Weaveworld

V

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES

1

awn crept over Liverpool cautiously, as if fearful of what it would find. Cal watched the light uncover the city, and it seemed to him it was grey from gutter to chimney stack.

He’d lived here all his life; this had been his world. The television and the glossy magazines had shown him different vistas on occasion, but somehow he’d never quite believed in them. They were as remote from his experience, or indeed from what he hoped to know in his seventy years, as the stars that were winking out above his head.

But the Fugue had been different. It had seemed, for a short, sweet time, a place he might truly belong. He’d been too optimistic. The land might want him, but its people didn’t. As far as they were concerned he was contemptibly human.

He loitered on the streets for an hour or so, watching another Liverpool Monday morning get started.

Were they so bad, these Cuckoos whose tribe he shared? They smiled as they welcomed their cats in from a night of philandering; they hugged their children as they departed for the day; their radios played love-songs at the breakfast table. As he watched them he became fiercely defensive. Damn it, he’d go back and tell the Seerkind what bigots they were.

As he approached the house he saw that the front door was wide open, and that a young woman he recognized as a local. but didn’t know by name, was standing at the top of the path staring into the house. It was only as he came within a couple of paces of the front gate that he set eyes on Nimrod. He was standing on the welcome mat, wearing a pair of sunglasses that he’d filched from beside Cal’s bed, and a toga made from one of Cal’s shirts.

‘Is that your kid?’ the woman asked Cal, as he opened the gate.

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘He started banging on the window when I went past. Isn’t there anyone to look after him?’

‘There is now,’ said Cal.

He looked down at the child, remembering what Freddy had said about Nimrod only seeming to be a babe in arms. Having slid the sunglasses up onto his forehead, Nimrod was giving his visitor a look that fully confirmed Cammell’s description. Cal had little option, however, but to play the part of father. He picked Nimrod up.

‘What are you doing?’ he whispered to the child.

‘Bussteds!’ Nimrod replied. He was having some difficulty mastering the infantile palate. ‘El killum.’

‘Who?’

But as Nimrod went to answer, the woman, who’d come down the path and was standing half a yard from the door, spoke:

‘He’s adorable,’ she cooed.

Before Cal could make his excuses and close the door, the child raised his arms and reached towards her, a stage-managed gurgle in his throat.

‘Oh –’ said the woman, ‘– sweet thing –’

and she’d claimed Nimrod from Cal before he could prevent her.

Cal caught a gleam in Nimrod’s eyes as he was pressed to the woman’s ample bosom.

‘Where’s his mother?’ she asked.

‘She’ll be back in a while,’ said Cal, making an attempt to claim Nimrod from his luxury. He didn’t want to go. He was beaming as he was rocked, his pudgy fingers grappling with the woman’s breasts. As soon as Cal laid hands on him he began to bawl.

The woman hushed him, pressing him closer to her, at which Nimrod began to toy with her nipples through the thin fabric of her blouse.

‘Will you excuse us?’ said Cal, braving Nimrod’s fists and taking the babe from his pillows before he began to suckle.

‘Shouldn’t leave him alone,’ the woman said, absent-mindedly touching her breast where Nimrod had fondled her.

Cal thanked her for her concern.

‘Bye bye, beautiful,’ she said to the child.

Nimrod blew a kiss at her. A flash of confusion crossed her face, then she backed away towards the gate, the smile she’d offered the child sliding from her lips.