Complete Short Stories (20 page)

Anyhow, the baby got safely born, and because
it was a boy Onofre simply had to call it after the grandfather; that’s a rule here, just as the second son has to be called after the other grandfather. Sita was splendid. She helped the midwife with Marujita, and didn’t scream or run in circles like the Binijiny women do; but she made the baby feel at home, and washed it and changed it and sang it lovely Flamenco songs. She also cooked the meals
and did all the other housework. Onofre had told her on the first day: ‘Sister-in-law, you’re a very good girl; you shall be godmother.’ When the New Zealand painter was asked to be godfather he answered, ‘Look here, I’m a Protestant.’ But Onofre said, ‘No matter, it’s all the same. Priests are priests everywhere.’

Of course, Onofre had announced the birth to the grandparents, first with a respectful
telegram, and then with a flowery letter, enclosing an invitation card to the christening. He never expected to get any answer; it was just to keep his allowance safe.

Well, on the day of the christening, Sita put on her Sunday dress and wiped off her make-up and arranged the drinks and cakes and biscuits and
tapas
for the baptismal party in the sitting-room. Then she wrapped the baby like a
mummy in four or five thick shawls and Doña Isabel the midwife accompanied her because she had never been a godmother before. Marujita wasn’t well enough to go, so she stayed in bed. Onofre had sent out a whole packet of invitations to the christening, but nobody else came at all except mother and father and me and Richard, and the two American abstract painters and the New Zealand real painter.

The priest was waiting at the church door but the acolytes hadn’t arrived. We waited about for nearly an hour talking and joking, while the baby slept. At last the priest said he had other business to do and he must start without the acolytes, and perhaps Onofre would condescend to assist? So he did, to save time. Sita already had the lighted candle in her hand, which every godmother carries,
when a large, splendid car drew up in the Plaza, and Don Isidoro and Doña Tecla entered. Onofre turned pale, and the beastly old man said at once: ‘
I
am godfather here and no one
else, understand, Onofre? What’s more, this immodest woman is not going to be godmother by my side. Unless she goes away I’ll cut off your allowance and the child will starve.’ Onofre turned paler still, but Sita kept
calm. She said to the priest: ‘Father, I renounce my rights. Nobody will ever say that I prejudiced the good fortune of this precious infant.’ Then she handed the candle to Doña Isabel and went home to tell Marujita. The New Zealand painter also gave up, of course, so the priest started; but as soon as he turned his back and bowed to the altar Doña Tecla seized the baby from Doña Isabel, and said
‘
I
am godmother here, woman, and no one else, understand?’

But Doña Isabel hung on to the candle, and told the grandparents in a loud whisper that Sita was worth forty basketfuls of
canaille
like them. Doña Tecla screeched back at her, cackling like an old hen, which made the priest lose his place in the book and start reading prayers for missionaries in foreign parts. He had just found out his
mistake and said ‘Caramba, what a folly!’ when in ran the acolytes without their surplices and laughing fit to burst. The manager of the hotel had sent them to fetch Doña Isabel at once, because two Belgian ladies insisted on sunbathing naked by the fishermen’s huts, and if the Guardias caught them
he’d
be fined two hundred and fifty pesetas for each woman, because they were guests in his hotel,
and that is the law. Doña Isabel asked ‘Why me?’ And they answered ‘Because you are accustomed to deal with undressed women.’ So Doña Isabel said ‘Patience, in a moment!’

The priest took the baby and put the usual salt in its mouth to drive out the Devil, but for some reason or other it didn’t cry. Perhaps it liked the taste. So Don Isidoro said ‘Put in more, man; the Devil’s still inside!’ and
Doña Tecla reached forward under the shawls and pinched the poor little baby on purpose to make it yell. Onofre noticed that and said in a loud voice ‘Mother, you may insult my sister-in-law, and the certificated midwife of this village; these are women’s affairs in which I don’t meddle. But you will
not
pinch my son’s bottom.’

The priest hurriedly made the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead,
and called it Onofre, by mistake for Isidoro. Then Onofre took it from him and gave it to mother, who hurried it out of church before worse could happen. Doña Isabel went with her, still holding the candle.

