by Cormac James
Describe it, he said. You’re sure that’s what it was?
Sticky. Brown, she said. Like something you blow out of your nose. Like something you cough up out of your throat.
He wished he’d not asked. Now he would have to explain to DeHaven, with words of his own. He turned to go.
Richard, she said.
He halted, but did not turn to face her. What? he said.
Could you take it out?
What? he said. He wanted to hear her say it out loud.
The pot.
Why?
It’s just, well, I don’t really want him to see it.
The pot was already waiting by the door, with the cover on. He carried it up, to fling over the side, onto their rubbish heap. But first he took the cover off and held it under the lamp. She was not wrong. The glob looked like what they hacked up into the bowls in the hospital. The water was a greenish brown, the surface slick and greasy, as though spilled with train oil. It was another kind of proof. The birth, it said, was a purely physical thing.
A corner of the housing had come loose and was flapping frantically. He went over and tied it down. In the galley, he got two cups and set them on the tray. The kettle was beginning to tremble. The cat leapt onto the counter. The props all looked so familiar, so uninclined to change. Then he lifted his head, frowning. He stepped out and lifted the hatch. She was roaring his name, with a new kind of hate in her voice.
Back down into the animal kingdom, down the ladder, step by step. He stood facing the door. He was about to face the judge. He was a child again, and it felt unfair to give someone so helpless so much responsibility.
In the cabin, she had one foot on the floor and one on the bed, knee bent, was leaning back on an elbow, and perfectly still. The pose looked ridiculous. He glanced between her legs, ready to see a mess.
I’ve just had two, she said.
Two more, he said. How many does that make?
These are different, she said. She sounded slightly out of breath.
Until now the contractions had bloomed and quickly withered, their roots not particularly deep. But tonight they ploughed straight through her, barbed, on their way to another place.
Do you think this is it? he said, and heard both hope and dread in his voice. It was the question he asked himself at every crush. After so many false alarms, he still did not believe. It would pass, as everything passed.
I need – She could not finish the phrase. She had still not moved from her bizarre pose. She looked stuck. She blocked her breath, then used it to blow away the last of the pain. The pot, she said.
He took it from under the bed, held it out. She shook her head.
Do you want me to leave? he said. She wanted to empty her bowels, he knew, not to empty them later, when the time came to push.
She shook her head mutely. It was coming back. Her two fists were gripping the blanket. The knuckles were white. The fingers would have to be peeled away one by one. There was something in them she would never let go.
Tell me what to do, he said. He had stepped over the threshold. From now on, everything would be merely practical. He felt himself strangely calm, as he often was when the actual crisis came. He no longer had to maintain his anxieties with such meticulous care.
She reached an arm towards him. The gesture was operatic, without opera’s excess. He stepped closer, let her grab hold of him however she needed to. He put his hands under her armpits, to hold her in place. She hooked her arms around his neck and let it take some of her weight. She tightened her grip. At last she swung her second leg off the bed and onto the floor. He swivelled her around and set her straight.
Good, he said. He wanted her to believe she had the measure of the trial to come. He wanted to believe it himself.
Her head against his chest. Under his hands he could feel her lungs working, managing the pain. The gutters, she said, working to get the words out. The waters, did she mean? The guts? Still she clung to him with both hands. He was something warm, solid, sure. He stroked his hand up and down her back. It seemed to be what she wanted. For the moment it seemed enough. The daily wrestle and dance were done.
The nightdress was up. DeHaven had his hands flat on the bump. Under the pressure, it was ceding readily, like potter’s clay. It had the same dull brown colour, the same slick sheen – some kind of oil they had poured on. Morgan watched with horror and admiration. Those first examinations, that other anxiety – that had all happened to someone else, long ago. Three months. Four. Five. He was older now. He was slow. He was more frightened than he’d even been in his life.
He could almost feel those same hands deforming his own insides. The mere thought was sickening, but he forced himself to watch. If he could not watch this polite puppet-show, how could he hope to sit through the epic hours to come, the raucous stretch and pulp?
That bump, that’s the head, DeHaven told her. You see? And there’s his little backside. He turned to Morgan, asked: Do you want to feel it?
No thank you, Morgan said, but less from fear now than respect. Inside, he knew, was something more precious than all the rest. A dark, troubled knot of flesh. It was the heart, irrepressible, beating hard. It was something he trusted absolutely. It was tougher than everything. It wanted to live.
Ideally it would be engaged by now, DeHaven said.
What he meant was, the baby still had too far to travel, to reach the outside world. Morgan smiled cheaply at the thought. How often had he told the men that out here distance equalled time? In this room, henceforth, time equalled pain.
