Foal's Bread (12 page)

CHAPTER 5

‘O
h dear me, Rol,' said Ralda the following winter, meeting her brother at the door of Hinley's cottage hospital. ‘On your birthday too. And I was set to make you the best butter cake with sultanies.'

‘What's that meant to mean? Got a boy, haven't we? Cream man carried message.' Roley's thoughts raced in alarm to Noah. ‘What could be luckier than that for my birthday?'

‘Yes, but oh dearie me.' She looked out to the street, to the bake-house's new delivery van blowing enough smoke to choke a baby to death. Guilty she could've had such a thought she rushed on. ‘A boy born not right. Here comes Matron. She'll say what has to be said,' then, ‘Lassiter,' she murmured, and she wasn't referring to the name of any horse.

‘Mr Nancarrow?'

Roley stared at the woman wearing the great big white starched affair on her head and felt afraid. Looked like a bloomin iceberg and just about as frosty.

‘Matron?' He held his hat in his hands and under her gaze felt vulnerable without it on his head.

‘The thing is we've set the wheels in motion already for him to go to Lassiter.'

There, that terrible name again. The home for the retarded wasn't it, on that island before the river reached the sea at Port Lake? Roley felt more than his left foot faltering. Since childhood there'd been stories about Lassiter. He knew that whenever the lighthouse beam hit the windows the lunatics began to howl. The sound of the sharks moving through the mullet in the river in the summer made them that much worse. They'd escape then, charging off into the water, only to always be washed up drowned, their heads as big as whales by the time they were found because they'd started out anyway with water or worse on their brain.

‘Before the mother bonds,' Matron Hinley was saying. ‘And it can all just become like a dream that never happened.'

‘No son of ours is going to any such place,' burst out Roley.

‘Better wait till you set eyes on him,' said Ralda.

‘Is Noey alright? Can I go in?'

‘It wasn't such a long labour and she's had some breakfast. Haven't yer, Noh?' said Ralda, following the matron into the room. ‘She's had a bit of toast and butter.'

When Roley first looked at his wife he saw her lower her eyes in shame. He felt the thinness of panic in the noon air. Noah looked aged and blown, as if she was a sprinter pushed to gallop too many furlongs. He wouldn't have been surprised to see blood gushing out of her nostrils all over those sheets as white as wedding-cake icing.

‘I'll leave you now to talk,' said Matron. ‘But as it's a mongoloid boy that's been birthed, only one choice.'

In the throes of his disbelief Roley thought, what would that old battleaxe know? Mincing so painfully out of the room like a fat bull on a set of feet too small for its weight.

‘Thing is,' Noah began, ‘the feeling is we should give him up right now. Today. 'Fore any 'tachment can develop. Haven't even let me give him a feed or see him again. But listen, I can pick out his voice amongst the others wailing. He's the one screamin.'

‘Screaming for his mum, isn't it?' he said, but for a moment he just couldn't think because his mind was so full of fear at this inexplicable turn of events.

In Noah's exhausted mind, hazy still from pain and fatigue, was rising an old and urgent chant—
The butter box boat, the butter box baby—
for in the brief look she'd got of the newborn before they'd bundled him up and away she could see
him
alright. Uncle Nip. Even though his face was an idiot's. Like God had steered him all the way back up the Flaggy from the sea where he was long ago meant to have tipped over.

That Little Mister. Going against the current like that, all his limbs, his little fingers, feet and face. All filled up with water. And the colour of river water in his eyes too. Greeny-blue and sooty just at the edges. The exact opposite of Lainey's little blue sapphires.

It was too late to think about not bonding. Because of that Uncle Nipper one, she already had.

‘I told that Matron no baby of ours is going into no such place.' In his panic Roley also looked down.

‘But you haven't seen it, Rol.' He would see its eyes and know, she thought. He'd see its baby Uncle Nipper-after-a-spree eyes.

‘Wait here, Noh. I'll be right back.'

With Ralda leading the way, anxious not to bring that matron back out, he crept along the corridor to the nursery, which he could smell even before Ralda opened the door. Tears and fear, that was the smell.

They had put his and Noah's baby right away from the others, as if he alone were contaminated.

‘Don't say we didn't warn you,' Ralda was saying, her forehead as creased as that which was screaming there in the hospital cradle.

Now God, he prayed silently, what kind of a birthday present is that meant to be? It looked like it was about to explode, as a day nurse came in and tried to introduce a bottle into its mouth.

How could this have come? something in Roley's mind cried out. From him and Noh? This ruined monkey-looking thing?

‘Why haven't you got the fire blazing in here?' He turned on the nurse. ‘Want them all to die of pneumonia, is that it?'

‘He's getting picked up for Lassiter this afternoon.'

‘No,' said Roley emphatically, ‘he most certainly isn't. He's cold. Can't you see? Hungry for something he can eat. No Lassiter. Not for George.'

