The big Australian called him in the night.
“I think you should come, Mr John. I’ve sent for Dr Patterson. Would you like a cuppa tea then?”
He declined the tea. Put his feet into wrong slippers. Got his arm caught in the sleeve of his dressing-gown.
The bedroom with its dimmed light, was no longer quiet but filled with the noise of stertorous breathing. He thought it impossible that what remained of his father could produce such a horrible sound.
His mother sat by the bed holding his father’s hand. Her eyes did not leave his face. The breaths came every two or three seconds. In between they waited. The nurse had put a chair for herself next to the bed. Oscar sat in the armchair, on the arm of which was Death in Amsterdam which Marilyn was reading. He wondered if it was right to watch somebody die. A theatre for which the tickets were free. He did not know how his mother in her wrap-round, quilted dressing-gown from her ring-side seat could watch while the emaciated body racked by its own breath struggled to leave the life they had shared.
His thoughts were broken into by the sight of his father suddenly sitting bolt upright, eyes staring wide open, gasping. Oscar sat horrified, paralysed. Never had he witnessed anything so grotesque.
Marilyn was up like a shot, both arms round him.
“That’s all right, Dr John. Everything’s all right. Jest try to relex.”
In a moment it was over. He slumped back on the pillows. He must be dead, Oscar thought. But in a moment came another, rasping breath.
“A convulsive attack,” Marilyn said. “Inadequate circulation in the brain. Not to worry.”
It happened three more times. On each occasion Oscar was more scared. His father was fighting now for every breath which came at increasingly lengthy intervals. There seemed to be bubbles in his chest.
Dr Patterson had one scarlet pyjama leg showing beneath his trousers. He was a tall, balding man, a contemporary of his father’s. He briefly acknowledged Oscar and his mother.
“How much has he had?” he asked Marilyn who stood up when he came into the room.
“Twenty-five milligrams, doctor,” she said.
The struggle for breath was becoming indecent.
“Can’t breathe, Tom,” his father said quite clearly. “Help me!”
He went back to the struggle. Dr Patterson held his hand for a moment. “Take it easy, old chap, take it easy.”
“Can’t you do something?” Oscar said.
Tom Patterson looked at him. “Yes.”
“Then please…”
Patterson looked at his mother. “Muriel?”
“Please Tom,” she whispered. “Please.”
“Double the dose please nurse,” he said to Marilyn, “intravenously.”
“It’s all here,” Marilyn indicated the trolley near the window. “While you’re giving it, doctor, I’ll fetch some warm milk for Mrs John.” She left the room.
“What was all that about?” Oscar said.
Dr Patterson was unwrapping a disposable syringe. “Ethics, I presume. It’s rather a large dose. Nurses are funny.”
“Is it all right then, Tom?” his mother said.
He attached a needle to the syringe and plunged it into a vial.
“I’d expect someone to do the same for me.”
His father was thrashing around in the bed.
“Take it easy,” Tom said. “Muriel’s here and Oscar.”
He moved to the bed and sitting on it pushed the pyjama sleeve up the bony arm. Oscar looked away. Heard the clunk of the syringe in the waste-paper basket. His father was still agitated.
“How long does it take to work?”
“Not long.”
“Thank you, Tom,” his mother said.
“As I said… Shall I stay? Would you rather be alone, the three of you? Whatever you like.”
“Is there anything else to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Go back to bed, Tom. You have a busy day tomorrow.”
By the time Marilyn came back with the milk his father had stopped thrashing, the breathing become less of a struggle.
“All right now, nurse?”
“Thank you, doctor.” She sounded only faintly disapproving.
Dr Patterson kissed his mother on the head, held his mother’s hand for a brief moment.
“Bye, Muriel. You know where to find me. Oscar.” He looked at the shrunken head on the pillow. Held the fleshless fingers for a moment. “Bye friend!” He paused for a moment, then braced his shoulders. “I’ll see myself out.”
“They were very close,” his mother said.
In ten minutes his father was quiet. The breaths came less painfully at what seemed to be ever-increasing intervals.
