The Things We Never Said
Page 22
Maggie crushes a baby aspirin and mixes it into a jar of egg custard, Elizabeth’s favourite. But she won’t open her mouth. She even refuses rosehip syrup. Maggie telephones Vanda, who is sympathetic but can’t offer practical advice: Darling, the only thing I’ve ever looked after is a boa constrictor, and even he died!
Maggie lights another cigarette. If only her mother were alive; she’d know what to do. She drums her fingers on the arm of the settee; Jonathan is playing contentedly with his bricks while Elizabeth sits listlessly on her lap, coughing occasionally. The hands on the mantel clock seem paralysed. She picks up her book, but after two pages she realises she hasn’t taken any of it in. How is she going to get through until the surgery opens?
After half an hour or so, Elizabeth brightens, and she doesn’t feel quite so hot.
‘Look, sweetie,’ Maggie says, reaching for Tabitha and her Kittens, one of the books Vanda sent down for the twins’ birthday in November. ‘Where’s the pussycat? Show Mummy the cat.’
Elizabeth touches the page. ‘Tat!’ She turns to Maggie, her little mouth widening into a smile and revealing four snow-white teeth.
‘Clever girl!’ Maggie kisses the top of her head.
Elizabeth puts her thumb in her mouth, curls her index finger around her nose, then leans back onto Maggie’s chest and closes her eyes, as though her work is done. She must be teething again, Maggie thinks. Or it’s another bloody cold.
Maggie reaches for her cigarettes. Damn, it’s her last one. She looks out of the window. The fog seems to have lifted now. Perhaps the air will clear Elizabeth’s nose. She dresses the twins in padded leggings, coats, hats and mittens, and straps them into the pushchair. Jonathan wriggles and frets. He too is looking slightly red-eyed and pale. Please don’t let them both have colds.
The air is damp, and the pavements look wet even though it hasn’t rained. The seagulls seem to be shrieking particularly loudly. She wishes they’d just shut up, stupid, useless birds. As soon as she manoeuvres the huge pushchair into the tobacconist’s, a smiling Mrs Dean comes out from behind the glass-topped counter. She has known Maggie since she was a little girl and must now be well into her seventies, though still slender and attractive, pearls in her ears and at her throat, her hair an improbable shade of auburn and her face carefully made up. ‘Hello, my poppets!’ she cries, ducking her head down to the pushchair to kiss the twins. But then she freezes and the smile evaporates. ‘Goodness.’ She looks at Maggie. ‘Ought you to have them out?’
Maggie looks at her, then at the babies. ‘Elizabeth’s got a cold,’ she says. ‘I’m taking her to Dr Cranfield later, but he’ll probably only give her a linctus.’ Then she looks more closely and begins to see what Mrs Dean sees. Red patches on Elizabeth’s face; a rash. Jonathan looks blotchy as well, screwing up his eyes against the light and pulling at his ear. She puts her hand to his head and feels the heat before she touches him.
‘Measles!’ Mrs Dean announces. ‘They shouldn’t be out while they’re infectious, dear. I’d take them straight back home to a darkened room and get Dr Cranfield out.’
Maggie is flustered. ‘Measles? I thought they were too young for measles.’ But now she looks at them again she can see that it’s not just any old rash. ‘They said I should go to evening surgery . . .’
‘Poppycock! Those children should be tucked up in the warm and if . . .’ She stops. ‘Never mind.’ She nods towards the wooden chair in the corner of the shop. ‘Sit yourself down for a minute, pet. I’ll sort this out.’
Maggie watches her disappear into the back room, hears the whir and click-ker-ching as the telephone dial spins round. Mrs Dean shouts into the receiver, demands the doctor come out immediately. She doesn’t give a tin ker’s cuss whether Dr Cranfield is about to have his tea; she’s had three children and seven grandchildren and she knows a measly child when she sees one. There is a clunk as she slams the receiver back into its cradle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Before now, Jonathan has only ever seen Cassie smiling and laughing; this is like a different person. Her face is dark and her mouth has gone thin and hard; when she looks at him, her eyes seem powered by an electric current, as though she might zap him with one laser glance. He and Malcolm sit meekly side by side in the back, the frost that sparkles on the deserted streets failing to rival the iciness inside the car. Talking is clearly not permitted. He glances at Malcolm, whose skin is now the colour of an old bandage. It must have cost him a great deal to talk about what he’d been through, Jonathan realises. As he gets out of the car, he catches Malcolm’s hand and holds it for a moment.