As the name of the recently dead king was heard in the nursery, the light blue air of the room seemed to grow paler. A hushed shock came over them all. Roley ploughed on. ‘Matron,' he said, because with its eyes narrowed to flints in readiness for a battle, she'd reappeared at the door, ‘we'd picked out George for a boy so George he'll be. Gunna rear him at One Tree with his big sister Elaine.'

‘You'll come to regret your decision, Mr Nancarrow. Much easier all around if you let him go now rather than later. He'll settle in then after the trip. They always do.'

Breaking all protocol, his mouth set into a line of decision, Roley picked up the baby. As he carried it down the corridor he thought of other unexpected moments. It was like thinking you'd lined your horse up just perfect for the jump only to have it slew sideways at the last minute and go through the wings.

But there, would you look at that. Just by moving with him in his arms the screams were turning to crying, to little hiccoughy heaves.

‘Brought him back, Noh,' he said triumphantly. ‘Reckon George knows what he needs. Gunna leave him at the best milk bar in town. And once I've been into Pearsons' Produce in Port, will be right back to see how the pair of you is making out.'

Alone for the first time with the baby, for a moment Noah just felt horror. In the clear light of day no look of Uncle Nipper at all, let alone herself or Rol or Lainey.

Then, more to keep it quiet than from any maternal stirring, she poked a breast into its mouth. Strong on the suck though. Like a bawling hungry poddy being led to a bucket by sucking on the hand, it was mastering how to get the milk almost straight away.

No tit cups needed for you, and in admiration at its sheer pluck, she felt a momentary softening fill her heart. Almost an amusement. Its little groans and calls. Then the way it flinched when she pulled it off to give the other side a go. That look in its wrinkles. The determination.

‘And Roley says we're to keep you,' she whispered, so that when the matron came in she was ready too, to fight on George's behalf and to enjoy the momentary breather from milking, since already this winter her chilblains were so bad she could barely bend her fingers.

The following day was no less hard. In the presence of the contingent that came from One Tree there came a feeling of collective embarrassment and dismay that just had to be borne. Roley saw it sweeping over them as they clustered in around Noah.

George, all swaddled up in Ralda's new blue knitting, was awake, but at first no one looked at him the way anyone in the presence of a normal baby would.

Reenie it was who first broke the silence. ‘Reckon he takes after his aunties more than his mum,' she said.

Roley looked gratefully over to his eldest sister.

‘Why's that, Reen?' asked his mother, and she flung a look of bitter outrage at Noah. You've gone and given me a little lunatic for me first grandson, said her expression, her own mouth fallen open like she was locked inside Lassiter herself.

‘Don't go gawpin at him, Mum,' said Ralda, jiggling Lainey on her hip. ‘You'll scare him.' For Ralda, of all of them, would be able to love him best first of all. Not even the great ugly new pair of brown-framed glasses on her nose could obscure the kindness in her eyes. ‘Why's he like us, Reen?'

‘Cos he's a little vealer,' said Reenie, and cast her mind back to other babies like George she'd seen born during her nursing training. How often it was that they died, she didn't say. Holes in the heart or other complications.

‘Well, I don't know, Reen. Here, Laine, you go over to your Nanny.'

‘By gee I hate that, Ral. How many times do I have to say reminds me of the black gins? I'm her Nin, not her flaming Nanny.'

‘Well, I'm going to have a nurse of George, all nine pound of him,' and Ralda, disregarding her mother, bent down to Noah for the transfer.

Noah and Roley, feeling that nothing was ever going to be alright again, watched the baby settle into Ralda's arms like a great big barn cat.

Lainey, snuggling in turn into her father, was assessing what this new arrival meant in terms of the survival of everyone's affections for her own self. She hoped things with Ralda weren't about to change for the worse. Often she thought that she loved her Aunty Ralda more than anyone. Aunty Ral always smelt so beautiful, of little lollies tucked somewhere deep inside the top of her dress. Buttery skin from non-stop baking. You could easily get one across the leg from Nin, Mum or Aunty Reen, but never Aunty Ral. More likely a little lol from Aunty Ral. Her lap was wide and warm and if you looked hopeful enough she'd scoop you right up against her big boosies and fish something good out of a pocket.

‘There yer go, George,' said Septimus, looking baffled. What'd been the name of that retarded boy, head always half-full of lice, that was tormented without mercy all his years at Oakey Flat Public? A face on it as big as a bloody Barrett's Bush Block pony. Now here, blow me down, his thoughts continued, the Nancarrows had been given their very own Leaf Slingsby—that was the name. That's right. Their own baby blockhead. George.

Septimus shifted uneasily in his boots, remembering small acts of cruelty he'd devised himself for poor old Leafy, who in the light of these would've probably viewed a stay in Lassiter as heaven.

No sooner had this unwilling memory of his own persecution of an idiot arisen than a fierce feeling of protection rose up in his breast. Woe betide anyone who burnt George with a magnifying glass or made him open his mouth for a lolly and spat in there instead.