by Wendy Orr
‘You’d think that after all those years of cranking down an Anson undercarriage I could grind up a bit of meat!’ she laughed, and Myrtle, who had no idea what either an undercarriage or an Anson was, looked at her sharply. She didn’t need to imagine a world where women in slacks or flying suits, en route from airport to airport, took turns winding down the wheels of their taxi-plane, one hundred and fifty heavy revolutions; it was enough to understand that Ruth was breathless. She ordered her onto the day bed in the corner; Ruth refused and was allowed to stay at the table on condition that she content herself with watching and not helping.
The kitchen was warm and became fuggy with steam as the well-spiced pork, a chopped onion and a handful of raisins for sweetness simmered on the wood stove. Ruth’s nausea at the sight of the meat and stitch from grinding it subsided and she was left with a sense of wellbeing and lassitude which in the end sent her up to her own bed, that big empty bed waiting for Bill, to doze for an hour or two. She was too uncomfortable to sleep well at the moment, and perhaps because of the nap, slept worse than usual that night.
This morning she has tried her hand at pastry, using fingertips to rub the lard into the flour, mixing a little too much cold water so that more flour has to be added, having to add still more to roll it out, and suspecting that she will never learn the quick flip Myrtle demonstrates to lift the pie-sized circle over the rolling pin.
‘Just practice,’ Myrtle says encouragingly, although she can’t remember a time when she couldn’t make a pie herself and is beginning to share Ruth’s suspicion that it may be something her daughter-in-law will never learn.
The pie is ready for dinner, which they eat at what Ruth would call luncheon. ‘I can see why this is Bill’s favourite,’ she says after the first mouthful, and everyone, even Louise, smiles as if they’ve been waiting for this verdict.
It’s rich, though. For a stomach used to five years of rationing, excessively rich.
‘A sliver more?’ Myrtle tempts, worried about the more obvious effects of those lean years. ‘Don’t forget you’re eating for two!’
Ruth feels that she’s eaten for six. When the dishes have been washed and tidied she goes back to her own room. The euphoria of the day before is replaced by a wave of depression and the certainty that she will never fit in here: she not only can’t cook, the daily routines of a country household are foreign to her. Every night when Myrtle settles the big porridge pot on the wood stove to be ready for morning, all Ruth can think of is the Starkadders’ boiling-over porridge in Cold Comfort Farm and as a result still can’t remember the correct proportions of water and oatmeal. Now she’s discovered that she can’t even eat the food Bill is used to.
When Myrtle brings her a cup of tea later that afternoon she is too ashamed to admit the indigestion that has recommenced: spasmodic, increasingly severe attacks which once again disappear just as she is on the point of wondering whether it is in fact baby rather than pork.
Outside, the snowfall has blossomed to blizzard. George and Louise constantly clear a path the few feet from the end door of the shed to the barn; around the other doors the drifts are piling high. Ruth’s mood has lifted again and she is excited by the wildness of the wind and isolation. The moon is full; she sleeps little on a full moon at the best of times, and tonight lies in a half dream wishing, as she wishes several times a day and constantly at night, that Bill was beside her and that they were alone in a snowbound house, a cosy private cave. A baby does not intrude on this frigid honeymoon vision.
She must have slept, because she wakes in a wet bed. There is no pain, simply a pool of rapidly cooling water; something that she’d understood happened after a period of labour. She wonders how long she will have to wait for contractions to begin; wonders if she should wake up Myrtle; wonders how she will cope with this and what it will be like, and will she really have a baby at the end of it? Wonders what time it is and sits up to pull the light cord over her bed.
No light. The electricity has gone.
Climbing tentatively out of bed, her wet nightgown clinging stickily, she crosses to the window with clock in hand and pulls the curtains.
The snow has stopped falling; the wind has passed. The world gleams white in moonlit magic and mysterious slopes, and the wonder of it becomes part of the story of her firstborn child. (From next December on, when Ruth reads ‘the moon on the breast of the new fallen snow’ to her children on the night before Christmas—and forever after that because when the children are too old for it the words have become part of her Christmas habit—she will relive the night of Jane’s birth.)
