Reginald Decides to Join the Foreign Office

It was almost as if Reginald had been conscripted into childbirth. He had lived a fairly irresponsible life throughout his early twenties. His sudden marriage had been more about infatuation, lust and impulsiveness than any kind of considered choice.

Reginald would say, though, that he was very responsible. He got his papers in on time. He was always available for his students. He was diligent in his studies. He sometimes claimed and spoke of things he knew not, but that was, after all, the academic disease, and he could scarcely be singled out.

Reginald did not think very much about his future; in this, he and Tom had much in common. (In fact, this is probably why Tom’s obvious lassitude provoked Reginald so much, and why he had been unable to visit Tom in his room.) Reginald wanted an impressive future; he dreamed of nodding graciously in the face of endless applause; he loved the idea of entering a room and provoking ripples of “isn’t that..?” He liked the idea of climbing a stage in a tuxedo, and accepting a Nobel or Pulitzer. He liked the idea that, when society faced intractable problems, he would be almost ordered to do a series of radio lectures to address them.

So when it turned out that Wendy was pregnant, his initial shock (and horror, given the circumstances of the discovery, and the ghastly argument which happened right afterwards) quickly gave way to visions of a wise and vaguely ‘American Indian Chief’ kind of fatherhood. He pictured his children – sons, usually – climbing on his lap, wide-eyed and questioning, or sitting cross-legged on the floor as he sat in a leather armchair, delicately tracing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire with his flowing hands. My sons, he thought, will see everything in its obvious first instance – that the world is flat, our football team is the best, and capitalism is good – and I will set them straight, and there will be much confusion, and it will take many moons for them to see the wisdom of my words, but they shall come to me when they are older, perhaps when they get to university, and say that they finally understand my thoughts, and apologize for questioning me at any time…

It can be said with great certainty that, throughout the history of man, dreamy reveries about munificent patriarchy have found precious little weight with women vomiting at dawn and weeping over swollen feet that threaten to burst favourite shoes. As a woman watches her youthful figure sail into the foggy realms of pure history, into photos, to be commented on by her children in twenty years (‘is that really mum?’), and grapples with strange eating preferences, and food combinations that would give a starving man pause, she might not have a lot of patience with a man’s dreams about obedience and worship from the coming offspring.

Wendy desperately hoped that she would fall back in love with Reginald. His seed was growing within her; surely that would re-open her heart. And it was touch and go, for a while. But emotional reality always reasserts itself, and it wasn’t long before they began to lean dangerously over the cliff...