Penny Hodgkinson

Baby Love

         Eddie Murdow says Annie Garslake is a baby killer.  We are sitting on the wall under the laburnum tree in my back garden.  Eddie is my best friend.  We’ve sat next to each other forever; Miss Deeney’s nursery class up to Mr Beale’s All Stars Leavers in Juniors.  We’ve just raced down the hill to see who could climb the wall first.  I am panting a bit.  The shade and my quick breathing make me feel sick.  Eddie slaps me on the back.  Then he reaches up and pulls the long strings of green leaves, letting them bounce back.  It makes the straw-gold August sun jump into splinters.   The laburnum branches are straggly; in the spring they have bright yellow tassels like scrambled eggs.  Dad says the tree needs pruning or it’ll make the wall fall into the garden.  This afternoon it is a cool space in the late summer sunshine. 
         We are invisible in this place.  It’s the back-end of the summer holidays and we have run out of things to do.  Eddie wants to walk up to Wandlebury Common, but I say it’s too far. I don’t care if we just hang around here, punching each other in the arm and trying to push each other off into Dad’s compost heap.  The shadows up here are like a cave we can hide in.  The tree drops black curly pods into the garden.  Mum says they are poisonous.  
         Grownups round our way say Annie Garslake is a nurse; she delivers babies for mums too poor or too busy to go to the hospital up the top of Gardener’s Hill.  Me and Eddie know better; she’s a baby killer.  She disappears the bodies into her house and hides them in the attic or buries them in her back garden.  We’ve seen her dog digging under the bushes.  We swing our legs over the mossy top of the wall and kick our heels against the red bricks – they are crumbling.  A fine dust floats in the breeze.  The skin on the backs of my knees feels gritty; I rub one finger into the crevice.  It comes out sweaty and sticky red.
         I know Annie Garslake really is a baby killer because Eddie told me he saw her one night pushing her bicycle down Leaven Drive to the allotments; she had a bundle in the basket wrapped up in cloths – like swaddling said Eddie. He was Joseph three Christmases ago when we were at Cork Street Infants – he’s got big brown eyes like the dried figs in the long boxes Mum piles by the fruit bowl at Christmas.  I was an angel and my mum made my wings out of an old feather boa from the dressing up box.  The feathers made Miss Hickling splutter as we waited backstage to hear the words ‘heavenly host’ and then Susan Plamer pinched me as we stood behind the star tied to the top of the window pole.  Her nails left a faint crescent on the flesh inside my upper arm – the blood made a smiley dent. 
         Eddie dares me to go up the allotment and see what Annie Garslake has buried; we’ve played truth or dare all summer, running in long strings, up and down the alleys behind our streets.  Some of us have been on holiday to the seaside and now we are back with sand between our toes.  Juniors finished weeks ago and anyway we’re all going off to new schools soon.  Some of us are going up to the grammar in town; or there’s the community college a few streets away.  Our mums are in and out of everyone’s kitchens, sharing piles of clothes and comparing lists; I need a hockey stick.  There’s lots of talk of name tags and bus passes.  Only you don’t need a bus pass for the community college – you can walk there.  It’s local.  Mum says we’re all on the cusp now.  We smell different.  And the boys are shorter than us girls, by two or three inches.
         Eddie’s older brother, Mark, comes to get Eddie; he knows we hide under the tree and he shouts up through the thick scented air – ‘Eeeeeeddie – mam’s calling for you – tea’s on the table.’  I can feel him staring at my legs and my scabbed knees.   Eddie puts one finger to his lips and looks at me– I can see my face reflected in his pupil; a tiny chip of white dots – nose, eyes and mouth.  He whispers, ‘Let’s go up the Waterbridges and fish for sticklebacks.’  I shrug my shoulders – do I care if I’m seen fishing?  I don’t know – I think I should care but I like the way the pebbles crunch under my toes in the icy water, and maybe I’ll have to grab Eddie’s hand if I slip on the bank.
         ‘What about Annie Garslake and the allotment?’
         ‘Yeah  – we’ll do it on the way  back – folks’ll be in having their tea.’
We half-jump, half-fall off the wall and run hard down the alley, until our hearts are jumping in our chests.  The allotments are just over the rec –  where Eddie’s dad and my dad play cricket and our mums serve tea in green-rimmed cups and saucers.  When I grow up I want a teapot with a green stripe going all the way round – it’s very posh.
         The allotments have grass paths and funny old sheds with windows taken out of cars.  Other patches are tidy and the vegetables look like they’re at school in long rows, with neat haircuts. Other bits are all overgrown with nettles and giant dock leaves.  Annie Garslake’s patch is a bit like this – overgrown patches and a couple of stripes of earth with potatoes and stuff.  Witch plants.  Nettles – she says they are good for butterflies.  No-one up here grows nettles.  She grows flowers too – dahlias as pink as Dad’s boiled sweets.  There are a couple of old car tyres too; she could hide a dead baby in the gape of a tyre arch – a bundle would slip in quickly – specially if she had been interrupted.  Maybe by Mr Piper.  Mr Piper is up here most days – he wins the prizes in the town show for a set of onions and stuff – I’ve seen them all laid out on a velvet cloth, all shiny and papery like dolls’ heads.
         Eddie points to a heap of soil – it’s all crumbly.  ‘Go on, then.’  
         I look at Eddie, ‘I’ve nothing to dig with.’
         ‘Use your hands,’ he says. 
         I think about this; then he’s in there scrabbling, like he’s digging at the seaside to let the water appear by magic at the bottom of the hole.  I squat next to him; I like the way my legs burn when I sit like this. Roots and pebbles bubble up in the crumbling soil.  We can’t even pretend there are bones and soon Eddie is kicking over the dirt, like he’s bored with the game.
         Trees overhang the pond in the corner and we crawl out along the branches and drape our arms and legs into the cool water like lizards basking – we are watching our reflections burst and break.  Pond skaters skit about – midges are clustering in the evening air, blobs jumping up and down like static.  Eddie rolls his torso from side to side and the branch quivers – I don’t mind; I learned to dive this summer – he can tip me in and I will surface and surprise him. 

