Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  Suddenly Susie began to pour out the saga of pain, shock and indignity which had been labelled Christmas Day. Christmas for her had been a collage of shrapnel-sharp contractions, glaring lights, loud confusing voices. Her body had become a broken-down machine, out of her control, man-handled by rough mechanics, wrenched, prodded, forced. Her voice became gradually shriller as she described the great bruiser of a midwife shouting ‘Push, mother, push,’ while she heaved and panted, her feet stuck up in stirrups, tears and sweat streaming down her face.

  ‘And there was this great sort of squelching sound, a terrible wrenching pain and they pulled the baby out and everyone said, ‘‘It’s a boy … it’s a lovely little boy’’ and I could hear it yelling and …’

  ‘Y … yelling?’

  ‘Yeah. They put it on my tummy all squirming and covered with sort of gunge stuff, and still bawling its head off as if it h … hated me already, and I said ‘‘Take it away, take it away’’ and …’

  ‘You mean … it w … was all right—alive and …?’ Jennifer was saying ‘it’, like Susie, not daring a ‘he’ until she was sure beyond all doubt.

  ‘Course it’s bloody alive. It wouldn’t stop screaming.’

  ‘Why? Was something wr … wrong with it?’

  ‘No. Just a damned good pair of lungs—or so the midwife said and …’

  Jennifer gripped the end of the bed, forced herself to listen to the next instalment—the vomiting, the stitching up, the catheter, the shakes—but all she was really hearing was ‘It’s a boy—a lovely little boy.’ The baby wasn’t dead, wasn‘t a monster or a cretin, offal in a bowl. He was yelling, bawling, triumphantly alive.

  Susie stammered on. Every time she mentioned the baby, Jennifer pounced on the tiny jigsaw scrap of information, pieced all the scraps together until she had a whole and healthy child. Her relief and wonder doubled. The baby was not only alive, but normal, perfect, huge—well, five pounds three and three-quarter ounces, which was gigantic compared with those dregs of almost-life in the Special Baby Unit. He appeared completely unaffected by the antibodies, neither jaundiced nor at risk, so they had spared him intensive care. He hadn’t needed so much as an incubator, let alone a life-support machine. For all its muddle and shambles, all her own carping and complaints, the hospital still styled itself progressive, and progressive hospitals believed that the bond with a baby’s mother was more important than the latest technological hardware. The irony was that Susie had refused that vital bond.

  As soon as he was born and weighed, they had laid him naked in her arms, but she had pushed him away, broken down in tears again. Even when they had washed and dressed him, presented him clean and fragrant in his shawl, she had still turned her back, hidden her face in the pillow, refused to have the cot beside her bed.

  The next day, no change. Jennifer had tossed and turned throughout that endless night, reliving Susie’s labour as if to make it her own, feeling the rude probe of the enema, the jab and gripe of contractions, and finally split apart at dawn by the baby’s ramming head. She got up in the pitch dark, fretted through the pointless hours till visiting time, then rushed back to the hospital where she found Sister herself sitting on Susie’s bed, trying to talk her round. Susie remained deaf to all persuasion, staring pale and listless at the wall when she wasn’t actually weeping. Jennifer felt pity mixed with terror. Susie was meant to be pretending she wanted to keep her child. In fact, she had rejected him out of hand, and in her present state of shock and hostility, might well forget their vital agreement and hand him over for adoption.

  It was Sparrow who saved all three of them. On the day after Boxing Day, family duties over, he turned up in the ward in skin-tight jeans and an oil-stained donkey-jacket, waving two airline tickets to Malaga.

  ‘Picked ’em up cheap,’ he said to Susie. ‘It’s time you got off yer arse. If we don’t beat it soon, there won’t be any cushy jobs in Spain. They’re dated Thursday—New Year’s Eve. I’ll call for you here with …’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jennifer interrupted, from the other side of the bed. The baby was still in the nursery, but she was doing her daily stint of trying to calm and rally Susie. ‘Susie won’t be better by then. She’s still very sore and she certainly can‘t start jetting around on planes just six days after …’

  ‘You bet I can!’ Susie was sitting up now, trying on the silver lurex boob-tube Sparrow had brought her with the tickets. She seemed to have miraculously rallied already. ‘I’ve had more than enough of this dump and the sooner I get out of it, the …’

  They argued back and forth for half an hour, Jennifer warning of shock, infection, relapse, Susie pleading the health advantages of rest and convalescence in the sun. Both were dissembling. Susie wanted Sparrow and the quickest possible out, Jennifer wanted the baby. In the end, they compromised. Susie agreed to feign an instant maternal interest in her child, in return for Jennifer’s promise to plead with Sister to let mother and baby out first thing Thursday morning.

