Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby Page 4

  Others say nothing but with a widening of the eyes, a tilt of the head and a sad smile they communicate their sympathy, no one deserves to be named Daphne. Students are the most honest. Some of them laugh out loud. The fourth response is, ‘Oh, how unusual!/ quaint!/ pretty!/ charming!’ Carol is one of these.

  Please God don’t let Carol have a date this weekend, Daphne prays. She doesn’t know if she can stop from blurting the truth if Carol asks her what she and Donnie are up to this weekend. But God isn’t listening.

  ‘What are you and Donnie up to this weekend?’ Carol enquires.

  It’s not even as if she’s actually interested. She only asks so that she can bum about what she’s up to. She can’t ask Jo or Magda, they’re married so they only cook, clean and get school uniforms ready. This is why she picks on Daphne.

  ‘Staying in. We’re just going to have a quiet weekend.’

  The lie comes easily. Daphne doesn’t go red or cry. It’s not a lie, she thinks, we are going to have a quiet weekend; me in my house alone and crying and Donnie in his house alone and off his head.

  ‘Again? Phew, your social life is a whirl.’

  ‘Donnie’s tired, he’s got a big project at work, he’s been working late, he…’

  Daphne is beginning to make things up, her face is getting red, she can feel her throat get tight.

  ‘You know Daphne, you’re as bad as us,’ says Jo, ‘you might as well be married with kids.’

  ‘I’ve got to go to a dinner party,’ moans Carol. ‘No way out of it, Cynthia’s rescheduled twice already to accommodate everyone, I have to go.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad, getting your dinner made for you, sitting getting drunk, don’t have to wash the dishes or anything,’ says Magda. ‘I bet the food’ll be good too.’

  ‘Oh yes, I suppose so,’ says Carol in the bored voice she uses when she’s bumming. ‘She’s doing salmon. Caught it herself on one of these corporate days out with clients, she’s a manager with the Royal Bank. It weighs eighteen pounds apparently, some kind of company record. She’s an excellent cook but she’s had it in the freezer three weeks now. If she doesn’t cook it this weekend it’ll go off. I’ve no choice, I have to go.’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do Carol,’ says Jo kindly. They all know that Carol never does anything she doesn’t want to do.

  ‘Oh no but I have to, Cynthia’s got a bad leg.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘One leg shorter than the other,’ Carol lowers her voice and patiently explains, ‘she was born that way, she’s handicapped. I couldn’t possibly refuse her invitation.’

  ‘Carol, she’s a bank manager with the strength to land an eighteen-pound salmon, she’ll take it on the chin if you cancel. Don’t be so bloody patronising, I thought you said she was a friend?’ says Daphne.

  ‘Oh! No doubt you’d tell her to stop bothering you with her gimpy leg and her rotten stinking fish but I’m not like you, Daphne. And besides, it wouldn’t just be Cynthia I was letting down, she’s set me up with one of her friends.’

  ‘Aha! So now we come to the real reason why you’re going!’ says Magda, jumping in to the fray.

  ‘He’s a vet. Gerald, his name is.’

  ‘Where does he practice? Daphne could bring him her flying mice.’

  ‘Cynthia says he’s based in an abattoir.’

  ‘Oh, so he doesn’t do dogs and stuff, then?’ asks Jo, slightly disappointed.

  ‘No, not in an abattoir,’ explains Magda, who is a vegetarian, ‘he won’t do puppies or fluffy kittens. It’s a manky slaughterhouse where the animals are pissing and shitting themselves, knowing they’re about to be murdered.’

  ‘Magda, stop,’ says Daphne, ‘I’m feeling a bit rough.’

  ‘Where they queue to be murdered by a bolt through the brain and have their guts ripped out.’

  ‘Please,’ begs Daphne, ‘I’m going to heave.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ counters Carol, laughing, ‘he’s not a murderer, he’s a vet. Vets look after animals, he’s in Disease Control.’

  ‘Carol,’ says Magda, ‘wise up. Gerald’s job is to separate the terrified pissing shitting healthy animals from the terrified pissing shitting diseased ones.’

  ‘Still and all,’ says Jo, obviously impressed, ‘a vet.’