****

         Annie Garslake is the same shape up and down her whole body – round like a rolled-up bandage – the shape is called a cylinder.  Miss Hickling told us that when we did 3D shapes in Maths; pyramids, cubes, globes and cylinders.  Annie Garslake’s legs are two sausages in thick ribby tights like Mum wears; they help her veins, which bulge crinkly blue bumps and lines.  Battle scars, she says, lifting Clemmie out of her cot, a witness to motherhood.  I thought witnesses were what the police interview in trials.  Annie Garslake’s legs could tell some stories.  Mum says one day when she’s finished mothering us five, she will have her veins stripped and get calves as smooth as an eggshell. 
         My new grammar school uniform is dark blue like the nurse’s uniform Annie Garslake wears.  The blazer is felty; I know it will make me sweat in summer.  There is a belt too with a zipped pocket for money.  Annie wears a belt with a big buckle on it; there is a crest on the buckle with some initials on it.  She also wears a watch upside down on her chest and in her pocket there are pens and a funny spiral tube.  Her shoes are those thick-soled school shoes for grownups.  Mum says nurses do a lot of walking.  I need sensible shoes too for the grammar school; I’m not allowed a heel more than 1 inch high.  We didn’t have uniform in the Juniors and the community college people can wear their own clothes too.  Dad calls it the tyranny of the middle classes; I know a tyrant is someone like Stalin or Hitler. Tyrants have moustaches and wield lots of power without responsibility.  I read that last bit in a book.  Secretly I don’t know whether to like my new uniform or hate it – it’s different – smart like an air hostess.  Susan Plamer wants to be an air hostess when she grows up.  Mum says it’s a silly job and why not do something useful like being a teacher or a nurse.  Going up to the grammar will give me choices, she said.  No-one round here has jobs like those except Annie Garslake. 
         Annie Garslake always smiles at me if we meet.  When she’s pushing her bike up the hill.  Her face breaks up into triangles of eyes and mouth.  There is always a package in her basket – a loaf of bread from Freestones Bakery on the corner near the bike shop or a net bag of clumpy potatoes from her allotment.  Or worse broad beans with black flies squished on to the stalks.  She says ‘And how are you today, pet? And your Mam and Daddy? And those brothers and sisters of yours?  All growing up and away, I’ll bet.  Mind how you go now.’ And with a swoop of her sausage leg she is up and on her bike and the wheels whirr down the street going bump, bump over the cobbly bits. She pedals with the ball of her feet.  The packages in the basket shudder and jump all the way down the hill.  I imagine a bundle of wrapped up baby arms and legs tucked into in a cotton blanket like the one Clemmie still sucks at night.  Overnight the corner where she has sucked dries into a stiff lopsided pyramid of material.
         Eddie says he saw his older brother Mark and Linda Plamer at it in Annie Garslake’s shed last summer. She had her cotton school dress scrunched up over her thighs and Joe’s school trousers were round his ankles. I imagine hard, two smooth brown legs and folds of grey gabardine, twitching with passion.  Passion is what drives us – Miss Hickling tells us that when she reads us a poem about misty autumn or snowy nights or even the story of Pip in the graveyard.
         Eddie and I are rolling down the slope at the Waterbridges.  As I turn over and over I see the same thing again and again – the long line of birds sitting on the telegraph wires, looping in a running stitch along the stream’s edge. The birds are there, then it’s dark damp grass, then they’re there – I try and count to see if it’s the same number each time but I’m rolling too quickly.  You have to swivel your body as you reach the bottom or you’ll fall into the water and get all soggy and covered in weed.  Eddie is pulling up long strings of goose grass to stick on my back – they cling like tiny arms and legs – I think of the stick insects he keeps by his bed.  They hardly move but they must be watching all the time.
         Eddie isn’t going up to the Grammar School.  It’s only for girls.  I have to get a bus into the centre of town – my new school is near the big Catholic Church where the priests swing balls of smoke.  I have a new briefcase with my initials on it just below the padlock.  Dad got a packet of stick-on letters from the hardware shop – you pick at the corner until one sticky back peels off and press hard with your thumb and hold for thirty seconds.  I have four initials.  Susan Plamer only has two – S P – she could be any Susan, Jane or Harriet as my father says.  There is a shiny padlock and a tiny key.  I know I will lose this in the first week.  But I turn it and lock and unlock the catch to hear the click as it opens and closes. 
