Undergraduate Page
ELEPHANTS IN PINK
By A. C. L. HACKNEY (New College, Oxford)
0I course, it was my wife who actually had the baby, but I make bold to assert that in these performances husbands play a real part, and an exacting one. It begins with that unexpected rush to hospital three %wets before what one has come to regard confidently as the "expected date." One's wife has taken the reasonable view that to be ready a fortnight before time should be adequate, so that on coming back in the taxi one is left with an empty flat, the evidence of a hurried female departure, and one's first list. This is the first of a series of lists, and begins ominously with "Finish ironing." As the easy ironing has been -done—the handkerchiefs, for example—it is a long time before one can transfer
attention to the other items on the list, which have a high carbo- hydrate content: "Cornflakes," "Potatoes from Veg. Man," and " Bread (8d. owing)." The ironing is certain to include two or three elaborately frilled blouses and, surprisingly enough, a brassiere, which one does not normally associate with ironing.
The next day, just before visiting hours, a small herd of husbands gathers outside the hospital, mostly Town, with a sprinkling of Gown. The Town, as a rule, bear magnificent bunches of flowers, while the Gown, being on the whole poorer, predominantly bring cherries. The herd paws the ground silently, looking worried, and one asks if, it being five minutes to the hour, one might reasonably go in. "No, no. On the dot," says one's neighbour with violent heilishaking. "Strict." On the dot, therefore, the herd presses upstairs and disperses to the wards. As we pound into a ward our faces change into fixed grins. But within five minutes we all have our pencils out and are industriously writing out our lists. By this time they include simple recipes. "Cover the meat with water. Simmer 2 hours (NOT boil)."
During these waiting days I acquired an item, "Paint elephants on bath." This was by request. My wife held that our baby-bath should be decorated with some cheerful nursery designs, but elephants are the only things I can paint. My wife claims that I have an obsession about elephants. This is quite untrue. I never go out of my way to look at one, even though, naturally, opportunities arc relatively rare. I do not even collect model elephants, as some people do, even surreptitiously as souvenirs. I have, on the other hand, nothing against elephants, and do not actively discourage them in any way. Again, it is pure coincidence that we have a black one on the mantelpiece ; it is down in the inventory as "one small elephant (trunk damaged)." My wife, however, prefers to believe my mother, putting it all down to an early nightmare in which I was alarmed by being visited by an elephant. The truth is, of course, that the smooth curves and simple design of the elephant are easily captured by the amateur brush, and even though the result be somewhat Disneyesque, it is still recognisably an elephant. The difficulty was: What colour ? Blue or pink ? Lest this be regarded as a lunatic question, let it be remembered that it is important that small boys should be brought up in a predominantly blue atmo- sphere—blue clothing, blue cot and so forth, and small girls, pink. This is quite as important as thinking up two sets of names before- hand. My tutor, and Mrs. Tutor, only last year had confidently bought and knitted little blue garments and toned.up the nursery in sky blue, only to be nonplussed by the arrival of a (presumably indignant) small girl.
1 had my own lists, too, largely questions about cooking and reports on parcels that had arrived in advance of the infant. The Items most frequently recurring on these lists concerned matinee coals. These are tiny garments of which only the sleeves can justly be called tiny. The body part is alarmingly wide for even the fattest baby conceivable, but this is apparently because it serves as a small overcoat down to the waist. Hardly a post failed to bring another specimen, obviously carefully chosen or laboriously and lovingly knitted, but unmistakably a matinee coat. Their final mention, when the top drawer in the baby's bedroom was crammed, took the form, "What do with further mat. coats ? " but then the flow unaccountably stopped. • Our collection was of all sizes and most shapes. Very few were coloured. Not to be outdone by circum- stances, most people had not chosen a blue or pink, but had played safe, and knitted whitc. This, at first sight, would appear to solve the elephant-colour problem, but the bath itself was white, and in any case, when you think of it, who wants a white elephant ?
At visiting hours my wife's main preoccupation was, understand- ably enough, with speculations on babies. She shared this with the entire ward. Their keenest interests were reserved for peering out of the windows into a ward at right-angles where there was a woman expecting triplets and allegedly as big as a house. When, however, I suggested jocularly that triplets or perhaps twins would solve both the problem of the matinee coats and that of the colour of the elephants, I was not well received.
Shortly after this my wife was removed to the labour ward, and when I 'phoned next morning, I was told that it was a girl. The morning was spent sending telegrams and cards and the afternoon in answering the door for the telegraph boy, though once it was the baker for his 8d., and once a parcel (the final matinee coat). In the evening I rejoined the extramural herd at the hospital and started the stampede a little before time. My wife was back in the ward, but the baby was not. Apparently they put the new ones for most of the time in a large nursery. When f went to view my daughter I was met by an extraordinary sight. There were serried ranks of cots, mostly on shelves, irresistibly suggestive of the pots in "Omar Khayyam":
"In that old potter's shop I stood alone With the clay population round in rows" and even more appropriately: "And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot Some could articulate while others not."
Some were, indeed, articulating quite strongly, though ours was sleeping uneasily through it all, looking remarkably like Dr. Dalton, in which she takes after my father.
At this point I remembered the promised elephants. They would be the first pink elephants she would see. Next day I painted them on the bath: large benignant ones. A mother elephant with large pink spots and eyelashes ; a father elephant, all pink, with black spectacles. No hats. I am still debating whether or not to add a small pink one, in a matinee coat.
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