  *

  Another early morning phone call, another slippery dash from the shower, but this time Daphne gets there before the machine and something makes her hold back. It’s her mother; she was right to hesitate. Once again Mum is bright and breezy, chattering about her new home with Daphne’s big brother, Albee, and his wife and kids. Albert has converted his basement into her granny flat. She has her own kitchen and bathroom, her own air conditioning, which is just as well because she wouldn’t last ten minutes without it, her own television although God knows she hasn’t had a chance to watch it she’s so busy with the kids and anyway Australian TV is so full of swearing, even the adverts, can Daphne believe that they actually allow swearing on the adverts?

  Daphne smiles, she’s been so busy missing Donnie she hasn’t thought about missing Mum. She’s going to have to speak to her, but not now. She’ll wait until Donnie is well again, until they’re back together. Then she can laugh and gossip with Mum.

  Daphne wakes the next morning in a hurry. It’s only quarter past four but she braces herself and puts the light on. Now she knows what she must do. She can’t believe it hasn’t occurred to her before now. While she was half dozing, running over and over again in her mind everything that has happened, something Donnie said hit her like an anvil. You deserve better.

  The significance of these words stir in Daphne a wave of pity for Donnie. He has spent his life unloved. He once told her that at school he was small, freckly, specky, smelly, bugsy, but worst of all, red-haired. A ginger nut, a carrot heid, a Bunsen burner, a ginguy. Nobody loves a ginger baby, he said, that’s why she gave him the nickname.

  It’s so obvious to her now. The antidepressants have, for years, masked Donnie’s total lack of self-worth. You deserve better, that’s what he said.

  She begins a letter.

  Chapter 5

  Dear Donnie,

  How are you? I hope you’re feeling better. Please try to remember baby, the bad times always blow over, always, and life is always sweet again.

  Think back to when you used to have your black weekends. It’s the same kind of thing and no wonder: you’re coming off four years of medication. Please Donnie, don’t shut me out. You say that nobody loves a ginger baby, but I love you. You deserve to be loved. I think about you all the time and worry. I send you love rockets that explode above your head and fall like kisses on your face while you’re sleeping.

  Please phone me Donnie, if only to let me know that you’re okay and that you haven’t forgotten me. My love for you is unconditional.

  I will always be your

  Daphne.

  At twenty past eight the letter is finally finished. She’s going to be late for work but it’ll be worth it. In the departmental office she smiles at the secretaries. She sets exercises for her class to do and while they’re busy she re-reads it. She’s not one hundred per cent sure about the last line, is it too possessive? Perhaps she should go with something a bit chirpier: Catch yae Versace! Or See yah, wouldn’t want to be yah!

  At the postbox, after she has kissed the envelope, her heart is pumping and her spine feels like jelly as her fingers enter the mouth of the box and then, no going back, lets it drop inside. Immediately she feels better, a stout sense of having done the right thing. In years to come they’ll laugh about this. All she can do now is wait.

  The next day she skips the Asda run in case he phones. It was a first class stamp so he should have received it. The day after that she also comes straight home, he’ll definitely have got it by now. The day after that she does just quickly nip into Asda because she’s run out of milk but she’s home in no time. The day after that is Saturday
so if he doesn’t phone by lunchtime he’s not going to phone. On Sunday afternoon she phones him.

  She can picture him lying in the bedroom with the blinds down. As she listens to the impotent bring bring of the unanswered phone, in her imagination she is in bed beside him, running her hand across his brow, brushing his hair from his face.

  On Sunday night he phones her back.

  ‘Daphne, you phoned me.’

  ‘Yes, I…’

  ‘I know it was you. Don’t try and deny it. I checked 1471.’

  ‘What d’you mean, Donnie?’

  ‘Why did you phone me? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, well, other than the fact that we’re apart. Did you get my letter?’

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘I sent you a letter. I posted it a couple of days ago. You should have got it by now.’

  ‘I haven’t opened any mail. Those neds found out it was me who squirted them with piss. They put a lit newspaper through my letter box.’

  ‘Oh my God Donnie, that’s terrible! Are you okay?’

