The Corner House

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Try telling the baby that! Look, send Danny for Mrs Harris on View Street. She’ll have to hurry up.’

  Bernard ran out, but returned when his wife howled in pain. ‘Liz?’

  ‘Are you still here?’ she yelled. ‘Get gone, tell Danny I’ve a baby coming.’

  ‘Push,’ ordered Eva Harris. She was a small woman with a voice that didn’t fit her. The ringing tones seemed too huge for her reed-like frame and thin, prematurely greying hair.

  ‘You should have been a sergeant bloody major,’ breathed Liz.

  And you should have taken things easy, thought the midwife, although she kept this thought to herself. ‘Don’t just lie there like a pound of wet tripe, Liz.’

  ‘I don’t like tripe. And as for fish …’ Pain swallowed the rest of her words.

  ‘I’m not here to talk about menus,’ chided Eva. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a baby’s head trying to come out of a very small opening in your nether regions. If you’d just shut up and start fettling, we might get somewhere.’

  Liz fixed her adversary with as hard a look as she could manage in the circumstances. ‘It hurts,’ she said.

  ‘It’s supposed to hurt. If it didn’t hurt, nobody’d know they were having a baby. They’d be giving birth on bloody trams, in the Co-op divi queue and all sorts.’

  ‘God should have organized things a bit better,’ moaned the patient.

  ‘Tell Him next Sunday,’ snapped Eva. ‘See if He’ll swap nature round to suit you. Save me a job and all if kiddies gets flown in by stork.’ Eva wasn’t happy. If Liz Walsh’s export department didn’t do its job soon, a doctor would have to intervene. Eva Harris, midwife and self-appointed medical advisor of folk from the Daubhill end of Bolton, didn’t hold with doctors. They were too happy with their forceps and knives. Such tranklements, as Eva termed them, did far more harm than good.

  At last, the head crowned. ‘I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies,’ muttered Eva. ‘At least yon babby seems to have a bit of sense. Now, push when I tell you.’

  ‘I’ll push when I bloody well can,’ replied Liz.

  Eva, keeper of more secrets than any priest, deserted her post and arrived next to Liz’s pillow. ‘Any more trouble from you and I’ll send for the fire brigade.’

  Liz managed a watery smile. ‘Oh aye? My husband is the fire brigade and you chucked him out of here hours ago.’

  ‘An answer for everything,’ complained Eva as she reclaimed her true position in life. Liz Walsh was having a rough time of it, poor soul. She was one of those deceptive women – rounded on the outside, but with a small skeleton. This one wasn’t really built for child-bearing, which was a shame, because the Walshes would make good parents.

  The child seemed to be stuck. Panic fluttered stupidly in Eva’s breast. There was nothing else for it – she would have to send Bernard Walsh for the doctor. The daft lump was just outside the bedroom door – Eva could all but hear him breathing. This was a seven-month pregnancy. Still, better the seventh than the eighth. Eva, like many of her generation, preferred prematures to arrive before lulling themselves into the long, lazy sleep usually enjoyed by the unborn just prior to full term.

  As Eva prepared to throw in the towel, the child’s head emerged. It was tiny, perfectly formed and with small tufts of brownish hair punctuating the baldness. Eva reached out, guided the shoulders and received yet another life into expert hands. But this was not another life. Liz Walsh’s little daughter was not moving. Eva cleared air passages, slapped and cajoled, massaged the tiny chest, but to no avail.

  Liz stared fearfully into Eva Harris’s eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ she managed eventually.

  ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  ‘No,’ screamed Liz. ‘No, no, no!’

  Bernard crashed his way into the bedroom. ‘Liz?’ he managed.

  ‘Take the baby and put it near the living-room fire,’ yelled the demented patient. ‘Babies need warmth!’

  Eva shook her head at Bernard.

  ‘Do it!’ ordered Liz. The chocolate-brown eyes were wide and fearful beneath a tangle of wet, dark hair. She pushed a lock from her forehead. ‘Take no notice of Eva Harris,’ she commanded. ‘There’s nowt wrong, nowt at all. Baby’s resting after working hard, that’s all there is to it.’

  Bernard took the dead child in his arms.

  ‘Go on,’ yelled Liz. ‘Plenty of blankets.’

  When Bernard had removed the sad bundle, Liz turned her fury on Eva. ‘What would you know? You’re not a bloody doctor.’

