Beautiful Little Girl by Susan Giles
Published 05 January 2012 as part of the Writing East Midlands and Lincolnshire Echo Short Story Competition
*‘Susan Giles can be found online at www.sfgiles.wordpress.com*
She is fading. One face among many, peering down with damp eyes and shaking hands. He blinks again, one last attempt to refocus on his daughter, and for a moment there is clarity, a young face smiling and small hands reaching.
She is born four days late, just hours before her mother is scheduled for a caesarean. He is at home, deep in much needed sleep, after finally succumbing to the midwife’s promises that nothing would happen till morning. Of course, after all the hours that stretched into days that they spent waiting, once she starts she is surprisingly quick to emerge. It takes the hospital twenty minutes to get hold of him, five minutes for him to pull his clothes on and start the car and, when he arrives an hour later, he’s only just in time. He is still tired. His wife’s screams barely penetrate the haze in his head, and even the pain of her digging her nails into his hand doesn’t seem quite so bad, doesn’t quite match the brilliant red crescents she leaves pressed in his palm. The room fills with a high pitched squeal, far too loud for someone just born, and the haze clears. He takes the crying baby from the midwife, holds her too gently, not gently enough, and his breath catches. He is scarcely able to believe something this beautiful can be his; the knowledge swells in his chest and his smile broadens till it aches. ‘Well hello there,’ he says to his daughter, glad his words are lost beneath the noise of her mother and the nurses, as his voice cracks on the second syllable. ‘Hello my beautiful little girl.’
A small hand shakes his shoulder, surprisingly strong and insistent. He wants to ignore it – it’s the middle of the night and he has work in a few hours. He is warm and comfortable and barely awake. Sleep still toys lazily with him – he could so easily slip back.
A voice calls to him and even in the quiet of the night he can barely hear her words, hushed but thick with fear. The hand reaches out again; this time he turns to catch it and fold his fingers round hers. ‘Okay,’ he whispers into the darkness ‘I’m here, I’m awake.’
There are monsters in her room, lurking under the bed and creeping in the shadows that the streetlights cast. She is scared, can’t face sleep alone and unprotected. He knows he ought to take her back, flick the light switch and show her there is nothing hiding there, nothing waiting in the dark places of her room.
But he is tired. It is late and early at the same time, her bedroom is all the way across the hall and, anyway, if he got out of bed he would wake his wife, no point three would suffering when it could just be two. He takes the easy option.
‘Come on then.’ He pats the duvet, as if she needed telling; she is already clambering in, all sharp elbows and pointy knees. She isn’t happy with the edge – that is still too dangerous – so she carries on climbing, up over him and into the small gap that had been between him and his wife. There she is happy, between her mother and father; she spreads out across the mattress and wriggles down into this warm safe darkness.
That, he thinks as he is backs out of her way, slides over to the edge of the mattress and teeters, feels the nip of cold air on his bare back, that is not what I meant.
She is six today. Her party finished hours ago, balloons wander across the living room floor and ripped paper streamers hang off a table now empty. All afternoon the house has been warm and loud, filled with the sounds of children playing and mothers gossiping. ‘Six,’ he had said, ‘is too old to bring your parents to parties,’ but his wife shook her head, and this was another display of just how little he knows. Now the house is cold, silent except for the rustle of bin bags in the kitchen as his wife clears away paper plates and plastic cups. Across the window, a banner declaring that today is ‘Katie’s Birthday’ slaps gently against the wall, teased by the breeze from an open window. He stands by the back door, ash dripping from the cigarette in his hand – a cigarette he needed without wanting in an attempt to recover from what had come before. His daughter is asleep, curled in the old armchair. Her present, the product of many hours searching, is abandoned in the corner. Tomorrow he will take the bike to the garage, remove the big ribbon from the pink wicker basket and it will become just another toy, used and unappreciated; today it was a present, new and adored.
How can you do this to her, she wants to know, are you trying to ruin her life? He takes a moment to consider this question, wondering when an evening of bowling became her life and how refusing to lend her ‘just a tenner’ is ending all her chances of future happiness. Her mother is frowning in the background, and he thinks she probably wants him to hand the money over, if only for a quiet life. If only to stop the plaster cracking from their raised voices. ‘No,’ he says slowly, reasoning his argument even as he is speaking, ‘I am not a cash point with endless money.’ This is not a real reason, not even an excuse, but he is her father: he doesn’t need one.
When Mr Jones from number 38 warns him, he refuses to believe. He tells his neighbour that he is mistaken, and sends poor Mr Jones on his way with a regretful smile. But when she comes home and he stands close, the stench of smoke is woven through her hair, the fibres of her clothes, and he can almost see yellowing stains on the tips of her fingers.
Yes, he loses it. He screams, he shouts and he swears until his voice goes hoarse. He demands to know how she can be so stupid, so immature, and tells her it’s not cool, not fun; it’s an open-ended invitation for death and illness. He invokes her Aunt Jeanie, the row of pills in her bathroom and the foul smelling gunk she hacks up every morning. Is this, he asks, what she wants for her own old age?
She does not like the truth. She narrows her eyes and gives a sceptical sneer. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ she says and there is more than condescension in her voice, there is genuine disgust and it pounds in his head. Not only is he right, but he is her father. She should listen to him and respect him enough not to dismiss him so easily.
‘You’re such a hypocrite,’ she finishes, and she thinks the conversation is over. Her final word is thick with spite, and she turns away, lifts a hand to the door.
