Читать книгу On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home - Laura Elliot - Страница 13

Go to her, they whispered when I saw her in the papers. Isobel Gardner – a baby with no distinguishing features to set her apart from other newborns who slide into the world a fortnight before their time. I resisted at first. I deadened my ears to the whispering and went to bed instead, pulled the pillows over my face.

The pain awakened me in the small hours. Clockwork precision each month, the bleed so heavy that I’m always nervous going anywhere for the first two days. It was still dark outside. Another hour before dawn lifted over the Burren. The pain was intense, thin and razor-sharp, slicing through my coccyx, through the sacrum, reaching a pitch where I believed I could no longer endure without screaming. Then it eased, ebbed, and I rested in the shallows until it began again.

I knew then that I must leave before the light broke. Before Phyllis Lyons arose to lift her mother upright and plump the pillows behind her head. Before Mitch Moran opened his garage and Stella Nolan switched on her bakery oven. I checked the nursery. All was in order. I prepared your first feed and placed the formula back in the kitchen press. I filled a flask and removed your bottle from the sterilising unit. The pain built again and with it came the bleeding. I had a four-hour journey ahead of me. Eight hours on the road. Heavy rain was expected to fall.

When I reached the Valley View Maternity Clinic, I parked in the most secluded area of the car park. An embankment of pampas grass sheltered me. A wall of cotoneaster caught against my coat as I stepped from my car. I pulled free and the berries fell like drops of blood on the ground.

I gazed through the glass doors into a spacious foyer. The clinic used to be a Georgian family home and the building still smacks of carriages and candelabras. A fire was blazing in the reception area, turf and logs piled in the cavernous fireplace. Armchairs had been placed around it and magazines were stacked neatly on small tables. But no expectant fathers waited in the wings today. The only person I saw was the receptionist, her head bent over her desk. I moved out of sight before she noticed me and walked back down the steps.

At the back of the clinic, signposts directed me to different wards, outpatients’ department, the laboratory and the private rooms of gynaecologists. At the outpatients’ department, building work was underway. A notice apologised for any inconvenience. The workmen paid no attention to me. I paused outside automatic glass doors. This was the instant when sanity demanded to be heard. Once inside, I was stepping into a zone where rules no longer applied. But it was too late…far too late for second thoughts.

The glass doors opened and closed behind me. The noise fell away. Such a calm atmosphere, an empty waiting room, a notice advising me to knock at Reception then take a seat. Through the opaque glass of Reception I saw someone moving across the office. The top half of another person was visible at a desk. I walked past, expecting at any moment to hear the authoritative command that would pull me back from the brink. It never came.

My hands began to sweat. My knees trembled so badly I had to stop and lean against the wall. I forced myself to move on until I reached a long corridor with doors on either side. The smell of food lingered, not heavy and fishy (a smell I have always associated with hospitals) but herby and fragrant. The smell of health and vitality, the aroma of coffee, bread freshly baking, a hint of garlic. I reached a staircase; the banisters formed an elegant swerve. My shoes sank into soft, thick pile. At the top of the stairs, two arrows pointed in opposite directions, leading to rooms 18 to 25 or 26 to 33. On the way to the clinic I’d stopped at a public phone. The receptionist had told me that a bouquet for Mrs Gardner could be sent to Room 27.

I turned left and walked along the corridor until I reached her room. The pain had moved from the base of my spine to my stomach, the cramps doubling me over. I stumbled towards a bathroom. I had tablets for pain control in my handbag. They usually offered some relief but pain was necessary for rebirth. It was important not to interfere with my natural cycle.

Inside a cubicle, I sat on the toilet seat and adjusted my clothes. The harness holding the cushion had loosened. I fumbled, my hands shaking so much they became entangled in the bindings. The door to the ladies’ opened and a woman entered the cubicle next door. I remained motionless until she had washed her hands and left. Then I tied the strings securely over my hips and emerged. The white tiled walls cast a hard reflection on my face. My eyes were red-rimmed, shadowed, filled with anticipation.

