Heaven's On Hold Read online

  He must have looked for just a second too long, because that sixth sense made her turn and see him. He called ‘ Hello there!’ self-consciously and she gave him a childish wave, arm raised, hand wagging back and forth sideways from the wrist. Blushing again, unless he was much mistaken.

  He had to see clients at their property in the afternoon, but when he got back he said breezily: ‘ You’re right, it’s quite a good spot by the fountain there.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘You can watch the world go by.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  By the end of that week, things were beginning to go wrong. Gina’s inadequacies were beginning to catch up with her. The polite, respectful manner, it seemed, was a kind of camouflage to disguise her lack of savoir-faire. A couple of important messages got scrambled, another failed completely to get through, a potentially valuable deal was put in doubt. It was clear she’d been to great lengths to cover up her mistakes, and in doing so had compounded the difficulties. It upset David to think of her secretly suffering in the outer office, getting in a muddle and not asking for help. For a while he colluded in her efforts at concealment, pretending he hadn’t noticed, slipping her hints and giving her the chance to correct what had gone wrong. But one by one the chickens came home to roost, and once Doug cottoned on there was no escape.

  This time he wan’t joking. ‘She’s a nice enough girl, David, but she can’t cut the mustard.’

  ‘It’s early days.’

  ‘Damn right and she’s made enough cock-ups to last years.’ He was in David’s office, and the door was closed, but here he lowered his voice significantly. ‘Joking apart David, you’ve had your bit of whimsy, it’s time to recall one of the harpies off the shortlist.’

  David demurred. He disliked Doug in this thrusting, company-comes-first mode, he wouldn’t allow himself to be tainted by association.

  ‘I haven’t even had a talk with her yet, I’ve been standing back and giving her a chance to sort things out.’

  ‘Well don’t stand back any longer or we’ll go down with all hands!’

  ‘That’s a slight exaggeration.’

  ‘You think?’ Doug gave him a bellicose glare. ‘Look, who cares? The job market is awash with smart cookies dying to better themselves, give me one good reason why B and C should run some kind of charitable institution for misfits.’

  David had begun to sweat slightly with an uncomfortable mixture of anxiety and anger.

  ‘We’ve always tried to run this company on traditional, principled lines. I’d like to talk to Gina before we simply discard her.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ said Doug. He went to the door and opened it wide, so that David could actually see Gina sitting at her PC, the unwitting victim of their deliberations. ‘But a word to the wise – don’t be too long about it.’

  That evening he’d asked Annet for her opinion. It had only been ten days ago, she was massively pregnant, in her last week at the office. But just as cooking was more his bag than hers (though they pretended otherwise), so the trials, triumphs and tribulations of the workplace were her province. She was more savvy, more au fait, metropolitan to his provincial, a go-getter to his wait-and-see-er.

  She listened to him with unblinking, plain-faced attention, a person consciously closing herself off from his underlying agenda of persuasion and entreaty. When he’d finished she picked up her drink and said:

  ‘Well, darl, you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m with Doug on this one.’

  ‘What, boot her out, just like that?’

  ‘No point in prolonging the agony.’

  ‘But a lot of people are thrown off their stroke in their first weeks in a new job.’

  ‘Some do, but the good ones are proactive in looking for solutions. She should have come to you, apologised, asked your advice, showed an immediate and significant improvement – a steep learning curve. From all you’ve told me this girl’s bumping along the bottom.’

  David sighed heavily. He’d got exactly what he asked for – his wife’s unbiased opinion, and if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear he had only himself to blame.

  ‘Oh, darl, I’m sorry …’ Her tone was contrite, she got up and came to sit on the arm of his chair, her arm round his neck, hand stroking his cheek. ‘Hm? But you asked and I’m not going to flannel you. Cruel to be kind time.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He caught her hand and kissed the palm. ‘ I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘I think so.’ She turned his face up to hers and they kissed. He put his arms right round her and rested his face on her bulging stomach.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her.

  She clasped his head and rocked him slightly. ‘You have no idea how glad I am about that.’

  He’d put it off a week, and then the baby’s tumultuous arrival had enabled him to postpone it another few days. Gina had left a card on his desk – a big card with a picture of a pink bassinet pavilioned in lace and garlanded with roses. Inside was a not-too-cloying rhyme about the joy occasioned by a baby girl, and Gina’s own message in loopy, forward-leaning writing:

  ‘To Mr and Mrs Keating, many congratulations on your new baby, with love from Gina K. xx’

  Shell-shocked as he was, he could still see that the two rather sweet childish kisses on the end were not wholly appropriate. It was the first time he’d been able to view what had to be done with any sort of equanimity. In the end he’d actually been able to use his impending paternity leave as a buffer.

  ‘I shall miss you, Gina,’ he said, more truthfully than she could know. ‘But this is a sort of natural break for both of us, so perhaps that will make it easier.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with heart-rending docility, adding for good measure: ‘And I’m really sorry I messed things up.’

  ‘Not at all, nothing serious, no harm done, but I’m quite sure you’ll find something more suited to you.’

