Sail Upon the Land

by Josa Young

  The social workers would abide as exactly as possible by strict rules about cultural matching. A mixed-race couple would be perfect but Indian parents would also ‘advantage’ the child enormously. Damson suspected she was a most unusual sort of person in the non-judgmental Eighties to be giving up her baby.

  The midwife came in and looked at the readout from the monitor strapped to her belly, then she hit the red buzzer on the machine and it was all go.

  The doctor came hurrying in, glanced at the readout and said to the midwife: ‘Prep her. We can get to her immediately.’

  Damson was bewildered. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Baby’s a bit tired so we’re going to have to perform a caesarean. Nothing to worry about. Lucky you chose to have an epidural, we can just get it topped up and whip baby out in no time.’

  So she wasn’t going to give birth after all. First they were going to take the baby out of her, then they were going to take it away. She was overwhelmed by helplessness and began to cry. The midwife, coming back in, misunderstood. ‘Don’t worry, dear. There’s nothing to be frightened of. A caesarean is very straightforward these days. You’ll be fine.’

  Damson wiped her eyes on her indecent hospital gown. She signed the consent form, then the porter came in and she was wheeled rapidly down to the operating theatre. There she was prepped and a green curtain erected between her and the scene of the action. She didn’t like this at all but the surgeon was adamant.

  She was completely numb as they’d topped up her epidural. There was a sensation of someone rummaging. Then there was a pulling and release, a pause while they cut the cord, and a mewling cry that receded away from her.

  ‘At least it’s alive,’ she thought.

  No one popped a friendly face around her curtain to tell her the happy news. Clearly the staff didn’t think it was appropriate.

  She lay like a chest of drawers that a burglar had tipped on its back and ransacked. Tears prickled her closed eyes. Then she was aware that someone was pulling her back together, stuffing things in any old how and locking her up tight. After a while, she ventured, ‘Is the baby all right?’

  The theatre nurse bustled round to her side of the curtain and said briskly, ‘It’s perfectly all right, the midwife’s taken it into the recovery room. Now let’s get you cleaned up. Mr Wells is just finishing off your incision and then we can get you through as well. How do you feel?’

  ‘Sad.’

  ‘Now, now, none of that. Baby’s fine and so are you. You’ll soon be back to normal.’

  Normal? How could anything ever be normal again? The tears slid down her temples and into her hair. She couldn’t find the energy to lift her hand and wipe them away.

  ‘What is it?’ she sobbed.

  ‘What’s what?’ said the nurse, whose name Damson did not want to know.

  ‘The baby. What is it?’

  ‘Oh. OK, it’s a little girl.’

  ‘What are they doing with her?’

  ‘Just warming her up a bit and sucking out some mucus and stuff from her little tummy. You were in labour for a very long time and she got a bit distressed. But she’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  The nurse looked worried for a moment and went and consulted with the obstetric surgeon. She heard him say, ‘I don’t see why not. She’s the medical student, isn’t she? She’ll be sensible.’

  He poked his head over the green curtain and said, ‘That’s you all stitched up, Miss Hayes. Nice clean scar. We can get you back into the ward and resting in a minute.’ The curtain was removed and Damson looked down at herself. Lying on her back, she wasn’t breathless or dizzy as she had been in the last couple of months with the immense weight of the baby pressing down on her vena cava and causing supine hypotensive syndrome – naturally she’d looked it up. Not caring that Mr Wells was still there, she hauled up her surgical gown and examined herself. All was flaccid flabby flatness now. A great pool of flesh veined with purple stretch marks, the scar neat and pink with staples shining in the light and her pubes shaved off. The life that had made beautiful the fidgeting mound was gone. She was heaved on to the trolley and wheeled away.

  In the recovery room Damson shifted herself up on to her elbows to see the midwife standing in front of something that looked like an infrared grill, attending to whatever was under it. All she could see was one tiny pale arm.

  ‘Do I dare call her Melissa?’ she whispered to herself. ‘My own honey?’

