Black Feathers

1

I see the boy’s birth.

There were signs; portents, if you will.

His two sisters were banished from the master bedroom where Sophie Black wished to give birth. It was upon the same bed where she had conceived the boy but for this, the moment of his introduction to the world, her husband was excluded. Sophie’s closest friend, Amelia Porter, comforted her, squeezing her hand and massaging her sacrum with every accelerating contraction.

There was no sign of the midwife.

Downstairs, Louis Black paced the living room, checking his watch and sipping often from his whisky glass. He glanced at the inglenook and stooped to add a log to an already roaring fire. As he stood, he noticed the celebratory cigar poking from the breast pocket of his worn tweed jacket. He pushed the cigar out of sight.

On the mantelpiece stood a collection of photos. Louis’s eyes were drawn to the tiny birth portraits of his daughters – wrinkled, red faces cocooned in white blankets and protected in the arms of their mother. A dozen times already Louis had thought of fetching the camera from his study. A dozen times he’d checked himself, deeming it hasty. Childbirth was dangerous, unpredictable.

He massaged his temples and took another drink.

Upstairs, in her older sister’s bedroom, Judith couldn’t sit still. She spun and danced while Angela sat cross-legged on the bed picking at the threads from a tear in the knee of her jeans.

“It’s going to be a boy, Lella,” said Judith.

“How would you know that? You’re just hoping for a little brother you can fuss over.”

“I dreamed about him. He’ll have black hair and grey eyes.”

“When did you dream that?”

“Can’t remember,” said Judith.

“You’re making it up.”

“Maybe I am. Want to see me skip backwards? I’ve been practising.”

Lifting her arms with each step, Judith managed to skip backwards in a small circle. She stood, waiting for judgement and smoothing her fine hair back from her face. Angela didn’t look up.

“What do you think, Lella? I can do a handstand too. But I have to be near the wall or I fall over.”

“Mum has blond hair and green eyes. Dad has brown hair and blue eyes. We’re both blond with blue eyes. It won’t have black hair. And it won’t be a boy.”

Their mother’s scream, from the other end of the corridor, left a hush in the room. Judith ran to the bed, climbed up and into the arms of her sister. A few moments later a longer cry pierced the entire house. Judith clung to Angela and whispered:

“It doesn’t sound like her.”

Judith felt Angela’s warm cheek against her head. Her sister’s hair smelled of shampoo and her cardigan was soft lambswool. Judith wished Angela would hold her more often until their mother howled again.

Judith cried out too, “You’re hurting me.”

There were deep red dents in the skin of Judith’s arm. Angela released her grip a little but still hugged Judith hard.

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK, Lella. Was she like this with me?”

“I wasn’t there. Maybe Dad knows. Come on, we’ll ask him.”

“But he’ll shout at us. We’re meant to stay up here.”

Louis Black screwed the lid back onto a bottle of Dimple. When he turned he saw two pale faces.

“What are you doing downstairs?”

The moment lengthened, broken only by mellow crackles and hisses from the hearth. Louis smiled and they ran to him, Angela hugging his hips, Judith clutching one of his thighs. He placed his glass on the mantelpiece, knelt and put an arm around each of them.

“Is she going to be OK, Daddy?” asked Angela, trembling. “Her voice is so horrible. She sounds like… like an animal.”

Angela began to cry. Seeing her big sister break down, Judith wept too. Louis Black guided them to his huge armchair and lifted them both up, one onto each side of his lap. He squeezed them to him and spoke in a deep, soothing rumble.

“Your mother is a very strong and healthy woman. This is the third time she’s done this, so she knows what she’s doing. She’ll be fine.”

“But why is it hurting her?” asked Judith.

Louis sighed.

“Giving birth is painful. Anyone would cry out under the same circumstances.”

“Does it always hurt?” asked Angela.

“Yes, always.”

“I’m never going to have babies,” said Judith.

“Or me,” said Angela.

Louis nodded.

“A very wise decision. However, if no women ever gave birth again, all the people on Earth would die out.”

“Why?” asked Judith.

Angela rolled her eyes.

“Duh! Because there would be no children born to replace them, stupid.”

Louis’s eyes silenced Angela but Judith had other questions.

“Does that mean that we’ll have to have children even if we don’t want to?”

“No. It doesn’t mean that. The choice will be yours. Anyway, Jude, you’re a little young to be thinking about it. But when the time comes, you’ll know exactly what to do, just like your mother does. It’s all perfectly natural and normal.”

There was a vigorous rapping at the front door.

Louis stood, spilling the girls who followed him to the black-and-white tiled front passageway. Louis shivered and rubbed the chill from his arms. The girls sheltered behind him as he turned the Yale lock and drew open the door. Snowflakes and frosty air blew in. Louis frowned at the weather. Filling the doorstep was a plump barrel of a woman in a navy-blue overcoat with the collar turned up. On her head was a starched white nurse’s hat and in her right hand a battered leather medical bag.

“Mr Black?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Frances Godfrey.”