I splashed water over my face until my skin was raw and flushed. No more…no more…the whisperers drove me forward. I could have stopped at that point. I wanted someone to enter and order me from the premises. A hard-faced matron or an enquiring nurse who would accept my excuse about being lost in this labyrinth of corridors. Then I heard you for the first time. You, my daughter, your voice calling out to me. I pushed the door open, hoping I would find Carla Kelly awake, protective and alert. But she was sleeping, one arm resting on the counterpane.

You made no sound when I lifted you. Light as thistledown, you moulded yourself against my breasts. Swiftly, swiftly, we moved as one, mother, daughter, into the ladies’, into the canvas holdall, into the future. Hush little baby, don’t say a word…walking fast down the stairs with its muffled carpet, past Reception where figures moved behind yellow glass, past the builders who did not stare or wolf whistle at a pregnant woman, to the car park where I held my bag away from the spiky cotoneaster, safe inside the car, driving away, my stomach cramps beginning to subside, and deep in the depths of the canvas holdall, you moved, jutted an elbow, kicked a foot, struggled to be free from the dark confines. Then you settled back to sleep again.

Rain wrapped the city in a grey shroud as I drove through the traffic and out into the countryside, my foot hard on the accelerator, heading for home.

When you cried I pulled into a lane. The rain dripped like tears from black branches and a cow poked a damp, inquisitive face over a gate. I opened a flask and filled a bottle with your first feed. My hand trembled so much the formula spilled over my trousers. You whimpered, struggled to adjust your mouth around the teat. Your cheeks worked, your lips puckered, your eyes screwed up in outrage. You threw up your feed. The smell was faint but sour. I had to drive on, terrified a farmer would round the bend in a tractor. I wanted to turn back. Leave you where I had found you. But she would be awake by now and already screaming. So I kept driving. Your wailing terrified me – so strident and demanding from such tiny lungs. When I pulled into another lane and fed you again, you sucked reluctantly on the teat and eventually fell asleep.

I drove fast until I came to towns where the rain forced the traffic into a slow, sullen crawl. After Limerick City it wasn’t so difficult. I kept expecting to hear the wail of a siren but only the swish of the windscreen wipers disturbed my concentration. When I reached Gort, I noticed the fields were already under water, the same in Kinvara. Water ran from the hills and gathered in the ditches, spilled across the road, splashed dangerously under my wheels. The rocks of the Burren came into view. I drove through Maoltrán and past the craft centre. Lights were on in the windows. Miriam was in London, exhibiting at a craft fair. She’d warned me, before she left, to drive to the hospital if I experienced even the slightest twinge.

The windscreen kept hazing over and the rain was so heavy it flowed under the swishing wipers. I drove past the Lyons’ house and, suddenly, I was facing the wet rump of a cow. Cattle fanned across the road and Phyllis, walking behind in a bright yellow sou’wester, looked over her shoulder and moved close to the hedgerow. I skidded, the car waltzing on the scum of dead leaves, but I managed to control the wheel and glide gently into the grassy embankment. The front bumper took the shock, but the holdall slid from the seat. I grabbed it as it was about to topple over and held it steady. Phyllis peered through the window, tapped on the glass. I saw her lips moving and when I lowered the window she stuck her head into the car. Rain dripped from her sou’wester cap, sliding down her nose.

I expected you to cry. Wanted you in a crazy way to do so and end the madness. But you stayed silent, undisturbed by the swerves and jolts.

Phyllis demanded to know if I was okay.

‘I’m rushing,’ I told her. ‘Dying for a pee.’

She kept her hand on the window to prevent me sliding it up again. The road was flooding fast, she said, and she was taking her cattle to the high field. ‘Watch how you go,’ she shouted when I pressed my foot to the accelerator. ‘Take care of the dips. You know how quickly they flood.’

