As she went through the doorway I saw that the back of her grey gown was darkened, and darkening further even as I looked, by some flood. Was it possible that my wife had wet herself at her own dinner-table?
I waited, but Norah did not reappear, only finally flustered Alma, the new maid, poked her head around the doorway, as if I were a tradesman owed some money, who did not require proper courtesies, and shouted out hastily, âIt is coming, Mr Singer, the baby is coming, sir!' and was gone again, leaving me sitting in foolish pomp at the head of an empty table, with an uncleared clutter of plates around me.
I had known for years, especially at my own marriage, that a husband is the least important accessory at a wedding. The gown, the bridesmaids' gowns, the going-away outfit, the flowers, the choice of hymnsâall were more important than the bridegroom. Now I discovered that the unimportance of a man at his own wedding is as nothing compared to the unimportance of a man at the birth of his own child. I sat in the parlour, where the fire was dying away for lack of coal in the coal-scuttle, and submerged myself in the sober facts of the
Sydney Morning Herald
, lit a cigar and let it go out, poured myself a port and drank it too quickly, and sat hiccupping, crouching lower and lower over the creaking coals.
But no matter how many solemn pieces of news I read, no matter how I puffed, swallowed, hiccupped and crouched, I could not fail to hear the sounds from the room above. All my study of the statues in the Botanical Gardens, the books on
The Sacred Bond
, Valmai and all the rest of them, even the various textures of my wife, had in no way prepared me for those sounds. At first I thought the screams must be some aberration of the wind in the shutters, and went around the room checking each one. Then I wondered if what I heard was not a large sound travelling some distance, but a tiny sound close up, and I poked and prodded at the embers, in case some bit of something damp was setting up a tiny squealing. I could not believe for a very long time that the sounds were definitely coming from upstairs, and it took me even longer to comprehend that they must be coming from the dainty throat of my wife.
Nothing I had ever experienced made it possible for me to believe that any human being could make such noises, and certainly not a lady. And it was simply not credible that it should be my soft-spoken wife, immaculate and modulated at all times of day or night, whose voice was never raised, whose control over the various operations of her body was total, and who would be embarrassed beyond words to hear sounds like these.
These sounds were made by a person who did not care what anyone thought: they were made, could only be made in their dreadful coarse frankness of pain, by someone who had forgotten that they were part of the human race: they were sounds made by someone entirely alone with the unbearable.
Around the time of the arrival of the midwife, the timbre of the sounds changed to something more like hoarse cries for help. By the time the specialist had arrived, solemn in his whiskers, brushing past the ineffectual hovering husband on his way up the stairs, the sounds Norah was producing were a kind of agonised mooing.
I had long since stopped even pretending to read the
Sydney Morning Herald
; I had lit several cigars, poured more port, lit every lamp in the room, paced up and down like a man in a cartoon: generally I had not known what to do with myself. Finally, frozen in the bleak room, I went out myself to fetch coal and ran into Alma, heaving a great kettle of hot water up the stairs, panting, wild-eyed: the look she gave me could only have been one of accusation. âOh, Mr Singer, it is bad, it is real bad,' she said, then set her mouth tight and went on slopping the kettle up the stairs.
I went down to the scullery, feeling that nature was being turned on its head on this wild night. That grubby and illiterate maid-of-all-work was full of power tonight, and Albion Gidley Singer, man of expensive and extensive education, of spotless linen, beautiful manners, and a considerable way with the ladies, mattered about as much as a puppy underfoot. Alma was mistress over the master tonight: she was invited into the room upstairs, while I was not. Alma could look at me with barely disguised scorn because she knew the facts of what was going on up there, and I did not. I knew the orifice the child was likely to emerge from, that far simple logic could get me, but beyond that I had not the slightest image of what the thing involved.
As the hours passed and a second coal-scuttle was emptied, the sounds from upstairs found a new tone. There was no longer fear or despair in them, no longer a pleading cadence. Now they were the sounds of a being in outrage. There was an element of astonishment, and an element of muscular rage. They were now the cries of someone doing battle, someone becoming more furious and more determined with every new blow: someone in whom mere pain had been transformed into adamantine will.
