Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal

Author:Sharon Duggal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bluemoose Books Ltd
Published: 2020-09-04T18:39:46+00:00

15. NIKOS

The day Dimitri was born was the happiest day of Nikos’ life. Ourania woke him gently as a rose gold dawn glowed across a tranquil sky.

‘Nikos, it’s time,’ she said calmly as he fell out of bed and reached around in semi-darkness for his clothes.

Ourania, meanwhile, switched on the bedside lamp

and raised herself out of bed by pushing both her palms onto the mattress. A peach-coloured stain across the bed sheets and down the back of her white cotton nightdress shocked him.

Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?’ he said.

‘Yes. I’m certain,’ she replied firmly and Nikos gulped.

Ourania put her hands on her hips, bent towards the floor and let out a succession of slow sharp breaths.

‘Are you okay, my love?’ He tripped over his trousers as he tried to pull them on.

‘Yes,’ she said abruptly, straightening herself up. She placed one hand against the wall. ‘We need to hurry. I can feel him pushing down. He’s impatient.’

‘He?’ Nikos said with a big grin. It was the first time she’d assigned the baby a sex. For eight months, it was the neutral moraki: Moraki has hiccups; Moraki is hungry, Moraki wants Baba to sing.

‘You think it’s a boy, Nia?’ He could hardly contain his excitement.

‘He, she, it, whatever. Get me to the hospital now, Nikos. We don’t have time for this chit-chat.’

Nikos helped Ourania into the car and rushed around to the driver’s seat. His hands shook on the steering wheel as he weaved through the back roads, avoiding the high street which he knew would be clogged with traffic even though it was still some time before rush-hour.

‘Soon be there. Hold on moraki mou, hold on, little baby,’ he said as Ourania opened the window, stuck her face into the crisp morning air and panted.

Six hours later, he held a tiny squirming pink bundle with a mop of black hair, and a swell of ecstasy careered through his body.

‘I knew it would be a boy,’ he said to Ourania. She smiled weakly and closed her eyes. Her hair was as black as the baby’s; strands stuck to the side of her bloodless face. Nikos pushed them clear with his lips while holding his baby in his arms.

‘We’ll call him Dimitri,’ Ourania said. Her voice was tiny but assertive. ‘After my father and my brother.’

‘Okay,’ Nikos said. And then, to the baby, ‘Kali-mera, Dimitri, my boy.’

George came just a little less than eighteen months later, arriving one lunchtime, three weeks early while Nikos was fiddling about with a delivery of waterproof mattress protectors at the shop. When he heard the news, he ran down Grand Parade nudging people out the way as sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes; damp spread in huge patches beneath his armpits. At home he was met by Doctor Razak at the front gate followed closely by a midwife he’d never seen before. The doctor slapped him on the back,

‘All is well, Nikos. Your wife is as strong as a bull. Congratulations, my friend.

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