the interests of getting back on the road before the work traffic. The children were watching television as Mags came to see him off.

  ‘It’s been so nice,’ he said.

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘And an unexpected pleasure to see Tim.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t going to be left out.’

  He put Freya in the car. ‘Thanks, Mags.’ He kissed her cheek and thought he heard her make a small sound in her throat – of gratitude? of pleasure? – as he did so. With his hands still on her shoulders he asked: ‘Everything all right?’

  She smiled, too much and her eyes were pleading. ‘Of course! How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know … You’re obviously pretty tired. Tim too. I can see why.’

  ‘We’re fine. We’re always tired, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Good.’

  Perhaps to preclude any more questions the children were summoned to make their goodbyes. His last impression of Mags was of her standing sturdily amongst her brood, bending to engage in a swift, fierce remonstration with Luke, shaking his wrist, then straightening up with a brave face on, to wave cheerily.

  Not waving, he thought, but drowning.

  That evening Annet was out of sorts and Freya wouldn’t settle.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with her?’ asked Annet, walking up and down in between him and the Nine o’clock News, jiggling and patting impatiently, probably making things worse. Already he noticed in himself a dismaying tendency to find fault with her handling of Freya.

  ‘I’ve no idea. She’s been good as gold all day.’

  ‘That’ll be it then. One sniff of her mother, shattered and shot at, and all hell breaks out.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ He switched off the TV. ‘ Do you want me to have a go?’

  ‘No thanks. How were they anyway?’

  ‘Worn out.’

  ‘I fully sympathise.’

  ‘They could probably both do with a holiday.’

  Annet jerked her head in exasperated disbelief. ‘ Gimme a break! I mean, their kids are all at school, Tim earns a good screw, they have a bloody nice house, what’s their problem? I mean what does Mags actually do all day for heaven’s sake?’

  The fact that he’d often asked the same rhetorical question, or something like it, made it no easier to answer.

  ‘I think – from what I can gather, though of course she didn’t confide in me – that it’s more a case of what she’s been doing for the past twenty years.’

  ‘Her choice.’ Annet plumped down on the sofa and began undoing her shirt. ‘ Sorry, desperate measures.’

  ‘Is there any there?’

  ‘I doubt it, and it’ll be a pretty vinegary brew after today’s shenanigans, but any port in a storm.’

  Freya latched on optimistically and Annet said: ‘ Mags needs to get a life.’

  ‘I think she’d agree with you.’

  She slid him a tired travesty of the cowboy look. ‘You have been having heart to hearts.’

  ‘Not at all. Not in the way you mean. She’s an extremely loyal woman.’

  ‘Ah, now we come to it. And Tim’s not so loyal?’

  ‘Let’s just say he and I did have a heart to heart.’ On an impulse he reached out and caressed her arm that cradled Freya. It felt firm and muscular. ‘He envies us.’

  ‘Really.’ It was a sceptical comment, not a question.

  ‘He thinks we have something going for us.’

  ‘I should damn well hope so.’

  ‘Well, do we?’

  She kept her eyes on the baby’s face. ‘ Of course.’

  ‘I hope so too.’

  ‘What, you have your doubts? Look darl, I really don’t need this. I’m knackered, she’s in a strop, and you seem to be saying we’re all washed up—’

  ‘I never said
any such thing, on the contrary—’

  ‘You don’t want to start sitting about at kitchen tables with disaffected wives, it’s unhealthy.’

  ‘I didn’t. We didn’t—’

  ‘Or husbands. In fact now I come to think of it that’s worse.’

  It was almost funny, and he would have laughed except that he so urgently wanted – needed – her to understand.

  ‘All I meant was, it shook me to the core to think of those two having difficulties. I’ve got used to regarding them as completely solid and immutable, and now it turns out they’re not. That Tim thinks we’re the ones who’ve got it right.’

  She sniffed, mollified. ‘ Solid and immutable?’