          Rolling down the slope at the Waterbridges, Eddie and I startle two swans.  One of them rears up towards us, sweeping its wings back and forward.  The air rushes hard and strong across my cheeks.  ‘Maybe there’s a nest’ says Eddie. And he crawls on his tummy through the spires of cow parsley.  The creamy flower heads loll and nod, flicking the sun’s rays in stripes across his back.  Sweat stains are darkening his shirt under the arms.  I go after him on my hands and knees – my breasts are sprouting and it hurts to lie on them.  Mum says I’ll definitely need a training bra soon – I suppose I’ll give in then.  The swans’ nest is on the opposite side of the stream.  It is a crown of straw and reeds piled high and round like a medieval castle motte.  I can see a freckled clutch of eggs nestling together like fresh bread rolls.  Eddie fishes in the mud for a pebble and pulling his arm back, hurls the rock across the water – it’s reflection hurtles almost as fast over the water and disappears at the same time as I hear a crack.  I don’t want to look but Eddie is whooping with delight. I pull his shirt – ‘Come on let’s look for newts up at Sidegate’s pond.’  Eddie wrenches his sleeve away and punches my shoulder.  The bruise pours deep into the joint – I wince and then hug the feeling to myself.  ‘Cry baby,’ he says and then races me up the back through the hedge along the edge of the allotments rimmed by nettles and overgrown elderflowers.  I like the friendly sunflowers and dahlias bobbing up and down and the rows of peas and beans.
         Eddie Murdow kisses me by Annie Garslake’s nettle patch.  I’m running and feeling the burn in my upper thighs and then he’s pushed me over onto my side and rolled me onto my back. He presses his chest on to my front – his ribs are bony and his shirt smells of ironing, slightly burnt.  His face lurches over me and his lips are cold and greasy with sweat and they press onto my open mouth.  For a moment I think he’s dropped a slug in my mouth but it’s his tongue.  I push him off and wipe my mouth along my arm – a tidemark of dirt smears between the downy hairs.  I turn and run down the hill into our alleyway without looking back.  It doesn’t matter if he is following me.  I don’t want to race him any more.
         I see Eddie walking down the hill; I’ve just got off the bus – it’s the end of my first week.  I am heady with chalk-dust and homework and new subjects – Latin, French, Physics, and Chemistry.  ‘Eddie,’ I shout and run down the hill; my heavy briefcase bumping into my legs.  Eddie doesn’t turn round – he’s kicking a ball along the gutter and his coat slung over his shoulder like a sack emptied out.  I catch up and look sideways at him – his upper lip is downy.
         ‘How was school?’   I want to hear about Eddie’s day, if the meals at the village college are really as awful as they say. 
         ‘s’alright, I suppose,’ he kicks the ball into the kerbstones. It bounces back to him; he kicks it again into the drain grating, then scoops it up into the crook of his arm and jumps up onto the pavement.  ‘What do you want to know for?'   I look at Eddie, silhouetted against the evening sun; my blazer makes my skin hot and sticky, the bruise on my legs from my briefcase is beginning to ache.  I want to reach out and grab his sleeve to pull him over and wrestle him in the gutter. But I daren’t risk my blazer and skirt and anyway the purse belt is too tight round my middle. 
         ‘We do Latin – it’s really weird and nobody actually speaks it any more,’ I look at Eddie.  He’s looking down so his lashes almost brush the top of his cheeks. ‘Uh – Latin’s for swots and girls,’ he mutters then spins round kicks his football with the back of a heel and runs faster and faster up the hill.  I think about going after him but my legs are weak. At the grammar we don’t run up and down the playground in long chains linked by stretched sweaters or someone’s anorak.  Tagging each other, playing ‘it’ or stuck in the mud.  The girls huddle in little knots and fiddle with each other’s hair or whisper about the teachers. 
         A week later I get off the bus at the bottom of the hill. If I walk up the hill my muscles will grow back.
         ‘Grammar school git.’  The words hurtle towards me and bounce back into the evening air.   I look round; the bus is rocking its way down back to town.  My mouth freezes open.  I can’t work out where the voice came from.  I listen for a sound of breathing. There are only leaves scuffing onto the gutter.   Someone is pushing a bike up the hill – from here they look like a beetle on a twig.  Further on there’s a woman pushing a pram; I check it’s not Mum coming home from the shops with Clemmie.
