by Anne Bennett
Stan shook his head. ‘Been too much for months but I was too stubborn to admit to it and the old girl can barely manage the locks now and she’s been getting bronchitis every winter for the last few years with the damp and all.’ He stopped and then went on with a catch in his voice, ‘I mean, it isn’t as if I have anyone to take over with my family wiped out with TB before they reached double figures.’
‘So where will you go?’
‘Wife’s sister,’ Stan said. ‘It was always on the cards when we retired anyroad and she is not a bad old stick. Mabel can’t wait.’
‘God, Stan, I’m going to miss you.’
‘I ain’t going a million miles away,’ Stan said and then gave a rueful smile and said, ‘Not straight away anyway. I’ll still be in Aston. Albert Road, Mabel’s sister lives this side of the park. If you’ve time you can pop along to see me now and again. I’d like that.’
‘I will,’ Billy promised.
‘Now about this job transporting the workers,’ Stan said. ‘They need someone to take it on quick, like, because the people can’t get there else, unless they walk the length of Tyburn Road and that’s a hefty walk when you have a day’s work in front of you and it would be worse at the end of the day. Anyway, one of the other boaties did it today.’
‘Maybe he might want to take it on permanent,’ Billy said. ‘Anyone with any sense would cos they would get regular money, like.’
‘Maybe he would if I’d told him what was up,’ Stan said. ‘But I took care not to let him see me and Mabel just said I was a bit under the weather but would probably be all right in the morning.’
‘But—’
‘Look, Billy,’ said Stan. ‘You are a plucky young man and so far you’ve been dealt a bad hand in life. ’Bout time someone gave you a hand up. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation and you take it into the management when you take the workers in tomorrow morning. Oh, and it will need two cos you’ll be pulling the tender along with all the workers on so can you get hold of that fellow I’ve seen helping you a time or two?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Billy said confidently. ‘I imagine he’ll be fairly easy to find. And he likes the life on the canal as much as I do.’
And that’s just how it was. Billy found Andy sheltering from the sleety rain under the bridge by Aston Station and he was both gratified and relieved at Billy’s news and they walked down towards Aston Cross together to seal their new venture with a pint in the Gunmakers’ Arms.
By the end of October Andy had been working with Billy for a month and thought in many ways he had never been happier. There was a tug at his heart though every time he thought of Celia and he would wonder afresh what had happened to change the nature of the girl he thought he had known so completely. He never confided in Billy and so Billy thought he was over any romantic thoughts he’d had about the girl who had ended up betraying him and thought Andy too sensible a man to waste time or effort thinking about that little slut.
Andy was just glad that he was too busy to think about Celia much in the day, but when he was in bed at night thoughts tumbled in his head and disturbed his sleep. He could have done with sleeping deeper for they had to be up early to get the workers to Dunlop’s so that they could clock in by half past seven. And before they could set out, one of them had to collect the horse from where he was stabled and feed him and shackle him to the barge, while the other would cook up a pan of porridge for breakfast.
He didn’t mind the early morning or the wintry weather for, as he said to Billy, you didn’t just farm on good days. He was easy and relaxed with Billy and there was no task on the barge that Andy hadn’t learnt to do and each night he bedded down on the bed that Billy had shared with his brothers while Billy slept in the bed his parents had used. Andy was now once more clean-shaven because although water wasn’t plentiful in a barge, for it had to be collected from the taps along the towpath, there was a damn sight more than there was when he lived on the streets.
In fact life was so much better and he said so once to Billy and thanked him and coloured in embarrassment. ‘Oh give over, man.’
‘All right,’ Andy said with a grin. ‘I just want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and so settled do I feel here that I am going to do something I have been promising I would do as soon as I could and that is write to my parents and let them know I am alive and give them my news.’
‘Do you think that wise?’ Billy said. ‘Thought you said this was all hush and hush. If you give them this address they might trace that Celia too.’
