Ben Page 17

  “I’m not a doctor, by the way,” said Martin. “I just come along to support a good cause. They only invite me because my wife and I make donations.”

  Layla smiled. “That’s what makes the world go round, isn’t it?”

  Ben was back, and he heard that remark. “I’d like to think that it’s love.”

  “See,” said Martin, poking Layla meaningfully in the back. “It’s all about you now. Thank God.”

  Layla adjusted the shawl self-consciously.

  An evening of fine food and terrible jokes began. Layla could see that Ben moved easily in a world full of doctors. But to her surprise, it wasn’t that hard for her to move in that world, either. It seemed to be all a matter of smiling and chatting on about nothing in particular.

  The only difficult moment came when Ben got up and asked her to dance, after the desserts and the coffees. The music was pumping and she enjoyed the dancing, surprised at how many middle-aged doctors and their wives seemed to know all the moves. But when she got back to her seat she realized the black shawl was nowhere to be seen and she must have shed it on the dance-floor. The message ‘Loverboy’s Back’ was now on display, for anyone to read.

  She felt acutely aware that people noticed it, as they threaded their way through between the tables.

  “Loverboy’s Back?” said Martin, with a questioning grin. There was a ripple of interest and amusement as she stood there beside her chair, wondering if she should make a run for it and spend the rest of the night in the ladies’ loo.

  “Yes,” Ben ran a protective hand over Layla’s back and smiled at everyone looking up from the table. “I won’t offer to show you mine. It’s in a spot I can’t possibly reveal. Not in polite company.”

  And Martin guffawed with laughter and said he was looking forward to telling Becky that one when he got home. The look on her face would be priceless.

  And Layla looked at Ben like he now had a golden halo around his dark, Jewish head. He grinned, like he knew she thought he was a genius. Or a madman, or both.

  “Did you have some Chardonnay while I wasn’t looking?” she said, suspiciously.

  “You think I’d break our deal when there’s only ten days to go?”

  “I didn’t promise you a deal. I only said I’d think about it…”

  “I know. I just hope you’re thinking about it as much as I am, that’s all.” Ben’s eyes glittered and she knew she’d have to sit down before the thought of surrendering herself to him made her weak at the knees.

  Then another voice came from behind them. “Hi Ben. And who’s this glamour girl?”

  She looked round and saw a face she recognized. The Indian doctor, from the medical centre. What was his name – oh yes, she remembered. Dr Ravi Kapoor.

  Ben’s face. It went white.

  Layla watched him shake hands with the other doctor, like they too were long-lost friends. She saw the fear behind Ben’s dark eyes. “Hello Ravi. I didn’t know you were coming to this.”

  “No. Snap decision. You know how it is.” Ravi kept smiling, rather too broadly. Rather too falsely, for Layla’s liking. “So tell me - who’s this lovely lady? And does she have a name?”

  “This is Layla,” said Ben. Rather heavily.

  “Layla?” said Ravi. “That’s unusual. Now where have I heard that, before?”

  Ben looked like he was going to pass out. “Um…”

  “It’s a song,” Layla interrupted. “Most people have heard it. It won a Grammy award.”

  Baby

  They walked up the two flights of steps to his flat after the Charity dinner. Even in Richmond you couldn’t hope for a working lift. Ben was quiet. And Layla knew he was worried.

  “Do you think he knew?” she said. “That doctor called Ravi?”

  Ben sighed. “Maybe. Perhaps he doesn’t care.”

  “He didn’t say anything.” Layla said, with almost pathetic hope. “He didn’t ask us any difficult questions.”

  Ben looked like he was about to say something more, but then, when they turned the corner on the upstairs landing, they saw a man. Hammering on the door of Ben’s flat. And when the man saw them, he almost cried in relief. “Oh, there you are! Thank God! The woman who lives next-door says you’re a doctor.”

  “I am.” Ben said. Very tired.

  “It’s my wife,” said the man. “She’s in the bath.”

  “Good for her,” said Ben, but he looked like he knew what was coming.

