Carol followed me into the conservatory. ‘You’re not going to leave me alone with her?’ she whispered. ‘What if the baby decides to come now? I can’t do this.’ She was shivering with cold and fear.
I held her shoulders firmly. ‘Look, Carol, I know you don’t like doing things you don’t like, but just this once, please.’
‘Can’t I go and you stay? You can’t run anyway, with that foot.’
‘No. You’ve got to stay. Alex won’t want me. She’ll want a woman.’
‘But I can’t help her. What do I know about childbirth?’
‘Just be reassuring. Keep telling her help is on its way. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’ I was edging out of the door as I said this.
‘Carol. Don’t leave me,’ came a plaintive voice from the sitting room. Carol turned obediently, made suddenly brave by this admission of need, and I left the two of them together.
Rain was falling again, with renewed energy it seemed to me, after the brief lull. I could hear it swirling and chuckling in the gutter beside the house. My car was parked on the hardstanding in front of the barn. I considered my foot – now wet through where the toes poked out of the amputated boot. Walking would be painful but slow, whereas driving would be painful but quick. I let the car bump down the track in second gear, keeping the arch of my foot on the accelerator to protect my toe. In the mirror Hartslip blazed with light: the glow would be visible for miles across the moor, and a beacon for Gerald who was still out there, somewhere. Below, on the other side of the ford, I could see the shadowy outline of a car, all detail obscured by the glare of its headlamps, but even so, quite evidently not an ambulance. My stomach lurched with disappointment.
A stout middle-aged woman climbed out of the driver’s seat as I drew up opposite, and hailed me across the water.
‘I’m looking for Hartslip Cottage.’
‘It’s up there,’ I said. ‘We were expecting an ambulance.’
‘I’m the community midwife,’ she called back. I thought I’d never heard such beautiful words. I wanted to kneel down in the mud and worship her. ‘Is there any way across this?’ she went on, but before she had even finished speaking I was wading through the water towards her. The icy shock of it pouring into my boots, hitting against my legs, nearly knocked me over, but I kept my footing using Gerald’s stick for support and within seconds I was beside her. ‘Get on my back,’ I said, crouching lower. ‘I’ll carry you over.’
She looked nonplussed for a second. We were both wondering how I’d ever straighten up. She was no waif. ‘Go on.’
‘What about all my stuff? I’ve got two bags and a gas canister in the boot.’
‘I’ll go back for them.’
‘I can wade across myself,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘You don’t want to be cold and wet,’ I insisted, backing into her, so she had no choice but to wrap her arms around my neck and clamp her knees around my waist. ‘You’ve got work to do.’
30
ALEX’S BABY WAS born at 5.15 that morning, upstairs on my bed, while Gerald and I waited below, slack-jawed with tiredness but unable to sleep, listening anxiously to the creaks and murmurs from above, but gratefully redundant before the midwife’s godlike authority.
Within minutes of arrival she had assumed control and subdued the panic that had been building since Gerald’s departure. Perhaps it was no more than the unhurried manner in which she unpacked her bags and set about transforming my bedroom into a delivery suite, or the cheerful way she spoke to Alex, assuring her all would be well. Whatever it was, she managed to convey the impression that this was just another routine home birth of no great complexity, well within the range of her professional expertise. I had never in my life been so willing to defer to anyone.
‘Stop fawning,’ Carol said to me when we were momentarily alone. ‘She’s only doing her job.’
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But if she wasn’t here, we’d be doing it.’
Carol shook her head. ‘What a night. You certainly know how to keep your guests entertained.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to be bored.’
This exchange was interrupted by the return of Gerald, drenched but complacent in the face of his successful mission. We offered him the appropriate congratulations. Carol even gave up her seat nearest the fire.
‘You saved the day, Gerald,’ I said. ‘Thank God you were here.’ I realised it was the first time I had ever paid him a compliment.
‘Did the ambulance come?’ he wanted to know.
‘No, just a midwife,’ said Carol. ‘She’s upstairs with Alex now.’
He shrugged off his waterproofs and unsnapped the elasticated miner’s lamp. It had embossed a star-shaped pattern on his forehead. He looked like the high priest of some strange cult.