It is probably only seconds before she looks at the clock, because the room is cold and her nightgown chilling quickly around her. Quickly, anticipating the onset of pain, she changes into a clean nightie, strips her bed and feels her way down the hall to the linen closet in the trunk room, taking an armful of sheets from the darkness and making her way back to her room without tripping or stumbling.
She has just managed to flip the mattress, damp side to the springs, when the first pain begins and Myrtle appears, ghostly in long dressing gown and flashlight.
‘How long have they been coming?’
Ruth waits for it to ebb before replying. She is slightly humiliated by the wet bed, but Myrtle waves the thought away and begins covering the mattress with an old blanket before tucking in sheets.
‘No need to go to the hospital yet,’ she says, once her daughter-in-law is settled back into bed, ‘you might as well be comfortable.’ Her voice is calm, but she can’t help a quick, betraying glance out the window.
For the first time Ruth understands the full meaning of snowbound. ‘We can’t get out, can we?’
‘Not right now,’ Myrtle admits. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t get the doctor here when you’re ready.’
‘On snowshoes?’—remembering Bill’s waddling description with a laugh that is choked by the grip of the next pain.
‘George would love the excuse to use the sleigh; he hasn’t had it out yet this year. It’s a wonder he hasn’t carried you off for a ride in it already, baby or not, he’s that fond of the thing. And you know, my dear, I had Bill in this house, and Louise—and Albert,’ she adds resolutely, with only the slightest quaver. ‘Of course I was born here too, and my father too; now doesn’t it seem a wonderful thing that your child should be born here in his turn?’
Ruth, resting between pains again, loves her for this. With one stroke the baby has been given a secure place in family history. She sees generations of women, far longer back than this house, labouring as she is now to produce the next part of the web that is family, and realises that historyless or not, she is part of it too.
‘Now, my dear,’ Myrtle says briskly, returning from another bustle around in the trunk room with what looks suspiciously like an antique chamber-pot, ‘I’m going to go downstairs and poke up that fire. We don’t want you getting cold. While I’m gone you might like to use this.’
Ruth blushes scarlet. She had expected childbirth to be painful, not humiliating.
‘You can’t wait till it’s over and we don’t want you walking up and down those stairs for no reason. Nothing to be ashamed of, between women.’
Another pain begins, and Ruth realises she wouldn’t have time to get down the stairs and back between them. Myrtle waits till it’s over, trying not to look as anxious as she feels, then flies downstairs to the basement furnace.
Crouching over the pot in the moonlit room, hanging on to the bedframe for balance, Ruth is overwhelmed with relief that Bill isn’t here yet. They don’t know each other well enough, she thinks, for him to see her like this. Another pain begins before she’s finished and she’s suddenly terrified that she’ll push the baby out into the pot by mistake, a disastrous beginning to life, though a small voice points out that these pains, unpleasant as they are, are not devastating enough for what she’s heard of childbirth.
They are coming closer together, though, and each one
is a little stronger. Myrtle reappears with a kerosene lamp but the smell makes Ruth so nauseated that at the next pain she cries out for the first time.
Myrtle runs across the hall to wake George. Louise comes in, tentative and dishevelled. The first time she’s been in my room since I’ve been here, thinks Ruth, feeling at a distinct disadvantage though minding less than she’d expect. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she pants. ‘It’s just that lamp.’
Thoughts flit across her mind in random patterns, dreamlike; is this how it was for her own mother? . . . Did her mother die? . . . Where is Bill now? . . . Why does the smell of kerosene make her sick and sad? . . . And here it comes again.
‘Get some candles, Louise,’ Myrtle orders, ‘and then go check that fire. Take the baby blankets down with you and put them in the warming oven.’
‘Baby blankets!’ repeats Ruth in wonder, as if this particular outcome has never struck her before.
