“Utter nonsense, my dear!” said Delia bracingly. “You’re by no means an old woman — bite the bullet and go with the times! Just sweep out your mind. Davina has a child, she’ll have less and less to do with her firm in years to come. Prepare to be her replacement, rather than be squashed by another import.”
“Good advice I echo,” said Fulvia. “You’re a mouse Hester — learn to be a rat! University presses are looking at bigger markets because more people are doing degrees, and the need for texts is mushrooming. Delia’s right, change your mind-set.”
Millie sat listening and enjoying the food, even let Delia put more on her plate when Uda came around. Yes, today was an acid test: Davina had deliberately tossed her guests into a food pool made by an accused poisoner. And no one was worried! There might be a few in need of a digestive later on, but no one howling for an ambulance and a stomach pump. Davina had definitely won.
She was sitting nearby with Angela M.M., and they were talking about the waywardness of genetic inheritance.
“I have two great-grandparents and a paternal grandfather who were Negroes,” Davina was saying. “Grandfather, whom I remember, had red hair and green eyes, but medium-brown skin and Negroid features. Yet none of our Negro blood showed in multiple offspring, whereas Uda’s handicap, also inherited, but very rare, did. I find it extremely interesting.”
“On one of our zanier trips,” said Angela, “M.M. and I were in the Solomon Islands — he was on some veterans’ committee, and the Solomons saw terrible fighting against the Japanese. Anyway, we were told that on one of the more remote islands there is a pure Melanesian tribe with black skin, Melanesian features, red or blond hair, and pale green eyes. They were never infiltrated by whites for any purpose, they’re a natural phenomenon.”
“Well, the Negro shows in my son, Alexis,” Davina said airily. “Would you like to see him?”
“I’d love to,” said Angela sincerely.
“Oh, please!” cried Betty Howard.
“Uda, fetch Alexis.”
Delia sat with skin crawling, though all the while her common sense kept asserting that this moment had to come, and that all the child shared with Jim Hunter was a pair of green eyes.
Millie had shrunk a little — a natural response in one who had recently miscarried. Of course Davina didn’t know this, but if she had, would it have stopped her? Delia had to think, no.
“If I were a Muslim wife, I would have been killed,” Davina was saying chattily to a growing group of listening women. “The ordinary Islamic understanding of genetics is rudimentary, I would be deemed unfaithful for producing an impossible baby. In my country, especially in its southern parts, there are many Muslims. However, I am fortunate. I am here in America, and blessed with an educated husband who understands the vagaries of genetics, of throwbacks. In actual fact, our son’s features are Max’s, though I flatter myself he has my nose.”
At which moment Uda returned bearing a bigger version of the beautiful child Delia remembered. He sat up straight in his aunt’s arms and gazed about as if fascinated by the unfolding vistas of this tiny journey.
Delia’s head swung to Millie, who was staring at the baby in an apparent wonder. Her expression was gentle, her demeanor quite relaxed. Despite which, sight of a baby that echoed what her own would have been like must have moved her deeply. A private person, Millie, no heart on her sleeve.
Sensibly, Davina didn’t allow others to take him, cuddle him. Watching hawklike, Delia concluded that most of the women filed Jim Hunter as a possible father, yet had taken due note of Davina’s explanation and the fact that, apart from his eyes, Alexis did in fact bear no resemblance to Jim. As for Millie …
“Are you all right to go home, dear?” Delia asked her.
The blue eyes were tranquil; Millie smiled. “I’m fine.”
Delia didn’t go home immediately. She detoured to East Circle to have a drink with Carmine and Desdemona.
“If ever there was an April Fools’ party, that one was it,” she said with feeling. “I just haven’t worked out who was the intended April Fool, though on the surface it was Pamela Devane. A frightful woman! However, the bash itself was a triumph. The invited social lionesses came, ate Uda’s food as if they’d never heard of tetrodotoxin, and had a jolly time.”
Desdemona was perturbed by the tale of Alexis’s display to the guests. “Millie?” she asked anxiously.
“He was produced after an audible discussion about inheritance and the black antecedents Davina claims to have. Real green eyes, she said. Angela came up trumps with a story of some Solomon Island natives — at that stage she couldn’t possibly have known about Alexis, so I swear M.M.’s wife is a witch. To be absolutely fair to Davina, I add, the child doesn’t resemble the present Jim Hunter or the gorilla Jim Hunter. It’s just the eyes. He’s about twice as old as he was when I first saw him, and his facial structure has grown more European. There is a resemblance to Max.”