‘Well I’m not with Celia now, so that hardly applies any more,’ Andy said. ‘Anyway we live the other side of Killybegs and it is highly unlikely they would even hear about me running off with Celia Mulligan from Donegal Town. I never said a word about her in my letters home when I worked for the Fitzgeralds, not that I wrote home that often, but when I did, I mean that’s hardly the sort of thing you write to your parents, so they’ll likely know nothing about it. Anyway it was months ago. Someone else will be in the headlines by now.’
‘So are you going to mention Celia at all?’
‘No, course not,’ Andy said. ‘That would set the cat among the pigeons. I will just tell them of the canal and all and about the work I do and I will start tomorrow for it’s Sunday and so I will have more time.’
Andy took his time over the letter. He didn’t give any reason for leaving Ireland other than the fact that he wanted to try his hand in England and apologised for not writing earlier but said he hadn’t any permanent address. He said nothing about the lines of the unemployed nor how many months he had been one of them, but said he was lucky for he had met a young fellow like himself called Billy Brown who owned a barge but who was alone in the world after his brothers had all been killed in the war and his parents succumbed to illness afterwards.
He said how difficult it was to work single-handed on the barge and so now they worked together and he explained the work they did, including ferrying the Dunlop workers.
Writing that though made him think and when Billy came back, for he had taken the chance to see Stan, who he said was fading fast, Andy said, ‘I know it’s doing us good and everything ferrying the Dunlop workers but wasn’t it a damned stupid thing to do to build a factory and not have the road built leading to it?’
‘It was, I suppose, but that was the war, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it?’
‘Course,’ Billy went on. ‘Think, if it hadn’t been for that, the road would have been built this long while. I mean, they knocked down buildings that would be in the way of it and all but when the war was declared most building of anything stopped.’
‘I suppose it would be costly,’ Andy said. ‘To fight a war, I mean.’
‘I’ll say,’ Billy agreed. ‘Cos every bullet fired costs summat and so do the guns to fire them, not to mention tanks and stuff.’
‘The road will be built eventually now though,’ Andy said. ‘I mean, we see men working on it.’
‘It will,’ Billy agreed. ‘And it will be finished and tarmacked and tram tracks laid and trams will run all along the road and we will have to find another source of income but, until then, let’s not worry about it for it won’t happen today or tomorrow. Anyroad, did you get your letter finished?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And did you give them an address to write back?’
‘How could I?’
‘Mmm, difficult,’ Billy said. ‘As long as we’re still doing the run you could have letters sent to the office at the locks where we drop the Dunlop’s people off.’
Andy shook his head. ‘I just wrote to let my parents know I was still in the land of the living, particularly my mother because I know she worries about me and never wanted me to leave home in the first place.’
‘Yeah,’ Billy said with feeling. ‘It’s mothers do the worrying all right.’
‘I’m not interested in replies though,’ Andy said. ‘They might ask me awkward questions
I would rather not answer.’
‘Like about that Celia?’
‘Not specially her,’ Andy said. ‘Cos I doubt they will know anything about that, but anything I’d rather not discuss with them, like why I was working on a barge for example.’
‘Why wouldn’t you?’
‘That’s exactly it,’ Andy said. ‘You know, when we were coming over here I thought I would end up working in a factory somewhere because people said Birmingham was the city of a thousand trades and so I thought there might be more factory jobs going. Now I’ve never worked in a factory and though I would have taken a job there, taken a job anywhere if I’d been offered one, I doubt I would have been as contented as I am at the moment.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Billy said with a satisfied smile on his face. ‘Because I am too.’
FOURTEEN
As Andy was writing his letter, Annabel’s pains began. There had been more than a few false alarms in the last month and the doctor had been a regular visitor for he’d insisted they send for him as soon as Annabel’s labour started. Celia told Henry to tell the doctor she thought it was the real thing this time. He’d had the phone fitted a few months before, primarily for just such an occasion, but Celia was too nervous of it to ever think of using it so in a way she was glad that it was Sunday and Henry was home.