  “The baby’s coming,” the man said, in a voice trembling with emotion. He was about thirty, with brown hair and the makings of a ginger beard. “Much too early.’

  “Have you called the ambulance?” suggested Ben.

  “Yes. But please. She’s in a bad way. And she’s terrified.”

  “Okay. I’ll come and have a look.” said Ben. “Where is she?”

  “In the bath, like I said.”

  “No. Which flat do you live in?”

  “18A. Downstairs. She’ll be terrified because I’m not with her.”

  “Go back down there and tell her I’m on my way.”

  Ben gave the house key to Layla, who looked at him and said. “What do you want me to do? Stay here or come and help?”

  “Go and get my bag – I’ve got gloves in there, and a couple of other things we might need. Make sure I’ve got gloves, Layla – I’m going to need them.”

  He turned and followed the man in the direction of flat 18A.

  Layla ran into the apartment. She found the bag, checked for gloves, grabbed some clean towels. She put them on the kitchen bench while she threw on a sweatshirt over the revealing evening dress. No need to shock the couple at 18A with her stupid tattoo. Then she gathered the stuff together and headed back to find Ben.

  Ben and the bearded man were already in the bathroom, with a woman who looked like a whale in serious trouble. She had nothing on, and her hair was slicked back wet. Presumably, she’d been taking a bath when more important events overwhelmed her. But there was no water now, in the bath.

  Ben knelt down beside her on the bathmat - Layla passed the bag over to him, and stayed in the doorway.

  The woman experienced another rippling contraction that you could even see, and Layla watched with a kind of scared fascination. “Help me,” she said, gripping the sides of the bath.

  Layla wondered how often he heard those words, and remembered the day she’d said them herself.

  “It’s okay,” said Ben. “I’m going to help you.”

  He explained to her that he wasn’t an obstetrician, but he had done this a few times and he’d be happy to help out as long as she did all the pushing.

  She smiled. Then the pain overtook her. She gripped his hand in answer, and her face sort of scrunched up as she experienced a contraction and the veins stood out on her neck.

  Layla felt like she was going to faint just watching. But Ben took control. When the contraction passed he swapped places with the husband, and told him he had to do the hand-holding. Then he took off the jacket of his evening suit, and rolled up his shirt sleeves like a vet about to help a cow with a calf that wouldn’t come out. Layla passed him the gloves and he pulled them on. He leaned into the bath tub and put his hands between the woman’s legs to check the status of the baby.

  “Fully dilated,” he said. “You’ll soon have your little baby.”

  “Will it be alright?” said the baby’s father. “I mean – it’s only seven months. It’s really much too early.”

  Ben looked at him, willing him to keep calm. “Baby feels nice and warm to me. Sure, we’ll all be glad when the paramedics show up, but we can do this on our own for now.”

  The woman gave a long, desperate groan. “Oh, god, I feel like I’ve got to push…”

  “Then you must push,” Ben said. “No stopping it now, I’m afraid.”

  Ben turned and spoke over his shoulder. “Layla, can you get me some flannels soaked in hot water, I want to try and ease her pain a bit.”

&n
bsp; So they laid hot towels under the woman’s back while she laboured. The husband – whose name was Jack – said he couldn’t bear to see his wife in so much pain. “It’s all happening so fast, doctor, less than four hours since contractions started – we thought we had loads of time.”

  Ben smiled, and spoke like they had all the time in the world. “Babies have a way of picking the least convenient moment, don’t they?”

  Layla caught Ben’s eye and for a moment a silent question passed between them. Will we ever do this, you and I? She tried to look into her heart and imagine it. Could she bear all this pain for him? Would he want her to? Would he want her to give him a child?

  Ben checked the woman’s progress again. “Doing well. Last couple of pushes. You know how to pant when I tell you to?”

  “I can’t do it, doctor, it’s killing me.”

  “It’s almost over,” he promised. “The baby’s coming now.”

