The Night Ferry

7

On her very last day of being sixteen Cate found her mother lying unconscious in the kitchen. She had suffered something called a hemorrhagic stroke, which Cate explained as being like a “brain explosion.”

Ruth Elliot had two subsequent strokes in hospital, which paralyzed her down her right side. Cate blamed herself. She should have been at home. Instead we’d sneaked out to watch the Beastie Boys at the Brixton Academy. Cate let a guy kiss her that night. He must have been at least twenty-five. Ancient.

“Maybe I’m being punished for lying,” she said.

“But your mum is the one really being punished,” I pointed out.

Cate started going to church after that—for a while at least. I went with her one Sunday, kneeling down and closing my eyes.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Praying for your mum.”

“But you’re not an Anglican. Won’t your god think you’re changing teams?”

“I don’t think it matters which god fixes her up.”

Mrs. Elliot came home in a wheelchair, unable to talk properly. In the beginning she could only say one word: “When,” uttered more as a statement than a question.

No matter what you said to her, she answered the same way.

“How are you today, Mrs. Elliot?”

“When, when, when.”

“Have you had your tea?”

“When, when, when.”

“I’m just going to study with Cate.”

“When, when.”

I know it sounds horrible but we used to play tricks on her.

“We have a biology test, Mrs. E.”

“When, when.”

“On Friday.”

“When, when, when.”

“In the morning.”

“When, when.”

“About half past nine.”

“When, when.”

“Nine thirty-four to be precise. Greenwich mean time.”

They had a nurse to look after her. A big Jamaican called Yvonne, with pillow breasts and fleshy arms and mottled pink hands. She used to wear electric colors and men’s shoes and she blamed her bad complexion on the English weather. Yvonne was strong enough to scoop Mrs. Elliot up in her arms and lift her into the shower and back into her wheelchair. And she talked to her all the time, having long conversations that sounded completely plausible unless you listened closely.

Yvonne’s greatest gift, however, was to fill the house with laughter and songs, lifting the gloom. She had children of her own—Caspar and Bethany—who had steel-wool hair and neon smiles. I don’t know about her husband—he was never mentioned—but I know Yvonne went to church every Sunday and had Tuesdays off and baked the best lime cheesecake in creation.

On weekends I sometimes slept over at Cate’s place. We rented a video and stayed up late. Her dad didn’t come home until after nine. Tanned and tireless, he had a deep voice and an endless supply of corny jokes. I thought him unbelievably handsome.

The tragedy of his wife’s condition gained a lot of sympathy for Barnaby. Women, in particular, seemed to admire his devotion to his crippled wife and how he went out of his way to make her feel special.

Ruth Elliot, however, didn’t seem to share this admiration. She recovered her speech after months of therapy and attacked Barnaby at every opportunity, belittling him in front of Yvonne and his children and his children’s friends.

“Did you hear that?” she’d say as the front door opened. “He’s home. He always comes home. Who does he smell like tonight?”

“Now, now, Ruth, please,” Barnaby would say, but she wouldn’t stop.

“He smells of soap and shampoo. He always smells of soap and shampoo. Why does a man shower before he comes home?”

“You know the reason. I’ve been playing tennis at the club.”

“He washes before he comes home. Washes the smell away.”

“Ruth, darling,” Barnaby tried to say. “Let’s talk about this upstairs.”

She would fight at his hands and then surrender as he lifted her easily from her chair and carried her up the sixteen stairs. We would hear her screaming and finally crying. He would put her to bed, settle her like a child, and then rejoin us in the kitchen for hot chocolate.

When I first met Cate, Barnaby was already forty, but looked good for his age. And he could get away with things because he was so supremely confident. I saw him do it countless times at restaurants, on school open days and in the middle of the street. He could say the most outrageous things, using double entendres and playful squeezes and women would simply giggle and go weak at the knees.

He called me his “Indian princess” and his “Bollywood beauty” and, one time, when he took us horse riding, I actually felt dizzy when he put his hands around my waist and lifted me down from the saddle.

I would never have confessed it to anyone, but Cate guessed the truth. It wasn’t hard. I was always inviting myself back to her place and making excuses to talk to her father. She didn’t even know about the times I rode my bicycle past his office, hoping he might see me and wave. Twice I ran into open car doors.

