ANGEL MILK

by
Kenneth Stephen

Even as he walked, he felt the old feelings settling in on him. She would be sitting with wet hair from her bath, dwarfed by the adult chair, waiting. She would scramble onto the knee of his work trousers and morph into the shape of his chest.

He would become aware of the dank smell of stress on his clothes, so different from her bubble-gum cleanliness. She had mishaps and she couldn't wipe properly at the toilet but she always seemed to smell of washing powder. Him? He couldn't even put the milk in the fridge without starting to go off. But she didn't mind his scent. She enjoyed contorting herself into his shirt or under his Tank Top. In surprising places, a head here, a supple leg there.

"Tonight it's Little Miss Muffet. And that is what it is because that is what you said it would be. Remember daddy?"

In truth, he didn't. During the day, his mind was taken over. He remembered sitting on the train last week. He was travelling to see a client. It was approaching the end of the tax year and he had hardly seen Helen or Hannah for weeks, it seemed. There was a field of brilliant green speeding past the window. Cows sat ruminating, flapping flies. And he blamed Kant, he blamed Plato and Socrates, too. How dare they suggest the beasts were below us? Ok, they lacked rational capability but look at them. They had the work/life balance off to a tee compared to him, hurtling from one crisis to another in stiff collars.

"If I said it's Little Miss Muffet tonight, then Little Miss Muffet it is," he said, running his fingers through the skeins of her brown hair. He engulfed her smallness in his bigger arms. Normally, her frivolity would suck out the tensions of his day, like a tree ridding the air of pollutants. Not tonight. The feeling was already bedded deep, kissing corpuscles. It was there in the turn of the page. It was there in the breath between Hannah's giggles.

He tried to re-focus his mind, training his eyes upon the pewter wall-clock. It was Cockerel-shaped. He had always liked it. He only wished he could slow the hands careering towards the weekend and the fears he would have to confront all over again. "It won't happen. I am over it," he argued with himself.

The anxiety attacks were bad enough in themselves. But they affected him down below. "No," he thought. "Please, no."

They would go to the hotel on Friday. The rustle of the basque being teased from the crepe paper would not heighten the pressure upon him to perform. They would make the movie love she would expect after weeks of abstinence while he signed off the world's tax returns. Their sexual complicity would reflect the fact they seldom got a baby- sitter for Hannah and that this was a rare and special treat. And if it didn't?

There was no point of thinking about it. "Each negative thought starts a cycle." He remembered writing it on one of the hundred torn scraps of paper he kept by his bed so he could always find encouragement somewhere.

"Daddy, the page. Do you want me to do the pages?"

"Sorry, darling.”

"What were you looking at?”

"I was, just, looking at the clock to see if it was near bed-time.”

"But you had that Granny face on.”

"What Granny face?”

"That Granny face you had when the doctor phoned about granny. Remember, they said they were stopping her food. If they didn't, she would be too heavy to fly to heaven for her tea dancing with God."

"Did I? Well don't be silly, there's nothing wrong with me. I was just growing my spider legs," he said, locating that gap in her ribs that made her wriggle.”

Recomposed, they returned to the pages. The book was far too babyish for her now. It was like neither of them could think of anything better after her pyjamas were pulled on. Maybe they didn't want anything else. He imagined her at 25, heaving herself onto his aching frame to hear him push Jack and Jill through his dentures like wind whistling through an empty fire. The book was one he made for her. He had illustrated every page in pastel and paint. When very small, she was colicky and struggled to expunge wind. He made a book for her then; the story of the girl who stole out of bed and prowled around swallowing all the neighbourhood's burp. In the morning, he and mum would have to get it all back out again, holding her wobbly head upright and patting her back. Gosh, he wouldn't have time for that now. They were poorer then and he could remember the iciness of the stone hall floor on his bare feet but he often looked back to that time with nostalgia. The creative struggle- wearing the white Panache to cover your privates because you couldn't afford proper Y-fronts.

Through the open kitchen door behind them, Helen was laughing. Jane, Adrienne and Sung Wi came on Wednesday for the 'book group'. It was Margaret Attwood this month but it didn't sound like Margaret Attwood was getting much of a say. "It's just an excuse for you to guzzle wine and gossip about men," he had said to her after he overheard them chortling their way through the Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

"And?" she replied, hiding the book under a cushion. "A touch of jealousy because I can laugh without you?" He could imagine her wicked smile and, yes, she would. She would be telling them about Friday and their romantic retreat. He loved her. Far too much. She would help anyone. She was all the things he was not. She cried at television soaps and her biggest nightmares were over a baking tray. While she fretted at the thought of sunken souffle, he would be curled upon the bathmat having an existential crisis on the floor. And now she would be smiling and dreaming of Friday and he was sitting with Hannah knowing he had the capability to ruin it all for her. He couldn't even warn her. It was the thing he had to hide.

