The Ice is Singing (2 page)

The baby (Amanda) was born with clean white hair, and a screwed-up kitten’s face. David cried when he saw her. And when he dared to cuddle her close enough to feel the living heat of her
small, determined body, the cold space of loss that he had carried inside himself for years blazed up with an answering warmth.

Elizabeth was an erratic mother. She fed the child and looked after her well enough, but sometimes she wanted to do nothing but pet and fondle her – at others the baby must be banished to
her cot for hours on end, to learn to sleep and get into a routine. Crisis followed crisis: over feeding (breast, followed after two weeks by bottle), colic, non-sleeping, nappy rash, dummies
versus thumbs, and so on. Gradually David gained confidence, and began to infiltrate Elizabeth’s sloppinesses with his own methodical preparations. He cleaned the bottles, sterilized them and
mixed up new feeds. With a patience he recognized as scheming – perhaps evil – he waited for Elizabeth to get tired of her new toy. Soon he had taken over the night-time feeds. He was
at work all day, and became so tired he often hallucinated, but at night he was awake, ready with Amanda’s feeds, ready to change and cuddle and play with her. Alongside the growing intensity
of his adoration for Amanda mushroomed a terrible fear for her. He began to imagine all sorts of things going wrong while he was out – Elizabeth leaving her dangerously near the edge of the
bed, or Amanda choking in her sleep and Elizabeth not noticing. He was haunted by tales of cot deaths and infantile diseases.

Elizabeth, maddened by his fussing over the child, flared up and attacked him.

‘Look at yourself. You never sleep. You never even look up. You scuttle about from work to the baby to work again, with great bags under your eyes, like some sort of maniac. It’s
impossible to hold a conversation with you. You’re insane.’

She insisted that he leave the baby to her for a few nights, and he did so, taking sleeping pills to prevent himself lying listening for the cries that Elizabeth might not hear. Amanda survived.
She was smiling now, and waving her arms above the blankets when she woke.

There began to be a balance between David and Elizabeth, as he recognized that she wouldn’t actually let the child starve, and she accepted that it was useful if he fed the child in the
evenings and at night. It meant she could go out.

When Amanda was nearly one, Elizabeth made an announcement which was as startling as the news of her pregnancy had been. David had put Amanda to bed and was having his tea. Elizabeth, who was
going out, had already had hers.

‘I want a divorce. I’ve met someone else and he wants to marry me.’

She treated David’s astonished questioning with contempt.

‘Well, if you didn’t know you must be blind. It won’t make a damn of difference to you – Amanda’s the only thing in the world you care about anyway.’

‘Yes, I’ve known him a while. I’ve known him two years, if you must know – on and off.’

When she’d gone out David sat staring at the dirty table. He was glad she went out. He wanted to hit her. He wanted to hit her face and punch her belly and hurt her. That was the only
thing he could think of. Hitting both of them with all his strength. The want seemed to swell and he raised his fist and brought it down with all his force on the table. Two plates fell off and
shattered, and the milk fell over, spilling everywhere. His fist hurt.

He was not a man to analyse feelings. When the desire to hit her stopped being a physical need, he methodically tidied and swept the kitchen. Then he went and looked at Amanda sleeping. It was
Amanda he cared about. He wouldn’t care about Elizabeth, he wouldn’t even interest himself in what the bitch did. She was finished, as far as he was concerned. It was Amanda he
loved.

When Elizabeth returned later that night he was perfectly controlled. Speaking politely and distantly he began to discuss the settlement of their joint finances. He proposed that she move out
immediately. Amanda would continue to live with him but he would deliver her to Elizabeth in the mornings when he went to work, and collect her on his way home. He would stay in the house and buy
her half of the joint mortgage from her. Elizabeth, who had visibly been crying, flew into an uncontrolled rage, calling him a bastard and throwing her shoes at him.

‘I wish I’d never married you. I wish I’d never seen you!’ she screamed. ‘You don’t know what love is. You’ve never loved me, you’ve never cared
about me. Only the cupboards and the car and the fucking wallpaper. You won’t love Mandy either, when she starts to be a person – she’ll see through you. You’re incapable of
love!’

He didn’t see what she had to be so upset about, since she was getting her own way and leaving. He went to bed and when she followed him with her weeping and accusations he shifted to the
spare room.

