David Hill
In 1974 we left for a two-year working holiday in the UK, with three sleeping bags, three suitcases and a 4-yearold son. Two years later, we came back with three sleeping bags, four suitcases, five tea-chests, a 6-year-old son and a 5-month-old daughter.
We’d thought we might not be able to have any more children after Pete, so when we got the brilliant news from a Margate doctor that
Beth was pregnant, we decided it must have been the English mild ale. I won’t say which of us had been drinking it.
Beth had a glorious pregnancy, though the sight of 40 fried eggs in the seaside hotel kitchen where she was working did send her sprinting from the room.
Our carefully eked-out photos (I’m talking camera-withroll-of-film days) show her and her lovely, slowly-swelling cargo, plus small son and small son’s stuffed cat, as we strolled the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, did brass rubbings in Canterbury Cathedral, took Pete to glimpse foxes in Kentish woods.
The baby was due at the end of 1975. By that time, we were living in half an 18th century farmhouse in a West Sussex village. It was two storeys of mellow bricks, leaded windows, a stone front doorstep that centuries of feet had worn into a dip. It was charming, rustic, bone-shakingly freezing.
As the UK winter bit, all three-and-a-bit of us moved into one bedroom to save on heating. On the coldest nights, our curtains froze to the inside of the windows. Washing on the line rained little shards of ice when you shook it.
We made it to Christmas. Snow didn’t fall, but sleet did, and we huddled around the coal fire (global warming? Never heard of it) to unwrap presents that had come all the way by sea from New Zealand.
Later, we went for a walk, saw robins on bare branches and genuine carol singers outside a genuine thatched church. Neighbours who’d only nodded to us before now smiled, shook hands, went ‘‘All the best for your new arrival’’.
That new arrival came in the middle of the night, at the turn of the year. Two hours into 1976, Beth shifted in bed, panted, shifted again. ‘‘I think you need to make a phone call.’’
I hurried 50m to the village shop, and the square red telephone box outside it. Britain’s National Health System had briefed us on what to do. I inserted two pennies, dialled St Catherine’s Hospital in Chichester, crossed my fingers.
Two minutes later, I was heading back to the cottage, under a sky glittering with northern constellations. ‘‘The ambulance is on its way,’’ I told Beth, who was now dressed and perched on the edge of the bed, taking slow breaths. On the other side of the room, Pete slept on.
The ambulance came just 20 minutes later. As Beth and her bulge got in, the driver told me ‘‘Don’t worry, chum. We always look after you Australians.’’ I went back inside, muttered ‘‘Australians?’’ a few times, and lay in bed, fretting. 3am. 4am. 5am. Nothing would have happened yet, but I couldn’t wait.
I checked on Pete, ran back to the phone box, inserted more pennies. (We’d built up an emergency stack on the mantelpiece.)
I was answered. I was transferred. I was put on hold. Finally, a West Sussex accent came on. ‘‘Muster Hill? You’ve got a booful daughter. Happy New Year, luv.’’
Helen Mary had reached Planet Earth. I knew my face was split by a huge, stupid grin.
Pete was still fast asleep. I shook him. ‘‘Pete? Wake up, son. You’ve got a little sister.’’ Our 5-yearold stared, sprang out of bed, peered under it. ‘‘Where?’’ he went.
We’d arranged to park him with friends a few miles away. I rang them, too (of course they wanted a 5.20am call), helped a yawning small son into his clothes, and we drove off.
The road to our friends wound through bare, silent winter woods. We slid along a tunnel of oak and beech that flicked past in our headlights. Black branches arched above us.
The bird came with no sound. From a tree just ahead, a white owl swooped down. It hung in front of us for half a second, wings spread, great eyes gazing straight at us. Then it lifted up and vanished into the darkness.
A white owl. The bird of the Greek Goddess Athena; a symbol of female knowledge and power.
Pete had slept through it. Twenty miles away in Chichester, our daughter had been in the world for less than three hours. I drove on, my back prickling.
Of course no parent forgets the birth of a child. But this time, I felt I’d been sent a sign. I’d been blessed. And her life has blessed us ever since. Happy New Year and Happy Birthday, Helen Mary.
A white owl. The bird of the Greek Goddess Athena; a symbol of female knowledge and power ... I drove on, my back prickling.