         ‘College cretin’ I shout into the evening breeze.  Susan Plamer told me  this – she got it from her sister. Then I kick a pebble up the hill just to get my shoes scratched and grubby.  They are still shiny new with that extra slick of polish Dad gave them.  At home I go out to climb up onto the wall under the laburnum.  Then I reach for the gap in the bricks to haul myself up.  The top of the wall is damp and mossy.  Mum will snap at me for getting green stains in long stripes across the seat of my school skirt. I hoist it up and sit in my knickers.  Up the road at the back of the end houses some boys are playing football.  I strain through the leaves to see if Eddie is there.  We haven’t spoken since he ran off after last week.  The gang run down the street, shouting and tearing at each other’s clothes; Eddie’s the last to go past. I squirm and roll my skirt down halfway to hide my knickers.  He stops suddenly.  He bounces the ball off the wall just below my dangling feet. 
         ‘Meet me up at the allotments after tea’; he’s looking up at me. I press my knees and thighs together – perhaps he’ll think my navy rolled up skirt is games shorts like those stupid divided skirts I have to wear for hockey.  Only he doesn’t know about my uniform.  He can go off to the community college in just a jumper and trousers and his games kit comes from Woolworth’s not the department store in town.
         Mum frowns as I slip around the back door.
         ‘Have you done your homework?’
         ‘Yeah, all that I have to give in tomorrow.’
         ‘Alright but be back before it starts getting dark’
         I run up the hill and across the road turning into the lane up the allotments.  I am out of breath before I even get half way up. 
         Annie Garslake is digging up at the allotments. Some people have dug over their plots for the autumn and the brown earth rolls away from me in waves.  I creep along the hedge and the overhanging trees, hoping the shadows are long enough to hide me.  But a pheasant startles up and she straightens and waves.  I bet she’s planting daffodils; no-one else up here grows flowers.  They’ll come up in the spring – clumps of green spikes which swell at the tip before bulging out into frilly, egg-yolk-orange blooms.  Eddie told me that Mark came up one night and cut them off and took a big bunch to their Gran for a present.  Better flowers for the living than the dead, he said.  I don’t believe that the daffodils cover a dead baby.  I think now that it’s just a silly rumour put about by people who don’t know about the world outside. Babies do sometimes die when they’re born.  And I do know that in other countries they leave babies on hillsides; places like India and China where boy babies are better because they grow up and go out to work and look after the family.  I think about me and my sisters; we’ll look after Mum and Dad when they are old even if we have to go away and become doctors or nurses to do it properly. 
         I wave back to Annie Garslake and walk faster so I look as if I am meaning to go somewhere.  I slip through the gap in the hedge; the brambles reach for me with their long springing arms but I squirm through.  I sit on the damp ground, squinting into the evening sun.   Someone is climbing up the slope.  Against the orangey glow his silhouette grows; it is Mark.  I turn to hurry back.
         ‘Hello, you,’ a hand grabs my school jumper.  But not like Eddie to pull me over and push me down the hill.  His grip is tight.  My head only comes to his shoulder.  His anorak smells of old damp and mushroom.
         The sound of a spade splitting earth; Annie Garslake looks up and calls, ‘everything alright, love?’  Mark’s grip slackens; I wrench the fold of jumper away from his fingers and run through the hole in the hedge, across Mr Piper’s plot leaving footprints next to his onions, onto the grassy path the other side.  I run down the hill without stopping or looking back; my heart jumping in my throat.  I reach my back gate and have to bend over to cough my breath back.  Sweat slips down my back.  Something powdery drifts into my hair.  I look up.  Eddie is sitting on the wall under the laburnum tree, swinging and kicking his legs so that a fine rain of red clouds down.  He is tearing off bits of moss and throwing those down too.   I want to reach up, grab his legs and bring him crashing to the ground, smashing his skull open like the swan’s egg he broke, so that his brains flop out onto the cobbles.  My eyes sting from the dust.   I can hear Clemmie crying inside – it must be nearly bath time.  My hair sparkles, beaded with slime green moss fronds and my cheeks glow red as I open the gate; I reach my back door, behind me the gate bangs shut. Then bounces open again.  Eddie is running up the road – he gets smaller and smaller as the gate gapes open and then closed.

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This story excerpt is from a collection of stories linked by setting and characters.

Penny Hodgkinson lives and works in Suffolk.

PennyHodgkinson@aol.com