Country life
Perhaps it's all for the best
Leanda de Lisle
My middle son, Christian, was born on Easter Saturday eight years ago. He was an eccentric child even then. He' was deliv- ered on the day he was due, something my obstetrician assured me never happened, which was why he was fishing in Scotland when I went into labour.
Christian wrapped his arm round his head and got jammed on his way into the world, so a stand-in doctor squished down on my stomach as if I were a tube of tooth- paste until my baby flew out, bright red, with black hair growing down to his nose. `My God, it's Geronimo,' my mother said when she saw him.
Well, perhaps Christian wasn't the right name for him. A few years later he was found on his knees in front of the silver salver in my in-laws' dining-room, chanting `Bongo banana, we worship you.' Still, I'm not sure that Geronimo would have been quite right either. 'Running Lemming' might have been more appropriate.
When he was three months old, he threw himself out of his cot. We lived in a farm- house with rather ancient wiring and those modern baby intercom devices were always breaking down, so I never heard the bump in the attic or the cries that followed. When I went up to check on him, I thought the fairies had taken him, until I found him under his cot looking rather confused.
At ten months, Christian found himself locked in a third-floor bathroom with his two-year-old brother. `11mm,' I thought, `this is bad. Christian might get shoved down the loo.' I couldn't move the door and there were no neighbours to turn to, so I telephoned my husband, pulling the receiver out of the back door to look up at the bathroom window.
I was just asking my husband where I might find a suitably muscular farm work- er, when Christian pulled himself up against the window bars and began squeez- ing himself between them. Perhaps he had decided to bail out before he got the lava- tory-brush treatment. I screamed, dropped the receiver and ran to stand under the window. Christian was, by now, outside the bars, bouncing up and down on the win- dow-ledge 25 ft above a stone courtyard. I calculated that he would be able to stay upright for two to three minutes — just long enough for me to go into the house, grab some sofa cushions and yell for the nanny to dial 999.
The nanny then ran off across the fields to find help, but I knew that nobody would be able to get to us before Christian dropped. I begged his brother to pull him back, but he was too young to understand what was hap- pening and just laughed like a mad troll. I waited for the inevitable, remembering how terrible I was at netball at school. Christian began to whimper. Then he fell. I put my arms out and he hit them like a sack of bricks, breaking through and dragging me down onto the cushions.
There was a three-hour wait at the hospi- tal to X-ray his skull, but we were told he was fine. Christian grew into a very affec- tionate little boy. Unfortunately, his embrace is inevitably accompanied by a knee in your groin. He loves history but, unfortunately, he can hardly read. He loves his food but, unfortunately, he has the table manners of a wart hog.
About a year ago he was diagnosed as dyslexic. As there is no family history of dyslexia, I am told that his brain may have been damaged at birth, or perhaps when he fell on his head. It seems the problem is rather severe, so Christian is off to a spe- cial boarding school next term. Perhaps, if we lived in London, we would have found such a school locally and I could have kept him at home for longer. Anyway, he's off.
It's all for the best. Mind you, that's what my great uncle said when he sent his sis- ter's boyfriend to the front in 1916. It's all for the best. I suppose it is.
`Do you have to bring your work home with you?'
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