THE STORM CHILD

It's the sort of weather outside that calls for a story like this.

The time, 6.49pm, the date June 28^th, the year 1976.

Wendy sighed to herself and held her swollen stomach reassuringly with one hand. The heat was even more oppressive because she was full term pregnant

“The little darling will come soon,” Paul murmured to her, hoping he was right in assuming that their first offspring was going to be anything like a little darling.

“This weather isn’t helping,” gasped Wendy, and he knew it couldn’t be. A very hot and uncomfortably sultry day had transformed itself ito the sort of electric storm that filled the evening sky with vivid slashes of intense lightning.

“Whatever it is, it’s coming!” she yelled, “where’s the blasted midwife when she’s wanted?”

“I’ll do it,” he replied, knowing that he didn’t have a clue but loved her anyway, “I’ll pull the little darling into the world!”

But Wendy’s only response was an agonised shriek.

Then the cuckoo clock to one side of the mantelpiece announced the hour followed by a deafening clap of thunder that seemed to shake Paul to his bones.

But he did it! Somehow, and he could never explain how, he helped Rosie into the world. And as if to celebrate the occasion the seemingly impossible happened and a stray streak of lightning forced its way through the window and straight to the now silent cuckoo clock and, somehow, smashed it to smoking pieces.

But they barely noticed at the time because Rosie was in the room and she was all the mother or father had eyes for. Because she was beautiful. And because her fist word at such a tiny stage in her life sounded spookily like cuckoo.

Storms never last for long in this part of the world, not even in 1976 when the weather was having a scorching adventure of its own. This one blew away soon enough and poured its lightning glistening rain on another county.

And Paul and Wendy’s cuckoo clock never worked again. But that did’nt matter necause they had Rosie, and she was a tiny miracle. They were going to fry the afterbirth and have it for supper but when he took one look at it Paul had other plans for it. Wendy wasn’t bothered, so he buried it next day under soil that had been baked solid and then blasted by a storm, so it was diggable.

And we turn out attention to little Rosie.

Like loads of little girls she melted hearts because she was pretty. Her smile was pretty, the curve of her lips was pretty her flaxen hair was pretty, and to top it all up Wendy used all her considerable skill making pretty little dresses for her.

There are journeys young children, boys and girls alike, take through babyhood and one of them is the mamma dadda business of which shall come first. Men secretly encourage the repetition of daddy whilst women use whatever time is available to torture out a repetition of mummy.

But Rosie had other thoughts on her mind.

Instead of mamma or dadda she shocked both parents by repeating the first sound she had made.

Cuckoo she mouthed with perfect fluency. And although she soon managed to satisfy both parents by references to them as mummy and daddy, she still managed to interrogate them with cuckoo questions.

The burnt out cuckoo clock had long been consigned to landfill but, out of recognition of the peculiarities of their daughter’s birth, Paul found a replacement in a jumble sale and after treating it to quite a bit of loving care it was hung to one side of the mantel piece where its predecessor had been blasted to kingdom come, and in contrast to its predecessor this one kept fairly poor time.

It was Wendy who noticed it first. She knew the treplaceemt cuckoo clock was often five minutes slow, and it shocked her when out of the blue and five minutes ahead of it calling the hour her lovey daughter tended to go cuckoo herself.

“I’m quite impressed,” she said to Paul after he returned home from work. By then it was 1978 and memories of the blistering summer off 1976 had all but faded into the mental cauldron of things best forgotten..

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s our Rosie. Im sure she can tell the time,” she replied quite seriously.

Rosie was playing with a doll as she spoke, and totally ignored them, but the clock didn’t.

It cuckooed six o’clock, five minutes early.

“Just wait,” urged Wendy. And being a good and obedient husband which he was because Wendy was the most lovely wife a man could have, he waited.

For five minutes.

And then Rosie made a creditable cuckoo sound at precisely the time when the clock should have done it. He looked at his watch and nodded.

“Incredible,” he agreed, “she’s spot on.”

“Do you think, you know when she was born?” asked Wendy.

“You mean, the storm?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Well, our old clock was blown to smithereens by freak lightning,” she reminded him.

“But no, it’s not possible,” he decided.

At seven oh five, less than an hour later, the child cuckooed seven.

“We’d better not mention it to anyone,” whispered Wendy.

“Quite right! They’ll say she’s a freak or something even worse,” agreed Paul.

So their secret was kept and the child cuckooed to herself until she learned a bit more about telling the time, when she started muttering things like four o’clock at precisely the right time.

“You know, when you start school soon,” Wendy aid to her at eleven o’clock one day, “amd you tell us what the tims is?”

“Like just then?” asked Rosie.

“It would be best if you didn’t. The teacher might not like it and if you annoy her she might slap you.”

Rosie smiled at her mother. “I’m not stupid,” she said.

And she was never heard to cuckoo again, and she only mentioned the time when she was asked. Like d you know what the time is, Rosie?

And she would beaming tell whoever asked.

So it was that the years passed. The cuckoo clock was relocated into Rosie;s room because the noise irritated one of her sisters, who claimed to have ultra sensitive hearing.

Wendy and Paul had three more children, a girl and two boys, and none of them ever had more than a clue what the time might be and were almost always late for just about everything. But Rosie grew older, married, became famous for her punctuality, and eventually applied for the one job she really dreamed of having, as the talking clock.

Then, in the year 2023 there was another storm. A brief but explosive mixture of wind and rain and thunder. It was then that Rosie passed away, trying to sleep through the storm, underneath the old cuckoo clock.

She was buried in the church yard, a timeless stretch of land dedicated to the dead where her loved ones dreamed she would be happy.

© Peter Rogerson 16.06.23

...