1. THE FIRST DAY

Walter Pratchett is born.

It was nineteen forty three, war was raging over much of the world and somewhere, away from the fuss and bullets, a baby was helped into the world following a difficult labour.

It was never quite certain whether Wallace Pratchett took and notice of Maureen on the day he was born but the general consensus of opinion was that it was unlikely. He did, after all, spend a great deal of that first day with his eyes shut.

Maureen Rosebush, on the other hand, noticed him, and it was from that first day that she loved him. It was a beautiful kind of love, the sort that only a five year-old can feel for her brand new cousin when his predecessor in her affections has been a plastic doll with nylon hair and sour looking lips.

“I love him, Auntie Helen,” she said with the broad and beautiful smile of a truly pretty child.

And lying in her hospital bed, holding her Wallace as close to her as she dared, Helen Pratchett smiled at her niece and whispered, “I know you do, darling.”

Wallace, on the other hand, appeared to take no notice of that brief interaction.

“Can I feed him, please?” asked Maureen after a while when it seemed that auntie Helen was going to spend too long cuddling her baby and not enough time acknowledging the important role the pretty little girl was going to play in the boy’s future. Because Maureen knew, right then and there, that her role was going to be vital to the life and well being of the little lad she looked on as Cousin Damien.

“Not now, darling,” murmured Auntie Helen, “but maybe one day soon when his mummy’s too tired to manage.”

“Then can I call him Damien?” asked Maureen, loving the name because when she’d been at nursery school last year a boy called Damien had showed her a picture of his pet rat and being allowed to see that picture had somehow seemed the sort of thing that cemented a friendship that hadn’t existed until that moment. Since then the rat-owning little lad fad faded into obscurity when his family moved to the posh end of town, but Damien had remained as a name inside Maureen’s head.

“I’m afraid we can’t, darling?” smiled Auntie Helen, “his daddy and I have decided to call him Wallace. It’s such a lovely name, don’t you think? And don’t you think he looks exactly like a Wallace should look?”

Maureen thought he looked more like a Damien, but had the sense to merely nod her head.

“He’s going to be my friend,” she confided in Auntie Helen, “I know he is because he’s a brand new person and I love him.”

“We all love him,” sighed Helen Pratchett, “and his daddy’s coming soon to see him, he’s bound to really love him. It’s a pity he couldn’t be here when he was born, but there was a funeral...”

“I know,” smiled Maureen, “old Mrs Fotheringay is dead, isn’t she? Mummy says she’s gone to Jesus and Uncle Jack’s got the special job of showing her the way. I like Mrs Fotheringay. She liked knitting and she gave me sweets sometimes.”

“Yes,” sighed Helen, “she couldn’t have waited and died a week later, could she? Then Jack would have been here and seen his little boy being safely delivered. But life’s what it is and she died when she did die, and on the very day our little Wallace said hello to us all, she was put in the ground.”

“Mummy says it’s poetic,” sighed Maureen, “one out and one in is what she said, one out and one in.”

“I suppose you could look at it that way,” murmured Maureen, “but Mrs Fotheringay was really very old, and poorly for ages and ages. It was best that she … did what she did, and passed on.”

“So Uncle Jack’s showing her the way to see Jesus,” sighed Maureen.

Uncle Jack, or the Reverend Jack Pratchett as he was more commonly known, had actually muttered a few very unChristian words when it had transpired that he had to lead a funeral service at exactly the time when his lovely wife Helen had found herself having their first baby. They’d asked if the time or the day could be in some way altered as if the baby had no say in the matter, but a long list of reasons reeled off by the hospital staff explained why that was plainly impossible. So Jack had to guide the spiritual remains of Mrs Fotheringay into the Afterlife whilst his wife was having their youngster introduced to this one. It was all very unsatisfactory from the point of view of the Reverend father, but what could they do?

“He won’t be long, will he?” asked Maureen.

“Who, dear?” asked Helen a trifle absently.

“Uncle Jack,” sighed Maureen. “I like Uncle Jack, but he can be ever so serious,” she added, “and he talks about stuff I don’t understand.”

“He’s a very serious man,” smiled Helen, “but I love him anyway.”

“Like I love Dam.,.. Wallace?” asked Maureen, “because I love him very much indeed.”

“I suppose it’s a different kind of love,” sighed the new mother, “a kind of love special for mummies and daddies.”

“Like when my daddy makes my mummy go to the bedroom with him on Sunday afternoons, and I’m to stay downstairs watching cartoons?” asked Maureen.

Helen didn’t want to answer that question and fortunately was saved by the arrival of the dog-collared Jack Pratchett.

“At last,” he boomed, “you clever little thing! Let me see him? Is he anything like the scans of him?”

“Well,” said Helen with a broad smile, “he’s not in black and white and all blotchy. Take a look, darling, and see what we’ve produced between us.”

Before he went closer to his new son he scowled in the direction of Maureen. “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

“She’s keeping me company,” replied Helen, “Amy’s gone to the café for a coffee. She was with me before the surgery and needed a break, and Maureen was sent in to keep me company. And she’s been a big help, haven’t you, darling?”

“I love Dam … Wallace,” smiled Maureen.

“Darling, go and find your mummy,” suggested Helen, “while the Reverend and I have a very grown up conversation about things.”

Maureen looked at her quizzically. “What things?” she asked.

“Grown up things,” snapped the Reverend, still in a tetchy mood having been denied what he looked on as the father’s right to witness the birth of his first-born.

Maureen, pretty as she was with fine fair hair and a rose-bud complexion, scowled at that and backed out of the room.

“Mummy’s coming,” she said, “and I’m telling her!”

And it’s probably perfectly true to record that the new born Wallace Pratchett had no idea that his most ardent fan had ever been anywhere near him as he slept in his mother’s arms.

Ignorance, maybe, can be bliss!

© Peter Rogerson 27.05.19