As he walks up the path, he braces himself. It’s gone four now, and yet the lights are still on downstairs. She’ll be furious, and she has every right. He should have phoned; she’ll probably accuse him of going to Sian’s again or something. At least her car’s here – when Malcolm said Cass couldn’t get hold of her, it crossed his mind that she might have gone again. He’s surprised she didn’t call, but then he reaches into his jacket for his phone. Shit. It’s still on ‘silent’ and there are four missed calls and a text. He scrolls down as he fumbles for his keys. But there’s only one from Fiona – the others are from Lucy. He switches it back to ‘outdoor’, puts his key in the lock and pushes the door open.
He stares at the big red drops on the carpet and bloody handprints on the wall; he bounds up the stairs, feeling the sticky wetness as soon as he touches the banister rail. He pushes the bedroom door open and freezes. The smell hits him first, a rusty, coppery tang. The duvet is on the floor, one corner completely sodden with blood. The bed is covered too, and there are bloody handprints on the chest of drawers. He can’t move; he can’t think. Perhaps this is some sort of drink-induced hallucination. His phone rings. Lucy. He presses answer but he still can’t speak.
‘Jonathan? Where the fuck have you been, you selfish bastard?’
He’s never heard Lucy swear before. ‘What . . .’ But his voice still won’t work. He clears his throat and tries again. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Fiona’s been rushed to hospital,’ Lucy says, in a tone that suggests it’s his fault. ‘She was bleeding, and yet again you—’
‘Lucy, please. Just tell me what’s happened.’
‘Lewisham hospital; the labour ward.’ Then her voice fractures. ‘Just get here.’
‘Lucy!’ But she’s gone.
He knows he shouldn’t be driving but bollocks to it. He almost falls down the stairs in his hurry to get out of the house and into the car. Labour ward; why is she on the labour ward? She’s only twenty-four weeks.
He stopped believing in God when he was about ten, but now he’s desperate to believe there’s something out there that can influence what’s happening. Please, please, please, he prays as he drives. Please don’t let us lose this baby. Let Fiona be all right, I’ll be a better person, I swear. I’ll be a good husband and a good father and I’ll try my hardest to be a good son; just let our baby be born safely and I swear I’ll bring him up properly and I’ll take him to church. Show me what to do; I’ll do anything, I promise, anything if you’ll keep them both safe. He coughs to hold back a sob that threatens to slip between his lips.
*
The car park is full, even at this time of night, so he parks in a disabled bay and runs into the hospital. One of the midwives buzzes him into the ward and meets him just inside the doors. She’s wearing what look like green pyjamas. ‘Your wife’s very poorly,’ she says as she leads the way along the corridor. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood but we managed to find a match fairly quickly and we’re giving her a transfusion now.’ The woman’s buttocks are so large that each seems to move independently of the other, but she walks quickly despite her size, and Jonathan has to hurry to keep up with her. It’s only five in the morning and many of the rooms are still in darkness, but there’s a feeling of activity, a sense that the ward is awake, alert.
As they pass one of the side rooms, he can hear a woman crying ou
t in pain. For one awful moment he thinks . . . but the midwife marches straight past, thank God. A heavily pregnant woman in a pink and black dressing gown is pacing the corridor, supported by her dishevelled-looking partner. Behind the door of another room, a baby cries insistently.
‘Nurse!’ An older woman comes out of one of the rooms, her face creased with anxiety. ‘Please, when are you going to see to my daughter? She’s in such a lot of pain.’ Behind her, an enormously pregnant teenage girl is leaning over the bed while another girl of about the same age rubs her back. The first girl is crying loudly.
