Procreate and multiply. Harder than you might think for Marjorie, Grace and me. And to think how easily the cows and the bees and the stickleback and the toad and the spider seem to manage! In their various ways, of course; and no doubt the courtship habits of the widow spider are more bizarre than any behaviour pattern displayed by any of us. But of course they have no choice. They merely respond to the stimuli.
Show a red brick to a female stickleback and whoosh, away go her eggs, spurting out to take their chance. She’s got no say. It simply happens. And no-one thinks to blame her. No-one says but you should have laid those eggs on a warmer day – poor little things! – and in a patch of the river so full of pike, and so fast-flowing, what were you thinking of! Better they had been never born at all, than subjected to such hardship, you must agree, you wicked, thoughtless mother? Just whoosh, away they went, and no comment.
Whoosh, away Grace went, in such a calm, clear untroubled patch of water too. Private nurses, private hospital, her own gynaecologist, nanny waiting on the sidelines to catch the baby from the monthly nurse.
A son, too, what Christie wanted. And all that money, and all those flowers, to soften the blow.
First babies are all blows, make no mistake about it. Duck when you see one coming. The child-wife becomes a mother. The status-wife becomes a messy cowering helpless thing. Listen to her. Listen to the chorus. Help me, look after me, cosset me, she cries. Me and baby. What precious vulnerable things we are, and yes, I must have a blue ceiling for baby to stare at, you beast. Paint it when you get home from work and can’t you get home earlier? LOOK AFTER ME, you bastard! Of course we can’t go to the party, what about my milk supply. No, you can’t go by yourself.
As for him, he’s impossible, more of a baby than the baby itself: pernickety about food, going mad from lack of sleep; he gets drunk, throws tantrums, falls ill, throws baby in the air for fun and fails to catch it when it falls. Oh loving husband, loving father, where are you? And we were going to be so happy, so complete, so different from everyone else! She, the monumental dangerous she, pads about the house, belly and breasts all swollen, desperate, distraught, wondering who this monster is she’s married. A baby to cope with, and a madman too!
Tout casse, tout lasse.
When Helen was having Marjorie, look what Dick went and did. And see the trouble that led to!
Tout passe, tout casse.
When Piers was two weeks old, Christie, then working on designs for a Fashion Pavilion for the 1951 Exhibition, made some serious structural errors, found out, and couldn’t be bothered calling the plans back for correction.
Well, Christie hadn’t slept for a week, had he, and Grace’s lovely nipples were inflamed and cracked and when he touched them she screamed, so he fired the monthly nurse, who had clearly been criminally negligent, with five minutes’ notice and five months’ pay, and then, of course, another couldn’t be found for three whole days during which time Grace sobbed and called for her dead mother and her friends, clustering round the bed, glowered at him as if he were some kind of villain.
Oh, nightmares!
When Inigo was three weeks old Oliver went off on a fishing trip. He couldn’t work with a baby in the house, and he had a script to finish. Near the water, he was always more productive.
Two weeks after Petra was born Christie swept Grace off on a holiday to the Bahamas, leaving the baby behind. He needed a rest from babies, he said. While he was away the roof of the half-finished pavilion fell in killing three people – two of them only plebs, builders – but the other one his Chief Assistant. No-one left uncrushed so much as to murmur of criminal negligence; and actually Grace didn’t even get to hear about it, she was in a hospital in the Bahamas with a milk ulcer. The operation was clumsily done; she has a scar on her bosom to this day. Christie sued, but won only £2,500 damages and a lot of publicity. Breasts being news and deaths not.
Oh babies! The blows fall hard upon the neonate, a little softer on the multipara; being anticipated, merely hurt the more. A duller pain, perhaps, not quite so piercing.
When Esther was in hospital giving birth to Stephen, Edwin was lifting his potatoes and putting in daffodil bulbs, to please her in the spring. She never saw them, and nor did he, or knew that he had conceded her the victory.
As for Patrick – well! He painted mousy Midge at every stage of her pregnancy with Kevin, and wanted to paint her giving birth, except Midge’s father whisked his daughter away in an ambulance just in time – well, not in time, Kevin was born on the hospital steps, even more publicly than if she’d stayed at home – and Patrick was so angry he said let her father visit her. why should I? I’m superstitious about hospitals. And he didn’t visit at all. And when Midge was giving birth in St George’s, to Kestrel, Patrick was with Grace in the very next labour room, holding her hand as she gave birth to Stanhope. Just as well somebody was there – it was Christmas Eve and the nurses were singing carols in the wards, and the interns had been drinking.
Never conceive in March, Grace would say, afterwards, not if you carry to maturity. Never have a baby at Christmas.