16 December 2024
Welcome…
to a new working week, the final week of exams and assignments before the Vacation. Thank you to all involved in choral services over Advent – such beautiful celebrations in the chapels.
Feathers
The story so far: Maryam, a first year student of International Relations, is living with Joe, a joiner, as the time to her due date shortens.
Part 16
Maryam had been keeping her parents in the dark, sticking to audio on WhatsApp, coming off social media altogether. They’d learn the truth eventually, when the added stress couldn’t hurt her unborn child. But Lizzie had convinced her they had to know sooner rather than later.
“Mum,” she started, during an otherwise typical phone call, “there’s something I need to tell you. Are you sitting down?”
“I’m not totally decrepit yet. What is it? Did you fail your first year? I’ve never been convinced you’ve been truly applying yourself. I suppose you’ve stayed in Scotland for the resits. You should have told us earlier – we would have organised some proper tutoring for you.”
“Mum, I didn’t fail. I told you all my grades weeks ago. It’s something else.”
“Go on – give me the worst.”
“I’m having a baby.”
Silence: her mother was gathering her forces, but not for long. “You are having a baby. You have ruined my life – how could you be so selfish? Do you never think of your father and me, working and saving all these years so that you could go to one of the best universities – number one in UK league tables – to set you up for a proper career? You are having a baby. You stupid girl.”
There was a pause.
“Have you finished Mum?”
But she hadn’t. She went on, blaming St Andrews for allowing this to happen, claiming it would humiliate her father. “What kind of man has a daughter with a teenage pregnancy?”
Maryam couldn’t think how to answer this.
“And who is the brute you have made this baby with?”
Maryam had known this question would come and didn’t know how to cover the Instagram message and everything since. It seemed less hassle to say, “I’ve moved in with Joe, a carpenter. We’re going to bring the baby up together.”
“You’re killing me more and more. The father’s a tradesman, you’ve shacked up without the hint of a marriage, and to some local boy.”
“Yes.”
“But Maryam, he’s not one of our people. Birds of a feather should flock together – you know that matters to us. I need to talk to your father. We’ll call you back.”
Over the months which followed, when the shock had passed, first Maryam’s father and then her mother would call to find out how she was. Was she eating enough? Had the time of sickness passed? (Her mother had been terribly sick with Maryam.) What was this cottage like? Was she warm? They would send some blankets. Was she able to study hard? But Maryam found it painful to hear their continuing antipathy to Joe. As they built their home together, she felt bound to this man through her unborn baby, as if the child’s being was dissolving the differences she studied in International Relations or, under their pantile roof, the disparities she recognised between Joe and herself.
Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585), Madonna and Child, St Anne and St John the Baptist, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain