‘I think the name Alice suits her,’ you said. ‘Oh…yes, definitely. Alice. What do you think?’
I shrugged indifferently. ‘If you like,’ I said. I wasn’t really bothered one way or another. Alice would do as well as the next name.
There was black magic involved in the coming of my son though. Oh, scientists would say that I was just being fanciful, but I know. I was in my sixth month. We had since moved to the British Crown Colony of Aden. Having developed extreme eczema, blistering and bleeding over your hands and lower arms—a reaction to the chemicals you used in photography—you had been persuaded by George Walbrook, your friend in the Foreign Office, to apply for a posting in government information services in Honduras. Failing to secure this, you were offered instead an administrative post in Aden. And it was here, in the merciless heat and chaos of this busy port, with its shark-infested harbour, that we settled with our growing family.This time, I had decided not to return to England for the birth. I did not think I could bear Mother’s disapproval if yet again I failed to produce the necessary male. Besides, I had been assured that they had the very best of facilities and doctors here in Aden.
We were having a party when it happened. Do you remember, Ralph? We had many friends there, British and Arab. I was wearing a voluminous midnight-blue affair. Quite suddenly a tall Arab gentleman, with sable skin and very white teeth—dressed, I couldn’t help thinking, with his turban and glittering tunic, a bit like a fairground magician—seized hold of the hem of my dress, folded himself in half, and with his other hand flung some white powder up under the bell of my skirt. It coated my mound. The gentleman’s name was A…A…Akil, that’s right, and he worked with you.
He fixed me with his black hawk eyes, Akil, and straightened up. As I moved away the remaining powder fell softly about my ankles, like a dusting of snow. I was taken aback. I had not been prepared for someone shoving handfuls of unknown substances up my maternity dress, and did not know quite how to react. He bowed to me graciously.
‘The baby you are carrying, it shall be a boy now,’ he said in a deep, sonorous voice.
I was so delighted with his prediction that I forgot to be annoyed. At least he understood the turmoil inside me.The thought of another girl growing there, another Alice…dear God! Later that night as you and I tried in vain to slumber in the heat, you mentioned the encounter. I didn’t think you had seen it. Even in my tangle of sheets, hot and bothered, with the child stirring restlessly inside me, as if it too was finding the intense heat unbearable, I was surprised.
‘That Akil has a cheek,’ you mumbled through a yawn.‘Throwing talcum powder up your dress, and coming up with that mumbo-jumbo about our baby.’You thrust the sheet back from your body, and I saw that your skin was slick with sweat.
We were sleeping beneath mosquito nets, and I found the effect of that claustrophobic haze disturbing.
‘He took me unawares,’ I responded primly, pushing down my own portion of our sheet, sitting up, and resting back against the pillows. ‘He told me that now we will have a son.’
You laughed. ‘What, as if it was down to him!’
Outside the netting, the high-pitched whine of a mosquito could be heard, fading and then coming back, as it attempted re-entry.
‘It might be true. It might be a boy,’ I commented casually, as if I couldn’t have cared less.
‘And it might be a girl,’ you said equably.
After that you fell asleep. But I remained awake for some time, my hands exploring my bump, glossy with moonlight. I could not bear to go through this again. There was no choice in the matter, and the child should know this. It had to be male. Our son was born three months later. Clearly he had been paying attention to our Arab friend.But he had obviously been a touch overwrought at the prospect of his much longed-for arrival, and had wound the umbilical cord around his neck like a noose. He emerged not a healthy shade of pink, flushed with his first breaths of life, but milky-blue, his lips an even deeper hue, kissed with death. The doctors were uncertain if he would make it through the night. They took him away to wrestle with the black prince, promising to do their best to snatch my son from his grip. I lay alone in bed that night, in a white nondescript room, in a hospital in Aden. I felt bleak. I had produced a son. Finally I had produced a son, and now he might die. I thought about our three healthy children—my firstborn, Jillian, a girl, but welcome for all that, and my second, Nicola, impossible not to like, with her indomitable charm and her discretion. She understood the boundaries so well and never overstepped the mark. And then our third daughter, Alice. Alice had already made it apparent that she did not understand about boundaries. She was colouring outside the lines. I felt annoyed just thinking about her. If I could…if…I could…swap her life for his, then…At first the thought was so terrible that it floored me. It had all the menace of dark fairy tales. I will give her up if you will…
But gradually in the dullness of that room my wicked thought glowed like a hot coal.You may take Alice but leave me my son. I will never renege on the contract. Take her. Take Alice. Take Alice. Take Alice, was my incantation. She’s yours. I shall never want her back, only leave me my son. It seemed the demons were not listening, or perhaps they didn’t want Alice either because as it was they both survived.The next day you brought our daughters to see their new brother. You stood, Ralph, and the girls sat on the low wall that surrounded the hospital.They squinted up through the fierce sunlight as I stepped onto the balcony from my second-floor room, my fragile son in my arms. The doctors felt it would be better to keep my sickly babe away from any possible source of infection for the time being, until he grew stronger.They recommended no direct contact with our other children during those first crucial days.
The girls were wearing matching pinafore dresses, with white blouses, Jillian in French navy, her blonde hair in pigtails, Nicola in bottle-green, her dark silky locks cropped short, and Alice in red, blood-red, her mousy-brown bob with a side parting, held back from her face with a grip.The green and blue blended in with the flashing gold of the sun and the cooler acid green of the young palm trees. The girls waved.You waved, Ralph. I looked down at my son and felt pride wash over me.
‘Here in my arms are all my hopes and dreams,’ I thought.
But the red of Alice’s dress hooked me back again. Even then she was a jealous child.
You were reassigned after that, this time to the British Colony of Hong Kong. When you first mentioned it to me, the new posting, I was intrigued.
‘How would you like it if I spirited you away to a beautiful island in the Orient?’ you asked, jumping up suddenly from the wicker chair you had been sitting in. We were in the bedroom of our bungalow home in Aden.Above our heads a fan rotated noisily,doing its best to hold the heat at bay.
‘I should like that very much,’ I said, only half listening, concentrating on our blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, wriggling in my arms.
‘Then your wish is my command. I shall transport you to Hong Kong,’ you shot back, unable to hide your delight.
‘Hong Kong?’ I said, trying out the name and finding it both familiar and unknown.
You elaborated. ‘It’s a small island in the South China Sea, not much more than 400 square miles I believe. But then there is the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories too, just across the harbour.’
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to sound enlightened.‘It seems odd that we should own an island so far away.’ You smiled knowingly and continued.
‘It was leased to Britain after some skulduggery which involved the shipping of a great deal of opium grown by us in India into China.Very lucrative apparently. When China, unsurprisingly, protested and asked that we desist in the trade, we were so outraged we went to war with them.’ Here you paused mid-stride and chuckled.
‘Ah,’ I said, switching my son from one shoulder to the other, and patting his back gently. In a while I would call for his nanny, but just for now it was nice playing