"Right Hannah, right daddy, bed in five minutes." She smiled at him as she poked her head around the door.

He returned it, though doing so left him with a loose sensation in his gut. He turned to Hannah. He raised both arms and bore his canines at either side. He splayed his fingers as wide as they could go. "Here's the spider frightening Miss Muffet away."

Hannah gave a girlish scream. As she broke free of him, he realised the cycle was now happening inside, demanding every space in his cerebellum.

He chased Miss Muffet up the stairs, aware the all-encompassing spider legs were closing in around him.

When a small person breaks, no one hears it. We know the person is with us because we see them every day but we don't see their falling until it is too late. The breaking is like the silent dropping of a leaf. We pass on. These were his words. He kept a notebook at the start, as part of his self- therapy. At lunch times, he would leave the office for Waterstones, checking no one saw him. He would head to the Mind, Body and Spirit section. There, he met other paper people with holes. For a while, he felt empowered in this silent brotherhood of fragility. He bought a diary and scrawled down thoughts and feelings but he never left it sitting around. Then he tore the hundred pieces of paper and wrote the positive phrases on each. With a supportive Other and these nuggets of wisdom, he could never be alone. Then one night, he turned to place his hand on Helen's naked thigh. She trembled under his touch and, sweating, craved to let the moment die. He had become her problem. Knowing this made it worse for him. The hope he was clinging to was a lie.

"Daddy, please can I have another story, please. I didn't get any sweeties today," Hannah said, catching her breath.”

"But mummy was wiping chocolate off you face earlier."

"Aw, dad, Please. I promise I won't interrupt when you're on the work phone, ever again."

"Ok. Last one."

Hannah propped herself against her cushion and opened the book. Humpty Dumpty. The letters covered eight pages but he had wove the story through a fairytale land that exploded into life. She rested her shoulder against his arm, snuggling her comforter, Cakey Bird. He began the rhyme and silently they traced and found all the places from where the words sprung- over the wall; behind Humpty's back; under a soldier's foot.

He noticed that she followed his fingers unquestioningly, wherever they travelled on the page. The responsibility he held over her touched him. "I must be strong for her. God, I must guide her the right way." In his worry, he'd forgotten something basic, though.

"Hannah, your teeth.”

"Aw, dad."

"I've got my finger on the place. Go. It'll still be here."

He listened to the cold tap. The struggle for ease told him he was losing. He closed his eyes tight and tried to still his mind, before she returned again.

Through the blackness, he entered a room. The windows were open. The air tasted of winter. Helen's perfume bottle sat upon the dresser; the lid beside it. Her red dress was on the floor, on his side of the bed, entwined in the legs of his black trousers. They were the garments of lovers who had danced in the dark.

The advances she made were in expectation and in the spirit of keeping their love young. They met with failure. The episode culminated in a disjointed clash of elbows as the one part of him that should have been bone-like was limp and as cold as the draft around the skirting boards of the room. She gave up and rolled over.

"It's tiredness," he said, knowing neither of them believed it.

"I know," she said, forcing the words through pained lips; pressing his hand in self-sacrifice.

The hurt he caused her would eat him for breakfast, shadow him at check-out, tear through the tarmac home to Hannah and torment all the days until he could make amends." No. I must not let this happen," he said to himself, desperately.

The tap had stopped. Hannah was beside him now.

"Right daddy, I've done it."

He opened the book again and read the final part, as he had promised, finishing: "And all the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again."

"Are you OK, daddy."

"Yes."

"Are you scared of anything?

"No, I'm a grown-up. Grown-ups aren't scared.”

"Sometimes Cakey Bird gets scared but I tell him things which make him better."

"What do you say?"

"Well, the same as I'm telling you. If you are ever scared, I am four and three quarters and I think I can look after you."

He held her little body and kissed her hair, trying to conceal his tears. If you could stand a rod in love like that, it would be pure, like milk, he thought. The good stuff, straight from the Maker. When he woke there were lights on, outside in the hall. Hannah was snoring innocently by his face. Helen had put a blanket over both of them. When he felt it there, he knew he was going to be alright.

© Kenneth Stephen
Reproduced with permission