The Fruit of the Tree

by Jacquelynn Luben

  ‘Would you be awfully disappointed if you had to stay an extra day?’ she asked. Naturally, I replied that I was prepared to do what was best for Amanda, despite my disappointment.

  ‘Well, I should ask Sister,’ she advised. ‘Wait till she’s had her breakfast—then she’s in a good mood.’

  I plucked up my courage just after Amanda had been weighed.

  ‘Will I be able to take her home, as planned?’ I queried.

  Sister looked at me sharply. ‘Why shouldn’t you?’ she snapped.

  ‘Er, well, because of her small weight…’

  ‘Why she’s done ever so well!’ exclaimed Sister. ‘What more do you expect of her?’

  Duly squashed, but relieved, I returned to the ward to tell the girls how, once again, I had rubbed Sister up the wrong way.

  Nevertheless, I couldn’t altogether quell a feeling of concern about Amanda. One day when I was sitting her up, supporting her chin with two fingers, she started to cough—I must have been practically strangling her—and I realised that I was going to have to be extra careful in my handling of her. Then there was the problem of infections—and I confided this worry to the Matron of the maternity home.

  ‘She’s been protected from germs here—but what about when she gets home? My son is always getting colds and coughs.’

  For Robert had an unfortunate tendency to get tonsillitis invariably followed by bronchitis. But Matron reassured me—it seemed that their main concern was keeping Amanda away from the various germs brought in by different visitors, but there was no need to worry about the germs circulating in our own family.

  On my last night I had a surprise visit, long after visiting hours, from Michael, accompanied by Robert, who looked almost grotesquely huge to me, now that I had become accustomed to Amanda’s minute features. They crept in, bearing my suitcase, and luckily did not receive a chilly reception; Robert, who had done a tour of all available relatives, including Mrs. Goldsmith, an ‘adopted Grandma’ who lived locally, clasped my hand.

  ‘Has it really gone?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your tummy.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ I laughed. ‘You feel it,’ and sure enough it was—well more or less—flat.

  Then the accommodating nurse on duty took him into the nursery for a peep at his little sister.

  The next morning Michael arrived for the ritual departure; there was always a little farewell scene, and Sister usually carried the baby to the doorway or even the car.

  As we stood making polite exchanges, Michael, never renowned for his tact, said, ‘Well we’d better make a move, if we’re going to Brighton today.’

  I could have sunk through the floor. I knew the next line in the script before it was even uttered.

  ‘You’re not going gallivanting off to Brighton!’’ Sister exclaimed in horror.

  I couldn’t bear a repeat performance of the same argument.

  ‘I think we’ll have to reconsider that,’ I said to Michael, bluffing, and hoping he would catch on quickly.

  At last we made our escape. I hoped Sister wouldn’t accompany us to the car, because it looked such a disgrace, but she did. However, she didn’t see the hole in the floor of the car.

  Then we were driving off, with me weakly giggling with relief at the scene that had taken place and wishing I could nip back and tell the girls in the ward all about it. But in the end, I never did see them again.

  * * *

  The first weeks with a new baby are always spent in a haze and the days in Brighton were no exception. Sometimes I sat in the seafront hut and fed Amanda, and sometimes the Aunties took Robert to the front without me, and I followed later, contentedly wheeling Amanda past gardens ornamented with enormous blue and pink hydrangeas.

  Robert tricycled along the promenade, visiting neighbouring huts and occasionally playing ball with a paraplegic child in a wheelchair nearby. Frequently he persuaded the Aunties to tiptoe painfully over the shingle to paddle in the water with him, and even I, now my figure was a comfortable size, was occasionally persuaded to join him.

  The holiday of sorts came to an end and we resumed our life at home, where days and nights merged together, punctuated by nighttime awakenings and daytime dozes, and only an occasional unusual event stood out from the monotony. Like ‘Alice’, I had to run very fast to stay in the same place and rarely made any progress.

  I tried ringing the local primary school to find out if Robert could be admitted before his fifth birthday, but the earliest time was at the beginning of the term in which he was five and that was not for another year.

  We were welcomed back in the local shops.

  ‘And what,’ one of the shopkeepers asked Robert, ‘have you got that’s new?’

  Robert replied immediately, ‘A new car.’

  Everyone roared with laughter; we had finally had to replace the A40, which was beyond repair, with an old Vauxhall, and this was far more exciting and interesting to Robert than the new baby. I was relieved and glad that he was not obsessively interested in Amanda, for I hoped he would avoid the pain of extreme jealousy. When I fed her, I tried not to exclude him from the occasion, and I would invite him to make himself comfortable on my bed, as I myself did, and whilst Amanda contentedly took her feed, I would sing to him, racking my brains for inspiration and coming up with such varied concerts as songs from ‘South Pacific’, followed by ‘My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean’ and ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.

  Morning playschool and regular clinic visits somehow fitted into the scheme of things and I was happy to see that Amanda—often discontented and always hungry—was nevertheless gaining weight fast, at a rate of half a pound a week.