He doesn’t mean to lash out. He’s not making a point, proving himself or anything else as ridiculous and redundant as the gesture might suggest. It’s just a reaction, one he can’t help. He grabs her arms; his hands grip tight against her white school shirt and his fingers press down, hard, harder, until he can feel the flex and stretch of her muscles as she struggles.
She stops. Stops struggling, stops even moving. They both stand rigid, their breath coming in matching bursts. The fast, unsteady beat of her pulse echoes through his fingertips and her eyes are not angry anymore. They are stretched wide – scared and shimmering with tears. She is shaking.
He lets go.
He hovers in the doorway, the last of the boxes pulled tight against his chest. There is no space on the floor for this one; the tiny room is already covered in haphazard stacks that are almost too high to be safe. He wonders where all this stuff came from, when exactly they bought her so many clothes, bed sheets and books. Enough to fill the car to the roof and leave it shaking and groaning with the effort of moving. ‘Where do you want this?’ he asks. Her hand waves vaguely in the direction of the open wardrobe. He is pretty sure the box contains a printer but he follows her instructions without question. A familiar ache starts to pull across his shoulders and there is a tweak of pain in the base of his back; he is glad to be rid of the weight. She is rooting through the boxes already, pulling out books for the shelves and sheets for the bed and he knows he should leave. This is his cue, his chance to avoid tears and a scene. His wife appears behind him, announces ‘this is it’ and strides across the room to take their only child in her arms. There is a moment of silence, a sniff of tears and a rustle of clothes and then they part, his wife ducks her head and his daughter turns to fix him with an awkward smile. ‘That’s the last,’ he says, stating the obvious just to fill the silence. ‘The car is empty now. She nods and he nods; both hover on the brink of affection, neither of them comfortable but both expectant. She breaks first. Her words tumble out in a mess of sounds and she blushes as she wraps her arms around his shoulders. He repeats her words into her hair, and with his twinge in his back and the grown woman in his arms, he feels far too old.
There is boy in his living room. His daughter tells him that this boy is a man, with intentions and ambitions and many other words that are supposed to impress. She calls the boy ‘the love of her life’ but all her father can see is a child: a child with too much gel smeared in hair that is crying out for a trim.
His daughter thinks he doesn’t know what’s going on. That he is blind or stupid – that he hasn’t noticed the large lump of carbon that is sparkling on her left hand. That she keeps looking at, every other second, and smiling – a wide, warm smile that dances in her eyes. She keeps touching her hair with that hand, smoothing the curls and tucking loose wisps behind her ears. She doesn’t notice that she’s doing it, and he worries that a few copper strands might get caught amongst the stone and the gold.
‘Mr Matthews,’ says the boy, and for the first time he notices the sheen on the boy’s forehead, the film of clear liquid that is not gel. There is a definite tremor in the boy’s voice as he says the family name.
Of course he agrees. His daughter shrieks and leaps to her feet, throws her arms around him as if he might have said anything else. As she turns to his wife babbling about dresses and churches and flowers, he shake hands with the boy, feels the slick of his sweat in the palm of his hand and wonders perhaps.
Perhaps, though he is in need of a haircut and a pair of trousers at least three sizes bigger, though his handshake goes on a second too long and he could never truly be good enough, perhaps there might be hope for the boy yet.
His wife hands him the phone, her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed and it is too late to back out now. They’d argued about it earlier, and he had insisted that he couldn’t break news like that over the phone like this, while she is a hundred miles away in a Victorian hallway, whose ceramic tiles and plain plaster walls would echo her tears back over and over. ‘You’re assuming she’ll cry?’ His wife had said, smiled at the bittersweet irony of the tears already flashing in her own eyes. He’d shaken his head, amusement, regret and then his wife had told him it was the only way they could break news like that. That he couldn’t call her home, drag her back to their little house in the middle of nowhere because she would panic and worry, every worst-case scenario would taunt her, and the journey would be hell and dangerous with distractions. ‘This,’ his wife had repeated ‘is the only way.’ So now she is there, at the end of the phone, her voice as tinny and little as it was twenty years ago when it reached to him through the fog of sleep and small, insistent hands shook at his shoulders. ‘Katie,’ he says, with a voice that shakes and cracks, ‘there’s something I need to tell you.’
In front of a flickering television, his baby daughter sleeps in his arms. He isn’t sure how long he’s been sitting there, but the curtains are open and it’s dark outside. He should move. His daughter needs to be put in her cot and he needs to be in his bed: his wife is out tonight but tomorrow is back to normal and he is at work. He has an early start to think about, and another day of spilt coffee and lazy mistakes will not go unnoticed at the office – there is only so much slack this newfound fatherhood can cut him. She snuffles in her sleep, twists towards the warmth of his chest and reaches out a hand. Five wrinkled fingers flex, so small that he can barely feel their pressure against his shirt, so light they almost weigh less than the cotton. He blows on them, watches them twitch against the rush of air and they continue to reach; five tiny fingers grasping his thumb.
He wakes to a darkened room, silent except for the sound of machines beeping and pumping. In the chair beside his bed, his daughter sleeps, her legs curled underneath her.
Her head slips sideways; she nuzzles into the chair and gives the soft sigh of the deeply asleep. He shuffles forwards across the acres of the bed, reaches out and tweaks the edge of her coat so it covers her bare wrists.
Soon she will stir; be disturbed by his wife returning or a nurse doing rounds and then she will have to go home but, for now, he lets her sleep. There is no hurry.