  For an hour or more, Liz Walsh ranted and raved about the various stupidities of humankind, then she settled down very suddenly and gazed in silence at the wall opposite her bed. Bernard came in a dozen times, spoke words of comfort, left without receiving a reply from his wife. Danny, who was easily as distraught as his brother, paid a short visit while the midwife brewed tea. But Liz sat perfectly still in her own little world. Her mind could not cope, so she had simply shut herself down.

  In the kitchen, Eva took Bernard to one side. ‘Listen, lad,’ she whispered. ‘If I were you, I’d not be in a hurry to put Liz through this again.’

  Bernard swallowed a sob. ‘You what?’

  ‘She’s narrow round the beam.’ Liz might well need a Caesarean next time. In spite of mounting evidence, Eva refused to have any faith in the benefits of surgical intervention. Women’s wombs were not meant to be hacked at; a man with a knife was all right as long as he stuck to carving pork or chicken. ‘She’ll get over it, Bernard. She’ll be chattering away like her old self in a day or two.’ The baby was downstairs in a shoe box. ‘Give your Liz time,’ said Eva.

  The midwife bustled off, tears dampening her face as she closed the fish-shop door. They would have made a lovely mam and dad, Liz and Bernard Walsh.

  Bernard entered his brother’s little room. ‘I think Liz is asleep,’ he muttered wearily.

  Danny placed a hand on the larger man’s trembling shoulder. ‘What do we do with … with her?’ He pointed with the stem of his pipe.

  Bernard lowered his head and stared dully at the box containing his daughter. ‘No ceremony, Danny. Eva Harris’ll come back and do what’s necessary.’ He gulped, dragging a shirt sleeve across his face. ‘She never breathed, so she never existed. I’d best get back to Liz.’

  ‘Like a perfect little doll,’ whispered Danny, his eyes fixed to the makeshift coffin. The box had ‘SIZE TEN’ and ‘MADE IN ENGLAND’ printed on the end. ‘God, I’m sorry. So bloody sorry.’

  Bernard climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom. ‘Liz?’ She hadn’t moved, was still propped up as still as a rock on the pillows, eyes closed, chest moving in time with slow, even breaths. ‘Liz?’

  She opened her eyes and moved her head a fraction of an inch. ‘What?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ That, thought Bernard, was the daftest question of all time.

  ‘Is the baby still asleep?’ asked Liz.

  He cleared his throat of emotion. ‘She’s dead, Liz. She was born dead.’

  ‘Make her a bottle, will you? I’ve no milk yet, so use that National Dried in the kitchen cupboard. Keep her well wrapped up, too. It’s very cold tonight.’

  Bernard left the room again, closing the door softly in his wake. Danny was halfway up the stairs. ‘She’s gone crackers,’ mumbled Bernard.

  ‘It happens,’ replied his brother.

  ‘Not to my wife.’ Bernard sank onto the top step. ‘No, I can’t let Liz go crazy.’

  The night dragged on. Bernard and Danny sat in the first floor kitchen, ears straining towards the silent bedroom. Liz was asleep. Perhaps she would be all right in the morning? ‘She won’t,’ whispered Bernard.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Liz. I don’t think she’ll come round in a hurry, not after this shock. She was putting all her energy into getting the nest ready. We’ve even bought a cot.’

  ‘You must move,’ replied Danny. ‘Get away from Derby Street, let these rooms, go for fr
esh air and a fresh start.’

  Bernard pondered. It was three o’clock in the morning. Neither man had bothered to report for duty at the fire post. Everybody knew about Liz’s pregnancy, so Bernard’s absence might be accepted. But Danny hadn’t wanted to leave his brother alone with an unbalanced wife and a pretty little waxen doll in a shoe box. ‘You should have reported in, Dan.’

  ‘Sod it.’ Danny stirred his umpteenth cup of tea. At this rate, there’d be no tea coupons left. ‘Shut the shop tomorrow,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll meet the train and see to the market.’

  Bernard shrugged. If he shut the shop, there’d be customers kicking the door down. He couldn’t even manage to worry about that, seemed unable to fret about anything except the state of Liz. He cocked his head to one side. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like a tapping sound.’

  Danny listened. ‘It’s not your Liz. That’s from downstairs. I’ll go. There must be a fire.’ He left the room and crept downstairs, anxious not to wake the sleeping Liz.

