Daniel Isn't Talking Read online

  Took is her maiden name. She spies it in the lower edge of the map. Indicating with a bony, arthritic finger that does not point exactly where she intends, she smiles.

  I am there, too. My name on the Marsh family tree: Melanie Lavin. An addition to the name Stephen James Edward Marsh. But I notice that I am only pencilled in. Why am I only pencilled in?

  Leaving Daniel on Stephen’s lap, I make my way to the loo, passing Cath, who is looking at books on the ornate, glass-fronted shelves in the hallway.

  ‘Somewhere here is something I want to read,’ she says, studying the titles. ‘Statistically speaking, that is.’

  ‘I’m only pencilled onto the family tree,’ I tell her. ‘Though I notice the children are in ink. Are they expecting an annulment, do you think?’

  Cath laughs. ‘I don’t know how anyone stays married to my wretched brothers. If I were Tricia I’d have more than a migraine, I can tell you. I’d have a settlement by now. You’re better off with Stephen. At least he speaks.’

  ‘It’s not even dark pencil. It’s as though they got some feather-light lead and just scratched in the suggestion of my name.’

  From behind us comes Daphne’s voice. ‘I heard that!’ she says, tottering through the narrow hall with Raymond trailing behind. ‘And the reason for pencil is that you were written in at the time of your engagement. Very simple explanation. You make such a fuss without understanding the why of things.’

  ‘The why of things, Mother?’ says Cath, coming to my defence as she always does. At the wedding she slipped me a Valium and told me her prescription pad was available to me at any time. Perhaps I ought to use the opportunity of this family lunch to mooch some Prozac, those small wonder pills. But I’ve grown suddenly shy of any sort of drug, having been traumatised by the mystery pills Stephen gave me. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ says Cath. ‘They’ve been married five years.’

  ‘Yes, but if you remember, they had a very brief engagement and there had been that long-standing girlfriend, Penelope, and it caused us to wonder if Stephen might just change his mind.’

  ‘Oh, for Godsakes, Mother,’ Cath snorts.

  Daphne draws her chin back, lifts her finger as though testing the wind. ‘You don’t know how many times he changed his mind before, dear. Your brother can be dead set for one thing, then suddenly turn. So rather than ruin Uncle Raymond’s lovely tree we pencilled in Melanie’s name.’

  ‘How ridiculous,’ says Cath.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say.

  ‘We’ll put your name in ink right away,’ says Raymond. He takes a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, wiping his brow in a flustered manner. ‘I do apologise.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t go in for family trees and tradition,’ says Daphne, sizing me up with her cloudy grey eyes. ‘But I suppose people change.’

  Bernard, having heard the argument, arrives in his slow, faltering gait, with something he feels needs to be said. ‘Stephen was with Penelope for many years. She was practically one of the family,’ he tells me with authority. He suffers from a lung condition so that his speaking voice is filled with wheezy sighs, but he means business. ‘Not that you aren’t one of the family,’ he adds quickly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Daddy, sit down,’ urges Cath.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ Daphne asks me.

  Meanwhile, Stephen and David watch the cricket. Emily draws heads for the game hens, cuts them out and sticks them into the opposite cavity to where the head goes, announcing to anyone who cares to hear that we will wake her brother if we keep arguing like this, and that he will scream.

  * * *

  In the car, on the way back to London, I say, ‘Once more, just so I remember, how long were you with Penelope?’

  ‘Six years,’ says Stephen. ‘God, I hope we aren’t going to go into all that again.’

  He takes a long breath, one of his warning signs that we could have a big argument if I carry on.

  ‘That’s one more year than we’ve been married,’ I say. ‘Not that I’m counting.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘You were supposed to smile,’ I tell him. But he doesn’t smile. And I know why, too. It isn’t that the joke is old – though of course it is. It’s a variation of a Jewish mother joke that my father told my mother and my mother told me. But I can’t pull off the humour any more. Along with everything else, I am losing my lightness, my wit, the thing that always got me through. Inside me I feel as though I am losing a battle in a war that hasn’t even been declared. As for Penelope, I know that Stephen still talks to her, that they are friends. Occasionally she sends us postcards from the faraway places she studies, reporting the concerts she has heard done on instruments made from stones and reeds. But this has always been the case, and no reason for concern.

