She did not follow for the gorse was dense and she was wearing her Sunday stockings. She sensed, however, that a crisis in their relationship had arrived, or was on the point of arriving and was therefore partially prepared for his re-emergence within a matter of seconds with an expression of terror on his face. She had never seen so much horror in a man’s eyes, or a face more tense and blanched and cried, ‘What is it, Keith? What’s in there?’ and he gibbered, ‘It’s . . . it’s a woman, a gggirl! She’s . . . she’s . . . there’s a bbbaby coming!’ and for a moment she thought he was going to faint. Then a second cry came from the base of the rock and another and another, each louder and more pitiful than the other, so that Rachel rushed past him and dived through the gorse to find that it screened a small, shallow cave, evidently the hideout of a tramp or gypsy, for there was a burned-out fire and a few trumpery utensils scattered about. Beyond the fire, close against the wall was a girl, her knees drawn up and her single garment, a faded dress, rucked up level with her breasts. Her matted hair tumbled as she heaved and when her mouth was not open in a yell her teeth were clamped over her lip.
Rachel recognised her at once as Hazel Potter, the half-crazed postscript of the Potter tribe and a glance told her that Keith, unbelievably, was right and that the poor little wretch was indeed giving birth to a child, for the baby’s head was already showing and it seemed to Rachel, who had witnessed the birth of innumerable foals and calves, that labour was about half-way through and progressing rapidly before her eyes. She had inherited courage from her father and any amount of common sense from her mother, so that even before the shock had receded she knew what she must do and also what Keith must do if he could keep his nerve. She dived back through the bushes and seizing him by the shoulders shook him as though he had been a troublesome child.
‘Listen!’ she shouted, ‘listen, and then do exactly what I say! Are you listening? Are you?’ and when he nodded, his head wobbling on his long, thin neck, she went on, ‘It’s Hazel Potter and she is having a baby! I’ll have to stay and help but you must go for the lady doctor as fast as you can. Don’t go the shortest way but across the stream to Sam Potter’s cottage and send his wife here to help me—tell her to bring towels and a sheet and . . . and string and scissors, can you remember? Then take Sam’s pony, ride on to the Lodge and guide the lady doctor back here.’
She was agreeably surprised to see that he pulled himself together at once and repeated her instructions like a recitation. Then he set off at a long, loping run, disappearing round the bend in the track while she ran back through the bushes and flung herself on her knees beside the girl, looking wildly around for something approximate to a bed and rejecting the pile of sacks in favour of a great truss of freshly-cut bracken bundled against the wall. She saw the kettle beside the almost extinct fire and would have crawled across to revive it by blowing on the embers had not Hazel, at that moment, clutched her with both hands as her mouth opened in another fearful yell. Then she understood that everything else would have to wait, that her immediate presence as someone to cling to for as long as the ordeal lasted, was more important than water or bedding or linen, so she wriggled in a half-circle that brought her in a position where Hazel’s head could rest on her lap and Hazel’s hands could retain their grip on her wrists and in this way she rode out the girl’s successive heaves, pouring out such words of comfort as she could invent while the climax mounted and mounted until there was no interval between the spasms that touched off the girl’s cries.