‘George is going for the doctor,’ says Myrtle, ‘but you’re doing such a good job, you might be finished before he gets here.’
‘Why don’t you phone?’ demands Louise.
Her mother glances at her sharply. ‘It’s out.’
Louise takes the offending lamp and heads into the trunk room. George clumps hurriedly down the stairs.
‘Myrtle,’ says Ruth, ‘do you mean I’m going to have a baby now?’
‘If you’re not, you’ve eaten far too much tourtiere!’
‘How soon?’
‘I don’t know, dear. They’re unpredictable creatures, babies. Like men.’
A longer contraction interrupts the conversation but this time Ruth holds the thought.
‘Have you ever delivered a baby before?’
‘Goodness! I’ve seen that many born I couldn’t count—more than twenty, certainly.’
Louise returns with candles and goes to dress; it’s going to take some shovelling, her father has reported, before he can get into the barn, much less get horse and sleigh out.
The moonlight has dimmed now and the sky is grey, still hours before dawn. The pains rest briefly and reappear with less pattern and renewed intensity. Ruth is glad that the others are out of the house and can’t hear the noises she’s making.
‘You’re a brave girl, that’s for sure,’ Myrtle says. ‘But if you can’t shout when you’re having a baby, I don’t know when you can.’
Her voice comes from a distant place. Ruth’s pain is no longer controllable; her insides are being torn apart, like the ancient victims sundered by wild horses.
‘Oh, God!’ she groans as the next pain changes into the most powerful, the most primeval urge she has ever known. ‘I’m having a baby!’
‘You certainly are.’
‘Now!’ Ruth shouts, her face contorted with pushing.
Myrtle pulls back the covers and peers between her daughter-in-law’s legs to see the crowning head of her first grandchild. Tears spurt to her eyes.
‘It’s nearly here; take your time. Squeeze my hand when you push.’
‘I’ll hurt you,’ Ruth pants, readying herself for the next wave.
Myrtle would have preferred to be hurt and share the burden, but has to content herself with smoothing hair off the damp forehead between contractions and watching the baby’s progress during them. Neither woman has much sense of the passing time, but dawn is barely breaking when the baby shoots out in a sudden rush of blood, its hurry turning it a bright surprising blue, identical in the dim candlelight to the periwinkle blue of the wallpaper flowers.
Its grandmother lifts it gently, unsure what to do with the thick pulsating cord, but Ruth holds out her arms in yearning demand and the baby is placed on her stomach.
‘A girl,’ Myrtle says as she lifts and the baby pinkens obediently under its layer of protecting grease, becoming within seconds a so obviously healthy, normal newborn that neither woman is quite sure whether she has imagined the blueness.
This is not how Ruth has imagined birth. This is magic, this is euphoria, this is a tiny human being nestled on her bare midriff, mouth gawping blindly as a fish, and she had thought babies were ugly but this one, blotchy and bald, is quite beautiful, and she’s done it, she’s done it all by herself, made this wonderful baby.
‘Hello, Jane,’ she whispers, touching the frail head with a finger.
Another contraction, vicious in its unexpectedness. When she can think, Ruth expects to see a twin, but it’s simply the afterbirth, something else Myrtle is not sure what to do with, all the mothers she’s attended previously having eaten it without comment.
Ruth rests a moment and begins stroking Jane’s head again. After some hesitation, Myrtle produces the kitchen scissors, carefully washed in one of her forays downstairs, and cuts the cord. Ruth is astonished not to feel pain, not yet understanding that the baby is now separate from her. With increasing intensity, Jane begins to nuzzle at her mother’s stomach, and after a moment of absolute panic at handling so tiny a creature, infinitely smaller than the sturdy babies on the ship, Ruth wiggles her higher until she attaches herself to a breast.
‘Well!’ says Myrtle and sinks into the chair beside the bed, satisfied but utterly drained. ‘Well!’
‘Won’t Bill be surprised!’ Ruth says suddenly, breaking into helpless shaking giggles, which Myrtle has just recognised as shock when Louise appears to say that George is leaving for the doctor.
