The Magdalena Curse by F.G. Cottam Page B

to end his life that a book still lay open, half read, on his desk. It was Herman Melville’s novella, Billy Budd . He had disobeyed the witch’s command to steer clear of the sea. Of course he had. He would never have obeyed it. He had not been that sort of man. He had defied his curse and paid with his life for doing so.
    After six months, Hunter was itching to return to action.
It came. And it was sometimes chaotic and always bloody and often inconclusive. But it confined itself to a reality with which he was comfortable. It gave him no nightmares. He performed his duty with courage and flair. There came the engagement in which he gained the citation that earned him his Military Cross. He won promotion. And after a year, Lillian fell pregnant. And he felt no hint of trepidation, only unconfined joy at the thought of extending their family, of becoming a father. As Lillian’s term progressed, he felt happier than he thought he had ever done in his entire life.
    Adam was born, healthy and beautiful. Lillian, who had been nervous about motherhood, found that she enjoyed caring for the baby more than she could have imagined she would. She had feared post-natal resentment. A professional woman, someone who set great store by her own independence, she was the classic candidate for it. But her fears were groundless. She loved her infant child, knew that he depended upon her for his health and happiness and was proud of the responsibility of motherhood. And this was just as well. Mark’s service took him away for weeks at a time. Adam, a bright child, like most bright children, needed little sleep. He was demanding of attention and stimulation.
    Mark, jet-lagged after returning from a mission in the Gulf, drove to the Boots branch in the village four miles away and bought the boy a dummy, exasperated by his general restlessness. Adam settled his lips around the plug.
    ‘There,’ Mark said. He sat down and picked up the TV remote. Lillian observed this male duel from the sofa, from under arched eyebrows. Adam stared at his father, his eyes growing large. He sucked, experimentally. He spat the dummy out.
    ‘He isn’t the sort of child who can be fobbed off with a dummy,’ Lillian said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice.
    ‘Then what the bloody hell does he want?’
    ‘Announcements,’ Lillian said. ‘He wants announcements.’
    And announcements he got. He showed no interest in television, however baby-friendly the fare. He liked building blocks and his simple Lego set. But he enjoyed, above all else, being read to. Mark, when he was there, read to Adam for hours, the boy on his lap never tiring, it seemed, of the stream of stories related in his father’s gentle voice. He was almost three when his sister Kate was born and by then had taught himself the alphabet. By the time of his third birthday, he was reading fluently. Mark and Lillian thought little of it. They had no prior experience of children and didn’t think Adam’s accomplishment unusual. It took the reactions of other people to show them that Adam was remarkable.
    He was in the park with his father. It had snowed and there was a hill in the park and they had taken a sled. But they had been there for over an hour and Adam’s nose had turned red and his mittens soggy and Mark wanted to get him home and warm him up before the building of the snowman in their garden. It did not seem to snow in winter like it had when he had been a boy, Mark thought, and you had to take full advantage when it did.
    Adam was at a stage where he read everything out loud. His reading was a redundant skill, to Mark’s mind, because he understood so little of what he read. The pronunciation was eerily perfect. But he did not appreciate the sense of anything without it having to be explained to him at sometimes tedious length. They came upon a park bench. Snow sat on it and lay heaped on its flat arms and the top of its slatted wooden back. Adam pointed a wet, woolly