She was never able to recall how long they were alone before Joannie Potter arrived. It might have been twenty minutes, or an hour, or even longer before Rachel saw the child lying there and Hazel’s grip on her wrists relaxed, so that she was able to shift her position and spill the truss of lean bracken across the floor, dragging some of it under the girl’s shoulders, then scrambling round to revive the fire. The water in the iron kettle was still warm and in one of the cave’s recesses she found the deep earthenware bowl that Hazel used for baking. She cleaned it as best she could, using strips torn from her petticoat and half-resting the squirming little creature on her knee sponged it from head to foot with her best cotton blouse. She had no means of separating mother and child, for although there was a large wooden-handled knife among the utensils its blade was rusted and she remembered that Jamieson, the Valley vet, had impressed upon them the importance of using clean instruments. It did occur to her to hold the blade in the fire but she shrank from this and anyway it did not seem to matter for the terrible urgency had ceased with the girl’s cries. She was still making sounds of distress, long, whistling gasps, like a cider-sodden harvester asleep in the hay but her big brown eyes followed Rachel’s every movement and noting this Rachel said, softly, ‘It’s a boy, Hazel! I think he’s all right!’ The girl twisted herself to look at the child but even this small effort exhausted her and she slumped back on the bracken while Rachel, now using the hem of her petticoat, tied the cord tightly in two places about twelve inches apart as she had seen Jamieson do in the byre at Four Winds. When the water had been changed and the baby sponged again it looked, Rachel thought, more like a baby and less like a slimy pink monkey. It let out a single yell and its tiny feet pressed feebly against Rachel’s knee, so that she forgot her terrible anxiety in a surge of achievement, wondering again whether or not to use the knife to cut the cord but again rejecting the idea from motives of hygiene. Instead she cradled the baby against her soiled skirt and with her left hand tore off another strip of material from her petticoat, using it to wash Hazel’s face and the lower parts of her body. The girl spoke, suddenly, her voice seeming hardly to belong to her after all those cries:
‘Where’s ’er tu?’ she demanded. ‘Where’s The Boy?’ and Rachel, surprised that she should have remembered Keith’s fleeting appearance in the cave, said that he had gone for Joannie Potter, who would be here any moment and also the lady doctor, who would come as soon as Keith Horsey guided her here. Hazel received this information thoughtfully, lying back with her eyes fixed on the roof of the cave and Rachel noticed that her breathing was slowly returning to normal and that she seemed, miraculously, little the worse for the ordeal. Then, as the light in the cave waned, they heard someone call from the path and Rachel shouted, ‘In here—through the bushes under the rock!’ and Joannie Potter appeared clutching an armful of bedding and towelling and with barely a glance at the baby began to make a couch at the back of the cave, spreading the sacks as a base for heaped-up bracken. The little cave seemed very crowded now and Rachel realised that Joannie was very much out of breath, so much so that it was minutes before she could gasp, ‘You’ve washed the mite? ’Twas warmish, I ’ope?’ and Rachel told her the kettle had contained lukewarm water and that the baby, a boy, had cried out within a moment or two of birth. Joannie paused in her work of doubling the blankets. ‘ ’Er baint crying now an’ her should be! Turn un over, an’ give un a smack or two!’ and Rachel, smiling now, began to turn the child face down and then remembered that the cord was uncut.
‘I tied the cord but couldn’t cut it, Mrs Potter!’ she said and Joannie, without a word, poked her head under Rachel’s elbow and bit so that the cord parted and Rachel was able to administer a smack on the child’s tiny behind. The baby opened his mouth as wide as it would go and roared its resentment, the volume of his yells astonishing Rachel almost as much as the mother’s unaided scramble on to the bed. The baby continued to bawl so loudly that Joannie said, grimly, ‘ ’Er’ll do! Just ’ark to un! Still, ’twas lucky you was by, with nought but a few dirty sacks to hand!’ and she sighed as though the birth of a child in these circumstances was a bit of a nuisance but otherwise unremarkable.
‘Be ’ee gonner tell ’em whose tacker tiz?’ she asked carelessly but Hazel replied, sharply, ‘Tiz mine! Dornee pester me, Joannie!’ whereupon Joannie sighed again, grumbling that Sam would want to know and so, probably, would the lady doctor but implied by her tone that the identity o
f the father was not very important.
‘Be ’ee strong enough to give un the breast, child?’ she said and Hazel, in answer, reached out for the baby and Rachel, a little regretfully, placed him carefully in her arms while Joannie pulled the crumpled dress over the mother’s shoulders and busied herself tucking the blankets around her. The baby’s outcry ceased so suddenly that the silence inside the cave seemed uncanny. Joannie said, dispassionately, ‘You’d better go an’ watch for ’em. That boy was so scared I woulden wonder if ’er dorn taake lady doctor to Hermitage! I’ll bide ’till they come, for Sam’s with the children, young Barby bein’ sick abed!’