DeHaven had put on one of Cabot’s white aprons. Now she watched as he rolled up his sleeves. Morgan watched her as discreetly as he could. The more you resist the more you suffer, he reminded himself. For as long as he could remember, this was a lesson he’d wanted to learn. He wanted to catch her eye, to tell her some useful lie, but now she turned her head to stare at the wall, not to see what DeHaven was doing to her bump. It made no difference, of course. She’d had too much practice, and the fear came quickly, effortlessly. It knew the way.
The contractions came and went. Each time felt like it had to be the last, that the very last dregs of pain in her were being drained away. Then she would feel it building again, like a wave far out from the shore. She settled the strap better between her teeth, and waited for it to come.
By now Morgan was kneeling by the bed, holding her hand. He would tell her whatever he thought she needed to hear. How brave she was. How far along. Anything he could think of but the truth. The truth was, there was so much worse in store.
Between contractions, they did their best to kill time. Morgan started to read aloud to her from a magazine.
Let her rest, DeHaven said. She’s going to need it.
They went at it, hour by hour. In the end DeHaven put her walking, to try and hurry it on. It was four short paces across the cabin floor. The two men sat up on the bed, out of her way. She waddled back and forth.
About three in the afternoon something suddenly took her in its grip and began to squeeze. Morgan caught her as she collapsed, sat her as best he could on the bed, held her up. In his arms, he could feel someth
ing wilt, something cede. He laid her down very carefully, and laid her dressing-gown over her, and the blankets on top of that. Still she was shivering. Morgan said he would bring her some tea.
He went out and went up and was glad to get away. He stayed too long in the galley, letting it come. This was how it would be, he thought. This was older and wiser. This was nothing to be done. It was going to happen, finally. Imagining, he felt sick with anticipation, with the great, complicated success of the hours to come.
It seemed less like a specific time than a specific place they’d been slouching towards, all these months. It was that cabin under his feet. She was down there now, waiting. The legs somehow hitched up and spread. Her face staring madly into the pain. The animal grip of her hand. The desperate, defeated panting. In the corner the stack of neatly-piled cloth, still a sober white. By tonight, he knew, the same cloth would be crumpled in a bucket, glossy and red.
A few minutes later DeHaven followed him up.
It’ll be a few minutes before the next one, he said. Cabot will call us if there’s need.
He’d come to get his tools, which were boiling in a pot. He lifted the lid and peeked inside, as though to check were they done.
This is how it’s going to be, is it? Morgan said.
How do you mean? The birth?
You’ve been at a few, haven’t you? he said.
I’ve been at plenty. There’s no point talking about it until I get a proper look at what way it wants to come out.
He needed a proper look, Morgan thought, but Kitty herself would be in the way. He would struggle to get a proper grip, a direct line of sight, and it would be her own fault for being such an awkward shape.
They seem quite strong now, Morgan said. How much worse do you think it can get?
Well, they’re not going to ease off.
That was his friend’s answer. There was no use debating the matter now. It was time for everyone to take their punishment.
Eventually DeHaven fished out his tools and dropped them on their tray. Morgan listened to them clatter and settle. They looked merely clean, new, nice to hold, but he knew they were still far too hot to touch.
Well? Morgan said.
In my opinion, it’s wiser not to talk too much about it in advance.
I want to know. I want to have some idea of what I’m going to see. I won’t say anything to her, I promise.
From what I can see, it’s like being murdered, DeHaven said. Although I imagine most murders can’t be half as painful and drawn out. And if you ask me, I think I’d prefer to be murdered. At least when you’re murdered, right up to the finish you must have some hope of escape. Maybe murder is the wrong word. Tortured is perhaps a better way of putting it. The woman is tortured, and survives. And not only does she survive being killed, but when she comes round she finds someone else – someone completely helpless – it is now her charge to keep alive. Even as she herself tries to recruit.
On the galley door now came the very lightest knock. It was Cabot. He seemed strangely shy.
It’s Miss Rink, Cabot said. She’s says she’s bleeding again.
They went at it hour by hour, scream by scream, and nothing but DeHaven’s blue bottle to thin the catastrophe. Listening, Morgan imagined a blank page being slowly torn in two. The rip has a will of its own, wanders off, like a fault line in a solid wall. Flaws appearing in places she would have sworn were sound. But that solid surface – it is the merest skim of plaster over old cracks. Underneath, all the old wounds are still open, and the pain knows exactly where they are. It knows her better than she knows herself. It has been studying her secretly, all her life.
