Dr. Bottle bustled down from London. Nothing so delighted her as to get some patient a little out of the ordinary.
“Youngest yet!” she purred, leading the way to the largest, most expensive room in the San. A young couple followed carrying a baby, a pitiful little wreck. Both parents cried aloud as they came. This was their firstborn. “Pierre, Pierre, Petit Pierre!” they moaned.
A little white cot had been put in the centre of the big room. The weeping parents drew chairs, one on either side of the cot. The cot was sometimes put on the terrace, then the French couple took their chairs and sat holding hands across the canopy of the baby’s cot. No matter where the nurses put Baby Pierre, papa and mama picked up their chairs, followed. They wept and kissed; a hand of each was locked in that of the other.
If Nurse took the baby away to tend it, the couple walked up and down the terrace kissing, comforting. Their foreignness seemed to enclose them in complete privacy. We did not exist, nothing in the universe existed except themselves and their great sorrow. Cold English allowed their tears to congeal, ossify under the skin of their faces. The French said, “Stupid fools. We French cry.” They cried hard and watched their child fade.
The baby was too weak to wail any more. The father’s and mother’s hands froze in each other’s grip. Everyone tiptoed past the room where little Pierre was; we knew the baby was dying; it was not kept secret like mature death. The whole San cried for Baby Pierre, boldly, unashamed.
The door of the room stood wide; the little cot was gone. Gone too were the French couple. A tiny white marble cross stood among the more mature tombstones of Sunhill Cemetery.
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