Rachel went out into the open, surprised to find it was now almost dark. In the glimmer of light over the Bluff she saw the foliage stir down by the north corner of the mere and presently, where the trees fell away around the stream, she caught a glimpse of two figures on horseback moving at a trot and yelled at the top of her voice in case, as Joannie had suggested, Keith had difficulty in locating the spot. Somebody answered her and they came on at a canter, the ponies’ hooves chinking on the stones of the ascent like bottles in a basket. Keith appeared first, rolling from the saddle of Sam Potter’s chestnut pony and shouting the moment he saw her, ‘Are you all right, Rachel?’ and Rachel said, ‘Of course I’m all right! It wasn’t me who had the baby, stupid!’ but then she understood why he had asked for she was blouseless and her hair was falling over her bare shoulders so that for once it was she who blushed and was glad to answer the bark of Doctor Maureen, who climbed out of the saddle holding her bag, demanding to be shown the way to the patient.
They left Keith with the horses and pushed through the gorse, guided by the gleam of a lantern Joannie had lit but Rachel, acutely conscious of her dishevelled appearance, and feeling suddenly helpless in the presence of a professional, was glad to wash her face, hands and neck in what remained of the water before despatching Keith to the stream for more. While he was gone she hitched up her skirt, tore away the trailing edge of her petticoat hem and tried to tidy her hair by rearranging pins but she could do nothing about her bare neck and shoulders until Joannie said, ‘Taake my jumper, child, and go along home! Us can manage now and you can ride Sam’s pony backalong, and Passon’s boy can return un in the mornin’.’ Gratefully Rachel slipped on the soiled jumper that hung about her like a cloak, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt and giving a final, fascinated glance at Hazel, as she sat propped against the rear wall of the cave, the child at her breast. Then she went out to find Keith and said, apologising for her appearance, ‘It’s Joannie Potter’s jumper! I . . . I had to use my blouse in there,’ but she didn’t mention her petticoat thinking that the poor boy had had a surfeit of embarrassments that evening. It was when he helped her climb up behind him and she clasped him round the waist, that she began to feel happier and more serene than she had felt in twelve months for somehow, after all that had happened back there in the cave, his angular body was a source of comfort and what had occurred seemed, perversely, to have given him more confidence, for he said as they crossed over Codsall Bridge, ‘You were wonderful, Rachel! I was proud of you, and some time . . . some time I’d like to . . . to speak to Mr Eveleigh about you, Rachel.’
It was not the proposal she had daydreamed about either before and since the entry of Keith Horsey into her life, but it was valid she supposed and she hugged him in silence. There was really nothing she could reply to such a delightfully old-fashioned statement of his intentions. When they reached the yard and got down, unbridling the pony and turning him loose in the duck field, Keith found an excuse to linger by the gate. She could have wished that he had sought an elbow-rest further from her own kitchen door for she could hear the clatter of dishes and the voices of the children, any one of whom might appear bawling, ‘It’s Rachel, Mum!’ for it was late enough to merit explanations. She said, therefore, ‘I must go in now, Keith dear. It’s late and Dad’s very strict about time,’ and then, without the slightest prompting on her part, he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth, and she kissed him back and ran swiftly across the cobbles towards the oblong of light in the kitchen yard. As she ran she giggled, partly with excitement but also with relish at the thought that it had taken Hazel Potter’s bastard child, born in a cave in Shallowford Woods, to convert him from a possible into a certainty.