  So she pushed and pushed and finally with one last ear-splitting scream – loud enough to wake the whole apartment building – she pushed out her baby. The poor little scrap of humanity came out with a kind of slither and a lot of pink fluid. Layla had never thought she was squeamish but it wasn’t easy to watch. It was awful and awe-inspiring at the same time.

  This is what it’s about, she thought. Couples in love. Moments of pleasure, that sometimes, only sometimes, lead to this. Another human being. It’s about creating life. Not filling Mr Birch’s pockets with wads of cash.

  Ben took all the mess and the drama in his stride – speaking as calmly and pleasantly as if he was still at the Hilton having a coffee. “A baby girl,” he said, taking her into his arms and getting blood on his smart white shirt. “Quite a cutie.”

  The baby’s arms and legs moved – fragile as a new-born kitten. Ben placed the baby on the woman’s body, and she reached down and touched the child with a stunned kind of wonder. “A girl…” she murmured as if no girl-child had ever been born in the world before tonight. “A little girl…”

  Her husband touched the child too and said she was beautiful – which Layla thought was stretching the truth, but it was a nice thing to say.

  Ben looked tired. He found a clamp in his bag for the cord, and then he wiped his brow with his arm because his hands were messy from handling the baby.

  Layla stepped forward and passed him a clean towel. “All over.”

  He looked up at her, with tired dark eyes and shook his head. “Not quite,” he said. “I was hoping the ambulance men would be here before we had to do the placenta.”

  * * *

  They got back to the flat looking like they’d been in a train wreck. Ben had blood all over his white shirt like he’d been involved in a mafia killing. And his dinner jacket had some suspicious damp stains on it, from where he’d leaned into the bath and held the woman’s hand. “Well,” he said, bundling it all into the laundry hamper like discarded scrubs. “It definitely has to go back to the dry-cleaners.”

  Layla approached him, shyly. “Ben. So many people ask you for help. And you always help them if you can.”

  “Yes.”

  “So when I asked you for help, it was just the same, really. Wasn’t it?”

  He looked at her. “Layla, what are you saying?”

  “That you kind of… need to help people. And I suppose I’m worried…that what we have together is all based on that.”

  “Layla. It was different. And if I was to be brutally honest about that day – the day we met – I’d have to tell you that my thoughts were very selfish. I wanted you like crazy. You’re the type of girl men’s fantasies are made of. The fact that you needed my help gave me an opportunity, and I sometimes feel very guilty for taking it. But since then it’s become something more. Something worth crossing a boundary for.”

  “Worth risking your career for?”

  “Yes,” Ben looked at her, with direct honesty. “I know Ravi could report it. I know there could be repercussions.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because there was such a strong mutual attraction and I didn’t want to be single any more. You knew how much I wanted you, didn’t you?”

  She nodded and broke into a smile. “I never had that effect on crusty old Dr Barrymore.”

  He smiled too. “But going beyond that, Layla, there was more. Even in those few minutes after we met – we teamed up – we had to. To outwit Ray Leach. We teamed up and worked together. Like we did tonight.”

  “Oh, Ben, I felt so helpless tonight with that woman and her baby. And you were amazing.”

  “And you were everything I needed you to be. You always are.”

  She hesitated, just for a second, before she asked him, “Would it be like that if we ever had a baby?”

  “Good heaven’s no. If you were having a pre-term baby in our bathroom, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

  Weekend in the Country

  “Oh, good,” Ben said. “They’ve left the gates open for us.”

  Layla looked out through the windscreen to catch her first glimpse of the Steins’ place. It was big. Built of stone. With wide, shallow steps up to a heavy oak door half hidden by overhanging ivy. Ben spent his childhood here, she thought. The sign on the ivy-clad wall said ‘Chanson D’amour’.

  “Is that the name of the house?” she asked, as they drove in through a pair of wrought-iron gates.

  “Yes,” said Ben absently, wheeling the car round into the semi-circular driveway in front of the house. “Do you need me to translate?”

  “No. My French is terrible, but I’ve heard the song.” In her head Layla heard it now. Chanson D’amour. Song of love. “Strange name for a house.”

