days and weeks, mother and father and child, the holy trinity of the maternity hospital that gets made and remade and remade, day after day after day.
He’d first seen Jess when she’d been brought in with contractions, panicky, knowing much too much already about all the things that can go wrong. She’d been trying to have this child for years. He’d explained to her what would happen if her labour could not be stopped, how the baby would be cared for, what a twenty-five-week baby looks like, how big he would be, what to expect. Jess and Ian knew already that the child was a boy, and they had named him. And then for five weeks Jess had been in the hospital, on a drip, holding on to each hour and day. When the baby couldn’t be held back any longer, Adam was in the operating theatre, and Nicholas was delivered into his hands. Adam was responsible for Nicholas’s care until he died.
Adam did something I can’t fathom, to absorb that experience into him time after time without flinching, and yet be ready to begin again, by another bedside, with another phone call, with another baby born so early it couldn’t cry.
I knew that Adam was going back, in his head, over everything that had been done for Nicholas. He would evaluate it all. There were things to be learned, even if all you learned was more about unpredictability and your own limitations. These were the worst times, when it had looked as if a baby would make it and then it didn’t.
Nicholas was chill and stiff. The nurses would have made a print from the palms of his hands, and a print from the soles of his feet, and photographed him in death as they’d photographed him in life. If the parents could not bear these things now, they might ask for them later.
We had our living baby in her all-in-one winter suit, in her sheepskin pushchair liner. I stopped pushing and knelt to look at her. Her cheeks were lit with a flush of sleep, and I leaned close to feel her breath, so much stronger now than when she was new-born.
‘Is she warm enough?’ Adam asked. He came round and tucked her hands inside the sheepskin. Ruby would never wear mittens. I knew how big she would seem to him, and solid, with her skin like a fortress compared to the veiny, dark, translucent skin of the prem babies in their incubators.
Already, I thought, Nicholas knows all the mystery of life.
Adam put his arm around me. He took the left handle of the pushchair and I took the right. We walkedawkwardly, bumping hips through the bulk of our winter coats.
That night we would put Ruby into the deep cot where she seemed to swim herself to sleep. We would leave on the little light beside her. We would prop her door open, and prop our door open. We would take hold of each other. We would sink into each other.
We voyaged on in the dark, going farther each night. In the day, no matter what, I felt the waves of it beating in me, moving me. Soon Adam would come home. Soon we would walk upstairs. Soon we would turn on the little light, prop the doors, begin. We would fall asleep, still deep in each other’s bodies, locked, going down. In the morning Adam would get up first for Ruby and put her into bed beside me while I still slept. I would wake and see her face rising like the sun.
10
Damiano’s Dreamworld
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone –
Before he went into the hotel business, Mr Damiano ran a fairground. It was a place of dreams, both tawdry and bright. When I met him, his fairground days were long gone, but the more I knew him, the more I thought that one day he’d disappear and go back there. He would vanish from his empire of hotels and if you looked for him you might find him in a little travelling fair touring Linz and Melk and the outskirts of Vienna. He would be back in his booth in the middle of the fair, holding the strings that made a thousand dreams move. He would have shrugged off his beautiful suits and he’d
He’d first seen Jess when she’d been brought in with contractions, panicky, knowing much too much already about all the things that can go wrong. She’d been trying to have this child for years. He’d explained to her what would happen if her labour could not be stopped, how the baby would be cared for, what a twenty-five-week baby looks like, how big he would be, what to expect. Jess and Ian knew already that the child was a boy, and they had named him. And then for five weeks Jess had been in the hospital, on a drip, holding on to each hour and day. When the baby couldn’t be held back any longer, Adam was in the operating theatre, and Nicholas was delivered into his hands. Adam was responsible for Nicholas’s care until he died.
Adam did something I can’t fathom, to absorb that experience into him time after time without flinching, and yet be ready to begin again, by another bedside, with another phone call, with another baby born so early it couldn’t cry.
I knew that Adam was going back, in his head, over everything that had been done for Nicholas. He would evaluate it all. There were things to be learned, even if all you learned was more about unpredictability and your own limitations. These were the worst times, when it had looked as if a baby would make it and then it didn’t.
Nicholas was chill and stiff. The nurses would have made a print from the palms of his hands, and a print from the soles of his feet, and photographed him in death as they’d photographed him in life. If the parents could not bear these things now, they might ask for them later.
We had our living baby in her all-in-one winter suit, in her sheepskin pushchair liner. I stopped pushing and knelt to look at her. Her cheeks were lit with a flush of sleep, and I leaned close to feel her breath, so much stronger now than when she was new-born.
‘Is she warm enough?’ Adam asked. He came round and tucked her hands inside the sheepskin. Ruby would never wear mittens. I knew how big she would seem to him, and solid, with her skin like a fortress compared to the veiny, dark, translucent skin of the prem babies in their incubators.
Already, I thought, Nicholas knows all the mystery of life.
Adam put his arm around me. He took the left handle of the pushchair and I took the right. We walkedawkwardly, bumping hips through the bulk of our winter coats.
That night we would put Ruby into the deep cot where she seemed to swim herself to sleep. We would leave on the little light beside her. We would prop her door open, and prop our door open. We would take hold of each other. We would sink into each other.
We voyaged on in the dark, going farther each night. In the day, no matter what, I felt the waves of it beating in me, moving me. Soon Adam would come home. Soon we would walk upstairs. Soon we would turn on the little light, prop the doors, begin. We would fall asleep, still deep in each other’s bodies, locked, going down. In the morning Adam would get up first for Ruby and put her into bed beside me while I still slept. I would wake and see her face rising like the sun.
10
Damiano’s Dreamworld
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone –
Before he went into the hotel business, Mr Damiano ran a fairground. It was a place of dreams, both tawdry and bright. When I met him, his fairground days were long gone, but the more I knew him, the more I thought that one day he’d disappear and go back there. He would vanish from his empire of hotels and if you looked for him you might find him in a little travelling fair touring Linz and Melk and the outskirts of Vienna. He would be back in his booth in the middle of the fair, holding the strings that made a thousand dreams move. He would have shrugged off his beautiful suits and he’d
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