The Forget-Me-Not Girl by Sheila Everett

Author:Sheila Everett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

NINETEEN

Pop didn’t say much after Penny imparted the news in the privacy of their room the following weekend, but, hurt at the remark ‘I imagined we were past all that’, she took it that he was more dismayed than delighted.

‘You might be, but I’m not!’ she flashed back.

‘Pen! I didn’t mean—’

‘Didn’t you?’ She marched out, adding, ‘Supper’s ready.’ You couldn’t call it a tiff, more a catastrophe, she thought, sniffing loudly as she ladled out the stew in the kitchen. If I had an ‘added ingredient’, well, I’d add it to his plate. That actually made her laugh. She was so rarely angry, she’d get round him, make him believe it was all his idea to have a baby, eh?

He rustled his paper after supper, ostensibly reading, while Penny silently signalled to Tess, ‘D’you think he’s all right?’

She began clearing the table. ‘Your turn with the dish mop, Barney.’

‘What’s up?’ Barney asked bluntly. ‘Have you and Pop had a quarrel?’

Penny put the plates down with a clatter, dashed from the room.

Pop lowered the paper at last. ‘You’ve upset her.’

‘No, you have, Pop!’ They glared at each other.

Pop rose. ‘Had a shock, that’s all – it’ll take time to sink in.’

‘What will?’

‘Penny’s going to have a baby, Barney.’

‘Gosh!’

‘What exactly does that mean?’

‘It means – it’ll be golly-gosh if it’s a boy! I always wanted a brother.’

‘Pop,’ Tess urged, ‘go after her, tell her.’

‘I know what to say. I’ve had some experience, after all.’

Penny was curled up on her couch. ‘Millie Mae,’ she wept aloud. ‘Help me! Please.’ Then Pop sat down heavily beside her, gathering her up in his arms.

‘I’m sorry, Pen, it was so unexpected – an old buffer like me.’

‘And me!’ She clung to him. ‘But we weren’t too old, were we, to have a baby, and who cares what others think – apart from family – and I want it.’

‘I want it, too,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that all that matters?’

She didn’t need to say it this time, anyway she couldn’t because they were too busy making up, and being old buffers didn’t come into it at all.

*

Nick spent a week with them in June. When Penny was resting in the afternoons, her only concession to pregnancy, he and Tess went walking, where defences permitted, or sat in the garden, among the weeds, as Penny ruefully pointed out, flourishing now she couldn’t bend and touch her toes.

Barney monopolized their guest in the evenings, and Nick didn’t seem to mind. He couldn’t impress with flying stories, only general aircraft design, and then nothing specific because of the nature of his work; but he really was quite an artist, as Pop said. His lively, lifelike sketches entertained them all.

‘I must frame that one of Moses stalking some poor little creature in the long grass,’ Penny said. ‘How about a Moses design for my mugs, Nick?’

‘Give him matching eyes,’ Barney suggested, ‘or you’ll frighten the customers away.’

‘I can’t catch the essence of your colouring in 3B pencil,’ Nick sighed to Tess, tearing off the latest attempt from his pad.

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