“Christ it’s hot,” Ainsley said as we turned up the walk that led to Clara’s house. The grass on the doormat- sized lawn had not been cut for some time. On the steps lay a neatly decapitated doll and inside the baby carriage was a large teddy bear with the stuffing coming out. I knocked, and after several minutes Joe appeared behind the screen door, harried and uncombed, doing up the buttons on his shirt.
“Hi Joe,” I said, “here we are. How’s Clara feeling?”
“Hi, come on through,” he said, stepping aside to let us past. “Clara’s out back.”
We walked the length of the house, which was arranged in the way such houses usually are – living room in front, then dining room with doors that can be slid shut, then kitchen – stepping over some of the scattered obstacles and around the others. We negotiated the stairs of the back porch, which were overgrown with empty bottles of all kinds, beer bottles, milk bottles, wine and scotch bottles, and baby bottles, and found Clara in the garden, sitting in a round wicker basket-chair with metal legs. She had her feet up on another chair and was holding her latest baby somewhere in the vicinity of what had once been her lap. Clara’s body is so thin that her pregnancies are always bulgingly obvious, and now in her seventh month she looked like a boa constrictor that has swallowed a watermelon. Her head, with its aureole of pale hair, was made to seem smaller and even more fragile by the contrast.
“Oh hi,” she said wearily as we came down the back steps. “Hello Ainsley, nice to see you again. Christ it’s hot.”
We agreed, and sat down on the grass near her, since there were no chairs. Ainsley and I took off our shoes; Clara was already barefoot. We found it difficult to talk: everyone’s attention was necessarily focussed on the baby, which was whimpering, and for some time it was the only person who said anything.
When she telephoned Clara had seemed to be calling me to some sort of rescue, but I felt now that there was nothing much I could do, and nothing she had even expected me to do. I was to be only a witness, or perhaps a kind of blotter, my mere physical presence absorbing a little of the boredom.
The baby had ceased to whine and was now gurgling. Ainsley was plucking bits of grass.
“Marian,” Clara said at last, “could you take Elaine for a while? She doesn’t like going on the ground and my arms are just about falling off.”
“I’ll take her,” said Ainsley unexpectedly.
Clara pried the baby away from her body and transferred it to Ainsley, saying “Come on, you little leech. I sometimes think she’s all covered with suckers, like an octopus.” She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, looking like a strange vegetable growth, a bulbous tuber that had sent out four thin white roots and a tiny pale- yellow flower. A cicada was singing in a tree nearby, its monotonous vibration like a hot needle of sunlight between the ears.
Ainsley held the baby awkwardly, gazing with curiosity into its face. I thought how closely the two faces resembled each other. The baby stared back up with eyes as round and blue as Ainsley’s own; the pink mouth was drooling slightly.
Clara raised her head and opened her eyes. “Is there anything I can get you?” she asked, remembering she was the hostess.
“Oh no, we’re fine,” I said hastily, alarmed by the image of her struggling up out of the chair. “Is there anything I can get you?” I would have felt better doing something positive.
“Joe will come out soon,” she said as if explaining. “Well, talk to me. What’s new?”
“Nothing much,” I said. I sat trying to think of things that would entertain her, but anything I could mention, the office or places I had been or the furnishings of the apartment, would only remind Clara of her own inertia, her lack of room and time, her days made claustrophobic with small necessary details.
“Are you still going out with that nice boy? The good-looking one. What’s-his-name. I remember he came by once to get you.”
“You mean Peter?”
“Yes she is,” said Ainsley, with a hint of disapproval. “He’s monopolized her.” She was sitting cross-legged, and now she put the baby down in her lap so she could light a cigarette.
“That sounds hopeful,” Clara said gloomily. “By the way, guess who’s back in town? Len Slank. He called up the other day.”
“Oh really? When did he get in?” I was annoyed that he hadn’t called me too.
“About a week ago, he said. He said he’d tried to phone you but couldn’t get hold of your number.”
“He might have tried Information,” I said drily. “But I’d love to see him. How did he seem? How long is he staying?”
“Who is he?” Ainsley asked.
“Oh, no one you’d be interested in,” I said quickly. I couldn’t think of two people who would be worse for each other. “He’s just an old friend of ours from college.”
“He went to England and got into television,” said Clara. “I’m not just sure what he does. A nice type though, but he’s horrible with women, sort of a seducer of young girls. He says anything over seventeen is too old.”
“Oh, one of those,” Ainsley said. “They’re such a bore.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the grass.
“You know, I got the feeling that’s why he’s back,” Clara said, with something like vivacity. “Some kind of a mess with a girl; like the one that made him go over in the first place.”
“Ah,” I said, not surprised.
Ainsley gave a little cry and deposited the baby on the lawn. “It’s wet on my dress,” she said accusingly.
“Well, they do, you know,” said Clara. The baby began to howl, and I picked her up gingerly and handed her over to Clara. I was prepared to be helpful, but only up to a point.
Clara joggled the baby. “Well, you goddamned fire hydrant,” she said soothingly. “You spouted on mummy’s friend, didn’t you? It’ll wash out, Ainsley. But we didn’t want to put rubber pants on you in all this heat, did we, you stinking little geyser? Never believe what they tell you about maternal instinct,” she added grimly to us. “I don’t see how anyone can love their children till they start to be human beings.”
Joe appeared on the back porch, a dishtowel tucked apron-like into the belt of his trousers. “Anybody for a beer before dinner?”
Ainsley and I said Yes eagerly, and Clara said, “A little vermouth for me, darling. I can’t drink anything else these days, it upsets my bloody stomach. Joe, can you just take Elaine in and change her?”
Joe came down the steps and picked up the baby. “By the way,” he said, “you haven’t seen Arthur around anywhere, have you?”
“Oh god, now where has the little bugger got to now?” Clara asked as Joe disappeared into the house; it seemed a rhetorical question. “I think he’s found out how to open the back gate. The little bastard. Arthur! Come here, darling,” she called languidly.
Down at the end of the narrow garden the line of washing that hung almost brushing the ground was parted by two small grubby hands, and Clara’s firstborn emerged. Like the baby he was naked except for a pair of diapers. He hesitated, peering at us dubiously.
“Come here love, and let mummy see what you’ve been up to,” Clara said. “Take your hands off the clean sheets,” she added without conviction.
Arthur picked his way over the grass towards us, lifting his bare feet high with every step. The grass must have been ticklish. His diaper was loose, suspended as though by willpower alone below the bulge of his stomach with its protruding navel. His face was puckered in a serious frown.
Joe returned carrying a tray. “I stuck her in the laundry basket,” he said. “She’s playing with the clothespins.”
Arthur had reached us and stood beside his mother’s chair, still frowning, and Clara said to him, “Why have you got that funny look, you little demon?” She reached down behind him and felt his diaper. “I should have known,” she sighed, “he was so quiet. Husband, your son has shat again. I don’t know where, it isn’t in his diaper.”
Joe handed round the drinks, then knelt and said to Arthur firmly but kindly, “Show Daddy where you put it.” Arthur gazed up at him, not sure whether to whimper or smile. Finally he stalked portentously to the side of the garden, where he squatted down near a clump of dusty red chrysanthemums and stared with concentration at a patch of ground.
“That’s a good boy,” Joe said, and went back into the house.
“He’s a real nature-child, he just loves to shit in the garden,” Clara said to us. “He thinks he’s a fertility-god. If we didn’t clean it up this place would be one big manure field. I don’t know what he’s going to do when it snows.”
