On Loving Josiah (5 page)

At the time of Josiah’s birth Dr Fothering had been languishing in Hull for six weeks. Recently he had seemed increasingly distracted, phoning the maternity hospital daily and asking for news of Eve Nelson. When finally they told her she was in labour, he was away, only remembering to explain his absence to his colleagues (‘possibly a life or death situation’ involving ‘someone close to him’) from a phone box half way down the A1.

Dr Fothering was in the hospital car park at three pm, and ran, sweet man, all the way into the foyer where he filled his arms with huge lilies. He was too impatient to take the lift and skipped up the stairs; too impatient to ask anyone which ward she was on, and barged into all of them before he found her. He stood for a moment
at the door, watching her. She looked wonderful, he thought, glowing, happy. Sheepishly he walked up to her bed.

‘Please don’t stop feeding your baby because of me!’ pleaded Dr Fothering.

Eve did up the top button of her nightdress and looked at him quizzically.

‘But I don’t understand, what’s brought you to Cambridge? Are you visiting friends? Are you attending some conference or other? Of course I’m delighted to see you, Dr Fothering, but you see, you’ve completely caught me off my guard.’

The poor man threw his flowers into Eve’s arms, so appalled was he by Eve’s reception of him, and Eve was touched and said the lilies were lovely. She took no care of them, nonetheless, and a couple of them dropped to the floor. Gibson winced as though he himself had been dropped, but could do nothing to save them, what with Josiah in his arms.

‘I wanted to see how you’ve taken to motherhood, Eve! And I came to see you not as an off-duty doctor but as a friend. From now on, you must call me ‘Michael’.

‘Gosh, Michael. Here, look, you look so uncomfortable. Sit down next to me. I’m so flattered that you’ve come! Did you really come all the way down from Hull to see
me
?’

Dr Fothering did as he was told, squashing a couple more lilies as he did so. Gibson could hardly bear it.

‘Well, I was so happy for you both,’ he said, and noted how wretched Gibson was looking. ‘Or should I say, happy for the three of you? My goodness, what a beautiful baby he is!’ For some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, Dr Fothering was rather thrilled by that fact. ‘What are you going to call him? He is a boy, isn’t he?’

‘Isn’t he just the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?’ cooed Eve, ‘Oh Dr Fothering… Michael, have you ever seen a baby quite as beautiful as Josiah?’

‘Is that what you’re calling him, “Josiah”?’

‘Yes, that’s his name!’ declared Eve, eagerly. ‘We’re calling him “Josiah” after the great Jewish child king. Oh Gibson, are you
thinking
what I’m thinking?’

Gibson was not.

‘We were just about to perform a baptism ceremony, weren’t we? We were trying to work out what religion to bring him up in, nothing strange, no funny cult or anything, but I want him to have virtues and know how to pray, for you must know as a psychiatrist how important it is to pray!’

‘I didn’t know you were religious, Eve.’

‘I don’t think you ever asked me.’

‘But you don’t pray, do you?’

‘Dr Fothering, Michael, surely after two years you realise I live a life of unceasing prayer, which is, according to the Russian
Orthodox
Church, the very best kind of prayer.’

‘But who do you pray to, Eve?’

‘A good question. Gibson and I were just discussing that very point. But when anyone prays, do they know who it is they are praying to? I would call that very presumptuous. Gibson, do you know who you pray to when you pray? One prays to creation, to good will, to benevolence, destiny, I
bow down
to destiny, I
surrender
, I am flotsam and jetsam being tossed on the sea, O Michael, can’t you see how wholly religious I am? And my point is this. Would you like to be a godfather? O Gibson, wouldn’t he make a
wonderful
godfather? You are, indeed, an answer to a prayer I made earlier, and you, without me knowing it, were the very person I was praying to… O Dr Fothering, Michael, don’t you see how important it was that you came?’

‘I don’t know whether I wish it to be important, Eve,’ said Dr Fothering, from the heart. ‘I was hoping I would be unimportant. Or at least, not relevant. I’m not making myself clear. I came as a
friend Eve, not as your doctor. Because you don’t need a doctor. You’re a woman, and a mother. You’re strong. You seem so strong!’

‘My dear Michael!’ exclaimed Eve, equally from the heart, ‘I
honestly
don’t know what you’re on about. If you remember, I asked you if you’d be a godfather!’

