Yesterday's Weather Read Free Page B

know why until she was standing in front of him, with the baby thrust out at arms’ length.
    ‘Take him,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Take the baby.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Take the fucking baby!’
    The baby dangled between them, so shocked that when John fumbled it into his arms, the sound of wailing was a relief – at least it turned the volume in her head back on. But Hazel was already walking back up to the ball. She picked it up and slung it low towards the apple trees.
    ‘Now. There’s your ball.’ Then she turned to go inside.
    John’s father was at the sliding door; his stick clutched high against his chest, as he managed his way down the small step. He looked at her and smiled so sweetly that Hazel knew he had just witnessed the scene on the lawn. Also that he forgave her. And this was so unbearable to her – that a complete stranger should be able to forgive her most intimate dealings in this way – that Hazel swung past the tiny old man as she went inside, nearly pushing him against the glass.
    John found her hunkered on the floor in the living room searching through the nappy bag. She looked up. He was not carrying the baby.
    ‘Where’s the baby?’ she said.
    ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.
    ‘I have to change my top. What did you do with the baby?’
    ‘What’s wrong with your top?’
    Snots . Hazel could not bring herself to say the word; it would make her cry, and then they would both laugh.
    But there was no clean T-shirt in the bag. They were staying in a hotel, because Hazel had thought it would be easier to get the baby asleep away from all the noise. But there was always a teething ring left in the cool of the mini-bar, or a vital plastic spoon in the hotel sink, and so of course there was no T-shirt in the bag. And anyway, John would not let her bring the baby back to the hotel for a nap.
    ‘He’s fine. He’s fine,’ he kept saying as the baby became ever more cranky and bewildered; screaming in terror if she tried to put him down.
    ‘Why should he be unhappy?’ she wanted to say. ‘He has had so few days in this world. Why should the unhappiness start here?’
    Instead she kept her head down, and rummaged for nothing in the nappy bag.
    ‘Go and get the baby,’ she said.
    ‘He’s with Margaret, he’s fine.’
    Hazel had a sudden image of the baby choking on a prawn-flavoured Skip – but she couldn’t say this, of course, because if she said this, then she would sound like a snob. It seemed that, ever since they had arrived in Clonmel, there was a reason not to say every single thought that came into her head.
    ‘I hate this,’ she said, eventually, sinking back from the bag.
    ‘What?’
    ‘All of it.’
    ‘Hazel,’ he said. ‘We are just having a good time. This is what people do when they have a good time.’
    And she would have cried then, for being such a wrong-headed, miserable bitch, were it not for a quiet thought that crossed her mind. She looked up at him.
    ‘No, you’re not,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You are not having a good time.’
    ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Right. Whatever you say,’ and turned to go.
    Margaret hadn’t, in fact, asked the baby to suck a prawn-flavoured Skip. She had transformed the baby into a gurgling stranger, sitting on the brink of her knee and getting its handsclapped. The baby’s brown eyes were dark with delight, and his mouth was fizzing with smiles and spit. At least it was, until he heard Hazel’s voice, when he turned, and remembered who his mother was, and started to howl.
    ‘Well, don’t say you didn’t like it,’ said Hazel, taking him on to her shoulder, feeling betrayed.
    ‘Sorry,’ said Margaret, ‘I was dying to have a go.’
    ‘Oh, any time,’ said Hazel, archly. ‘You can keep him if you like,’ listening already to her housewife’s camp.
    Why not? She sat down at the table and threw a white baby cloth over the worst of the slug trails on her chest and lifted her face to the weak Easter