  In a traffic jam on the M40, just outside of London, Daniel wakes up. He wails, angry at the confinement of his car seat.

  ‘Oh great,’ says Stephen.

  ‘He can’t help it,’ I say. ‘He hates car seats.’

  Stephen doesn’t say anything, not to me, not to Daniel. I tell myself this is only because Daniel is crying so loudly and because Stephen is tired, that’s all. How can he be expected to talk over this noise?

  ‘All right, I’ll do something,’ I say. I can’t bear it when Daniel screams like this either; there’s no point in pretending it’s only Stephen who is riled. Daniel is knocking his fists into the sides of his car seat. Emily and I name his tantrums the way that meteorologists name hurricanes. Tantrum Annabel, Tantrum Betty, Tantrum Caroline. If I don’t want Tantrum Louise, I have to move fast. So I slip out of my seat belt and go to sit with him in the back.

  ‘Can I have the front seat now?’ asks Emily.

  ‘Of course you can!’ Stephen says, patting the empty seat beside him. Emily climbs into the front seat, a smile on her face. ‘Hello, Pretty,’ Stephen greets her. Crouched in the back now with only Daniel, I roll Thomas the Tank Engine around the edges of the car door, on to Daniel’s legs and up to his chin. He screams, bangs his head against the back of the car seat, kicks his feet violently and spills so many tears that he makes his shirt wet. Finally, I unlock the seat belt. While Stephen and Emily discuss what exactly a grandparent is and how Stephen is Granny’s little boy from a long time ago, I quietly lift my shirt and let Daniel find whatever milk might be left in my breasts. He is nearly weaned, but not quite. I have tried – believe me, I have – but among my weaknesses are children’s tears.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mel,’ says Stephen. He’s watching me through the rear-view mirror. ‘You aren’t breastfeeding him, are you?’

  ‘I can’t get him to settle.’ In a manner as though I am striking a bargain, I say, ‘Please, let’s just get home.’

  ‘Are you going to be breastfeeding him when he’s fourteen?’

  Cath would say, ‘Oh, shut up, Stephen, you sod. The chap is only a baby, let him be.’ Penelope, whom I have met from time to time, would laugh at him, whisper in his ear that he is only jealous. ‘You’ll just have to wait for yours,’ she’d say, tossing back the fringe of dark hair that decorates her forehead. But I don’t say anything. Daniel has stopped crying, which is what matters to me. And Emily is laughing at the thought of Granny being young and Stephen being a little boy. And that is the only other thing that matters to me.

  4

  Stephen dated me at the same time his girlfriend, Penelope, was having an affair with her university professor. I would have learned a great deal about Penelope if Stephen had taken me to his flat, a large floor-through at the top of a Victorian conversion in Belsize Park, as all of her clothes were strewn across the floor’s oak-wood planks, along with various bizarre musical instruments – most of which looked like elaborate sticks or pots. Balingbings and bamboo xylophones, African gourd drums and Romanian pan pipes shared space with a grand piano from 1926, which aged gracefully on one side of the room. Penelope is an ethnomusicologist, which means she studies music s
uch as Manchurian shamanic drumming, Brazilian death metal, Scots pipe music and even some Continental street busking. I wish I could report that she is a dry-thinking, doughy girl who dresses in woollen trousers and enjoys open fires, but Penelope is the sort of person who, though quite capable of pulling off a day at Ascot in a big hat, prefers miniskirts and boots up to her thighs, cuts the necks out of her sweatshirts and wears them hanging about her shoulders, sleeps in the nude amid satin sheets and takes pride in the fact that she can accomplish most sexual acts even underwater. Well, this is what I’ve managed to wheedle out of Stephen anyway – and yes, I wish I’d never asked. Penelope’s parents, as it happened, were believers in the theory that humans evolved from fish, and spent every family holiday risking their children’s lives in scuba gear and wetsuits. Thus, the child had learned at least how to hold her breath.