  Fingers rattled the letterbox.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he hissed in a stage whisper. He opened the shop door, his jaw dropping when he saw Eva Harris. ‘Hello,’ he began uncertainly.

  She thrust a package into his arms. ‘Take that,’ she ordered abruptly. ‘I’ll go and get the … the wotsit. The box with the … I’ll get the box.’ She bustled off to pick up the dead baby.

  The parcel moved, causing newspapers to rustle. What was this? A kitten, a puppy? Was it some hastily wrapped child substitute?

  Eva returned with the shoe box. ‘It’s a girl,’ she said, her head nodding in the direction of Danny’s parcel. ‘Same as the one poor Liz lost, God love and keep the little lass.’ She nodded in the direction of Danny’s wriggling parcel. ‘Yon kiddy’s full-term, but underweight, needs looking after. She could easy be a prem, so the two babies aren’t that much different from one another. There’s a bit of blanket round her, but newspaper’s nice and warm. All the tramps wear it between their layers, especially in winter and—’

  ‘A child?’

  Eva nodded.

  ‘But it’s not … I mean, whose is she?’

  ‘Never mind that. Just tell Liz that her baby warmed up near the fire. Tell her that’s her own baby.’ She stepped closer to the astounded man. ‘Just do it, Danny. It’s for the best all round, I’m telling you.’

  Danny gulped. ‘But the real mother?’

  ‘Enough on that family’s plate,’ answered Eva. She paused. ‘Have you told anybody about the stillbirth?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve not been out. Neither has our Bernard.’ The second baby mewled in its cocoon of cotton and newsprint.

  ‘Then say nowt, Danny Walsh. Liz’ll rear that child without knowing the difference.’ She paused. ‘Look, your sister-in-law’s in shock. I’ve seen it all afore. I bet she still thinks her own baby’s warming up near the fire. Am I right or what?’

  Danny gulped noisily. ‘Aye, Liz seems to be a bit strange, but what if—?’

  ‘And Bernard – well, he’ll do owt to keep Liz happy. I’ll have to go, because I’m needed. Tell them I’ll call in first thing tomorrow. If Bernard doesn’t want that sad little scrap, I’ll find somebody who does.’

  Danny stood and watched the midwife as she bustled off to her other business. He removed one hand from the living, breathing package and scratched his nose. This was a right bonny state of affairs and no mistake. The real little Miss Walsh had gone away in the clutches of Eva Harris. This imposter was supposed to be registered within a few days as the daughter of Bernard and Elizabeth Walsh. The whole thing seemed sinful, heathen.

  ‘Danny?’ Bernard was still sitting on the landing.

  ‘I’m thinking. Stop where you are,’ Danny ordered his brother.

  ‘Bernard!’ screamed Liz from the bedroom. ‘Bernard? Where’s my baby? I let you mind her for two minutes, that was all. Bring her here, I want to nurse her.’

  Danny went into his cold little room and peeled back a few sheets of the Bolton Evening News Saturday Green Final. She was beautiful. His heart turned over when he realized that this was his first contact with a recently emerged living soul. As long as he lived, Daniel Walsh would not forget this precious, hurtful, joyous moment. Tears welled in his eyes. He thought about this little mite’s overworked, poverty-stricken and possibly dead mother, about the rest of that unknown family.

  Determinedly, the new Uncle Dan cleared his clogging throat. ‘You’ve come to the right place, sweetheart,’ he told the newborn. Her face was streaked with birth fluids. He imagined the sight of poor Eva Harris as she placed the child on one side in order to fight for the mother’s life. Or had the mother deliberately given away an unwanted daughter? ‘You’ll be loved, I can promise that much. Aye, you’ll have a cracking mam and dad, you will.’ He set his mouth in a hard, straight line and forgot about being a Catholic. If this was a sin, then it was a good sin. Wasn’t it?

  When the child was wrapped just in the blanket, Danny carried her up to his sister-in-law’s bedroom. ‘Here she is,’ he called with forced cheeriness.

  Bernard’s jaw sagged.

  ‘She’s on the small side,’ added Danny.

  Liz beamed. ‘I told you she’d warm up, Bernard. Look at her. She’s the image of my mother, God rest that good woman’s heart and soul.’

