Now Luke
Now
Luke
To tell you the truth, I’m a little bit addicted to my amateur sleuthing. I’m good at it, that’s the thing. I have Alice and Samuel’s timings down to perfection; I know exactly where they will be during my lunch hour. I have a little argument with myself most mornings. Today you will not follow your mother and son, I say as I sit down at my desk. But by midday the craving is upon me. I need the fix of looking, watching, examining; I like to catch the scent of Alice in the air – lemons or cedar or fig, an indefinable yet instantly recognisable perfume that is beginning to drive me mad.
Alice, I discover, is a creature of habit. After Samuel has had his lunch at midday – relentlessly puréed slops, poor sod – she always walks up to the park or the high street, depending on whether or not she’s had a chance to go shopping in the morning. Sometimes they stop off in the library. I haven’t had the nerve to follow them in there. I stand outside the old sandstone building watching its passage of visitors: Clapham mummies wrestling buggies up the steps, pensioners who go to read the papers or perhaps in the hope of a random hello, a shaggy-haired tramp once, who was ejected minutes later.
It’s better when, as today, they head for the shops and I can follow at a distance. I love walking behind Alice; there is much to glean from the unguarded posterior view. I see that she is happy and relaxed, occasionally I’ll even hear a fragment of a song she is singing – she has a good voice, clear and strong. Mostly I observe how devoted she is to Samuel, talking to him softly if he’s awake, constantly telling him about his surroundings. I can’t hear exactly what she says from this distance, just a muffle of words. Sometimes she stops, sharply swivelling the buggy in front of a shop window, where she’ll point out something of interest. The butcher’s, with its hanging pig carcasses, feels a little indelicate after his lunch of carrot mush.
I was in danger of getting caught once, when they slammed to a halt in front of Arcadia, the gift shop. I stood exposed, terrified of Alice glancing to the left and seeing me, her son, Samuel’s father, loitering with intent. A moment of reckoning, that time.
I tell myself that I am checking in on Alice from time to time, as any other new father would, making sure that the woman who cares for his child is doing a good job.
I’ve been standing at the top of Clapham Manor Street for only five minutes when Alice and Samuel walk right past me. I catch her perfume in the air, sharp, citrusy, a little floral. They might be going to Woolies; Alice goes there a lot. I’ve risked lurking amidst the pick ’n’ mix once or twice just to see her at the back of the shop, examining cake tins and oven gloves that appear in our house later. Another little Alice gift, something useful, thoughtful, transformative – like the corkboard she tacked up to the kitchen wall.
‘So we can leave each other notes,’ she said. ‘And I can buy stuff you need.’
Such a simple thing. So obvious, I wonder now how we lived without it. Alice bestows these gifts upon us with such ease and grace, it’s easy to accept.
I was right, they have turned into Woolworths, which is perfect. I always think it’s the kind of place I might easily pop into to pick up some pens or a notepad on the pretence of having left mine at the office.
As always, Alice wheels the pram towards the back of the shop. She is looking not at kitchen equipment or stationery but the selection of toys on the left-hand side of the store. From a distance I watch her pick up a glove puppet, an orange, yellow and brown chicken made of felt. She puts her hand inside it, snaps the beak at Samuel and gives a pretty perfect rendition of a cockerel. Cock-a-doodle-doo. The whole of Woolworths must catch Samuel’s hysteria, a joyful, infectious sound. I creep a little closer, addicted to the tableau between woman and child. I’m lurking three rows away, amidst a job lot of Caterpillar boots, taking a pair from its box, sliding my hand inside one and holding it out for closer examination.
The puppet routine continues. Alice has moved on to a furry alligator, emerald green with a lemon-yellow stomach and a crimson mouth. She snaps its jaw, hovering right in front of Samuel’s face until she swoops down and pecks his nose. More wild laughter and Alice is laughing too. There is no end to the fun these two can have together. I’m about to leave my post when a blonde girl with a toddler walks up to them.
‘Hi there,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen you at circle time in the library. How old is your baby? He’s gorgeous.’
‘Six months, almost seven,’ Alice says. ‘How about yours, he looks around a year older?’
‘Yes, he’s eighteen months. I’m Kirsty, by the way.’
‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Alice. And this—’
‘Would you like to try them on?’
The girl in front of me, green Woolies shirt of nylon, has a quizzical look on her face. Perhaps she’s been watching me. Perhaps she’s wondering why a young guy like myself is peeking over the shelf of boots to observe a middle-aged woman and a baby.
But my mind is heavy with new intelligence and it’s an effort to speak. Alice didn’t explain that Samuel wasn’t her baby, a child she looks after three days a week. She acted as if he was hers.
‘No, I don’t, thanks.’ I’m barging past the shop assistant, incapable of civility.
Outside on the pavement, I run down the street, realising after a minute or two that I am running away from the Tube, not towards it, so preoccupied am I with this latest development. Is Alice pretending Samuel is her baby? Or am I, increasingly paranoid freak that I am, jumping to conclusions? If I told Hannah, apart from thinking I was a lunatic for spying on my mother in my lunch hour – not spying, H, checking up – she’d tell me not to be so ridiculous. I can even hear the words she would choose.
‘Alice looks far younger than she is; she probably gets mistaken for Samuel’s mum the whole time. Sometimes it’s too boring to explain, that’s all.’
And she is probably right. But that doesn’t stem the cold spread of concern I feel in my lungs, my stomach, my heart. I’m your baby, Alice. Me. Not Samuel.
I’m walking down the steps into Clapham Common station when the truth strikes me: I am jealous of my own son.