آینده

CHAPTER TWELVE

The future

Six months later, John Duncan was living in a small flat near the sea. He had lost his job, and had had to sell his expensive house. He couldn’t afford the payments on it.

From a window in his flat, he could look at the sea. He sat and looked at the cold, grey sea for hours, every day.

Christine would have her baby soon. He had bought lots of baby clothes to give her. His bedroom was full of baby clothes - little pink coats and trousers for a girl, blue ones for a boy. There were little soft toys too - teddy bears and small animals with blue, empty eyes.

But he hadn’t given any of these things to her, because she wouldn’t talk to him. When he went to see her, she closed the door in his face; when he rang, she put the phone down; when he wrote, she sent the letters back unopened.

There were a lot of books and magazines in his bedroom, too. But he kept them under his bed. He read them sometimes at night, but he didn’t like to see them during the day.

They were about babies, and the diseases that babies could get, before they were born. There were some terrible things in the books, terrible pictures. He didn’t like to think about them, but he couldn’t stop. He thought about them all day, all the time.

Today, as he sat staring out of the window at the sea, he could not stop his hands shaking. Every morning he rang the hospital, to ask if his daughter Christine MacDonald was there. He had rung this morning, and a nurse had said yes, Christine was there, and the baby was coming.

That had been four hours ago. For two hours John had sat by the telephone, afraid to ring the hospital again. Three times he had picked it up, and three times he had put it down again.

He picked it up again, and rang the number. Seven– five– eight– three. it was no good. He put the phone down again. He could not hear the news from the cold voice of a nurse over the telephone. He had to see the baby for himself.

He got up, put on his coat, and went downstairs. There was a cold wind outside, blowing from the sea. The sea and the sky were grey and miserable.

He went into a shop and bought some flowers. He chose them carefully - bright red and yellow colours - and the shopkeeper put paper around them to keep them safe. John took them and walked quickly, nervously, along the windy road by the sea, towards the hospital.

It was raining out at sea. Already the rain was falling on the sandbanks where the seals used to live. Soon it would be falling on the town. John Duncan shivered, and turned his coat collar up. Then, with his bright flowers in his hand, he walked on, into the winter wind.