by Rebecca Tope
He paused for a moment. He would be burying homeless addicts, tramps, solitary hermits with no locatable families. Bodies found under hedges, dead of exposure and neglect. The detritus of society, unclaimed and unfunded when it came to the disposal of their mortal remains. ‘No, I’m not worried about that,’ he told her. ‘It’ll be a privilege.’
‘I’m going to enjoy working with you, Drew.’ She laughed as if she’d just thought of a good joke. ‘Incidentally – there’s another reason I phoned you – you know that woman you buried for us last Friday? Well, someone’s sent us five hundred pounds to pay for the funeral. Anonymously. A wad of twenty-pound notes in a plain brown envelope, delivered by hand. It says For funeral costs re: unidentified body at Peaceful Repose Cemetery. Plain enough.’
‘But that’s—’
‘More than your account comes to. I know. Embarrassing, isn’t it. But you’ll have to take it. Get a few trees or something with the change.’
‘Have you told the police?’
‘No – that never occurred to me.’ He could hear her tapping a pencil against the desk. ‘I suppose I ought to, now you mention it. She was murdered, after all. Or so we’re assuming.’
‘She didn’t bury herself, as Maggs keeps reminding me. A crime was committed – we can’t get away from it. Who on earth would send a large sum of money like that?’ He wasn’t asking Fiona, but himself. And only one answer came back.
Genevieve Slater. The bitch daughter with a guilty conscience and some crazy mixed-up ideas about making amends. Surely, it had to be Genevieve. Trevor Goldsworthy looked as if he couldn’t spare even one twenty-pound note, let alone twenty-five, and he couldn’t see any reason why Dr Malcolm Jarvis should start throwing money about.
Stephanie spent most of the day in her usual corner of the office. The moment Karen came to collect her, Drew was pulling on his coat, and unhooking the keys to the van from their place by the door.
There was no sign of anyone else in the house apart from Genevieve. She let Drew in before he could ring the doorbell. He’d forgotten how tall she was, how straight-backed and regal. She smiled widely, meeting his eyes in a long gaze, but he was not so carried away that he missed the lines of strain around her mouth.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes. As well as can be expected. I’ve got the bugger of a backache, that’s all. Had it all day, and can’t get comfortable. You’ll have to take my mind off it.’
She led him into the living room, and eased herself down into a corner of the sofa. The bulge of her pregnancy seemed like a separate entity, perversely clinging to her, spoiling her shape. She let her legs flop open, ungainly and untidy, so the unborn child appeared to sink into the space between.
‘Did you want a cup of tea?’ she asked with a little frown.
He could see that she had no intention of getting up again. ‘I’ll go and make some for both of us,’ he said. ‘I expect I’ll be able to find everything.’
‘Give me a shout if you can’t,’ she told him, her words broken off with a little moan. ‘Christ, this is getting beyond a joke. I won’t sleep a wink tonight if it doesn’t ease up.’
Drew hovered in front of her, trying to remember what he and Karen had done to alleviate late pregnancy aches and pains. All that occurred to him was that she’d slept on a bizarre arrangement of pillows, which allowed her to lie face down, as she preferred. He couldn’t recall any actual back pain.
‘When exactly are you due?’ he asked.
She shook her head irritably. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We keep changing our minds about precise dates. It’s this month sometime, I think.’
‘What did the scan say?’
‘I never had a scan.’
He wasn’t surprised. ‘Well – the midwife usually has a pretty good idea, from the way the uterus grows. I never quite mastered all the details, but I seem to remember a whole lot of dating tricks.’
She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Are you telling me you were a midwife? I thought you were a nurse.’
He laughed. ‘That’s right – only a nurse. But we all had to do a few weeks in Maternity. I’ve forgotten most of it now. When Stephanie was born, it all went out of my head. Seeing my own baby being born wasn’t anything like the textbooks, or any of the deliveries I watched.’
‘Oh well,’ she tried to smile. ‘Never mind all that now. Make some tea and we’ll get down to business.’