However, the doctor was not at home and all his housekeeper could tell Henry was that he had gone off with his wife and she didn’t know where, but she said he would be back at tea time. However, it was a long time till tea time and Celia was glad Cook offered to forgo her day off to give her a hand and Janey said she would take over Sadie’s duties in the kitchen because Annabel refused to release Celia’s hand, which she gripped so tightly when the pains came that Celia felt the bones grind together.
Never had time appeared to go so slowly. Celia talked to Annabel of all manner of things in an effort to take her mind off the griping pains. She knew they were in for a long haul because after three hours the pains were still coming twenty minutes apart and so the birth was nowhere near imminent. She knew too the pains had to get a lot stronger and closer together before the baby was anywhere near ready to be born and she did wonder how Annabel would cope because she was finding the pains hard to bear now.
Henry had been woken up early because of the unusual activity in Annabel’s bedroom and when Celia came into the kitchen, having eased her hand from Annabel’s to make them all a cup of tea, it was to see Henry seated at the table, an unread newspaper in front of him. Celia saw the anxiety reflected in his deep brown eyes as he said, ‘God, Celia, I heartily wish Annabel had agreed to do as the doctor wanted that time and gone into the hospital. I mean, I’m not decrying what you have done or anything but …’
‘I know you’re not,’ Celia said and though she was concerned herself about Annabel she knew it would be no good loading that onto Henry too, so she continued, ‘And really so far everything is as it should be. These pains are normal so don’t let’s worry before we have to.’
‘I suppose,’ Henry said, but he still looked doubtful. ‘And then the bloody doctor is out after he expressed such concern and said we must send for him the minute she started.’
Celia gave a slight laugh. ‘Henry, you can hardly blame the man for taking a few hours off. He’s hardly been away from the house this past month and he only saw and examined her the day before yesterday and there was no indication then that Annabel was going to start the minute he left the house. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘it will be some hours yet before the baby is born and by then the doctor will be here should she need help.’
‘Oh God!’ Henry exclaimed. ‘Have we got hours of this?’ For now moans were coming from the bedroom.
‘’Fraid so,’ Celia said. ‘And I must make this tea and get back to her.’
Later when she brought the tea up, she said to Sadie, ‘Have you attended many births before?’
‘Bless you, ducks, over the years I’ve delivered many babies,’ Sadie said. ‘Funny that when I’ve not chick or child of my own. Course my young man was killed in the Boer War.’
‘I never knew that, Sadie.’
‘No need for you to know, ducks,’ Sadie said. ‘Just explaining like and there ain’t never been anyone else. I love babies though and each birth seems like a little miracle somehow.’
‘Some miracle,’ said Annabel with a grimace and Sadie smiled as she said, ‘When you hold this wee one in your arms all the pain won’t matter any more. Seen it time and time again.’
Celia had heard that said often and even from her own mother and yet she didn’t think this might be the case with Annabel … but only time would tell.
Another hour went by and then two and Sadie went down to the kitchen and brought more tea along with a plate of hot, buttered toast. The food put new heart into Celia who had been flagging.
‘Come on,’ she encouraged Annabel. ‘You must eat too for there’s a lot of work ahead.’ Annabel was only able to nibble at the toast though, but she gulped gratefully at the tea.
‘Everything all right in the kitchen?’ asked Celia
Sadie nodded. ‘Janey is making a good fist of putting a meal together for this evening for Lord Lewisham will need to eat even if we don’t have time.’
‘Yes, what about his lunch?’
‘Oh, I advised him to go for a long walk and get his lunch while he is out,’ Sadie said. ‘I mean, he’s sitting there like a spare dinner and really it’s no place for a man. I said he could take his time for there will be nothing happening for hours yet.’
‘What do you mean?’ Annabel gasped from the bed. ‘I can’t take much more of this.’
