Open Writing

The afternoon tea party was a special occasion to celebrate the arrival of my neighbour’s third child. I was warmly welcomed and settled beneath a sunshade in the garden.

My neighbour’s daughter, a diminutive Shirley Temple look-a-like, stood before me. With a dimpled finger tucked between her rosy lips she gazed solemnly into my face. Pale golden curls escaped from beneath her brightly coloured sunhat and she held out the hem of her dress as she turned shyly away, avoiding a direct stare, but still looking at me from the corner of her eye.

I smiled. ‘That’s a pretty hat. I forgot mine. Would you loan me yours?’

After the slightest of pauses she pulled it from her head and handed it to me.

‘How do I look?’

Her eyes twinkled and she laughed. ‘It’s too small.’ The ice broken, we chattered.

'I have a new baby brother. He is called Cameron and he came out of mummy’s tummy.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. The doctor had to cut mummy open. He used a very little knife and stitched her up again very carefully. It was a salad.’

It took a moment for me to make the link between salad and Caesar and on to Caesarean. Because the child was sharing a confidence I could not laugh. So I took a sip of tea and spluttered as my mother had done when I was small and naturally curious about where babies came from.

I asked the question one day as my younger brother Doug and I sat at the lunch table with our parents. Mother and father exchanged looks and both spoke at once. ‘From amongst the cabbages,’ said father. ‘Beneath the gooseberry bush,’ said mother. They smiled at each other in a funny way and encouraged us to eat up and run outside to play.

After lunch Doug and I sat on the edge of the sand pit looking around the garden. I was excited thinking there might be any number of babies right there in our garden, waiting to be discovered. With as much stealth as is possible for a child not quite three years of age and being egged on by an older sister, Doug crept to mother’s sewing corner and emptied her sewing basket. The padded satin interior of the wicker basket was perfect for a baby to lie in.

We decided to try the cabbages first. Lifting the leaves of each plant we worked our way along the row. By the time we reached the end of the third row we were hot, tired and very dirty. I stood up and brushed the dirt from my hands.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s try the gooseberries.’

Dragging the basket along the path, Doug followed me to the thickest clump of prickly bushes. On hands and knees I wiggled beneath the spiky branches. First my hair caught, then my dress. I tried to crawl backwards but became more scratched every time I moved. I was well and truly stuck. I began to cry and called to Doug to run and fetch mother.

There was no reply and I yelled his name loudly. ‘Doug. Douglas!’ A moment later his earnest face appeared on the other side of the bush. ‘I have found some black currants,’ he said proudly holding out mother’s beautiful sewing basket, the lining stained black by the over-ripe fruit.

Doug did not have to fetch mother. My ear-piecing wail of impending doom for what we had done brought her running down the path and with her pruning shears, mother set me free. Both Doug and I were bathed clean and my scratches liberally daubed with peroxide that fizzed and stung, making me cry even harder. Punishment enough, mother said as she looked ruefully at the spoiled basket.

Today’s openness and honesty is no doubt better. But I am glad I grew up in an era when parents maintained a sense of mystery in the lives of their children. When Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, storks bringing babies and the idea of a man on the moon invoked an inquiring young mind to search for the truth in all things.