Chapter 10. Born with the Caul

Mrs Cole pulled a small suitcase from under the television table, and found amongst her papers and effects, a purse. In the purse was a silver snuff box. In the box, folded minutely, was a fragment of brown parchment, delicate and dry.

“I was born with the caul, you know that? I still have it here”

Her younger sister, an invalid confined to bed, exclaimed in surprise, and bent her neck to see. Mrs Cole was rightly confident of my interest in her exhibit — a portion of the amniotic membrane, preserved by her mother from the confinement in Bengal sixty years ago:

“Doctor, it means you'll be lucky you know. If a baby is born with the caul still round it, it's going to be a lucky baby, a good omen.”

I looked it up later, in Brewer's dictionary, “a charm against death by drowning”. Ellen Cole always knew what she was talking about. In fact, in the ordinary sense, she had not been very lucky, but she knew she was fortunate in her exceptionally sunny and affectionate temperament. That did preserve her from submersion by adversity both before and after she and her husband came to London from India.

She was about fifty when she first appeared at the surgery, cheerful and rotund: the chair creaked when she sat down. Her complexion was an alloy of metallic grey and pink tints, one part silver, three parts zinc, the hues soft, pearly, pastel.

Her lilting voice lifted and dipped, modulated in the Indian way. At our very first meeting, a complicated story was begun, which was to continue for years and years and which I never fully understood, because of the exuberance of her delivery, because many relatives and acquaintances, quite unknown to me of course, some still living in India, were confusingly referred to by their first names, but mainly because she was engaged in introducing me, bit by bit, into the complicated life of a being exceptionally gifted with a capacity for love.