‘You might have told us!’ Louise snaps, and Ruth covers herself instinctively against the glare.
‘For pity sakes, girl, you can see it’s just happened! Go and tell Dad; he’d still best fetch the doctor, but he could have his porridge first.’
Then there are warmed blankets to tuck tightly around mother and babe, and the kettle on for a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle because Ruth is still shaking, and water warmed for the baby, still covered in bloody vernix, to have her first bath. George comes up to say hello from the doorway before he leaves, beaming at this sight of his son’s daughter, and Louise stays there too, as if uncertain of her welcome, till Ruth asks if she would like to hold her niece.
Louise’s tense face softens. ‘Will I bathe her for you?’ she asks briskly, and Ruth, feeling as if her heart will break at this first separation, but better that than wash this dearest being in this chilly room, agrees and sees her daughter disappear to the kitchen to be washed and inexpertly wrapped, Louise not having had much more experience than Ruth in the matter.
Jane is returned and tucked into her own cot, where Ruth, sitting up against her pillows, can gaze at her in wonder, tears flowing softly now in gratitude for her daughter, and grief for Bill not being here to share her.
‘We’ll leave you alone to rest.’ Myrtle bends over Ruth as if she would have liked to kiss her, but contents herself with stroking a tear away from her cheek.
Ruth catches her hand. ‘Thank you. There ought to be a better word—but thank you.’
‘It was a privilege,’ says Myrtle sincerely. ‘To see my own grand-daughter born; something most people don’t get to see these days, with hospitals and all.’
‘But the other babies you delivered?’
‘All had four legs, my dear, but I didn’t think it was the time to say so when you asked.’
In the same room, fifty-three years later, Jane will read Ruth’s letter to Mary announcing her birth.
I had intended to write immediately on my arrival in Canada, but have procrastinated long enough to announce the arrival of a brand-new Canadian. Jane Myrtle Dubois was born three days ago, in the house of her ancestors. A true Canadian, she arrived in a blizzard—though to be honest, I am not completely sure at what point snow becomes a blizzard, and it’s possible that this was the Nova Scotian equivalent of a London drizzle. It was, however, enough to bring down electricity and phone lines for a day, and block roads until now. From my window the world is still quite white; only the trees in the woods behind the garden are starting to shed their coverings and stand out, green or bare according to species, agai
nst the snow. Drifts are piled deep against the front of the house and barn, looking as high as my head, although perhaps I exaggerate. The only route to the outdoors is through the long outbuilding at the end of the house, where a brief path has been shovelled to the barn door. (One wonders why the original builders didn’t simply attach the barn to the other end of this shed, so one could go in comfort all the way!)
Needless to say, I haven’t attempted this route myself. The baby and I spend our time ensconced in bed where, like royalty, we grant occasional audiences.
I had always thought tiny babies to be rather hideous creatures, and never understood the hypocrisy of calling them beautiful. I now understand that it is simply because there is no other word to express the emotion that fills one’s heart on seeing this tiny new creature. Objectively, Jane has a small, slightly squashed-looking red face with a strange little bruise on her forehead as a result of her rush to greet the world, which the doctor assures me will disappear. This will, I think, be a person who will make her way in whatever she chooses to do. However, it is impossible for me to look at her objectively; what I see is simply the most important being in the world and I am tied to her by something like a physical cord. You cannot imagine how one feels when she cries! One’s stomach clenches and one could howl oneself. But when she’s happy, sleeping or nursing or just lying in my arms with her strange glazed look, I feel the most privileged person on earth, happy and exultant. At some stage during the process of birth I seem to have lost a layer of skin, so that the slightest breeze of this tiny person’s desires blows directly across my soul.
This is so unlike the mother she knows that Jane will have to stop at this point and make a cup of coffee before she can go on. It’s also a revelation to learn that Ruth and Mary had been so intimate, and she cannot know of the gaping need Ruth had felt, with Bill now on ship and out of letter reach, to explore her feelings on paper.