In the kitchen, Drew wrestled with something odd in her manner. Was it normal for a woman within days of delivery to dismiss all discussion of the subject? Although understandably nervous, especially if this was her first, it struck him as peculiar that she should be so evasive. Maybe she just didn’t think it was relevant to the business between them. And she was probably right about that.
She took the mug of tea from him with a trembling hand. He sat at the other end of the sofa, twisting to face her. ‘So – how do I earn all this money you’re giving me?’ he said. It crossed his mind to ask her directly about the five hundred pounds handed in to the Council offices, but it seemed somehow rude. Insensitive – like asking how much a present had cost. She probably hadn’t expected Fiona to mention it.
She forced a smile at his question. ‘I’m sure you’ve done your best,’ she said. ‘I didn’t give you very much to go on, did I?’
Drew remembered Trevor’s words. The bitch daughter. From Gwen’s point of view, translated through Trevor’s friendship and grief, this might be evidence of selfishness or worse on Genevieve’s part. But, of course, that didn’t mean she’d murdered her mother. If she had, it would be sheer insanity to then pay someone to investigate the death.
And where was Willard?
‘I’ve seen Trevor Goldsworthy,’ he told her, in some trepidation. ‘He came to visit the grave yesterday.’
Genevieve frowned. ‘Who?’
‘He knew your mother in Egypt, and other places, apparently. Sounds as if they were quite close.’
She screwed up her face in a disarming attempt to recollect. ‘I don’t think I ever knew him. She had loads of peculiar people in her life. She met them on her travels. Most of them sound like losers. How did he know where to find her grave?’
Drew hesitated. There was no good reason for withholding information from Genevieve, especially as he was ultimately answerable to her, but something warned him it might be a mistake to mention Henrietta. He chose compromise. ‘The place where your mother used to live – it seems Trevor called in there and they directed him to me.’ The over-simplification jabbed at his conscience, but Genevieve seemed satisfied. At least, she didn’t query his explanation. Instead she put a hand to the small of her back and groaned. Then she seemed to hold her breath, leaning forward and staring at the sofa cushion between her legs. ‘Oh God!’ she grunted. ‘I think I’ve wet myself. How awfully embarrassing.’
Drew recognised the sweet-sour smell that rose from the fabric. For a moment he was transported to the delivery room where Stephanie had been born, the sharp scary moment when the midwife had taken a long plastic instrument to Karen, and ruptured the membranes. He stared at Genevieve. ‘Your waters have broken,’ he said. ‘You’re in labour, aren’t you?’
She stared back at him. ‘Am I?’ she spat, looking frightened. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Come on,’ he said more gently. ‘Remember your antenatal classes. Let’s keep calm. Where’s the phone number for the hospital? Is your case packed? I guess we should call an ambulance. That backache – it looks as if it might have been the first stage of labour. It happens like that sometimes. When did it start?’
‘Ages ago. This morning. It just got worse and worse.’ She put both hands across the bulge of her belly, fingers outstretched, and shook her head. Her eyes gleamed with anger and anguish.
‘Don’t worry,’ Drew soothed her. ‘This is going to be a nice quick delivery, I bet you. No time for any drugs or unnecessary interference. Just show me where you’ve put ever
ything, and I’ll see you get to the Maternity department. I don’t think we should waste any more time, though.’ As he spoke, he watched her hold her breath again, as if seized by some inescapable outside force, and tuck her chin down on her chest. She was pushing, in the classic posture drummed into women at antenatal classes. ‘Very good!’ he said, automatically. ‘But if we don’t bustle, the baby’s going to be born on the sofa.’
She looked up at him, breathing fast, her eyes losing focus. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s happening? Everything’s horribly wet.’
‘Take your trousers off,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and find you something else to wear.’
He ran upstairs, locating the main bedroom without difficulty, and casting a hurried look around it. The bed was unmade, a jumble of duvet and newspapers and a rather grey-looking T-shirt. The dressing gown on the back of the door was far too flimsy to be of use. Flinging open the wardrobe door, he spotted some sort of knitted coat, long and voluminous. He grabbed it, and ran back to Genevieve with it. He found her pushing again, having made no effort to undress as he’d instructed.