‘We’ll be along to check on her in a little while,’ the midwife snaps without breaking her stride. ‘There are other patients besides your daughter, you know.’
Up ahead, there’s a hubbub of activity. A lot more people in green surgical pyjamas are going in and out of one of the rooms. They move quickly and purposefully; the sense of urgency is palpable.
‘She’s in here,’ the midwife says, pushing the door open and standing aside as someone else hurries out. ‘You’ll have to stay out of the way; they’re still trying to get her stable.’
Lucy is standing just inside the door, her hair a mess. She’s wearing glasses instead of her usual contacts, and she looks as if she’s been crying. Instead of yelling at Jonathan, she almost collapses into his arms. ‘Thank God you’re here. I thought . . . I thought she might . . .’
Men and women in green surround the bed, moving in and out of the little cluster like bees around a hive. They’re all frowning, intent on what they’re doing; they speak in sharp, clipped sentences but he can’t make out what they’re saying because they’re talking so quickly. One of them reaches up to adjust a bag of blood that’s hanging from a stand next to the bed.
‘She was fine when she left me earlier on,’ Lucy is saying. ‘Then she phoned at about half two and said she was bleeding and could I come over, but by the time I got there . . . oh God, it was . . . I’ve never seen so much blood.’
Then a gap appears in the group around the bed and he can see her. She looks smaller, somehow. At first he thinks she’s unconscious, but then she opens her eyes. He steps forward and she looks at him, but her face doesn’t register anything at all; it’s as though she isn’t actually there. He’s never seen her so pale. Her face is ashen; her skin glistens with sweat and there’s dried blood on her forehead and in her hair. She tries to speak but it’s very faint.
‘All right, Fiona,’ one of the men says in an extra-loud voice, as though she’s deaf or stupid. ‘You’re doing fine. Everything’s under control now.’
Fiona murmurs something again, but no one takes any notice.
‘Pulse is coming down, but it’s still one-twenty,’ someone says.
‘Give her another two units,’ the man who appears to be in charge shouts. ‘Come on, let’s speed it up a bit, shall we?’
One of the women fixes another bag of blood to the stand beside the bed. There are so many of them, all around her, all doing things to her.
Jonathan watches what’s happening as though it’s a film. He wants to intervene, to stop them prodding at her or at least to ask what they’re doing and why, but he’s in limbo; frozen.
‘We’re getting there,’ someone says after a while. ‘BP’s picking up.’
‘Thank Christ,’ says the man in charge. ‘Good girl, Fiona. You’re doing just fine.’ He says something to the woman next to him, then turns to Jonathan. ‘Right, you the husband?’
Jonathan nods.
‘We’ve given her six pints of blood; the trick with this is to get the blood into her faster than it’s coming out – pretty basic, really. She seems to be stable now and her blood pressure’s looking much more healthy, so it doesn’t look like we need to do a caesarean—’
‘Caesarean? But the baby’s not due until—’
‘Only option if the bleeding doesn’t stop spontaneously we’re risking mum and baby otherwise. Placenta praevia can be a life-threatening condition, but I think we’re out of the woods now.’
Jonathan looks at the doctor, who clearly expects some response.
‘He doesn’t know,’ Lucy chips in. ‘She hasn’t told him.’
‘What?’ Jonathan turns to Lucy. ‘You mean she knew there was something wrong—’
‘Not like this. They didn’t think it was serious.’
‘But why didn’t she—’
‘Because she didn’t feel she could tell you,’ Lucy sighs. ‘I know it’s not your fault, Jonathan, but with everything else . . .’
The doctor is speaking again, and Jonathan tries to focus on what he’s saying.
‘We still need to see how the baby’s doing. We’ll get a CTG on her now she’s stable – sorry, that’s a cardiotocograph – it measures the foetal heartbeat so we can tell if the baby’s in distress. Then we’ll need to get her scanned so we can see what’s been happening in there.’