‘I will,’ said Dr Fothering, wishing to make progress.

‘The right answer! We’ll have the ceremony straightaway. We’re going to baptize him in Holy Spirit, we were just saying that
whatever
you believe and whoever you pray to you can’t go wrong with the Holy Spirit and look what I’ve got!’

Eve proudly presented him with a mug of vodka, and mouthed the magic word. ‘The three of us shall have a sip, then we’ll make the sign of the cross on Josiah’s forehead, and then we’ll make a wish for him, how does that sound?’

‘Blasphemous, I think.’

‘Oh nothing is blasphemous if you don’t intend it to be!’
pronounced
Eve. ‘Perhaps we should call him Josiah Michael after you? On second thoughts, “Michael” is a bit weak, a bit Mummy’s boy, no offence meant, Dr Fothering. I’ve got it! We shall call him “Horatio”! Josiah Horatio Nelson. Now, did a finer name exist than that, I ask you?’

‘No,’ said Dr Fothering, ‘That’s a very fine name. Very fine.’ He was sipping thankfully at the vodka.

‘And we need your advice Dr Fothering! We hadn’t decided on the virtues Josiah was going to be blessed with – no, I lie, we decided that Josiah wasn’t to have any virtues, didn’t we Gibson, though I can’t for the life of me remember why.’

Gibson looked at her pleadingly.

‘You’re right!’ she said, ‘because he’s both beautiful and good already! What more in life could one possibly want?’

Then Eve began to stroke the baby as he slept in his father’s arms, and really quite affectionately too, and there was a moment’s relief
for the poor doctor, before she sat bolt upright and exclaimed, ‘I remember! Dr Fothering, do you think it’s better to be the object or subject of sexual desire?’

And Dr Fothering, in sudden despair, retorted, ‘I think it’s better not to have any at all.’

‘Dr Fothering,’ cried Eve in disbelief, ‘you’re not yourself!’

‘Call me Michael, Goddammit! So what if it is a namby-pamby name, call me Michael.’

‘Oh Michael!’ cried Eve, taking up his hand in her own. ‘You must have had a terrible journey, and I’m so grateful to you for making it!’

‘Yes, it’s true,’ mumbled Dr Fothering, ‘the traffic was bad.’

‘There is nothing more soul-destroying than a traffic jam. Tell me, is your soul quite destroyed, Michael?’

‘Yes,’ he said, because ‘yes’ was the path of least resistance.

‘So all the time I was creating a new, living, vital soul, yours was being destroyed! How are we to re-distribute ourselves? By you becoming Josiah’s godfather, of course. And the difference in our ceremony will be that he will provide for you, rather than you for him.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Dr Fothering, sipping at the mug of vodka. His last sober thought was that he should go and visit Eve and Gibson at their home in a couple of days, when he was feeling a little better. He tried to remember when it was exactly that he had lost control of the conversation, but he felt confident that if he had an opportunity of beginning again, all would somehow right itself. Meanwhile he was enjoying a free-floating, rather pleasant sensation of nothing being either important or relevant; and when he heard Eve suddenly exclaim, ‘Ave Maria, Ave Maria!’ he even managed to rejoin, with surprising gusto, ‘Hallelujah!’

‘Yes, yes, I have it! I know exactly what our baptism needs: Latin. No proper ceremony is complete without it. Now, what Latin do you know? As godfather you have a particular duty to supply some.’

‘Cave canem,’ suggested Dr Fothering. ‘I’m afraid it’s all I know. You can take it or leave it.’

‘Well, you never know, we might be able to incorporate it somewhere,’ said Eve, graciously. ‘Gibson, you don’t know any Latin, do you?’

But if Gibson did, he’d long since passed the speech barrier and wasn’t going to divulge it.

‘Now, now, wait, wait, the Latin is coming, I can feel it coming,’ and Eve closed her eyes like a medium in a trance. ‘Give me the baby! Give me Josiah!’

‘Asleep,’ was Gibson’s only word, as he cradled his son.

‘This is important, Gibson, the words are coming.’

Gibson relented, and the pretty baby was handed over to his mother. Eve dabbed her finger in the mug of vodka which Dr Fothering was still enjoying, and tenderly placed it just above the bridge of Josiah’s nose. Her voice was solemn:

 Dr Fothering and Gibson looked blankly at her.

