The Sugar Mother (23 page)

They went quietly down the hall together because Leila needed, she said, the bathroom. Edwin, with the comfortable feeling of being the provider, went on to the kitchen to boil eggs, Leila having decided on the way that she might need two.

 

E
dwin called Leila dumpling and listened for the sound of her soft footfall in the passage outside his door. They took little walks together in the pines, breathing in the warm fragrance. The pines seemed lighter and the bleached grass gave way to patches of sand. Leila had to stop to empty first one shoe and then the other. Edwin, as usual, was surprised how he could forget, from one season to the other, these gifts from the pines, the gentle sighing of the wind in the tops of the trees and the warmth and the sustaining quality of the air. While Leila emptied her shoes he supported her tenderly.

The yellow flowers on a spiked bush outside his study window leaned towards the panes. The whole tall hedge leaned and pressed the woody centers of the bushes towards the house. From his desk he could look up into the thickness of the dividing hedge and through it to glimpses of a faraway blue sky. The scent of the yellow flowers and of the Chinese privet filled his study, especially at night. Further down, out of sight of his window, the loquat tree blossomed and fruited and they heard the birds every morning noisily in the branches. He told Leila it was too much trouble to eat loquats, they were best left for the birds. Leila's mother said loquats might be acid for the baby. She watched Leila's diet carefully.

At the back and at the front of the house everything seemed to be coming into flower: cape lilacs, honeysuckle and the olive trees. But especially there was the bush outside the study, with the brilliant splashes of yellow against the clear blue sky.
There was a piling up of color and sweetness, a burgeoning of life in the outside world as the season made changes towards summer. And inside the house Leila blossomed. Her skin glowed and her hair shone. Her eyes seemed larger and her expression softer. She carried the enormous bulge in her short plump body, Edwin thought, bravely. He told her she was brave and she asked him why. He put his hand where he thought the baby's head was.

“He's the wrong way up,” she told him. “He'll turn later and point down,” she said. The doctor had explained everything very clearly; that's how she knew. Sometimes it seemed to Edwin that the head or the feet were at Leila's side, in her side. He expressed concern.

“I suppose he turns around,” Leila said. Her fullness made her seem shorter and more solid and she was very calm. Edwin thought she seemed happy and confident. He thought he had never before seen real happiness like this. Quietly the house was being made ready for the new occupant.

“Here's a man as has shed two thirds of his body weight.” Leila's mother read the paper during a late breakfast. “And the Duchess of Windsor, poor woman, they should have given her a bit of peace and happiness. Fabulous emeralds go a long way but alone they aren't enough for happiness.” Leila's mother consulted her knitting pattern, drank up her tea, concentrated on a stitch, scratched her head delicately with a knitting needle and turned the page of the newspaper. “And here,” she said, “here's someone I've never heard of about to reveal some incidents he could never tell anyone. The things they put in the papers these days! Give me your cup, Leila pet, and I'll read the leaves.” Every morning breakfast was late and comfortable.

Edwin in his study, searching for and finding references and quotations suitable for the writing of the lectures for the following year, felt safe. It was as if he was being carried along in the progress of Leila's pregnancy. There was a hitherto unknown serenity in the monthly visits to the clinic, in Leila's increasing size and weight, and in the recent acquisitions
which seemed to be in all parts of the house. Leila's pleasure in the new things gave him pleasure.

“Where are you, little sugar mother?” he called as soon as he stepped indoors. Leila, as if she spent her time listening for his key in the lock, was in the hall before he needed to call a second time.

One evening they spread out all the new little clothes. Some had been made by Leila's mother and by Leila and others were bought, chosen carefully to suit any child so that a baby boy need not lie in his cradle distressed and fretful because he was wearing colors and clothes intended for a girl.

“There wasn't any old things to cut up”—Leila's mother allowed herself a complaint—“nothing to cut up for little sheets and pillowcases,” she said. “Dr. Sissilly has everything all new!”

“Are these enough?” Edwin, used to a plentiful wardrobe, surveyed the little collection of tiny singlets and jackets. He picked up some small white knitted things. “Oh,” he said, “they're socks.”

