by Maeve Binchy
Clare and David looked at each other and back at this magnificent person they had created. They kept saying over and over that they couldn’t believe it. They said it so often in front of Father Flynn that he said he thought that’s what they wanted her christened.
They decided they would give her a name that nobody else had, nobody else they knew. She wouldn’t be Molly or Agnes; nor would she be Chrissie or Caroline or Angela or Emer or Valerie or Mary Catherine. She would not be a Fiona or a Josie or a Bernie. She would be a name that nobody had used before and put a shape into like wearing a jumper.
They didn’t know any Victorias, and neither of them knew anyone called Martha; so those two were considered. Then David thought of Olivia, and the more he said it the more the tiny baby seemed to suit it; and the more they liked it. Olivia Power. It was a name that sounded made for her.
“You’ll have to have a saint’s name as well,” said the nurse who knew everything.
“I don’t mind, any saint,” Clare said cheerfully.
“Mary’s always nice,” said the nurse.
“What’s your mother’s name?” Clare asked David suddenly.
“It’s Molly. You know that.”
“Yes, but what’s it short for?”
“Margaret.”
“Right. We’ll call her Olivia Mary. I just didn’t want to let poor Saint Agnes feel left out. Da was put out enough about John Fitzgerald Byrne. I’ll tell you that. . . .”
Olivia Mary Power was ten days old when she left the hospital. Her mother was still pale, and rather shaken-looking. Olivia would need more bottles than a baby which had gone the full nine months, but she was perfectly well and healthy. She had a small christening, with champagne, in the private room which had been found for Clare when they realized she was a doctor’s wife and not the hysterical student they had taken her for when she was admitted. There were flowers and cards, and a great deal of admiration.
At no time did anyone say that it was a pity that this of all babies had to be premature since they were going to pretend in Castlebay anyway that it was a premature birth even if it were six weeks late.
And at no time did anyone mention to anyone in the room that it was a pity that Olivia Mary Power could not have delayed her arrival for ten days so that her mother could have sat the examination for the degree she had so much wanted.
There was so much delight about the new baby, it would sound un-welcoming to say anything about bad timing.
“Do you think she minds desperately and isn’t saying?” Valerie asked Mary Catherine.
“I have no idea. I know I was about to show her the examination papers and something stopped me. And I never mentioned them again.”
“It’s funny. I’ve never been afraid to ask her anything, and even when I was on my own with her and the baby the other day, I couldn’t ask.”
“Neither could I. That plausible attorney called me to ask me out, and in the midst of my saying no, he suddenly cut in and asked was she going funny in the head about the exams. He said that since he met her as a kid she’s been talking about getting a degree, and now she doesn’t mention it.”
“I don’t think she minds. I think she’s so goddamned pleased about the baby.”
“There’s a bit in the New Testament about a woman getting all pleased about a man being born into the world.”
“Spare me your interpretations of the Bible, Val. Nobody in Ireland has ever read the book as far as I can see.”
“Wasn’t that the worst luck ever? Poor Clare.”
Dick and Angela were learning to cook from a book, and each week they made something new in Angela’s kitchen.
Angela agreed. “I thought it would be the end of the world, and that we’d hear the tears of her the whole way from Dublin. But it seems she’s not taking it badly at all.”
“I suppose, now she has the baby—” Dick broke off and frowned into the bowl. “Is this the pale and light in texture that I should beat it until?”
“The people who write these books should be hanged. It looks pale and light in texture to me, but how would you know? This one says cook till ready. If we knew when ‘ready’ was, we wouldn’t need their stupid books.” She banged round the kitchen a bit.
“I suppose she could always sit it again next year.”
“She could. But people don’t. It’s like that. And with a small child she won’t keep up her studies. How could she?”
“You’re worried about her.”
“I am, but don’t mind me. I worry about everything.”
Agnes read the letter out to Tom: the way the child’s hair came forward and sideways from the crown like a little star. How the tiny toes each had a perfect little pink nail on them. How David had to bring all the things for the baby when he came up in such a rush, and he couldn’t find half of them so he had packed tablecloths and sheets and teatowels instead of the little matinee coats and vests.
“She seems to be delighted with the child,” Agnes said, pleased.
“Didn’t it arrive a bit early? Isn’t that what people will think?” Tom O’Brien looked at her over his glasses, waiting to see what reaction he would set.
“Wasn’t it miles too early? Isn’t that why she missed her exam?” Agnes said.
“But even if . . .”
“Tom, will you stop that. Doesn’t everyone know that the child wasn’t expected for an age? Clare thought she was going to be doing her B.A., and everything.”
“Yes. Yes.” He saw there was going to be no scolding and complaining on the home side, which was a great blessing. “Queer sort of name they gave it,” he grumbled.
“Oh, you can be sure that’s the Powers’ doing. Some fancy choice of Molly’s. That’s what it will turn out to be. But saying nothing, that’s always the best.”