  At weekends, the pressures abated a little. One Sunday, we displayed Amanda to our neighbours, Doug and Beryl, and they took photographs of my sleepy three-week old daughter in my arms, with Robert standing solemnly next to us, like a guard on duty.

  A couple of weeks later, on our fifth wedding anniversary, I cooked a celebration dinner, and unexpectedly that night, Bruce, on a flying visit from Ireland, called in. We sat talking for hours, putting out of our minds the sink full of washing up awaiting us and the impending two o’clock feed.

  The next day, I sat in the garden, savouring the September sunshine, browsing through a garden catalogue, while Amanda was peaceful and Robert playing, visualising displays of spring bulbs in my mind’s eye—something to look forward to during the winter months.

  The garden played an important part in my life now. It wasn’t tidy and it wasn’t weeded, except when Guiseppe appeared occasionally and took it in hand, but it was a place of creation. Babies—and three-year-old boys too—are demanding creatures, and flowers are not. Often, I would run from the house, just to see a new bud or flower, and after a minute or two of absorbing the peace of the garden away from the call of domesticity, I would return, refreshed, only to find Robert hurriedly putting on his boots to join me. Then sometimes, to spare his disappointment, I would take him on a guided tour, pointing out the radiant dahlias flowering happily next to marguerites, a pot marigold fortuitously planted by an unknown bird and tomatoes, at last ripening in the sun. Only the fruit trees had failed to produce their harvest.

  The summer lingered on and we took another weekend trip to Brighton, but the hut was to be closed in October, and when we went there to collect a few large items for my parents in the car, the first hint of autumn was present in the grey mist from the sea.

  For a very few minutes we stood chatting to one of our neighbours at the hut, before we left. She mentioned the boy in the wheelchair, whom Robert had played ball with. He had been crippled by the lifesaving operation he had undergone as a baby. Not for the first time, I was filled with gratitude and relief that my own baby, though tiny, was perfect.

  A plague of flies filled the air, and I was glad we had put the insect net over the carry-cot. We hurried away from the promenade, saying our goodbyes till next spring.

  ‘Take care o
f them, Michael,’ said our friend. ‘You’re a real family man now.’

  14. At the First Stroke of Autumn

  Autumn lived up to its reputation and, one morning, the mist was so bad that I turned the car homewards on the way to Robert’s playschool, saying that I dared not go any further. Usually, the morning mists gave way to brilliantly sunny days, so that it was difficult to believe we were creeping towards winter. But even before the middle of September, Robert developed his first cold of the season. I mentioned it at my post-natal check-up.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to stop the baby getting it?’ I asked.

  But the doctor shook his head, saying, ‘Not a thing,’ and sure enough, in less than a week, Amanda had caught it.

  It couldn’t have happened at a less convenient time. I was in the throes of preparing for a visit from Philippa and Colin on Sunday, and a few days after that was Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, when many of the least devout fast for twenty-five hours. It would be necessary to prepare special meals for the beginning and the end of the Fast, even though, on this occasion, I would merely restrict myself to eating simple foods during the day, as I was nursing a baby.

  I had one dreadful night, when I was awoken constantly by Amanda crying; she was so blocked up that she was snuffling and snorting in discomfort. But in the morning, I was not sure whether to ring the doctor or not. He had not seemed to regard a cold as very serious, and I was reluctant to ask him to call unnecessarily. But I was without the car that day, and I didn’t want to take the baby out in the pram to the surgery. A good middle of the road course seemed to be to ring the local Health Visitor and get her advice. She asked if the baby was taking her feed and I told her that she was; in fact it had been the only way to comfort her during the night. The Health Visitor was reassuring—there was probably little to worry about, but she would try to come to see her if she could. But the next day she telephoned apologetically; she had been too busy to call round and wondered if I still wanted her to see the baby? Amanda was so much better that I was no longer worried, and told her not to come.

  I had been so concerned about the effect of the usual infections upon Amanda, that as the cold passed, I felt quite elated. Philippa and Colleen’s visit on the following Sunday was a great success and our two boys, Robert and David, wandered off into the woods with the two Daddies, while I fed Amanda and chatted to Philippa, expecting a second baby herself at the end of the year. Philippa, who had sent us a telegram asking, ‘Can we have the wonderful recipe?’ had been impressed by our cleverness at producing a daughter, and made a great fuss of Amanda, for once dressed up in a frilly pink dress instead of one of her usual flannelette nighties.

  ‘Now that you’ve got a boy and a girl,’ she asked me, ‘would you have another?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered slowly. ‘I might still like to have three children, but it’s too early to say yet. At the moment, I’m just glad it’s all over and I don’t have to have another baby tomorrow.’

  When tomorrow came, I still felt a sense of relief—relief still, that Amanda was better, and relief (as always) that a day of entertaining was over and I could collapse back into my usual routine. It was raining dismally outside and it was not a day for an ambitious programme.

  Michael’s mother was away on holiday and that evening, we received a disturbing phone call from Sonia—things had gone hopelessly wrong, it seemed, and my mother-in-law had written unhappily from Majorca.

