The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

  *

  Worst of all, Patrick kept praising her; he said he didn’t know how she managed it all. He was trying to encourage her, though it made her feel alone, too, that her experience was untranslatable, obscure to him. He did not perceive that she was half-mad with fatigue, and yet she rose each day and knew she must play her part, she must be a mother to her son, she must be measured with him, never raise her voice to him, even when her blood was curdling with frustration. Yet often she felt so happy, so overwhelmed with love – everything was incoherent and ragged and she could not explain it to Patrick; she mostly blamed him when things were hard. She wanted him to experience it too – the relentlessness, how it did not end, and you could never rest, how it was beautiful and it smashed you to pieces at the same time – but he usually came home after Calumn was in bed, found her collapsed and monosyllabic on the sofa. She told herself each day, she must remember, he was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, this would soon be over – then everything got clouded, this chemical exhaustion took hold of her, and she slipped again.

  *

  She felt a low pain in her belly, the sort of grinding cramps she had been experiencing for a day or so. In her complaining body, she was desperate for her pregnancy to end, so she hesitated to question this augury, fearful of misdiagnosing it as labour. She didn’t want to attract any attention from vengeful gods or in any way leave herself open to charges of hubris. She rubbed her belly, felt the baby kick, a palpable swelling which was a foot, a tiny vengeful foot, she thought, because the kick was so hard and probing. A reproach, perhaps. Impatience or apprehension, if a foetus could feel either. The pain was surging within her, and she tried to remember how it had been last time, how it had felt. Then, she had been optimistic; in the final weeks of her pregnancy she had phoned the hospital at the first sign of a contraction. They had rushed off, she and Patrick, like eager neophytes. They arrived and were sent away again. Braxton Hicks, the midwives told them patiently. The body practising for real labour. Nothing to worry about. Do call if you’re concerned about anything. Three times they tried to scale the ramparts and found the hospital fortified against them. The entrance was barred; she was not ready. When she finally gained access to her sterilised room, things moved efficiently, to a timetable. A nice quick birth, the doctor said.

  *

  Another pain, and Brigid breathed more deeply, her instincts beginning to help her. She was planetary in her girth, an ancient breeding cow. She was whole with child, swollen beyond any size that seemed proportionate or reasonable. She was entirely child, she felt; her body had been colonised. It was not herself, as she had been, she had become someone else; it made her uncertain if she really had a self at all. She was surely half-mad, her brain stewed in hormones, yet now she took Calumn in her arms, tickling him under the chin. He turned to her, smiled toothily, said ‘Mamma,’ and she said, ‘Hello baby. Hello, hello lovely baby baby,’ and he said, ‘Ahdoorschnefatibumaha,’ some proto-talk she couldn’t interpret. She kissed his warm soft skin, breathed in the wafting beautiful smell of him, baby shampoo and milk. She kissed him and held him to her, whispering in his ear, telling him how precious he was and how much she loved him. Though she felt spiky and savage within, she never doubted that she loved her son. Her love was infinite; she sensed there was a deep infinite core of love, and then a lesser love, her surface emotion, where everything got sullied by quotidian demands, and mingled with guilt.

  *

  ‘… The Moon, a novel by Michael Stone … its central subject the … epidemic of childbed fever …,’ she heard the radio say, and that made her shake her head. If Patrick had been here, he would have acted swiftly, banished the voice. Instead the phone was ringing, so she said to Calumn, ‘Come on sweetie, let’s go and see who this is.’ He beamed up at her, made a sound like a siren, his current favourite noise. ‘Nee-nar nee-nar nee-nar,’ said Calumn, as Brigid led him slowly along the corridor, knowing she had twelve rings to get the phone. She caught it on the final ring, heard her mother saying, ‘Hello Brigid,’ as she lifted the handset. Calumn dropped to the floor and began picking at a piece of fluff. Brigid smiled at him. ‘Hi Mum, yes, fluff, Calumn,’ she said. ‘It’s called fluff.’

  ‘Feeff,’ he said, glancing up at her, seeking her approval.

  ‘That’s exactly right. How are you, Mum?’

