Holding The Baby: Part I

Iris was uncomfortably aware of her own voice in the quiet office, and lacked the confidence not to care if other people were listening. She was good enough at her job, but newish, and shy, and the furniture had been rearranged recently, and she was not yet accustomed to the change in acoustics.

She tucked a thread of long, red-gold hair behind her ear and rested her chin on her elbow, watching the slight ripple of activity at the other end of the room, where a door opened into the tiny kitchen. She felt out of place here, as she felt almost wherever she was. She was too tall, too plain, too slow-moving. At school she had been teased for her low-pitched voice and her spectacles, and she had never quite lost that sense that someone was about to tell her how stupid she was, in their opinion. Years had passed and that had continued not to happen, now that she was grown up, but she still felt an echo of it, making her blush when she walked around a crowd of schoolgirls at the station, or crossed the road to avoid someone who might look her up and down with a sneer curling their lip.

Iris always dressed conservatively for work; plain clothes, dark colours, to blend with the filing cabinets. There were people who she had conversations with, but she often wished they would not bother her; at lunchtime she occupied a corner of the blue-painted staff lounge and opened a heavy book, which usually prevented any danger of social overture. She was not completely anti-social; she went along to office parties, usually wearing black; she even danced at the Christmas do, tipsy and fending off advances from Dave in IT.

It wasn�t even that shyness stopped her being a party animal; just that she preferred to deal with people on her own territory, at her own pace, and at a time of her own choosing. She was not unpopular, either; but as people respected her obvious desire for privacy and solitude, she was unable to reckon the number of people who were happy to spend time with her.

She had been in the job, for six months; after university, she had spent several years selling advertising space and doing various other lowly media-related tasks. She was not pushy enough to be a journalist, but she could spot an undotted i at 50 paces, so copy-editing was her fate, and one day if she was lucky she might get to be a chief copy-editor. She liked being paid to read all day, even on days when she ended up with the money pages on her desk. Today it was like working in a library; just the shuffling of paper and occasional muted telephone calls, muffled conversations, soft bursts of typing on quiet modern keyboards. Iris was restless at her desk, but the kitchen looked busy, so she could not go down there and make herself more tea. She waited for the people to disperse, the water cooler moment to be over. And she watched the flow of her colleagues around each other, observing the currents of politics and flirtation.

When it was quieter, she slipped away from her desk, self-conscious as she walked down the aisle between filing cabinets and VDU screens, the idle eyes of editors and administrators burning into her old favourite suit. Seconds away from her seat, she looked forward to returning to it, her safe corner.

Nathan was making toast in the kitchen, and had thrust open the window to let out the evidence of his incompetence before it set off the building�s smoke alarms. Encountering the hapless expression on his good-looking face, Iris forgot to feel awkward, and returned his smile. He was healthily tall, like a young green sapling; a New Zealander who described himself as the foreign exchange student, only working here for a too-brief year. His indiscriminate charming politeness always included Iris, and so she liked him and gave him a little less distance than their colleagues.

Nathan was able to be so utterly charming because he existed in a state of general carefree contentment, taking things in his ample stride. For three-quarters of a year he had been enjoying relative wealth and a continued lack of responsibility, editing articles for the paper�s website, his rent paid and a colourful social life guaranteed. He was 24 years old and had failed so far to get a degree, to his father�s disgust, which was part of the reason for his extended stay in England. When he tired of his very pleasant lifestyle, he told people, he fully intended to go home and knuckle down.

Two days ago, Nathan had invited Iris to join him and some other colleagues on a trip to the cinema, and she had cautiously accepted, because sometimes she found her own company tiresome, and there was rarely anything particularly diverting on the television. What film they saw is immaterial, but Iris had surprised herself by having a good time, and by being able to relax. Afterwards, they adjourned to a bar, and she had felt a little bit left out in her corner, taking no part in the general hilarity except to smile politely whenever she understood one of the cliquey jokes.

Come out with us again on Friday, he said now, encouraging her with his antipodean white-toothed smile.

She considered it: colourful noise in a smoky pub, possibly a club, probably still a bit left out; and she shrugged. I have nothing to wear.

Dismissing her objection, he went back to his desk and emailed all the details about what time he would meet her, and where; and so Iris found herself making conversation with some girls from another department, who really weren�t so unfriendly, it was just that she didn�t know them well. Nathan did not talk to her much, but he danced with her in the hubbub, and she found his out-of-work spikes of hair and his extra splash of aftershave pleasingly attractive, so she raised her eyebrows at him, and he bought her a drink.

She was fuzzy round the edges, from drinking and dancing, when he swept her up in the lobby of wherever they were and bundled her into a taxi. Like remembering the rituals of a lost magic art, she invited him in for coffee, and even made some, which of course was never consumed; instead he kissed her and undressed her, and for a little while she abandoned the fortifications that kept other people out of her life.

She liked fucking him, and she did it often. She was unable to describe it to herself as making love, because neither of them pretended that they loved; nor as sleeping together, because they never ever slept. Instead they fucked, mostly at the weekends, or on occasional weeknights, which resulted in them being bleary and bashful in the office, and a general reduction in productivity.

One of the reasons she liked it was because his body was so very pleasant: his legs were solid and long, clothed in fine, bleached hairs; his stomach was flat, and his chest chiselled, reminding her of a clich�d old black and white poster of a man holding a baby and pretending to give the child a devoted look, while making sure his best side was turned to the camera. She liked to watch him undress, and could spend hours stroking his golden skin, absorbing into her fingertips the years of New Zealand sunlight that had marinated it. He was always warm.

At work it was clear that they had become friends, although they continued to know relatively little about each other. He didn�t know her star sign, but he was intimate with the noise she made and the way she wriggled when his teeth nipped the soft downy pale skin between her neck and her shoulder. They certainly did not come out as a couple; all was kept quiet, and no-one ever enquired, as Nathan was assumed to sleep around, and Iris was assumed to have no sex-life at all.

It worked beautifully, except for one tiny flaw, which was that Nathan only had another ten weeks before he was due to go home.