Jonathan Raban - Foreign Land - A Novel

The nurse came back.

“It’s going to be a long time yet, Mr Grey. If I were you I’d go home and get some sleep.”

“Would you mind awfully if I kipped down here?”

“No. I’ll get you some blankets if you really want to, but you’d be much more comfortable at home.”

“I’d sooner stay. If that’s alright with you.” At ten, the nurse came back with a pile of hospital blankets and a mug of tea. At eleven, George went out on to the loggia, where he smoked a pipe and stared into the half-lit dusty courtyard. Someone had once planted a tree in the middle, but like most green things in Aden it had died. At midnight, he tried to read a magazine. It was tough going.

An Eton and Harrowing Tale

The warning to the public to bring its own

snacks to the ‘Varsity and Eton and Harrow

matches, coming on top of what we are told

about our bread, serves to emphasise the

sombre hue of our times …

He wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be funny or not.

“Still up and about?” It was the nurse again. “You’re not going to be good for much in the morning, are you? Still, I’ve brought you a drop of brandy. Don’t drink it all at once — we’ve got quite enough on our hands without having to deal with sozzled fathers.”

“She is … all right … isn’t she?”

“She’s tophole. She’s sound asleep at present. Just like you ought to be, my lad.”

George measured out the quarter bottle of brandy at a fingernail an hour. He watched the dawn sky lighten to the colour of Parma violets and saw the kites wheeling high over Crater Town like scraps of burnt paper. At six, he heard singing — a soprano hitting a random selection of top notes — and realized that it was a moan of pain. He couldn’t tell how far away it was, but it didn’t sound at all like Angela. At seven, breakfast came on a tray.

“Sleep well? She’s doing fine. Not long to wait now.”

The morning lasted for days and weeks. People passed by the loggia, talking, busy, indifferent. George hated them. Angela was Having a Baby, yet the bread man stood by gossipping in Arabic with a ward orderly, a doctor in the uniform of the RAMC walked past whistling “Much Binding in the Marsh” and a dog was lifting its leg against a gatepost. He swallowed the last of the brandy. He wanted to go to the lavatory but didn’t dare, in case they needed him.

A few minutes after noon, George heard Angela scream. It was a scream in which the whole world seemed to curdle — a scream from which it seemed impossible that the screamer could survive. It was ragged, gasping, louder and louder, arching over the hospital into the sky. Clutching his head in his hands, George shuddered with it, as if the scream was inside him. He bit on his sleeve. Then there was silence. A landrover, misfiring on all five cylinders, went by on Hospital Road.

Drenched in sudden sweat, George thought, she’s dead . He stood in the corner of the room, hunched, his eyes covered, his head pressed against the hot wood. He felt someone touching him. Then he heard another horrible scream.

“It’s all right, dear. Don’t worry. She’s having nice big contractions now.”

The nurse was laughing at him.

He said: “It’s not … always like this?”

“Oh, yes, dear. It’s perfectly normal. It’s just Nature’s Way.”

“Oh, God,” George said, as Angela screamed again.

“It’s always the fathers who have the worst time of it. The mums just sail through.”

At 12.30, Angela’s bachelors piled out of a Morris 8 into the courtyard. Peter Moffatt. Alan Chalmers. Tony Flower. Bill Nesbit. Justin Quayle.

“Hello, George! Hasn’t she had it yet?”

“Don’t mind us, do you? Just thought we ought to turn out and show the flag.”

“I say, George, you look positively wrecked.”

“What’s the latest from the quacks?”

Angela screamed.

“Christ,” said Tony Flower.

Justin Quayle produced a packet of Players.

George shook his head wordlessly at the sight of the cigarettes. The bachelors lit up in silence, looking suddenly pale under their yellow tans.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Bill Nesbit said.

When Angela next screamed, Peter Moffatt put his arm round George’s shoulder and held him. George’s eyes were squashed shut. He was pressing into them with his fists.

“Bear up, George,” Peter Moffatt said. “They know what they’re doing. Pretty bloody, though, isn’t it? I had no idea. Tony — what about a spot of whisky for the wounded man?”

George sucked gratefully at the bottle. “Thanks so much. I suppose I’m being a b.f., really. The nurse seems to think so, anyway.”

“How long have you been on sentry-go?”

“Since 10 last night.”

“You should have roused out the chaps. We’d have sat it out with you. Bit bloody much having to face it all out on your own-i-o.”

“What are you going to call it, George?”

Angela screamed. The bachelors stood awkwardly at attention. When the sound died, George said, “Ah … Crispin … if it’s a … boy … or … ah, Sheila, you know …”

“Good-oh,” Tony Flower said. “I’ve got a brother called Crispin. The one who’s out in Sarawak, poor old bugger.”

“Well, there’ll be a lot of sloshing being done over at the Club tonight,” Alan Chalmers said. “Bags-I the job of making sure that George gets pissed out of his mind.”

“I suppose they’ll keep her in for a few days, for observation.”

“Bound to,” Justin Quayle said. “My sister had a baby last year, in Godalming. They kept her in for a fortnight, I think it was.”

“Boy or girl?” said Tony Flower.

“Boy. Pretty squalid little nipper, actually.”

The screams were coming at closer and closer intervals. The bachelors, battle-hardened now, sat around on the cane chairs, smoking and tugging at the knees of their trousers in embarrassment when they heard Angela cry out each new time. Bill Nesbit remembered that there was a pack of cards in the glove compartment of the car, so they played poker. Since no-one had any cash on them, they played for imaginary stakes. They bet their next year’s salaries and their parents’ houses in England. Peter Moffatt bet his sister’s virginity on a pair of tens, and lost it to George, who had a full house.

“To him that hath …” Justin Quayle said.

“The painting by Joshua Reynolds in the drawing-room. Six Chippendale chairs. And the Chinese vase thing on the hall table,” Bill Nesbit said.

“Pass,” said George, even though he’d been dealt a straight flush in diamonds.

At 4.00 in the afternoon if was Peter Moffatt who noticed the silence. “I wonder if that’s … it?” he said. Ten minutes later, a different nurse came out on to the loggia.

“It’s a girl.”

The bachelors whooped. “Sheila!” Peter Moffatt said, his arms round George. “Well done!”

“Well, which of you boys is the Daddy, then?”

The nurse looked surprised when George shambled forward, grinning helplessly. He followed her along the walkway, under a painted sign saying “X-Ray Unit” in War Department lettering.

“Just through here—”

The whitewashed room was cool and smelled of medicine. A flappy punkah fan was turning overhead, and Angela was lying back on the pillows, her face as colourless as putty. Pain had given her a sort of isolating celebrity, and George felt shy of touching her. He said, “Oh Christ, my darling.” The baby was in her arms, wrapped closely in a shawl. George gazed unbelievingly at his daughter. She was like an enormous wrinkled purple grub, not really human at all. He said: “She’s … wonderful.”

Angela said, in a strange, croaky voice, “Everyone was quite sweet.”