Louis blinked at her, blinked at the snow whirling around her.

“The midwife.”

“Right, right. Come in.”

He stood aside. Frances Godfrey was so broad he had to press against the wall to let her pass. She walked with a determined waddle and removed her overcoat in a series of impatient shrugs. Below it her nurse’s watch lay upon a massive shelf of bosom. Her cardigan was ill-designed for such an enormous chest and it stayed back somewhere around her armpits. Louis noticed all this with a perplexed look and spent another few moments staring into the night. White flakes swirled in and out of view. A layer of powder an inch thick already coated the ground.

“Was this forecast?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea. Which room?”

“Sorry?”

“Which room is your wife in?”

“Oh, I see. First on the left at the top of the stairs.”

“Nearest bathroom?”

“It’s en suite.”

“Fine. Will you be joining us, Mr Black?”

“Ah, no. No, I won’t.”

“In that case I shall see you later. I may call on you to bring certain items from time to time. Will you be… available?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Some tea would be most welcome. I’m frozen to the core.”

She held out her overcoat, ice crystals becoming beads of rain which dripped onto the hallway tiles. Louis took the coat and she wobbled away from the three of them, her feet pointing to ten and two. The stairs creaked louder than usual as she climbed them, her behind almost totally filling the gap between banister and wall. Her blue, drip-dry uniform crackled over black nylon tights as she ascended. She drew the too-small cardigan tightly around her against the chill. It sprang open again straight away. Long before she reached the bedroom, her pace had slowed and her chest was heaving. As she raised her hand to knock, an agonised stiletto of a scream cut them all.

“My god,” whispered Louis. He took the stairs two at a time. The midwife had already opened the door and appraised the situation with a glance. She turned to Louis and pushed him away.

“Stay out, please, Mr Black. This won’t take long.”

Louis had seen past her bulk, though, and he never forgot the scene:

A freak gust had sucked open a window. Unexpected winter breathed into the room. Snowflakes twirled in and fell to the carpet. A fleeting impression of black wings beating their way into the night was interrupted by the curtains billowing inwards. In the reflective black of the panes which remained closed, Louis saw his own face, dazed by a glimpse of his wife.

On their bed, padded with layers of towels, Sophie squatted with her hands thrust between her legs, intent on what was happening there. She wore the top half of an old pair of his pyjamas and was naked from the waist down. This was the position she most enjoyed when making love to him but beneath her now was a dark, wet stain of blood and mucus. Her ankles were streaked with fresh and drying spatters of her body fluids. Amelia Porter’s hands were on Sophie’s shoulders, either giving massage or merely support through her touch. Sophie’s face, though shiny with tears, was not contorted by pain; she appeared to be concentrating. Louis was awed by the primal will he saw there. She screamed again, her face showing the strain, and his heart broke for her. His wife – so determined, so strong, so full of courage.

Then the midwife was closing the door on him.

“I’m sorry, Mr Black. You can be with her very soon. Why don’t you go and put the kettle on?”

Louis shut his eyes, committing the scene to memory. It was sacred and extreme, both beautiful and base. A smell from the room lingered in his nostrils – the dry, almost Alpine chill of the air and the moist scent of Sophie’s sweat and blood. My god, he thought again, there was a brininess to that smell; could it have been the smell of her tears? Perhaps the impact of the moment had brought some extra intensity to his perception. And those dark, beating wings at the window: surely just a misinterpretation of his own reflection in the glass.

Stunned, he walked downstairs.

His daughters stood unmoving in the hallway. They looked small and terrified. As he held his hands out to them and they began to walk towards him, there was one last scream from Sophie. It paralysed them all with its rawness. Louis could almost feel her throat bleed as it released that final, barbed howl. Some seconds later there was a smaller sound, also a cry, but that of an infant. The front door blew open and the panes of frosted glass in its upper half rattled in their frames when it smashed into the wall. The fierceness of the wind frightened the girls even more and they began to cry again. Louis walked to the front door, certain he’d closed it properly the first time. A living strength resisted him from the other side. He had to use his shoulder and much of his weight to make sure the lock caught and clicked.

He ushered the girls into the kitchen, filled the steel kettle and switched it on. From the cupboard he took down four tea mugs and arranged them on a tray. He made the girls get the tea bags and pot, sent them again for the milk and sugar. All this he did without being fully present, without conscious control, so that, when it was all arranged and the kettle had almost boiled, he barely knew how they’d done it.

There was a call from upstairs. It was Amelia.

“Louis? I think you’d better come up.”

He walked up the stairs, aware that his movements were stiff and automatic. Amelia’s face was tear-stained and full of care when he reached the top. She held the door open. The girls were right behind him but they waited on the threshold. The towels now lay in a tangled pile on the floor. Sophie was propped up with pillows, still in his pyjama top but now tucked under the bedcovers. In her arms she held what looked like a giant, mummified prune.

She smiled through crystal-tinted lashes.

“It’s a boy, Lou. Our very own boy.” She held the oblong parcel up high. “Say hello to Gordon Louis Black.”