  “It was called that before my parents moved in. A stonemason built it, for his young wife. But she ran away and was found dead only a few months after the couple were married.”

  “Oh, that’s cheerful.”

  “I know. Sorry. But you were bound to hear the story sooner or later. Thought I might as well get it out of the way.” Ben parked by some rosebushes that would have been lovely in summer, but just now were looking wintry and bare. “My father wanted to change the name, but my mother said it reminded her of Paris – where she and Dad had their honeymoon. She said that even if the young couple who built the house hadn’t known much happiness or romance, she could still hope for some, couldn’t she?”

  Layla felt she understood. Life was like that sometimes, and it seemed to her that even with doom and gloom all around you, you had to take your chances when they appeared. She got out of the car, and saw that up above there were storm clouds now, and the first spots of rain dotted the boot of the car as she and Ben unpacked the bags. He carried them, gentleman that he was.

  “Right,” he said, inclining his head towards the house. “Shall we?”

  She nodded. They crunched across the gravel towards the house.

  This was it. Meeting his parents. Mr and Mrs Stein.

  “Benjamin!” An excited voice, belonging to an excited little lady with curly grey hair. Layla looked up.

  She already had the door open for them, and she stood at the top of a shallow flight of stone steps, clapping her hands in delight that her wonderful son had come home. “And Layla. It is Layla, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, mother. Here she is.”

  “Oh, but she’s lovely, dear! Very pretty!”

  Layla blushed and looked down as she followed Ben up the steps, which said “1937” in curly letters carved deep into the stone. Ben turned and gave her an encouraging smile. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Then he turned back to his mother and flung down the bags and embraced the tiny, excitable woman. She seemed to almost hop up and down in his arms like a fidgety animal or a fluttery bird.

  “Come in, come in, out of the cold. Can you believe Christmas is only three weeks away? You will be back for Christmas, won’t you? You and Layla? You promise me, darling?”

  Ben smiled. “Mother, can we get this visit underway befor
e we start planning the next one?”

  “Yes. Yes. Oh I shall feel quite guilty now. Because if you can’t come back for Christmas I should have put the tree up so at least you could have seen it. It would have looked so lovely standing here in the hall. And then Layla could have seen it, too. But maybe she will, fingers crossed. Do you know I found Mr Sminky the Christmas mouse and I pulled his tail and he worked, Benjy, he worked after all these years.” Mrs Stein turned to Layla, and explained, “Mr Sminky is a clockwork mouse that Benjy got for Christmas when he was nine. And he plays ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’ at top speed. Oh, we all enjoyed him so much! Imagine, dear, a little clockwork mouse that sings at ninety miles an hour!”

  Layla didn’t have to imagine. Mrs Stein was just like that. Exactly like that.

  Ben picked up the bags and attempted to get past his mother and into the hall. But she was waving her arms and saying that she should have left the door closed so they could have heard the new door-bell chime. “It goes like this,” she said, excitedly, and leaned around the door post to sound the bell for them. “It’s Big Ben – isn’t that a scream? And highly appropriate, really.”

  She sounded the chime again and the sonorous notes of Big Ben chiming the hour were heard in the Steins entrance hall.

  “Mother, can we please come in?” Ben tried to aim the front of his overnight bag through a space between his mother and the door frame, but it was no good she was throwing her arms around him again.

  “It’s so wonderful to have you here, dear. And Layla, too.” She extended her bird-like arm out to Layla as if to pull her into a group hug. “You’ll persuade him to come home for Christmas, won’t you, dear? There’s nothing like a Christmas at Chanson D’Amour, except maybe Rosh Hashanah.”

  Layla could well believe it. It already seemed like she’d landed on another planet. A planet where festive holidays of all types were celebrated with a vengeance.

  “Sylvia, Sylvia,” said a man’s voice behind her. “Let the dog see the rabbit!”

  “Thank heaven,” said Ben, as his father came and hauled Sylvia away – placing firm hands on her shoulders and moving her, purposefully, a few feet off to the side.