  After a few more minutes the midwife leant forward and lifted the baby with both hands, settling it into her left elbow and turning to Damson. She wasn’t smiling. It was probably quite difficult and embarrassing to know what to do with a baby that was to be adopted. Particularly when this was not at all like the usual care situations where social services hovered like so many ladies-in-waiting around a queen.

  She couldn’t help smiling down at the baby and then turned the smile on Damson.

  ‘She’s a beautiful little girl. Aren’t you, precious?’

  In an instant Damson was very angry. Why wasn’t she the first person to look at her baby and tell her she was beautiful?

  ‘Give her to me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s wise in the circumstances you might bond with her,’ said the midwife, holding her against her uniform. ‘Anyway, you need to lie flat for a bit. You can have a hold when we get back to the ward. We’ve arranged for you to have a side ward for a bit of peace,’ she added.

  ‘Give her to me, I need to see her now,’ Damson repeated, trying to keep her voice level. The midwife could see that she was about to lose control so she leant down towards Damson’s teary face holding the baby closer to her.

  Damson saw a rumpled rosebud with a tuft of black hair peeping out of the hospital-issue cotton blanket. She reached out a finger and touched the petal cheek. The little creature’s eyes snapped open gazing with deep purple irises at her mother. Anguish shot through her from groin to heart. She opened her mouth and the wail tore through all her careful constraint.

  ‘Now, now, no need for that. Stop making that noise, you’ll upset your baby. Come on.’

  Damson tried to shut her mouth but she was wracked by waves of love and pain that threatened to overwhelm the frail barque of her sanity.

  ‘Move her out of here quickly and get her into a side ward,’ the midwife instructed her assistant. The assistant kicked off the brake and they went in a tearful hurried procession out of the recovery room.

  Over the next few days she recovered physically. She wasn’t allowed to feed and bathe her daughter although she hovered and watched. A few times she’d held her, particularly towards the end, but there was no doubt that the midwives had been told to minimise contact. She realised that she must not call her child Melissa, so she chose something that sounded similar and Mellita went on the birth certificate. Both names meant honey after all. The adoptive parents would no doubt change it but at least she had named her on purpose first. She stayed as long as she could by complaining of pain. She was in pain but not from her scar.

  When the time came to part she was driven to the social services contact centre by Eva Williams with Mellita in a borrowed car seat beside her in the back. She leant over her daughter trying to imprint the infant face upon her mind’s eye.

  She insisted on carrying Mellita into a room painted yellow with a frieze of ducks. Eva Williams was brisk, showing her the Moses basket in which the baby was to be placed and hustling her gently to get it over with. Her heart was beating too fast as Eva stretched out her hands to take Mellita away.

  ‘Can you leave me alone with her for a minute?’

  Eva looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. I just want a moment.’

  Eva hesitated. ‘OK then, Damson, just pop her into the basket and let yourself out of the other door. I’ll be by the car. The family will be here in ten minutes and you need to be gone by then.’


  Damson sank down on one of the armchairs. What do you do when you have to fit a lifetime of mothering into ten minutes? She knew she must not cry, so she sang wordless lullabies instead and examined her baby’s hands and feet. After what seemed like seconds, she heard movement outside the door and a soft knock. She stood up, holding her little honey close to her pounding heart. Wrapping the shawl about her baby’s tiny body, she kissed her and settled her in the basket, bending over to touch Mellita’s cheek with her own. The baby never made a sound. Then she left.

  How could she have done that? Only by slamming an enormous door that reached right up to the stratosphere, across to every horizon and down into the great iron ball at the centre of the Earth.

  Someone else would see her baby fill out like a rose coming from the bud. A butterfly packed into a chrysalis emerging into the light. Someone else would worship her and watch her grow.

  Twenty-seven

  Damson

  February 2005

  Damson cycled slowly up the hill towards her cottage. She was tired and unfit at the end of a long cold winter. Her basket sagged on to the front wheel, which made a faint and ominous squealing noise that she could not be bothered to do anything about. She had put a couple of cans of beans, Heinz tomato soup, salad, sliced brown bread and cottage cheese in the basket. Also a pint of milk.