The midwife who’d let Jonathan in fits a strap around Fiona’s belly and pulls another screen into place. Fiona mutters something. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart.’ The midwife lays her big paw of a hand on Fiona’s forehead and strokes her hair. ‘No more bleeding now; you’re going to be just fine.’ Her voice is considerably less strident than when she spoke to him outside. ‘Hey now, look who’s here to see you. And you with no lipstick on!’
Jonathan moves nearer to the bed, but Fiona looks right through him. ‘The baby,’ she whispers.
There are tubes going into the back of both her hands, and there are wires and loops everywhere, but he manages to curl his fingers around hers as he leans over and kisses her. Her lips are dry and cracked but her skin is clammy to the touch.
‘Okay, Fiona,’ the midwife says. ‘You see that line on the screen there? That’s your baby’s heartbeat, still nice and strong. And listen . . .’ She adjusts something on the machine. ‘There we are – listen to that! Good, normal, healthy heartbeat.’
‘Thank God,’ Jonathan whispers, gently squeezing Fiona’s fingers. Her gaze flickers towards him and she smiles weakly.
Lucy bursts into tears, kisses Fiona and Jonathan, and says she’s going outside to phone home. Everyone else in the room is smiling too, and there’s a sense of ‘job done’, of tidying up. The room begins to empty until the only people left apart from himself and Fiona are the man in charge, who’s writing something on a clipboard, the big midwife and a tall, red-haired man who Jonathan has only just realised is also a midwife. He looks ridiculously young and is so slender he could play Laurel to his colleague’s Hardy.
‘Well done, Fiona,’ the doctor says. ‘Things are looking good, so you try and get some rest now, okay? I’ll pop back and see you later.’ He nods at Jonathan. ‘She’ll look a lot better in a few hours, but she’ll be staying with us for a while. Sister’ll fill you in.’ He smiles at Jonathan for the first time, and Jonathan is struck by an absurd desire to embrace the man. Instead, he tries to thank him, but his teeth start to chatter and he can’t get the words out.
He turns back to Fiona. She’s still hooked up to a drip and the male midwife is attaching another bag, this time of clear fluid, which looks far less terrifying than the blood. ‘Just some saline,’ the midwife says, as though that explains everything.
Fiona is watching the jagged line on the monitor. Jonathan strokes her hair back and kisses her damp forehead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there.’
She turns her head away, and he realises he probably still stinks of whisky.
CHAPTER FORTY
Throughout several long days and nights, Maggie nurses the twins exactly as the doctor told her. She sponges their fevered foreheads, dabs calamine lotion onto their itchy skin and bathes their swollen, crusted eyelids. Leonard helps out on his day off, bringing her cups of tea and cheese on toast, and Mrs Dean pops in with Lucozade and cigarettes. When Maggie finally sinks into bed, she lies rigid as the babies thrash around in their cot, their dry, rasping coughs ripping though her.
‘The rash is fading,’ Dr Cranfield says when he calls in on his evening rounds. ‘But I’m surprised she’s still feverish.’ He takes off his bottle-end spectacles and cleans them with the hem of his jacket. ‘Hmm.’ He purses his lips and taps his stethoscope in the palm of his hand. ‘Keep sponging her down and I’ll call in again tomorrow.’ He puts the stethoscope back in his bag and clicks it shut. ‘This little chap’s on the mend, anyway,’ he adds, as a grinning Jonathan clutches his trouser-leg and pulls himself to a standing position.
The following morning, Elizabeth’s temperature is a hundred and three. Jonathan, disgruntled by the lack of his mother’s attention, whinges and pulls at her sleeve every few minutes. Maggie crawls through the day, and by the time she puts the babies down for their nap, she is almost crying with tiredness. Jonathan fidgets when she tucks him in at the other end of the cot – he doesn’t understand why his sister isn’t up and playing. Elizabeth’s forehead is still burning, but for the moment, she’s quiet, so Maggie allows herself a short rest. Just ten minutes, she thinks as she curls up on the settee. She picks her housecoat up from the floor, throws it over herself like a blanket and sinks immediately into sleep.