Nellie wanted to know when they’d be home. She had been down to the Lodge on her day off in order to have it right for them. She hadn’t liked Clare coming in there at first, she was sure there would be airs and graces. But as the months went on Nellie had felt sorry for the girl, stuck in there at her books all day. If ever you passed the window she wouldn’t even look up, reading and studying and learning.
Nellie had known from the word go that there was a child on the way, and she knew better than anyone how enraged it had made the Mistress. The trouble was that the Mistress had no real friends she could talk to, and was sore to the bottom of her heart about it. She woke bad-tempered and she went to bed bad-tempered.
Nellie pitied her. She wasn’t a bad woman—full of nonsense, of course, but everyone had something a bit wrong with them. Of course she’d have liked David to have got a finer girl than one of the O’Briens from the shop. David Power was the equal of anyone, but if he had got the little O’Brien girl into trouble and if he did seem happy to marry her, then Nellie thought that the best should be made of it all. There was no point in conducting a war across fifty yards of garden. Maybe it would be better when the baby came back, but you didn’t need to be a genius to see that the Mistress was even more livid that the child had arrived so early. Now there was no way of covering up.
Molly said that they’d be arriving on Saturday.
“Will I set the tea for all of you in the dining room?” she asked.
Molly was about to say no, then she thought again. “Yes, that’s right. Set it for all of us.”
Nellie smiled to herself. At least she had done that much for the young couple; they wouldn’t have to be banished to their own little place and wait till the Mistress buzzed for them.
Dr. Power was waiting on the platform, eager as a child.
They were in the front of the train, so they passed him, blinking happily into the carriages. Clare felt the tears come to her eyes, and David leaped up to wave out the window. “Father, Father.”
They didn’t like Dr. Power to drive on his own now, so he had brought Mrs. Brennan with him. She had wanted to do a few things in town. She was waiting now in the car. Molly had said she�
��d prefer to meet them at home, and because she had arranged a welcome-home supper, Paddy hadn’t argued with her.
He hurried until his steps were a run down the platform and he peered into the white bundle. He took off his glasses and wiped them and put them on again.
“Isn’t she perfect? God bless her, perfect little girl,” he said.
Clare was very nervous of anyone else touching the baby; but there she was thrusting it into her father-in-law’s arms. He joggled her around expertly. He was so sweet that other people started to look at them.
“We’re making a circus of ourselves,” he said. “Come on, Clare, girl, let’s go home.”
They walked to the ticket gate and Dr. Power showed off his grandchild. Mrs. Brennan in the car admired the baby with all the right words.
“Am I holding her right, do you think, Mrs. Brennan?” Clare asked.
It was very much the thing to have asked. Mrs. Brennan’s face softened to the girl she had thought of as a bit of a madam up to now. All the way back to Castlebay they had lessons on supporting the head, and keeping the spine firm and the way to tilt the bottle. Dr. Power hid his smile of pleasure when he saw how genuinely interested Clare and David were in what the woman was saying.
Six months ago they would both have crossed the road to avoid talking to Mrs. Brennan. Now they hung on her every word.
Dr. Power drove to the door of the big house.
“Molly has supper for you all here. Will we go straight in and show her the baby or would you like to go to your own house first?”
There was no doubting which he wanted.
David looked at Clare quickly.
“We’d love to come in and show off the baby,” she said.
Molly had been to the hairdresser, and she was wearing her best knitted two-piece. She was standing in the sitting room as if the gentry were coming.
David ran in and kissed her, and then stood back.
Clare put the baby straight into Molly’s arms, which startled her. She had expected to bend over Clare and admire the child that way. Now she was holding her grandchild all on her own.
They couldn’t stop admiring the baby. Clare looked at Molly occasionally, when she wasn’t looking; Dracula was absorbed in the baby.
Nobody was going to be forgiven for anything, like blighting David’s young life, forcing him to marry a girl from the lower classes, a shotgun wedding and an early baby. But given all that, at least Molly liked her granddaughter. At least she wasn’t going to reject the child. Things were looking up.
At Mass next morning they met Gerry. He was full of congratulations.
“Olivia, that’s a fine posh name for Castlebay,” he said approvingly.
“Ah, they’re sick of these Davids and Clares and Gerrys, the dull old names,” Clare laughed.
“I hope they won’t call her Olly,” David said.
“Make your own nickname then,” Gerry said.
“Livy?” Clare suggested.
“Liffey even?” Gerry said. David was buying the papers from Mickey Mack.
“I’m sorry about the exam,” Gerry said in a low voice.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said brightly.
“Of course, it does.”
“No, really. It sort of faded away. I didn’t think it would.”
“You can’t fool me. I know that’s what you wanted so much, so don’t throw my sympathy back at me as if it was worth nothing.” He stamped off.
They insisted that Angela come back to the Lodge where Nellie was minding Olivia.
They had coffee and toast, and Angela said she was going to give the baby a book, not a matinee coat, because she couldn’t knit for one thing and everyone else gave matinee coats.
“You gave me my first book, remember,” Clare said. “To console me for not getting the Prize.”
“A Golden Treasury. And it turned out better in the end.”
