THE BABY

Having been born the baby Oliver enters the very earliest stages of forming opinions...

Baby Oliver lay on his back and gurgled. This wasn’t to say he was a happy baby, but the gurgle meant he wasn’t so miserable that he might as well be dead. In actual fact he was neither happy nor sad, though contentment occasionally reared its pretty little head.

Time might have been a problem for him had he the capacity to contemplate it.

It seemed he could remember forever, yet everything he saw out of eyes he hadn’t opened too many times had a freshness about it as though he’d only just become aware of it, and that didn’t gel with his developing concept of always and forever.

Like the bringer of the breast. He didn’t call her that, but the words summed up his concept of “mummy” all right. He knew that he needed to suck and that what he sucked was as essential as pooing, and he knew that he must have done the sucking for ever because there surely wasn’t a time before he could remember sucking, but the whole thing still had a freshness, a newness to it. He’d always sucked, for ever, but maybe that wasn’t so long a time.

He’d pooed forever, too, but that was less comfortable to think about. The towelling stuff they wrapped his bottom in was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t make them understand even though he had bellowed his objections about the things more than once. And when it got wet or sticky with poo it was painful.

Given sufficiently advanced genius he might have invented disposable nappies, but he wasn’t that way inclined.

Yet he didn’t like pain.

So he stopped gurgling and squawked.

“It’s a damned noisy baby,” growled the man Tommy (he didn’t know he was a man or that he was called Tommy or even that one day he might be referred to as daddy, but for convenience sake the sentence uttered by the man reverberated inside his baby head for a few moments, sans meaning, true, but threatening like deep growly voices are.

“He wants to be changed,” cooed the woman Lydia, the bringer of the breast, the provider of deliciousness, the calm one, the soothing one, the lovely one. He didn’t know much about calm or soothing or loveliness except that one particular voice seemed to effect him in a way that might one day be described in those words.

He wanted to say “mummy” but his mouth wouldn’t work. It would suck, yes, and that in a way was working, and it could squawk or gurgle, but it couldn’t mould sounds so precisely as to come out with “mummy”.

And all the while time was passing. Boredom, eyes closed, sleep, uncomfortable bottom, wetness, change the towelling (he would grow up hating the word terry because of that discomfort, the soreness, the white cream rubbed too hard into it, the way it made him wake up when he was in the middle of a delicious dream about nothing.

If anyone had asked him in a way that he could understand he would have suggested he might be growing into an irritable baby. It wasn’t that anything was particularly more wrong for him than it was for others of his age, but nothing was exactly right except for the bath, and he was never in that for quite long enough.

He didn’t wear that awful towelling stuff in the bath. He could kick in the bath, and splash the delicious woman with the breasts and she would giggle and tickle him under the arm and coochy-coo him, calling him naughty in the kind of voice that meant he was good, which made him wriggle and rock and laugh. But he was never in that bath for long enough, but when the gruff voiced Tommy put him in the bath it was always for too long because didn’t the man know about temperature? Couldn’t he tell when it was too hot or when it was too cold? But no. He always made the same kind of mistake as if he did it on purpose.

The baby didn’t like Tommy.

The baby did like Lydia. He liked her for the water that was just warm enough, for the tickles, for the coochy-coos and giggles, for the bright eyes, for the love, for the milk, that wonderful warm milk, for being there.

“There’s something wrong with him,” sniffed Tommy. Good job the “him” of his words didn’t understand.

“He’s perfect,” retorted Lydia. Angrily, maybe? He wanted her to be angry with Tommy because he didn’t like Tommy.

You know, Tommy never brought him any milk! Tommy was bigger, but he never nourished him with warm milk. Except once, that is, from a cold bottle and the milk was as cold as the bottle and made his tummy hurt. That was the one and only time. Baby hated bottles.

“He’s too sensitive for formula,” gloated Lydia, unlatching her nursing bra and bringing forth one gorgeous brown and red n****e that he lunged for greedily. “See how he likes the real thing,” she chattered, “see how he likes mummy’s breast… see how he knows what’s good for him...”

And that made him close his eyes and sleep.

There was a lot of closing of eyes and sleeping in Oliver’s brand spanking new world. A lot of sucking and letting the music of the milk gurgling into his mouth send him off into another world where nothing happened. Except, sometimes, his dreams had to do with the man Tommy and the cold milk and too-warm baths and gruff voice and impatience.

Yes, Tommy was impatient.

And one day he, Oliver, looked at the woman and said “mummy” in a voice so clear and harmonious that it made her cry tears of joy and happiness.

He didn’t say “daddy” but he did say “mummy” and “daddy” wasn’t pleased at being left out. He didn’t say anything, of course he didn’t, that would have been churlish, but next time he went to tickle the baby he pinched him instead. Not hard, not to leave a mark, but hard enough to be felt.

“Mummy!” cried Oliver. Of course he did: nobody likes to be pinched, though someone might have tried to tell him that daddies don’t like to be forgotten.

“Oh son of mine,” crooned the cruel man, and he pinched the tender young flesh again.

He wouldn’t be able to do it many more times because the baby was learning words quickly and it wouldn’t do if the first time Oliver said “daddy” it was joined to something like “hurt me”.

And then they were both so proud of him and he was given his first pair of proper underpants.

“He’s got control,” sighed mummy. “He’s such a clever boy...”

“About time too,” growled daddy.

He’d be crawling soon. He knew that much. Then walking. Then running.

Then would be that time to sort out that man Tommy once and for all!

© Peter Rogerson 11.12.16