  She was surprised at the opposition, despite her carefully crafted story which avoided all reference to dangerous things like DC 10s and lovers. Sister remained cautious and uneasy, concerned not only about Susie’s capabilities, but also about the weather and the risk of an infection.

  ‘If Susie insists on walking out, that’s her affair,’ she frowned. ‘We can’t actually keep her here by force, but she’ll have to sign her discharge. Baby’s a different matter. He’s still below his birthweight and we’re most unhappy about him going home so soon.’

  Jennifer sought out Staff-Nurse Stapleton, who had allowed her into Special Baby Care, begged her help again. Although she was on a different ward, she was friendly with the Sister on Postnatal and might be persuaded to use her influence. Kate not only agreed, but even suggested checking on the child herself once he was discharged, since she all but passed their door on her way to the hospital, and it might reassure Sister if she reported directly back to her.

  Sister kept her distance, said nothing more at all. By Wednesday evening, the baby was gaining weight, but Jennifer losing hope. In twelve short hours, Sparrow would be marching down the ward again, with suitcases and passports. She had used every possible argument, even turned to Jo, to see if there were some basic law or freedom she could appeal to in the impasse. There wasn’t. Jo informed her that the hospital had every right to keep the baby in, if its health or welfare gave reason for concern. She did, however, promise her assistance once it was discharged, offering bed, roof, cash and moral support, and pledging total secrecy.

  Jennifer sat by Susie’s bed in silence, watching another patient pack her case and leave, a conventional married woman with a nine-pound baby and a supportive husband who had brought a couple of bottles of sherry for the staff. When Jennifer left herself, deep in gloom and with nothing yet decided, she could hear the nurses clinking glasses in Sister’s office. Sister called her in. Whether it was a sniffter or two of Tio Pepe which tipped the balance in their favour, or Kate Stapleton’s assurances, Jennifer never knew, but she got her yes, at last.

  It was a reluctant yes, admittedly, hedged about with every possible precaution and instruction, and with the full array of social services alerted and ready to pounce.

  ‘How are we going to dodge them?’ Jennifer whispered to the baby, as she sat tense and frowing in Jo’s sagging Oxfam chair. She had replaced him in his carry-cot, switched on the one-bar fire. She’d been so relieved to wangle him out at all, she had hardly spared a thought for the problems it had left behind—all those responsible professionals committed to an infant she had spirited away, rushing round to check on it, help and counsel its mother. How could she avoid them, how explain Susie’s absence? Jo had offered her a refuge, but could she really cower at Putney while they knocked frantically at the heedless Southwark door? She would have to spin another web of lies. Her head was spinning with all the complications. She still felt weak and weepy from Susie’s departure, confused by the whole fraught and hectic morn
ing. She would shut the problems out, let them wait till morning. There were more important things. This was the first instant she had had her baby truly to herself, could claim him as her own. She pulled her chair up closer, gripped his tiny fingers in her own.

  ‘I’m sorry I left you,’ she said. ‘I won’t again.’

  It was difficult to talk to him. He seemed so grave and somehow withdrawn. Baby-talk was impossible. He was too dignified for that. He still had the hospital name-tag on his wrist. ‘Baby Grant.’ Jennifer went to fetch Jo’s nail-scissors, snipped it off.

  ‘Baby Winterton now,’ she told him. ‘I’m afraid you haven’t got a first name yet.’

  Despite the pressure and suggestions of the nurses, Susie had left the baby nameless. She herself had tried a score of names, but none seemed quite to suit him.

  ‘Graham?’ she suggested now. That was her father’s name. Her father had died young and unfulfilled. Not Graham. Charles, perhaps—in honour of her favourite nephew. No—that was too close to Matthew and therefore dangerous. Every time she thought of Matthew, she felt a wave of shock that this baby was his flesh and blood—his fifth and youngest son—with the same dark colouring as the other four. Supposing he grew up to look like them (and him) and so aroused everyone’s suspicions? She would have to keep away. Yet even that would …

  ‘Tea up!’ shouted Jo, banging on the door. ‘I’ve brought the little blighter’s bottle, too. He didn’t seem to want it while you were away, though I shoved it in his direction once or twice. I think I’ll leave you to it and grab some lunch in peace. Make yourself at home, love. Sorry things are such a mess, but there’s a pouffe thing there you can put your feet up on, and if you want cottonwool and talc and stuff, its all in the bathroom. I’ll give the room a clear-up in the morning, make more space.’

