Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 2.2

I looked around the carriage. There were people drinking beer, and an old man with a shopping cart and a white beard that was yellow underneath his mouth who was talking to himself, and lots of bare-legged girls shrieking with excitement. Three of the girls pointed at the baby in Sophie's arms and cooed and sighed and all that – it was enough to make you sick. Someone was playing a radio. People were saying fuck a lot.

We passed six stations. We were miles from Crapper now and I was starting to feel better. We passed stations with strange names and whooshed through tunnels and over bridges with cars going by underneath, and when we turned a corner I could see the city floating there like a chandelier in the darkness. I was starting to enjoy myself, actually.

Then I saw the police.

They were on the platform of the next station. The train was slowing to pick them up. I looked across at Sophie – she'd seen them too.

The train came to a halt, the doors opened, and the police came on board. All the beer magically vanished. I looked around for a place to hide a baby but I couldn't see any. I tugged at the woman's sleeve. "Can you hold our baby?"

She turned away from the window and gave me a strange, distant look.

"Please," I said.

Sophie didn't wait for her to answer: she simply pushed the baby into the woman's lap.

"Oh," the woman said, clasping the baby to herself so it wouldn't tumble to the floor.

The doors wheezed shut behind the police.

That was when the baby started howling again. The woman cooed at it, but it didn't seem to care. What a noise it made. I could've killed Sophie for bringing it.

Now the police were coming up the aisle towards us. They were watching us. It seemed like everyone in the carriage was watching us. The woman was doing something with her clothing, but I was too busy watching the police to see what she was doing.

The baby's howls suddenly cut off.

"Evening," one of the policemen started, then they both suddenly went red. The second policeman coughed into his hand. Without another word they turned around and walked away again.

I looked at the woman. She had the top of her blouse open, and the baby was silent because it was hard up against her breast. I could hear it sucking away. It sounded like when Dirty Joe sucked on a cigarette. Sophie was looking from the woman to me and back again, her mouth open.

The police reached the other end of the carriage as the train slowed down for the next station. When the train stopped they got off and went on to the next carriage. They didn't come back.

The woman fed the baby for a while longer, then I saw it pull away. There was milk at the corner of its mouth and running down its fat chin. She wiped its chin and it gurgled. She pinched its cheek and it gurgled some more. Then she pulled her blouse up and gave the baby back to Sophie. It went straight to sleep in Sophie's arms, its thumb in its gummy mouth. The woman watched it sleeping.

"Do you always have milk?" I said. I didn't know much about this kind of thing, and I was surprised to see the milk on the baby's chin.

"No."

I was too embarrassed to ask anything else. I'd never seen an actual breast before.

"Why do you have milk?" Sophie said.

The train was slowing again, and the woman rocked a little with its movement. "When you have a child you make it."

"Oh," Sophie said. "Where is he... she...?"

"She died."

Me and Sophie were silent. I looked at the baby. It was sleeping nicely now, full of the dead baby's milk. I never thought much about babies before – they were just crying things that went around in prams, but now, watching that baby, I liked the look of it, fast asleep and full of warm milk, with its bald head and fat chin and everything.

"Can I hold it Soph?"

She gave me a scowl.

"Come on."

She sighed and gave the baby to me. It woke up and looked up at me, then went straight back to sleep again. Amazing.

I held the baby through three stations. Sophie's eyes were shining and she had her hand over her mouth. The woman just smiled sadly. She never asked what we were doing or where we were going. It was like she thought she was dreaming it all.

When she got up to get off at the next station Sophie leaned over and kissed her cheek. I couldn't kiss her: I had the baby in my lap, and anyway I was still too embarrassed. As the train rolled out of the station I watched her standing on the platform alone in the night. I don't know why she was just standing there, but then the train was moving away and she was gone.