Taking a deep breath, he knelt in front of her. ‘Let me,’ he said, and started to pull the baggy maternity trousers down. She had to lift her bottom to help him, and for a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to cooperate. Then she heaved herself up, and the garment came away. The smell of amniotic fluid grew stronger, the strangeness of it sharpening his wits, forcing him to face what was happening. ‘Lie down,’ he told her. ‘I’d better try and see what’s going on.’
‘I’m not having it now, am I?’ she said stupidly. ‘I thought it was supposed to hurt.’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘But some people get lucky. You look to me to be in the second stage, already. You’ve had at least three pushing contractions. The hospital’s more than twenty minutes from here. The ambulance could take that long again to reach us. Sorry, but I think we’re going to have to cope on our own. Where’s your husband? I ought to phone him. And I’ll have to call the hospital. It’s illegal to deliver a baby without medical assistance – you do at least have to try to get somebody.’
Something he’d said seemed to get through to her, and she looked at him with wide-open eyes. ‘Call Dr Jarvis,’ she said. ‘I want Dr Jarvis.’ And she recited a phone number. Drew went out to the phone in the hall, stretching the cord and propping the lounge door open, so he could watch Genevieve at the same time. He asked her to repeat the number, as he pushed the buttons.
There was no reply, after ten rings. ‘I don’t think he’s there,’ he told her, just as she began another unmistakable push. She’d swivelled round on the sofa, and was now much more horizontal. He wondered if he’d done the right thing, telling her to lie down; she looked a lot less comfortable than before. Dropping the phone, he went back to her, picking up the knitted coat and wondering how he’d ever get her into it.
‘Where’s your husband?’ he asked again.
She shook her head, and grimaced to indicate ignorance. ‘No idea,’ she managed eventually. ‘This is amazing,’ she added. ‘It hardly hurts at all. And I was so terrified.’
A suspicion began to dawn in Drew’s mind. ‘You have booked in at the hospital, haven’t you?’ he demanded.
A look of childish cunning crossed her face, followed by a parody of regret. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t,’ she admitted. ‘I did try to. I actually phoned them once, to ask what I ought to do. But I never got through to anybody who could speak any sense.’
‘But Doctor Jarvis would have done it for you. Has he been doing the antenatal checks?’
‘Not really. I told him my GP was handling everything, but that I’d like him to come with me, as a friend. The truth is, I haven’t got a GP. There was never any need. I’ve never been ill.’
‘But your husband? Didn’t he insist?’
‘I told him the same story. I said I’d arranged for a home birth, with midwives and everything. He washed his hands of it all. He knows he’d never get me inside a hospital.’ She gasped and held her breath for another dramatic push. Drew watched the changing shape of her belly as the baby prepared to make its entrance. Genevieve continued breathlessly, as if it was as important to expel her confession as to give birth to her baby. ‘I can’t go near hospitals, you see,’ she panted. ‘I’m phobic. Always have been. It’s like trying to make myself step into a furnace.’
Before another contraction could cut off any more revelations, Drew forced himself to look at her vulva. There was a segment of dark hair clearly visible, even between pushes. Another five minutes or less, and there’d be a third person in the room with them. He experienced a crystal-clear moment of decision. Either he could panic – rush round trying to gather up towels, scissors, hot water, dial 999, tell her to stop pushing. Or he could stay calm, give her the comfort and support she needed, catch the baby as it arrived and use whatever came to hand for the aftermath. His training counted for nothing in that moment. Something much deeper took hold of him, some visceral confidence that babies get born regardless of circumstances. And it was exciting.
‘It’s nearly here,’ he told her. ‘We’d better just let nature take her course.’
But Genevieve had opted for a belated hysterical panic. ‘Help me!’ she cried. ‘I’ll die, I know I will. And the baby’s going to be deformed. I’ve known all along. It isn’t right. It’s a monster. I don’t want to see it, Drew. Take it away, will you, as soon as it’s out. Please!’ She gripped his hand, digging her nails into his flesh.