  ‘You’re an angel, Jo.’

  ‘Angels are males, dear, so I can’t accept the compliment.’

  Jennifer waited till Jo had gone downstairs again before settling the baby on her lap and offering him the bottle. It was somehow a private moment—a most important one—his first meal out of hospital as her sole responsibility. She let herself sink back, cuddled him against her, watched his screams shudder into silence as he fumbled for the teat. He sucked slowly and in snatches, stopping every few moments and staring round him as if to check there were no dangers, his hands clenching and unclenching against the bottle.

  She felt a surge of warmth and strength flood into her bloodstream, as if she were being fed herself. The baby’s tininess, his helplessness, made her huge and powerful. She was tower and refuge, shield and anchor. She had a purpose now, as protector and provider, totally committed. Whatever she might choose to do, or want to do, the baby’s sheer physical needs would always tug her back. It was almost a relief. She was no longer split three ways, tugged apart by conflicting obligations. Susie had gone; the marriage with Lyn was over. Both hurt. In fact, the loss of Lyn was a pain too huge and cold to measure, yet he couldn’t accept a baby, least of all his half-brother’s. Why should he? The child was Matthew’s responsibility, and Matthew was already in his debt. Even if she passed if off as Sparrow’s baby, never breathed a word to Lyn, Matthew himself might guess the truth, start acting strangely, stir up trouble or try to interfere. Better to follow the dictates of the Women’s Group and manage on her own.

  Money was a problem, but Jo had offered her a job—the sort of menial low-paid work she was always warning women to refuse—as a general help and assistant in all her different feminist activities. But it was only a temporary measure. She would move to another job as soon as she felt more settled—or could find one where a baby would be welcome.

  It wasn’t safe to be in Putney, anyway, with Matthew living there. Thank God he was away—and for quite some time, so Anne had said in her brief and frantic phonecall before the family left for their holiday abroad. They were taking a longer break than usual, Anne had explained, and had even arranged for the boys to miss some school, on account of Matthew’s exhaustion. Both the Winterton men had somehow gone to pieces—Matthew, once a tower of strength, now ill and overwrought; Lyn, feverish and ragged, living on the run. Lyn, too, might be abroad, for all she knew. That would explain his silence, his lack of communication. Less agonising, really, to have him far away—like Susie. Easier, then, to cut them off, start again anew.

  She could see it as a challenge, living on her own, finding a place and making it really hers, for once, reflecting her own taste instead of someone else’s. She had moved from her mother’s chintzy overspill to the junk-shop Edwardiana with which Matthew had furnished Cobham; on again to the gloomy splendour of Matthew’s own house in Putney; from there to a shabby bedsit painted Susie-style, and finally to this lumber-room of Jo’s. Once she got her own place, it might be bare and poor, but at least she would keep it tidy, make it cheerful. She might even start on Hester’s country crafts again, earn a bit of money making patchwork or preserves.

  She smiled down at the baby. ‘We’ll manage,’ she told him. ‘Somehow.’ She had to convince herself as well as him. He had stopped sucking and was gazing anxiously around, his mouth opening and shutting soundlessly, his forehead furrowed still.

  He suddenly looked so small—his tiny hands with their diminutive fingernails flailing feebly against her neck, his feet limp and helpless on her giant’s arm—rag-doll body, sparrow bones. Had she been irresponsible to remove him from the shelter of the hospital? Supposing something did go wrong?

  Her hands were not quite steady as she changed his nappy and settled him down to sleep. She had totally forgotten her tea, took a sip of it now, to try and calm herself. It was cold and forming a skin. She went down to make a fresh cup, found Jo still in the kitchen, ironing a long, hairy skirt which looked as if it had been cobbled out of an ancient piece of sacking.

  ‘All fed?’ she asked.

  Jennifer nodded, sank into a chair.

  ‘You look done in. Why not have a nap and then you’ll get your second wind and be fresh enough to come out with us this evening. I’ve invited a group of girls over. Thought we’d go to our local Chinese restaurant and have a bit of a nosh and a knees-up. You can bring Yours Truly in his carry-cot. The proprietor won’t mind. He’s got hordes of kids himself. I mean, you can’t be all alone on New Year’s Eve.’

