A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

  Mary and Andrew arrived. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ Mary said, her face lit by a beautiful smile. ‘She spoke, Thora.’

  ‘She did, love. We’ll get her back, Mary. I’m sure of that. And when yon babby puts in an appearance, let her hold him.’

  ‘Her,’ Mary said. ‘Katherine Mary, shortened to Katie. I’d know if it were a boy. This one might be a great lump, but she moves gracefully. I just wish she’d stop leaning on my bladder. I’ll be the one in nappies soon. Three times, I’ve thought my waters had gone, but no, it’s Katie stretching her limbs like an Olympic athlete. But Andrew, won’t it be great if your mother’s here in time for the birth?’

  ‘It would be my idea of a good day, because she was an excellent mother, and I’m sure she’ll be good with our child. Come on, small circular person, let’s get you home.’

  They walked the hundred yards that separated Rosewood from the bungalows. ‘She has to come right, Mary. I didn’t realize how badly affected I’d been until we got this ray of hope.’

  ‘I know. She’s your mum.’

  ‘She’s special, darling.’

  ‘Oh yes, she must be. Because she had a special son.’

  The miracle lay in the fact that Emily Sanderson, after years of withdrawal from society, recognized and acknowledged Thora immediately. ‘Is this your new house?’ she asked. There was confusion, but her eyes were alive at last.

  Yet Thora insisted inwardly that the miracle had come from Geoff, though she had to admit that shock therapy might have had something to do with it. She sniffed back emotion and went into Bolton mode. ‘Nay, lass, it’s thine. Does tha not remember living here with Geoff? I can tell tha remembers owld Bowton talk, so look round. It’s your bungalow, is this. Joe lives next door, only he’s off somewhere being a millionaire, and your Andy lives a few strides that way.’

  Andrew and Mary entered. ‘Mother?’ He held out his arms and she entered his embrace. ‘Oh, son. What happened? Where’ve I been?’

  Mary turned away, because her tears flowed too freely.

  ‘Never mind all this mawping about,’ said Thora. ‘Get that kettle on, Emily Sanderson – I’m fair clemmed. I’ll have a bourbon with my tea, ta.’

  Emily went straight to the kitchen. She never faltered, didn’t ask where anything was.

  Mary mopped her cheeks. ‘Will she be all right with a kettle?’

  ‘She will,’ Thora replied. ‘Some memory goes with ECT, but old skills remain. I’ve seen this bloody game before.’

  The nurse who had brought Emily home entered the house. ‘Is it all right if we go? You know where we are if you need us.’

  ‘That’ll be a cold day in hell,’ Thora muttered sotto voce, though Andrew heard her.

  ‘Behave,’ he chided.

  Emily wandered in. ‘Carry the tray, please. My arms don’t work.’

  ‘See?’ Thora’s hackles were up. ‘They try to treat the illness, but they ignore the bloody patient what’s fastened to it. Her muscles have wasted with all that sitting down. Don’t worry, I’ll sort her out.’

  The nurse left the house quickly.

  Emily wandered to the corner cupboard and placed her hand on the box. ‘Geoff,’ she said. ‘He’s dead, you know. But he came to see me and said I had to go home. So this must be home. I have a blue bedspread with matching curtains. A reading lamp with a cream-coloured shade. In there.’ She pointed to her bedroom.

  There were bourbons on the plate and there was a doily under the biscuits. Every cup had a saucer and a spoon, and there was an extra spoon in the sugar next to a jug of milk. Yes, this was all very Emily Sanderson.

  ‘Where are we?’ Emily asked her son.

  ‘North Liverpool, Mother.’

  ‘Ah. And Joseph?’

  ‘Away on business. He lives next door.’

  They drank tea. ‘Bourbons for Thora. Don’t forget the bourbons. Where’s Joseph? Yes, business. Furniture and kitchens. They hurt my head, you know.’

  ‘It’s the treatment,’ Andrew told her. ‘You have to go back, but you won’t sleep there. You’ll be here with Thora and us. Four more headaches, that’s all. After that, we’ll see how you go.’

  ‘You’re a doctor,’ Emily said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Geoff was a doctor.’

  ‘He was, and a bloody good one, Mother.’

  She looked up at the ceiling. ‘A lot of papers in the roof. I’m tired.’ Without another word, she went to bed.

