Weldon, Fay - Novel 07

by Puffball (v1. 1)

  “Mrs. Lee-Fox is in good hands.”

  “It’s a punishment on me,” said Mabs, and began to cry, though what was the punishment she did not make clear. Eddie had stopped crying. He stayed in the car while the doctor drove back to the hospital. This time they did not pass a policeman, and when they reached the hospital the doctor had to stamp and roar to get attention, by which time he feared all hope for Debbie was probably lost.

  “Two emergencies in one afternoon,” grumbled the theatre sister. “You can tell it’s Sunday.”

  Birth

  Bells rang, red lights glowed, people ran.

  Liffey had been in the operating theatre for twenty minutes. She had gone in fully conscious, been given one injection to reduce the secretions from her throat and mouth, another one that part paralysed her and prevented her struggling, and an anaesthetic that was of necessity light, in case the baby was anaesthetised too. Liffey sensed the passage of time and of terrible, painful, momentous events. Of struggle and endeavour, and of the twists and turns of fate, and of life taking form out of rock.

  “Was there breakthrough?” enquired the anaesthetist later. “Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to judge, not too much, not too little, and there wasn’t much time.”

  The foetal heart had showed no signs of distress. The baby’s supply of oxygen remained adequate, in spite of the knot in the umbilical cord, in spite of the haemorrhage behind the placenta, in spite of the frequency of the uterine contractions —each one obstructing the blood and oxygen supply to the placenta for, at their height, one minute in every three—in spite, in fact, of anything, everything Mabs could do. The umbilical knot remained loose; the area of haemorrhage was limited; the placenta remained able to provide enough oxygen in two minutes to carry the baby through the next. The heart remained at a steady 140 beats, falling to 120 at the height of a contraction.

  “Lots of time for baby,” said someone, surprised. “What a lucky baby. Not much for mother, though.”

  The uterus had to be emptied before it could fully contract. Until it was fully contracted it would continue to bleed. Difficult to drip as much into Liffey as she dripped out. The surgeon made an inverse incision from side to side across the abdomen just above Liffey’s pubic mound. He then separated the muscles of the lower abdominal wall and opened the abdominal cavity. The bladder was then dissected free from the lower part of the anterior of the uterus. A transverse incision was then made in the lower uterine segment, exposing the membranes within. The baby’s head slipped out of the surgeon’s hand, membranes closed.

  Mabs seated herself, coincidentally, in the waiting room of the theatre block, and took up a magazine and flicked through it. Poor woman, thought the voluntary worker who organised the tea bar there.

  The baby, conscious of distress, moved violently, tumbled and turned and pulled the umbilical knot tighter, and the surgeon reexposed the membranes and found the baby’s buttocks, and Liffey, conscious of struggle within, tried to cry out and could not.

  The surgeon found the head, used forceps. He sweated. “Little beggar,” he said. “You seem to like it in there. If only you knew how unsafe it was.”

  The surgeon lifted out the baby.

  “A boy,” someone said. Someone always names the sex. Everyone wants to know. It defines the event. Liffey heard.

  “I’m really sorry,” said the anaesthetist later. “Still, we do our best.”

  “At least,” said Liffey, “I am left with a sense of occasion, not just in one minute and out the next.”

  The baby was held upside down. The baby did nothing. Then the baby breathed, spluttered, coughed and cried, and tried to turn itself the right way up, slithering in restraining hands. His colour was pinkish blue, changing rapidly to pink, first the lips, then the skin around the mouth, then the face. He was covered, beneath the slippery vernix, with fine hair. His muscles were tense.

  “Doesn’t seem premature. Got her dates wrong, I expect.” The umbilical cord was clamped in two places, and divided between the clamps.

  “A knot too. See that? Only eight lives left.”

  “About five, I’d say. How far did she walk?”

  “A mile, someone said.”

  “Christ!”

  More anaesthesia. The placenta was removed. Ergometrine, to contract the uterus.

  “How much has she lost?”

  “Two, three pints since she’s been in. Can’t say, before.”

