This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  She called her mum next, then Naomi, Simon, her dad and Brian. No one answered. What the fuck? Where were they all? She staggered into the kitchen and leaned on her forearms on the table as another contraction hit. She breathed deeply, which did precisely nothing to alleviate the pain. Looking up, she caught sight of a leaflet on the fridge. It was an ad for Carols in the Domain. Now she remembered. That’s where they all were. Carlos was a typo.

  Lightning flashed through the window as another thunderclap cracked. They couldn’t still be at the Carols, could they? Surely it was a complete washout? She just needed to stay calm. Someone would look at their phone soon. They would see all the missed calls. They would listen to her messages. And if she had to, she could call an ambulance, but it wouldn’t come to that. She wasn’t going to have this baby here, into a laundry basket.

  The next contraction came less than two minutes after the previous one subsided. Okay, that was not normal. Molly remembered being told not to go to hospital until the contractions were five minutes apart. These were too close.

  Triple 0. She dialled, and when the dispatcher asked whether she wanted Police, Fire or Ambulance, Molly said, politely, uncertainly, ‘Um, hi, I think I’m about to have a baby.’ Then another contraction hit.

  ‘So, ambulance then,’ said the dispatcher, who coaxed the location out of her then passed her on to the ambulance service. Another operator answered and said her name was Sue, which Molly did not care about, and asked several questions, which Molly mostly answered by screaming.

  ‘Is there anyone else in the house with you, Molly?’

  ‘No,’ she cried, ‘they’re at Carols in the Domain.’

  ‘Is there a neighbour you can call?’

  ‘I don’t know them; I don’t normally live here,’ she said, but she struggled into the sunroom and shoved open the window. There was a light on in Ray’s kitchen. The rain was still pouring down, and it splashed her arms and face as she leaned out and screamed across the right of way. ‘Help me! Please.’

  Again and again she called, before turning back to the phone, weeping. ‘There’s no one home. Oh wait, no! He’s there. I can see someone. Help me, please,’ she yelled frantically again, as loud as she could, while banging on the window frame.

  Patrick, standing at Ray’s sink, draining a pot of spaghetti, looked up and saw her. His face became a picture of alarm. He opened his window just as another contraction smashed into her, and when he saw her double over and scream again, he ran from the room.

  Then Molly could hear him at the front door, and coming down the hall, and he was in the sunroom with her. He skidded to a halt. ‘Oh my god, you’re in labour.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ she gasped. Then she couldn’t speak.

  ‘Have you called an ambulance?’ he asked and she nodded, pointing to the phone lying on the bed. A voice came from the speaker.

  ‘Hello? Molly, is someone with you now?’

  Patrick grabbed the phone. ‘Yes? I’m here. Patrick. My name’s Patrick.’

  ‘Right, Patrick,’ said Sue, sounding for all the world like she was about to give instructions to a dim child about where she thought they might find their missing shoes. ‘Molly here sounds like she might have a baby in the next little while. An ambulance is on the way, but the rain’s making it a bit slow-going out there this evening. I might need your help. Does that sound all right?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about babies,’ Patrick said, breathing as fast as Molly.

  ‘Well, you’re in luck because I do. Now, Molly, how are you going, love?’

  Molly replied with a roar, and Sue kicked things up a notch. ‘Patrick? Can you get a couple of clean towels without leaving Molly for too long? And can you please make sure the front door to the house is open and any pets are secured?’

  ‘I don’t know where the towels are —’

  Molly looked up from where she was crouched beside the bed, with her arms stretched forward and her forehead resting on the chenille bedspread, and gasped, ‘Under the stairs.’

  He returned quickly with an armload of towels.

  ‘Molly,’ continued Sue, ‘have you got your pants on still?’

  Patrick looked her in the eyes and something passed between them. It was an understanding that they were in this together, and despite the fact they’d only just met, they were about to participate in something so huge that it made taking off your knickers in front of a person you’ve known for two minutes inconsequential. In any case modesty was not why Molly still had her wet knickers on.

  ‘I’m not taking them off,’ she said. ‘They’re all that’s keeping the baby in.’