  She is not a beauty, Penelope. She has a hook nose and stringy hair, eyes that seem overly wide apart in her face, like those of a cow. But she has something about her that far outclasses the likes of Stephen, who it must be said is a man who understands his limitations and so, perhaps unwisely, surrounds himself with extraordinary people to lighten his spirits and to give him something to think about other than whatever happens to be on television that week. Even I can see Penelope’s appeal, her showy sexuality, her beautifully articulated vowels. When she met me once by accident on the street, she did not say, ‘Oh, you,’ with haughty disregard, but instead asked me to say a number of words for her: zebra, aluminum, advertisement, Alabama. The sound of these words seemed to fill her with a moment of exhilaration, such that the nostrils of her bony nose quivered, hearing the long ‘a’ of Alabama, the protracted ‘oο’ of aluminum. Like Henry Higgins, she could place an accent without trouble, and she declared correctly that I was mid-Atlantic, but with some time further south, possibly Virginia. To Stephen she said, ‘Hi, pet,’ and then moved on.

  But Stephen did not mention Penelope, or give hint to the fact she’d bought that flat with him, nor that his relationship with her was crumbling with the arrival at the University of London of a member of the elite among French ethnomusicologists, Dr Jacques-Pierre Devereaux, world-renowned expert on Asian idiophonic sound, who had whisked Penelope away to do field work in Thailand. He took me chastely to Hampstead Heath, where we sat on the lawn by the lake, watching a fireworks display.

  ‘What would be your eight desert island discs?’ he asked me. I had no idea what he meant, having not at that time ever heard the Radio 4 show in which celebrities are asked what they’d listen to if stuck on a desert island. I didn’t understand that this question was loaded with the invitation to display a sharpness of mind and deep cultural understanding of classical music.

  ‘Peter and the Wolf?’ I said. I could not think of a second. Stephen was stretched out on a tartan rug, his chin resting in his hands. Fireworks filled the night air with booming sounds, with bright colours reflecting now against his skin. His face took on an almost tribal aspect. When I declared I had no second choice, he pushed his gaze in the direction of the lake, wearing an expression as if he was suddenly, irretrievably bored. I am not a stupid woman. This gesture alone should have been indication enough to me that Stephen expected a woman to entertain him in that Edwardian manner of being pleasantly witty in conversation, knowledgeable about history, proficient at the piano or perhaps even the harp. In other words, that he would be no great friend of mine whatever he thought of my legs. But I shrugged, blew the grey wisps of a spent dandelion in his direction, and announced that I preferred the music of seashells and mermaids, of bellowing whales and chattering dolphins. Wouldn’t the desert island be a symphony enough for me, providing as it did all of these sounds, not to mention the ceaseless clap of waves against rocks, the delicately lapping surf?

  He seemed pleased with that answer. Clasping my naked ankle, he pulled me gently beside him on the rug, kissed me and called me darling.

  I can only imagine what Penelope would have answered to such a question.

  ‘So, is this what is bothering you?’ asks Jacob now. His eyes are large and round in the dim light of his study. His leather chair creaks as he shifts his weight, leaning toward me. ‘This woman? Penelope?’

  I shake my head. I don’t even know why I’ve wasted his time with this information. Wasted my time.

  ‘Then can we talk about what is really going on?’ Jacob asks.

  ‘I don’t know what is really going on,’ I say.

  When I want him, I must go to him, find him, take him by the hand. In the sunlight, he lies on his back, his legs kicking the glass doors in a steady rhythm, his small fingers shoved down his nappy. He will not speak or look at me while I sound out words for him. It appears a deliberate effort, this turning away, for he seems to search for everything but my face, my eyes that seek him out, my lips that produce the words I am so desperate for him to try. ‘Mummy,’ I say, hoping he will imitate. Beside me is Emily, her mouth pursed reproachfully at her brother, who is pulling away from me now, having decided that if he cannot be left alone to kick the door he would rather be in another room. ‘Say Mummy, Daniel!’ Emily urges. But he will not speak to us or stay with us. He wiggles free and begins to climb. A spot of sunlight has divided into a rainbow across one side of the wall, and he is scrambling up the back of the sofa now to lay his tongue against its colours.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment for Daniel to see a consultant about his hearing,’ I tell Stephen. ‘So you’re going to have to move the school thing.’