  The bleeding stopped. A morsel of puffball, undigested— for during labour the digestive processes stop—rose up in Liffey’s gullet, propelled by retching muscles as the anaesthetic deepened, and such was its light yet bulky texture, might well have been inhaled had the nurse stopped bothering to exert pressure on Liffey’s neck. But she was young and frightened and doing as she was told. So much so that Liffey’s neck retained the bruises for some weeks. But she lived.

  Mabs, sitting outside in the waiting room, was conscious of defeat, and sighed and was brought a cup of tea by the voluntary worker.

  Repair

  The incision in Liffey’s now firmly contracted uterus was repaired with catgut. The bruised bladder was stitched back over the lower uterine segment. Liffey’s Fallopian tubes and ovaries were inspected. They looked young, healthy, and capable of function in the future. The anterior abdominal wall was sutured. The incision in the skin was then closed with individual stitches.

  “I wouldn’t want to do that again,” said the surgeon. “Next?”

  The baby lay in an incubator in the special-care unit. His temperature was 98 degrees. His heartbeat, 120 at the moment of delivery, had fallen to 115, and would slow gradually over the next three days to between 80 and 100, where it would stay for the rest of his life. He breathed at 45 breaths a minute, with an occasional deep sighing breath. The breathing came mostly from the abdomen—the chest itself moved very little. He grunted a little, but that would soon stop. He was immune for the time being to measles, mumps and chicken pox, thanks to antibodies present in Liffey’s system which had crossed the placenta.

  With his first breath he had inhaled some 50 cubic centimetres of air, opening up the respiratory passages in his lungs, forcing blood through the pulmonary arteries, establishing an adult type of circulation. He weighed six pounds and six ounces, he was nineteen and a half inches long. Grasp, sucking, swallowing, rooting and walking reflexes were present. That is, his palm would clench when pressure was applied to his palm, pressure on his palate would start him sucking, a handclap would make him throw out his legs and arms, he would swallow what was in his mouth, he would root for food, following touch on his jaw: when he was held under the arms and his feet touched a firm surface, he would seem to walk.

  His nails reached the ends of his fingers, which were blue, but already, unusually, changing to brown. He could not see in adult terms but could differentiate light from dark. His tear ducts worked so well he could not cry. He sneezed from time to time. He could hear. He had already passed a quantity of meconium, the sticky dark-green substance present in his intestine at birth. Liver and spleen were slightly enlarged at birth, which was normal. His testicles had descended, and his urinary passage was normal.

  Everything was well with the baby. Very well.

  In the operating theatre next door Debbie hovered between life and death and finally came down on the living side. The nurse who went to tell the mother found her eventually in a phone booth, where she was having a long, wrangling conversation with her sister Carol as to whose fault it was.

  Mabs seemed annoyed at having to bring the call to an end, rather than gratified with the message brought. “What a fuss,” she said, “about nothing!”

  Mabs did not enquire too closely into the nature of Debbie’s illness, its cause, or its prognosis.

  “I expect you’ll want to stay with your little girl till she’s out of the anaesthetic,” said the nurse.

  “Well, I can’t get back till Tucker comes with the car,” said Mabs. “How’s Mrs. Lee-Fox doing?�
�

  Liffey had been wheeled past her on the trolley, ashen white, head lolling.

  “She’ll be all right,” said the nurse. “We only lose one mother a year and we’ve already lost her!” It was their little joke.

  Murder

  Mabs heard Liffey’s baby cry. A pain struck through to Mabs’s heart, not just at this final, overwhelming evidence of her impotence to prevent this birth but at the injustice it presented. Tucker’s baby emerging from the wrong body, so that she, Mabs, was left ignored in a waiting room while the gentle, powerful concern of authority and the dramatic indications of its existence—masks and lights and drugs and ministering hands—focused down on the wrong person. Mabs sat beside Debbie’s bed and waited for her to wake up and scarcely saw her.

  Liffey woke up to ask how the baby was and was told it was fine, which she didn’t believe, and sank back into sedated sleep. When she woke next she cried with pain, exhaustion and lack of a baby to put in her arms.

  “Baby’s perfectly all right,” said the nurse. “Don’t fuss. All Caesar babies go into special care for a couple of days, that’s all.”