  ‘Fwuff,’ said Calumn, taking the phone book from a shelf and opening it, glancing down the pages as if in search of something.

  ‘How are you feeling dear? Any signs?’ her mother was saying. Yes, there was a star above the house last night, Brigid wanted to say, and an old crone shook her stick at me this morning. But she said, ‘No, no signs. I feel as usual.’

  ‘Oh, it must be awful to be so overdue,’ her mother said. ‘So terribly boring.’

  ‘It’s not that overdue,’ said Brigid. She had been saying this to everyone for two weeks, ever since her baby had been diagnosed as late. As if there was a deadline, as if they were falling behind. Below her, Calumn was meditatively tearing at the pages of the phone book, while Brigid watched and couldn’t face bending down to salvage it.

  ‘You can’t have heard about Dorothy, about poor Dorothy’s baby,’ said her mother.

  ‘Yes, I did hear. I must send her a card.’

  ‘You know, she thought like you. And she was much younger. At your age Brigid, you have to take care. You sound terribly tired.’

  ‘I’m not too bad. I could last another week or two, if necessary.’ She didn’t believe that at all. She had plainly established that it was bad, that she could barely suffer another hour of it. Yet there was something within her, some instinct she couldn’t entirely command, which made her disagree nonetheless. She said, ‘I’ll write Dorothy a card today …’

  ‘You do understand that it’s another person’s life, don’t you? I always think there are points to make and points to waive, Brigid. Battles to fight and battles to cede.’

  ‘How are you, Mum?’

  ‘I’m not the subject under debate, Brigid.’

  ‘Nee. Nar,’ said Calumn. ‘Aidahadabok.’

  ‘Look, it’s all fine. I’m fine. That’s right, sweetie, it’s a book,’ said Brigid. Now Calumn dropped the phone book, having torn it to his satisfaction, found a ten-pence piece on the floor and stuffed it into his mouth. There began a mighty struggle between mother and baby for possession of the coin, mother with her fingers in the baby’s mouth, baby throwing back his head, trying to clamp his lips shut. Prising open his mouth she seized the object. He began a screaming protest so she gave him a pen to chew. He sat on the floor, instantly mollified, busy with the wonder and strangeness of a pen.

  ‘There’s absolutely no need to play the martyr. At your age they would induce you like a shot. Nobody in their right mind would deny you an induction.’

  Calumn had dropped the pen and was trying to drag the phone away from her, accompanying his endeavours with insistent little yelps and squeals.

  ‘What on earth is up with Calumn this morning? Is he ill?’

  ‘No, no, he’s all right,’ Brigid said, trying to smile at Calumn. ‘He just needs his morning snack. And a friend is coming soon. I’d better go.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Well, I was phoning to say I’m just at the hairdresser’s. So I can drop round after I finish here.’

  ‘Really Mum, there’s no need to put yourself out.’

  ‘Oh no, I’ll just drop round with a couple of things.’

  It was improbable; her mother was coming to assess her. Now she took the phone back from Calumn again, tried him with the pen but he shook his head, knocked it out of her hand.

  ‘What about later, later today? It’s just, I have a friend coming this morning,’ said Brigid, as Calumn’s wails rose in pitch, and he lunged for the phone again.

  ‘Oh, I won’t stay long,’ said her mother.

  *

  Defeated, Brigid put the phone down and turned to her son. She smiled down at him, though he twisted in
her arms, kicked against her. ‘Come on sweetie, come on,’ she said. She took his hand and danced him along, ‘Bouncy bouncy bouncy. Bouncy bouncy bouncy boy, look how we’re bouncing along.’ He began to chuckle. He lifted his head and looked delighted again. His energy amazed her, especially now she had slumped so consummately. It made her glad, that he was so enchanted by everything, so eager to know it, feel it, eat it – his appetites were robust and she admired that. She watched him, from far away – as if he was a beacon on a hill, and she was in the shadows, far below. He was radiant; he really burned with life – and she wondered if this unborn child – kicking now within her, pushing against the prison walls – would be as radiant as her son.