  ‘Well it’s doing nothing for my nerves. But it’ll take more than a couple of neds to torch me. I’ve fitted a metal box on this side of the letter box. They can’t do any damage, the paper just burns itself out.’

  Daphne had warned him there would be repercussions from the Super Soaker incident. She told him it would make him a target but now is not the time to say so. This kind of behaviour is all part of his illness, classic Donnie siege mentality.

  ‘Well, the letter is probably in there.’

  ‘You promised me you wouldn’t contact me.’

  ‘But Donnie, it doesn’t …’

  ‘Daphne, don’t pressure me. I’ve told you, I don’t know what could happen.’

  ‘I won’t pressure you, baby.’

  ‘You’d better not come round here, stalking me or becoming some sort of bunny boiler. I’ll get the police to you, don’t make me have to do that.’

  ‘Donnie. Calm down, pet. Just read the letter, eh? That’s all I wanted to say, just read it. And phone me when you’re feeling better. I miss you.’

  ‘Daphne, I’m not going to read it, you can’t make me.’

  ‘I’m not trying to make you, I just wanted to…’

  ‘And anyway, if they haven’t burnt it by now, I’m going to shred it. You think you know it all Daphne but you don’t, you just don’t know.’

  ‘I know, baby, I mean that I don’t know, of course I don’t, but it’s okay Donnie honestly, take your time. I won’t come round and I won’t phone you I promise.’

  ‘No, because I’ll get the police! I mean it.’

  Daphne knows she can’t cry or respond to the threat; it will only intensify his hysteria.

  ‘Just get well, Donnie. I love you.’

  But he has already hung up.

  No matter how she looks at it, whatever spin she puts on it, the phone call did not go well. The thing about getting the police was shocking and under normal circumstances would be a horrible wounding thing to say but it’s the mention of the shredder which is the most upsetting. He’ll shred everything, shredding till his fingers bleed, feverishly shoving through her handmade valentine cards with the glued-on stars and tissue paper, the funny rhymes she made up, the photos, all their photos. He’ll slice their life into thin strips of rubbish for vermin to nest in.

  *

  Daphne is very good. Of course she worries constantly, but there really is nothing she can do. She’s angry and frustrated and frightened but mostly she’s lonely without him. It’s hard but she often reminds herself that if it’s this hard for her, how tough must it be for him? Paranoid, miserable, suffering alone. But if he can hack it so can she. At least in their separate pain they’re sharing the experience. Daphne doesn’t care how long it takes for him to get better, she’ll wait. At least when he gets better he’ll realise how much she loves him. She’ll have proved without a doubt her love and loyalty even unto letter-shredding and police-calling. He’ll see that despite everything she has waited for him, she hasn’t taken up with other men. Although she worries that he might have topped himself she resists the impulse to phone or call round; for two weeks she is really good. Then she sees him in Asda.

  Her first instinct is to hide because he’ll think that she’s stalking him, that she’s become a bunny boiler after all. But then, this is the Partick Asda, the Asda he refuses to set foot inside for fear for bumping into his ex-wife, there’s no way he can accuse her of stalking him in here. He is coming towards her. He looks a changed man, the separation really has done him the world of good, he looks relaxed and he’s smiling as he walks towards her. And now he’s laughing, he hasn’t seen Daphne yet so who is he laughing with? Oh yes, now Daphne sees, he’s laughing with his ex-wife. He’s shopping and laughing with the woman he supposedly hasn’t spoken to in six years.

  Chapter 6

  Daphne is squeezing a pineapple, feeling its bottom for ripeness, when she hears his voice. It’s not so much that she hears his voice, more that she feels it, cutting through the supermarket sounds: the mumsy music of Radio Asda, a squeaky-wheeled trolley, the hum of the refrigeration cabinets, a wheedling child, a frazzled mother. Though he’s not speaking loudly, his voice blares at her like a factory hooter. She can’t pick out the words but she can tell from the tone he’s in a good mood. Bertha, his ex-wife, his shopping partner, is responding to what he’s saying, she’s cracking jokes too and Donnie is laughing.

