It started as
soon as people knew Lucy was pregnant. Her Mum was the first.
“Is it a boy or
a girl?” her Mum wanted to know.
Lucy was a
computer programmer. Her mother was convinced Lucy had no idea about the things
that really mattered.
Lucy didn’t know
whether it was a boy or a girl. She didn’t want to know. It was too soon to
know anyway.
“You need to
know” her mother said, “How can I start making things if I don’t know whether
to do pink or blue? Of course it might as well be blue. There hasn’t been a
girl in Chris’s family for five generations. It’s bound to be a boy.”
Chris was Lucy’s
partner. They had been married nearly two years now. Everyone, well Lucy’s
mother and Chris’s mother and a couple of Lucy’s friends, had kept asking when
they were going to “start a family”. Lucy’s
mother had even gone so far as to get some information on IVF in the belief
that perhaps they were “having problems”. Any fault would be on Chris’s side of
course. Lucy had not spoken to her mother for a week after hearing that except
to say they would start when they were “good and ready”.
As for colours,
well Lucy thought she did not care particularly about colours either, at least
not at this moment. Babies wore all sorts of colours now. The baby would not know. Still she told her
mother,
“Well make
everything blue. It won’t matter that way.”
“You can’t put a
girl in blue!”
“Well if she has
red hair like me then it would be a better choice than pink,” Lucy said crossly.
Her hair was an unfortunate shade of red. Despite that her mother had insisted
on “pink for a girl”. It had clashed horribly with Lucy’s hair.
“Don’t be so
ungracious. And you had better start thinking about names,” her mother said
sidestepping the issue of pink or blue.
“There’s plenty
of time for thinking about names,” Lucy said. She sighed inwardly. There would
be no end to this until the baby was born. That was, according to the doctor,
another thirty-four weeks away.
“You should start
thinking about it now…and don’t forget you will need to include your father’s
name and Chris’s father’s name.”
There had been a
terrible row when Lucy’s sister had failed to call her son “Mark Albert Solomon
Stafford” or even “Mark Solomon Albert Stafford”. This time it was supposed to include Albert because
of Lucy’s father.
Chris’s father
was called Edmund but everyone called him “Piper” instead. Lucy did not care
for Albert or Edmund and Chris’s father had actually said,
“Don’t call the
poor little beggar Edmund.”
“He’s only
saying that, “Lucy’s mother said, “Because he really does want you to do it.”
Lucy ignored
that. Edmund had been “Piper” from the day he was born.
“And then you
have Gramps and Pop to consider too.”
They were Lucy’s
grandfathers, both still alive. Gramps was Ezekiel and Pop was Edgar. Lucy did
not care for those names either. Anyway the old men were known as Pat and Ed to
their friends. Lucy thought it said something about what they thought of their
names.
“And
Christopher’s grandfather is still alive isn’t he? Do you know his name?”
“Balthazar,”
Lucy told her. She had no idea what his name was but it might stop her mother’s
ridiculous suggestions.
“Mmm - different.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite the thing. But, you must start thinking about it Lucinda.”
Other people
said she should start thinking about names too. Her friend Josie gave her a fat
book of 75,000 Baby Names with the words,
“You won’t need
all of those but they might give you some ideas.”
Lucy felt sure
she would not need all of them. She might not need any of them.
“Of course it is
no use thinking about names until you know,” her friend Sandra told her.
“Know what?”
Lucy asked – and then wished she had not.
“The sex of Bump
of course – boy or girl. You really do need to know you know. After all is he
going to Chris’s old school or yours?”
“We both went to
the same school,” Lucy reminded her, “You went there too – remember?”
“Yes, but that’s
not the point. You need to start thinking about names now. If you don’t you’ll
end up calling him Albert just to please your Mum.”
“And you want to
start thinking about giving Bump something a bit different, you know – not
ordinary,” Josie added, “That’s what the book is for.”
Josie’s girls
were called Clarissa and Tatiana. Her son was called Sylvester. Lucy did not
care for those either.
Chris was, as
she knew he would be, sympathetic.
“No, we don’t
have to think about names yet.”
He got a piece
of paper and his favourite magnetic pen. He clipped the paper to the fridge
under the pen and said,
“If you do have
ideas then put them there. I’ll put mine there as well. We won’t discuss names
until Bump is born. I have an idea for sorting the issue anyway. I’ll work on
it and tell you later.”
The months went
on. Lucy’s mother worried. She had long conversations on the phone with Chris’s
mother. They both agreed that the young couple was being completely irresponsible.
Names were very important and they were not even thinking about them. That
piece of paper on the fridge was still blank. Lucy’s mother tried adding some
names to the paper herself but Lucy and Chris just changed the old piece of
paper for a fresh blank piece.