II
There was less speculation in the Valley as to the identity of the man responsible for bringing Hazel Potter to bed than there was comment regarding her reply to every enquiry, a sullen, reiterated, ‘Tiz mine an’ my man’s, baint it?’ to which she would sometimes add the admonition directed at Joannie Potter at the time—‘Dornee pester me!’ as though requests for enlightenment on the subject were not merely impertinent but frivolous. Her sisters, who were shocked by the event, came up with a list of probables that included a half-witted crowstarver employed on the Heronslea estate and all three of the Timberlake boys. Fathers were canvassed in Coombe Bay and among the labouring population on the western side of the estate, the Potter girls reasoning that if Hazel’s lover had lived on the eastern side they would have been sure to have seen him coming and going about his shameful business. Meg, for her part, did not seek information, realising that one might as well ask a vixen to name the dog-fox that had crossed into Shallowford country when she was last in season. She was, moreover, resigned to the arrival of babies without fathers and in any case did not consider it her business. In her view any grown woman could renew herself if she felt so inclined and with whom she went about it was a personal matter. Doctor Maureen, however, had other views and after making no headway at all with Hazel consulted her husband, declaring that the father of the child should be sought out, encouraged to marry the girl or if he was disinclined, compelled to contribute towards its upkeep but John told her not to waste time and shoe leather. ‘That child has lived rough in the woods for years,’ he said, ‘and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before! It might be any one of a score of men and no one is likely to own to it.’
‘If that child is promiscuous I’m Boadicea!’ Maureen declared. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’d been raped and threatened and that’s why she’s holding her tongue!’ but John said, wearily, ‘Why do we have to put such a dramatic construction on a Potter producing a bastard? They were doing it when I came here!’
‘The circumstances are different,’ his wife said, ‘very different and not on account of the child being born in a cave. That Hazel Potter is fey for how else did she conceal her pregnancy all the time?’
‘With the help of the Great God Pan I wouldn’t wonder,’ John said, grinning and resumed his attempt to teach his seventeen-month-old son to walk a straight line across the carpet.
So Maureen turned elsewhere, questioning patients up and down the Valley but adding nothing to her knowledge. Few recalled having seen Hazel Potter during the last few months and those who had declared she was always alone. She persisted, however, and it was while casting about for some means of providing for the child’s future that she was approached by Keith Horsey, the son of the rector, whom she recalled as being a friend of the absent Ikey. Keith came to her with a practical suggestion. If Hazel would domicile herself within walking distance of Coombe Bay, he said, the rector was prepared to pay her a small weekly sum out of parish funds for cleaning the church and helping Marlowe, the sexton, keep the graveyard free of weeds. She thanked him and recalling that it was he who had summoned her the night the child was born asked if he or Ikey had any knowledge of the company Hazel kept. He was on the defensive at once.
‘Certainly not,’ he said, stiffly, ‘why should I have? Or Ikey either for that matter!’
‘Oh come, lad,’ she chaffed. ‘I’m not suggesting it was either one of you but you and that lass you’re courting walk the woods of an evening whereas Ikey, whenever he was home, was through them on horseback often enough. He’s sharp enough to have noticed and remembe
red if he did see her with anyone. Will you mention it when you write?’
The boy turned aside and it seemed to her that he found the subject distasteful. Then she realised why, recalling that he had burst into the cave and seen the girl in labour and it had probably been a considerable shock to a person as shy and withdrawn as Keith Horsey. He said, finally, ‘I’ll write and ask Ikey but I don’t think he’ll know anything. Won’t the girl say?’
‘No,’ said Maureen, ‘she won’t but for your information that isn’t at all unusual in these cases.’
‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely surprised. ‘Why should that be so?’
‘All manner of reasons—fear, a bribe perhaps, or even mistaken loyalty. Sometimes they break down when they are faced with angry parents but this won’t happen in Hazel’s case, for that gypsy mother of hers thinks no more of a bastard than a litter of kittens under the stairs.’
He flushed and she was sorry she hadn’t chosen her words more carefully but after repeating his father’s offer he left abruptly and she tackled her husband again, this time on the subject of accommodation for Hazel.
‘There’s a half-ruined cottage near the old mill a mile or so along the river road,’ she said. ‘Do you think Paul would do it up and let the girl have it on a peppercorn rent?’
Post of Honour Page 4