Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

She had the stupid convention that no man was capable of holding a baby without serious consequences to the baby. Strangely enough the baby had been good as gold on David’s knee. But now it began to cry and was still crying when Ada carried it from the room.

David went out to his clerking thinking about the baby and when he returned at the end of his day’s work he was still thinking about the baby. He had begun to be fond of the small, ugly baby.

It was perfectly clear that the baby was delicate. Jenny admitted it herself and in course of time adopted a neatly descriptive phrase which she used in the presence of visitors. Looking compassionately towards the baby she would remark all in one breath: “Poor little mite, he’s not very robust, the doctor says!”

Powders were prescribed by Dr. Scott for the baby with an ointment to rub in and Jenny, after a few initial protests, fed the baby herself. The doctor insisted on that, too.

Already the memory of her confinement — considered at the time to be excruciating and unforgettable — had become dimmed and Jenny was brightening up, recovering from her disappointment that the baby was not a girl. She wanted to call the baby David. She implored David very prettily to let her call the baby after him.

“He’s yours, David,” she remarked with a naive logic. She faced him with her clear, beautiful eyes and smiled. “It’s only right he should have your name.”

But David wanted the baby to have the name of Robert: his dead father and his living son both Robert. And Jenny, after countering with several other names, notably Hector, Archibald and Victor, which she thought superior in point of sound and importance, very meekly gave in. She wanted to please David in every possible way. So the baby became Robert.

Three weeks passed. Ada went back to Tynecastle. Jenny was able to leave her room and recline languidly upon the sofa downstairs. Yet she found the duty of nursing Robert a tax on her in many ways. As her strength returned and her life approached the normal the resolutions formed by her romantic imagination gradually seemed less attractive. Robert, from being a dear little mite, had now become a dear little nuisance. She was pleased to let David give Robert his medicine and to bath Robert when she felt tired. And yet in a way Jenny was queerly resentful of David’s interest in the child.

“You do love me best, don’t you, David?” she exclaimed one evening. “You don’t love him better than you love me?”

“Of course not, Jenny.” He laughed at her as he knelt with rolled-up shirt-sleeves beside the tin bath where Robert lay in the soapy water.

She did not reply. And, still watching them, the look of discontent deepened upon her face.

Indeed, as the New Year approached Jenny became increasingly discontented and restless. Everything seemed wrong, nothing right. She wanted David to go to the front and yet she did not want him to go. She was proud one minute and afraid the next. To distract her mind she took to reading a great many paper-backed novelettes, Sunny Half-hours in the Happy Home having been mislaid. She had forgotten about her music now, never touched the piano and never sang her lullabies. She studied her reflection in the glass for long periods on end to reassure herself that her looks and her figure had not suffered. Once again she felt she had no friends. She was out of things, life was passing over her. She was missing everything. It was very trying and upsetting for Jenny, she might as well be dead. The weather was wet, too, and though she was able to get about now it was useless to go out in the rain. Besides, Robert had to be fed every four hours and that naturally interfered with any decent outing she might make up her mind to take.

But on New Year’s Eve the rain ceased and the sun came out and Jenny felt that she could stand it no longer. She really must have a little jaunt. She must, she must. It was years, hundreds of years since she had had a little jaunt. She would go and see her mother at Tynecastle. Her face brightened at the decision, she rushed upstairs, dressed herself nicely and came down. It was four o’clock. She fed Robert, put him in his cot and scribbled a hurried note for David saying she would be back at eight.

David was quite glad when he returned and found Jenny’s note, pleased to think that Jenny was having an outing and pleased in some singular way to have Robert to himself.

Robert was asleep in his cot in the corner beside the kitchen range. David took off his boots and walked about in his socks in order not to make a noise. He got his tea and enjoyed his tea in Robert’s company. Then he took a book and sat down to read beside the cot. The book was Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and David was interested in Nietzsche. But David looked more frequently at Robert than at Nietzsche.

At half-past seven Robert woke up and got ready to be fed. He lay perfectly quietly on his back, looking up at the much-befrilled ceiling of his cot. What a queer view of the world he must have, thought David.

For a good half-hour Robert kept on contentedly taking his queer view of the world, meanwhile staving off his appetite with his thumb. But in the end the thumb was not satisfactory and after a few preliminary whimperings Robert began to cry. David lifted Robert out of his cot and soothed him. That was successful for a little while, then Robert began to cry again.

Anxiously David looked at the clock. Half-past eight: Jenny must have missed her train and the next did not arrive till ten! It struck David how utterly dependent Robert was upon Jenny.

He did the best he could. He saw that Robert was uncomfortable and wet, and though he had not much experience with napkins he took Robert’s napkin off. Robert seemed pleased and by way of gratitude when David lifted him aloft again he clutched hard at David’s hair.

David laughed and Robert laughed too. He seemed hungry, but otherwise much relieved. David put Robert down on the hearthrug and Robert sprawled and kicked before the fire. He seemed altogether a healthier baby these last few weeks, he was fatter, his rash had gone and he did not snuffle so much. But now he was extremely hungry, he cried a good deal again as it came towards ten o’clock.

With a rising indignation at Jenny’s lateness David got down on his hands and knees and began to talk to Robert, to try to soothe and reassure him. At that moment the door swung open and Jenny came in. She was in tremendous spirits. She had been to the pictures with Clarry and had her glass of port. She stood in the doorway with one hand on her hip and a broad smile on her red lips, then all at once she began to laugh; she was convulsed with laughter at the picture made by David and Robert on the hearthrug.

David drew his lips together.

“Don’t laugh like that,” he said sharply.

“I can’t help it,” she giggled. “It’s something… something just come in my head.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said hurriedly. “Just a kind of joke.” There was a short pause. He got to his feet and lifted the child.

“Robert’s hungry,” he said, still angry and indignant. “Can’t you see he wants his feed?”

She came forward rather unsteadily.

“Here, then,” she said, “I’m the one that can see to that, amn’t I?”

She took Robert from him and sat down with a bump on the sofa. Perhaps two glasses of port gave a certain generosity to her movements. David watched her grimly. She ripped open her blouse. Her big full breasts protruded like udders, veined and white and fat, the milk was already dripping from them. As Robert nestled to one breast and sucked the milk spurted from the other. Flushed and happy Jenny smiled, rocking sensuously back and forward on the sofa, careless of the dripping milk.