A Glove Shop In Vienna

A Dark-Haired Daughter

When Julie Howard came to tea and burst into tears over my flapjacks, I rejected, quite quickly, a number of possibilities. That she had ‘Fallen in Love with Another’, for example. I lived opposite the Howards in a cottage I had bought after my retirement from the village school, and only the broad-mindedness acquired by dealing for thirty years with what went on behind the Infant lavatories enabled me to view, unblushingly, the physical enthusiasm of Julie for her husband and his for her. Similarly I rejected bankruptcy (Donald was the local doctor and doing very nicely), petty crime and illness. Julie looked fine.

Or did she?

‘You’re pregnant again?’ I hazarded and quickly poured another cup of tea.

She nodded, sniffed. ‘It’s so awful, Mouncey, I don’t know what to do! It isn’t just the guilt, though that’s dreadful. I mean, did you know that all the people in the world can’t stand together on the Isle of Wight any more? Perhaps on one toe, that’s all! But quite apart from that, I just don’t feel I can bear it!’

‘I suppose you couldn’t…’ I began — and stopped.

My first memory of Julie was of a huge-eyed and dusky-headed five-year-old, tottering in tear-stained from break with a waterlogged earthworm hanging in a swoon from her small, pink hand. As a destroyer of life, born or unborn, Julie Howard was clearly a non-starter.

‘There’s only one way I can bear it,’ she said. ‘If it’s a girl. A dark-haired little girl, very small and gentle. I could bear that. Maybe she’d love music and I could play the piano to her, or she’d want to go to ballet classes. Of course I wouldn’t pressurise

her; if she wanted to be an engineer or an aviator I’d back her up. Naturally. But you know what I mean?’

I did know.

Julie already had three little boys. I myself had watched them — alike as peas, terrible as an army with banners — grow from bald and bullet-headed babies chronically crimsoned with hunger and rage, to flaxen-headed, blue-eyed replicas of their father who spent their days ricocheting off the furniture, whooping from upturned wheelbarrows or falling out of the few trees in the Howards’ garden which had survived their coming. ‘Julie’s Juggernauts’ was how Angus, Jamie and Guy were known in East Moreton, and if Julie felt she could face only a gentle, dark-haired daughter, no living soul could blame her.

‘Girls are more likely later in marriage; I read it somewhere,’ I I said. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

News of the baby spreading through East Moreton found the village sharply divided. There were optimists like Mrs Hicks, the grocer’s wife, who cited cases of daughters born to men with as many as seven sons, and there were others, such as Ben Farrer at The Feathers, who said darkly that Dr Howard’s genes were not of the kind that gave way suddenly. What everyone was agreed on was that if the baby was another boy, Julie — already worn out by the other three and never allowed, being a doctor’s wife, to be ill — would crack up and crack up badly.

I like to think that my own efforts had something to do with the growth of confidence in Moreton as Julie’s pregnancy advanced. After all, a retired headmistress has a certain standing. Certainly by the late spring, anyone who dared to suggest that the Howards’ new baby might be a boy was regarded as unpatriotic, defeatist or just plain nasty.

Meanwhile, over snatched cups of coffee in my cottage, Julie and I played the name game. Sometimes it was a grave and dedicated little girl out of a Russian ballet school that we conjured up:

‘What about Natasha, do you like that? Or Tatiana?’

Sometimes we felt old-fashioned and Victorian.

‘Tabitha’s nice, don’t you think? Or Griselda? Do you remember The Cuckoo Clock?’

Or we would draw out of the ether a peat-eyed, barefooted little Celt as we toyed with Kirsty or Mhairi or Catriona.

Once — I had neuralgia and wasn’t quite myself- I said stupidly: ‘And if it’s a boy?’

Julie’s face clouded over. ‘Oh, don’t, Mouncey. Please don’t even talk about it!’

As the months passed, the support of the village grew steadily. Mrs Hicks said Julie was carrying high and that was a girl for sure; old Mrs Elmhirst, who dabbled in astrology, said that nothing could be more favourable than the way Jupiter was carrying on with Mars; and the Vicar, when questioned, closed his eyes and intoned: ‘… all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’’

Nevertheless, in secret I worried about Julie. As her pregnancy advanced she looked more and more exhausted and once, when I found her crying over the ironing board, she said, ‘Oh, Mouncey, I had such a ghastly dream! The midwife was holding up the baby — all bald and bullet-headed, you know, with ears like handlebars — and saying, “It’s a boy!” and when I put out my arms to take him he punched me on the jaw.’ She began to cry again. ‘I’m so tired, Mouncey, I can’t take any more males!’

Two weeks before the baby was due, my widowed sister rang from London. She had to have a minor operation and asked if I could possibly come up for a few days to help.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon when I returned. Stepping down on to the platform I saw Mrs Hicks on the other side, waiting for the 3.47 to town.

She saw me and waved. ‘The baby’s come, Miss Mouncefield!’ she shouted — and then her train drew in and I could hear no more.

Well, no matter. The cottage hospital was not far out of my way and I only had a little case. I set off down the High Street.

It was a heartening and friendly place, the maternity wing. Glistening lino, fresh-painted walls…

‘May I see Mrs Howard? I know it’s not visiting time, but I’ve just come from town.’

The Sister nodded. ‘Room 23. She’s on her own, being a doctor’s wife.’

My hand was shaking as I opened the door. Suddenly I felt I could not bear it if Julie had not got her heart’s desire.

It was all right! More than all right! Julie was sitting up in bed, her cheeks glowing and her eyes blazing with joy.

I went over and kissed her. ‘I haven’t brought any flowers yet, pet, I just came off the train.’

‘I don’t need flowers,’ said Julie ecstatically. ‘I don’t need anything! Look!’

She pointed to the cot from which soft snuffling noises came. I went over, peered inside — and almost recoiled.

Pugilistic, steaming with uncontrollable life, bald and bullet-headed, with ears like handlebars, the latest Howard chewed with cannibalistic fervour at his own wrist.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous, Mouncey? Isn’t he the most beautiful baby you ever saw?’ said Julie, and the look on her face made my heart turn over. ‘I’m so happy! So incredibly happy! I must be the happiest person in the world!’