Once he opened his eyes and said to Oscar, who was still sitting on the bed:
“Oh Oscar! What shall I do?”
“Just relax, Dad.” Even dying had its jargon. He was picking it up. “We’re both here.”
It seemed five minutes now between each breath. The three of them waited in suspense. How did you now when he’d finished breathing? Done with life.
“His hand’s very cold,” Oscar said.
Marilyn felt it and the tip of his nose.
“The peripheral circulation always fails first.”
He wanted to ask how much longer but was afraid of seeming callous. He smiled at his mother. His father was still. Only the chest moved. Heave. Blow out. Clock ticking; waiting. Nothing. He looked at Marilyn watching from the armchair. Why didn’t she get up? Tell them it was all over. He watched his father’s face carefully. He wanted to catch the actual moment. The passing from one world to the next. He, Oscar John, would see death giving up its secret. Another one. Dear God, how much longer? Total stillness. He wished he’d put on his watch. He knew time seemed longer than it actually was but he could swear ten minutes passed. His father was still. The hand like a stone. It was over. Heave. This time bubbles from the lips. Marilyn stood up and took a Kleenex. Relieved, Oscar yielded his place. She wiped away the bubbles. Put two fingers on his pulse. He looked at her questioningly but her face was impassive. Who was it who had been an unconscionable long time dying? Mind you, it didn’t seem difficult. No more breaths, he willed. No more, please. He realized with horror that he was urging his father to die. There were no more. Stillness. He wondered should he go and put his arms round his mother. Heave. My God, it wasn’t possible. Bubbles. Silence. They waited. Five minutes; ten. He concentrated on the things in the room. The heavy, old fashioned furniture. The twin wardrobes. People didn’t have wardrobes any more. The photographs on the mantelpiece. They didn’t have photographs either. Marilyn let the wrist go and stood up, a veritable Amazon; a Boadicea.
To his amazement he saw there were tears running down her face.
His mother didn’t cry. He went outside with Marilyn to leave them alone.
“He was a great man,” Marilyn said. “Kin I git you something?”
“No thanks.” He was surprised at her concern. What had his father been to her? A patient among hundreds. A case among cases. Tomorrow night there would be someone else.
“I think I’ll put your mother to bid with a teblet. She’s not slept in nights. If you like to pop in to your father thin and efter I can clean up.”
Your father. He hadn’t got a father. What else could she say?
Alone in the room he didn’t know what to do. Thoughts came kaleidoscoping into his head. Walking. Black Rock. Raffles. Trying to keep up. Patients. In and out of his car. Cricket on the lawn in Wimbledon. LBW Oscar! Got you? Rosy and Daisy on his knee, pleading for ‘stories, Grandfather’. Sitting on his father’s shoulders at football matches. Is the doctor in? Is the doctor in? The telephone on the dining-table. The patience with the patients. Always time. Always time.
He approached the bed. Perhaps there would be another breath. Marilyn had made a mistake. He thought he should cry but there were no tears. He bent and kissed the cold, still forehead. He could not remember when last he had kissed his father.
Afterwards he wondered why the burial was worse than the death. In a few days between there had been the bureaucracy of dying. A visa for Moscow could not have been more tightly bound with red tape. Death certificate, registrar, funeral director, vicar; and then of course the relatives. Most of them Oscar had forgotten he had. Like bees round a honeypot. They clasped his mother to their bosoms, shed tears, bemoaned a man some of them had paid little attention to in life. He realized that they enjoyed a nice funeral. It was an occasion for a family get-together like christenings and weddings. They meant no harm. It was the patients who cared; really cared. All day they came and went; old and young, their eyes red with weeping, their voices sad. They had lost a friend. What would they do? Dr John understood, Dr John cared; he was irreplaceable. What could they do now but join a ‘group’ practice where they saw a different face each time; where their medical histories were recorded on a card, if they were lucky, but no one remembered the time little Jenny, now married with children of her own, had fallen from the tree and shattered her leg, no familiar face would come to ease the pain in the small hours of the night. It was the end of an era. They wept for themselves.