  The staff treated Liffey with automatic kindness—moving her up in the bed when she slipped down, changing pillows, sponging her face. The desire to empty her bruised bladder was enormous; the ability to do so lacking: the pain and humiliation of being lifted to use a bedpan overwhelming. She had more drugs.

  She remembered the baby.

  “Don’t let Mabs get the baby,” she said. Of course this was hospital, and Mabs was at the farm, but Liffey kept saying the same thing: “Bring the baby here. Please bring the baby here,” and they promised her they would to keep her quiet, knowing her sense of time was confused.

  The Almoners’ Department tried to trace her husband, but he could not be found at his office and had a new secretary who was not helpful. They did rather better with the Personnel Department, which proffered the information that Mr. Lee- Fox might well be having a minor breakdown, that this sometimes happened to executives under stress at the time of a major life event, of which having a first baby was certainly one. They were concerned but not anxious, and thanked the hospital for its help.

  Liffey lapsed back into slumber and pain and woke to find Mabs in the room. Liffey tried to sit up but could not. She had no strength in her abdomen, thighs, arms or shoulders.

  “Well, well,” said Mabs. “Feeling better, are we? Congratulations!”

  Liffey said nothing.

  “I never had to have a Caesar,” said Mabs. “Perhaps you have narrow hips? You should have taken some of my rosemary tea. I always drink it when Pm pregnant and never have any trouble. Is Richard pleased?”

  Liffey said nothing.

  “I do think a girl’s easier for a man to accept,” said Mabs, “but there’s not much we can do about that. Do you mind me just chatting on? Don’t talk if it tires you. I know what it’s like by now. The doctor told me you lost a lot of blood too. Why didn’t you come down to me instead of setting off like that all by yourself? Mind you, the phone was out of order. Eddie broke it, the naughty boy; I didn’t half wallop him. Debbie was taken ill with appendix, and of course the one time l really needed the phone, it wasn’t working.”

  “Is it visiting hours?” asked Liffey. Perhaps she was dreaming Mabs?

  “No,” said Mabs, “it isn’t. I’m living in, with Debbie. She’s been quite poorly. Isn’t it a coincidence, the two of us here together? So I can pop in any time I please. Where’s baby?”

  Dreamt or not, Liffey wasn’t replying to that.

  “In the special-care unit, I suppose?” went on Mabs. “I’ll just nip down and see him. Poor little mite, all wired up. No baby of mine ever went into special care.”

  Mabs saw the bruises on Liffey’s neck. “Who ever tried to strangle you?” she asked as she left. “Now who would want to do a thing like that?”

  And Mabs was gone.

  I dreamed it, thought Liffey. There was a great hollow under her ribs where the baby used to live, and a hole in that part of her mind that the baby had used. She had endured some kind of fearful loss. Liffey sat up and cried for help.

  No one came.

  No. She had not dreamed Mabs. Mabs had been real.

  Liffey remembered Richard’s going, the pain, the broken telephone, the slammed door, the blood, Eddie, the walk. Mabs. Witch. Murderess.

  Liffey got out of bed. She took her legs with her hands and dropped them over the side of the bed and let the rest of her fall after them. Once she was out of bed and on the floor, progress was possible. Surprisingly, movement begat movement. Liffey began to crawl. She still wore a white surgical gown, tied with tapes across her back.

  Mabs was already at the special-care unit, at the far end of a wedge of post-natal wards. The walls of a corridor turned to glass, and there, behind the glass, under bright yet muted lights, were ranks of plastic incubators, and in them babies, wired up to monitors by nostril and umbilicus, or linked to drips of life-support machinery—tiny mewling scraggy things.

  Baby Lee-Fox, there only for observation, unwired, unlinked, lay in a far corner, breathing, sighing, snuffling, doing well. Masked nurses sat and watched or moved about the rows on quiet, urgent missions. An orderly at the door handed out masks and gowns for parents and close relatives.

  “Baby Lee-Fox?” asked Mabs. She looked like many women in these parts, large and strong, yet soft.