“Bootees,” Leila corrected him.

“They grow that fast,” Leila's mother said. She unwrapped another plastic bag. “There's some bigger sets in here,” she said, “and once the birth is announced and all your friends know, Dr. Sissilly will get no end of presents: clothes, toys, books—you name them, they'll come.” She sighed. “She'll not know where to put them.”

“I see.” Edwin could not help a small frown as he saw the procession—Paulette, Erica, Ida, Ida's daughters and others—bending over the cradle. Where would Leila be by then? Somewhere in England, out of reach, in a small suburban house, probably something mean, semidetached. He wanted to say “Don't go” to Leila, there and then, to make a big change in his life. One night in bed recently, Leila had said she didn't want to leave and he had comforted her, kissing away her words, saying that he was old and she would soon forget him and that she would be very happy with someone else. And to comfort himself he had caressed her possessively, making
love to her to find forgetfulness. Looking at the baby clothes now he felt worried and deeply ashamed.

“And these”—Leila's mother was unwrapping a large fold of white tissue paper—“are the christening gown and the shawl.” A froth of the softest cotton and lace and the finest cashmere wool lay like snow on the table.

“They are a surprise,” Leila said. “Mother made them at times when we were out. We never saw her making them.” Edwin
was
surprised. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the idea of so much love and devotion being stitched into clothing for his child. He looked at Leila's mother as if he had never seen her before. She, bending down smoothing the gown, did not notice. He thought the clothes were beautiful and said so. They made him feel humble but he did not know how to say this to these two women. He wanted to ask what had to be done about a christening. How was it arranged? In his lectures (first year) he often discussed the various rites of passage, the ceremonies which changed the status of the individual, one of them being the naming of the child and the acceptance by the church of the offered child. The statements in his lecture were about to become a part of his own life, except that he and Cecilia never went to church. It was always the tennis club on Sundays. He wondered if it was possible to simply choose a church and ask to have a baby christened.

Promises would have to be made and kept. He supposed in their new life they might prefer church to tennis. Happiness, he reflected as he watched Leila's mother fold away the fine white soft things, was often marred by an unexpected uneasiness. The shawl—he allowed himself the pleasure of the thought—must be symbolic of the garment which has no seams. He supposed Leila's mother did not know this but was simply carrying out a ritual of preparation. He felt he wanted to thank her and did so, his voice deeper than usual because of the overwhelming feelings of gratitude. Leila's mother smiled.

“I've enjoyed it,” she said, “enjoyed every minute of it all,
the sewing and everything.” It was a pleasure, she added, to keep house for a gentleman like Dr. Page. “It's not often,” she said, “that you get paid to enjoy yourself.”

“I like those little yellowy shawls babies have,” Leila said, “little stiff yellowy shawls; we haven't got one of them. I like them best.”

“Just you wait,” Leila's mother said. “Those little yellowy shawls as you call them is what a shawl like this one gets like after all the washings. Oh!” she cried suddenly. “Whatever am I saying!” And she burst into tears.

 

E
dwin, packing winter clothes unwillingly, paused to look, without wanting to, at Cecilia's letter to see which of her things she was asking him to bring. He had found the gloves she wanted. She had changed her mind about a certain dress she had asked for earlier, as she was all on for raging in a couple of little bargains, in sultry patterned satin, picked up when shopping in London with Vorwickl. She now had two pantsuits; he would rave over the camisoles, she said. That's what they call them now, camisoles. Revealing. She had two as Vorwickl, who had chosen the hot pink, couldn't squeeze into the below-the-knee pants. Her own choice had been the purple and silver, the sequins absolutely irresistible.

Edwin shook the mothballs out of his woolen (Jaeger) underwear and pushed too many pairs into his case. Cecilia was longing, she said in her letter, for Edwin to come. Vorwickl,
she wrote, had already upset Mumsie during a previous visit, just a weekend, with her ideas on the alternative life-style and she, Cecilia, needed Edwin to be there at Christmas as he was always so soothing for Mumsie. She was sure he would calm her down about Vorwickl's habits. Cecilia loved Christmas in England with all the remembered pleasures of childhood. She had never been able to enter into what she called “the spirit of Christmas” in the hot climate.