Good girl, he told her, regardless. That’s the way. The next time it comes, you do that again, exactly the same. He didn’t know if what he said was true, but it didn’t matter. What she needed more than anything was some kind of encouragement.
We need to do something, he whispered to his friend.
Give her another dose, DeHaven said.
Morgan poured a spoon, but she could not lift herself. He brought it closer, but she made a sign with her eyes. He brought the basin. She tilted her head, let it all dribble out. It looked like bits of crushed bone, ashes, dust. She had broken a tooth, biting the strap.
I can see the head, DeHaven announced. I’m going in.
She showed no sign she’d heard. Her hair hung in ropes on her shoulders. She looked drugged or in a daydream. The tears ran down to her jaw.
Wider, DeHaven said, leaning in. He turned and took the forceps from the tray.
Whatever he was searching for was well hidden, but he seemed determined to find and dig it out, regardless of any resistance met on the way. Morgan stood watching, stupefied. He was holding one of her legs. The screams were going right the way through him, to the soles of his feet.
When it came it came almost in a slither, as though to discount all that had gone before. More than anything, Morgan thought, it looked like a mass of liver smeared in something like buttermilk.
Here, DeHaven ordered. Hold it a minute for me.
And Morgan’s two massive hands were suddenly weighing the meat-purple lump.
Cabot stood uselessly in the corner, back to the wall, holding the immaculate white wrap.
The thing was warm and slick, whatever it was. To the touch it felt just like the guts of a newly-shot bear, as you cleared him out. But it was moving. It was alive. And at the end of each finger, outrageously, there was a tiny fingernail.
Soon enough DeHaven sent him out. He needed to do some stitching up and didn’t want her watching the mirror of Morgan’s face. Morgan put on his furs and went out onto the ice. He knelt to wipe his bloody hands on the snow. He was flooded with relief, weighed down with it. He knelt there breathing, still soaking up the essential fact. Often in recent months, he had woken in the morning to a well-earned sense of relief, a reasonable calm, that told him the crisis was past, false alarm. That was how he felt now. It felt like success – his personal share.
For over an hour he circled the ship, refusing to go back in. What he felt now, he did not need or want to share. It was dark, and he kept veering and veering harder, to keep the red lamp on the mainmast in sight. Again and again he passed the gangway, but did not tire. Tonight he was younger than he’d been for many years. Soon enough, he supposed, the feeling of mastery would start to drain away. His legs and lungs would falter, and with them the invincible dream. But for the moment it was a feeling he refused to interrogate, refused to doubt. With nothing to hinder or heckle, images rose to his mind of what he’d seen that day. But none of the labour, the flailing foremath. He saw only the baby, bloody and fierce, cradled in his own outsized hands. The clenched fists, the bright greedy eyes, the mother’s champion face. His own childish pride, that someone’s survival now depended on him. The devotion he could freely foster on it, without fear and without risk. For a few moments, helplessly, he was determined to be up to the task. For the first time in a long time, he heard a call to his better self.
PART IV
1852
20th February
Their plates were full but untouched. Knives and forks in hand, they sat staring at the table t
op. They watched the cork trundle towards the edge, falter. Now she seemed to be leaning a little more to port. For a moment the cork lay there motionless, then rolled wearily back to where it had been. She was rocking ever so slightly in her cradle. Suddenly Morgan’s hand shot out and snapped up the dawdling thing, turned it ninety degrees, set it down again. They watched it roll happily past his plate and sail straight over the side.
Boats, sledges, and packs were all waiting up on deck. In a matter of minutes they could be off the ship. They would make for the island, he supposed. After that, he did not know. His one hope was that she not be crushed.
Perhaps, MacDonald said, something ought to be said to the men.
What exactly do you propose I tell them? said Morgan.
It’s just that this last spell seemed especially violent, and especially long.
Mr MacDonald, Morgan said brightly. You may inform the crew that the captain notes their concern, without sharing it.
Overhead, the boots of the watch swayed back and forth. MacDonald put a forkful of his dinner into his mouth. He looked sullen, accused.
The door opened. She had come for her supper. Am I late? she asked.
They watched her shuffle to the end of the table. Tonight she was wearing her sealskin jacket, that Petersen had shown her how to make. She bowed her head over her plate, pursed her lips, and sucked it up.
The pan was passed from man to man. When it came to him, Morgan took his slice and leaned across her, handed it back to Cabot. It was the last of their frozen blubber. Coddled since morning in a marinade of kitchen-spirit and thaw-water, meant to help the thing go down.
Hello, she said brightly. Remember me?
It’s not for you, Morgan said.
Why not? I won’t be more fussy than anyone else.
I don’t think it wise. For your stomach. And for the milk.