Babies

The dogs and I were absorbing sultry calm under the big maple tree in their play-field. They sprawled on the parched grass, not awake enough to seek trouble, not asleep enough to be unaware of the slightest happening.

A most extraordinary noise was happening, a metallic gurgle that rasped in even-spaced screeches. The noise stopped at our gate; every dog made a dash. Punk and Loo, who had been sitting on top of the low kennel against which I rested, leaped over my head to join the pack. The fence of their field angled the front gate. A weary woman shoved the gate open with the front wheels of the pram she pushed. A squeal or two and the noise stopped.

The woman drove the baby-carriage into the shade of the hawthorn tree and herself slumped on to the bench just inside my gate. Her head bobbed forward; she was so asleep that even the dogs’ barking in her ear and pushing her hat over one eye, pawing and sniffing over the fence against which the bench backed, did not wake her.

For a few seconds her hand went on jogging the pram, then dropped to her side like a weighted bag. I called the dogs back and every soul of us drowsed out into the summer hum. Only the sun was really awake. He rounded the thorn-tree and settled his scorch on to the baby’s nose.

The child squirmed. He was most unattractive, a speckle-faced, slobbery, scowling infant. A yellow turkish-towelling bib under his chin did not add to his beauty. In the afternoon glare he looked like a sunset. He rammed a doubled-up fist into his mouth and began to gnaw and grumble. The woman stirred in her unlovely sleep, and her hand started automatically to jog the pram handle. I had come from the dog field and was sitting beside her on the bench. Eyes peering from partly stuck-together lids like those of a nine-day-old kitten, she saw me.

“Teethin’,” she yawned, and nodded in the direction of the pram; then her head flopped and she resumed loose-lipped, snorting slumber.

“Wa-a-a-a!”

The dogs came inquisitively to the fence.

“‘Ush, ‘Ush!”

She saw the dogs, felt their cool noses against her cheek. “Where be I?–Mercy! I come for a pup! That’s where I be! ‘Usband says when we was changin’ shifts walkin’ son last night. ‘Try a pup, Mother,’ ‘e sez–‘We’ve tried rattles an’ balls an’ toys. Try a live pup to soothe ‘is frettiness.’ So I come. ‘Usband sez, ‘Git a pup same age as son’–Sooner ‘ave one ‘ouse-broke me’self–wot yer got?”

“I have pups three months old.”

“Ezzact same age as son! Bring’em along.”

She inspected the puppy, running an experienced finger around his gums.

“Toothed a’ready! ‘E’ll do.”

She tucked the pup into the pram beside the baby who immediately seized the dog’s ear and began to chew. The pup as immediately applied himself greedily to the baby’s bottle and began to suck.

“Well, I never did!” said the mother. “Let ‘im finish–‘ere’s a comfort for son.”

She dived into a deep cloth bag.

“That pup was brought up on a bottle,” I explained.

“That so? Tote!” she commanded. I operated the pram’s screech till the comfort was in the baby’s mouth and the pup paid for.

Loo and I, watching, heard the pram-full of baby whine down the street. Loo, when satisfied that the noise was purely mechanical, not puppy-made, shook herself and trotted contentedly back to the field–finished with that lot of puppies. Nature would now rest Loo, prepare her for the next lot of puppies. Life, persistent life! Always pushing, always going on.