  ‘Molly,’ said Sue, ‘pop your hand down and tell me if you can feel anything.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you feel the baby’s head?’

  Molly reached down and burst into tears. ‘Yes, I can feel it. Should I just hold it in until the ambulance gets here?’

  ‘No, my love, it’s time to let the baby come out. All right then, you push with the contraction — gently, gently, because your body is doing all this for you — and ease off with some little breaths in between.’

  ‘How far away is the ambulance?’ Patrick’s voice was high and strained.

  ‘Ten minutes, Patrick. You’re going to help Molly deliver her baby. Molly, are you in a comfortable position?’

  Her wail suggested how far beyond comfort she was.

  ‘Patrick, have you got those towels? What position is Molly in?’

  ‘She’s sort of crouching and kneeling, she’s leaning on the bed. Is that okay?’

  ‘If she’s happy, I’m happy. Patrick, I want you to get in whatever position you need to be in to catch the baby. It might be fast and it will be slippery. Right. Now, Molly: undies off. It’s go time.’

  Molly struggled to her feet, kicked off her pants and leaned her head out the window, feeling the rain on her face. It was all happening to someone else; she was sure of it. It wasn’t her, standing in only a T-shirt and bra in the window of the sunroom at Granny and Pa’s, her head in a storm, with a stranger watching her vulva for signs of an emerging human. It couldn’t be real. She wasn’t really about to give birth with Jack hundreds of kilometres away.

  Then she was seized by a force so huge it felt like the whole world was trying to claw its way out of her and she closed her eyes, grasped the flaking paint on the windowsill, and pushed. She was only pain. She was on fire and at the end of this she would be ash.

  ‘There’s a head!’ yelled Patrick. Molly reached down and felt an entire head, right there, like it had just popped into the room to have a look at what was going on. A person both born and not born. The ultimate liminal space.

  There was a moment of silence, a pause, and all Molly could hear was her own breath, before a final contraction swept over her — ‘Whoa! Oh my god, I’ve got it! It’s a baby,’ cried Patrick — and there was a strange slithering between Molly’s legs. She turned around and slid to the floor. Patrick was holding something wet, slippery and furious.

  ‘Patrick,’ came Sue’s voice, ‘I want you to check the cord is away from the baby’s neck. Is the baby breathing or crying?’

  ‘Breathing,’ said Patrick, and the baby answered with an affronted squawk.

  ‘Lovely. Can you wrap the baby up in a towel, including its head but not its face, and hand it to Molly if she’s ready?’

  Why would anyone wrap a baby’s face? Molly wondered, as Patrick passed her the bleating bundle, wrapped in an ancient faded Ken Done beach towel. She looked at her baby’s face. It looked just like Jack, but red and fat and squished.

  ‘Is it a boy?’ she asked.

  Patrick stared back at her. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘I didn’t look.’

  Molly unwrapped the towel a bit. ‘Nope. Not a boy.’

  Sue interrupted to tell them the ambulance was outside, and from sheer relief and shock Molly began to laugh. Her baby had just been delivered by a stranger who might be her
uncle. She felt high, like she was floating. She tried to look at the baby but she kept having to look away — it was too overwhelming.

  A paramedic with a ponytail came in and crouched down next to Molly. ‘Hello, there. My name’s Claire. Aren’t you a bit of a legend?’

  ‘The baby isn’t due yet. Is she all right?’

  ‘Looks pretty good to me. Mind if I take her for a little check? This is Gianni: he’s going to have a look at you, make sure everything’s okay and help deliver the placenta. Now, who’s going to cut the cord? Dad?’ Claire looked at Patrick.

  ‘I’m not . . . I’ve just . . .’ The events of the past ten minutes seemed to suddenly catch up with Patrick and he couldn’t get out a clear sentence.

  Molly tried to help him. ‘Patrick is staying next door. We’ve only just met. This is my grandparents’ house. Everyone’s at Carols in the Domain. My husband’s away.’

  ‘Shall I cut the cord then?’ Claire was unfazed. She laid the baby on the bed and busied herself with a clamp and scissors. ‘Are you going to name her after Patrick? People often do in these sorts of situations. I’ve got a few little Claires running around — but only from when I’ve got there in time to catch one.’