It was a
dreadful worry; especially as both mother and mother-in-law were sure Lucy must
have miscalculated the dates. She was rather big already. Bump was bound to be
a boy. No girl would be that big. They only needed to think about male names. Surely
the young couple would be willing to listen to advice?
Lucy’s mother
did her best. She bought two more baby name books. One claimed to have 1,000,000
names in it. There were names like “Bob”,”Trev” and “Em” in it. Lucy thought
they were not names at all, just diminutives of things like Robert or Trevor or
Emily or perhaps Emma – or even Emlyn. The other claimed to be “Names for the
Twenty-First Century Baby.” It contained things like Elvis (Lucy thought of him
as very last century) and Homer (Lucy did not care for the Simpsons). You could
forget Aretha, Britney, Kermit and Uma too.
Chris’s mother,
much more adept at using a computer, provided a list of “potentially useful”
internet sites. Chris actually used them – but not in a way his mother expected
or even knew about. He was working on something else.
“All you can
find Mum,” he told her cheerfully, “We can use all the help we can get.”
Puzzled but
pleased his mother spent hours working at the list for him. The result was that
their regular “third Sunday in the month get together” lunch consisted of
frozen pizza instead of the usual roast. Lucy’s mother did not speak to Chris’s
mother for a week after that – but Chris’s mother was too busy to notice.
Chris was busy
too. He was a lecturer in “Computer Programming for Core Value Social Network
Systems” at King James College in Oxford. He was never sure what “core value”
was supposed to mean but he had done his thesis on an alternative to Facebook.
His new “Person-able” site was going to be launched in a matter of weeks.
Interest was intense. Despite that Chris seemed distracted.
Lucy understood.
He had done the work on Person-able. He was ready to move on to the next thing.
Well, he had moved on to the next thing. He told her about it while they were
painting the nursery in a rather nice shade of lavender blue. (The blue was
because they both liked the colour and not because everyone was saying Bump
would be a boy.)
“It will take
people from guess work to an informed choice. It should save a lot of
arguments.”
“It’s
brilliant,” Lucy said meaning it and, at his request, made more suggestions.
Chris added them to his mini-computer. He did this while he was up the ladder
painting the ceiling cream. It meant he had to remove some paint from the
computer’s screen but the ideas were too important to risk forgetting them.
By then Lucy was
feeling very uncomfortable. Bump felt like a footballer, a whole team of
footballers. No, she did not know the sex. She did not want to know the sex.
She did not want to know anything except to be reassured that “everything is
going very well”. It was, she told family and friends, all she needed to know.
Chris was barely
sleeping by then. There was a definite time limit on this new project and the
project was a huge one.
The team doing
the launch of Person-able were puzzled. Chris did not seem interested in the
millions it was bound to generate or the intense media buzz surrounding it.
“Come on man,
concentrate. It’s way bigger than Facebook! It’s your baby,” his media advisers
told him.
“No,” he told
them, “Bump is.”
“We haven’t got
time to waste!” the team leader told him, “Person-able is due to hit the
screens in just over two weeks.”
“It’s not a
problem. I promise you.”
Chris went back to
his computer programmes. The team leader sighed and found, somewhat to his
surprise, that most of the problems he was worrying about had sorted themselves
out.
Lucy went into
labour right on schedule. It was perfectly timed. The launch party for
Person-able had ended an hour before.
“Just the way a
good computer programmer should behave,” Chris said as he rushed her at high
speed to the Radcliffe Maternity Unit at two in the morning. They got there
just in time. (It was only then they noticed a police car had been following
them.)
Lucy’s mother
and Chris’s mother arrived almost at the same moment later in the morning.
(Their husbands had gone to work.) Chris was nowhere to be seen. The woman at
reception could tell them nothing. They paced the waiting area. What was taking
so long? What was wrong? They drank cardboard flavoured tea and paced some more.
Surely Chris would come to tell them what was going on very soon now?
At two in the
afternoon Lucy’s mother demanded to know what was going on in a very loud
voice. They had, she told the new and very young girl at reception, been very
patient. If there was something wrong they had the right to know. Would the
girl at least inquire?
More easily
intimidated than the previous receptionist she finally tapped some keys and
then gave them some directions. They hurried down the corridor united as never
before by their concern for their status as grandmothers.
The room at the
end was in semi-darkness apart from the light beaming from Chris’s laptop
screen. Lucy and Chris were watching the screen anxiously.
“Yes!”
“Absolutely
perfect!” Lucy said. They high-fived and laughed, “Quick, write them on the
cards now.”
“Just what do
you think you are doing?” the two grandmothers asked together.
“Oh hello Mum,”
he said, “We wanted to be sure it worked before we told you.”
“Hello Mum,”
Lucy said, “Chris is just going to write their names on their cribs. We used
his new Luchris Baby Name Program to find the right names.”
Lucy looked at
the three white cots lined up against the other wall and smiled.
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