that babies couldn’t focus, but she was looking at me. Then her eyelid fell shut again and she slept.
‘Did you know she was a girl?’
‘Yes.’
My girl, my daughter. I hadn’t thieved this love, though I was still fearful that someone would come in and denounce me for taking a baby that didn’t belong to me. The midwives called her my daughter straightaway and I wondered how they dared, how they could be so certain.
‘Oh, she’s lovely, your little girl,’ said the midwife who’d delivered her, wrapping Ruby up in a sure way that made a parcel of her. ‘She’s like a little doll.’ Ruby was my little girl and there would never be any need to explain her. For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood.
‘You could bring her to see me in Moscow,’ Joe said. ‘There’s enough room in the apartment for all of you to stay.’
The door opened and there was Adam with snow on his hair and his arms full of flowers and carrier bags. Joe stood up and the two men faced each other, oddly squared up to each other like boxers or dancers. But Adam dropped the flowers and bags on the bed and took hold of Joe. They embraced, crushed close. I wished I had once held Joe like that.
‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ asked Adam. He knelt by the bed and a drop of snow fell, dissolving in the heat that Ruby and I made. Adam’s face was ablaze and tender and I knew that he was like me, not safely himself any more, but lost in Ruby. We’d made her and in doing so we’d lost ourselves.
I remembered the night she’d been conceived. No one had ever told me I’d know the moment it happened. I’d expected to be surprised one day by a blue line in a pregnancy test in a public toilet.
We were going down and down in the dark, locked together. We didn’t speak or move or seem to breathe. In the deepest of those circles of bliss I felt Ruby’s touch.
One day I’d tell her about it.
‘ You can’t have known ,’ she’d say.
‘ I did know .’
‘ You can’t have done .’
Or maybe I’d say nothing. Ruby must have her own life, right from the beginning.
‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘She’s beautiful.’
9
First Christmas
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray,
And think of nothing. I see and hear nothing:
Yet seem too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:
No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad’s-love, or Old Man, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.
We were walking down a long, grey street of terraced houses. It was Christmas Day, and three in the afternoon. Adam had just come back from the hospital.
A baby had died that morning. A boy called Nicholas, born at thirty weeks. He’d died following a haemorrhage into the lungs, six days after birth.
Nicholas had been born after years of fertility treatment. Labour had started at twenty-five weeks, they’d stopped it but there were still problems and Jess had delivered by Caesarean at thirty weeks. The baby had moderately severe respiratory disease but he was being managed on a ventilator and Adam thought he was stabilizing.
Adam got a call at 10 p.m., went into the hospital andstayed most of the night. He came home for a shower and breakfast, and then went back. We didn’t say any Christmas things to each other.
Ruby was eleven months old. Sometime we’d have to decide whether we would celebrate Christmas with her or not, but this year it wasn’t necessary. Adam was irreligious in a Jewish way, and I was irreligious in a Christian way. What kind of way Ruby would be irreligious, we didn’t yet know.
We walked along the street, which was stripped of people, as if a war had taken place rather than a festival.
People think that doctors become callous. They think that a man like Adam must keep a membrane around his work so that it won’t get into his life. Maybe it would be better that way. But Adam knew them so closely in those hours and
‘Did you know she was a girl?’
‘Yes.’
My girl, my daughter. I hadn’t thieved this love, though I was still fearful that someone would come in and denounce me for taking a baby that didn’t belong to me. The midwives called her my daughter straightaway and I wondered how they dared, how they could be so certain.
‘Oh, she’s lovely, your little girl,’ said the midwife who’d delivered her, wrapping Ruby up in a sure way that made a parcel of her. ‘She’s like a little doll.’ Ruby was my little girl and there would never be any need to explain her. For the first time, I was tied to someone by blood.
‘You could bring her to see me in Moscow,’ Joe said. ‘There’s enough room in the apartment for all of you to stay.’
The door opened and there was Adam with snow on his hair and his arms full of flowers and carrier bags. Joe stood up and the two men faced each other, oddly squared up to each other like boxers or dancers. But Adam dropped the flowers and bags on the bed and took hold of Joe. They embraced, crushed close. I wished I had once held Joe like that.
‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ asked Adam. He knelt by the bed and a drop of snow fell, dissolving in the heat that Ruby and I made. Adam’s face was ablaze and tender and I knew that he was like me, not safely himself any more, but lost in Ruby. We’d made her and in doing so we’d lost ourselves.
I remembered the night she’d been conceived. No one had ever told me I’d know the moment it happened. I’d expected to be surprised one day by a blue line in a pregnancy test in a public toilet.
We were going down and down in the dark, locked together. We didn’t speak or move or seem to breathe. In the deepest of those circles of bliss I felt Ruby’s touch.
One day I’d tell her about it.
‘ You can’t have known ,’ she’d say.
‘ I did know .’
‘ You can’t have done .’
Or maybe I’d say nothing. Ruby must have her own life, right from the beginning.
‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘She’s beautiful.’
9
First Christmas
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray,
And think of nothing. I see and hear nothing:
Yet seem too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember:
No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad’s-love, or Old Man, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.
We were walking down a long, grey street of terraced houses. It was Christmas Day, and three in the afternoon. Adam had just come back from the hospital.
A baby had died that morning. A boy called Nicholas, born at thirty weeks. He’d died following a haemorrhage into the lungs, six days after birth.
Nicholas had been born after years of fertility treatment. Labour had started at twenty-five weeks, they’d stopped it but there were still problems and Jess had delivered by Caesarean at thirty weeks. The baby had moderately severe respiratory disease but he was being managed on a ventilator and Adam thought he was stabilizing.
Adam got a call at 10 p.m., went into the hospital andstayed most of the night. He came home for a shower and breakfast, and then went back. We didn’t say any Christmas things to each other.
Ruby was eleven months old. Sometime we’d have to decide whether we would celebrate Christmas with her or not, but this year it wasn’t necessary. Adam was irreligious in a Jewish way, and I was irreligious in a Christian way. What kind of way Ruby would be irreligious, we didn’t yet know.
We walked along the street, which was stripped of people, as if a war had taken place rather than a festival.
People think that doctors become callous. They think that a man like Adam must keep a membrane around his work so that it won’t get into his life. Maybe it would be better that way. But Adam knew them so closely in those hours and
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