Blue Bells in May

Nearly next Christmas. The small child in its pushchair. The bars of the pushchair’s frame hung with small bells that the traffic deafened. Bells that were once Christmas decorations. Evidently they had been painted blue, it now being long since Christmas when most decorative bells were silver or gold. The child’s father pushed the pushchair ... or the pushchair pushed the father. That sort of day in May’s Britain when things may go in reverse, or everything seemed just so much trouble and the child that had only been a baby last Christmas grizzled and screeched by turn. The father was a single parent now. The mother was still at the beginning of last year, trying hard not to think of the future with the father. If it were not for the child, things would be or would have been so much simpler. In fact, at the beginning of last year, she had no child out or in. The mother had bought the bells, the year before last in the father’s future, when they were still not blue. The bells, too, were still gold or silver, to hang on the tree. She wonders inside how she may avoid any future with the father, even then. She smiled as she felt a gentle weight upon her lap. Or within her lap. She saw a small gurgling child or baby touching the bells with curious longing and pent-up excitement. But too young to know it was Christmas very soon. It appeared to raise its mouth for a kiss. Marcel in Proust. A sort of goodbye, or a sort of hello. Too young, too, to know which colour was which.