Scarlett

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘Holly, let me speak to Dad,’ I bark.

  ‘Oh, hi, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘I’m in the dentist’s waiting room, playing Snake on the mobile –’

  ‘It’s an emergency, Holly,’ I tell her. ‘Let me speak to Dad, OK?’

  ‘Scarlett?’ Dad’s voice comes on to the line. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dad, I’ve been trying to get you for ages,’ I blurt. ‘You have to come, quickly. Clare fell off a ladder and hurt her head, and there was a terrible storm and two Americans gave us a lift to Castlebar Hospital. The doctors think everything is fine but you’d better come quickly, Dad, because she’s having the baby, OK?’

  There’s a silence at the other end. ‘She’s having the baby?’ Dad says carefully.

  ‘Yes, I said so, didn’t I?’

  There’s a muffled crash at the other end of the line, and then Holly’s voice is back. ‘He dropped it into a potted plant,’ she says, exasperated. ‘Lucky I’m here to take charge of things. It’s almost time for my appointment, but I guess those fillings will have to wait. Shame. We’re on our way, Scarlett, OK? Tell Mum to hold on. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’

  The doctor comes out to talk to us. He says Clare is in good shape, and that the monitors show the baby’s heartbeat is strong.

  ‘We’ve got a message through to the father,’ Ed chips in. ‘He’ll be here just as soon as it’s humanly possible. An hour maybe?’

  ‘A lot can happen in an hour,’ the doctor says. ‘Clare’s asking for you, Scarlett, and you, Sylvie. If the father doesn’t get here in time, how d’you feel about being Clare’s birth partners?’

  Sylvie beams. ‘Try and stop us.’

  I say nothing. I can think of about a million reasons why I shouldn’t walk through that door. I’m clueless about childbirth and babies. When we had that sex education film at school, I pretended I was sick at the childbirth bit and hid out in the girls’ loos writing rude things about Mrs Mulhern on the cubicle door.

  I don’t like pain and I can’t stand the sight of blood, I hate hospitals and it’s not even like Clare is any relation to me, not really. I’d be better staying out of it, seriously.

  ‘Scarlett?’ the doctor says. ‘She really wants you with her.’

  I take a deep breath and all in a rush I remember that it’s Clare in there, and that she needs me. I can’t let her down. In the delivery room, Clare is kneeling on the bed, hanging on to the metal rails at its foot. She is wearing a weird hospital nightie and the look of someone who is battling hard.

  Sylvie strokes her forehead with the wet wipes, and I hold her hand, telling her to hang on, Dad’s coming, and Holly. The midwife bustles around us, checking the monitor, resting her hand on Clare’s stomach with each contraction. Outside the sun is shining, like there never was a storm or an accident at all.

  The contractions are so long and strong now that each one seems to merge into the next. Clare has been given a tube to gulp down gas and air as each new wave of pain hits, but still she grabs on to me, her hands clawing into mine as she struggles back from each onslaught.

  ‘I’m sorry, Scarlett,’ she grins, her face red with effort and damp with sweat. ‘I didn’t plan on this.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell her. ‘You’re doing great, Clare. Keep going! Count to ten and remember to breathe!’

  Clare laughs, even through the pain. ‘Now where have I heard that before?’

  ‘C’mon, honey,’ Sylvie says. ‘You’re almost there!’

  But ‘almost there’ seems to last forever. Clare looks drained, exhausted. She slumps, defeated, against the foot of the bed.

  ‘Too tired,’ she whimpers. I want to shout at Sylvie and the midwife, scream at everyone to do something, fast, because it’s clear to me that Clare has had enough. She needs help, medicine, doctors, something to put an end to all this. Instead, she opens her eyes and pulls one last effort from somewhere.

  ‘I need to push,’ she says, and the midwife does a quick check and tells her to go with it. The contractions are stronger still now, and Clare pushes down with each one, her face scrunched up with the effort.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ the midwife tells Clare. ‘I can see the baby’s head. One more push

  She goes to the door and calls for the doctor. He slips into the room soundlessly, moving about quietly, working with the midwife. In the brief rests between contractions, Clare seems to drift.

  ‘Scarlett?’ she murmurs. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ I tell her.