  ‘I do hope you find someone more suited as well.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He tried to make it sound as though that would be hard, if not well nigh impossible. It was then that he got up from his desk and went over to open the door for her, touching her upper arm briefly and gently as he did so. It was a gesture of reassurance and comfort, for himself as much as for her, but he was aware even as he made it that in the present climate men in his position had been dragged through the courts for less. The only reason he felt safe in venturing it now was because the poor girl was going anyway. After she’d left the room he developed a tremendous headache.

  Just before he’d left to collect Annet from the hospital, Doug slapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Cheer up, you can get off home to the little family knowing you did the right thing.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Give my love to Annet, and enjoy the baby – they’re not small and sweet for long.’

  Bearing this in mind, David had slipped Gina’s card into his briefcase as he left.

  Sitting in bed in the half-light at – he turned his wrist and peered at the small green numerals – two a.m., it was hard to believe all this had only taken place less than twelve hours ago. If ever he’d needed proof that time was relative, the past week had provided it. Parts of it had been so momentous that in his memory they occupied huge chunks, while other periods of a day or more seemed to have slipped by almost unnoticed, time in parenthesis. Yesterday afternoon came under the former heading. Dismissing Gina King, which in reality had taken no more than half an hour, was a great expanse in his mind, with every detail clearly recalled. Conversely, the preceding couple of days were a blur, but the birth of his daughter stood out like a small lifetime, not necessarily for the right reasons. He’d found himself envying earlier generations of prospective fathers who had been banished by fierce midwives to pace the corridors with a supportive friend and a hip flask until such time as they were presented with their respectably swaddled offspring, when they could repair to the nearest telephone and spread the happy news.…
/>   He’d been baffled by Annet’s refusal of pain relief. She had written a characteristically lucid ‘birth-plan’ with numbered bullet points, declaring that she wanted analgesic only if it would assist the chances of survival of herself or the baby in a life-threatening situation. The whole exercise had seemed pretty life-threatening to David. He didn’t like to see Annet, who was always so rational and in control, reduced to a heaving, pain-wracked, cursing delivery system. And then when it all got too much, and had gone on for too long, and she agreed to an epidural, he felt her humiliation and disappointment keenly.

  ‘You’re doing wonderfully, my darling,’ he said, kissing her reddened cheek and smoothing her damp, sweat-smelling hair, but she wasn’t to be comforted.

  ‘It’s not what I wanted.…’

  ‘But it’s for the best.’

  ‘Only because I’m too old and too bloody feeble to go on under my own steam.’

  ‘Nonsense, no one could have done more.’

  She was always so determined to do things right, and in the most rigorous way. Sometimes he thought she would never know how much he loved and admired her, because she never believed she had quite come up to scratch by her own exacting standards. Her gallantry was among her most appealing qualities, but he knew what it was she feared: weakness, letting go, loss of control. This fear was what he’d captured in his drawing of her. Only in the very extremity of lovemaking did she lose herself for a moment and afterwards she was herself again in no time, speaking in a perfectly collected voice, of everyday matters. Because he adored her he would have liked more – or indeed any – whispering, inconsequential intimacy, but for the same reason he accepted that it was not to be.

  In view of what she perceived as a failure in her performance at the birth, he knew it was doubly important for her to succeed – in her terms – now. He understood, anecdotally and from reading, that she might be rather wobbly for a few weeks, prone to tears and so on. That he was prepared for, and believed she was too. What he could not countenance was the thought of her despair if things actually went wrong – if the baby failed to thrive, or became ill, if she (or he) dropped her in the bath, if the nanny was a disaster, if she herself went into a clinical depression … it didn’t bear thinking about.

  This train of thought brought him full circle. Another half an hour had passed and his arms were getting a bit stiff. He wondered if he dared risk putting the baby back in her basket. Annet was deeply asleep now, the only movement was the tremble of a strand of dark hair with each slow exhalation. Gently he moved the strand aside, and touched her cheek with his fingers. He felt held in a still, steady circle of love. It was a spell that he was loth to break by moving. When he did, he was swept by a tender melancholy, and kissed his daughter lightly on the forehead as he lowered her into the basket.

  Stirred by new feelings and haunted by old ones it was another hour before he fell asleep. He put a careful arm round Annet and felt what had been a wife’s and was now a mother’s body – the soft slack of her stomach, the taut breasts encased in that infernal bra … a feral dampness that had seeped through to the front of her nightdress.…

  The curtained rectangle of the window was turning a dull grey and the birds were emitting their first tentative cheeps as his eyelids drooped.

  Less than an hour later the baby woke up again. This time David could manage no response. He was dimly aware of Annet lurching out of bed, going to the basket and returning, and then of the sounds of sucking which meant it was OK to sleep. But the room was getting lighter and the heartless birds noisier, so that after a short interval the next outburst of crying was harder to ignore and he struggled dutifully, miserably, back into consciousness.