Cate, of course, found my infatuation hilarious beyond measure, thus ensuring I have never admitted to loving any man.

See the sort of stuff I remember! It’s all coming back, the good, the bad and the ugly. My mind aches.

I’ve been dreading this moment—seeing Barnaby again. Ever since the accident he has slept at Cate’s house, according to Jarrod. He hasn’t been to work or answered calls.

The front door has stained-glass panels and a tarnished knocker in the shape of a naked torso. I grab her hips. Nobody answers. I try again.

A lock turns. The door opens a crack. Unshaven and unwashed, Barnaby doesn’t want to see me. Self-pity needs his full attention.

“Please, let me in.”

He hesitates but the door opens. I move inside, stepping around him as though he’s surrounded by a force field. The place is musty and closed up. Windows need opening. Plants need watering.

I follow him to the kitchen and dining area, open plan, looking out into the garden. Cate’s touches are everywhere from the French provincial dining table to the art deco posters on the walls. There are photographs on the mantel. One of them, a wedding picture, shows Cate in a twenties flapper dress trimmed with mother-of-pearl.

Folding himself onto a sofa, Barnaby crosses his legs. A trouser cuff slides up to reveal a bald shin. People used to say he was ageless and joke about him having a portrait in his attic. It’s not true. His features are too feminine to age well. Instead of growing character lines he has wrinkled and one day, ten years from now, he’ll wake up an old man.

I never imagined speaking to him again. It doesn’t seem so hard, although grief makes everything more intimate.

“They always say that a father is the last person to know anything,” he says. “Cate used to laugh at me. ‘Dear old Dad,’ she said. ‘Always in the dark.’”

Confusion clouds his eyes. Doubt.

“Did Felix know?”

“They weren’t sleeping together.”

“He told you that.”

“Cate wouldn’t let him touch her. She said it might harm the baby. They slept in different beds—in different rooms.”

“Surely a husband would—”

“Marriage and sex aren’t mutually inclusive,” he says, perhaps too knowingly. I feel myself growing uncomfortable. “Cate even told Felix he could see a prostitute if he wanted. Said she wouldn’t mind. What sort of wife says that? He should have seen something was wrong.”

“Why couldn’t she conceive?”

“Her womb destroyed his sperm. I don’t know the medical name for it. They tried for seven years. IVF, drugs, injections, herbal remedies; they exorcised the house of evil spirits and sprinkled Chinese lemongrass oil on the garden. Cate was a walking bloody textbook on infertility. That’s why it came as such a surprise. Cate was over the moon—I’ve never seen her happier. I remember looking at Felix and he was trying hard to be excited—I guess he was—but it’s like he had a question inside him that wouldn’t go away.”

“He had doubts?”

“For years his wife rejects his sperm and then suddenly she’s pregnant? Any man would have doubts.”

“But if that’s the case—”

“He wanted to believe, don’t you see? She convinced everyone.”

Standing, he motions me to follow. His slippers flap gently against his heels as he climbs the stairs. The nursery door is open. The room is freshly painted and papered. The furniture new. A cot, a changing table, a comfortable chair with a Winnie the Pooh pillow.

Opening a drawer, he takes out a folder. There are receipts for the furniture and instructions for assembling the cot. He up-ends an envelope, shaking it gently. Two sheets of photographs, monochrome images, drop into his hand. Ultrasound pictures.

Each photograph is only a few inches square. The background is black, the images white. For a moment it’s like looking at one of those Magic Eye pictures where a 3-D image emerges from within. In this case I see tiny arms and legs. A face, eyes, a nose…

“They were taken at twenty-three weeks.”

“How?”

“Felix was supposed to be there but Cate messed up the days. She came home with the photographs.”

The rest of the file contains testimony of an unborn baby’s existence. There are application forms to the hospital, appointment slips, medical reports, correspondence and receipts for the nursery furniture. An NHS pamphlet gives details of how to register the birth. Another lists the benefits of folic acid in early pregnancy.

There are other documents in the drawer, including a bundle of private letters tucked in a corner, bank statements, a passport and health insurance certificates. A separate file contains details of Cate’s IVF treatments. There appear to have been five of them. Sohan Banerjee, a fertility specialist in Wimbledon, is mentioned several times.

