Chapter Thirty-Six
There was a young woman called Erica whom Dad used to visit, back before the Marines when he was just a parish priest. She was a single mother, nineteen years old and alone in the world, entirely dependent on state benefits. I was only two or three at the time, but I read about her in Dad’s diaries after he died.
Erica’s life as a single mother seemed to break my father’s heart. In the pages of his diary he often asked God how he could better be of service. He wrote about taking her to the supermarket, about topping up her electricity meter with his own money, and about the way he’d see her sitting in the park sometimes, eyes blank with unhappiness.
But what really got to me was a line he wrote about how her baby cried all the time. That image of a sweet baby – my sweet baby – stuck in a damp bedsit with a mother who had no idea how to look after her (I was certain my baby was a girl) kept me awake at night. A baby who could otherwise have lived in a warm, comfortable house with proper grown-ups like Jeremy and Janice Rothschild.
Jill said I was being ridiculous, that young single mothers on benefits had babies all the time, and these babies were perfectly happy and did not cry all day long, any more than they lived in damp bedsits. And she was right, of course, but it was easier for her. She hadn’t read my dad’s diaries, and she had a whole family to lean on.
She reminded me that Jeremy had promised he’d get David to pay me an allowance if I decided to keep the child. He and Janice had already sent me a mobile phone – I knew they wanted to help.
But what if David didn’t want to pay me an allowance? What if he just said no? He was a lawyer, he’d find a way out of it if he wanted to; Jeremy couldn’t force him. And I was a twenty-year-old with no backup; no more able to take him to court than I was to swim the Pacific.
The Rothschilds had a holiday house in Northumberland, Jeremy told me, when I finally called to ask more questions. A village called Alnmouth, near where Dad and I had stayed when I was a kid. One of Dad’s lads at the 45 Commando had a static caravan in Beadnell Bay, a few miles up the coast.
I imagined a little girl running around on that wide, shimmering beach with a bucket and spade as I had once done; her dad showing her how to look for blennies and prawns in rock pools, teaching her about dahlia anemones and sponges and seaweeds, just like Dad had me.
Janice and Jeremy would watch as she played, smiling, explaining, guiding – maybe adopting another child, so she’d always have a sidekick. They would have a car, a fridge full of food, and they’d give her that basic, cellular sense of safety that comes with a healthy bank balance.
Jill gave this short shrift, too: she said there was nothing to stop me taking my daughter to the beach myself. ‘You’d be a brilliant teacher!’ she insisted. ‘Your dad was just an amateur rockpooler; you’re on your way to being a pro!’
She would help me, she said, the day she took me out for a 99p baguette to try to persuade me not to give the baby away. ‘We can turf Vivi out and have a nursery in her room. We can ask to be in separate tutor groups so I can look after the baby while you go to seminars. And I’m sure you could take a baby into lectures!’
In the end I had to ask her to stop, and she did, because she knew what I was really afraid of: that this baby would have a childhood as lonely as my own.
It was the call from Janice that made up my mind.
Led by one of the PhD students, a small group of us from my department had converged on rocky shore at low tide one Tuesday lunchtime to survey a stretch of exposed rock. We were armed with quadrats, hand lenses and cameras and I felt unusually hopeful, surrounded by friends, working in the hard spring air.
The tide was out, the North Sea thoughtful. Clouds massed on the horizon, where huge tankers lumbered north to Russia and Canada. I was standing on a rock, surrounded in all directions by dank bladderwrack, when my phone rang.
‘Emily?’ said a woman.
I recognised her voice straight away. Jill, Vivi and I had rented one of her films the other day: she only had a small part but she did it very well and we all agreed she was ‘cool’.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Janice?’ Although I normally forbade myself from doing it, I felt my hand ascend to my belly, where it rested protectively.
‘Yes,’ she said. Then: ‘Alan, fuck off!’
There was a scuffling sound.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, when she came back on the line. ‘I’m looking after my friend’s dog; she’s having an operation. I made the mistake of giving him a biscuit earlier and now he won’t leave me alone.’
I liked her immediately. Granny had always had dogs, and she was always giving them biscuits and swearing at them.
‘Look,’ she went on, ‘I won’t take up your time. I just felt it was strange that we hadn’t spoken yet. I just wanted to say – even though I know Jeremy will have said it a million times – that you mustn’t feel any pressure whatsoever to give your baby up to us. Or to anyone. This is your child, and, God knows, I know how special it must be to be carrying it.’
To my surprise, I laughed. ‘Special isn’t the first word that crosses my mind,’ I said. ‘I mean, it is special, but it’s ... terrifying.’
Janice laughed, too. Nobody had laughed about my situation until now. It was actually quite refreshing.
‘It’s been a bit of a shitshow for you, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘I always feared David would do something like this. I could kill him. But all I wanted to say is that we really, truly do not want you to feel trapped. We’ll do our best to make sure you’re OK whatever you decide to do. I just needed to tell you that myself.’
We’ll do our best.They had no control over David Rothschild, and she knew it.
My coursemates, focused on what lurked under rocks and in pooled water, fanned across the shore, surveying, discussing, documenting. A trawler ploughed towards the harbour with a late catch.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But – honestly – I don’t feel pressured at all. Jeremy’s been great.’