  Then her face crumples and darkens, and she’s pushing again. ‘Ynnnuughhh…’ she groans.

  ‘Almost,’ the midwife says encouragingly. ‘One more, one more…’

  Clare groans and pants again and suddenly the midwife is cradling a tiny, purple-pink baby, sticky with blood and greasy white stuff. The doctor bends over the baby, blocking my view.

  ‘Buzz for paediatrics,’ he says quietly, and the youngest nurse bustles out, blank-faced. Then there’s a tiny, gasping cry like a cat yowling, and Clare’s eyes fill with tears.

  ‘You have a baby daughter,’ the doctor says, and the baby is wrapped in a soft white blanket and laid on Clare’s tummy for a moment. She’s tiny, her face crumpled up as though she’s angry at the world.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ I whisper. I touch her tiny clenched fist with one finger. She grabs on to it, and opens her milky-blue eyes wide at me. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. Suddenly it’s hard to focus. My eyes mist, and fat, salty tears roll slowly down my cheeks. I’ve never felt so happy before, so full of love, so much a part of things.

  Then everything changes. Sylvie is behind me, pulling me back from the bedside. The young nurse is back, a woman doctor in tow.

  ‘Let’s get this young lady checked over for you,’ the new doctor says smoothly, lifting the baby from Clare’s arms, ‘She’s come along a little sooner than expected, so we’d like to keep an eye on her, make sure she’s breathing properly.’

  ‘Breathing?’ Clare asks, alarmed.

  ‘Just a few tests,’ the doctor says gently. She tucks my brand-new sister inside a crib trolley and wheels her away, out of the hospital delivery room and down the corridor to special care.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I ask Sylvie. ‘Where are they taking her?’

  Sylvie slips an arm round me and leads me to the door. ‘She’s five weeks early,’ she reminds me. ‘She’ll need some extra help for a while. It’ll be OK, Scarlett, wait and see – your sister’s going to be fine.’

  I look over my shoulder and see Clare, leaning back against the pillows at last, crying softly. It just about breaks my heart.

  Ed and Sylvie promise they’ll stay with me until Dad and Holly arrive.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Ed wants to know, and when I think about it I realize I’ve had nothing since breakfast. Sylvie flings an arm round me and the three of us head off to find the hospital canteen.

  ‘I could murder some fried chicken and whipped potatoes,’ Ed says. ‘And some real coffee, not that stuff from the machine.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ Sylvie laughs, ‘as long as it’s good. Delivering babies is hard work, huh, Scarlett?’

  ‘Mmm,’ I say. ‘Look, d’you mind if I see you in there? I need to find a phone box.’

  ‘Use my cellphone,’ Ed says.

  ‘OK. Thanks, Ed. I’ll see you both in a minute.’

  They walk off down the corridor, following the signs to the canteen, and I sink down into a blue vinyl chair in another waiting area, outside a different ward. I punch the numbers in, press call and wait.

  ‘Hello?’ Alima’s clipped voice responds. ‘This is Sara Murray’s secretary. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I need to speak to my mum,’ I say. ‘It’s urgent.’

  ‘Scarlett?’ Alima squeaks. ‘Great to hear from you! Putting you right through…’

  I blink. Alima has never put me right through to Mum before, not in living memory.

/>   ‘Scarlett?’ Mum’s voice sounds high-pitched and strained. ‘Sweetheart, is that you?’

  ‘Mum,’ I say

  ‘Scarlett, I’m so glad you called me at last, I’ve missed you terribly,’ she babbles. ‘Did you get my phone messages? I’m not sure your dad’s been passing them on. Did you get my letters?’

  ‘I got them,’ I say shortly. ‘All the messages, all the letters.’

  ‘I see.’ Mum clears her throat. ‘That’s OK then. I was just worried, Scarlett. Connemara is so far away. You were right, darling, I never should have made you go. I mean, you were never going to fit in, were you, not with them. You belong with me. I should have listened –’

  ‘Mum,’ I interrupt. ‘Listen now. Clare’s had a fall. She’s had her baby early, five weeks early, and the doctors have taken it away to the special care unit and Ed and Sylvie are looking after me, but nobody actually knows what’s happening. Clare’s crying and Dad’s not here, and…’

  ‘And what, darling?’ Mum asks.