“Where was she planning to have the baby?”

“Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.”

I look at a brochure for prenatal classes. “What I can’t understand is how it was supposed to end. What was Cate going to do in four weeks?”

Barnaby shrugs. “She was going to be exposed as a liar.”

“No, think about it. That prosthetic was almost a work of art. She must have altered it two or three times over the months. She also had to forge medical letters and appointment slips. Where did she get the ultrasound pictures? She went to all that effort. Surely she had a plan.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe she organized a surrogacy or a private adoption.”

“Why keep it a secret?”

“Perhaps she couldn’t let anyone know. Commercial surrogacy is illegal. Women can’t accept money to have a baby. I know it sounds far-fetched but isn’t it worth considering?”

He scoffs and smites at the air between us. “So a month from now my daughter was going to nip off somewhere, dump the padding and come back with a baby, custom-made, ready to order from the baby factory. Maybe Ikea does them nowadays.”

“I’m just looking for reasons.”

“I know the reason. She was obsessed. Desperate.”

“Enough to explain these?” I point to the ultrasound pictures.

Reaching down, he opens the second drawer and retrieves a different file. This one contains court transcripts, charge sheets and a judgment.

“Eighteen months ago Cate was caught stealing baby clothes from Mothercare. She said it was a misunderstanding, but we knew it was a cry for help. The magistrates were very kind. They gave her a suspended sentence.

“She had counseling for about six months, which seemed to help. She was her old self again. There were obvious places she had to avoid like parks and playgrounds, schools. But she couldn’t stop torturing herself. She peered into prams and struck up conversations with mothers. She got angry when she saw women with big families, who were pregnant again. It was unfair, she said. They were being greedy.

“She and Felix looked into adopting a baby. They went for the interviews and were screened by social workers. Unfortunately, the shoplifting conviction came back to haunt Cate. The adoption committee deemed her mentally unstable. It was the final straw. She lost it completely. Felix found her sitting on the floor of the nursery, clutching a teddy bear, saying, ‘Look! It’s a beautiful baby boy.’ She was taken to hospital and spent a fortnight in a psych ward. They put her on antidepressants.”

“I had no idea.”

He shrugs. “So you see, Alisha, you shouldn’t make the mistake of putting rational thoughts in my daughter’s head. Cate didn’t have a plan. Desperation is the mother of bad ideas.”

Everything he says makes perfect sense but I can’t forget the image of Cate at the reunion, begging me to help her. She said they wanted to take her baby. Who did she mean?

There is nothing as disarming as a heartfelt plea. Barnaby’s natural caution wavers.

“What do you want?”

“I need to see telephone records, credit card receipts, check stubs and diaries. Have any large sums of money been withdrawn from Cate or Felix’s bank accounts? Did they travel anywhere or meet anyone new? Was she secretive about money or appointments? I also need to see her computer. Perhaps her e-mails can tell me something.”

Unable to push his tongue around the word no, he hedges. “What if you find something that embarrasses this family?”

His wretchedness infuriates me. Whatever Cate might have done, she needs him now.

The doorbell rings. He turns toward the sound, surprised. I follow him down the stairs and wait in the hallway as he opens the front door.

Yvonne gives a deep-throated sob and throws her arms around his shoulders, crushing his head to her chest.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she wails. Her eyes open. “Alisha?”

“Hello, Yvonne.”

Manhandling Barnaby out of the way, she smothers me in her cleavage. I remember the feeling. It’s like being wrapped in a fluffy towel, fresh from the dryer. Gripping my forearms, she holds me away. “Look at you! You’re all grown up.”

“Yes.”

“You cut your lovely hair.”

“Ages ago.”

Yvonne hasn’t changed. If anything she is a little fatter and her pitted face has fleshed out. Overworked veins stand out on her calves and she’s still wearing men’s shoes.

Even after Ruth Elliot recovered her speech, Yvonne stayed with the family, cooking meals, washing clothes and ironing Barnaby’s shirts. She was like an old-fashioned retainer, growing old with them.

Now she wants me to stay, but I make excuses to leave. As I reach the car, I can still feel Barnaby’s stubble on my cheeks where he kissed me goodbye. Glancing back at the house I remember a different tragedy, another goodbye. Voices from the past jostle and merge. The sadness is suffocating.