The Devil Rides Out by Paul O'Grady Read Free Book Online

of his newborn child.
    Diane, sitting on the bed, her face flushing a bright red to equal mine, was just as embarrassed by the situation as I was. She quickly said, ‘Why don’t you have a look at her?’ I noticed she avoided my eyes as she spoke.
    Leaning over the crib I tried to adopt the Little House on the Prairie approach as was obviously expected of me by the mums. Look at baby, look up and around at the eager faces, my own face a mask of incredulous joy, pick baby up and examine it closely, cradling it gently and making suitable cooing noises to convey a first greeting to the child, then kiss mother tenderly on the forehead to an audience of blissed-out women. Tears optional.
    ‘You’re looking at the wrong baby, mate. That one’s mine, yours is over there.’ The kid’s mother was pointing to a cot on the other side of Di’s bed. This went down a treat with the mums and nurses, setting them off screaming with laughter and me scuttling over to take a peep at my own child, feeling more like Carabosse than a loving father.
    ‘Well, what do you think?’ Diane asked, still unable to look at me.
    I wasn’t sure what to think. Amazed? Confused? Or just nothing? Could this minuscule object with the scrunched-up face and the tight little fists really be my own flesh and blood? I kept waiting, hoping for a rush of fatherly love as I lifted her nervously out of the cot. She was a sweet little thing, yet I felt distant. I was ashamed of myself. What was wrong with me? Didn’t I come from a loving, stable family? My father had been an excellent role model and yet here I was, a false grin fixed firmly on my face, hoping that it would mask my true inner feelings as I stared with blank eyes down at this cuckoo in my nest. The answer is clear to me now. I was a very immature and scared teenager who didn’t want the responsibility of a child – simple, but back then I thought myself to be unnatural, an abomination against the laws of nature, a freak who was incapable of bonding with his own daughter, heaping more shovelfuls of guilt into that already overloaded sack that I seemed to be permanently carrying around. I remember tentatively sniffing her scalp. She smelled nice although it has to be said that all babies smell the same really, a mixture of milk, sick and Johnson’s Baby Powder – providing the heart-stopping stench of a full nappy doesn’t assault your nostrils first.
‘Why are you sniffing her?’ Diane asked.
    ‘I don’t know, it’s obviously a primeval instinct to react this way, inhaling the scent of your child to see if you recognize it.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, and do you?’
    ‘Not particularly.’
    I felt awkward and wished that this moment could’ve been a private one. No mothers, nurses or Diane gawping at me, eagerly waiting to see my reaction. Why couldn’t it be just me and the baby left on our own for a while to quietly get to know each other during these important first moments?
    ‘Well, what do you think?’ Diane asked again, a note of anxiety in her voice. I did my duty and grinned at the mums, kissed Diane clumsily, telling her unconvincingly that the baby was beautiful before quickly handing her over as she’d woken up and was starting to cry.
‘She wants her feed,’ Diane said, taking her off me.
    No she doesn’t, I thought. She knows, she sensed it. I don’t know what to do with her.
    When the time came for them to leave hospital I collected them both and we went back to Diane’s flat on the bus.
    I stayed over those first few days and nights. Sharon cried non-stop, an exhausted Diane seemed to be forever pressing the baby on me, eager that I got to know my daughter, but every time I went near her she screamed the place down. She reckons today that the reason she cried for such long periods was down to croup, but back then I was convinced she could sense my fears.
    Diane and I were used to spending long periods together and on the whole we would have a good time. Not