  A noise that’s somewhere between a gasp and a howl leaks out of my mouth, and I know I can’t hold it together for much longer. I can taste tears again, wet and salty, sliding down my face. What do I want of her anyway? I want her to be here, right now, to wrap me in her arms and wipe away my tears and make everything all right again. Like that’s ever going to happen.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say into the mobile. ‘Bye, Mum.’

  It’s past midnight. Holly is asleep on a squashy blue vinyl chair beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. One of her mouse-brown plaits curls down round my arm like a snake.

  Clare is sleeping in the maternity ward just along the corridor, and Dad is keeping his own night vigil in the special care unit nearby. My new little sister lies in an incubator, a tiny, angry doll. She looks like she could break at any minute. She is hooked up to tubes and drips and ventilators, and when I saw her I raked the dent in my tongue against my teeth and blinked back tears. I wanted to rip out the tubes and wires, lift her up and hold her tight, but I knew I couldn’t.

  I left Dad sitting with his face against the incubator, his hand inside one of the portholes, one curled finger resting against the baby’s clenched fist while the doctors and nurses move silently around him.

  Ed and Sylvie went hours ago, back to the real world. They left me with a scribbled address (somewhere in Ohio) and promises that everything was going to be fine, and that we were to keep in touch and come visit some day, the whole family, baby included.

  I shift around on my seat, letting Holly’s head slip down towards my lap. She moans a little, pulls an arm across her eyes to block out the light. The minute hand on the wall clock jerks round in slow motion.

  ‘Scarlett?’ a voice says.

  I turn, expecting to see the kind-faced nurse who brought me a hot chocolate earlier on, but the figure in the corridor is not a nurse. She’s small and slim, with blonde hair piled up in a messy bun and a blue skirt-suit and impossibly high-heeled, pointy shoes. She looks tired and creased and slightly uncertain, standing there in the half-light.

  ‘Mum?’ I say. ‘Mum, what are you doing here?’

  Mum hugs me so tightly it feels like she’s holding me together. When somebody holds you that tight, it feels safe – safe enough to let yourself fall to pieces. The tears come again, tears for Clare and Dad and my new baby sister wired up to monitors and machines and feeding tubes in the bright, warm room along the corridor. Tears for myself and the mess I’ve made of things.

  ‘Scarlett,’ Mum whispers into my hair. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’

  When I’m done with crying, she wipes my eyes and strokes my cheeks and I become aware of Holly staring at us wide-eyed from the blue vinyl seats.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell her. ‘It’s OK, Holls, really. This is my mum.’

  ‘Hi, Holly,’ Mum says to her politely, offering a hand to shake. ‘I’m pleased to meet you at last. Let’s find Chris, shall we?’

  Mum takes charge. She tells Dad that Holly and I are exhausted, and offers to take us back to the cottage to get some sleep. ‘I’ll bring them back in the morning, when they’ve had some rest and some breakfast and a change of clothes,’ she says. ‘They can’t stay here all night.’

  ‘I’m not leaving Clare,’ Dad says defensively. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know the baby’s going to be OK.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Mum says. ‘You’re needed here. I’ll take the girls – I got a hire car at the airport, and Scarlett can show me the way. Ring me in the morning, let me know what’s happening’

  ‘The phone at the cottage is broken,’ I remember.

  Mum shrugs. ‘Well, you’ve got my mobile number, Chris. Call me first thing.’

  ‘I will,’ Dad says. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem,’ Mum says. ‘Come on, girls.’

  We drive through the night in Mum’s hire car, Holly fast asleep on the back seat, me wide awake, wired, fear running through me. I can’t stop thinking about my new sister, tiny, frail and raw, not quite ready for the world. I wish I’d found a way to tell her to hang on, give it a chance.

  The drive back takes forever because we don’t have a map and the signposts are kind of crazy, but finally we get to Kilimoor and I know the way from there well enough.

  Mum lifts Holly out of the car and scoops her up, brown legs dangling, to carry her in. The chickens rustle anxiously from the branches of the apple tree because nobody was around to shut them in the henhouse. The front door is unlocked, the lights blazing. The power cut is clearly over. Apart from that, the cottage is just the way we left it, the kitchen table heaped with fabric, the stepladder still propped up into the open attic hatch as we edge carefully past to Holly’s room.