  I was feeding the baby while they talked; she lay so contentedly in my arms, I couldn’t help feeling that this was more important than anything else in the world, even family problems. Not always an easy baby, I had had occasion to say many times in the last few weeks, ‘Madam Amanda, you’re far from “loveable”.’ But tonight she seemed at her best. After her feed she lay on a sheet on the floor, kicking her legs frantically, freed for the moment from the restriction of her nappy. Her eyes were alert as she followed the movements of her father. She seemed so different from the scraggy, screwed-up little creature delivered less than two months ago. Her eyes were blue and her cheeks smooth and rosy and she had learned to smile all of three weeks ago.

  I was quite disappointed in her, when she reverted to her normal practice of crying when I put her in the carry-cot. She had been behaving so beautifully—I had quite thought she was growing out of her baby tantrums and would settle down to sleep contentedly. She’d been up quite long enough—it was nearly nine o’clock. I still had the washing up to do, and I’d left a pile of ironing on my bed, so as usual I ignored the fretful sounds and got down to work. But in the end, I was too tired to do the ironing. Michael and I just sat on the settee, and I couldn’t stop chuntering on about little Amanda—how bonny, how pretty she was—how she was going to charm all the young men, when she grew up—until Michael stopped me, saying, ‘You’ll give her a “nehora” (a curse)’. I was quite surprised at him—for he didn’t use all that many Jewish expressions, and wasn’t normally superstitious—and I told him so. Still he was soon back to his practical self, picking up the nappy bucket and heaving the contents into the washing machine (rather than fishing them out individually as I always did). I told him it was hardly worth the bother—there were only two or three nappies in there—but he took no notice and, running true to form, was still practically ready for bed before I’d even started to undress.

  The pile of un-ironed washing was lying on the bed. I wondered afterwards if things would have been different if I had come in earlier to collect it.

  In the darkness, I wandered slowly over to the cot to check the baby. She was right up at the top of the cot, squashed into the corner.

  ‘That doesn’t look very good,’ I remarked, slightly concerned.

  ‘Ssh, you’ll wake her,’ said Michael.

  It was only two hours since she’d gone to bed.

  ‘She won’t wake up,’ I replied—then not liking the sound of the words, added, ‘Not until about two o’clock, anyway.’

  I bent over the cot—she was a very quiet sleeper—I couldn’t hear a sound from her, and I moved her arm gently, but it fell back limply without response.

  ‘I can’t hear her breathing,’ I said, and put my head even closer to her. Still there was no sound. Michael came over and I waited for him to reassure me, but after a moment he said slowly, ‘There’s something wrong.’

  With increasing fear I turned her over onto her back. My roughness should have disturbed her, but it didn’t and, suddenly panic-stricken, I rushed to turn on the light. It no longer mattered if I woke her. I had to have the reassurance that all was well.

  But there was no reassurance in the little face in the cot. Her eyes, closed, were dark circles sunk in the ghastly white of her face. I heard myself say, ‘Oh my God!’ and, as if I were an observer, thought how theatrical the words sounded.

  And then, quite calmly, as if an ice-cold automaton had taken over from me, I went over to our bedroom telephone and dialled the doctor’s number.

  The impersonal tones of an operator answered.

  ‘What number are you calling?’

  I reeled off the number, including the local code.

  ‘What exchange, caller?’

  I racked my brains for a moment until the name of the exchange came to me.

  ‘You have to give me the name, not the code,’ he lectured.

  For a moment the calm left me.

  ‘Will you hurry, this is an emergency!’

  He gave me the number of another doctor on call. But it seemed pointless to bring a strange doctor here from further away. Instead I dialled 999.

  Michael said he would take the car to the top of the lane, so that the ambulance would know where to come. I took the baby from the carry-cot and held her in my arms. Her body felt soft in the familiar flannelette nightie. Part of my mind was thinking, ‘It’s all a mistake; it’s all going to come out all right in the end. Things like this don’t happen to us. We’re just no
rmal people.’

  Michael rushed back in.

  ‘I can’t get the car to start!’

  ‘Never mind. Take the torch and walk up to the top of the lane and look out for the ambulance,’ I replied, calm in the dreadful knowledge that it wasn’t really going to matter.

  I had never learned how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but I tried to breathe life into her and I gently massaged her heart. Was it my imagination? Did her skin take on a creamy colour? If she started to breathe now, would she be brain damaged? Surely she had been without oxygen too long. But I had to try.

  The ambulance arrived. The men rushed into the house and seized Amanda from me, and I, almost reluctantly, gave her up.

  There were a few seconds of indecision, when we realised that only one of us could go with the ambulance. Then it seemed natural that I should go and Michael should stay at home with Robert.

  Automatically, I took a coat and got into the back of the ambulance. The ambulance man was trying to resuscitate the baby. All through the journey, he never stopped working on her. I was grateful for his efforts. But he must have known, as I did in my heart, that it was fruitless.

  At the county hospital, I sat in a small waiting room. A very plump nurse brought me a cup of tea and I sat in front of an electric fire. The tea was sickly sweet. For a moment I thought I was going to be sick. I felt very hot, and yet incapable of removing my coat. I wished I had some cigarettes with me.

  At last the nurse reappeared.

  ‘You know what I’m going to tell you,’ she said.