The Fifth Child

‘Wait,’ said David. ‘Wait, my soup…’ He ate.

‘I know what happened,’ said Dorothy firmly. ‘Phyllis decided to leave that nasty pool at once. She ran fast along a path until she bumped into her brother. He was looking for her. They held each other’s hands and they ran out of the forest and they ran safely home.’

‘That was it, exactly,’ said David. He was smiling ruefully, but looked bemused.

‘And that was what really really happened, Daddy?’ demanded Luke, anxious.

‘Absolutely,’ said David.

‘Who was that girl in the pool, who was she?’ demanded Helen, looking from her father to her mother.

‘Oh just a magic girl,’ said David casually. ‘I have no idea. She just materialized.’

‘What’s materialized?’ asked Luke, saying the word with difficulty.

‘It’s bedtime,’ said Dorothy.

‘But what is materialized?’ Luke insisted.

‘We haven’t had any pudding!’ cried Jane.

‘There’s no pudding, there’s fruit,’ said Dorothy.

‘What is materialized, Daddy?’ Luke anxiously persisted.

‘It is when something that wasn’t there suddenly is there.’

‘But why, why is it?’ wailed Helen, distressed.

Dorothy said, ‘Upstairs, children.’

Helen took an apple, Luke another, and Jane lifted some bread off her mother’s plate with a quick, conscious, mischievous smile. She had not been upset by the story.

The three children went noisily up the stairs, and baby Paul looked after them, excluded, his face puckering, ready to cry.

Alice swiftly got up with him and went after the children, saying, ‘No one told me stories when I was little!’ It was hard to tell whether this was a complaint or, ‘and I’m better for it.’

Suddenly, Luke appeared on the landing. ‘Is everyone coming for the summer holidays?’

David glanced worriedly at Harriet – then away. Dorothy looked steadily at her daughter.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet weakly. ‘Of course.’

Luke called up the stairs, ‘She said, “Of course”!’

Dorothy said, ‘You will have just had this baby.’

‘It’s up to you and Alice,’ said Harriet. ‘If you feel you can’t cope, then you must say so.’

‘It seems to me that I cope,’ said Dorothy, dry.

‘Yes, I know,’ said David quickly. ‘You’re marvellous.’

‘And you don’t know what you would have done –’

‘Don’t,’ said David. And to Harriet: ‘Much better that we put things off, and have them all at Christmas.’

‘The children will be so disappointed,’ said Harriet.

This did not sound like her old insistence: it was flat and indifferent. Her husband and her mother examined her curiously–so Harriet felt their inspection of her, detached, unkind. She said grimly, ‘Well, perhaps this baby will be born early. Surely it must.’ She laughed painfully, and then suddenly she got up, exclaiming, ‘I must move, I have to!’ and began her dogged, painful hour-after-hour walk back and forth, up and down.

She went to Dr Brett at eight months and asked him to induce the baby.

He looked critically at her and said, ‘I thought you didn’t believe in it.’

‘I don’t. But this is different.’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘It’s because you don’t want to. It’s not you who is carrying this – ‘ She cut off monster, afraid of antagonizing him. ‘Look,’ she said, trying to sound calm, but her voice was angry and accusing, ‘would you say I was an unreasonable woman? Hysterical? Difficult? Just a pathetic hysterical woman?’

‘I would say that you are utterly worn out. Bone tired. You never did find being pregnant easy, did you? Have you forgotten? I’ve had you sitting here through four pregnancies, with all kinds of problems – all credit to you, you put up with everything very well.’

‘But it’s not the same thing, it is absolutely different, I don’t understand why you can’t see it. Can’t you see it?’ She thrust out her stomach, which was heaving and – as she felt it – seething as she sat there.

The doctor looked dubiously at her stomach, sighed, and wrote her a prescription for more sedatives.

No, he couldn’t see it. Rather, he wouldn’t – that was the point. Not only he, but all of them, they wouldn’t see how different this was.

And as she walked, strode, ran along the country lanes, she fantasized that she took the big kitchen knife, cut open her own stomach, lifted out the child –and when they actually set eyes on each other, after this long blind struggle, what would she see?

Soon, nearly a month early, the pains began. Once she started, labour had always gone quickly. Dorothy rang David in London, and at once took Harriet into hospital. For the first time, Harriet had insisted on a hospital, surprising everyone.

By the time she was there, there were strong wrenching pains, worse, she knew, than ever in the past. The baby seemed to be fighting its way out. She was bruised – she knew it; inside she must be one enormous black bruise…and no one would ever know.

When at last the moment came when she could be given oblivion, she cried out, ‘Thank God, thank God, it’s over at last!’ She heard a nurse saying, ‘This one’s a real little toughie, look at him.’ Then a woman’s voice was saying, ‘Mrs Lovatt, Mrs Lovatt, are you with us? Come back to us! Your husband is here, dear. You’ve a healthy boy.’

‘A real little wrestler,’ said Dr Brett. ‘He came out fighting the whole world.’

She raised herself with difficulty, because the lower half of her body was too sore to move. The baby was put into her arms. Eleven pounds of him. The others had not been more than seven pounds. He was muscular, yellowish, long. It seemed as if he were trying to stand up, pushing his feet into her side.

‘He’s a funny little chap,’ said David, and he sounded dismayed.

He was not a pretty baby. He did not look like a baby at all. He had a heavy-shouldered hunched look, as if he were crouching there as he lay. His forehead sloped from his eyes to his crown. His hair grew in an unusual pattern from the double crown where started a wedge or triangle that came low on the forehead, the hair lying forward in a thick yellowish stubble, while the side and back hair grew downwards. His hands were thick and heavy, with pads of muscle in the palms. He opened his eyes and looked straight up into his mother’s face. They were focused greeny-yellow eyes, like lumps of soapstone. She had been waiting to exchange looks with the creature who, she had been sure, had been trying to hurt her, but there was no recognition there. And her heart contracted with pity for him: poor little beast, his mother disliking him so much…But she heard herself say nervously, though she tried to laugh, ‘He’s like a troll, or a goblin or something.’ And she cuddled him, to make up. But he was stiff and heavy.

‘Come, Harriet,’ said Dr Brett, annoyed at her. And she thought, I’ve been through this with Dr bloody Brett four times and it’s always been marvellous, and now he’s like a schoolmaster.

She bared her breast and offered the child her nipple. The nurses, the doctor, her mother, and her husband stood watching, with the smiles that this moment imposed. But there was none of the atmosphere of festival, of achievement, no champagne; on the contrary, there was a strain in everyone, apprehension. A strong, sucking reflex, and then hard gums clamped down on her nipple, and she winced. The child looked at her and bit, hard.