  Thora was quiet. She was seething. Mary sat next to her while Andrew perched on the arm of the Sanderson sofa. ‘Thora?’

  She shook her head angrily. ‘I’m just thinking about all what they’ve took away from her. They try to treat the mental side, but the physical end of things goes to hell in a handcart with bells on. They should have flexed her legs and arms a few dozen times a day, but oh no, they’re treating the illness, not the patient. She’s just flesh and bone fastened to a problem. She’s as weak as a newborn kitten. Oh, and get her one.’

  ‘A kitten?’

  ‘Yes. Something what she has responsibility for. I’ve ten weeks to get her right. When that babby comes, she needs the strength to hold it and enjoy it. Go home. I’ll walk her up later for her dinner or supper or whatever it gets called these days. Protein, veg still crunchy rather than drowned, hold back a bit on the dairy while we see what she’s used to except for milk in her tea.’

  Andrew patted his old friend’s hand. ‘I told Mary you were as good as any qualified nurse.’

  ‘Better than that bloody lot what brought her back today. They should be shamed of theirselves. Nurses? They couldn’t nurse a h-interesting thought.’

  In that moment, Andrew realized yet again that Thora was a lot brighter than most people he knew. Given an education, she would have been a hospital matron by now. She talked sense, albeit delivered in flat, Lancashire tones. He knew many people like her, men and women shoved in factories at fourteen, no chance of further schooling, no chance of promotion. George had been right, then. Thora was the answer. Andrew planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘See you later, sweetheart.’ He left with Mary.

  Thora blinked. Sweetheart? Why hadn’t she met somebody like him instead of Harry? Well, she’d never looked like Mary, had she? Thin, flat-chested except when pregnant or feeding, dark, rusty-red curls that wouldn’t behave like proper hair, a face only a mother could love. Whereas Mary, though rather distended at the moment, was a real looker. ‘You play the cards you’re dealt, Thora Caldwell,’ she said aloud. ‘And you got a bum hand. Still, never mind. You can come here for your holidays, bucket and spade, check on Mary, look after Emily, sit in the garden. Lovely.’

  When evening came, Emily and Thora walked up to Rosewood. Emily’s pace was slow, and she had developed what Thora called ‘the hospital stoop’, with her shoulders rounded and her back curved as if promising to become a dowager’s hump. Well, Thora would put a stop to that as well.

  Still rather confused, Emily seemed to enjoy her food. ‘Where’s Joseph?’ she asked several times. The response was always the same; he would be back very soon. She remembered the banisters, the monks’ benches in the hall, an antique grandfather clock that had cost a fortune after being restored, the big garden, the huge Sanderson kitchen.

  But she surprised them, too. ‘My parents died within days of each other.’

  ‘Who told you?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘You did, silly boy. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he replied. ‘They left you a lot of money, Mother.’

  She remained consistent in that area, as she didn’t ask how much and didn’t seem impressed. ‘They visited me, but I wasn’t there. It’s a shame.’

  There wasn’t one person at the table who didn’t understand what she meant. Mary suddenly lost her appetite. This poor woman had just spent the best – or worst – part of three years in Purgatory, all through no fault of her own. She had loved too much, and that was no sin.

  Andrew squeezed h
is wife’s little hand. If he lost her . . . it didn’t bear thinking about. From that very first day outside the Cavern, he had recognized her as part of him, and he knew it had been the same between Mother and Geoff. Certain of Mary’s love, secure in his happy bubble, Andrew needed only to look across the table at Mother to realize how fragile life was. Everyone was breakable.

  With the possible exception of Thora. No, that wasn’t the case. Difficult as life had been for her, Thora could never guard herself completely, since she had invested everything in her sons and her grandchildren. She never moved without her photos of little Matthew, our Eileen, who can read and she’s only four, Sam Cheeky-face and Laughing Jimmy. So yes, most people were vulnerable.

  The women went to the drawing room while Andrew made coffee. ‘That’s a h-inglenook fireplace,’ Thora announced.

  ‘There’s no aitch in it,’ Emily advised her.

  ‘No h-aitch?’

  ‘No aitch in aitch, either.’

  ‘Course there is. Stands to reason there’d be a h-aitch in h-aitch.’