  I pull the pink quilt back and Mum lowers Holly down gently, easing off her shoes, tucking the cover up around her chin. I drop a kiss on to her forehead, and see the look of surprise flicker across Mum’s face. I draw the curtains and switch off the light as we leave the room.

  Out on the landing, Mum folds the ladder and pulls the hatch closed while I gather up the little dresses still scattered across the floorboards. If Mum recognizes them, she doesn’t say so.

  She carries the stepladder downstairs, finds the back porch and props it inside, puts the kettle on, sweeps the mounds of scrap fabric off the table and into Clare’s scrap-bag. I catch the corner of the cot quilt and rescue it, spreading the patchwork out across the table.

  ‘Clare was making a cot quilt,’ I tell Mum. ‘She never finished it.’

  Mum strokes a hand across the quilt, smoothing the surface, tracing the pattern of bright stitching that decorates each jigsaw join. ‘Plenty of time for that,’ she says softly. ‘We can take it in to the hospital, tomorrow – Clare can work on it there if she’s feeling up to it. Or maybe we could do a little bit…’

  ‘Could we?’ I ask. ‘I’d like that, Mum. Thanks.’

  ‘OK, sweetheart.’ Mum smiles. ‘No problem. But right now, you need to sleep. Bed, Scarlett. And don’t worry – it’ll all look better in the morning’

  I pause halfway up the stairs, looking down. ‘Mum? You must have caught the first plane out here after I spoke to you this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, smiling. ‘Alima made the reservations over the phone. There were no late flights to Knock, but we found one going from Luton to Galway, and I took a taxi to the airport. The flight was on time, so it was just a case of hiring a car once I got there…’

  ‘What will your boss say?’ I ask.

  ‘Couldn’t care less,’ Mum says. ‘I work long enough hours for that firm – they don’t own me.’

  I raise an eyebrow. ‘Mum, what exactly made you decide to come?’

  She looks up, smiling. ‘Easy,’ she tells me. ‘You needed me, Scarlett. Simple as that.’

  I dream of Kian and Midnight and hazy afternoons by the loughside, holding hands beneath the wishing tree, riding along the ridges at sunset. I wake early but not to a
hail of gravel.

  Kian is gone, just when I needed him most.

  I dress quickly. grabbing my fluffy rucksack, stuffing in a few bits and pieces. I creep downstairs, past the squashy old sofa where Mum is sleeping, wrapped in one of Clare’s patchwork throws. I dip a hand into Clare’s scrap-bag, fishing out the dressmaking shears. I drop them into my rucksack, then open the door and slip outside.

  The air is clean and fresh, and the grass is sprinkled with dew. In the hedge beside the gate, a dozen little spiders’ webs shimmer. I walk down the lane, through the woods, to where the lough is sleeping beneath a soft blanket of mist. I sit down on a rock, empty my rucksack out on to the stones. Three red dresses, Clare’s dressmaking shears.

  I pick up the scissors and chop the skirt of the red velvet party dress away from the waistband. I slice down one seam, snipping the skirt’s soft fabric into strips of raggedy scarlet. I do the same with the crinkly silk dress and the rich red cotton with the embroidered hem, then I gather the pile of rags up in my arms and take them over to the wishing tree.

  I tie them on to the branches, one by one, making wish after wish for my new baby sister until the tree is filled with red rags, fluttering scraps of scarlet, crimson, cerise. Then I sink down on to the grass and rest my back against the tree, looking out at the mist and the lough.

  The rider comes out of the mist, at a canter, slowing as he reaches the tip of the lough, reining in the big black horse, turning him so that the pair splash along towards me through the shallows. My heart races.

  Kian and Midnight stop a few metres in front of me. Midnight scuffs at the grass, snorting and shaking his head. Kian just sits astride him, brown hands knotted into the horse’s mane, face half hidden behind a soft fall of dark hair.

  ‘Where were you?’ I ask, surprised at the anger in my voice. ‘Where were you yesterday?’

  Kian slides down from Midnight’s back and turns to me. ‘You know where I was,’ he replies. ‘I had to find my dad, let him know I was OK.’

  ‘But you promised!’ I fling at him. ‘You lied to me! I needed you, and you weren’t here.’