Elizabeth moved out. The quality of David’s life improved almost immediately. He was an organized man, and with no one else interfering in the house, he could make it run like a machine.
He shopped during his lunch-hour, and devoted the evenings to Amanda. She was walking now, and learning to talk. Her company was a constant source of delight. When he called for her she would go
into a frenzy of excitement, clapping her hands and shouting, ‘Da da da da!’ She giggled uproariously at him when he pulled faces; they had a game where he would chase her round the
sofa on all fours, roaring, and soon he had only to pretend to crouch down, to send her into a paroxysm of laughter.

At weekends he took her out, planning outings to zoos and parks to delight her. When old ladies commented on how pretty and clever she was he glowed with pleasure. People were always remarking
on her beautiful hair, which grew longer and more fly-away, without ever changing its silver-blonde colour. He called her Silver Top, Duck’s Fluff, Dandelion Clock.

As if he had been turned on a giant wheel, he entered again into a terrible state of anxiety about Elizabeth’s care of Amanda. Elizabeth might let her run out on to the road. She might
fall downstairs. He could see her hurt, maimed, unconscious on a hospital bed; she was only safe when she was with him. And when the child fell asleep, exhausted, at 8.30 or 9 p.m., he resented all
the waking daytime hours of her Elizabeth had enjoyed.

He considered leaving his job. If he gave up work . . . It would only be for three years anyway. Amanda could start school at four and a half. It wasn’t long – and he could sell the
car, and do odd pieces of carpentry at home, at nights. He had savings. Maybe he could persuade Elizabeth to wait for her money from the mortgage, till Amanda was five. The new man was well off, to
judge by the size of his house.

He realized that Amanda greeted Elizabeth with enthusiasm when he took her back in the mornings. She did like her mother. Would it harm her to lose contact? From the opulence of his imagined
full days and nights with her, he considered letting her go to Elizabeth for the odd weekend.

He gave six weeks’ notice at work before he’d even spoken to Elizabeth. He didn’t want the confrontation. But he was also quite sure that he would get what he wanted. If
Elizabeth refused, he would go to court and get proper custody. He was the injured party in the whole affair – and had clearly established more rights to Mandy through his continued care of
her. There was no way he could lose.

He finally told Elizabeth one morning as he dropped Amanda off, that he’d like to talk to her that evening. At 6 p.m. she ushered him into an untidy, expensively furnished lounge. As she
turned to open the door in front of him he realized, with a jolt, that she was pregnant again.

So much the better. She’d have no need to fight for Amanda now – she’d have a new baby all to herself. It hadn’t taken them long, had it. It hadn’t taken them three
bloody years.

She sat down and asked him, quite formally, to sit. He tried not to look at her. He was just starting to speak when the door opened and a man’s blond head peered round and said,
‘Sorry!’ before withdrawing.

David started again. ‘I’ve come to see you about Amanda.’

She nodded distantly. He imagined the shape of her belly under her smock, and his hands remembered the feel of her skin, stretched tight and silky-smooth. It was impossible that he should be
speaking to her like this – in another man’s house. He had to close his eyes to steady himself and tell himself with all his concentration, ‘She is a bitch and I don’t care
about her. She is nothing to me.’ His hands, clenched on the arms of the chair, were sweating horribly. He wondered where Amanda was. It would be easier if he could see her.

‘I’m stopping work. Given in my notice. I want to – you to – I want you to let me have Amanda. I’ll look after her in the days too. You can see her – but I
want her. It’s only fair. You can see that.’ Blurted out, not like any of the speeches he had planned. He was burning up. What was it? He didn’t even know what it was that was
sending waves of hot panic beating through his flesh.

Elizabeth seemed composed. She spoke in a low voice. ‘Look, I’ve got something to tell you, David, and I should have told you before. I’ve been putting it off because I
didn’t want to upset you. But there’s nothing else I can do, I’m afraid. I didn’t –’ She faltered, and he suddenly realized that far from being composed she too
was terrified, on the edge of tears. Her voice dropped even lower and he had to crouch forward to hear her. ‘When I moved in with Mark he guessed something which I’d never thought of.
He hadn’t really seen her before, you see. But when he saw Amanda – properly – he guessed.’ She came to a complete stop. David was paralysed. The ‘WHAT?’ of rage
inside him could not come out, and lodged in his throat like a brick. At last she went on.

