Quintin Jardine - Poisoned Cherries

‘Saying what?’

‘Saying that you’ve had our baby, that she’s a wee cracker, and that we’re both chuffed as hell.’

She laughed. ‘I can just hear Greg McPhillips reading that to the press!’

‘Word for word, I promise you.’

‘And what’ll he say about the fact that you’re still married?’

‘The truth; that Prim and I haven’t been together for some time, and that the last time I spoke to her she was in Mexico with her new partner.’

‘You sure you want to be that frank?’

‘Certain.’

‘What about Miles?’

‘If he can’t handle it, fuck him.’ Mary frowned at me across the supper table. I mouthed an apology.

‘Indeed I will not,’ Susie chuckled. ‘You might be making a scarlet woman of me, but I’m not going to live up to it.’

‘Hey, I don’t want to do that; we’ve got things to talk about.’

‘No, we don’t. I can take care of myself.’

‘I know that. I didn’t mean that.’

‘Shut up, Oz. You’re tired and emotional.’

‘Okay, I will, for now. How’re you feeling?’

‘Sore.’

‘How’s wee Janet?’

‘Hungry. Lovely too.’

‘Look after her. I’ll pick you both up tomorrow, mid-day as arranged. The only thing is, we’re not going to be alone.’

I was as right about that as my Dad had been the day before. There was a posse of reporters and photographers staking out the maternity unit when I drove up in Susie’s car. I recognised one bloke from my Edinburgh days, so I walked straight up to him, being as showbiz as I could.

‘Hi, Freddy,’ I greeted him. ‘You guys expecting something?’

‘Not any more,’ he answered, as they crowded around me, shoving mikes and tape recorders into my face. ‘You’re a fucking dark horse, big Oz.’

‘That won’t be going out on radio,’ I said. The newspaper reporters grinned; the woman from the local FM station scowled.

‘Can we have a picture?’ one of the photographers shouted. ‘You and Miss Gantry and the baby?’

‘That’s up to Susie. We’re going back to Glasgow. .’ I was still amazed that maternity units let patients home so quickly these days; I thought they’d have kept her in for a week. ‘. . Maybe we could do something there.’

‘We’d rather do it now, Oz,’ said Freddy Everest. ‘It’ll get the picture desks off our backs. . and yours, for that matter.’

We did what they wanted; I had done some shopping for Susie on the way in from Fife, picking her up some normal-sized gear, since all she had packed for the weekend was maternity kit. I have to say she looked terrific, as good as any movie star I’ve ever met, when we finally let the mob into her room.

She didn’t look as good as Janet Gantry Blackstone, though, dressed in a tiny gown I’d also found at the Gyle Centre, and wrapped in my christening shawl, which my Dad had produced earlier that morning, from the box in which it had been stored for thirty years.

The drive home to Glasgow really was sedate; Susie sat in the back seat holding the baby as if she was made of nitroglycerine. This time there was no music allowed, although I don’t think that Bohemian Rhapsody would have woken wee Jan.

‘Have you spoken to Miles and Dawn?’ Susie asked me, out of the blue, just as we passed Harthill.

‘I called Miles last night.’

‘Have you still got a career?’

I laughed. I’d been saving that one up. ‘I surely do. He knew about you and me; Prim lied about that too. She told me that she’d said nothing to them about our thing, because she didn’t want to hurt my movie prospects. That was rubbish, of course; as soon as she got back to the States, she spilled the lot to Miles and demanded that he fire me. He told her that he never let personal things influence business decisions, and he warned her not to say or do anything to upset Dawn.

‘He was a bit pissed off that I hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him myself, but we’ve sorted that out.’

‘Well,’ she muttered, ‘that was easier than you thought, wasn’t it?’

‘I suppose so; I was never really, truly worried about that side of things, but I’m glad it’s all out in the open.’

‘Me too.’ Susie paused. ‘Tell me something, Oz. If all this hadn’t hit the press, what would you have done?’

‘About the baby, you mean? Exactly what I have done. In our own time, maybe, but I’d have gone public.’

‘Why?’

I looked at her, in the rear-view mirror. ‘You’re sitting there, holding our daughter, and you have to ask me that?’

‘I just want to hear you say it.’

‘Okay. Because I’ve never been as proud of anything in my life as I am of being her father.’

She threw me a dazzling smile. ‘Good. Because there won’t be any more, you know. This one’s going to be a spoiled only-child.’

‘Susie. .’ I began.

She could read my mind, almost as well as Jan was able. ‘Don’t go there, Oz. Don’t give me the “I’ll stand by you” speech. I’ve got everything planned out. I’ll run the business mostly from home; my managers and staff will have to get used to meeting me there. I’ll have a live-in nanny, and domestic help; someone to clean and someone to cater when I have working lunches and the like. I don’t need stood by, lover, especially not by someone like you. You’re just starry-eyed over being a dad, so don’t go noble on me.’

That shut me up; in fact neither of us spoke, until the Charing Cross turn-off. ‘What are you going to do while you’re shooting this new movie?’ Susie asked me.

‘You mean where am I going to live?’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t made my mind up. I could take a suite in a hotel, but I had enough of them in Toronto, so I’m going to look for a place to rent for the duration. I’m not due there until the middle of next week, though; that being the case I thought I might bunk with you till then, and use the time to get myself sorted out.’ I looked at her in the mirror again. ‘Or is that not a runner?’

She grinned at me. ‘I think I can allow that. The thought of sleeping with a movie star still has its attractions.’

It was clear to me from the off that Susie loved that apartment. Even if she had been ready and willing, I saw that as a big obstacle to us getting together permanently, since I couldn’t conceive of myself wanting to lay down any roots there, not again.

Still, our time together was fun, while it lasted, even if I found it difficult to concentrate on the script of the new movie. A new baby is a bit like a quiet fart, in that its presence pervades all the surrounding space. A few months before, wee Janet hadn’t been as much as a twitching in my loins, never mind a gleam in my eye. Prim and I had muttered things about children, but vaguely, quietly, as if we were each afraid the other might take us seriously.

My Jan had been pregnant when she died; Prim had been pregnant too at one stage, by someone else, so each of us had our own mixed feelings, even if they were unexplored and unspoken.

When Susie and I had flung our fling, I had made the classic male assumption that she was on the Pill. It had been years since a knotted condom had lain under my bed. Yet when she let me in on the truth, I felt my heart take flight in my chest; if Prim had given me the same tidings, it would have fallen like a stone.

I’d tried to explain my elation to myself, but I couldn’t. And then wee Jan was born and I understood. Things don’t have to be conventionally right; some just are. She was perfect, a doll, growing more beautiful by the day, as her face uncrumpled and her features began to define themselves. Both of her grandfathers came to visit, my Dad and Joe Donn, Susie’s natural father. Joe didn’t quite know what to make of me, but he made a fuss of the baby, that’s for sure.