At the door I find my nerves fluttering. Excited rather than scared. The bell makes a soft, electronic ping… pong. I never thought Mo would answer to such a bell, but answer she does. She looks smaller, older, slightly denuded, but I recognize her at once. More lines on her face, and her hair a solid, unlikely chestnut color, but the same shrewd eyes. She looks at me with a steady, measuring gaze and I’m glad I’m not trying to sell her anything.
“Yes?”
“Um, I’ve come to see Honey? And the baby. It’s Erica. Erica Calcott.” I smile slightly, watch her recognize the name and search my face for the features she knew.
“Erica! By Christ, I would never have known you! You look so different!”
“Twenty-three years might do that to a girl.” I smile.
“Well, come in, come in, we’re all in the front room.” She ushers me inside, gestures to a doorway on the left and suddenly I’m nervous about going in. I wonder who we all are.
“Thanks,” I say, hovering in the hall, hands clammy on the plastic flower wrapper.
“Go on in, go on,” she says, and I have no choice. “I hear you nearly met little Haydee already, on the way to the hospital!”
“Nearly!” I reply. I find myself the only one standing in a room full of seated people. It’s stiflingly hot. The view from the window wobbles slightly in the radiator haze and I feel my face flush crimson. I glance around, smile like an idiot. Dinny looks up sharply from one end of the sofa, and he smiles when he sees me.
Honey sits next to him, an empty carrycot at her feet and a bundle in her arms. There’s another young girl I don’t recognize, with shocking-pink hair and a crystal in her lip. Mo introduces her as Lydia, a friend of Honey’s, and an older man, thin and beady, is Mo’s partner Keith. There’s nowhere for me to sit so I dither awkwardly in the small room, and Honey struggles to sit up straighter.
“Oh, no-don’t get up!” I say, proffering the flowers and chocolates, then shunting them onto the table through a clutter of empty coffee mugs and a plate of rich tea biscuits.
“I wasn’t. I’m passing her to you,” Honey says, flicking her kohled eyelids and carefully maneuvering the baby toward me.
“Oh, no. No. You look comfortable.”
“Don’t be chicken-shit. Take her,” Honey insists, half smiling. “How did you find us?” she asks.
“I went down to the camp first-bumped into Patrick. He told me you were home.” I glance at Dinny, I can’t help it. He is watching me intently, but I can’t guess his expression. I drop my bag and take Haydee from her mother. A small pink face, still creased and angry, below a shock of dark hair finer than cobwebs. She doesn’t stir as I perch on the arm of the sofa, or as I kiss her forehead and smell the baby smell of brand-new skin and milky spit. I am suddenly curious to know how it would feel if this baby were mine. To be in on those secrets-the strength behind Beth’s gaze when she watches her son; the way he raises her up, makes her whole, just by being in the room. These little creatures that have such power over us. The beginnings of a need in me that I hadn’t known was there.
“She’s tiny,” I say, breathlessly, and Honey rolls her eyes.
“I know. All that heaving and all this flab for a five-pound midget!” she says, but she can’t hide how pleased she is, how proud. This initiation over, the atmosphere in the room seems to ease.
“She’s beautiful, Honey. Well done you! Is she a screamer?”
“No, not so far. She’s been pretty chilled out.” Honey leans toward me, can’t stay even arm’s length from the child for long. Up close I see the dark shadows under her eyes, skin so pale that blue veins show through it, winding across her temples. She looks tired, but thrilled.
“She’ll get the hang of the yelling, don’t you worry,” Mo says ruefully, and Honey flashes her a mildly rebellious look.
“I’ll put another brew on,” Keith says, levering himself from his chair and collecting empty mugs onto a tin tray. “You’ll take a cup, Erica?”
“Oh, yes please. Thanks.” I can feel eyes on me and I look to my right. Dinny watches me, still. Those dark eyes of his, black as a seal’s again now; unblinking. I hold his gaze for two heartbeats and then he looks away, stands up abruptly. I suddenly wonder if he minds me gatecrashing his family like this.
“I have to get going,” he says.
“What? Why?” Honey asks.
“Just… things to do.” He bends down, kisses his sister on the top of her head, then he hesitates, and turns to me. “We’re all heading to the pub tomorrow night, if you and Beth want to come?” he asks.
“Oh, thanks. Yes-I’ll ask Beth,” I say.
“Raise me a glass,” Honey grumbles. “New Year’s Eve and I’ll be at home and in bed by nine.”
“Oh, you’ll soon get used to missing out on all sorts of occasions, don’t you worry,” Mo tells her brightly, and Honey’s face falls in dismay.
“I’ll be back later. Bye, Mum,” Dinny smiles, briefly presses his hand to the side of Mo’s face and then stalks from the room.
“What have you done to him, then?” Honey asks me, and she smiles but she’s guarded.
“What do you mean?” I reply, startled.
“He jumped like a rabbit when you walked in,” she observes; but her attention is back on Haydee, and I pass the baby back to her.
Keith returns with a fresh tray of steaming mugs, and the lights on the Christmas tree in the corner wink on and off; slow, then fast, then slow again. Mo asks me about the house, about Meredith and Beth and Eddie.
“Nathan tells me young Eddie was out playing with our Harry, when he was here,” she says.
“Yes, they got on brilliantly. Eddie’s such a great kid. He never judges,” I say.
“Well, Beth was always such a good girl. It’s no wonder really,” Mo nods. She blows on her tea, her top lip creasing like Grandpa Flag’s did. It gives me a shock to notice this resemblance, this sign of how much time has passed. Mo, becoming an old woman.
“Yes. She’s… a wonderful mum,” I say.
“God! It makes me feel ancient, to see you all grown up, Erica; and Beth too… with her own child, no less!” Mo sighs.
“Well, you are a grandma now, after all.” I smile.
“Yes. Not something we were quite ready for, but I am a grandma now,” she says, giving Honey a wry glance.
“Oh come on, Mum. We’ve had this conversation about a hundred times already,” Honey says, exasperated. Mo waves a conciliatory hand at her, then passes it wearily over her eyes.
“God, haven’t we though?” she mutters; but then she smiles. We sit quietly for a moment, as Haydee murmurs in her sleep.
“Mo, I wanted to ask you about something-if you don’t mind?”
“Fire away,” she says, but she laces her fingers in her lap, as if bracing herself, and there is tension around her eyes.
“Well, I was wondering if you’d tell me again why Grandpa Flag was called Flag? I know someone told me before, when we were little-but I can’t remember it properly now…” At this she relaxes, unknots her hands.
“Oh! Well, that’s an easy enough one to tell. His proper name was Peter, of course, but the story goes, as it was told to me, that he was a foundling. Did you know that? Mickey’s grandparents found him in the woods one day, in a patch of marsh flags-those yellow flowers, you know them? It was something like that, anyway. He’d been ditched by some young lass who’d got herself in trouble, no doubt”-a mutinous scowl from Honey, at this-“so they picked him up and took him in to raise as their own, and called him Peter; but more often than not Mickey’s grandma just called him ‘her baby of the flags,’ or some such fancy, and the name just stuck.”
“I remember. In a patch of marsh flags…” I say, and everything else about the story I remember being told before, except this part. With a tingle of recognition, I realize that this detail is not exactly right. “Do you know when that was? What year?”