It didn’t get that far, though. I was in London when Claire phoned and said she thought her waters had broken. It was three months early. She was rushed to the regional maternity unit and told to lie very still. They said it would be great if she could just stay as still as she could for about the next three months or so. She’d been there for a week when I got the call, the call I had been getting every day, ‘Get down here, I think they’re coming’, followed by a mad dash and panic and then, nothing doing.
It was the morning of Easter Monday, about two-thirty, when the phone rang. This time it wasn’t Claire who called. It was a midwife. She said, ‘I think it’s worth your while coming down.’
It was a familiar run, by now, but it was an eerie sprint to the hospital that time. The roads were immaculate. It was dream-like. I didn’t see another person or vehicle as I gunned the big old Merc through the ghostly empty night the twenty-odd miles to Oxford.
Hospitals are buzzing the whole twenty-four hours, especially maternity wards. There were always a couple of people smoking outside the entrance to the women’s centre and there were people around the drinks machine, waiting and wondering.
Claire was crying when I got to the ward. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It wasn’t her fault. I held her hand. We’d been briefed on what to expect if she gave birth this early when she was first admitted. It wasn’t exactly what you want to hear. Serious risk of brain damage, almost certain to be breathing difficulties, possibility of blindness, and that was just the ‘B’s.
The babies were definitely on their way and they were both breech and they were weak, especially the one whose waters had broken. The safest option, said the consultant, was an immediate emergency Caesarean. I didn’t have any better ideas.
The operating theatre was as white as an art gallery and as bright and busy as a TV studio. There was the surgeon and her assistant, the anaesthetist, a nurse for each baby, a specialist for each baby and doctors and people with clipboards. All you could see was eyes. Everyone had masks on.
I was sitting by Claire’s head behind a curtain that ran along the top of her chest. I’d been talking to my friend Robert about Caesareans. His wife had one. He said it was absolutely fine as long as you don’t look over the curtain. The only trouble is that all you want to do is look over the curtain.
It was true. I was leaning over. Claire wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t want to tell her. They’d painted her tummy with gloop, sliced it open and the surgeon was in there up to her elbow, rummaging.
When she pulled twin one out by his feet, like a rabbit coming out of a hat, he didn’t make a sound. I was sure he hadn’t made it. He was limp and silent. Claire was saying, ‘Is it OK? Is it OK?’ I said of course it was. It was a lie as far as I was concerned, but a good one. They were still fishing around for twin two. He was squeaking a bit when he got out, so that was all right.
I felt so confused. Claire was in a daze. The babies were whisked straight from the theatre into intensive care, where all the life-support apparatus was situated. No one can tell you what’s happening at this stage, no one can say, ‘It’s fine, don’t worry’, because no one knows. It’s best just to let them deal with it. It was my job to look after Claire. I couldn’t do anything else.
We got back to the ward and I asked the nurse as discreetly as I could when we’d know if there were any problems. I was really worried about the one who hadn’t made any noise or movements. She said brightly, ‘No news is good news, so try and get some rest.’ I called Mrs Swann, the piano teacher, to say we couldn’t make it today, because the babies had arrived. She said, ‘Congratulations!’, and I hadn’t realised until she said that magic word what had actually just happened. It was all so touch and go, I hadn’t even called the grandparents.
As the days in intensive care went by, I wondered when I’d be able to stop worrying. Blind panic had mellowed to acute anxiety, which in turn had settled right down into chronic mild apprehension with occasional spasms of intense anguish, all mixed with the chest-beating rapture of fatherhood. It was weird, like moose cheese: too much flavour to deal with.
The special care birth unit was as hot as hell, and the torment was as exquisite. This is where the sick babies from all points west were brought to fight for their tiny lives. It was always hard to walk through that door. Sometimes we’d visit and there’d be a new arrival, parents sobbing in the wake of some terrible complication. It was most heart-rending when the parents were young. We never knew if it was going to be us next up for some bad news.
But the little boys, who to start with would fit in the palm of my hand, fingers like matchsticks and faces like tiny old men, grew stronger. It’s the first twenty-four hours that are the toughest. Then if they can make the first week they’re in with a good chance. But it’s always day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, in neonatal intensive care. After eight weeks in Oxford and a fortnight in Banbury, we brought them home. It was a close squeak. Twenty years ago they wouldn’t have made it.
Toys are better now, as well. They don’t know they’re born, kids today.
Today and Tomorrow
It’s half my life ago, nineteen years, since the first rehearsal when we wrote ‘She’s So High’ and it’s nearly four years since
Think Tank
. It was a mad steeplechase on a mad horse, but writing about it all at last has made me realise just how much I loved every single minute of it, while it was happening. No one can be wise until they have been properly foolish, or feel well at home until they’ve spent time wandering in the wilderness. Having spent so much time together, all four of us in the band have grown up in our own quite different ways since that last record, we’ve all learned to stand on our own two feet as individuals. Damon’s sold millions more records, Graham has found peace and filled it with his own noise, Dave’s gone into politics and I’m a Renaissance man. I think we all needed to do that before we could face each other again.
On my last birthday, Graham came out to the farm. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, but we were both wearing tweedy suits and thinking about the same new things. He wants to move out to the country, too. He brought his new guitar with him, a customised Martin acoustic, built especially for him. He played it while I cooked lunch. It was just like at college only it was a better lunch, and a nicer guitar. ‘I’m up for having a jam with the others,’ he said, rather surprisingly.
I was just happy to see him again. It’s companionship that makes any journey worthwhile. I’d taken a running jump at everything and somehow, instead of falling, I’d risen, weightlessly and effortlessly, lifted higher and higher by the arms of the people who surrounded me.
Flying Tony brought the Bonanza over today. I’d sold it to Dave for a generous price and he still lets me use it occasionally. I drove cross-country to Enstone aerodrome with Claire and Geronimo. The flying club usually only does Pot Noodles and crisps but there was a barbecue going on this morning and burger smoke wafted amid the avgas fumes. There were planes coming in from all directions and the usual murmur of covert excitement that is the happy atmosphere of all small airfields.
‘Where do you want to go?’ said Tony.
‘Shall we just go and look around?’
The earth fell away once more. My wife, my child, my friend and I were airborne, a racing bullet at the exact centre of a perfect three hundred and sixty degree horizon, the whole world below us, and God knows, the boundless open universe above. It was a late September day. The haze of high summer had dissolved and the air beneath our wings was a sea of perfect clarity, England in its green glory, below.
England is beyond all doubt the prettiest country from the air. It is more intricately fascinating than the yawning stitched quilts of continental Europe, more vivid than any other landscape. Those small meadows are impractical for farming but unrivalled in their brilliant perfection. And right in the middle of the prettiest part of England’s green and pleasant land was the farm. I hadn’t seen it from the air since I’d bulldozed the concrete or planted the vegetable garden, dug the lake or knocked down the asbestos carbuncles. It was a miraculously transformed ruin; it was a phoenix from the flames; it was a very big house . . .