  ‘Patricia?’ Molly suggested dubiously. This was all happening very fast. Were they up to the naming bit? Did she have to decide now? While some man called Gianni was poking away at her groin with his gloved hands? She couldn’t imagine anyone naming a baby Patricia. Like polio, the name Patricia had been almost completely eradicated in their part of the world.

  ‘God no,’ said Patrick. ‘I’d never forgive myself if someone was named Patricia because of me. I’m sure you have a name picked out already.’

  Petula, thought Molly suddenly. It was the name her grandmother had wanted to call Annie. Granny had loved Petula Clark. She had played her records and then her cassettes in the kitchen when she was cooking or cleaning or doing the dishes, which seemed to be always, in Molly’s memory. Pa had made such fun of her, both for her old-fashioned taste in music and for how she’d wanted to name their daughter Petula. Pa used to tell it as one of his catalogue of funny stories. Imagine, he’d say, just imagine calling a child Petula. It’s asking for petulance. And you’d deserve petulance, because what a thing to do to a kid. Calling them a name that only one person has, and that person’s a singer of mediocre crowd pleasers. Even Petula Clark wasn’t really called Petula, he’d remind them — for goodness’ sake, her real name was Sally.

  Granny had lost that argument, and they’d named the baby Anne Katherine. It was funny that Annie had gone on to be a singer too. Maybe if she’d changed her name to something more fabulous, like Petula, or Paloma, or Aretha, or Rihanna, maybe she would have had a longer, more successful career. Annie Jones, nee Thorne, wasn’t a star’s name.

  The name Petula had occurred to Molly ages back, but it was clear to her now that it was the right name for this new person, her daughter. Because fuck Pa, she thought. Fuck him for making fun of Granny’s taste in music. Fuck him for sleeping with their neighbour. Fuck him for the secrets and the lies, the betrayal and disloyalty. The arrogance and the carelessness with people’s hearts.

  As the paramedics shifted her off the floor and onto the gurney, and Claire placed a tightly wrapped baby back into her arms, Molly wasn’t sure if what she was feeling, what was pulsing through her like a migraine, was love or fury. Suddenly she was searingly angry at her grandfather.

  She looked at her child and she knew she was absolutely hooked. No matter what happened, that memory of that tiny person was going to be inside her now, like a piece of shrapnel, for the rest of her life. Who Molly was that day was who she would always have been when her daughter was born. As of that moment, Molly was a mother. And she was not ready.

  They wheeled her out through the hall to the front door, past the framed family photos. She looked at the picture of Pa, resplendent in a white dinner jacket on his wedding day, standing beside Granny, who was smiling shyly at the camera as they both held a knife over the top tier of a white cake. Pa’s jaw was strong and set, and one eyebrow was slightly cocked. He looked, with the benefit of hindsight, like exactly the sort of man who would go on to father a child extra-maritally and refuse to acknowledge it. Back then, of course, who would have cared? What would anyone have done about it if they had known? Men had been more or less allowed to do that sort of thing.

  She looked down at the baby, who was gazing up at her. It was a shock, the intense eye contact. Molly’s vision blurred with tears. The responsibility was too much. How could she stop some man — who was currently a baby too, or maybe not even born yet — from trampling all over this girl’s heart and dreams, her thoughts and rights? Or what if Jack betrayed her? What if this child’s own father was the one who would break her heart, like Paul had Molly’s? Like Pa would Annie’s, when she found out about Patrick? The world had changed, but how much? And it mightn’t even be a man who would make her daughter’s life hard. It might be a woman. And it was definitely still a world that would cause her pain, because this child had come into an absolute shitstorm of a civilisation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, like someone who hasn’t had time to tidy before a visitor arrives, ‘everything’s a bit of a mess here.’ That was an understatement, Molly thought, because actually the world was on fire: it was nothing but melting icecaps, starving polar bears and oppressed minorities dying at the hands of the one per cent. Petula had come into a world of overcrowded feedlots, religious extremism, systemic racism and reality television. Plus she had a mother who hadn’t even decided what she wanted to do with her life yet.