She swiped at the cows with a switch and guided them into a straight line. I squeezed the car past their swaying bellies. The stream running through Dowling’s Meadow had burst its banks. Part of the meadow was already flooded, the water rushing through the hedgerows and seeping across the road. I turned into the lane and drove towards Rockrose, grateful for the steep incline that always protected us in times of heavy rain.

The sun peered between two heaving clouds and danced briefly in the sky. The drystone walls glistened as the weight of water swelled the turloughs, those mysterious underground lakes that appear so suddenly and flood the grassy swathes of the Burren. When I lifted you from the car and carried you up the garden path, it seemed as if we’d stepped into a world of glass.

I am a methodical woman and had planned each detail of your arrival. I planned as carefully as a bomber about to take flight, a strategy for survival in hand though he knows he could be blown asunder at any instant. But I cannot claim credit for the weather. I had cloud cover on the night you came to me but the rain that teemed from those clouds led me deeper into my deception.

Three days have passed since then. The flooded fields have swamped the roads and warnings on the radio advise people to stay indoors and only drive if it’s absolutely necessary. Two drivers, brave or reckless enough to drive along Maoltrán Road, stalled close to the lane and Phyllis had to pull them free with her tractor. We may be cut off by floods but her role in your birth has already spread the length and breadth of Maoltrán. She is the local heroine. I would have been lost that night without her assistance. I’ve spoken on the phone to Dr Williamson and to Jean, the district nurse. No need to worry, I told them. I have food in the house and you, my daughter, my miracle child, are in perfect health. When the roads are passable, I’ll bring you to St Anne’s Clinic for your postnatal checkup. They didn’t argue. There’s been an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea in the area. Not surprising with all that contaminated water.

They told me I was amazingly brave to give birth in such appalling conditions. ‘What was brave about it?’ I said. Women give birth in war and famine, under trees and in their branches, in igloos, sheds and caves. I brought you into the world under a dry roof and thanked God for a safe deliverance. We lay together between the sheets, nothing stirring except our breath. The whisperers were silent then and have remained so ever since.

‘Jesus Christ and his blessed mother,’ Phyllis said, when I rang that night and told her I was in trouble. ‘How fast are your pains coming?’

‘Every few minutes, I told her. It’s all happening so quickly. My waters have broken.’

‘Must have been the shock from the cows,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s a false alarm but I’d better ring Dr Williamson.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother her. The lane is flooded. Come quickly before it gets any deeper.’

She heard me panting and didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ll take the tractor,’ she said. ‘Hang in there, girl. I’ve delivered calves and if you’ve ever had your arm up a cow’s arse, childbirth is nothing.’

She was lying of course and she was very bad at it. ‘Hang on,’ she warned again, and this time I heard the shake in her voice. ‘You can’t give birth now. Not with Miriam in London and David still on the rig.’

Phyllis arrived shortly after my phone call, still swaddled in her yellow sou’wester. She had driven down the lane in her tractor and rushed the wet night air in with her. She squished upstairs in her wellingtons, her cheeks flushed from the exhilaration of dangerous deeds.

‘Stalled a few times,’ she said, ‘but here I am, and there you are, and what on earth is that?’ She drew back from the bed and covered her eyes.

I understood her fear. She can joke all she likes about calves but childbirth is a mystery to her. All that blood smearing the sheets, my legs, my hands, and you, your hair stiff with it, your tiny, wrinkled face marked with the slime of birth, face down and stretched naked across my stomach. I lifted you and swaddled you in a towel.

‘Hold her,’ I said. ‘Hold her while I take care of myself.’

I forced you into her arms. She held you gingerly, as if she expected you to mew or scratch.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said. ‘I’ve never held a baby that’s just been born.’

‘Barely born,’ I said, and roused myself from the bed. ‘Do you mind turning away? I want to…’ I hesitated and lifted the sheet. I thought she would faint when she saw the blood. ‘It’s the placenta,’ I said. ‘It’s come away.’

She moved away across the room, still holding you, and sank onto a stool in front of the dressing table. She looked at me in the mirror as I slopped the liver into a bowl and covered it with a white cloth.