The cemetery was not very far away. He did not think it had seen such a crowd on a Tuesday afternoon. Women with flowers, children with tiny posies, paying their last respects to the man who had brought them into the world and whom they had hoped would see them out.
His mother was practical, controlled. He saw that she would never be short of friends. The sun beat down on the open grave. He hadn’t listened to what the vicar had said in his funeral voice. It had to do with the healing art, comfort to so many, good upon earth, unstinting sacrifice of self, this world and the next. He hadn’t realized the hole would be so deep. There was a surge forward as the box was lowered. No, he cried, my father is inside. Mentally he removed the lid of the coffin, saw his father lying there as if in bed. He watched the vicar scattering the symbolic handful of dust. No, no; he remembered a holiday in Britanny and burying each other in the sand. In a moment his father would get up, brush himself down, smile: “That’s enough of that now, who’s coming for a dip?”
“Aren’t you coming, Oscar?” His mother’s arm was through his.
Not without Father.
“The car is waiting. We’re supposed to go first.”
We can’t leave him here. I don’t want to leave him here by himself. He doesn’t know anybody. He looked at the gravestones on either side. George Longman aged ninety-eight. Elizabeth Perry, thirteen, may her dear soul rest in peace. Perhaps he would make friends. It wasn’t so bad in the summer but what about the winter when it was covered with snow? So cold for him. He thought they should take him home again to the sunny bedroom overlooking the sea, the warm bed…
“Oscar!”
By the car people waited to pump her hand, kiss him, mutter consoling phrases.
He saw his mother into the house which filled with mourners eager for their tea. He ran over the road to the seafront, down the steps, past the Penny Wonderland, over the shingle. He stopped behind one of the fishing boats and was sick. He stumbled further to the breakwater and lying on his stomach so that no one could see, not that they would really think he was sunbathing in his dark suit, his black tie, he wept. He watched his tears slide over the stones, the tears of a baby, a small boy, an adolescent, a grown man. He wanted to go back. He blamed his mother for leaving him there alone. He dried his eyes and sat up. A small child with a bucket and spade was staring at him curiously. It’s my turn next to die, he thought suddenly; I don’t want it to be my turn next.
The telephone box was empty. There was graffiti on the walls.
Pips, then a voice recited the number.
“Dr Adler? This is Oscar John.”
“Yes?”
“My father died. He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want to see me?”
“No. Just thought you’d like to know.”
“Thank you.”
He put the phone down and dialled Marie-Céleste’s number. There was no reply. Strange, she had taken to resting in the afternoons. Hadn’t said she was going anywhere; not seeing Boyd until next week. He let it ring. There was a tap on the door.
“Can’t spend all bloody day in there! There’s other people…”
He opened the door.
“Bloody selfish some people…”
They had dinner alone.
“We could eat in the kitchen,” Oscar suggested, “easier.”
“Your father wouldn’t have liked it.”
The dining-room was too big. Between courses Oscar went upstairs to the sitting-room to phone. He didn’t care if Ernest answered. There was no reply. He got the operator to check the number.
“You’re like a cat on hot bricks,” his mother said. “She’ll be back on Sunday.”
“Who?”
“Karen.”
“Karen. She’ll be sorry she wasn’t here.”
“The children are better out of the way.” She set the apple pie someone had brought on the table. “He loved them so, Oscar; he loved them so…” The tears, for the first time, began to flow.
“He was always talking about Rosy and Daisy, watching them grow, told all the patients about them, showed them photographs and their letters, he was so proud of them…it wasn’t really fair…he could have had a little longer…not seventy yet, Oscar, not an old man…”
He suddenly realized that at that reckoning he had little more than twenty odd years to go himself. Frightening. What was it all about, all this struggling and striving…?
“Oh Oscar, I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.” It was the first time she had admitted it.
He took her hand. “Friends…?”
“At night; you talk about your day, silly things, stupid things…nobody else would know what you mean. You boost each other up when you’re down, strengthen the little weaknesses, talk out your ill temper and patch it up…”
“Time…” he said.