  It had been five years since she had bought Swine Cottage and moved to Fenning in Derbyshire, and she still wasn’t quite sure why. Originally it had been about indulging a passion for hill walking and cycling in the wind-scoured landscape, where granite burst through turf like bones in a compound fracture. Its wildness had appealed to her, so different from the safe leafiness of her Home Counties childhood. The colours were muted, the air had a bracing chill much of the time. When she was up on the hills alone, wearing warm weatherproof clothes, the cold wind against her face would almost empty her mind.

  She had made no close friends, only acquaintances whose Christmas parties she would attend. Her fellow doctors in the practice were all immersed in their own family lives, and a single woman, particularly one who did not go out of her way to please, was not easily assimilated into the local social scene.

  Going home to Castle Hey was always difficult because Margaret followed her around with Boden catalogues, saying, ‘They do awfully nice trousers,’ and offering to ‘get her colours done’.

  ‘Damson, darling, while I realise you want to blend in up in Derbyshire, I don’t think everyone expects their doctor to wear sludge green and those awful old jumpers. Where do they come from?’

  ‘Marks and Spencer men’s department,’ Damson muttered. ‘Or these days, Primark. They’re nice and roomy and they keep me warm. It’s cold in Derbyshire.’

  ‘Why do you live there at all? I don’t understand it. I’m sure your father would like it if you came to live nearer home.’

  Margaret’s words cooked up the usual simmering resentment.

  Pricking her in her tender places, Margaret would then say, ‘And you’d be closer to your grandparents. They must be getting on.’ Sarah and Arthur had been phased out of the Castle Hey social scene over the last few years. Damson’s visits to them were warm and regular but not so frequent now.

  Damson had learned not to blaze up like tinder and Margaret was more restrained now as well. She had decided there was nothing much she could do about Damson, so she made her point by giving her ludicrously inappropriate Christmas presents like a pink mohair shawl or expensive scent. The war between them was colder these days, their shared secret long buried.

  The twins took their lead from their mother. They invited her to major family occasions but otherwise did not seek her out. They knew nothing of the baby Mellita. Damson told herself she didn’t mind and could ignore them most of the time. That was until Damson’s mobile had rung at ten o’clock one Saturday night waking her from a doze in front of the television.

  ‘Damson?’ Is that you?’

  She didn’t even recognise Noonie’s voice at first.

  ‘Damson, it’s Noonie. Are you at home?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘I’m not far from you.’

  ‘Where?’ Damson was sleepy and confused, and could not work out why her ultra-cool stepsister sounded so agitated.

  ‘It’s Ottie, I think she’s ill. Can you come over?’

  Damson’s only contact with Ottilie dated from her christening, an adorable baby in a long silk and lace dress that Noonie had purchased from Harrods. No doubt the Victorian cotton and lace Hayes christening robe would be embarrassing in front of all the smart City godparents. Damson realised that Noonie was crying and woke up properly.

  ‘Where are you exactly?’

  ‘Hugo and I are staying with the Stapeleys at Cross Court, do you know it? We brought Ottie with us because Nanny was ill and couldn’t have her this weekend. We were down at dinner and when I went to check her, she was very hot. She’s got some kind of rash on her tummy. I can’t seem to wake her properly.’

  Damson snapped into action. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why Noonie hadn’t been in touch before the emergency. Their relationship didn’t include that kind of thing. Besides, it could be meningitis but there was no way of telling until she got there. Calling an ambulance to make its way through the winding roads up to the Court would be slower than if she took her beat-up Freelander along the familiar lanes.

  She grabbed her medical bag, thanking God she hadn’t had a drink that night, and ran for the car, still talking into her mobile.

  ‘OK, take all her clothes off and sponge her gently with a warm flannel until I get there. It’s about fifteen minutes. Call 999 now for an ambulance, but I’ll get to you before it does.’

