6. Because I am too tired to think of another because.
THE NEXT DAY, before I resigned, I had a bit of tidying up to do. The pigeon family was long gone — the two chicks finally flew the nest when spring was easing into summer — but the books that had hidden mother and babies from the City hawk were still in place. This time, I didn’t risk the ledge. I called Gerald up from Security to give me a hand forcing open the window. The books had all survived quite well, except The Ten Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management: Proven Strategies for Increased Productivity and Inner Peace. It looked like the floor of a cave, with little stalagmites of white pigeon shit obscuring its uplifting cover slogans.
When I went into Rod’s office I found him sitting at his desk behind the Equality Now! trophy, a set of scales with a tiny bronze figure of a female in one of the pans. In the other, Rod had put a handful of jelly beans.
He took the news of my leaving pretty badly. So badly, in fact, that the noise traveled through the wall to Robin Cooper-Clark next door.
“Katie’s doing a runner,” Rod announced, as the Head of Investment put his head round the door to establish the source of the roar.
Robin called me into his office, as I knew he would.
“Is there anything I can do to persuade you to change your mind, Kate?”
Only changing your world, I thought. “No, really.”
“Maybe part-time?” he ventures, with that ghost of a smile.
“I’ve seen what happens when a woman tries to go part-time, Robin. They say she’s having her days off. And then they cut her out of the loop. And then they take her funds away from her, one by one, because everyone knows that managing money’s a full-time job.”
“It is hard to manage money less than five days a week.”
I don’t say anything. He tries another tack. “If it’s a question of money?”
“No, it’s time.”
“Ah. Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus.”
“If that means you shouldn’t waste thirty years staring at a screen, then yes.”
Robin comes round to my side of the desk and stands there with that awkwardness they call dignity. “I’m going to miss you, Kate.”
By way of reply I give him a hug, perhaps the first ever administered in the offices of Edwin Morgan Foster.
Then I go home, taking care to run across the grass.
40 The Court of Motherhood
SHE WAS NOT AFRAID of the court anymore. They had nothing left to throw at her. Nothing they could charge her with that she hadn’t accused herself of a thousand times. So there she was, feeling quietly confident, and then they said the name of the next witness and suddenly she knew it was all over. Her time was up. As she swayed forward, feeling slightly sick, her hands clutched the oak rim of the dock. Here was the one person in the world who knew her best.
“The court calls Mrs. Jean Reddy.”
The defendant was upset at the sight of her mother entering the witness box to give evidence against her, but there was something about the older woman’s appearance that she found oddly cheering. It took her a few seconds to place it: Mum was wearing red cashmere, the cardigan Kate had given her for Christmas, over the Liberty’s floral blouse she had bought her for the birthday before last. The things kept for Best were getting their first outing.
“State your full name, please.”
“Jean Katharine Reddy.”
“And your relation to the defendant?”
“Kath — Katharine’s my daughter. I’m her mother.”
The prosecuting counsel is not just on his feet, he is standing on tiptoes with excitement. “Mrs. Reddy, your daughter is accused of putting her job before the welfare of her children. Is that an accurate description of the situation you have observed firsthand?”
“No.”
“Speak up, please!” bellows the judge.
Mum tries again. Clearly nervous, she is tugging on her charm bracelet. “No. Katharine is devoted to her children and she is very hardworking, always has been. Keen to get on and better herself.”
“Yes, yes,” snaps the Prosecution, “but do I understand she is not presently living with her husband, Richard Shattock, who left her after he said that she had ‘ceased to notice he was there’?”
The woman in the dock makes a low moaning sound. Her mother doesn’t know that Richard has left her.
Jean Reddy takes the news like a boxer taking a blow and fires back magnificently. “No one’s saying it’s easy. Men want looking after, and it’s hard for a woman when she’s got her work as well. Kath’s got that many calls on her time, I’ve seen her make herself ill with it sometimes.”
“Mrs. Reddy, are you familiar with the name Jack Abelhammer?” says the Prosecution, with a quick tight smile.
“No, no!” The defendant has climbed over the side of the dock and is standing in front of the judge in an XXXL Gap T-shirt with a dachshund motif. “All right, what do you want me to say? Guilty? Is that what you want me to say? There really are no lengths you won’t go to, to prove I can’t live my life, are there?”
“Silence!” booms the judge. “Mrs. Shattock, one more interruption and I will find you in contempt of court.”
“Well, that’s fine, because I am in utter contempt of this court and every man in it.” And then she starts to cry, cursing herself as she does so for her weakness.
“Jean Reddy,” resumes the Prosecution, but the witness is not listening to him. She too has left her place and moves towards the weeping woman, whom she gathers in her arms. And then the mother turns on the judge. “And how about you, your honor? Who’ll be getting your tea tonight? It’s not you, is it?”
“For God’s sake,” splutters the judge.
“People like you don’t understand anything about women like Katharine. And you think you can sit in judgment on her. Shame on you,” says Jean Reddy quietly, but with the force that generations of children heard in her voice when she was rebuking a playground bully.
ON THE DAY THAT Seymour Troy Stratton entered the world, a coup in Qatar sent oil prices spiraling and equities plunged around the globe, helped by an unprecedented rate hike from the mighty Federal Reserve. In the UK alone, twenty billion was wiped off the value of the FTSE 100. A minor earthquake outside Kyoto caused further shock waves in an already shaken global environment. None of this had an adverse effect on mother and baby, who dozed peacefully in their curtained cubicle on the third floor of the maternity wing off Gower Street.
As I walk down the corridor towards them, I am returned powerfully to my memories of this place: the midwives in their blue pajamas, the gray doors behind which the great first act of life is performed over and over by small women and tall women and a woman whose waters broke one lunchtime on the escalator at Bank. Place of pain and elation. Flesh and blood. The cries of the babies raw and astounded; their mothers’ faces salty with joy. When you are in here you think you know what’s important. And you are right. It’s not the pethidine talking, it’s God’s own truth. Before long, you have to go out into the world again and pretend you have forgotten, pretend there are better things to do. But there are no better things. Every mother knows what it felt like when that chamber of the heart opened and love flooded in. Everything else is just noise and men.
“I just want to look at him,” Candy says. Propped up on pillows, my colleague has undone every button on my white broderie anglaise nightdress to give her son access to her breasts. The nipples are like dark fruit. She uses the palm of her right hand to cup his head while his mouth sucks hungrily. “I don’t want to do anything except look at him, Kate. That’s normal, right?”