“Oh I shall survive; like all the other widows. I shall sit in the shelters along the seafront and remember.” She dried her eyes and blew her nose. “I don’t remember ever being alone.”
“I’ll try to help.”
“I know you will. I’ll be all right when I’m away from here; in the flat in Hove. Everyone will be kind but no one can help; no one. Have some apple pie.”
The evening was filled with people coming and going. He grew weary running up and downstairs to the telephone; his finger sore from dialling Marie-Céleste’s number. At three in the morning, unable to sleep, he got up for a drink. His mother was in the kitchen cooking.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Making a steak pie for your lunch. I couldn’t sleep. Did I disturb you?”
“No. I wanted a drink.”
“I’ll make you some hot milk.”
He laughed. Then remembered it was a house of mourning. “It’s whisky I’m after.”
“There’s a cupboard full. All those Christmasses! No one will drink it now.”
“Go to bed. Leave the pie until morning.”
“I’d rather be doing something.”
He realized it was occupational therapy. Took his whisky and went to bed.
There was no reply in the morning either. He was growing frantic. He waited until nine o’clock and rang the surgery number.
“Mrs Wilson where is she?”
“Oh it’s you, Mr John…”
“I’ve been ringing and ringing…is something wrong?”
“Wrong? Oh no! It’s wonderful, it’s the baby…”
“Born?”
“Oh yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“A boy?”
“How did you guess?”
“And she’s all right?”
“Quite all right. Exciting, isn’t it? Oh, there’s my other line ringing…”
“Look…”
She’d rung off. He stared at the receiver. A boy. He’d had a son. He ran downstairs. His mother was in the big bedroom kneeling in front of the chest of drawers.
“All these shirts!” she said. “Everything will have to go. Except this; I could never give this away.”
‘This’ was what Oscar had always known as the ‘night pullover’. Once knitted with love by the arthritic hands of a grateful patient, it had long ago deteriorated into a shapeless mass of gingery brown wool thick as a blanket. His father kept it by his bed and never went out in the night without it. He had a sudden urge to take it to the cemetery against the ‘keen wind’.
His mother held the pullover to her cheek. “I suppose the Salvation Army…?”
“Look,” Oscar said. “I’m sorry, but do you think you can manage without me today? I have to go to London. I’ll be as quick as I can. I don’t like to leave you but…”
“What about the steak pie?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll eat it tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about me, darling. You’ve been marvellous. There’ll be plenty of people and I want to get these things sorted. If I leave it I’ll never do it.”
“I’ll help you tomorrow.”
“If you want anything…?”
He was horrified at the thought of wearing any of his father’s clothes. Besides, he was twice the size.
His mother took something from the top of the chest. “Take this. There’ll be other things but take this for the moment.”
It was his watch. Worn and old. A bit of a joke but they could never make him buy a new one. He was not of the generation that had to have the latest toys; digital clocks, automatic watches.
Oscar put it in his pocket. He touched his mother’s shoulder.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Drive carefully!” She was back in the drawer.
The clinic was a private one. An air of opulent quiet pervaded, the floors were rubber.
“Dr Burns?” he said to the girl at the reception desk.
“Room 305.”
“What floor?”
“Third. Lift just there, sir.”
He pressed the arrow which lit up. There was a ‘ping’ and the doors glided open. The lift was large enough to take a bed. A middle-aged woman with a chocolate box from Charbonnel and Walker got in. She got out at the second floor.
At the third floor his heart was pounding. He hung around where the sign said ‘Enquiries’.
“Dr Burns?” he asked a nurse.
“Three-o-five.”
He wandered down a corridor in the direction in which she had pointed. Three-o-one, three-o-two, three-o-three, three-o-four, three-o-five. There was a neatly typed label in the slot of the wide door. ‘Dr M-C. Burns’ and underneath, ‘Dr Boyd’.
He tapped. No reply. He tapped more firmly.
“Come in.”
The door was heavy. The scent of flowers hit him. Someone was sitting in the armchair. His heart sank.
“Marie-Claire!” He hadn’t recognized her for a moment.