  She clicked off the phone, jumped into the car, opened the window and popped her magnetic Kojak light on the roof. She flipped on the siren, set the satnav and pulled out of the gate.

  As the Stapeleys’ family doctor, she’d been to Christmas parties at the Court every year, but the reassurance of the satnav was always useful. Headlights on full beam, she put her foot down and just drove, swinging the sturdy car around the twists in the road with skill undiminished by fear. Ottilie was what, three? four? She hadn’t dared ask Noonie to do the glass test.

  The great artichoke-topped gate posts swung into view on her right. Someone was there with a powerful torch. Damson opened her window and recognised Basil Stapeley with his teenage son, looking worried.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming so quickly, Damson. I’ll wait here for the ambulance, Benjie will take you straight into the house. Go round into the stable yard, it’s quicker to get to the nursery up the back stairs.’

  Benjie jumped into the passenger seat, and then they were there. Damson grabbed her bag and followed him through the back door, down the stone-flagged passage and up the back stairs two floors, to the day and night nurseries. Noonie came to the door, dressed in a red cocktail frock with bare feet and looking terrified.

  ‘Damson, thank God. She’s in here.’

  ‘Hello Noonie. I’m sure she’s fine, but the ambulance can take her into hospital if necessary.’

  Ottilie lay on her back, naked, rolling her head with its blonde curls, and Damson could see three or four of the purplish pinpricks she was dreading on the soft rounded tummy. She took out her stethoscope and electronic thermometer.

  ‘Ottie, darling, here’s Aunt Damson to look after you.’

  ‘Get me a glass, please.’

  Noonie didn’t argue for a change, just brought her stepsister the tooth glass from the basin in the corner of the big old-fashioned night nursery. Damson pressed it very gently on to the spots. If it was a meningitis rash they would not fade and, as she had suspected, they remained visible through the glass. She went to the basin and washed her hands with the yellow coal tar soap that was there.

  ‘She’s not allergic to penicillin, is she?’

  Noonie shook her head.

  Damson took a pre-filled syrin
ge from her bag, tapped it down and with a practised hand moved the child to one side, injecting her in one dimpled buttock. The girl didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘What did you give her?’ Noonie asked in a small, frightened voice. She was crying. Damson stopped for a moment to put an arm around her stepsister and kiss her wet cheek.

  ‘Benzylpenicillin as a precaution.’ Damson quickly wrapped the child in the cotton waffle blanket that was on the bed to carry her down the stairs.

  ‘I gave her some Calpol, but she sicked it up,’ said Noonie.

  ‘Try not to worry.’ Damson knew how useless it was to say that to a terrified mother. ‘I’ll come in the ambulance with you both, and get it sorted at the hospital. Bring my bag, will you?’

  Noonie snatched up the bag and came down the front stairs with Damson to find the paramedics in the hall. Ottie was taken straight out to the ambulance, its blue light revolving in the darkness of the gravel sweep.

  The two women climbed into the back and sat watching the paramedic working over the unconscious child. Strapped in they could do nothing for Ottie, so Damson took Noonie’s hand in hers and held it.

  In the very worst of the achingly lonely nights, Damson had told herself that Noonie and Clarrie didn’t love their children as she would if they were hers. They both had full-time nannies to allow them to continue the complex international social lives afforded by their husbands’ City bonuses. When she saw Noonie’s face that night, she was desperately ashamed of herself.

  At the hospital Ottie went straight into intensive care, was intubated and put on fluids and an antibiotic drip. A lumbar puncture was taken. Damson was glad she was there to remove Noonie from the room – even amid the fear for Ottie, Damson was happy to be wanted by her stepsister, able to comfort her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault. They both agreed it was lucky Ottie happened to be with her mother that weekend and not with the nanny, Noonie thanking God that Damson was close by too. The night was dreadful but as dawn came the little girl woke up and said, ‘Mummy’. After that, with the resilience of small children, she recovered very fast and without any permanent damage.