After lunch with Mum in the kitchen, I went into the bedroom and lay down for a quick nap.
I awoke to darkness and the sound of women’s voices like the laughter of water tumbling over polished stones. I lay in that halfway state between dreams and reality and listened as they moved around me in whispers of silk and perfume.
‘You want to get up now, babes,’ said my beloved. ‘Or you’re going to miss the main event.’
I rolled out of bed and luckily I was still in my boxers, because I wasn’t dreaming – the room was full of Beverley’s eldest sisters. Lady Ty was there, in a white cotton shift tied at the waist with old rope. There was gold at her throat and wrists and threaded through the braids that were piled up on her head like a crown. She glanced at me and shook her head in resignation.
Effra was there, long and lean in an eye-wateringly psychedelic halter neck dress cinched at the waist with an iridescent scarf of green, gold and black. She’d taken out her normal extensions, and instead her hair was a magnificent puffball Afro with a single Bride of Frankenstein streak of electric blue above each temple. Her nails were long and decorated with flags and shields, lions and leopards, crosses and chevrons. She grinned when she saw me looking and gave me a mocking salute.
Fleet was there, all broad shoulders and narrow waist in blue Lycra gym shorts and matching crop top. Around her neck hung a compact digital stopwatch, and her hair was sensibly hidden beneath a bathing cap. She gave me a curt nod and turned her attention to the stopwatch.
Standing amongst them was Beverley, huge and beautiful, vast and magnificent in a white linen undershirt with her dreads falling free down to her bum. She stood with her hands on the small of her back, spine slightly arched, eyes closed, cheeks puffing in and out.
‘When did it start?’ I asked, while desperately searching for my jeans, my work trousers, tracksuit bottoms – anything.
‘Hours ago,’ said Beverley. ‘But you looked so sweet I didn’t have the heart to wake you until I was ready to go.’
‘Are you ready?’
Beverley grimaced suddenly and then relaxed.
‘Oh, I’m beyond ready,’ she said, and her sisters laughed, even Lady Ty, which was quite unsettling in and of itself.
I found a pair of swimming shorts under one of Beverley’s wetsuits and dragged them on. I spotted a T-shirt under the bed, but when I grabbed it Beverley told me to leave it off.
‘I need you with your shirt off,’ she said, and then she tensed – her face screwing up.
I looked over at Effra, who shrugged and rolled her eyes – she didn’t know why either.
Lady Ty clapped her hands to get our attention.
‘If everybody’s ready,’ she said, ‘then let’s get this show on the road.’
She opened the French windows and, putting her finger to her lips, motioned us outside. Effra led the way and I took Beverley’s arm and followed her out. Beverley was perfectly mobile, except when a contraction hit – at which point she grabbed hold of me and, breathing hard, waited for it to pass. We had to stay quiet because of the row of tents that had been pitched on the patio and the lawn beyond. Tents full of the younger Rivers and hangers-on. Their older sisters and cousins were in the spare bedrooms upstairs.
Counting them, it was obvious that more had arrived while I was asleep.
‘Has everyone in the entire demi-monde decided to turn up?’ I whispered.
‘No,’ Beverley whispered back. ‘Miss Tefeidiad couldn’t make it.’
The night was dark, overcast, and I could smell rain on the air. Not fifteen hundred metres away was a perfectly good birthing pool at Kingston Hospital that had figured prominently in the birth plan not two weeks earlier. A nice, small, uncomplicated birthing pool for a nice low-key birth.
I sighed, and Beverley laughed and intertwined her fingers with mine.
‘I remember seeing you on the riverbank at Richmond,’ she said. ‘Staring out over the water with that same boggled expression on your face. And I thought, even then, there’s a boy who will be easy to surprise.’
‘That makes no sense,’ I said.
‘It does to me,’ she said.
Given the size of the pool at Kingston, the original plan was that I would be kneeling outside the pool behind Beverley, offering support both moral and physical. But now I was wading into – surprisingly clean – river water. Beverley led me by the hand until the water reached my hips and then stopped. She started tugging at her shift, which was already sodden and heavy.
‘Help me off with this,’ she said, and we peeled it off together.
I wadded it up and threw onto the pool side, where one of Abigail’s fox friends grabbed it and dragged it away. I turned to look and saw that Nicky, Brent and a couple of other junior river goddesses were piling out their tents and jumping up and down in excitement. Maksim shushed them before they could start making a noise and then opened a box full of sweets to bribe them to keep quiet. Standing on the patio, Abigail was chatting to Chelsea and Olympia.
Beverley had another contraction, and I slipped my arms under hers to support her. She blew out her cheeks and made a very strange whining sound which devolved rapidly into the much more familiar ‘Fuckfuckfuckfuck.’
Fleet, Effra and Tyburn waded into the pool to join us. Tyburn passed me a net on a stick, the sort Beverley used to scoop up fishes and insects. Because my hands were full, Tyburn had to delicately trap it under my armpit.
‘What’s this for?’ I asked.
‘Floaters,’ said Tyburn, and giggled.
Tyburn, as far as I knew, was the only one of Mama Thames’s daughters to have actually given birth, so I assumed she knew what she was doing. We’d asked her advice a couple of months previously.
‘Go to St Mary’s,’ she’d said. ‘And make sure you ask for an epidural.’
The Lindo Wing of the private St Mary’s Hospital was where the royals went to drop their sprogs, so I wasn’t surprised. And Beverley wasn’t keen. Besides, it didn’t have anything that Kingston didn’t have.
Listening to Beverley alternately puffing and swearing, I wondered if maybe she wasn’t regretting our al fresco birthing pool. Even if the water was unnaturally warm.
‘This is so undignified,’ said Beverley as she gripped my arm.
‘Anything worth doing usually ends up undignified,’ I said, and Beverley gave me a harsh look.
‘Peter, just so we’re clear,’ she said. ‘Your role in this is strictly supportive.’
‘Yes, my love.’
‘Shut up,’ she said, and turned her head to kiss me.
Fleet laughed and I heard Tyburn making gagging noises like a teenager.
‘Heads up,’ said Effra. ‘Here comes Mama Grant.’
I looked back again to see my mum approaching from the house. Her hair was covered in a white wrap, and she, too, wore a white linen shift like a baptismal dress. Or maybe not linen, because as she stepped into the pool lights the material shimmered with glints of colour. She was looking down at us with a beatific smile that I’d only ever seen on her face when Dad was soloing, and I was even more shocked to see the tracks of tears down her cheeks.
God, African mothers … If you can’t be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer, knock out some sprogs and they will forgive you all your failures.
She hesitated short of the water and I was wondering why, when I heard the sharp cry of a seagull and suddenly the air smelt of the sea.
With just a hint of diesel and coal smoke.
The whispers and murmured conversations in the garden ceased; even the constant rumble of traffic on the Kingston Bypass faded into nothing. Fleet, Tyburn and Effra separated to leave a path.