“Hallo, Oscar.” She got up and kissed him on both cheeks. He was relieved. He had not considered that there might be a room full of relatives.
Marie-Céleste was wearing pale green satin and white lace. She looked serene, beautiful.
He felt awkward.
She held her arms out and he kissed her forehead.
“I have to go,” Marie-Claire said.
She looked at his black tie. “Marie-Céleste told me about your father. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Look, please don’t rush off because of me.”
“Why not?” Marie-Céleste said. “You are lucky it was not Tante Sybille. She would have sat for a week.”
“I can come again tomorrow,” Marie-Claire said. “Au revoir, mes enfants.”
She touched Oscar’s arm for a moment.
“She has missed you. You look very handsome with a sun tan.”
He held the door open for her.
“She is a sweetie,” Marie-Céleste said. “She’d only just arrived.”
From the door he looked at her. A great love and longing filled him.
He sat on the bed and took her in his arms, kissing her like a thirsty man at a well. After the weeks of agitation he felt he had come home.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
“I want to marry you.” It was the first time he had said it.
She leaned back against the pillows straightening her bedjacket and smoothing her hair. He went to the window, looked out onto the square, tried to control the emotion he felt.
“Don’t you want to see him?” Marie-Céleste said.
“Who?”
“Warnford Laurent Burns.”
“Warnford?”
“Ernest’s late father. Laurent for my grandfather.”
“I shall call him Laurent.”
“Me too.” She smiled.
He hadn’t noticed the crib in the corner. He approached it gingerly. He’d forgotten they were so very tiny. He searched the little, crumpled face for resemblance to himself. He couldn’t honestly say…
“He was full term,” Marie-Céleste said.
“What do you mean?”
“There can be no question of him being yours.”
“He is mine,” Oscar said. “Laurent. I like that.”
He sat on the bed and took her hands. “Was it very terrible?”
“Not terrible at all.”
“You’re not telling me the truth.”
“When have I lied to you?” She stroked his face. “My poor Oscar. I’m truly sorry about your father.”
“We must get married.”
“Why?”
“There’s so little time.”
“There’s Karen and Rosy and Daisy and Ernest and now Laurent. It isn’t just us.”
“I was so unhappy away.”
“Me too.”
“I thought of you all the time. Laurent!” He put his hand on her flat belly. “I wanted to be with you. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs Wilson told me. Full term you said?”
“I made a mistake with the dates. It happens.”
He stroked her milk-laden breasts. His face was suffused.
“How soon can we…?”
“Six weeks.”
“I need you so much.”
“It’s not going to be easy. There will be the nurse; and Ernest. Ernest is going to supervise everything. You’d think no one had ever had a child before.”
“F— Ernest!”
She laughed. “In front of the baby!”
“We’ll find a way. If you still want me?”
“More than my life.”
He met Karen and the girls at the airport. He had installed his mother in the flat at Hove where she seemed not to rattle so much, helped her sort out his father’s possessions and put the big house in the hands of the estate agents. He had the odd feeling that for the first time in his life, at the age of forty-five, he had grown up.
Karen clung to him. “Sorry I wasn’t there when Father…” She was crying.
“It’s all right.”
“But I wanted to be with you.”
“I know.”
The girls were embarrassed. He recalled his own feelings about death as a child. He remembered the stories he had been told when his grandparents died about ‘going to heaven’ and ‘in a happier place’.
He hugged them both. “Grandfather wasn’t in any pain,” he said. “And he was very sick. You must see Grandma as much as you can, she’s going to be a bit lonely now. When you go to Brighton I’ll show you the place where Grandfather is buried. You can take some flowers. He loved you very much.”
Daisy was weeping down her sun tan. He picked her up.
“Everybody has to die. It’s like being born.”
They asked too many damned awkward questions.
“Nobody ever complains, the ones who are dying, I mean. So it can’t be too bad.”
“You won’t die, Daddy, will you?”
“Not just yet, I hope! Tell me about the holiday. What happened after I left?”
In the car Rosy and Daisy spoke of how they’d both learned to dive although Rosy said Daisy was a liar she just jumped in and Karen told him how Monsieur Durand had tried to pad the bills with extras they hadn’t had.
