‘Want me to take some of that home for you, Alma?’ Iorwerth Hopkins, the son of Edna who ran the shop near the house she shared with her mother in Morgan Street, held out his hand for the tree.
‘That would be good of you, Iorwerth. It would save me carting it to the café.’ She smiled as she suddenly thought of a solution to her problem. ‘You know Bobby Thomas, don’t you Iorwerth?’
‘Yes,’ he answered suspiciously in a tone that said knowing and liking were two different things.
‘He dropped this at Wilf Horton’s stall.’ She handed him the newspaper-wrapped jumper. ‘It’s his wife’s Christmas present. I don’t know where he lives so I was going to leave it at the police station, but it would be better if you could take it to his wife.’
‘They live in Bassett Street. I’ll drop it in to her when I take Madge home.’
‘Thanks a lot, Iorwerth.’ She breathed easier. ‘You’ve taken a load off my mind. I hope it isn’t far out of your way.’
‘Not far. Have you met Madge?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Alma murmured absently, offloading her tree on to him.
‘Madge, come over here!’
A pretty girl with dark hair and eyes and a glowing complexion left a queue at a fruit stall, sidled up to Iorwerth and smiled shyly at Alma.
‘Madge and I are getting married in the New Year,’ Iorwerth announced proudly from behind the Christmas tree.
‘Congratulations.’ Alma almost choked on the word. Most days she was too busy scraping a living to think about love, marriage, how much Ronnie had meant to her, or how empty her life had now become. She smiled hollowly at the couple as she dumped the remainder of her packages into Iorwerth’s arms. Why did everything, especially lack of money and Ronnie’s absence from her life, seem so much worse just because it was Christmas?
The room was an unprepossessing place in which to spend Christmas Eve. High-windowed, its bare walls were painted sickly hospital shades of dark green and rancid cream that appeared to have been selected to blend with the complexions of the most diseased patients imaginable. But as delivery rooms went, it was no better, and no worse, than the ones Bethan Powell had worked in as a trainee midwife in the Graig Hospital in Pontypridd.
Simply a dismal, uninspiring place in which to make an entry into the world.
‘Darling, are you all right?’ Andrew, her husband of three months hovered ineffectually at the foot of the iron bedstead, an anxious frown creasing his handsome face.
‘Of course she’s not all right!’ Lettie the cockney nurse snapped tartly. ‘Men!’ she grinned sympathetically at Bethan as she took her pulse. ‘They get us into these states and then have the nerve to ask if we’re all right.’
‘I’m fine,’ Bethan smiled weakly, valiantly trying to ignore the discomfort of the thin mattress and rickety bedsprings. ‘Really, it’s not that bad.’
‘Not yet it’s not,’ the nurse agreed. ‘But believe you me; it’s going to get a lot …’
‘ ... worse before it gets better,’ Bethan finished for her.
The phrase was one she’d used often enough herself during deliveries.
‘Midwives! They always make the worst patients. Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor John?’
Andrew smiled vaguely, too preoccupied with Bethan’s pain to follow Lettie’s conversation.
‘I’m only half a trained midwife,’ Bethan corrected, gasping as another pain gathered inside her.
‘And it looks as though you’re going to be too busy for a while to see to the other half. Doctor John?’ Lettie looked enquiringly at Andrew. ‘Do you intend to deliver your baby yourself?’
‘No. Doctor Floyd’s coming in,’ Andrew replied quickly, deferring to his immediate superior.
‘Then it’s time I called him. You’ll be all right for five minutes?’ she asked Bethan.
‘Ten if you can’t reach him.’ Bethan continued to smile with clenched teeth.
‘I’ll reach him.’ Lettie marched out of the room, closing the door behind her.
‘Are you really coping?’ Andrew grasped Bethan’s hand as he sat on the bed beside her.
‘You’re the doctor. You tell me.’ Her smile deteriorated into a grimace as yet another pain sliced through her abdomen. Sharper and more intense, it made her feel as though she were being torn in two. ‘I never minded this happening to anyone else,’ she joked feebly.
‘Neither did I.’ He enclosed her hand within both of his. ‘If you want me I’ll be just outside the door.’
‘Coward!’
‘Absolutely.’ He squeezed her hand mutely. The door opened and the nurse returned.
‘Doctor Floyd’s coming, and you,’ she glared at Andrew, ‘can get off that bed when you like. I shouldn’t need to remind you, of all people, of the rules.’
Andrew rose quickly.
Lettie studied Bethan for a moment. ‘Doctor John, if you’re not here in a medical capacity, I think it’s time you left.’
‘Midwives are the same the world over,’ he complained. ‘Bossy.’
Bethan wasn’t fooled by his mild protest. She read the relief in his eyes as he walked to the door. ‘See you later, Mrs John,’ he whispered as he disappeared into the corridor.
‘Husbands! When the going gets rough they cut and run, even doctors,’ Lettie Harvey said in a voice loud enough to carry outside. ‘Now look at what I’ve brought you. A nice smart hospital-issue gown, the absolute latest in maternity wear.’
Bethan struggled to sit up but another pain prevented her. The nurse pressed her gently back on to the bed. Laying her hand firmly against Bethan’s abdomen she pulled out her watch and timed the contraction. ‘Nice and regular now, Mrs John, it won’t be much longer.’
‘Thank you,’ Bethan murmured, drifting helplessly as the pain ebbed. The bare light bulb wavered overhead.
The atmosphere was tainted by a strong smell of disinfectant and rubber from the sheeting she was lying on. She stared blankly at the ceiling. It was meshed with a myriad hairline cracks. She traced their origins, following them backwards and forwards, her mind meandering through black and crimson tunnels of pain as a dense cloud floated towards her. It drifted slowly, gradually sinking over her. Soft, warm, it obliterated everything from view.
