Swimming Lessons(45)

Louise met me on the platform. Her hair had been set and she wore a camel-coloured suit, buttons up the front of the jacket, high heels. Her eyebrows had been plucked and her bosoms were tiny.

“My God, Ingrid,” she said, gawking at me, hair bouncing. “What the bloody hell happened?”

“I’ve had a baby, that’s what!” I shouted at her, rocking the pram and making Nan bawl louder.

“I can see that.” She glanced inside and with a sharp “Come on, then,” strode off. I followed on behind, looking sadly at her neat bottom in her fitted skirt.

She’d kept the flat after I left, and when we’d negotiated the Underground, the narrow street door, and the stairs up to the third floor, Nan was still crying. The smell, the light, and the furniture were the same, and a wave of nostalgia washed over me for the life I could have had. I didn’t let it show. Louise had thrown a patterned cloth over the sofa, a new rug was hiding the ripped lino, and she’d put a vase of flowers in the centre of the table. She lit a cigarette.

“I thought we could go out for lunch,” she said over the noise of Nan mewling. “I reserved a table at Chez Alain.”

I took my hand from inside my blouse and stared at her.

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “My treat.”

“With the baby?”

“I’ve got a job—research assistant at the House of Commons. I started last month. It’s amazing.” She took a lipstick out of her handbag and applied it, looking in the mirror over the gas fire.

“But I thought you were going travelling.” I lifted my breast out of my bra and latched Nan’s whimpering mouth onto my leaking nipple, and finally her noise changed to wet sucking.

“This opportunity came up and it was too good to miss.” Louise’s voice distorted as she stretched her lips. There was a tightness in my chest at the memory of the rebuke she’d given me when I’d gone back on our plans. “I bet you haven’t been to a restaurant in weeks,” she said. “It’ll do you good.” Her reflection in the mirror held the lipstick out to me. I shook my head.

“I don’t know. It depends if Nan falls asleep,” I said.

Louise smacked her lips together. “If she doesn’t, we can stick her in the bedroom; she won’t disturb the neighbours there.” She sat at the little square table where we used to eat our bean and potato stews and tapped her cigarette against an ashtray.

“I can’t leave her here on her own.”

She paused and said, “No, silly me, of course not. We’ll take her with us. Come on.”

With Nan asleep, we renegotiated the stairs and walked to Chez Alain, bumping the Silver Cross up the steps.

“Madam,” the French ma?tre d’ said before we were even inside, “we don’t allow children in the restaurant.”

“But I’ve reserved a table,” Louise said.

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look apologetic. “It will disturb our diners.”

“That’s ridiculous. I have a reservation and I would like some lunch.”

Nan was grizzling. I shook the pram and she began to cry. I could feel the sweet sting of my let-down reflex and the milk beginning to flow. The man shrugged, already turning away.

Louise and I sat on the bench in St. George’s Gardens, where I’d read your books only fourteen months previously. (How could so much have changed?) She tore into the pork pie we’d bought from Levitt’s. I shifted away, embarrassed to be feeding Nan in public, bending forwards, trying to release my breast and at the same time fit Nan’s head under my blouse.

“For God’s sake, Ingrid,” Louise said, her mouth crammed with pastry and pork. “Just get it out. What does it matter if anyone sees? You never used to be such a prude.”

I could feel those old tears stinging my eyes. It took two hands to get Nan latched on. “Tell me about your job,” I said.

She told me how she’d seen Barbara Castle’s back as the MP walked along a corridor in the House of Commons, and how when Parliament reconvened after the summer she was going to find the courage to introduce herself. Louise was excited, full of life and London. She held the pork pie up to my mouth so I could eat and keep Nan in place. I lunged and took a bite, fatty pastry spilling over my lips. Louise poked a piece back into my mouth with her finger and we smiled, and I was dismayed to feel my eyes watering again.

“So, motherhood isn’t all you thought it’d be?” she said, finishing the pie, sucking the grease from her fingers.

“I’m loving it. It’s wonderful.” I swiped my cheek against my shoulder. She wanted to say I told you so, and I wasn’t going to let her.

“And your husband? He’s wonderful too, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course. He adores Nan. He’s writing every day; his next novel will be finished soon.”

“And life in the sticks?” She snorted.

“You have no idea what my life is like, Louise, so how can you judge it?” I raised my voice and Nan twitched. She had come off my nipple and fallen asleep but I didn’t want to risk waking her again.

“I can imagine.” Louise crossed her legs—in tan tights although it was summer—and folded her arms. “You’re unhappy, you regret what you’ve done, but now you’re stuck. You didn’t get your degree and you’re financially dependent on a man. You have a baby but no money and nowhere to go. You live in the back of beyond and you have nothing to fill your time or your mind except nappies and breastfeeding.”