In the midst of the saga he said casually: “Marie-Céleste had her baby.”
“Marie-Céleste? How fabulous. I didn’t think it was due until September. Must have been a prem. Is she all right? Was it a boy or a girl? Who told you?”
He sifted the questions in his mind. Tricky.
“I bumped into Ernest…”
“In Brighton?”
“No. I went to town for the day… Father’s solicitors… I popped along to see Marie-Céleste.” He kept his eyes on the road. “She wants us to go to the christening. It’s in three weeks because Ernest’s going to America on business.”
“I love christenings,” Karen said. “You haven’t said if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“A boy. Warnford Laurent.”
“Warnford?” Both girls laughed. “That’s not a name.”
“It is, you know.”
“Warnford Burns!” Rosy said.
“Warnford Laurent.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Yes.”
“What does he look like?”
He thought. “Like a baby.”
“Yes.”
At the house the garden was overgrown. Rosy and Daisy dashed straight out to see if Araminta had been feeding the rabbit. While Karen unpacked he shut himself in his study, ostensibly to sort the post. For the first time, consciously, he thought about divorcing Karen. It had to do with his father dying. Before, he knew his father would have been angry, one simply did not do that sort of thing. Responsibilities, family…plenty of people did, and survived. Most of the people he knew, in fact. Well, not most, perhaps, but many of them. He remembered one dinner party they had been to not so long ago. Most of the guests were in show business and he and Karen had been the only ‘original’ husband-and-wife team there. The men were his age or older and the wives, young for the most part and beautiful, spoke of ‘his children’ at boarding school or ‘two of his and two of mine, and one of ours’.
They had laughed together, he and Karen, when they’d got home. The men seemed involved in a struggle to preserve their youth; hairpieces, and clothes that were slightly too young and too much activity in an effort to keep up with their young wives. They spoke of Burke’s and Annabel’s and you felt they tried too hard and would have been happier at home with the television or newspapers.
It would not be like that with him and Marie-Céleste. She wasn’t some dolly he had played around with in the office. She was a woman and he loved her. He loved Karen too; that was the odd part. But in a different way. He would never hurt her but was sure she would understand, had plenty of resistance, that one. Rosy and Daisy? He would see them. Karen wasn’t one to be nasty. It would all be very amicable and he would have Laurent. They would live quietly somewhere, in the country where no one knew them, away from the rat-race. Marie-Céleste would wear blue jeans. Karen and the children would come to visit them. They’d walk in the fields together…one big, happy family.
Because they were still on holiday from school they took Rosy and Daisy to the christening. Excitedly they presented themselves; Rosy in a long, sprigged pinafore dress and white blouse complete with parasol, Daisy in a black velvet dress with a lace collar, in which Rosy assured her she would ‘swelter’, and a straw hat with trailing ribbons. They did him credit. He changed his tie five times while Karen watched in amusement.
In church he wished he could wipe the unctuous smile from Ernest’s face as the baby was christened Warnford Laurent Burns. Marie-Céleste looked pale but happy in pale yellow chiffon, the baby in her arms. As the vicar named the baby her eyes caught his at the name ‘Laurent’, although actually he pronounced it ‘Lurrent’ to rhyme with current. The church was filled with men in city clothes and women in floating dresses and hats.
Back at the flat Searcy’s were doing the catering. There was champagne, held stiffly on silver salvers by men in morning coats, tiny sandwiches, petit-fours, tea. Warnford Laurent in his blue-trimmed crib (the White House) lay in state, fussed over, when they weren’t eating, by Rosy and Daisy and cooed over by the hat ladies.
Ernest said patronizingly: “Of course you’ve only got daughters! Better luck next time, old man.” Oscar had to clench his fists in his pockets. He introduced Karen to Marie-Claire who said: “What a charming wife you have. And your children! Pure Alice in Wonderland. You can be very proud.”
Karen asked how he knew her and accepted Oscar’s explanation that he had met her when he went to see Marie-Céleste in hospital. He caught Laura Beaumont in a grey, cobwebby hat looking at him quizzically.