  ‘Wait,’ called Patrick, from behind her. ‘What shall I do? Do you want me to come?’

  ‘No, I’m okay,’ she said. ‘Can you keep trying to get hold of Jack and my mum? Everyone’s numbers are on a list on the fridge.’ Granny had put them there years, years earlier, and no one had wanted to take the handwritten page down.

  ‘Yes, absolutely. I’ll find them.’

  It was still pouring outside, so the paramedics borrowed Pa’s old golf umbrella from the hall and held it over Petula and Molly as they were wheeled out to the waiting ambulance. Molly wiped a splash off Petula’s forehead and wondered if they had any other system for wet-weather patient transportation, or if paramedics always relied on the mortgage broker-branded umbrellas of the recently deceased.

  Chapter 19

  The thunderstorm had caused an abrupt end to the carols concert. A trio of heavily made-up morning television hosts were belting through ‘Jingle Bells’ when all at once thunderclaps drowned out the audience applause and hard rain began to pelt down. Thousands of people immediately gathered their sodden picnic blankets, disappointed children and half-eaten pots of hummus, and began to struggle towards bus stops and train stations.

  Brian was the first to check his phone, once all eight family members had squeezed, sodden, onto an express bus to the northern beaches.

  ‘Does anyone know this number?’ he asked, turning his phone to show the others the source of an alarming twelve missed calls. Droplets of water misted the screen.

  ‘Is it a stranger?’ asked Sunny. ‘Did a stranger ring you? You shouldn’t talk to strangers.’

  ‘It’s different on the phone,’ said Naomi.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Annie said, as she took out her own phone. Nineteen missed calls. Her stomach turned to ice. ‘Molly,’ she said. She listened to her first voicemail. Molly’s voice, sounding nervous, saying something about her waters breaking.

  Ringing came from the shopping bag Simon had slung over his shoulder, and he dropped it onto Diana’s lap and rifled through the remnants of their picnic until he grasped his phone.

  ‘Hello? Simon speaking?’

  The other soggy revellers on the bus listened with interest.

  ‘What? Who? Oh yes, next door. Yes. She’s what? Already? Is she? No, yes, good, thanks. Which —? Yep, got it. Thanks. I’ll let them know. And thanks
. Really, thank you.’ He ended the call and breathed out heavily.

  ‘What? Simon, what happened?’ Annie could hardly stand it.

  ‘Moll had the baby,’ he said, as if reporting that the bins had been collected.

  His family erupted into questions.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘What did she have?’

  ‘If you shut up I’ll tell you.’

  They quietened.

  ‘That was Patrick, you know, that bloke staying next door? Ray’s kid?’

  ‘But why was he ringing us? Where’s Molly?’ Annie started up again.

  ‘Mum. Listen. He said Molly was home alone in the house and she went into labour. She called an ambulance, and he heard her and went to help. She’s fine, the baby is fine: they’re both at the hospital now. It’s a girl. She had a girl.’

  Annie couldn’t speak. She looked up at Paul, who was crushed into the aisle beside her, hanging on to the pole for support. He had tears in his eyes as he bent down and kissed her, hard on the top of her head.

  Naomi put her arm around Diana and pulled her in for a hug. ‘I knew she’d be fine,’ she said happily. ‘I had a feeling this baby would join us soon. When I felt Moll’s belly the other day I sensed such a longing to be earthside.’

  Diana raised one eyebrow at Simon.

  * * *

  They got off the bus at the hospital, and spent an hour, still damp from the storm and all shivering slightly in the air-conditioned room, paying homage to the new baby. Molly accepted their apologies, flowers — even though they were gerberas — and, despite Naomi’s best efforts to talk Felix and Sunny out of it, a balloon in the shape of a Minion.

  Annie watched as Paul perched on the edge of the bed and Molly gently placed the baby in his arms. She was relieved to see her daughter smiling proudly, showing her father how to support the baby’s little neck, as if he had never held an infant before. Father and daughter, they were so similar in profile, and as they looked down at the baby, beatific half smiles of wonderment on their faces, she was momentarily astonished at their beauty.