“I don’t know. It depends if Nan falls asleep,” I said.
Louise smacked her lips together. “If she doesn’t, we can stick her in the bedroom; she won’t disturb the neighbours there.” She sat at the little square table where we used to eat our bean and potato stews and tapped her cigarette against an ashtray.
“I can’t leave her here on her own.”
She paused and said, “No, silly me, of course not. We’ll take her with us. Come on.”
With Nan asleep, we renegotiated the stairs and walked to Chez Alain, bumping the Silver Cross up the steps.
“Madam,” the French ma?tre d’ said before we were even inside, “we don’t allow children in the restaurant.”
“But I’ve reserved a table,” Louise said.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t look apologetic. “It will disturb our diners.”
“That’s ridiculous. I have a reservation and I would like some lunch.”
Nan was grizzling. I shook the pram and she began to cry. I could feel the sweet sting of my let-down reflex and the milk beginning to flow. The man shrugged, already turning away.
Louise and I sat on the bench in St. George’s Gardens, where I’d read your books only fourteen months previously. (How could so much have changed?) She tore into the pork pie we’d bought from Levitt’s. I shifted away, embarrassed to be feeding Nan in public, bending forwards, trying to release my breast and at the same time fit Nan’s head under my blouse.
“For God’s sake, Ingrid,” Louise said, her mouth crammed with pastry and pork. “Just get it out. What does it matter if anyone sees? You never used to be such a prude.”
I could feel those old tears stinging my eyes. It took two hands to get Nan latched on. “Tell me about your job,” I said.
She told me how she’d seen Barbara Castle’s back as the MP walked along a corridor in the House of Commons, and how when Parliament reconvened after the summer she was going to find the courage to introduce herself. Louise was excited, full of life and London. She held the pork pie up to my mouth so I could eat and keep Nan in place. I lunged and took a bite, fatty pastry spilling over my lips. Louise poked a piece back into my mouth with her finger and we smiled, and I was dismayed to feel my eyes watering again.
“So, motherhood isn’t all you thought it’d be?” she said, finishing the pie, sucking the grease from her fingers.
“I’m loving it. It’s wonderful.” I swiped my cheek against my shoulder. She wanted to say I told you so, and I wasn’t going to let her.
“And your husband? He’s wonderful too, I suppose?”
“Yes, of course. He adores Nan. He’s writing every day; his next novel will be finished soon.”
“And life in the sticks?” She snorted.
“You have no idea what my life is like, Louise, so how can you judge it?” I raised my voice and Nan twitched. She had come off my nipple and fallen asleep but I didn’t want to risk waking her again.
“I can imagine.” Louise crossed her legs—in tan tights although it was summer—and folded her arms. “You’re unhappy, you regret what you’ve done, but now you’re stuck. You didn’t get your degree and you’re financially dependent on a man. You have a baby but no money and nowhere to go. You live in the back of beyond and you have nothing to fill your time or your mind except nappies and breastfeeding.”
I shook my head, starting to interrupt, but Louise hadn’t finished: “Your husband spends his time working on some fiction you don’t believe will sell. When the baby pops off the boob, you cry yourself to sleep and then get up the next day and do the whole thing again.”
“How dare you!” I stood up and hefted Nan to my shoulder, feeling a trickle of milk run down my stomach under my blouse. “You know nothing about what it’s like to be a wife and mother. Nothing.”
“And I don’t want to,” Louise said. And then more calmly, “I can help you.” She put her hand on my arm. “If you want to leave him, I could help now, with the money.”
I pulled away from her. “I don’t think so.” I put Nan in the pram, not bothering to tuck her in. She’d had enough food and was floppy with sleep.
“Just think about it.” Louise stood up too.
“I have to go.” I released the pram’s brake. “Thank you for . . .” I was unsure. “The pork pie,” I said, and wheeled Nan out of the park.