‘It’s the hair, you see. It’s so unusual. It would have been such a coincidence. And yours and mine both brown . . .’

Noise. Of roaring. Inside a furnace roaring up with a huge burning lion maw to swallow into red heat.

As it subsided she’d been talking on ‘ . . . because I didn’t, honestly, it never entered my head; he said, well, you can prove it. So he took her to the doctor’s and had
a blood test.’

Roaring again, blocking her out. Red coming up before the eyes darkening to black. The white speaking senseless face blotted out, then hanging like a puppet gibbering before him. The mouth went
on opening and closing, the face contorting, as he watched. She was crying. She was talking. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, David. I didn’t know, I promise you. You can – if
you want you can see her – Mark won’t mind – if you want to see her sometimes.’

Without knowing how or where the strength came from he got out of the house, Elizabeth following him and crying at him all the time. At the door she caught his arm and he pushed her back, and
stumbled down the steps. She shrank back into the hallway, staring at him. As he turned on to the pavement the corner of his eye was seared by a flash of white hair at the bedroom window.

He had never seen Amanda again. Except secretly, through fences. And the schoolteacher was right. Carry on like that and he’d turn into one of those perverts, be no better than them.
Frightening a little girl at the school gate, with the ugly exposure of his crippling love.

Weds. morning

I am telling stories. In a chipboard cupboard of a room six floors up a cement column, with hot dry air and nylon sheets. The room is so full of electricity that I have adapted
to walking slowly, avoiding contacts. My hair crackles, the dry skin on my face is peeling. My lip bleeds.

I am here, not there. There are the twins, Paul and Penny, giggling crying slavering slopping their food sucking their thumbs. Paul sobs in his sleep. Penny moans. My babies who have sucked my
breasts and grown in my flesh, pieces of me, my belly my heart.

I am sitting six floors up with a window over the motorway to hills; a five-star view in a one-star room. Snow. Total snow, not London snow. Snow on road ditch hill tree roof cloud car field. I
am not –

Not a diary not a journal. Not Marion, not a sniff or spit or print of her. In my cement tower (once doubtless white as an ivory but now yellowing grey as decayed teeth, a tower for my times,
the days of ivory – like the golden age – being gone) I sit. Sit, wait, woman in a tower. Like Mariana in her moated grange. No, Rapunzel, gone bald. Stuck up a tower for good.

No games. Here. Nylon sheets, lemon. Two blankets, off white. Nylon quilted bedspread, pink floral. Grey fleck carpet. Woodchip off-white walls. Fitted white-wood wardrobe and shelves, white
washbasin, and mirror. Bedside coffee table (supporting lamp) of such generous proportions that this exercise of arm and pen is possible. I sit on the floor under the window, back against the bed,
legs outstretched beneath the table. Writing on a new block of A4 ruled feint (wide).

Me. No Penny no Paul No Ruth No Vi no Gareth. Me.

Yes, inescapably me. Not Marion, she says. Not a stiff or– But her sniffs and spits are all over David and Amanda. She has pummelled him into shape – hasn’t she? With her hammy
fists, he’s moulded and sticky as dough, paddled with the prints of her flat-edged fingers. Listen.

‘He began to long for a child. Not knowingly, but with a dull subconscious pang of loss.’ He didn’t know (she says). But Marion knows. Mother knows what’s wrong before
you know yourself. She names the pain. She identifies it, telling herself that thus it can be remedied, later in the story. Suggesting to herself – comforting herself – deluding herself
again – that things follow on, make sense, have remedies.

Perhaps she wanted a good wallow. Nothing like someone else’s troubles. Liberally doused with ketchup, with ‘slow burning love’. Great towering passions, in red and black
cloaks. She doesn’t feel secure unless she thinks they’re there.

Instead of real things. Little things, that lurk and move quick and don’t make sense. They resist explanation. They won’t stand still to have metaphors hung round their necks like
mayoral chains. Quick, dart, lurk. They’ve gone.

Marion. Whatever she writes. She might as well stop now.

Fri. 7