‘You’d better have these things back,’ he said, delving in his trouser pockets for our mobile phones. ‘Yours went off,’ he said to Carol, giving it a baleful look as he handed it over. ‘I managed to answer it eventually, but whoever it was just rang off.’
‘It must have been Jeremy,’ said Carol. ‘Oh God. He probably thinks you’re my lover.’ She stared at the screen as if trying to determine Jeremy’s likely mood.
‘It’s very quiet up there,’ I said. ‘Do you think everything’s all right?’
I had hardly finished speaking when there came the click of a door from above, and the midwife’s voice called, ‘Carol, can we borrow you for a minute?’
Carol fairly flew upstairs. I think secretly she’d been dying to get her hands dirty all along.
Gerald and I sat firegazing in silence. Every so often we would exchange a complicit shrug. We are mere men, it proclaimed. What can we do?
Gerald threw another log onto the blaze, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney and onto the hearth. From above us came an unearthly sound – a low, throat-burning growl of exertion. Gerald blenched. ‘Do you mind if I put some music on?’ he asked.
‘Yes, go on. Something classical. Soothing.’
‘Mozart,’ said Gerald, crouching in front of the CD rack.
‘Yes. Not the Requiem, though.’
A purplish pre-dawn light was seeping above the horizon when Carol came down again. She looked pale and shocked, as one who has witnessed atrocities, but exhilarated too.
‘Have you got anything to put a baby in?’ she asked, trying to sound brisk and businesslike, but unable to suppress a note of triumph.
Gerald and I were on our feet instantly. ‘Has she had it?’
‘What is it?’
Carol nodded, gleaming. ‘A boy. He’s so tiny, it’s unbelievable. Like a little pink frog.’ Pride in her achievement came off her like static. ‘I had to hold Alex’s feet, so she had something to push against, and I could see the baby’s head coming out. I mean, I saw the whole works. It was just incredible. You wouldn’t believe the gore.’
Gerald held up his hand for mercy, but Carol rolled on, unstoppable. ‘When the head came out the cord was caught round his neck, so the midwife had to unhook it or he’d have suffocated, and then the rest of the body came slithering out, covered in this sort of dark green seaweed. It was so . . . I can’t explain. I’ve got a thumping headache.’ She sat down hard on a chair, suddenly exhausted. There was a streak of dark blood on her cashmere sweater.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. Carol was notoriously fastidious about her clothes.
‘That’s nothing,’ she laughed. ‘You want to see your towels.’ She rubbed at the stain half-heartedly, transferring some of it to her sleeve. ‘How am I going to explain this to Jeremy? Sorry, darling, I seem to be covered in afterbirth.’
The midwife appeared in the doorway, tearing the sterile packaging from a syringe. ‘Any luck?’ she asked Carol. ‘We need something to put baby in while I do Mum’s stitches,’ she explained.
I glanced at the log basket, then away. Too spidery.
‘This would do,’ said Carol decisively, pulling out my desk drawer and
tipping an avalanche of dead biros, paper clips and pencil shavings onto the couch. ‘We can line it with a clean towel.’ They departed; efficient women on a mission.
‘Now the excitement’s over I might try and get some sleep,’ said Gerald, clambering back into his caterpillar suit. I killed the overhead light, leaving just the glow from the fire and one lamp. Exultate Jubilate still issued softly from the speakers.
‘Do you want this on or off?’ I asked, but within seconds of lying down Gerald had dropped off. He had always been able to do that trick. It was like throwing a switch. I knew there was no chance of my falling asleep, even if the couch wasn’t covered in discarded stationery. Although I had made no practical contribution to the drama upstairs, I felt I had at least hosted it, and had a host’s responsibility for the outcome.
Initial relief at the safe arrival of the baby gave way to fresh worries. How were Alex and son to be conveyed from Hartslip if the ford was still flooded? Were new mothers able to walk, or even stand? Or was she, in fact, bedbound – in my bed? This stream of questions occupied me until the reappearance of the midwife. ‘Is there anywhere I can dispose of this?’ she whispered, stepping over the prone figure of Gerald to hand me a plastic bag. I didn’t ask what was in it, but took it straight outside to the wheelie bin.
