The Blake Adventures: It Takes a Village
October 1961
Lucien Blake arrived home midday feeling very excited. He took off his jacket and hat by the front door and called for his wife. "Jean? Jean, I've got something to show you!"
"We're in the kitchen," she shouted back at him, unable to go to him at that particular moment.
He rounded the corner and found her sitting in a chair, turned away from the table and toward the stove. Lucien knew very well what she was doing. He'd come home many times to a similar scene. "Ah. Do you think you should be shouting like that?"
Jean turned her head toward him as best she could. "I think you'll find she's perfectly fine. With all the noise you make around the house, I don't think a bit of shouting will faze her at all."
Lucien walked around the table to stand in front of her. He leaned forward slightly to gently stroke soft brown curls with his finger, trying not to disturb the tiny being Jean was holding. "How is she today?"
"Your daughter has been rather obstinate this morning. Wasn't happy anywhere but in my arms," Jean sighed.
"So when she isn't cooperating, she's my daughter, is that right?"
She smirked. "Well she certainly drinks like you do, look at her!" she teased, gesturing to the baby feeding on her breast.
Lucien laughed as he kissed Jean on the cheek. "I'm sorry she's been difficult. Let me know how I can help."
"After she's finished, if you could take her for a while? I haven't been able to get a single thing done all morning."
He nodded. "Of course. She can join me when I meet with Mr. Claxton later."
"No, Mr. Claxton had to reschedule. You don't have any patients this afternoon," she informed him.
Lucien smiled. "Oh that is good. Now I can spend the day learning this!"
She regarded him curiously. "Learning what?"
He reached over to the bag he'd brought in and pulled out some pages of sheet music to show her. "I was in the music shop today, just looking around, and I found the music for this American song. Apparently it was mildly popular a few years ago. And I simply had to have it."
Jean saw the title and grinned. "You'll have to sing it for us. You go practice and we'll join you in a bit."
Lucien looked at the baby and got a dreamy expression on his face. That look always made Jean simply melt. She could not get over how besotted he was with their baby. They both were, really. They had been blessed with the most incredible little girl, no matter how much she cried and kept them awake and frustrated all the time. She was perfect.
"I take it you'd like to wait for her to finish her lunch before going to play the piano."
He blinked, breaking the baby's spell, looking at Jean sheepishly. "If it isn't too much trouble."
Jean just shrugged. "I don't know why you'd want to be here. It isn't interesting to watch me feed the baby. I do it all the time."
"Yes, I know but…I don't quite know what it is. I suppose I'm just fascinated by the miracle of it. Of course, I know how breastfeeding works; I'm a doctor, and I help women who have trouble with it all the time. But there is something about you feeding our daughter…" he trailed off, getting that dreamy expression again.
"Were you like this when Li was a baby?" she asked. It still felt strange to ask Lucien about his first wife and first child. He was much more open to talking about them than he used to be. And it didn't upset him at all to speak about them. Nevertheless, Jean was never quite sure if she was pressing too far by asking.
But Lucien replied without hesitation. "No, but that was very different. I don't think Mei Lin breastfed after the first few weeks. We had a wet nurse and a nanny. It was the way things were done at the time. I didn't think much of it then."
Just then, the baby moved her face away, making gurgling noises. Jean shifted her and asked, "All finished? Alright, sweet girl, your father is going to play a song now, just for you."
"Ah yes. I'll go figure this out then."
"Yes, if you don't want her to spit up on you, you'd better go now," Jean warned as she buttoned her blouse.
Not wanting to repeat the events of trying to 'help' a few weeks earlier, Lucien vacated the kitchen. He took the sheet music to the piano and sight-read his way through it, trying to get the key and syncopation right.
"It sounds quite nice so far," Jean noted from where she stood, bouncing the baby and patting her back to get all those pesky air bubbles out of her system. "But I thought you were going to sing."
"Needy woman, that wife of mine," Lucien muttered to himself. He turned back to the beginning of the song and played the melody line once through quickly to get the proper pitch. "Right, here we go," he announced. With a bit of a flourished introduction, he began to sing, "Valerie, my one and only. Valerie, don't leave me lonely. Stay here with me oh can't you see, I love you, Valerie."
After the first verse, Jean entered the room with the baby in her arms. "You hear that, Valerie? That's you! Your dad's found a song just for you," she whispered to her tiny daughter.
Lucien looked up momentarily to flash a proud grin in between verses. He continued singing, "Valerie, my heart is beating. Valerie, it keeps repeating, You're so divine, you must be mine. Come to me, Valerie."
Jean began swaying in place along with the music, dancing gently beside the piano and humming along with the melody.
The song finished with several repetitions of the name, Valerie. Lucien ended it and swung around on the piano bench to face his wife and child. "And there we have it. A song called Valerie, just for our Valerie."
"It's lovely, Lucien. You'll have to teach it to me. We can add it to the songs we sing to her at bedtime."
"I think we'll be able to harmonize nicely with it," he predicted. "It's originally a doo-wop song, so it's meant to be sung by more than one person. We'll play around with it and see what we like." He stood up and took the baby from Jean's arms. "Now that we've done that, I promised father-daughter time. Mum needs to accomplish some things, so it looks like it's just you and me for now, Valerie."
Jean watched them for a moment. Valerie was calmly and quietly gazing up at her father, acting the perfect angel. Jean huffed, "Valerie Genevieve Blake, that is not fair! Lucien, she's been a nightmare all day, but the moment you come home and sing her a song, she's fine! Now I know Mattie is just teasing when she says the baby likes you better than me, but now I'm starting to believe it!"
Lucien held Valerie up to look at her eye to eye. "Now, Valerie, that isn't nice. You've got the best mother in the world, so you treat her well. She sings to you just as much as I do. And she's the one who feeds you, so it's impolite to give her this much trouble."
Valerie just stared, her blue eyes matching his.
Jean started to laugh. "Alright, you two go find something to do somewhere else. I really have to do the dusting and vacuuming today."
But as Jean turned to go start on the housework, the telephone rang. Jean swore under her breath and went to answer it. Lucien waited where he was, gently rocking Valerie in his arms. He planned on taking her into his study with him, but he also knew that a telephone call was for him more often than not. Best not go too far just yet.
After a moment, Jean returned. "Lucien, that was Chief Superintendent Carlyle," she told him with a heavy sigh. "Give the baby to me. You're needed for a body. I wrote down the address by the phone."
"I am sorry, Jean. I'll be back as soon as I can," he promised.
"I know. But do send Charlie, if you can. I'm so far behind today, I may need him to help with dinner," Jean noted.
Lucien cocked his head, thinking. "Perhaps I should start learning to cook. For when Charlie can't be home to help."
Jean tried not to laugh. "You did attempt to cook once. Or have you forgotten the disaster that was breakfast in bed on my last birthday?"
"Ah. Yes, perhaps I'd better not."
"Go to work, love. We'll be fine here," she assured him, pushing him toward the door as she kissed him goodbye.