  The brothers’ eyes met across the counterpane that covered Liz Walsh. Bernard asked silent questions while Danny nodded his willingness to give answers when an opportunity presented itself.

  Liz crooned and put the child to a breast. Bernard looked at the tiny head, noticed the absence of patchy brown hair. He dragged his brother out to the landing. Liz, too engrossed in her daughter, perceived nothing amiss.

  ‘What the flipping heck—?’

  Danny dragged Bernard into the kitchen.

  ‘Where did you get her? It’s not ours come to life, Dan. Ours had bits of hair. Ours was bigger—’

  ‘Eva brought her.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘It’s probably a little orphan, likely from a big family. Eva took … she took the shoe box away. There’s only thee, me and Eva knows about what happened here last night.’

  ‘So this is … Whose baby is it? What if they want her back? I mean, folk don’t go about giving kiddies away, do they? This is bloody lunatic behaviour, our kid.’

  Danny raised a shoulder. ‘Too late if they want her back now. Liz gave birth last night and she has a baby girl. Do you want to be the one who takes the child away? Eh? Is that what you really want to do to your wife?’

  ‘But it’s not right—’

  ‘It’s not right that your baby died, Bernie. It’s not right that some little orphan child shouldn’t be given a chance. This is a miracle. So shut up and get on with it. Look on it as fate or the will of God. Remember Moses in the bulrushes, Bernard.’

  Bernard Walsh sat for a while in the kitchen while his brother grabbed some sleep. He was a father to a child who wasn’t his child. Liz was mother to a dead child, mother to a live one. ‘Yon baby needs us,’ he said finally to the empty room. ‘And God above knows we need her. So we’d best just get on with it.’ This was too big for confession. This was a matter that could not be discussed with anyone, even a priest; not yet anyroad. Were commandments being broken? Was this theft, mendacity, greed? Bernard shook his head. ‘And the greatest of these is charity,’ he muttered aloud. Then, after a few seconds, he begged God’s forgiveness for a sin that had simply happened.

  There were few secrets among the stallholders on Bolton fishmarket, though customers were often kept in the dark. Gossip seemed to transmit itself by some osmotic process from stall to stall, so, under the dark curtain of a dim winter dawn, Danny Walsh told his big lie just once. Later, as the day lightened, he was forced to add a little embroidery, but the die was cast once the tidings had travelled from Ashburner Street right through to New Street.

  Between these tw
o thoroughfares the fishmen spent their days, hands deadened by ice, fingers almost too numb to behead, fillet and arrange their wares. This was their own pungent little world, their private domain. They thrived together and suffered together, shared sorrow and joy, understood each other at that special level which needs no explanation.

  The day brightened slowly, as if begrudging the earthbound even the slightest glimmer of hope. Lorries, single-filed in the market’s central aisle, coughed, spluttered, then followed their leader towards one of the huge doors. The rabbit and chicken vendors came and went, those with fish-and-chip shops collected cod and plaice. Then, in that short lull between wholesale and retail, the shouting began. Chants of ‘Elrig, elrig,’ attacked Dan’s ears. Jim Brocklehurst, who had run a book throughout Liz’s pregnancy, paid out on the elrig list, and coppered up his winnings under yob.

  Backspeak was the official language of Bolton’s fish-traders. When a word could not be reversed perfectly, it was bastardized into as near a representation of backspeak as was possible. This clever method of communication meant that prices could be stated and adjusted without the customers’ knowledge. A few Boltonians had struggled hard to understand the strange jargon, but most had given up after a few wearisome attempts.

  To the rhythm of ‘Elcun Nad Shlaw’, the new Uncle Dan Walsh set out his stall. Bernard was open for business as usual on Derby Street, while Liz, tired from birthing and flushed with new motherhood, remained in the bedroom with another woman’s daughter. The baby was to be christened Katherine Jane Walsh, thereby becoming the physical embodiment of human dishonesty.

  ‘Danny?’

  He lay down a thin, keen knife and blew into icy hands.

  ‘A word,’ commanded Eva Harris.

  He followed the quick-footed woman into Ashburner Street.

  Eva wasn’t looking forward to what was about to happen. Bernard Walsh was her usual companion on such unsavoury expeditions, but Bernard was unavailable. She could have gone on her own, she supposed, but the presence of a man was always a good thing, a sort of lubricant that oiled the wheels of negotiation.

  ‘Well?’ asked Danny.