Cecilia went to church on Christmas Day. They all did. Buffy intended, every Christmas, to go to church more often, but he never did.

Edwin pushed an enormous long-sleeved pullover with a crazy Fair Isle pattern into the case. Apart from his hating the sweater (made by Cecilia's mother), it took an effort of will to even consider these warm clothes. Like the preparations for living in an unknown country, he reflected, it was similarly impossible to plan a whole year ahead, especially if the plans were made for another person, as Cecilia's plans were. He tried to think of her with affection and so hated the pullover even more. For one thing, it took up far too much space. He tried to make himself think of endearing qualities. An intellectual approach had often saved him when the physical failed. He would be seeing her, he told himself, in some of her more lovable moments, eating boiled fowl with greedy enthusiasm, dipping pieces of crusty bread in the golden broth while her mother looked on, smiling. Cecilia's mother's soups were always clear, glistening with beads of melted butter and often delicately speckled with fine green herbs. Her cooking was one continuous boiling fowl. He found it too rich and always ate as sparingly as he could.

The dinner parties so thoughtfully arranged by Cecilia had fallen through quite quickly, through no fault of Edwin's or anyone else's. As Daphne said, “
A throw of chance—and there goes Death—
Sorry, Teddy, for the thoroughly unsuitable quotation; you will know what I mean.”

First Paulette was back on traction and bedpans because of her disks and Buffy sat by her devotedly.

“My head's going bald with lying here.” Her voice was squeaky with indignation.

“Only at the back, m'dear,” Buffy reassured her. “It's only a small patch; it will grow again. Look at old Baldypate here.” He bent his white-fringed rosy head playfully towards her. At the time, Edwin, seeing Buffy do this, felt ashamed of his own lack of faithfulness and fondness. Leila, for a long time now, had been feeling the movements, thumpings she called them, of the baby, and Edwin's heart and mind were occupied with thoughts of the most tender kind, but not for Cecilia.

Buffy himself, when Paulette was better, had decided to face the knife and have his prostate removed, and Paulette sat by him. They all visited and sat and admired the clean scar which Buffy, himself amazed, was proud to show them. Leila needed new and more powerful bras and Leila's mother said she was sorry they were so expensive but to save money she had run up some little cottons to accommodate Leila's greater width instead of buying maternity dresses which, she said, cost the earth. Edwin said he thought the little cottons were charming, especially the ones with the round white collars. “Yes,” Leila's mother said, “the little Peter Pans are very sweet.” Edwin did not understand the reference and noted it in his book of the intangible, meaning to explore it more fully later.

Paulette and Erica, first one and then the other, had to have their veins done. Quite a prolonged business, as Buffy, laden with roses, said to Tuppy, who had chosen carnations, when they met on the steps of the hospital. Later, back at home, taking turns to be at each other's houses, Paulette and Erica had their bright banana lounges side by side. Edwin dutifully visited with fruit and flowers and read aloud to them from Edward Lear and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Paulette wanting to be amused and Erica needing to be submerged in images.

Everything in life was unpredictable, Edwin knew, except the changing of the seasons and the progress of Leila's pregnancy. Though that had to be carefully watched so that the rest of Daphne's unsuitable quotation could not come into use.

Leila's mother's sister died before the fulfilling of her last wish, which was to get back to a certain street of a London suburb. “It was for the best,” Leila's mother said in her practical way. “I doubt if the house she was thinking about is still there,” she said. Myra would never have stood the journey. Traveling without an invalid would be much simpler and Dr. Page was not to give it another thought. Edwin could see that Leila's mother's eyes were red and swollen. On his way home from the university he bought an armful of flowers.

Leila did not want Edwin to go away for Christmas. All along she said nothing, so that it was a surprise one night when she begged him not to go. She cried so much that Edwin was afraid some harm might come to the child. In the end he was obliged to fetch her mother, who made tea for them all.