  The name Lee-Fox, with its pallid hyphenated ring, its overtones of refined home counties, sat strangely on her tongue, but not strangely enough for the orderly to doubt Mabs’s right to be where she was so clearly at home, amongst these small babies hovering between dark and light, at that moment of existence at which the ability, the desire, to go forward peaks again towards reluctance.

  At Honeycomb Cottage, doors and windows stood wide. Rain had fallen in the night and splashed unheeded on to papers and books. A column of ants now filed through the sunny front door and into the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. The rain had washed out most but not all of the marks where Richard, in his anxiety to be away, had scored the lane with his tyres.

  Up at Cadbury Farm, Tucker was in charge. He liked being alone with the children. They sat round the kitchen table eating large plates of cornflakes liberally sprinkled with sugar and swimming in milk. Audrey made a cake. Eddie sat on his father’s knee and poked his fingers up Tucker’s nostrils. They missed Debbie. The radio was on. All remembered a time when Mabs had been kind, and Tucker felt at fault for not having earned them, of late, a remission. Each remission of course meant another mouth to feed for the next fifteen years. Now, it seemed, he had earned one by proxy.

  Mabs leaned over Baby Lee-Fox. Mabs laughed. The tone of the laugh disturbed a nurse, who came over and looked as well.

  Baby Lee-Fox clenched and unclenched fists, struggled to open eyes.

  “Lovely little baby,” said the nurse. “Of course Caesar babies usually are. They don’t get so squashed.”

  Mabs laughed again: it was a strange deflating sound, as if all the air and spirit were draining swiftly out of a balloon, so that it tore and raced and hurled itself about a room before lying damp and still.

  “Is it that funny?” asked the nurse, puzzled.

  “He’s the image of his father,” said Mabs.

  “Just like Richard,” said Mabs to Liffey, laughing again. Liffey had been picked up from the floor outside the special-care unit and put back to bed, and the drips set up again, and Baby Lee-Fox brought into her room, since she was apparently earnest in her desire to see her baby.

  “Why shouldn’t he be?” asked Liffey wearily.

  Mabs smiled, a really happy, generous smile.

  “All’s well that ends well,” said Mabs, “and Debbie’s fever has broken. If they’d let me give her feverfew in the first place, we’d have had none of this trouble. What a fuss they make in here about every little thing.”

  Mabs leant over and picked Liffey’s baby out of its crib. Sh
e did it tenderly and reverently. Liffey was not afraid. Mabs had dwindled to her proper scale. The world no longer shook at her footfall. Mabs handed Liffey the baby.

  “But where’s Richard?” asked Mabs, all innocence.

  Liffey’s memory of the Sunday lunch was vague, overshadowed by the events that had followed it. She remembered, as one remembers on waking from sleep, the feeling tone of the preceding day rather than its actual events—that Richard had left angry and that this had been a practical inconvenience rather than an emotional blow. As to the details of the rest, they seemed irrelevant.

  The baby lay in Liffey’s arms, snuffling and rooting for food. She sensed its triumph. None of that was important, the baby reproved her, they were peripheral events leading towards the main end of your life, which was to produce me. You were always the bit-part player: that you played the lead was your delusion, your folly. Only by giving away your life do you save it.

  “The little darling,” said Mabs. “How could anyone hurt a baby?”

  The baby smiled.

  “Only wind,” said Mabs, startled.

  “It was a smile,” said Liffey.

  “Babies don’t smile for six weeks,” said Mabs uneasily.

  The baby smiled again.

  Resignation

  Liffey slept. The baby slept. Mabs went home.

  “It wasn’t your baby after all,” she said to Tucker, and they went upstairs to try for another one. This time sufficient of Tucker’s sperm survived the hazardous journey up to Mabs’s Fallopian tubes to rupture the walls of a recently dropped ovum—fallen rather ahead of time, by virtue of the emotion of tenderness and remorse, mixed, which had flooded Mabs when she marvelled over Baby Lee-Fox, and laughed at his looks. Richard’s bemused air of competence combined with innocence, Liffey’s gentle generosity—as if the baby, wonderfully, had captured both their good qualities as they flew, and let the others pass.