Sadie smiled but in a kindly way. ‘No way round it I’m afraid, my dear.’
Sadie was gentle with Annabel but when she threw the covers back to examine her she was surprised how small her stomach was with the birth so close.
‘She hasn’t eaten properly for weeks, you know that,’ Celia said.
‘Didn’t know she was this small though,’ Sadie said. ‘Let’s have a look at you anyway.’
She took her time, going round and round the small mound pressing firmly but gently here and there, while Celia found she was holding her breath.
‘Is everything all right?’ Annabel asked, reaching for Celia’s hand as another pain gripped her.
‘Coming along nicely,’ Sadie said. ‘Don’t know what the doctor will say, Miss Cissie, when he sees the size of you.’
‘How’s she really doing?’ Celia asked Sadie quietly as she moved away from the bed.
‘She’s doing well considering,’ said Sadie, ‘but from what I could see the cervix hasn’t moved.’
However, as the hours ticked by the pains grew suddenly stronger and closer together and sweat stood out on Annabel’s face, which Celia constantly wiped away. Her hair was fanned out behind her on the pillow and it looked dull and dank and in her eyes Celia read raw, naked fear.
Some time later Sadie toiled up with a dinner that Janey had cooked. Annabel couldn’t eat but Celia and Sadie were grateful for the food and it was as Celia carried the plates back down again that Henry called out to her, ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s very frightened now and is finding the pain hard to bear.’
‘I think I would too,’ Henry admitted. ‘I would have said that I am as brave as the next man, but I don’t know how you women stand it.’
‘That might be because we’ve no alternative,’ Celia said.
‘I suppose,’ Henry said and then went on, ‘I wanted to ask you something anyway. Do you think that I should tell my parents that Annabel is in labour?’
‘Would they be interested?’
‘I don’t know,’ Henry admitted. ‘But have they a right to know?’
‘Leave it till the baby is born and then you can discuss what’s to become of the child as well,’ Celia advised. ‘You never know but the sight of a baby might heal the rift. I’ve seen it happen before and, however the chi
ld was conceived, he or she is still their grandchild.’
‘Yes you’re right, of course,’ Henry said. ‘The point is I feel so useless.’
‘We all do,’ Celia confessed. ‘All we can do is make Annabel as comfortable as possible.’
When she returned to the bedroom it was to find Sadie had tied a towel to the bedhead.
‘For when the pains get bad,’ she told Annabel and Celia remembered her mother being told the same thing. Annabel though was staring at Sadie with horror.
‘What d’you mean when the pains get bad?’ she demanded in almost a shriek. ‘They’re bad now. They’re tearing me in two as it as. I don’t want your stupid towel. I’ll hold Celia’s hand.’
‘If you hold Celia’s hand any tighter than you are at the moment she could easily lose the use of it,’ Sadie said. ‘Anyway you’ll have to push soon and the towel may help then.’
‘And I’ll still be here,’ Celia said soothingly as she wiped the beads of perspiration from Annabel’s face with a damp cloth. Annabel sighed and Celia’s heart bled for her.
‘I’m so tired,’ Annabel complained.
‘Well neither of us got much sleep last night,’ Celia said. ‘That ache in your back meant you couldn’t get comfy in bed. Why don’t you close your eyes between contractions?’
‘Why should I? I’ll hardly sleep.’
‘You may rest though,’ Sadie said.
‘I just want it to be over, the pain to stop,’ Annabel said. ‘Does it always hurt like this?’
‘I believe so.’
‘How do women bear it?’ Annabel said. ‘Some have big families. Fancy going through this over and over again.’ She looked across at Sadie and said, ‘Can’t you hurry it up a bit?’
Sadie shook her head. ‘’Fraid not,’ she said. ‘Babies come when they are ready and not before.’
Annabel sank back on the pillows, too exhausted to talk any more, and as the minutes and hours slipped by she eventually closed her heavy eyes and Celia sat back on the chair by the bed with a small sigh of relief.