CHAPTER 8
Wednesday. They hadn’t slept. The incessant mewing kept them awake. At least it was too feeble for the neighbours to hear. “We’ll not put it off any longer,” Evelyn said. “We’ll take it up to the canal this afternoon. There’ll be nobody around. If they give us a nice little baby, Muriel, we’ll take it out in a pushchair, you and me. In the spring. We’ll go to the Parade.”
More likely, of course, the Welfare would catch up with them and take it away. They couldn’t be avoided for ever. Still, Muriel was entitled to a bit of hope. Except for the baby, the house was so quiet. No incursions from the spare room. Everything held its breath. Another lightbulb had gone. The weather was getting colder, and the house was full of draughts.
By now there was no more milk. Muriel had spilled a lot, wasted it, even drunk some of it herself. Evelyn didn’t feel up to another shopping trip. It had a strange effect on her, making her speak out to people like that, tell them confidences. Least said, soonest mended. There were people everywhere waiting to report you to the Welfare. Look at that Florence Sidney.
Yes, look at her. Evelyn stood at the window on the landing. What did Florence think she was doing, standing outside by her dustbin and staring up at the roof?
Evelyn stopped at the door of the spare room and listened. She distrusted this unnatural silence. After a minute or two she thought she heard a faint stir behind the door, a grumbling, a low mutter of protest. I’ll fetch you a sop, something that’s belonged to it, palm you off.
“Well now, Muriel, are you ready?” she asked, going downstairs. “It’ll be dark before long. You carry the box. Sink or swim, we’ll have to see. We all take our chances in this world.”
“All right,” Muriel said.
They put on headscarves, and their thick coats. The baby seemed exhausted now, and had stopped crying; it didn’t seem likely to attract attention. Evelyn put a towel over its face, and folded over the flaps of the box.
The clock struck half-past three as they set out. It was one of those dank cheerless days so frequent in February and March; the ground was sodden underfoot, the trees dripping, and the sun a white haze low on the horizon. They passed no one on Lauderdale Road, no one on Turner’s Lane. From here a muddy path led across an open field. There was a faint scrabbling from within the box, and Muriel tightened her arms around it. She looked about her as she walked. It was months since she’d had an outing, of course. “Don’t dawdle, Muriel,” Evelyn said crossly. “At my age you feel the cold.”
On the canal bank, their shoes squelched in a mulch of old newsprint and last autumn’s leaves. There was no one about. There was a wrecked car rusting away, and broken glass on the path. The water was stagnant, green. A wind was getting up.
When Evelyn turned back the flaps of the box, Muriel thrust her hands out officiously, as if to pick the infant up. Evelyn slapped them away. She removed the towel and the sheet that had lined the box, put them aside, and lowered the box onto the surface of the water. She straightened up; her back ached from bending. In the last few minutes it had seemed to grow darker. The wind will push it along, Evelyn thought. They watched the box growing sodden, tipping into the water. “It must be moving,” Evelyn said. Then darkness sucked it away.
Inexplicably, Muriel leaned down and put a finger into the slime, as if she were testing bathwater. There was a kind of avidity in her face; no doubt she was straining her eyes. Evelyn gave her a clean handkerchief to dry her hand, then took it off her and put it in a damp ball in her pocket.
They waited on the bank for ten minutes. It was quite dark now. “It must be dead,” Evelyn said at last. “They won’t give you anything in exchange for a corpse. Well, I did the best I could for you, Muriel.” She folded the bedding and crammed it into her shopping basket, and took out a torch to light their way home. “Kick that box over by the wall,” she said, “we don’t want that.”
Muriel did as she was told, with an energetic boot from her sturdy leg. It will all be as before, Evelyn thought, as they trudged back across the field. As if Muriel had never been pregnant. Back to our old life. Oh, dear God. A sickly fear began to tickle and scrape in the pit of her stomach, then rose and lodged itself behind her ribs. The old life. What have I done? Her heart felt like lead, but molten lead, heaving and pulsating inside its coffin of flesh.
On the doormat there was another card from the gasman. Muriel rushed into the hall as if she had no concept of what might be waiting for her. Perhaps the changeling, come home already. She showed no fear. Sometimes Evelyn wondered at her.
“We’ll have our tea early,” she said. “We’ll have corned beef. I want to put my feet up. That walk’s taken it out of me.”
There was something she had to do first. She collected together the baby’s towel, its blanket, its feeding bottle and the sterilizing solution, and put them in a paper bag. She took them out to the lean-to, and thrust them into a pile of Clifford’s newspapers. It gave her a sour satisfaction. Back from the dead, are you? Your own daughter, in your own house. Damn you, Clifford; your handiwork hasn’t lasted long.
As she came through to the kitchen, she heard the doorbell ring. It was probably the gasman again, she thought. They’d not let him in the last two times, and he was getting impatient. Well, it could do no harm now, there was nothing out of the way for him to notice. Calling to Muriel to stay in the back room, she went down the hall and opened the door. On the doorstep stood the girl from the Welfare.
Evelyn’s jaw sagged. With a bleat of protest she stepped back and made to slam the door. But the girl put up her arm and held it open, a stronger girl than she looked, planting a booted foot on the threshold. She smiled implacably.
“Hello, Mrs. Axon. May I come in?” She was coming in, even as she asked, pulling off her woollen gloves as if she meant business. “I’m sorry to call on you so late, but I did come by just after half-past three.”
“I was out.”
“Yes. I thought you must be,” she said easily. “How’s Muriel?”
Evelyn felt she might suffocate with rage. “Who notified you?” she said fiercely.
“Notified me?” The girl’s face was blank. “But it’s just a routine call, Mrs. Axon. You’re on our files.”
“But you’ve not been, have you? Not for months. What have you come for now?”