  ‘No.’ He cupped his hand over Freya’s head. Thought of Annet and Bailey, and said gently: ‘ Just the opposite.’

  When he looked through the curtains before going to bed, Gina was there.

  The following day was Friday, and rainy. David could scarcely believe he’d reached the end of the week, the last day he’d spend on his own with Freya. On Monday the nanny would arrive and the process of handing over would begin.

  This knowledge, and Gina’s image, cast a wistful light on the day to come. Annet, misinterpreting his mood, said on her way out: ‘Cheer up, darl, you’ll be off duty soon.’ But he couldn’t help it, each thing that he did with and for his daughter had a tender, valedictory quality. When it was time for her morning nap, he put her in her Moses basket and took her up to the studio with him. For an hour he sketched as she slept, but although he enjoyed the process – the quietness of the room, Freya’s company, the small sensuous pleasure of pencil on paper – he took no satisfaction from the results. She was still too little, he couldn’t catch either her likeness to Annet or her fierce individuality. In fact, the most successful sketches were those which didn’t attempt either, but which suggested, in a few swift lines, her sleeping form, her hands and hair, the cross-hatched texture of the Moses basket.

  When she awoke he stayed up there for a while. He had the impression, fanciful probably, that Freya responded to the room in some way: that she understood it to be a place separate and distinct from the routines of the house. Perhaps they were both haunted.

  This impression was reinforced when he went downstairs and she at once became cranky. The phone rang and it was Annet, sounding subdued.

  ‘Oh God, bad moment?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Prioritising, he laid Freya back in her basket. ‘She’s only just started.’

  ‘What’s up, do you think?’

  ‘Nothing much, that’s for sure. She’s been in the studio with me good as gold for the past hour and a half.’

  ‘Look,’ she lowered her voice, ‘I only wanted to say sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Saying lousy things about Tim and Mags.’

  ‘Some of which were true,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not the point, I was being the bitch from hell and we both know it.’

  ‘I know no such thing.’

  ‘Hmm …’ He could picture the expression that accompanied this, and anticipated the swift change of gear that followed. ‘ OK, better let you get on. Bye, have fun at the clinic.’

  As fun, David concluded, the baby clinic was right up there with clipping nose hair. As a quaint exemplar of village life it was more interesting. A trestle table in the hall annexe was manned by representatives of the church and the ruling classes in the respective shapes of Della Martin and Diana Fox-Herbert, armed with Dickensian-looking ledgers, a large box of mansize tissues and a set of scales. Around the edge of the room sat some half-dozen mothers with their offspring, of whom Freya was by far the youngest.

  In spite, or perhaps because of this, the indignity of being dumped, naked, in a cold plastic dish caused her first to empty her bladder extravagantly (so explaining the tissues) and then to set about making a din that silenced all competition and gave rise to a litany of stock comments about sturdy lungs and the need to air them. Della told David he was a brave man, Diana Fox-Herbert said either that or a very foolish one, he said he just did as he was told, which gave rise to disproportionate hilarity all round. Freya continued to bawl as he got her back into her clothes, bawled as he took his place on one of the black plastic chairs beneath the indulgently smiling scrutiny of the mothers – and bawled for Britain in the presence of the youthful health visitor, who quickly pronounced her fighting fit and showed them the door.

  The very instant David put her in the buggy and made good his ignominious escape, she fell fast asleep.

  It had emphatically not been fun. But if there were one cheering aspect to the whole grim business it was that by the end of it he was beginning to regard the arrival of the nanny in a more positive light.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lara McKay, a light heavyweight from Cooney Bay near Auckland, five eleven in her Reeboks, arrived at speed, entered on a tidal wave of energy, and took charge. David had persuaded himself that his memory must have been playing tricks about her size: respectfully he had now to acknowledge that it wasn’t. She was an Amazon, with hands twice the size of his own, thighs like bolsters, and shoulders to make a navvy envious. Her Medusa-like hairdo alone was so big it seemed to brush the sides of the hall.

