The Daughter of Lady Macbeth by Ajay Close

Author:Ajay Close
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2017-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

Baby

What was different about that day? A part of me says nothing. It was a day like any other, when the potential became actual in its inevitable way. And yet the air was so warm and the gale so wild, bludgeoning the windows when I awoke, scrawling a queasy excitement on the blank canvas of the sky. Margo had been up before first light. Wet sheets and towels thrashed on the line.

Frankie was early. There was a split-second’s awkwardness before we kissed, and another when he noticed my jeans: fine for the farmyard, but not to sit in a chintz armchair surrounded by women in Hobbs and Jigsaw. I reminded him that I went every day, and never wore anything else. There was no point hanging around the clinic for an extra half hour, so I gave him a tour of the farm. The milking parlour. The churchy hush of the grainstore. The kitchen, where Margo challenged him to explain why there was nothing but rubbish on telly these days. After ten minutes, I put on my coat, tipping his half-drunk tea down the sink, rattling the crockery in the cupboard as I slammed the back door behind us. I was no calmer in the yard, snatching the keys out of his hand, stalling the car, doing a passable impression of someone fleeing the scene of a crime.

The receptionist did a double-take when we walked in. I was old news, but Frankie hadn’t shown his face in weeks. So then they all looked: the Glasgow blonde and her pony-tailed escort, the Sinhalese couple with the Mercedes convertible, the husband and wife who’d given me a card for their country house hotel. The door from the car park opened. A man and a woman came in: mid-thirties, good-looking, moneyed. Even before I saw what they were carrying I recognised the glamour of an Event.

The baby was knobble-headed with skin the colour of a household candle and the prognathous jaw of Early Man. His mouth shaped itself around the absent nipple, his toes curling and uncurling as his feet, held at right angles to his puffy ankles, kicked their slow spasmodic jig. At the sight of his beauty, the women in the waiting room uttered a collective ‘aah’, our gym-toned hips spreading, the strain on our faces dissolving. The receptionist held him first, over her shoulder. He watched us with unblinking eyes while she whispered in his ear. A smiling delegation of pyjama girls came through from the medical wing. The father basked in their questions, while the mother’s vigilant gaze followed her son around the room. One of the doctors planted him on her knee, cupping his neck between forefinger and thumb, rubbing his back till she became drowsy with her own caresses and lacked a free hand to cover her yawn. The Glaswegian hoisted him in the air and made pop-eyed faces. The hotel manageress winded him until he burped. The Sinhalese woman rocked him in her arms like a plaster Madonna and surveyed the room with a heart-breaking smile.

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