Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘We must go and see him,’ said Lou. ‘We promised. What about the Sunday after next?’

‘OK,’ said Raymond.

It was the Saturday before that Sunday when Lou had her first sick turn. She struggled out of bed to attend Benediction, but had to leave suddenly during the service and was sick behind the church in the presbytery yard. Raymond took her home, though she protested against cutting out her rosary to the Black Madonna.

‘After only six weeks!’ she said, and she could hardly tell whether her sickness was due to excitement or nature. ‘Only six weeks ago,’ she said — and her voice had a touch of its old Liverpool — ‘did we go to that Black Madonna and the prayer’s answered, see.’

Raymond looked at her in awe as he held the bowl for her sickness. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

She was well enough next day to go to visit Henry in the sanatorium. He was fatter and, she thought, a little coarser: and tough in his manner, as if once having been nearly disembodied he was not going to let it happen again. He was leaving the country very soon. He promised to come and see them before he left. Lou barely skimmed through his next letter before handing it over to Raymond.

Their visitors, now, were ordinary white ones. ‘Not so colourful,’ Raymond said, ‘as Henry and Oxford were.’ Then he looked embarrassed lest he should seem to be making a joke about the word coloured.

‘Do you miss the niggers?’ said Tina Farrell, and Lou forgot to correct her.

Lou gave up most of her church work in order to sew and knit for the baby. Raymond gave up the Reader’s Digest. He applied for promotion and got it; he became a departmental manager. The flat was now a waiting-room for next summer, after the baby was born, when they would put down the money for a house. They hoped for one of the new houses on a building site on the outskirts of the town.

‘We shall need a garden,’ Lou explained to her friends. ‘I’ll join the Mothers’ Union,’ she thought. Meantime the spare bedroom was turned into a nursery. Raymond made a cot, regardless that some of the neighbours complained of the hammering. Lou prepared a cradle, trimmed it with frills. She wrote to her relatives; she wrote to Elizabeth, sent her five pounds, and gave notice that there would be no further weekly payments, seeing that they would now need every penny.

‘She doesn’t require it, anyway,’ said Raymond. ‘The Welfare State looks after people like Elizabeth.’ And he told Lou about the contraceptives he thought he had seen on the table by the double bed. Lou became very excited about this. ‘How did you know they were contraceptives? What did they look like? Why didn’t you tell me before? What a cheek, calling herself a Catholic, do you think she has a man, then?’

Raymond was sorry he had mentioned the subject.

‘Don’t worry, dear, don’t upset yourself, dear.’

‘And she told me she goes to Mass every Sunday, and all the kids go excepting James. No wonder he’s got into trouble with an example like that. I might have known, with her peroxide hair. A pound a week I’ve been sending up to now, that’s fifty-two pounds a year. I would never have done it, calling herself a Catholic with birth control by her bedside.’

‘Don’t upset yourself; dear.’

Lou prayed to the Black Madonna three times a week for a safe delivery and a healthy child. She gave her story to the Father Rector who announced it in the next parish magazine. ‘Another case has come to light of the kindly favour of our “Black Madonna” towards a childless couple …’ Lou recited her rosary before the statue until it was difficult for her to kneel, and, when she stood, could not see her feet. The Mother of God with her black bog-oaken drapery, her high black cheekbones and square hands looked more virginal than ever to Lou as she stood counting her beads in front of her stomach.

She said to Raymond, ‘If it’s a girl we must have Mary as one of the names. But not the first name, it’s too ordinary.

‘Please yourself, dear,’ said Raymond. The doctor had told him it might be a difficult birth.

‘Thomas, if it’s a boy,’ she said, ‘after my uncle. But if it’s a girl I’d like something fancy for a first name.’

He thought, Lou’s slipping, she didn’t used to say that word, fancy.

‘What about Dawn?’ she said. ‘I like the sound of Dawn. Then Mary for a second name. Dawn Mary Parker, it sounds sweet.’

‘Dawn! That’s not a Christian name,’ he said. Then he told her, ‘Just as you please, dear.’

‘Or Thomas Parker,’ she said.

She had decided to go into the maternity wing of the hospital like everyone else. But near the time she let Raymond change her mind, since he kept saying, ‘At your age, dear, it might be more difficult than for the younger women. Better book a private ward, we’ll manage the expense.

In fact, it was a very easy birth, a girl. Raymond was allowed in to see Lou in the late afternoon. She was half asleep. ‘The nurse will take you to see the baby in the nursery ward,’ she told him. ‘She’s lovely, but terribly red.’

‘They’re always red at birth,’ said Raymond.

He met the nurse in the corridor. ‘Any chance of seeing the baby? My wife said…’

She looked flustered. ‘I’ll get the Sister,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t want to give any trouble, only my wife said —’

‘That’s all right. Wait here, Mr Parker.’

The Sister appeared, a tall grave woman. Raymond thought her to be short-sighted for she seemed to look at him fairly closely before she bade him follow her.

The baby was round and very red, with dark curly hair.

‘Fancy her having hair. I thought they were born bald,’ said Raymond.

‘They sometimes have hair at birth,’ said the Sister.

‘She’s very red in colour.’ Raymond began comparing his child with those in the other cots. ‘Far more so than the others.’

‘Oh, that will wear off.’

Next day he found Lou in a half-stupor. She had been given a strong sedative following an attack of screaming hysteria. He sat by her bed, bewildered. Presently a nurse beckoned him from the door. ‘Will you have a word with Matron?’

‘Your wife is upset about her baby,’ said the matron. ‘You see, the colour. She’s a beautiful baby, perfect. It’s a question of the colour.’

‘I noticed the baby was red,’ said Raymond, ‘but the nurse said —’

‘Oh, the red will go. It changes, you know. But the baby will certainly be brown, if not indeed black, as indeed we think she will be. A beautiful healthy child.’

‘Black?’ said Raymond.

‘Yes, indeed we think so, indeed I must say, certainly so,’ said the matron. ‘We did not expect your wife to take it so badly when we told her. We’ve had plenty of dark babies here, but most of the mothers expect it.’

‘There must be a mix-up. You must have mixed up the babies,’ said Raymond.

‘There’s no question of mix-up,’ said the matron sharply. ‘We’ll soon settle that. We’ve had some of that before.’

‘But neither of us are dark,’ said Raymond. ‘You’ve seen my wife. You see me —’That’s something you must work out for yourselves. I’d have a word with the doctor if I were you. But whatever conclusion you come to, please don’t upset your wife at this stage. She has already refused to feed the child, says it isn’t hers, which is ridiculous.’

‘Was it Oxford St John?’ said Raymond.

‘Raymond, the doctor told you not to come here upsetting me. I’m feeling terrible.’

‘Was it Oxford St John?’

‘Clear out of here, you swine, saying things like that.’

He demanded to be taken to see the baby, as he had done every day for a week. The nurses were gathered round it, neglecting the squalling whites in the other cots for the sight of their darling black. She was indeed quite black, with a woolly crop and tiny negroid nostrils. She had been baptised that morning, though not in her parents’ presence. One of the nurses had stood as godmother.