  ‘Mr Keating, here I am at last!’

  ‘Hello Lara.’

  ‘How you doing?’

  ‘Fine,’ he replied meekly, already sensible of an imbalance in this exchange.

  She slapped her hands together. ‘Where’s that baby?’

  ‘Asleep in her pram. Look,’ he went on in a delayed bid for the initiative, ‘why don’t I make us some coffee and we can have a talk before she wakes up?’

  ‘Great! Coffee sounds great! Kitchen’s through here, right?’

  He followed her in, glad that he’d put everything ready so she couldn’t take over.

  ‘This is a beautiful house,’ she said, ‘how old is it?’

  ‘Not very, it’s Edwardian. But they knew a thing or two about proportions back then.’

  ‘Didn’t they just?’ she sighed ‘I like old houses. My parents’ house is old by New Zealand standards, but it’s all, like, wood? It’s got a verandah, it’s pretty. But this is just so substantial.’ She slapped the chimney breast with her huge, spatulate hand. ‘ Feel that. Magic.’

  ‘Built to last,’ he agreed. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Fraid so, yeah, I know, but I do. And milk if you’ve got it.’

  ‘There we are.’ He put the mug down in front of her and, as an afterthought, the biscuit tin.

  ‘So,’ she said, removing the lid. ‘ How do you want to play this? I mean I know you’re off work for a while yet and I don’t want to cramp your style or anything, but I can’t wait to get my hands on your daughter!’

  The conversation seemed yet again to be getting away from him slightly.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ he said, ‘we can look on today as a handover period – and of course I’ll be here for another few days – but after that I shall let you get on with it.’ Thinking this might sound as though he were over-eager to pass Freya over, he added: ‘To be honest, it’ll be a bit of a wrench. I feel as if I’m just beginning to get the hang of it.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Lara. ‘ Good on you. But I like to work as part of a team. I’m not taking over, you know, I’m making a contribution.’

  This sounded so eminently sensible and reassuring, that he found himself wondering if, nannies were taught to say such things: ‘Never usurp the parents, girls, or look as if you intend to’.

  Lara lent some credence to this suspicion by standing up, taking another biscuit, her third, and announcing: ‘ Sorry but I can’t stand the tension – can we go and say hello to Freya?’

  It was, he realised as he sat in the study after lunch, a rite of passage, and as such was bound to be uncomfortable. For one thing it was weird to hear someone else thumping around the house – and Lara did thump – making themselves at home. He wa
nted her to feel at home of course, had himself spent some time this morning showing her the ropes, but the speed with which she was adjusting to her new surroundings was alarming. He would have preferred to be up at the top of the house in the studio, where he could have amused himself with some drawing in relative peace and quiet, but felt he should at least try to look busy. In the end, having called the office and spoken first to Doug, then to Jackie, paid some bills and played two games of patience on the computer, he decided to remove himself from fretting’s way, and go out.

  Emerging into the hall he found Lara in the act of hoisting the papoose on to her back with frightening ease. David was unsettled not just by this, and its implications – that she too was going for a walk and it might be impossible for them to avoid one another – but by her assumption that it was OK to use the backpack. He had imagined her pushing the buggy, or perhaps even the big pram, not using this, a piece of equipment which he’d come to see as his preserve, the emblem of the special relationship between father and daughter.

  ‘OK if I use this?’ enquired Lara breezily, extending the waist-strap and snapping shut the clasp. ‘ Thought your daughter could show me round the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ he said, knowing he hadn’t the least grounds for refusal or complaint, but put out nonetheless. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve got a few things to post and some stuff to collect, so I’m going to pop into town. I shan’t be more than an hour or so. Will you be all right on your own?’

  ‘Right as rain,’ declared Lara. ‘ Might as well start as we mean to go on. Okey dokey, let’s get this show on the road …!’ And with this she was off, leaving David dazed and bereft.