  He is sitting at the table eating his lunch as he studies the Financial Times. He flaps the paper to uncrease it, glances at me, then returns to the headlines. He says, ‘This is a top girls’ school and it has exactly two places available for the autumn.’

  I decide that if he isn’t going to look at me, then I am not going to answer, at least not out loud. Instead, I shrug. I send my eyebrows up and tilt my head this way and that, as though considering what Stephen is saying. None of this can he see because he is too busy reading the Financial Times. But then he lays the paper on the table, folds his arms across his chest, and sighs. ‘Melanie, I am listening,’ he says reasonably. ‘I think we should both be there. Why aren’t you eating anything?’

  In front of me is a cheese omelette, peas and grilled tomato, all of it grown cold. ‘I am eating,’ I say. ‘I’m about to eat.’

  He says, ‘Emily should be there. They’ll want to meet her.’

  At the other end of the table is Emily in a plastic smock with a big flower printed across the front. She is painting a blue cap on to a plastic monkey the size of her hand and seems wholly disinterested in our conversation. ‘She’s four years old,’ I say. ‘What are they going to do, give her a test?’

  I’d meant to be sarcastic, but Stephen looks at me squarely and says, ‘Yes.’ Then he takes my fork and stabs at the omelette. Adding on a few peas, he holds the fork to my mouth. Then he smiles, a gorgeous warm smile, and it seems to me that I haven’t seen him smile at me in so long I stare at him, mesmerised. He looks so sweet all of a sudden that I wish we could just stay like this. He says, ‘You are going to eat. Emily is going to go to school. Things are going to be normal around here.’

  I open my mouth for the omelette, chew slowly, still watching Stephen, who I realise now is just trying to manage our family the same way he manages his office. If I let him, perhaps he will succeed.

  ‘What about Daniel?’

  ‘What about him?’ he says.

  ‘The appointment with the consultant.’

  ‘How many consultants do you need?’ Stephen cuts some more of my omelette, hands me the fork, then nods to indicate that I should eat. ‘Didn’t you already take Daniel to a consultant? I certainly have a bill for a consultant.’

  ‘He wasn’t so good, that doctor. This next one is the very best.’ I chew slowly, then put my fork down, standing now to clear the plates. ‘I don’t want Emily tested,’ I say.

  He is annoyed, but all he sa
ys is, ‘Move the appointment.’

  ‘I’m really worried about Daniel.’

  ‘About his hearing?’ asks Stephen. ‘You think there’s something wrong with his hearing?’

  I consider this. ‘No, unfortunately, I doubt it’s his hearing,’ I say.

  Stephen looks at me as though I’ve just said something very sinister, disloyal; immediately I am shamed. Then he says, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Daniel, full stop. He’s a boy. Boys are slower than girls. As for Emily, she won’t even know she’s being tested.’ He points his chin toward Emily. ‘Emily, do you care about being tested?’ he asks her.

  Emily glances up from her monkey. She has a splash of paint across her cheek and some in her hair, too. ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Stephen says. ‘You don’t even know what “tested” means.’

  ‘Mummy thinks it’s bad,’ she says.

  Stephen rolls his eyes at me. ‘Oh great.’

  I say, ‘It’s as though she’s applying for a job.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Everybody tests kids these days,’ Stephen says. ‘It’s all part of the programme.’

  Daniel has given up on the rainbow and wanders now into the kitchen where we are talking. I go to hug him but he refuses my body, rolling his shoulders to evade my grasp. Tiptoeing across the kitchen floor, he arrives at the refrigerator, expertly tackling the child lock, to remove two pints of milk. Emily adds a blue jacket to the monkey, who I suppose she wants to look like the circus ringmaster for Dumbo. He’d be more authentic if he didn’t have his fangs bared.

  ‘Then what’s going to happen when they test him?’ I say, meaning Daniel, who is now pouring the milk straight on to the floor, without even looking up to see if anybody is noticing.