  *

  ‘Shall we go and have some grub grub?’ she said to Calumn, kissing his ear, and he recognised the words and smiled back. ‘Dah,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Let’s bounce into the kitchen,’ she said. Bouncy, bouncy, gub gub, they said – Calumn with his awkward little stomping movements, pausing from time to time to examine some fleck of dust. Gub gub, they said as they passed into the kitchen. The baby world of Calumn required her to communicate in monosyllables, to submit herself to these simplified versions of her own language. ‘Bek bek,’ she said to Calumn though her mother always told her – and would tell her again, no doubt, when she arrived later – that this would stunt his development. ‘I never baby-talked to you,’ her mother would say. ‘That must be why I was such a prodigy,’ Brigid would reply, laughing. Her whole being was tempered for Calumn, maintained at a level he could understand – though sometimes she felt he understood far more than she thought, was even in touch with something primal and significant. She didn’t really know why she thought that but sometimes when he became pensive or when he looked at her as if he could see her more clearly than anyone else, she wondered just what he knew, what he saw. In the kitchen she grabbed the protesting form of her son, bundled him quickly into his high chair and when he began to kick and flail his arms around she said, ‘Bek bek, gub gub,’ in a loud jovial voice, kissing him. When she gave him a book he flicked through the pages, smashed it on the table then dropped it on the floor. ‘Bek bek, gub gub,’ she and Calumn said to each other, as she put some fruit on a plate and directed it towards his scrabbling hands, and he began to paw at it and drop it and sometimes eat it. Now she had a few minutes, perhaps even ten minutes, while he sat there, playing with his food, so she put water in the kettle, found some chocolate in the fridge and ate it quickly, as her son chewed on a piece of apple. She made some tea, and now she heard the radio again. Brigid listened but only in a distracted way, making encouraging faces at her son and handing him chunks of apple. Occasionally she said, ‘Yum yum,’ pointing at her food, at his food, exaggerating the movements of her mouth so he would think it was fun to eat. And on the radio she heard people talking and didn’t entirely understand them, or she absorbed a few sentences then lost the thread while she said, ‘Yummy scrummy yum,’ to Calumn.

  ‘ … debut novel by Michael Stone …’ one of the radio voices was saying.

  ‘A sort of historical novel …’

  ‘Very loosely defined …’

  *

  Brigid put bread in the toaster, drank more tea, said, ‘Yes, sweetie, that’s right, that’s absolutely right. Would you like a piece of toast? Toast and honey, yes? You like a nice piece of toast and honey don’t you?’ she said, as she waited for the toast to pop up and on the radio another voice said, ‘… yes, a doctor …’

  ‘This man … Semmelweis …’

  ‘ … rise of modern obstetrics …’

  ‘Nee-nar gub gub,’ said Calumn.

  ‘Yum, yum, delicious. Mummy has some. Mmmm, delicious. Calumn has some … Mmmm delicious …’

  ‘Dah,’ said Calumn. ‘Dah.’

  ‘The imposition of technology on ancient process …’

  ‘Hardly fair … hospitals founded with benevolent intentions … Often the women were birthing illegitimate children … nowhere else to go …’

  ‘… but the midwives fared better …’

  ‘Well, they weren’t doing the autopsies …’

  *

  Brigid shook her head, spread honey on the toast, presented it to her son. His face was smeared with food and his hands were sticky, but he was babbling happily, enjoying the small rituals of the morning. She thought it was poignant, how much he enjoyed simply being with her, having her to himself. So she felt one more stab of guilt, even though she was having this child partly for Calumn, to give him a sibling, a life companion. She had a sentimental idea that one day he would thank her. But now, he didn’t understand and simply wanted her. He smiled at her, waving his fingers towards her, trying to grab her as she leaned over him. She kissed his hot face, smoothed his hair. ‘Lovely little boy. So beautiful.’ Then she sat down beside him at the table, holding her tea. She thought of Patrick in his office, typing emails, fielding calls from strangers. Leaning over his desk, a photograph of Calumn among the books and clutter. Living through time, elsewhere, apart from her. Perhaps he would be looking at the photograph of Calumn, in an idle moment he would glance towards it … and then the phone would ring.