  Trapped here in the fruit aisle with Donnie and Bertha advancing on her, like in a bad dream, Daphne wants to move but is paralysed. This is too much information, too contradictory, it doesn’t make sense and if it did, its meaning would be dreadful. They haven’t seen her so they’re not avoiding her but they don’t make it as far as pineapples. Donnie turns left into dairy goods. Bertha had headed back to tomatoes. They have split up, working as a team, buying dinner together, in exactly the same way Daphne and Donnie buy dinner. Daphne knows his next stop will be the beer aisle.

  She gets there before him, her mind working faster than she can properly think through. San Miguel is on a buy-one-get-one-free, he’ll go for that. She’s waiting for him when he turns into the aisle. His face lights with automatic polite recognition, as if he has unexpectedly bumped into a colleague or a distant cousin but realisation makes an ugly mask of his face. He shakes his head sadly, disappointed, Daphne has somehow let him down. She tries to speak but her brain is not working in words, it’s trying to process what she’s seeing, trying to find some interpretation that will makes this acceptable.

  Bertha walks up the aisle as, Daphne remembers, she has done once before. Donnie, staring hard at Daphne, puts out a hand to curb Bertha’s progress, to protect her from Daphne. From Daphne? Then he turns and walks briskly, resisting breaking into a run, out of the shop. Bertha, bemused but apparently understanding that something is wrong, takes a passive look at Daphne and follows him.

  Daphne’s knees buckle. She falls on the floor below a pyramid of Asda own brand lager. A woman stops and looks at her.

  ‘Are you okay, hen?’

  Daphne can’t answer, the power of speech has not returned. She tries to get to her feet but the shop is revolving around her. This is embarrassing, she thinks, people will think I’m an alcoholic.

  ‘Just stay where you are, hen, don’t try to stand up, I’ll get somebody.’

  But she does try to stand up. She’s not making it and then she feels an arm around her ribs lifting her from behind. She is scooped up effortlessly. It is not entirely an unpleasant feeling. This fainting sensation is infinitely preferable to the sick panic she felt a moment ago.

  A spotty youth with an Asda badge that identifies him as ‘Dale’ has returned with the woman. The person who has pulled her from the floor comes round in front of her and is dusting down her jacket. It’s Pierce. This strikes Daphne as funny, funny ha ha as well as funny peculiar that he should be in the shop at this time and see this.<
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  ‘It’s okay, I know her, she’s my neighbour, I’ll get her home.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ says Dale, more to Daphne than Pierce.

  She nods weakly. Dale obviously thinks she’s mentally deficient. Daphne doesn’t mind being mentally deficient. She allows herself to be led outside by Pierce and marched to the front of the taxi queue. Calmly and authoritatively Pierce calls through the people standing patiently, their kiddy buggies dangerously top heavy with loaded plastic bags, saying, ‘Emergency! Coming through!’ The crowd appear to take him for an undercover store detective who has arrested a mentally deficient shoplifter. This impression is strengthened when he puts his hand on her head and firmly ducks it as she enters the cab. Apart from Pierce giving the driver the address, neither of them speaks.

  Pierce herds Daphne into the building and upstairs to her flat. She lets him take her handbag, dangling like a vestigial limb from her arm, and unlock the door. He guides her in then leaves. She stands in the middle of the room with her jacket on, not knowing what to do. Pierce has left the front door open but Daphne hasn’t the power to go and close it. Pierce returns with a bottle of Glen-farclas malt whisky and goes to the kitchen, returning with two glasses. He pours large ones for both of them. They sit. He doesn’t tell her to sit or to drink but she knows this is what she is supposed to do. After a few hesitant sips she gulps the whisky. As soon as her glass is empty he pours her another, another big one. She takes her time a bit more with this one. Pierce has still not said a word.

  Daphne is getting used to the whisky. She knocks back the remains of her glass, ready for another. But Pierce doesn’t give her anymore. He takes the bottle under his arm, like a dockworker with a tabloid newspaper or a farmer with a pig, but Pierce is neither of these. Pierce is voluntarily unemployed, a work-shy lazy dole scrounger, a hash head, a mouse murderer, a cheat. Pierce takes his bottle of whisky and says,