  Emily started to giggle. The giggle caught hold, and she became breathless. ‘No, no,’ she moaned.

  Thora held her friend’s hands. ‘Come on, let it out. Emily, for God’s sake, set it loose.’

  The full-blown hysteria that should have seen the light of day well over two years ago suddenly filled the room. Andrew stood in the doorway, a coffee mill in his hands. Thora knelt on the floor in front of Emily and took the blows, the temper, the frustration that had been locked away for so long. ‘It’s all right, hit me, I’m tough as old boots.’

  A rhythm developed. ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.’ With every ‘dead’, she slapped Thora’s arms. ‘Dead, dead, dead. Where’s Joseph?’

  ‘He’s coming.’

  ‘He’s here,’ said a voice from the hall doorway. Emily’s husband opened his arms, and Emily staggered to him. ‘All right, love,’ he said. ‘You cry all you like, all you need to. I’ll look after you now. Thora will, too, and Andrew and Mary. You’re not alone. We’ve been waiting for you.’

  Joe was given cheese on toast, and everyone got coffee.

  But the pièce de résistance was saved until it was time to go home. Andrew gave his mother a cardboard box with holes in the top. ‘For you, Mother, from all of us.’

  It was a tortoiseshell kitten with a lot to say for itself considering its size. Emily dried her eyes. Toodles,’ she said. ‘Is it a queen?’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely female.’ Joseph laughed. ‘It hasn’t shut up yet. Come on, girls, let’s get home.’

  Sixteen

  ‘You look rather pale this morning, my darling circular person.’ Andrew studied his very pregnant wife across the breakfast table. She wasn’t eating. She had reached her due date almost a week ago, and he had booked time off work. If she didn’t get into gear soon, she would need to have labour induced, because the weight was too much for her, and her blood pressure had taken a couple of walks on the wild side. ‘Poor little Mary,’ he said. ‘That kid needs a calendar and an alarm clock.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she snapped. ‘You may be a doctor, but you’re only a man, so you know nothing at all about this.’

  Her skin was whiter than normal, and she seemed uncomfortable. In fact, she appeared to be in pain. But he had been warned. Should he panic and cast a shoe or sprain a fetlock when she went into labour, he would be downgraded immediately and put out to grass rather than to stud. Oh, and oats would be off his menu long-term.

  ‘Pale? That will be a pigment of your imagination,’ she went on through gritted teeth, a frown creasing her damp forehead. ‘At this moment, O knight in once shining and now rusty armour, I feel a strange urge to kill the person who altered the shape of my destiny.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘As you qualify for that position, you should bugger off quickly and get your mother. My waters have gone. The chair on which I sit, the upholstered seat, is saturated with said waters. Don’t start fussing.’

  He gulped audibly, stood up and knocked over his own chair. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God, God, God.’

  She looked at him in despair. ‘Bloody doctors? Just look at the state of you. I knew you’d fall to bits, you great lummox. Go before I find a use for this bread knife. And find me a change of knickers and the other pair of maternity trousers.’

  He wasn’t going anywhere. Mary sat and listened to him failing to make sense on the phone in the hall. ‘She’s . . . Mary’s waters . . . yes, yes. I have to get her case for the . . . yes . . . for the . . . will you come, Thora? Bring Mother. I have to . . . yes. Thank you.’ Mary heard him replacing the receiver and dashing upstairs. ‘Damned wonderful damned fool,’ she muttered. He was as much use as a chocolate kettle.

  There was just one small but pressing problem. Stage one, with the backache, the waters, and the fingers of pain creeping gradually from spine to abdomen, lasted just a few moments before the real business began. This wasn’t supposed to happen, not with a first labour, but Baby wanted out and Baby was breaking out.

  She heard Drew running upstairs for her case. The urge to push was suddenly overwhelming. Though if she screamed, he would probably fall downstairs and break his neck. Not a good idea, even though he was the one who’d put her in this mess, God help him. She tried panting, but the urge to bear down was primeval and undeniable. The base of her spine was moving outward, so she knelt on the floor, as sitting was no longer the easy option.