‘Mrs John! Bethan! Bethan ...’
‘What’s the problem?’ Andrew’s voice, rough with concern, penetrated her consciousness.
A face loomed overhead, bushy eyebrows and curling grey hair above a white mask.
‘You’ll soon be all right, Mrs John. We’re just taking you to somewhere more comfortable.’
She tried to say she was quite comfortable where she was, but her mouth was dry and her lips refused to open when she tried to speak. A damp-stained ceiling flowed rapidly overhead.
She saw Andrew, wide-eyed, white faced, his back pressed against the tiled wall of the corridor. A different room flooded around her, bright with lights and the silver glint of chrome. Again the pungent nauseating odour of rubber assailed her nostrils and she plunged downwards, swinging backwards and forwards ... backwards and forwards ... backwards and forwards ... clinging for dear life to a thin, stretched, bouncing strand of rubber.
Fear clawed at her throat as she realised that her tenuous grip on the elastic frond was all that kept her from falling into the black abyss that lapped at her feet.
The rubber band lengthened ... snapped ... and she hurtled helplessly downwards.
‘Bethan, can you hear me?’
She struggled to open her eyes. A mask pressed over her face, white gauze tented over a metal frame. She could smell iron as well as chloroform. Chloroform! Sweet, overpoweringly soporific chloroform – Andrew had been using chloroform the first time she’d seen him, when she’d been asked to assist him in that dingy, delivery room off the maternity ward in the Graig Hospital.
A pain pierced the numbing effect of the anaesthetic, shattering the sides of the abyss into a million crimson fragments.
‘Andrew,�
�� she moaned.
‘I’m here, darling. Right here.’
‘No!’ she screamed as loudly as she could. ‘No!’ She thrashed her arms wildly as agonising pain after pain pierced her body. It was worse than anything she’d ever experienced – she knew only that she wanted it to end, whatever the price. She should never have allowed Andrew to make love to her. He had made her pregnant and then left her – alone. No, not alone. Not entirely alone. She’d turned to her hidden comfort: the bottle of brandy she’d secreted behind the drawer in her dressing table away from her mother and sister’s prying eyes.
At first she’d believed that brandy could make anything go away but then she’d learned that it couldn’t help with the things that mattered, only the unimportant things, like blotting out the here and now.
It hadn’t taken away the baby – or brought Andrew back when she’d needed him most, but he’d come later ...
‘Andrew!’ she screamed again into the black void only to hear her cry fall unanswered, on deaf unhearing ears.
‘We’re going to have to use forceps.’
‘There’s something seriously wrong, isn’t there?’ Andrew’s voice, sharp, anguished, echoed outside the darkness that had closed around her again.
“There’s nothing wrong. Nothing at all, darling. How could there be when you came back for me. I left Pontypridd. Went to London with you.” She spoke but he didn’t hear. Warm, opiate-seasoned tides washed over her, filtering out the pain. She wanted to think of something pleasant. Not the time Andrew had left her.
A day when she had been happy. Her wedding! Here, in London, away from family and friends – no, not all her friends. Laura and Trevor had stood behind them, happy honeymooners, married for almost two weeks.
She’d worn the indigo dress and dark green coat Andrew had insisted on buying her although it had taken almost every penny of his spare money.
‘I do.’ Andrew looking at her, love etched in his deep brown eyes. ‘That’s it, Mrs John. You’re not going to get away from me now. Not ever again.’
His lips warm, moist, closing over her own as he carried her over the doorstep of the beautiful, modem flat he’d rented.
Her protest. ‘We have to save ...’
‘For a rainy day? It’ll never get any wetter than it is now. Another year or two and we’ll be rolling in it. I’ll be a senior doctor, and you’ll be a mother.’
Her Aunt Megan had said the same thing. ‘The rainy day is now.’
But it hadn’t been. Not for Megan. The rain had turned into a cloudburst the day the police took her Aunt Megan away for handling stolen goods. Megan, who had meant so much to her – the only woman apart from her dead grandmother who’d been kind to her when she was small – was serving ten years’ hard labour.
‘Mrs John? Mrs John? Bethan? Come on now. Wake up; it’s time to wake up.’
There was a baby crying. She could hear its wail: weak, resentful.
‘Mrs John? Bethan?’
Andrew’s voice, harsh and bitter. ‘Take it away before she sees it.’
‘It!’ Her baby? She made an effort, swam upwards towards the light. Fought to open her eyes. They hurt so. Every part of her hurt. She felt as though she’d been trampled on by an army of miners wearing hobnailed boots.
‘My baby?’
Andrew looked at her. Doctor Floyd stood next to him. Both had pulled down their masks, and both were wearing gowns.
‘You’re doing fine, Mrs John. We’ll just make you comfortable, then you can sleep.’ Lettie bustled around the bed.
‘My baby?’
Andrew turned away.
Doctor Floyd was kinder. ‘He has a few problems, Mrs John. Nothing for you to worry about. I’ve sent for a paediatrician. Don’t concern yourself. All that can be done for him will be. You have to concentrate on yourself. Get well and strong for your husband.’
She couldn’t see Andrew’s face. His back was still turned to her and he was looking out through the door.
The wail grew fainter. She closed her eyes. Don’t concern yourself? With her own baby?
It was all her fault. When Andrew had left her she’d tried to murder the poor mite even before it was born. But the drunken fall down the stone steps of the Graig Hospital hadn’t worked, nor had the brandy and boiling foot-bath. Not mercifully quickly they hadn’t.
www.accentpress.co.uk
The HEARTS OF GOLD series
by Catrin Collier
www.accentpress.co.uk
Pontypridd 02 - One Blue Moon Page 40