Grievance. Marguerite Alexander

      She looked up and said, ‘He’s really pretty,’ but her mother’s face was blank and she turned her head as soon as their eyes met and sank back into the pillows.

      There followed another of the periods of blank time that had punctuated the day – a day that had alternated strangely between boredom and fear. Normally there was a routine, and wherever she was in the day, Nora knew what would happen next. But now, although it was long dark, she hadn’t had her bath, or tea, or a story, and as far as she could tell, her parents had forgotten that she had come to depend on this clear sequence of events. She kept her position by the baby, who was silent in a way that, from her limited experience of babies, she hadn’t expected. Once or twice there was a slight stirring and he seemed on the point of crying. His mouth opened, but no sound came out, as though it were too much effort for him. She wondered whether he needed to be fed. She crept round to get a better view of her mother, who she assumed was sleeping, but she found her as before, staring blankly at the wall ahead. If she was aware of Nora, she gave no sign.

      It was some time after the doctor and priest had left before her father came to the bedroom door, where he stood, as if reluctant to enter. ‘Will you have something to eat, Bernie?’

      ‘I couldn’t swallow a thing.’

      ‘A cup of tea?’

      ‘I’ve drunk so much tea today that I don’t think I’ll be able to get the taste out of my mouth again.’

      ‘Right you are, then,’ he said, clutching the door handle as if to retreat.

      ‘Gerald, will you wait a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

      ‘Can’t it wait?’

      ‘Please.’

      Gerald stepped into the room, closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

      ‘Won’t you sit down?’

      ‘I’m right enough like this.’

      Bernie shifted herself into a sitting position, wincing slightly from the stitches. ‘We should decide what we’ll call him.’

      ‘Not now, Bernie. I can’t believe there’s any urgency. There are families of ten in this very town where the last ones had to wait weeks for a name, until their parents could summon up the energy.’

      ‘There may not be any urgency for you but they’ve been at me all the time – the nurses, the doctors, Father McCaffrey, and it will be the same with the midwives tomorrow. I’d just like them to leave me be, with all their talk about bonding and giving him a name so that he’s part of the family.’

      Gerald sighed deeply. ‘Well, if you’ve got any ideas, you just go ahead. It’s all the same to me.’

      ‘Father McCaffrey wondered about Felix.’

      ‘Isn’t that the name of the cat in the cartoon? I didn’t realise that the old boy had a sense of humour. Well, I’ll just take a wee look and see whether I think it suits him.’ He walked over to the cradle and peered inside without touching the baby. ‘What do you think, Nora? Do you think your brother looks like a Felix?’

      ‘I don’t know what a Felix looks like.’

      ‘That’s very good,’ said Gerald, laughing grimly. ‘I would say that makes it an appropriate name.’

      ‘Father McCaffrey says it means “happy”,’ said Bernie wearily. ‘He says it will help us if we think of him in that way.’

      ‘Does he now? Well, at least he’s consistent. Priests are experts at convincing themselves that what they want to believe is actually there, only they call it God. Maybe he’d like to take him off our hands and try it out for himself, since he’s had so much practice.’

      ‘We have to live here, Gerald. We have to do what’s expected of us.’

      ‘Go ahead, then, name him Felix,’ said Gerald, on his way to the door.

      ‘He says it’s Greek,’ said Bernie, delaying her husband’s departure. ‘He said it might appeal to you, as a man of learning. I said that we’d thought of giving him an Irish name and we’d talked about Sean and Liam if it was a boy.’ Her voice caught on the memory of that distant, hopeful time before she had given birth, since when the world had changed for ever. Two fat tears made their way slowly down her cheeks, but she continued speaking, although her voice was thicker: ‘He said it was only a suggestion, and that an Irish name might be even better. He said it would make him part of the community.’

      ‘No, we’ll call him Felix,’ said Gerald. ‘He doesn’t look like an Irishman to me.’

      With that he was gone. Apart from asking Nora’s opinion of the name, he had scarcely looked at her. After he’d gone, her mother lapsed back into her torpor. Nora could scarcely stay in her parents’ room all night, so she got up and crept to the door. Before she left the room she glanced back and saw that, although her mother was motionless, she was still crying. She had never seen her like that before. Usually she cried because she was angry, or feeling neglected, and the crying was accompanied by raised voices, but this time it was silent and she let her tears flow without drying them. It was almost as though she didn’t know what was happening.

      It didn’t seem right to disturb her, so Nora slipped out of the room and into the lounge, where her father was sitting in his special armchair with a glass of whiskey in his hand, watching the television. It seemed to be the news. As she stood there, the face of Mrs Thatcher flashed on to the screen. As the Prime Minister started to speak, Gerald said, with unusual vehemence, ‘The woman’s a bloody animal.’ Immediately Nora remembered that for a few hours that morning she had thought her new brother was a gerbil, and she felt again the terrible dread that had lasted until she saw him. Then, in her mother’s bedroom, her father had made a joke about Felix the cat, which she didn’t understand. She looked again at Mrs Thatcher and wondered what her father saw in this middle-aged English woman that she couldn’t see. The idea that a person could be an animal was so shocking to Nora that her mind recoiled from it. Nora knew that her father didn’t like Mrs Thatcher, and that she shouldn’t like her either because of what she had done to the Irish, but she had never heard him call her an animal before. She placed herself in his line of vision and said, ‘Will I go to bed now?’

      Barely glancing at her he said, ‘Does your mother need you any more?’

      ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘Then you might as well go to bed.’

PART TWO Servants

       London

      It’s late October and the remaining leaves are turning colour and falling across the squares of Bloomsbury. In one of those squares, Pete Taylor, Annie Price and Phoebe Metcalfe are sitting huddled on a bench, eating sandwiches. Pete and Annie ran into Phoebe earlier in the morning when they had just come out from a lecture that Phoebe should have attended but had somehow managed to miss. She was wandering aimlessly around the building looking, as Annie said later to Pete, for someone to play with. It was Phoebe who suggested the al fresco lunch – a rather lavish affair, for the circumstances, which she’s assembled herself since the arrangement was made, incurring expenses that she’s refused to pass on to them, insisting that it’s her treat – and they, taking pity on her, agreed.

      There has, since the beginning of term, been realignment in their group. Annie wasn’t even thought of last year, and although she has taken care to recognise the claims of Pete’s longer-standing friends, they sense that Pete is now semi-detached, the radiant good humour that once encircled them now more often, and with a particular fondness, bestowed on Annie alone. Meanwhile Nick and Nora, whose friendship until now has been defined by belonging to the same