A pal of mine went for one of the ex-Health-Board houses. They were in a group, not so far from Westview Terrace. Nice part of town and in good reach of the Lewis Hospital. It was a good buy. There was a lot of timber under the roof. It was Welsh slate, outside that, and the construction was solid. Like the Coastguard houses. You felt bad at taking advantage of the offer at the time but whatever you said, the next guy was going to buy it. If by any chance he didn’t, it would be sold on the open market.
These were the houses reserved for those with useful occupations. The teachers’ houses on Ripley Place. The nurses’ cottages on Westview. Police houses on Balmerino Drive.
But see, when it came to the plumbing in this house, he was expecting a nightmare of different layers of additions since the Sixties. But no, every pipe was labelled. Every tap, every twist and turn, joint and elbow. He said to me, ‘I think this must have been the gynaecologist’s house.’
I remember a gynaecologist from when I was a hospital porter for a year. He was very proud of his machines. He gave me dirty looks, for my cornering style. I remember this day, giving a young lad who was long-term sick, a spin round with me – a suggestion from one of the sisters. He was a born teacher, telling me the Gaelic for ‘This way North’ and ‘That way South’ and the lefts and rights. We didn’t come that close really but parked up behind the machine outside Maternity. Too close for the gynaecologist. He had these classic authoritarian eyebrows and he told us exactly how much that machine had cost.
When it came to Gabriele’s scans, it was probably the replacement model for that machine – so of course a lot more compact. That’s the way machines go. I’ve a very early hand-held GPS and you couldn’t fit it in a pocket. They cost a grand when they were new, about the mid-Nineties.
Anyway, when I was showing the new porter round, before going back to Uni, he thought the consultant was the day porter. That was the guy who was into sailing and vans and would stop for a cup of tea and a yarn with you. The gynaecologist was never so familiar. It’s very educational, observing a hierarchy from the bottom.
Gabriele had an issue with his dates. This was a bit crucial for us because our son was due right in the middle of the Coastguard Training Course which we hoped would help feed him and educate him. We knew he was a son because the gynaecologist told us. But he didn’t ask us if we wanted to know. I was a bit pissed off but Gabriele was livid. I had to press on her arm a bit to calm things down. Then she tackled him on the dates again. His answer is burned into my memory: ‘I have never known this machine to be wrong.’
So we drove down to Bristol and swung on to Christchurch. We had found a cottage to rent, out of season but the occupants were caught up in a chain of buying and selling houses. Everyone was talking about buying and selling houses. The Coastguard houses on Leverhulme Drive were being modernised – double-glazing and central heating from piped gas – but we’d been promised one, soon after the end of the eight-week course. So we found an out-of-season holiday apartment for our nest. It was clean and fine and close to the river.
We’d drive to Boscombe hospital for checks and visits. But our son was not born there. Though Gabriele did give birth there. It was not an easy birth.
The labour took about twenty-four hours and all issues about natural childbirth and waterbaths so the new baby could swim soon after birth – these did not seem very important any longer. So when I went into uncontrollable laughter when our baby was born, the staff must have thought it was simply the relief after all that tension.
Our son was a healthy girl. One arrogant bastard and his machine had been proven wrong. He must have just taken a glance at the scan, peering under all that hair in his eyebrows.
So this is of course a memory of the beginning of a new life. Though a strong case could be argued for seeing the event as a death. Whether you want to or not, you have an idea in your mind, suggested by the abrupt words of someone in authority. So the idea of that son died when our Anna appeared. That stage of the game I don’t think either of us could have cared what sex our baby turned out to be. Except that it was a very good result.
Gynaecologist nil. Anna one.