tender souls

The specialist spoke of blastocyst grading, vesicles, stress pathways, embryo culture, fertilised eggs and the importance of maternal diet in the production of proteins, and Jonah and Felicity spoke in hushed tones of miracles, blessings and joy that came with the baby boy they decided to call Hallelujah. They held each other’s hand, for he was a mighty soul that cried to the Lord and they both had recently joined the Jehovah church.

‘Jesus, is that your baby?’ The baby lay content after breast feeding, a sleeping parcel across Felicity’s stomach. She was recovering from the birth and lay dopey and stunned, slumbering in the hospital bed within The Queen Mother’s Hospital, while her mother, Agnes, picked up the baby to inspect it.  

‘Look at the size of him mum. His wee legs and his wee arms. He’s even got real fingernails. And the way that wain greets. He could greet for Scotland.’

‘What does Jonah think?’

‘Oh, him, he’s the happiest man in the world, now he’s got an heir and saviour for that big barn of his.’

            Hallelujah was destined for great things they agreed. Agnes picked him up and took him a walk over to the window. ‘Home is over there.’ She nodded in a general direction, holding his flapping mitten up,  and flopping his tiny hand, sure the baby would understand and, in his minds’ eye able to roam through buildings and roads, out into a  patch of home ringed with craggy mountains, jagged lines and distant rocky peaks in which nimbus clouds bathed dawn in wind whipped rain and the emergence of mist-wrapped houses was always a surprise. Hallelujah’s home was old-fashioned, grey weathered stone, the roof coming down steep and red, protective as a sailor’s caul and seemed to poke out into the land and the oak and elm standing together, sheltering and shadowing the passing of time. This was always where the Taylor family home had stood, distant from the tenement blocks, and the only home Jonah had known.

            Jonah had a face that to most folk in the wee village seemed large and square, wide-set grey eyes and a shock of ginger hair across a broad forehead. He was eaten up by freckles, painless, but in the best of sunny weather. Smiling his teeth shone, the better part of him that committed his face to good humour and made the world seem complicit in catching the same disease. The earnest tone of his voice betrayed a gentleness that caressed all but the wildest of creatures and put those most likely to bolt at ease, leaving little room for enemies or envy. Jonah was in the classroom above Felicity's when they attended Glenbrae School.  

            Felicity, like Jonah, was an only child, but blended in enough to make her almost invisible, standing queuing in rat lines in the playground with the local smelly kids who had ten or more brothers or sisters in large families that went to the same school. Felicity always kept dark hair tied tight and carbolic clean, or at least the parts that could be seen, and did not miss a day at school through sickness. She soldiered on, showing others it was no disgrace to patch cobbled shoes with cardboard insoles until Christmas came with some presents shiny black and new.  Her wan face was fine boned, delicate in a small frame and her laughter, a nervous tic, brought understanding smiles from the teachers and parents.  There were rumours about her Ma and stories about her Da being in Barlinnie for some unspeakable crime, but those were different times.   

             Jonah was so ardent and sincere in his pursuit of her that every day after school he was pulled in the wrong direction toward the busy streets and tenement blocks ending in the closed off walls and square in which she lived. But however much he wanted to speak, his tongue was a dry bone in his throat and he was struck dumb as Sandy, his mangy-collie dog, who at home tracked him with opaque cataract downcast eyes, sniffing the ground behind him and with a kind of doggy cunning, popped up in front of him, as if somehow he knew where he was going before he himself had decided.  Jonah lured her with a similar feat of magic into the phone box beside Macello’s Café, missing the smudged line of her mouth and pecking her on the nose in a kiss that crashed.  His marriage declaration was meant to be a schoolboy joke, but it came out all wrong, so that for once, when he wanted to sound silly, he sounded serious. She stiffly accepted his offer, not sure what to do with her hands or hips, backing away with a jolt. They were both suffused with a pink glow to their cheeks that would have melted the hard plastic of the telephone receiver and, if old Mrs Stewart hadn’t banged on the phone box window with a sixpence to use the phone, there would have been no telling what would have happened next.   

            ‘Oh Mum, don’t drop him.’ Hallelujah squawked on cue his little arms and legs pumping out a fury his mouth couldn’t manage to convey. Jean laughed, her eyes not leaving her grandson’s face as she passed him back.

            ‘He’s just like you were. You’ll soon know all about it when you’re back in that draughty old house with Lord Muck.’ Jean’s gaze drifted between her daughter, settling on her feeding grandchild.

            ‘What’s wrong mum?’

            Jean stayed motionless as if in a reverie.

            ‘You’re looking at him all funny.’ Felicity’s voice had risen a notch and she scrambled across the bed, holding the baby to her breast, her toes searching for her slippers, tottering towards Jean. ‘What’s wrong mum?’

            Jean grabbed her by the arm. ‘Get back to bed this minute! Don’t you worry, you’ll have enough chasing about to do without worrying about me.’ She guided her back to bed, kissing her on the forehead and swooping down to plant a smacker on Halleluiah’s head. ‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’ She waved away her daughter’s anguished look. ‘I’ll just be going now, leaving you to time to rest.’

            ‘But you’ve just got here Mum.’

            Jean watched the child clinging to her daughter's breast before making a clumsy, jolting movement towards the door away from them. ‘Aye, but you know the buses are terrible at this time of day. And the quicker I’m away the quicker I’ll be back.’ She hung her hand in the air and briefly waved as she hurried away, clattering into a trolley pushed up against the wall outside.     

http://unbound.co.uk/books/lily-poole