Clorinda Walks in Heaven

by A. E. Coppard

POMONA'S BABE

Johnny Flynn was then seventeen years old. At that age you could not call him 'boy' without vexing him, or 'man' without causing him to blush—his teasing ruddy and uproarious mother delighted to produce either or both of these manifestations, for her offspring was a pale mild creature—but he had given a deal of thought to many manly questions. Marriage, for instance, was one of these. That was an institution he admired, but whose joys, whatever they were, he was not anxious to experience; its difficulties and disasters as ironically outlined by the widow Flynn were the subject of his grossest scepticism—scepticism in general being not the least prominent characteristic of Johnny Flynn.

Certainly his sister Pomona was not married; she was only sixteen, an age too early for such bliss; but all the same she was going to have a baby. He had quarrelled with his mother about most things; she delighted in quarrels, they amused her very much; but on this occasion she was really very angry, or she pretended to be so—which was worse, much worse than the real thing.

The Flynns were poor people, quite poor, living in two top-floor rooms at the house of a shoemaker, also moderately poor, whose pelting and hammering of soles at evening were a durable grievance to Johnny. He was fond of the shoemaker, a kind, bulky, tall man of fifty, though he did not like the shoemaker's wife, as bulky as her husband, and as tall, but not kind to him or to anything except Johnny himself; nor did he like any of the other lodgers, of whom there were several, all without exception beyond the reach of affluence. The Flynn apartments afforded a bedroom in front for Mrs. Flynn and Pomona, a room where Johnny seldom intruded, never without a strained sense of sanctity similar to the feeling he experienced when entering an empty church, as he sometimes did. He slept in the other room, the living room, an arrangement that also annoyed him—he was easily annoyed—for he could never go to bed until mother and sister had retired, and for the same reason he had always to rise before they got up, an exasperating abuse of domestic privilege.

One night he had just slipped happily into his bed, and begun to read a book called Rasselas, which the odd-eyed man at the public library had commended to him, when his mother returned to the room, first tapping at the door, for Johnny was a prude, as she knew, not only from instinct and observation but from protests which had occasionally been addressed to her by the indignant boy. She came in now only half clad, in petticoat and stockinged feet, her arms were quite bare. They were powerful arms, as they had need to be, for she was an ironer of linen at a laundry, but they were nice to look at, and sometimes Johnny liked looking at them, though he did not care for her to run about like that very often. Mrs. Flynn sat down at the foot of his couch and stared at her son.

"Johnny," she began steadily, but paused to rub her forehead with her thick white shiny fingers. "I don't know how to tell you I'm sure, or what you'll say...." Johnny shook Rasselas rather impatiently and heaved a protesting sigh. "I can't think," continued his mother, "no, I can't think that it's our Pomony, but there she is, and it's got to be done—I must tell you; besides, you're the only man in our family now, so it's only right for you, you see, and she's going to have a baby—our Pomony!"

The boy turned his face to the wall, although his mother was not looking at him—she was staring at that hole in the carpet near the fender. At last he said "Humph! ... well?" And as his mother did not say anything, he added, "What about it? I don't mind." Mrs. Flynn was horrified at his unconcern, or she pretended to be so; Johnny was never sure about the genuineness of her moods. It was most unfilial, but he was like that—so was Mrs. Flynn. Now she cried out, "You'll have to mind, there, you must. I can't take everything on my own shoulders. You're the only man left in our family now—you must, Johnny. What are we to do?"

He glared at the wallpaper a foot from his eyes. It had an unbearable pattern of blue but otherwise indescribable flowers; he had it in his mind to have some other pattern there—some day.

"Eh?" asked his mother sharply, striking the foot of the bed with her fist.