‘I never knew what it looked like,’ she said when I was lying back again against the pillows. ‘Jesus, it’s awful.’

‘But it’s over now,’ I said. ‘The most frightening part was cutting the cord. If you’d got here on time you could have cut it for me.’

She glanced quickly at the scissors and thread lying beside the bowl then averted her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have known what to do,’ she said.

‘You cut it then clamp it on either end with thread,’ I replied. ‘That’s how you do it in an emergency.’

She came slowly towards me and sank to the edge of the bed. She seemed unable to take her eyes from the bowl. Blood had already seeped into the white covering. She swallowed loudly. I thought she was going to faint or throw up.

‘Let me hold my baby now,’ I said, and I took you back into my arms.

She stared down at the pair of us and wrinkled her nose. ‘Bit of cleaning up needs to done around here,’ she said. ‘Boiling water.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘It’s what happens in them films. I always wondered what the hell it was for. Now I know.’

She lifted a jug and matching basin from the dressing table, old porcelain, painted with blue roses. Miriam must have used it when David was a baby. His grandmother would have also bathed his father in it. The sense of tradition in Rockrose was never stronger than on that night.

I sponged the blood from the crevices in your skin. I cleansed you from all impurities then wrapped you in a soft white sheet. I wept tears upon your upturned face.

‘Tea and toast,’ said Phyllis. ‘My cousin says that’s the only thing when the tears start.’

The toast was thick and buttery, the tea stronger than I usually drank it. I’d never tasted anything so fine.

She asked if I’d decided on a name.

‘Only one name is possible,’ I replied. ‘I want to call her Joy.’

We rolled it around our tongues. Phyllis nodded, satisfied, and took you back into her arms. Her smile grew in importance. ‘Just as well I was able to manage that tractor,’ she said. ‘You’d have been truly stranded in your hour of need. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here for her birth.’

‘But you were,’ I said. ‘Or as close as makes no difference. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’

She assisted me into the shower. The water coursed over my body, washing away the stain of blood. When I emerged she had a clean nightdress ready to slip over my shoulders. The bed had been made with fresh linen and the old sheets bunched out of sight into the laundry basket. But you had had enough handling by then and David, when Phyllis phoned him, heard you crying…such a loud, lusty roar.

‘I should have been with you,’ he kept saying. His voice broke, as if he too was crying. ‘I should never have left you alone…is our daughter as beautiful as she sounds?’

‘Even more beautiful,’ I said. ‘She is our miracle baby.’

Gales were blowing across the North Sea. No helicopters had been able to land on the rig for two days. The forecast was for milder conditions and he would be home as soon as humanly possible.

I gave Phyllis instructions on how to prepare your formula and she watched, her eyes moist with longing, as you sucked. But she was growing anxious about her mother who always needed to be taken to the bathroom at midnight.

‘Do you want me to dispose…?’ She hesitated and gestured towards the bowl.

‘Leave it be,’ I said, when she went to lift it. ‘I’ll look after it myself.’

She nodded when I told her to leave the sheets in the basket, understanding, as all women do, that dirty linen is best washed in private. I asked her to take our photograph before she left. It’s important that David is able to share that priceless moment when I named you into life.

After she left, I rested with you in my arms and imagined the water bubbling behind the drystone walls, forming deceptive puddles and dangerous dips, and raising the river levels that would soon burst their banks. But we were content, you and I; safe and warm in an ocean of calm.

David is in the air, flying towards us. Miriam also, with a full order book, both of them anxious to catch their first glimpse of you. In Rockrose, you sleep by my side, your tiny face puckered with concentration. Your lips move, blowing silent raspberries. I cannot take my eyes off you. Your blonde hair is downy, as fine as my own. Your eyes are still milky, unfocused. Hard to tell the colour; I pray they will be blue.

Carla Kelly will be on the news tonight. Her press conference is due to begin soon. This is her first public appearance, apart from the flurry of publicity that followed the birth of Isobel Gardner. I cannot bear to watch. The deed is done.