  Thora rushed in and dealt with everything while Emily watched. She removed Mary’s undergarments. ‘Yon babby’s got black hair. Well, at least we know it’s the right way up, eh? Or the right way down. That’s it – lie on your side. You’ll be all right now, flower, because I’m here.’ What the hell was she saying? Had she ever done this before? No, she bloody well hadn’t. ‘Breathe easy, breathe easy. Just a minute; hold your horses, missus, this isn’t the Grand bloody National. Pant for me, love. Emily – sharp scissors and something to clamp the cord. Andy? Get your backside in here this minute. Bring towels. Right, sweetie. Give us a big push. Andy?’

  He rushed in clutching a case and a couple of towels, placing them on a sofa before staggering backwards against the wall. ‘Erm . . .’ He glanced at his poor wife and Thora. ‘I . . . er . . .’

  ‘Help your mother. Kitchen. Clamps. Something to cut the cord. Go before I clout you,’ Thora snapped.

  He left. ‘I love you, Mary.’ The words were thrown over his shoulder as he fled through the house.

  Thora tutted. ‘Now he tells you. They pick their bloody times, eh? Just let me wriggle this little shoulder round, sweetheart. Don’t push. Pant for me again. Curse if you like. Here we go, one more push, Mary. That’s it, that’s it, keep it coming. Aw – lovely. It’s a nice little lass. By, she’s got some lungs on her. Emily? Come on, Grandma.’

  Katherine Mary Sanderson was born on 1 June 1968 after just a few minutes of sharp, vicious labour. She was tiny, furious, and very vocal. Her mother, stretched out on a beautiful silk Persian rug, was in shock. On Mary’s chest, a screaming bundle of birth-stained humanity emptied her anger into an unattractive, over-bright world. Andrew, dangerously close to tears, dealt with umbilicus and afterbirth.

  ‘I hope you can see what you’re doing,’ Thora said. Then she joined in with a bit of weeping. She’d delivered a baby. She couldn’t believe she’d delivered this healthy-sounding baby. Her knees didn’t belong to her. She had thighs and shins, but nothing substantial in between.

  ‘Jesus, we’re a flaming quorum, all crying,’ said the new mother. ‘Cheer up, for goodness’ sake; it’s not a funeral.’

  Emily was the only one who held herself together. ‘Well done, Mary. Thora, will you do the tying off? Let’s have a tidy navel, shall we? Andrew can’t see properly.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ howled Thora.

  The baby, once separated from her mother and wrapped in a towel, became the star turn in a game of pass the parcel. She managed to stop complaining while Thora, after rediscovering her
knees, carried the newborn to the kitchen and put her through her paces, checking the reflexes, counting digits and making sure that Katherine could do a very strange thing that she would forget within minutes; yes, she stood, bore her own weight and ‘walked’ on tiptoes while Thora held her arms. ‘I wouldn’t care, I’ve only read about all this, but don’t tell them, Katie. This is our secret, little one. Never let them know you were my first.’

  Andrew, standing over his wife, stopped weeping. ‘I’ll get an ambulance,’ he said. ‘You should both be looked at in a maternity ward.’

  Mary forbade it. She was going nowhere, since she had too much to do, as her daughter needed to learn breastfeeding. ‘I’ve a big enough audience already, thanks. You should have sold tickets and given everybody a balloon and a slice of cake. If I’d wanted an ambulance, I would have said so. Thora’s an excellent midwife, better than most trained in our hospitals. Stop panicking. I knew you’d fall apart at the seams, soft lad. All men are stupid when it comes to the birth of a child.’

  Thora entered the room with Katie in her arms, opened her mouth to say she’d never done this before, thought better of it again, and snapped her jaw into closed position. It was best to look professional even though she’d almost made it up as she went along. If the truth were to be told, she felt a bit queasy, so she sat down and shut up. Had the situation been less busy, someone would have remarked on this unusual phenomenon, because she was reputed to talk even when asleep.

  Emily couldn’t take her eyes off Katie. ‘A little girl,’ she said over and over again. ‘He never had a sister, but he’s got you instead, baby. And see there? That lady you’re lying on? That’s your mother. Lucky girl, you are. Geoff would have loved this, you know. He would have made such a fuss of you, young Katie, because he loved babies.’

  Andrew helped his wife to sit up.

  ‘Wash this little one,’ she told him. ‘Keep her navel dry, but get all the muck off her. She looks basted ready for the oven. There’s some powder for the belly button, so use it.’