Because they were lucky with the weather the party overflowed on to the balcony and the chattering and cooing drowned the sound of the traffic below.
Gradually the family and friends drifted off and Oscar told Karen it was time they went. Rosy said that Dr Burns had promised they could watch the baby being bathed. Oscar looked at Karen and Karen said all right just for a little while if Marie-Céleste doesn’t mind. The flat was almost emptied of guests and the men from Searcy’s were clearing away the champagne glasses and the ashtrays and the crumbs. Marie-Céleste and Karen and the two girls were round the crib. Oscar, a little unsteady from the champagne, watched them.
“May I pick him up?” Karen said. “It’s ages since I held a baby.”
“Of course.”
Karen leaned over and lifted him. She cradled him in her arms expertly and looked across the crib at Marie-Céleste.
The last of the sun flooded into the room. A photo for the family album, Oscar thought. Karen, the baby held close, smiling across at Marie-Céleste, the proud mother; the two girls looking up at them. Portrait of contentment, peace and tranquillity. Oscar couldn’t remember when he had felt so happy. His family, he thought, and drank a silent toast to them in the last of the champagne that remained in his glass.
Rosy and Daisy each had a turn of holding the baby, then the maternity nurse, who must have been a hundred if she was a day, came in with her bandy legs and her flowing white cap to take Warnford Laurent for his bath.
Daisy, worried, took Karen’s hand and asked her to come with them. They followed the dragon into the newly decorated nursery.
Marie-Céleste went in to the bedroom. Oscar followed her, closed the door and turned the key in the lock. She was unzipping the yellow dress.
“No bump,” he said as she stepped out of it. “I shall have to get used to you all over again. Like old times.”
“Except for these.” She cupped the full breasts in her hands.
He went to her and kissed them tenderly. “Milk,” he said, “one hot, one cold.”
She laughed.
“How much longer?”
“Two, three weeks. I’m not sure. I have to get the all clear from Boyd.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just to hold you in my arms will do. When does Ernest leave?”
“Three days.”
“I’ll think of something, somewhere.”
“The maternity nurse goes off on Wednesdays. She has a sister in Welwyn Garden City.”
“If you think I can survive on Wednesdays…”
She had a new negligée, cream with coffee lace.
“You’ve never looked more beautiful; like a madonna. Motherhood suits you.”
“Doesn’t it suit all women?”
He took her in his arms. “I’m not interested in all women. God, how I love you. It gets worse every day.” He kissed her.
“We’d better get back,” she said shakily. “I have to feed my son.”
“Our son.”
She shook her head. “I love you, Oscar.”
In the car on the way home the girls sang ‘Rock-a-bye-Baby’.
“Why don’t we have another baby, Mummy?” Daisy asked.
“Ask Daddy.”
“Daddy?”
“Ask Mummy.”
They all laughed.
“That was a lovely afternoon,” Karen said. “I did enjoy it.”
“I think we all did,” Oscar said. He felt aglow with happiness. “‘Rock-a-bye-Baby!’” he sang, “‘On the tree top’.”
“‘When the bough breaks the cradle will rock’.” The girls and Karen joined in.
They sang all the way home. When they arrived they were on ‘Ten Green Bottles’.
As they spilled out of the car, Rosy treading accidentally on Daisy’s hat and bringing forth screams, they could hear the telephone ringing.
“I’ll get it!” Oscar said, and ran ahead up the steps.
He took the stairs two at a time into his study and shut the door behind him.
“Oscar?”
It was Marie-Céleste. Her voice was shaking.
“What is it?” He felt his stomach contract.
There was a pause.
“Ernest knows.”
He stared straight ahead at the plane trees in full leaf.
“He was in the bathroom while we were in the bedroom just now. The door was open. Are you there, Oscar?”
“Yes, I’m here.” The bottom had dropped out of his world. “I’ll be straight over.”
“No!” She sounded alarmed. “Please; not now.”
He heard the click as she hung up and then the dialling tone.
He sat with the receiver in his hand.