Naturally Don Isidoro disowned Onofre, and Doña Tecla slapped his face before they stamped out of the church and drove off in their large splendid car. The rest of us trailed along to the
baptismal party. Onofre did his best to be cheerful, and said ‘Come along, friends, and help me drink up the brandy, because tomorrow we’re all beggars.’

Sita was there when we arrived, rocking the baby and looking very pretty and pale without her make-up. Everyone began at once to drink and dance. Our family went away early because Richard had eaten too much cake and drunk half a glass of
anís
; but presently another guest invited
himself in, an officer of the Spanish Blue Division whom the Russians had just let out of prison after fourteen years. He had no friends left and wanted to celebrate his return. Doña Isabel also came. She had frightened the Belgian women into putting on their clothes and then gone back to the church, where she found that Doña Tecla hadn’t signed the register
as the baby’s godmother. So she signed it herself; because, after all, she’d held the candle. And the name would be Onofre, she said, not Isidoro, and that was God’s will.

Just before midnight Onofre beat his head with his fist and shouted ‘I had almost forgotten; my beast of a father did not sign the book either. Quick, gentlemen, to the Rectory, before the clock strikes twelve and the day becomes
extinct!’ So the Blue Division prisoner and the two abstract painters, and the real one, all trooped up to the Rectory, very intoxicatedly, and insisted on signing the register as little Onofre’s joint godfathers. The priest had to let them, to avoid a scandal.

And guess what? In April they’re all going to the Seville Fair at the invitation of Sita’s new
novio
, who’s a Chilean millionaire called
Don Jacinto; I have met him. Don Jacinto is also lending Onofre and Marujita five million pesetas to start a much more luxurious Palma dance-house than ‘The Blue Parrot’. He says ‘That will teach Don Isidoro not to insult poor beautiful dancing-girls who are positively saints!’ It’s going to be called ‘Los Cinco Padrinos’, which means ‘The Five Godfathers’, because Don Jacinto has added his name
to the list too, for solidarity.

All the same, I can’t say I trust him, somehow, and Marujita doesn’t either; but we hope for the best.

Lots of love,
Margaret

T
HERE HAD ALWAYS
been a Colonel Flack at Sophie, Georgia, even while it was still called Sophiaville, and a Doc Halloran, too; not to mention a Lawyer Pritchard. For generations it was a vexed question ‘who got there the fustest’, the Flacks or the Hallorans, and many a hasty word was spoken on account of it, until at last the Lawyer Pritchard
who flourished under President Polk summoned his Colonel Flack and his Doc Halloran to the County Court House. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘all the relevant documents are right here in that safe; and if this tomfool argument crops up again, I’ll publish a certificated extract of them in every paper south of the Line, which won’t do neither of you-all a heap of good.’

The Flacks came from the county
of Somerset in England, and owned a regular coat of arms, with the motto
Nec Flacci Mortem,
meaning: ‘I don’t care a straw for death.’ And they certainly did not.

We Doc Hallorans – for I’m the present holder of the title – originate in Co. Meath, Ireland. We’re charged with the protection of the said Flacks in the matter of setting their broken bones, plugging their bullet holes with medicated
cotton, scaring away their green rats and pink elephants (especially after Thanksgiving), and also seeing that they get born in good shape. We take the task pretty seriously, because the Flacks, when they’re not in liquor, are the best folks for a hundred miles around; and our debt to them, to quote Lawyer Pritchard, is inassessable and unrepudiatable.

The Flacks suffered as heavily as any Georgian
family in the Civil War; lost nearly every male of the younger generation in this battle or that, and Colonel Randolph Flack was fuming and pining because he had to stay home and mind the plantation, instead of riding out with General Lee. The principal tie was his lady: she’d been widowed in the first skirmish of the war, he’d married her a year later, and now she was expectant. The Colonel
couldn’t very well leave his lady in the big mansion, all alone except for the slaves; there were plenty of deserters and bad men around at the time. So he continued to pine and fume, and my great-grandfather had to bear the brunt of his tantrums.

General Sherman took Atlanta early in September, and began moving
across Georgia on his notorious march to the sea; destroying, as he went, everything
that could be destroyed. The Colonel took it into his head that Sherman was the Beast of Revelations, and that the South’s only hope lay in putting that Beast out of the way. Moreover, he was going to do it himself, in gentlemanly fashion. He would ride up to the General, salute him with a sweep of his beaver hat, and ask point blank: ‘Sir, are you man enough to shoot it out?’