  *

  ‘… Budapest. Moved to Vienna as a young doctor. Failed in every other department, so had to go into obstetrics …’

  ‘Facts have been changed …’

  ‘Became obsessed with saving the lives of mothers …’

  ‘… like a plague …’

  *

  ‘Ahhh ahhh ahhh …’ said Calumn, banging his spoon on the table.

  ‘Ssh, sweetie,’ said Brigid. She wondered if this was a message, if the radio was telling her something – if she must beware. She was superstitious and not reasonable at all. When the voices said, ‘A massacre of mothers …’ she trembled and didn’t want to listen any more. She was scaring herself, trying to hold back her fears, and sometimes saying ‘sweetie’ and sometimes ‘bek bek bek’. Still she couldn’t flick the switch, in case it was important, in case there was something she should understand. Then she wanted Patrick to be with her. She remembered now that he had an important lunch today. It was dreadful timing, he had said this morning, but they wouldn’t move it. This morning he had rushed out of the house, in his smartest suit, bearing a folder thick with papers. He carried this off towards the Tube, looking determined and as if his preoccupations mattered to the world, while she stood in the doorway, heavy and becalmed. Now Calumn put a finger to his lips, tried to ‘shush’ her back. She smiled back at him, even as she heard the warning from the radio –

  ‘… swathes of orphans …’

  ‘… called the hospital a charnel house …’

  *

  Calumn dropped his cup on the floor. That stopped him from eating, while he peered into the depths beneath him, searching for the cup. Instead of leaning down to pick it up, Brigid went to the cupboard and took out another, filled it with water. Swathes of orphans, she thought, and shook her head again. Then she missed what they were saying, as she splashed water at the dishes, stacked them on the draining board. It was clear that her brain had been rearranged by months of baby care and then the fatigue of pregnancy. Two rounds of pregnancy and all the sleepless nights with Calumn had made her kinder, more altruistic perhaps, and yet more easily unnerved. Often she took refuge on the surface: she considered the business of baby mush, she considered that carefully many times a day, and she pondered the complex question of whether her son needed more protein, or whether protein pained his stomach, and sometimes she thought, ‘Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle the cow jumped over the moon …’ Despite all that, she sensed something else, she had not been aware of it before, some ancient force that kindled life within her. All her enterprises, her tangled hopes, were nothing, against this force. It made everything so very strange, and these phrases on the radio – these sanguine, clever voices – seemed to come from a world she had once inhabited, spoken in a language she had once mistaken for her own.
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  *

  ‘Here you are, sweetie,’ she said, placing the cup in Calumn’s urgent outstretched hands. ‘More water.’

  ‘Wahatar.’

  ‘Yes, very good. Water.’

  *

  ‘… ever more distant from original events …’ said the radio, but Brigid had lost track of the debate. She breathed out slowly. Briefly she had been absurd, she had been frightened, and now she had returned to the morning, her son, the water she was pouring into his cup. It was just this fatigue; it made her nearly hysterical. She was forty-two and there wasn’t much to be done if you were tired at forty-two and about to birth another child. How much more exhausted would she become? She couldn’t quite imagine it, the period after the birth. There would be the baby, a tiny thing, with its simple needs – milk, love, a warm place to sleep. After a few months she would no longer be able to imagine that she had grown the child within her; it would seem so vital and present, as if it had always been in the world. When she thought like that, she thrilled to a sense of anticipation. She was simply glad, at those moments, but that was before her thoughts strayed into plain logistics: how would she carry her babies, feed them, clothe them, wash them? How would she tend to their basic needs, when she found the needs of one so entirely engrossing? She could fill a day with Calumn’s needs; where would she fit those of another child? She could oscillate from apprehension to excitement in a minute. Now, she was thinking, she would manage. There was no alternative, and besides there were people who managed with four children, five children. They didn’t die of exhaustion. No one ever died of sleepless nights. They might lose themselves for a time, enter a shadow world of bewilderment, but they didn’t die. So with a bright smile she said to Calumn, ‘Are we finished? Have we finished second brek? All done with your second brek? Good good. Can I take your bowl and spoon away?’