‘Could we have a cup of tea and a piece of toast for Mum?’ she asked on my return.
I decided to overlook this affectation in view of the heroic job she had done. I felt a little humbled that I had needed prompting to provide refreshment, and was determined to make amends. ‘Of course. Is that all? What about bacon, eggs, mushrooms?’
The midwife pulled a face. ‘No, just tea and toast.’ She checked her watch, and let out a sigh. ‘Another day, another baby. You can go up and look at him if you want to.’
‘Sure.’ I filled the kettle and climbed the stair with a deliberately heavy tread to warn of my approach.
Alex was sitting on my bed, her long cardigan belted across her deflated stomach. In spite of her recent experience she looked remarkably fresh; a little blotchy-faced, but otherwise much as before. Beside her, in a nest of towels in the stationery drawer, lay the baby, wrapped in a brushed-cotton sheet, and sleeping the profound, blank sleep peculiar to babies – and Gerald. He was unfeasibly small, and not smooth and cherubic at all, but like a shrunken and pickled old man. Still, it was remarkable enough to think that a few hours ago he hadn’t been here, and now he was.
‘Isn’t he peachy?’ said Carol, with jealous adoration.
‘He certainly is,’ I said, smiling at Alex. ‘Well done, you. How are you feeling?’
‘Sore,’ she replied. ‘And so glad he’s out.’
‘Has he got a name?’
‘We hadn’t completely decided on a boy’s name. We were down to a shortlist of four. I’ll have to wait until Craig comes back.’
The midwife came in, buttoning her coat. Her bags stood packed by the door. ‘I’m going back to my car. I want to get an ambulance to take Mum and baby to hospital to be checked over. I can’t take them myself because I haven’t got a baby seat.’
This mention of hospital made Alex sit up. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him, is there? You would tell me?’
‘No, he’s fine,’ the midwife replied, not pausing in her preparations to depart. ‘But because he’s a first baby, and a bit early, I want him to go in. Absolutely nothing to worry about.’ She gave a wide smile to convey maximum confidence. Alex looked only half persuaded.
I picked up the gas cylinder and the heavier of the two bags. ‘I’ll give you a piggyback,’ I said. My jeans were still damp from the first crossing.
‘No, no. You could just lend me a pair of wellies.’
‘It’s deeper than that.’
‘I’d better tell the ambulance men to bring their waders.’
We stepped out into a landscape rinsed clean. The grass glittered with trapped rain, and the mud had been blasted from the stones on the track, leaving them shiny as copper. A few rags of cloud were all that was left of the storm.
The midwife looked at her watch. Perhaps she was already thinking ahead to the next shift, calculating how much sleep she could expect. It struck me how differently we had all experienced this same event, the birth of a baby. To Alex it would surely be the most significant and transforming event of her life. To the midwife it was just another good night’s work, one of thousands. For Gerald it had been a chance to act the hero, and for Carol a reminder of all that had been denied to her. And for me, who had been a mere bystander, a good story to tell in the pub. It was only much later I recognised it for what it was: the beginning of a resurrection.
31
IT WAS TWO days later and I was walking back from the Crown in Hutton to an empty house.
Alex and son had been the first to leave, carried away by two paramedics, in a canvas stretcher-chair with handles. She and Carol, catapulted into intimacy by the experience in the delivery room, had parted with affectionate hugs and promises to meet.
‘Please come and visit when I’m back home,’ Alex said to me. ‘I know Craig will want to meet you to say thank you.’
‘You won’t want visitors,’ I said. ‘You’ll be too busy.’
Carol had gone that evening, as soon as the water level had dropped sufficiently to allow her Mercedes to take a run at the ford. Her initial euphoria at the idea of causing Jeremy maximum anxiety had soon given way to bitter frustration at being out of contact, and she was desperate to go and face whatever apologies or recriminations awaited her.
‘Thanks for the B. & B.,’ she said, as I loaded her suitcase into the boot. ‘And the crash course in midwifery.’
‘I hope everything gets sorted out indoors,’ I said. ‘Give me a ring sometime, let me know you’re OK.’ Even as I said it, I knew she wouldn’t. If her domestic affairs were ticking over happily it wouldn’t occur to her. I would only hear from her the next time there was a crisis and she needed something.
