Tomorrow Lies in Ambush
Bob Shaw
Call Me Dumbo
The thoughts were strange, and they hurt.
My husband is called Carl—and that’s a nice name. My three little sons are called David, Aaron and John—and those are nice names. But I’m called Dumbo—and that sounds silly. It isn’t even like a real name. How did I get it in the first place?
Dumbo bustled around the cottage trying to quiet her mind with work. Morning sunlight streamed across the breakfast table, making it glow like an altar. She set out five dishes of hot porridge then went to fetch the children who were tumbling noisily in her flower garden. Once out in the peaceful, sun-filled air she felt a little better. Beyond the picket fence the grain fields which Carl tended so carefully rolled down to the river like unleashed bolts of yellow satin.
“Come for your breakfast,” she called. “And don’t trample my roses, David. You’d miss the pretty colours as much as anybody.”
“What roses?” David’s six-year-old face was flushed with exertion. “You mean these green things?” The younger boys tittered admiringly.
“Those roses,” Dumbo emphasised.
David pointed straight at the freshly opened, deep red blossoms. “You mean these green things?”
Dumbo hesitated uneasily. David was being naughty, showing off to his brothers, but he was full of confidence, compactly indomitable as only a healthy child can be. And he had said this sort of thing before. Dumbo stared at the roses, but her eyes had begun to hurt now.
“Into the house!” she commanded. “Your porridge will be cold.”
They went into the coolness of the whitewashed walls and the children scrambled up on their chairs. Carl came in from the outhouse where he kept his pets and nodded approvingly as he saw the children eat. The faded shirt stretched across his thick, powerfully sloping shoulders was already dappled with sweat.
“Have your breakfast now, darling,” Dumbo said concernedly. “You worry more about the animals than about yourself.”
“Daddy fixed the rabbit’s leg,” Aaron announced proudly.
Carl smiled at the child as he sat down and Dumbo felt a flash of jealousy. She decided to win a smile for herself, with a trick that never failed.
“Some day Daddy’s going to have a daughter to worry about—and then he’ll have no time for rabbits.”
Carl kept his head down, scooping porridge into his mouth.
“We have to have a baby girl,” Dumbo persisted, disappointed. “Isn’t that so, darling.”
Behind his rimless glasses Carl’s pale blue eyes shuttled briefly. He continued eating.
“Your Daddy,” Dumbo switched to the children, ‘just lives for the day when we’ll have our own little …’
“For Christ’s sake!” Carl’s spoon clattered into the dish and his shoulders worked beneath the straining shirt. “I’m sorry.” he said quietly. “Of course we’ve got to have a girl. Now will you please sit down and eat your own breakfast? Will you please?”
Dumbo smiled happily and took her seat. Carl had given her the reassurance she wanted. It was good to know she was loved, and yet the disturbing new thoughts thudded continuously in her head. Who ever heard of a name like Dumbo? She should be called something different. A nice womanly, motherly name. Something like … perhaps … Victor…. No, that’s a manname…. Victoria would be nice….
She finished her porridge and brought a plateful of smoking griddle cakes to the table. The children chirped excitedly. They ate in comparative silence for a while, then Dumbo felt the pressure build up again.
“Carl, darling. I don’t like being called Dumbo. It isn’t a nice name. I want to be called Victoria.”
Carl abruptly stopped chewing and looked at her with bleak, unfriendly eyes. “You didn’t take your medicine this week. Did you, Dumbo?”
“I did,” Dumbo answered quickly. “You know I never miss it.” She could not remember having seen Carl look at her like that ever before, and she was afraid.
“Don’t lie to me, Dumbo’
‘But I …’
“Into the bedroom, Dumbo.”
Carl stood up and told the boys to continue eating. He followed Dumbo into the bedroom, took the black hypodermic gun from its case and poured three drops into the chamber from Dumbo’s egg-shaped medicine bottle.
“I’m disappointed in you, Dumbo,” Carl said, his thick fingers husking audibly against each other as he primed the gun’s pressure cylinder.
For a moment Dumbo considered the almost blasphemous act of resisting her husband’s will, but Carl gave her no chance. He pinned her big soft body to the wall with his forearm and fired the hypodermic into her throat. The charge felt ice cold, stinging.
“Don’t forget it again,” Carl said, putting the gun away.
Dumbo blinked back tears. Why was Carl being so unkind? He knew she put her duty to him and the children above everything. And she never omitted her weekly shot.
Back at the table Carl ate in silence until his plate was clear. He got up, kissed the three boys and went to the door. Morning light caught his spectacles, turning the lenses into miniature suns.
“I’m going to the village after lunch,” he said to Dumbo, ‘so check the larder this morning.”
“All right, darling. We need coffee.”
“Don’t try to remember it—just check it.”
“All right, darling.”
When he had gone Dumbo began tidying the cottage, aware once more of the pain behind her eyes. The children played with the remains of the breakfast and Dumbo left well enough alone, thinking idly that she might like to go into the village in the afternoon with Carl. Finally the boys’ quiet absorption with the scraps degenerated into horseplay and Dumbo determinedly pushed them outside. It was a long time since she had been to the village, and if she got through her work early….
“Lend me your egg, Mum.” It was Aaron, the four-year-old. “I want to play with it.”
Dumbo laughed. “I have no egg, sweetie. We haven’t had eggs in the house for years.”
“That’s a big lie,” Aaron said accusingly. “You have an egg! In your bedroom. In there.”
Dumbo hardly heard. Why were there no eggs in the house? Eggs are so good for children. That settled it. She would go to the village with Carl and attend to the shopping herself. It was so long since she had been there she had almost forgotten…. Her thoughts returned to Aaron.
“That isn’t an egg, silly,” she said, ushering the child out. “That’s my medicine bottle. It just looks like an egg.”
Aaron refused to be ushered. “It is an egg. I know, ‘cause David told me. David boiled it last week, but he must have boiled it too much ‘cause it wouldn’t crack.”
“Well, that was very naughty of David,” Dumbo said, feeling faint heart-whispers of alarm. “That’s my medicine bottle and Daddy doesn’t like anyone to touch it.” She had no idea what was in the little bottle but she sensed that boiling it might do it harm. Carl stored the main supply in the coolest part of the outhouse.
Aaron looked gleefully over his shoulder. “Are you going to spank David?”
“Perhaps,” Dumbo said numbly. “I’m not sure.” She found it difficult to speak. The pain behind her eyes had grown worse and she had just realised that, although the family had lived at the cottage for many years, she had hardly ever set foot outside its neat white picket fence. And it was so long since she had been to the village she was no longer sure of the way.
Dumbo brooded over it during the morning.
The act of worrying was strange to her, but deep wells of comfort within her broad, heavy body seemed to be drying up. Under the ankle-length dress insistent perspiration swept her skin so that she walked with an unpleasant rubbery slither of thighs. Several times she was tempted to shorten a dress to a more comfortable length, but it would have made Carl angry and she already had annoyed him once that day. Her purpose in life was to give Carl love and happiness, not to annoy him.