The chill that I was beginning to feel around my heart now was not entirely due to the lateness of the hour and the coldness of the room. There was another private and shameful chill of knowing that I would not be able to survive what Norah was now surviving. Man and all that I was, I would have despaired, would have laid down my burden and died rather than go on, and on, and on, with this thing that seemed to get nowhere. That flimsy, silly, timorous woman Norah, who had to summon me from the next room to kill a spider, who ran screeching at the sight of a mouse along the skirting-board, who collapsed in a heap if her pink moire got a drop of rain on it: this little nothing of a person had found within herself some warrior who could go on doing battle all night.
MY CHILD, a large pink daughter of many wrinkles and folds, was the most indubitable fact I had ever seen. She shocked me, lying naked and lewd on a sheet: her cleft was swollen, pink, pursey. The women watched me, to see what I would make of this creature with its privates as shameless and swollen as a libertine's, but I betrayed nothing. Norah stared with her biscuit-coloured eyes, Alma gawped and breathed, and the midwife in her bloodspattered white would not leave me alone with her eyes. âLook, what a beauty, Mr Singer,' they crowed. âLook, look, look!' and they thrust her tiny cleft towards me, and wanted to see me hold it.
Like any man worth his salt, and especially one in charge of a family business, I had wished for a son and heir. I had had various names in readiness, and had been enjoying small scenes in my mind, of introducing my manly young chap to acquaintances, and hearing them exclaim at what a fine fellow he was and how much he took after his father, and other no less comforting scenes of handing over the business at the end of a long and successful life to a son full of respect for his venerable father.
I had never thought of a girl as a possible event. The birth of my daughter was a harsh reminder to me that dreams are not facts, and dreams are not worth a pinch of dust.
How could it benefit me, I cried to the dead gods who had left us spinning here alone, to have a female child? âLord,' I would have cried, had I been able to believe in any Lord. âLord, how could'st thou?'
Such an unlooked-for event shook me somewhat. The steady world around me, in which a mile always contained 5,280 feet, and a table was a solid thing that hurt your knuckles if you struck it, took on for a while the unsteady quality of betrayal.
Babies were women's business, so that apart from gazing at the face surrounded by lace in the crib, I did not have much to do with Lilian the baby. Once or twice Norah handed me the white bundle, but there seemed nowhere to get a grip on the thing, and the way the head lolled backwards and forwards alarmed me: what if my daughter's head snapped off its shoulders while I was in charge?
On the occasion of her first birthday a celebration was thought to be in order, so the family assembled. Mother came down from Katoomba, where she had flung herself into good works and temperance. âNo, Albion,' she replied blandly to my enquiries. âI do not find the cold a problem, I just make sure I have my combinations on, and thank you, but Daphne and I seem to see eye to eye on most things.' Certainly the air, or something, had put a flush in her previously pasty cheeks and given her a liveliness of eye I did not remember her having. Norah saw the change too, and exclaimed with a tactless astonishment, âMy goodness, Mrs Singer, how wonderfully well you are looking!'
Certainly she exuded rude sinewy health now, but was rude sinewy health really what one wished for in a lady? Her stride as she crossed the room to see her granddaughter was robust enough to set the knick-knacks on the occasional table aquiver. Her hair was no longer arranged in an intricate construction of combs and pins, her clothes were plain to the point of ugliness, and she seemed to have forgotten that a lady does not monopolise the conversation about her own interests, and not in such a loud and dogmatic voice.
Ambitions to better the world were laudable, but they appeared to do nothing for a lady's charms. I made a note: Mother would have to be warned that she was in danger of
letting herself go.
She swooped on Lilian with great crows and cries of delight, rattling rattles at her with inexhaustible energy, and exclaiming over and over again the very things I felt might be better passed over in tactful silence: âLook at these great big fat legs! Look at the size of her chest! And goodness, how strong she is!'