My great-grandfather
did his best to dissuade him from his project. ‘May I venture to doubt, Colonel Flack,’ he said, ‘whether you’d be permitted to approach within parleying distance of General Sherman? He’s reckoned to have a bodyguard of Maine hunters about him who’ll drill you clean at a thousand paces.’

‘Those goddam Yankees can’t shoot!’ shouted the Colonel, who was certainly in liquor at the time.

‘They can’t
miss!’ answered my great-grandfather.

‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Colonel.
‘Nec Flacci Mortem!’

‘And what of your lady?’ asked my great-grandfather.

‘Why, she’s a Southerner, Doc; she’ll understand.’

‘And what of your child?’

‘That’s your business, Doc,’ says the Colonel. ‘But I’ll be along at the birth, never you fear, to see fair play.’

Nothing could stop the obstinate fellow. He
sent for his case of duelling pistols; he sent for his white horse; he made his coloured valet stuff the saddlebags with bourbon, corn bread, bacon and a couple of clean shirts. Then off he trotted, clippety-clop, up the dirt-road, over the brow of the hill, then down through the sweet-potato patch, splash across the creek and away into the pine wood…

What took place at the encounter, nobody
ever learned: whether the Maine hunters drilled him clean, or whether General Sherman was even quicker on the draw than he… But Colonel Flack didn’t come riding home that week, nor that month neither, though Sherman’s sixty thousand were now well on their way to Savannah. Sophie, I am glad to report, lay a good twenty miles off the track of destruction and escaped without losing so much as a hog.

The day before Twelfth Night, the Colonel’s lady was brought to bed, and this being her first child, my great-grandfather felt a certain anxiety; he arrived early with his black bag, and had twenty-four hours to wait – from midnight to midnight. But as the clock struck at last, a noise of hooves was heard approaching at a gallop from the pine woods and then splashing across the ford through the
creek, which was mighty deep at that season, and up through the sweet-potato patch, and down over the brow of the hill to the mansion. My great-grandfather was working like a demon now to save the child, and the sweat streaked his face. However, he stole a glance out of the window and recognized both horse and rider; so
he cried to the lady: ‘Courage, ma’am, all’s well! Your husband’s home!’ And
with that they made a concerted effort and another male Flack was brought into the world; which saved the family name from extinction, for all the rest had been killed. But he didn’t dare tell her until many months later that the breast of the Colonel’s shirt was stained with red, and that his face shone white as clay in the moonlight.

Now, this posthumous child happened to be the Colonel’s seventh;
and a tradition arose at Sophie that whenever a seventh Flack came to be born (it could be counted on to be a boy) the Colonel’s ghost would attend the accouchement. If it hadn’t appeared on such occasions, or if no Doc Halloran had been in attendance on the lady, Sophie would have reckoned it mighty queer.

Well, this is where I enter the story. The Flacks, as usual, had been breeding fast, but
the current expenditure of life was well above the average; three boys gone in the First World War, and two in the Second; and several other deaths from miscellaneous causes had reduced the line to the widow and two daughters of the late Colonel Randolph Flack, killed with the Marines on Iwo Jima. But a posthumous child was expected around Twelfth Night, to make the seventh.

Lawyer Pritchard
waited below, trampling up and down the parlour, like a bear in a cage, muttering to himself and anticipating the worst. I had been upstairs for twenty-four hours, but with plenty to occupy my hands and mind; though it looked to be a losing battle.

Finally the clock struck midnight, and the moment of crisis came. I heard the sound of hooves galloping out from the wood, plunging down into the
creek, then through, and up, and over, and along the dirt-road. ‘Fine,’ I thought, as they clattered to a stop. But then came sounds of a scuffle, and when I dared steal a glance through the window, I saw my own black gelding in the driveway, and on that black gelding sat Colonel Flack, dressed exactly as my father had described him to me – beaver hat, pistol case, bloodstain and all – but I have
never in my life seen a more dejected face! What is more, it was the face of the Colonel Flack whom I knew, Randolph Flack, of the Marines!