‘I shall translate, you uncultured pair,’ pronounced Eve, and did so.

‘Oh alas, there’s always a dog to beware,
sic vita humana.
Who has been the dog in your life, Dr Fothering?’  

‘Must Josiah be a dagger to his enemies?’  

‘How jolly Christian you are! I’ve always preferred the Old
Testament
myself. I think my little ode is quite like a psalm, don’t you?’  

‘I’m very impressed,’ said Dr Fothering, which he was.  

‘I’m going to teach Josiah Latin. He’s going to imbibe it with his mother’s milk, aren’t you darling? What a future’s in store for you, my dear one.’  

At which news Josiah, appropriately enough, began to cry.  

‘Oh it won’t be as bad as all that! God, stop that! Shhhh, shhh,’ and while another mother might have offered her baby a breast, Eve was having none of that, certainly not in company, and proceeded to lift up his vest to tickle his tummy. But there was a clamp attached to the bloody stump of the umbilicus, and Eve let out a squeal when she saw it, a squeal quite worthy of Sarah Bernhardt herself
confronted
with a dead body.  

A nurse, then two, ran over to see what had happened, followed seconds later by the ward sister herself, who’d already written a note in her book about Gibson putting an unwashed finger in the baby’s mouth; and hot on her heels of her was Roger Bolt, who’d already been discussing Gibson’s unwashed finger in earnest for at least ten minutes, and they’d been saying what a shame it was that the courts were
powerless
to make some kind of Parenting Order, by which parents could be forced to go somewhere and learn about germs and so forth, and they had both agreed that parents were very ignorant nowadays.  

What met them were two men sitting on the bed, one drunk, the other dirty, while the mother was holding out her new-born baby at arm’s length.

‘Take him Gibson! Take him!’ she was saying, but Gibson couldn’t move for fear.

One of the nurses said, ‘I’ll take him’, and put out her arms.

‘You certainly won’t!’ exclaimed Eve. ‘Michael, you’re the
godfather
, you take him.’

‘No, sir, you certainly won’t take him!’ said the ward sister, picking up the empty mug from the bedside locker and smelling inside it. You’ve been drinking! Let me smell your breath!’

Dr Fothering kept his mouth tight shut and looked defiant. The sister found the bottle of Polish vodka, three-quarters empty by now, and said to him, ‘Get out of here! And never, ever come back!’

‘But he’s the godfather!’ cried Eve, indignantly.

‘He’s also Eve’s psychiatrist’, said Roger Bolt, triumphantly.

Everyone looked at Dr Fothering.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Roger. ‘I thought you were in Hull nowadays.’ Trained social worker that he was, it wasn’t beyond his powers of observation to notice that the man before him was
desperate
, caught, humiliated. The thrill of schadenfreude made him positively shiver, and the realization – O heavenly realization! – that the baby belonged to none other than this arrogant arsehole was like a meal to savour for days, if not weeks. Godfather, my foot! The man was no more than a pathetic, sex-obsessed upstart, who probably had sex with Eve in the name of therapy.

And trained psychiatrist that he was, and drunk though he was, it was not beyond Dr Fothering to apprehend the exact moment Roger Bolt made his ridiculous assumption. Yet he was sufficiently drunk to say this, and aggressively, too: ‘I know what you’re
thinking
, Bolt, and it’s obscene of you to think it.’

Two nurses and the ward sister stood to attention, antennae
positively
swinging. Even as Dr Fothering spat out the word ‘obscene’ they knew that whatever it was the man was purported to have done, he had done it; and a quick inspection of the scene before them
confirmed them in their worse suspicions. That large, mute hulk with the filthy hands had never been this woman’s lover, and had been no more than an obliging front for all manner of immoral behaviour. Oh yes, that psychiatrist was a villain of the first order, incapable of coming to terms with his crimes. Only guilt could have reduced him to this hunched, haunted spectre of a man, his eyes raging, bloodshot.

‘What is it I’m thinking of, Dr Fothering? I don’t know that I catch your meaning.’ As Roger Bolt spoke he smiled at the ward sister, and the two nurses smiled at each other.

But the glorious Eve would have none of it. ‘Then you’re rather more obtuse than I thought you were, Bolt. And you’re a meddler. But you’re not meddling here. Sister, could you show him out? He’s not welcome. He’ll dry up my milk.’