  Jennifer checked her chores—nappies to wash, clothes to iron, suitcase to unpack. She had also promised Sister to keep the child indoors. ‘No thanks, Jo. It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’m not much good at cat-naps. I’d rather have a really early night. To tell the truth, the best New Year’s Eve treat I can think of is to rush through my jobs and be fast asleep in bed by nine o’clock.’

  By nine o’clock, she and the baby were still both wide awake. His feeds had got out of phase. He refused to stick to her timetable and took so little milk at a time, she had been warming fresh bottles every two hours or so. She couldn’t settle, anyway. The actual fact and presence of the baby after so long and fraught a wait for it, seemed too momentous an event to allow her to sleep at all. She wanted the world to share in her excitement, flock to the cradle and rejoice. Instead, it was busy with other people’s parties, fixated on New Year. Ordinary mothers would be showered with flowers, telegrams, cooing visitors, congratulation cards. Perhaps all that razzmatazz helped to soften the shock and startle of another life. Her baby had entered the world with hardly a witness or a well-wisher. Up at the Bertrams’, she had often felt sorry for the stoic sheep who produced their lambs and then returned to the cold and lonely hillside with no proud father-ram, no admiring grandparents. She remembered one which had refused to mother its lamb. Mick had transferred the tiny shivering bundle to another ewe who had lost her own and was obviously in mourning. Both mother and child had rallied miraculously. She smiled to herself, wondered how Molly was. Nice to have a confidante, someone she could tell ‘Today he gained two ounces,’ or turn to with a problem. It was hard to be independent, self-sufficient. She had planned
a whole lifetime on her own, yet even the first few hours of it were proving lonely and oppressive. It seemed wrong to spend New Year’s Eve in her nightie, drinking a toast in baby’s Cow and Gate.

  She gave up trying to sleep, brought the baby down to Jo’s main living-room, decided to sit and read. Jo’s early training as a librarian was still in evidence and there were four separate bookcases all overflowing with political manifestos, sociological textbooks, sex and psychology manuals, and every reference book and dictionary from a children’s encyclopaedia to a directory of Quaker meeting-houses. Nothing, though, to amuse or entertain. Jo didn’t believe in novels, even less in women’s magazines.

  Jennifer wandered into the kitchen, made herself a cup of coffee. She had already found half a tin of beans and eaten them out of the tin, with Sugar Puffs for pudding—a Susie meal. She had learnt a lot from Susie, felt a sudden wave of loss. If Susie were here, she would be concocting champagne cocktails, cavorting round the room.

  She moved the carry-cot closer to the phone, went and sat beside it. It would be comforting to ring a friend, say happy New Year to someone, but she had to be so careful. For Susie’s sake and Matthew’s, she was forced to lie low, suppress the baby’s existence and therefore her own. She had already phoned the hospital, assured them all was well and Susie sleeping. She still hardly dared think about the problems of the morning, the string of lies, or the brazen disappearance, deceiving people who trusted her, dodging the whole gamut of social services. And supposing she needed those professionals—if the baby got ill or refused to feed? If she dashed back to the hospital in some crisis or emergency, but with no Susie at her side, they could wrench the child away from her, put it into care.

  She picked up the receiver. There must be someone she could ring, to distract her from such fears. How about Molly herself? Surely she was safe enough, all those miles away in Mepperton? She would certainly be in, presiding at her party in her Sunday Best, which meant a skirt less clogged with dog-hairs than her usual one, and a daring dab of powder to cower her ruddy cheeks. The Bertrams always had a do on New Year’s Eve—or Old Year’s Night, as they called it in the counties close to Scotland. It was the most important night up there, even more special than Christmas. The date was surrounded with superstition, especially the ceremony of first-footing which had been observed for centuries and was believed to influence the whole succeeding twelve months. If the first person to cross the threshold on New Year’s Day (which usually meant a minute after midnight on Old Year’s Night) was a young, dark, male stranger bringing gifts of bread and fire, then the house would have good luck for the coming year. There weren’t many strangers in Mepperton, so they usually chose a local dark-haired man who would do the rounds of the village, calling on as many houses as he could, to bring them good fortune and prosperity. Molly had explained the custom to her, how it wasn’t just an empty ritual, but something almost as serious and solid as an insurance policy. This year, she was particularly excited, as her husband, Mick, had been chosen as first-foot. They had invited almost a hundred people to come and eat and drink with them before Mick set out on his rounds at the stroke of midnight. It would be a good time to ring them now, before the party got too riotous. She dialled the number, relaxed back in her chair.