  Annet wasn’t in the bed, the crying was coming from the other room. He squinted at the clock and stifled a groan of anguish: it was five-fifteen. There followed a brief struggle with his conscience during which he told himself that Annet had slept soundly while he dealt with earlier crises. But conscience won and he shuffled over the landing.

  Annet said without looking at him: ‘ Stupid of me, I should have done this first.’

  ‘What difference would that have made?’

  ‘She might just have drifted contentedly off. Now I’m having to disturb her.’

  He nearly said that worked both ways, but stopped himself in time. ‘ Shall I make us a cup of tea?’

  ‘What time is it …? Jesus wept. I’d say coffee, but it’s not a coffee time of day.’

  ‘I’ll make a pot.’

  The crying continued at full strength and he hesitated. ‘What’s up, do you think?’

  ‘God knows.’ Annet completed the nappy and picked the baby up. ‘I hope she’s all right.’

  He went over and touched the back of the baby’s head, but had no reassurance to offer that would have carried weight with his wife.

  For the next two hours they sat groggily in the kitchen, then in the drawing room, putting the baby down and picking her up again. Annet kept putting her to the breast with a desperate and exhausted air, as though stuffing a dummy in her mouth.

  ‘Can she be – I mean, is there an inexhaustible supply?’ he asked.

  ‘They say the more you feed, the more there is.’

  ‘Fair enough …’ In that case, he wanted to ask, could he have a suck? But the likelihood of anything so sensuous seemed remote. As in the delivery room, biological imperatives ruled, the role of his wife’s body had changed for the forseeable future and he would never have dreamed – or dared – of importuning it in full cry.

  Tired unto death the two of them kept watch: a watch not so much of wondering love, as of confusion and anxiety.

  At about seven, with the sun climbing, the milk on the doorstep, the Independent on the mat and the Today programme dishing out its customary stick to political spokespersons, they rallied. And their daughter, worn out, fell into a profound and peaceful sleep in her Moses basket.

  With the bright morning, the sights and sounds of everyday life, the knowledge that the rest of the world was once more going about its business, a sense of normality returned. They even, as they ate toast in their night things, ran baths and took occasional wary peeps into the basket, experienced a holiday mood. This was enhanced by flowers arriving at the door. ‘From Doug and all at B and C’ read David off the card. ‘ Welcome home to all three, have a good week.’

  ‘That’s nice of them,’ said Annet. She took the flowers and stood them in the sink. Following her bath she’d put on a pair of black trousers – normally evening wear but they had a drawstring waist – and a white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. With her hair brushed and her make-up on she looked ready for anything, and David could no longer resist putting his arms round her, his hands resting on her bottom.

  ‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’

  ‘No, but I shan’t hold it against you. There doesn’t seem to have been much time for that sort of thing.’ She placed her own hands on his cheeks and drew his face down for a kiss.

  ‘Well anyway I do,’ he said. ‘More than ever.’

  She pulled back to look at him. ‘And why is that?’

  He hesitated, wanting to give not just the right, but the truthful answer. But she misinterpreted his pause and added mockingly: ‘Because now I’m a fully paid-up woman?’

  ‘Your words, not mine.’

  ‘Close though.’ She gave his cheek a quick kiss as if saying that was that, but he held on to her.

  ‘We’ve been through something together, something momentous. A rite of passage.’

  ‘Correction darl,’ said Annet. ‘I went through it.’ Rebuffed, he let her go. Just as they were now middle-aged parents who’d sworn they’d never start a family, so they’d been resolute elective singletons who’d confounded everyone by getting married.

  David had been forty-two when he’d met Annet ten years ago, and she’d just turned thirty. Curiously, as it now seemed, it was he who’d been the veteran of several reasonably longstanding
relationships, none of which had resulted in any domestic arrangement, while she at the time was living placidly with a man named Seth in Bayswater. But then again, he hadn’t known about Seth to begin with, any more than she’d known he was on his own and out of work. These two conditions were not unconnected. Redundancy at his age had knocked him for six and left him winded, angry and demoralised. His lady friend at the time, a divorcee slightly older than him, had pretty soon tired of his depression and formed a jollier liaison with her tennis partner, leaving David plagued by self-doubt to face months of job applications and assiduous, time-filling self-improvement.

  On the day in question he’d forced himself to put on a suit and cart into London to attend the national AGM of the only good cause he formally supported, a charity for the homeless. The state of dispossession, whether from country, beliefs, home or family, was one with which he found it surprisingly easy to identify, and he feared it. In his present situation, in spite of a mortgage paid off and a perfectly healthy bank balance, it seemed only a step away. He knew that at every city soup kitchen and among every cluster of cardboard boxes there was probably at least one man pretty much like him, well-spoken, well-educated, middle-class – alone. Situations such as his, occurring at what was anyway a tricky time of life, were profoundly unbalancing, and though he was very far from being unable to cope he needed the salutary reminder of what not coping in its most extreme form could lead to. But as well as these secret fears his unprecedented attendance at the AGM was informed by less complicated self-interest – it was something to do, and he might meet someone interesting. He had read that most romantic liaisons began in the workplace, and while that particular avenue was currently closed to him, this was the next best thing.