To tell the truth, I was wondering whether Norah had not been stuffing the child like a goose, she was so very large and muscular-looking, and flung herself around in people's arms in such a determined and vigorous way. It would have been more natural for a girl to have something delicate about her, something winsome, something altogether more yielding.
Kristabel was there, playing the fond aunt, though she made no secret of the fact that she was not the motherly type. She admired Lilian from a distance, making remarks about how advanced her niece seemed to be, but was uneasy when given her to hold. It occurred to me to wonder whether my sister was simply barren by nature, or whether, being such an unnatural woman, she was
taking precautions.
I had heard the phrase, and naturally I knew what it meant, but
taking precautions
was another of those slimy female mysteries that a man was supposed to nod wisely about, and not enquire into too closely. I thought it was not a bad idea. It was hard to imagine the weird and wonderful progeny that might have come from the union of a woman like a man and man like a woman.
For Forbes was full of what one could only call maternal feelings. He clucked and sang at Lilian, and played
this little piggy
with her toes, and did
this is the way the ladies ride
with her on his knees: altogether making a monkey of himself.
I tried to think of the way I had seen other fathers deal with their children: surely a man was not expected to do this type of thing? I watched Forbes with embarrassment, but also with an uneasy knowledge that I could not have delightedly lost myself in a child the way Forbes could, even if it had been expected of me. He was not simply acting the part of the fond uncle, he was actually taking joy in every moment, relishing every smile she gave him, full of gladness when she laughed. Something in him was able to blossom with a child, and when I searched my own heart I knew I was lacking such a thing.
When Lilian, in the middle of all the excitement, suddenly went still, became very red in the face and began to grunt like an old woman, it was Forbes who laughed fit to rattle the ornaments, and exclaimed, âBy Jove, she is busy down below, that's the girl, Lilian!' I kept myself very cool about it all, but I could not help feeling it was something like having an animal in the room. From the area around Lilian there came a pungent smell. I was prepared to pretend it did not exist, but Forbes did not seem to have learnt the same sort of manners I had. âBy Jove, that is a rich aroma, Singer,' he blared out shamelessly. âThat is a healthy system at work!' Kristabel and Mother and I pretended a matter-of-factness about it all, but I could not help feeling that there was an obscene relish in his enjoyment of the bodily functions of my daughter.
When the nursemaid brought Lilian back it seemed that it was my turn. The proud father was handed his daughter, and while everyone looked on, staring as if wanting to see me make a fool of myself, I tried to dandle her on my knee. But she was an awkward child to dandle. She heaved around, arched backwards in my hands, flung toys across the room when I offered them to her, and was generally as wilful and uncomfortable as a lapful of monkeys.
They watched and watched, Mother and Kristabel and Norah and Forbes and the nursemaid, all their eyes on me. I grew more and more awkward, because as well as being restless, it seemed to me that my daughter was being a tease: yes, at one year old somehow she was already a flirt! Her tiny feet trampled into my lap, and however often I took her feet in my hand and shifted them onto my legs, they went straight back to the area of my groin: she stamped and fidgeted there, and laughed into my face to see me wince. She laughed, showing gums and a few lonely teeth, and collapsed against me so that I felt her wet hot mouth pressed directly against my own, cold saliva running down my chin, and it took a considerable part of my strength to prise her away from the embrace. Titillation of a male seemed to come as the earliest instinct, before speech, before locomotion, almost before thought!
I felt myself becoming flushed with the consciousness of all those eyes watching while my daughter toyed with me, and it made me remember what I had not thought of for years, that occasion of similar awkwardness during my courtship of Norah, when that yellow dog had humped itself against me as if I were a bitch on heat, and Norah had pumped away with her questions, artful or artless I would never know.
It was the same confusion I felt now, not knowing what any of these women were thinking, or how much they might know about the male physiognomy. The women all stared and laughed and murmured comments to each other that I could not hear over Lilian crowing in my ear; the nursemaid stood grinning, Alma stared and nodded like a dolt, and Forbes was smirking and exclaiming as if to egg Lilian on, and winking at me.