Clare cradled the new infant to her, and her thin white face looked misty remembering all that struggle ten years ago.
Angela wondered, as she saw Clare plant a kiss on the baby’s forehead, if she regarded this child as a consolation prize for not having got a history degree. And did she think it had all turned out better in the end?
Chrissie was the only one who mentioned that they had only been married five months when the baby was born. “I’m disgraced in front of the Byrne family,” she said.
Clare sighed. “Weren’t you able to tell them the baby came early?” she asked.
“No baby comes that early.”
“Is there a chance that you’d like to look at her at all? I brought her to see her cousin. John Fitzgerald seems in great form.” Clare struggled as she felt she had been struggling for years just to get some kind of normal reaction from her sister.
“Oh, I have nothing against the child, poor creature, it’s none of her doing.”
“Good. Then here she is to have a look at.” Clare handed her over. She had found that this was a surefire way of making people enthusiastic about the baby, once it was in their arms they felt different.
“She’s grand, isn’t she?” Chrissie said. “A bit small of course.”
“That’s to do with being born prematurely, I told you,” Clare said.
Chrissie had to laugh then.
“Come here to your auntie Clare.” Clare picked up John Fitzgerald and gave him a cuddle.
“Well, now, you’re a big fellow. Six months old. You’re a fine, big fellow.”
“If you knew all the trouble I had with him being born,” Chrissie said.
“Well, I do a bit. It’s not a bundle of laughs, is it?”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t have to give birth to this little thing at all! Wasn’t she lifted out of you?”
“It’s a way of describing it, I suppose.” Clare gritted her teeth.
“Sure, there’d be no problem. We’d all have a half dozen if that’s all there was to it. You wait, Clare. You wait for the next one, and see what it’s like. I was in labor for fourteen hours. Fourteen hours! But of course that wouldn’t be right for the wife of a doctor. They wouldn’t leave her pushing and shoving for a whole day and into the night.”
“It must have been desperate all right.” She would have been happy to push Olivia into the world too. But useless to say that to Chrissie.
“Well, it was. It wasn’t something you forget in a hurry. Still it’s more natural, in a way more normal. Imagine, you’re only the same as me now, after all the grand plans, all the studying.”
“I know. Isn’t it strange?” Clare said without rancor.
Chrissie felt guilty. “Well, you’d done enough anyway, hadn’t you?”
“Oh, definitely.”
All the patients seemed pleased that David was a father. It was nice to have a family man, they said. They sent soft toys for the new baby, they embroidered little dresses. Often the people who had little or no money to pay a doctor were able to give gifts, and they loved an excuse.
A man gave him a pair of hares that had been shot that day. “Tell your wife to make a nice jugged hare—very good for a baby, that is.” Another gave him potin to wet the baby’s head and a woman whose house was always thought to be of the illest fame sent a miraculous medal to the little girl and said that this medal would protect her all her life.
Clare became more deft at giving the bottle but it still took a long time. In fact everything about Olivia took a long time. Clare looked with awe at the women trailing six or seven youngsters around with them. How had they managed? Maybe it was only the first that was such a problem, after that you had a team to help you. Now that she came to think of it she remembered giving a bottle to Jim and to Ben, while Mam was in the shop.
Olivia was so sweet you could play with her for hours. Just poking her gently in the tummy made her wave her arms and legs a bit. And she smiled, long before babies smile Olivia was smiling.
“I’m sure everyone must feel a bit like that, but they don’t have
the time to say it and think about it,” Clare said, looking at the small white bundle in the cradle.
“I don’t have all that much more time to say it and think about it, I’m off again.” David finished his cup of tea as he pulled on his coat. “I don’t know how Dad looked after a quarter of this—I really don’t. And yet he must have. You don’t hear any complaints about him.”
He kissed his wife and daughter and ran through the rain to the car. He was becoming more and more involved in the work and all the patients; he said you’d learn as much in a month in Castlebay as in a year up in the hospital.
In the first few weeks there was no question of doing any studying, and Clare had no intention of beginning it until after Christmas. Everyone said a baby needed your full attention for the first three months. What nobody had said was that a baby took every ounce of your energy for the first three months too. But maybe you were meant to know that.
Olivia was a good baby they said—people who knew, people who had had babies like Mam, and Molly Power and Chrissie and Young Mrs. Dillon and Anna Murphy and a dozen more. And the amount she slept was good. But sometimes she cried for long long times. Clare was despairing one morning, and just before she took her child up to her grandfather in the surgery, she discovered that a nappy pin was open and sticking into the tiny leg.
“How could I have done that to you? How?” Clare wept and held the small baby so close that the howls started again as the child began to feel suffocated.
The bath took a long time. You had to be very careful to hold her properly, she was so slippy, and you had to keep the soap from her eyes and yet make sure she didn’t get cold.
And then the bottle. This was a slow day; she kept pushing it away. Finally it was almost finished and she was laid down. But she wouldn’t settle. Over and over Clare took her up. It seemed an age before she agreed to sleep, even though her eyes were fighting to stay open.