Gerald, too, having made such efforts to get here, was not disposed to prolong his stay. Perhaps the dramatic events of the night had made him nostalgic for the peace and solitude of Gleneldon Road. He certainly didn’t seem convinced by my assurances that I generally lived pretty quietly, and that the last weekend at Hartslip had been anything but typical.
I gave him the money for a first-class rail ticket to London, knowing that he would travel second, and live off the difference for a week.
‘Ring me if there are any problems,’ I urged him.
‘The phone’s been cut off,’ he reminded me. ‘But it’s OK. I can go out to the call box.’ He made a great show of writing down my mobile number in the back of his diary, beneath other ‘useful numbers’ – all untried.
‘If I need you I’ll ring Mrs Prickett next door and get her to give you a message,’ I warned him.
When I went to clear out his room I found he’d left Mum’s gold locket behind on the bedside table, with a brief note.
I found this when I was rescuing stuff from the flood. You may as well have it. You always were her favourite. G.
Picking up the locket and rubbing my thumb across its tarnished case I was assailed by a powerful sense of Mum, and I wondered what could have prompted Gerald to give it up. My thumbnail dug into the catch and it sprang open. From the palm of my hand my teenage face stared up at me, snipped from a Norfolk sky, frozen in a smile thirty summers old.
The walk from Hutton took much longer than usual because of my injury. Adjusting my stride to spare my toe had transferred the pain to my left hip, and it took two pints of Theakston’s to fortify me for the return trip. It was one of those clear-skied February days when you can almost smell the approach of spring. Frost lingered at the base of the walls and in the long slices of shadow cast by the trees, but in direct sunlight it was nearly warm.
Just outside the village a car had run over a squirrel: its body was crushed flat while the tail, undamaged, stirred gently in the breeze. Beside it in the
grass of the verge sprouted a cluster of snowdrops, like a tribute left to mark the site of the tragedy. Now that I was forced to walk so slowly I had time to notice these details.
From the curve in the road just before the ford I could see the chimney of the farmhouse, and the twist of smoke which told me that Richard and Sally were back from their holiday. They’d had a visitor: on the brow of the hill, silhouetted against the blue sky a motorcyclist was turning idle circles, the sunlight glancing off the polished chrome like arrows. The snarl of the engine tore through the stillness of the afternoon, more belligerently, it seemed to me, than the rumble of the tractor, or the scream of machine tools in the workshop.
As I walked up the steepest part of the road, glad of Gerald’s stick, to which I had become rather attached, the rider swung the bike round and appeared to rein it in for a moment as if it was a furious horse, before revving wildly and taking off down the hill.
He’ll be in trouble if he takes the corner at that speed, I remember thinking, and then concern for his safety switched in an instant to fear for my own, as he came gunning towards me.
He must have seen me, I thought. He’ll surely swerve. The man and his machine seemed to fill my whole field of vision and I threw myself sideways—
32
I OPENED MY eyes and looked up at the sky with a mind as blank as a newborn baby’s. I was aware of simple sensations – pain, extreme cold, wetness, distant noise – nothing else, and yet I felt strangely calm. I had only the mildest interest in processing these various sense impressions; nothing that might be called curiosity. How long this fugue state lasted, I don’t know, as I had no appreciation of time, but slowly, gradually, a sense of identity returned, and with it anxiety. I can only compare it to a greatly magnified version of the feeling of disorientation experienced on waking in a strange bed in a dark hotel room and knowing you are not at home, but where?
Anyway, I knew I was me, outdoors, and it was daytime. The water leaking from my eyes ran up into my hair and not down my cheeks, from which I deduced that I was lying on a slope. My head was on something hard, the rest of me on something soft but wet. The distant sound identified itself as the bleating of sheep, and this released a whole flood of associations: the moors, Hartslip, home. I tried to sit up. A bright rocket of pain burst in my skull. I stopped. Very carefully I tried to move my feet: success. I clenched my fingers: they were fat and stiff with cold. I managed to raise and lower one arm: the other seemed to be pinned underneath me, and any more ambitious movements set off another rocket attack. My fingers brushed something. Instinctively I gripped it. A thistle.
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