‘Come on,’ he adjured her. ‘Don’t be silly.’ He stroked the hair back from her brow, looking into her eyes. As if a button had somewhere been pressed, his own body began to take an active part in the proceedings. He was hot, flushed with the drama, and physically responding. He almost laughed out loud when he realised. Childbirth was famously non-sexual, a universal turn-off to husbands and partners. Some men, by all accounts, couldn’t face sex with the woman again for months, after witnessing the gross ravages to the genital region wrought by the birth process. Drew had felt no such excitement with Karen during her labour. He wondered what Genevieve would make of it, if she knew, and resolved firmly that she was never going to find out.
She pushed again, and the sliver of head became much larger. ‘Fantastic!’ he encouraged her. ‘It’s almost here.’
On the next contraction, she cried out, a sound full of despair and terror, and flung her head from side to side. Almost no progress was made. ‘You have to help,’ Drew told her. ‘This is the crowning. It needs your cooperation.’
‘I can’t,’ she whimpered. ‘I’m too frightened.’
‘You must,’ he said sternly. ‘There’s no going back now.’
Afterwards, she told him that there was nothing he could have said more guaranteed to convince her than that. Closing her eyes, gritting her teeth, with tears sliding down her cheeks, she screamed her way through the great final push. The baby surged into the world, twisting and turning to free its own shoulders, and landing glistening on the unprotected sofa cushions with a brief splutter.
As Drew grasped it, with the intention of placing it in Genevieve’s hands, the front door slammed. As he looked up, he met the eyes of a tall, gaunt, elderly man in the doorway.
‘Willard!’ gasped Genevieve.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Genevieve’s husband was much less substantial than Drew remembered him. In two years he seemed to have aged considerably. It took him a long, long moment to grasp what was happening. The baby coughed, and squeaked; the room was flooded with the smell of blood and fluid and sweat. Drew grabbed the forgotten coat and tried to drape it over Genevieve to keep her warm. His over-riding emotion was one of guilt. Kneeling on the floor, bending over another man’s wife in an attitude of acute intimacy, he felt he’d been caught in an act of the most flagrant adultery.
Willard took two steps towards the sofa, his face a ghastly grey-white, and then crumpled, in an unreal slow-motion faint. ‘That’s bloody typical,’
Genevieve squawked.
Drew felt a rising hysteria. He’d walked into a madhouse, occupied by people who made insanely light of death and birth equally. All it needed now was the nephew, Stuart, to stroll in wearing full biking regalia.
The baby, almost forgotten, lay quietly on Genevieve’s bare belly, its arms spread out, pressing into the warm skin. ‘You’ve got a daughter,’ Drew observed, almost casually. ‘She looks perfect to me.’ Examining the infant’s face, he saw the lips flush red, and then the whole body change from lifeless pewter to a rosy pink. ‘I’ll have to find something to wrap her in,’ he said. ‘It isn’t very warm in here.’
Genevieve ducked her head awkwardly, the flesh under her chin pleating as she tried to see the baby. ‘Help me sit up,’ she demanded. ‘I can’t see her properly.’
Drew put a hand under her arm and hauled her into a better position. Her T-shirt had ridden up until he could see the bra underneath. ‘You should put her to the breast,’ he said. ‘It helps expel the placenta. I’m going to have to cut the cord in a minute, too.’ He looked around distractedly, wondering where he might find a suitably sterile knife.
Genevieve looked from the baby to Drew and then to Willard, who was evidently regaining consciousness. ‘Blistering festering hell!’ he muttered. ‘Shit-scattered sodding cunt.’ Genevieve looked back at Drew, her face a caricature of disbelief.
There was a moment’s silence, and then she burst out in a shriek of laughter, making the baby flinch with alarm. ‘Did he say what I think he said?’ she spluttered. ‘He must have gone mad. Willard never swears.’
Drew’s head was whirling. Somebody certainly seemed to have gone mad, and he was beginning to wonder whether it might be him. But once a nurse, always a calm influence in a crisis. ‘People often curse when they come round from a faint,’ he said. ‘It’s as if their inner censor has been disabled.’