by Maggie Hope
Dr James put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come, Mr Scott,’ he said. ‘Sit down in my office. I’m afraid she’s gone. I’m very sorry.’ He nodded to the nurse and led Jeremiah away as she pulled the sheet up over Harriet’s face.
Jeremiah felt numb when he finally left the grounds of the hospital. He wondered why he felt nothing. Surely he should be grieving? So he turned on to the road over the high moor that led to Stanhope and strode along it, with the wind freshening the higher he climbed, until he had to bend into it to make any progress. Gradually, as the day began to fade, memories of his wife as she had been – the girl he had fallen in love with, the woman who had spent all of her adult life looking after him and loving him – came back to him, and images of those days flashed through his thoughts. Grief overwhelmed him. He sat down on a stone road marker and cried.
Eventually he rose, dried his eyes, and carried on his way to Stanhope railway station. There were things to be done, Harriet’s sisters and brothers to be informed of her death, arrangements for the funeral to be made.
‘Lottie, I’ve been waiting for you to tell me you’re having a bairn,’ said Eliza. She and Lottie were in the marketplace in Durham, having bumped into each other while shopping. It was market day and there were covered stalls selling vegetables and meat and boots and shoes and miner’s boots hanging by leather laces, with steel toecaps and studs glinting in the sunlight.
Lottie bit her lip. ‘I wanted to be absolutely sure,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you to get your hopes up and then be disappointed.’
‘It’s my grandchild, too,’ Eliza continued.
Lottie couldn’t think what to say. ‘I’m sorry, Eliza,’ she mumbled.
‘Well then,’ Eliza said in reply. ‘Let’s away home now. I could do with a nice cup of tea.’
Lottie followed her mother-in-law to where the trap was parked in a side street, with the pony still munching on the hay in the nosebag. Eliza took the bag from him and put it on the floor in the trap and climbed up on to the driving seat. Lottie sat down beside her. Eliza glanced at her as she picked up the reins.
‘Move on,’ she said softly and clicked her tongue at the pony, and they set off.
‘You’ll stay and have some tea, won’t you, Lottie?’
It was the last thing Lottie wanted to do but she couldn’t say that to Eliza. Eliza, who was still mourning her son. ‘I will,’ she replied. ‘But I can’t stay very long after that. I have work to do for the paper. Writing up notes …’ Her voice faded away as they went into the familiar kitchen. She simply couldn’t think of anything more to say.
‘Oh, what are they on?’
Eliza had her back to Lottie as she mended the fire and settled the kettle on the coals. Lottie looked at the clippie mat laid before the fire.
‘Oh, just the usual,’ she said.
Luckily Eliza was setting the table, reaching cups and saucers down from the dresser. By the time she was sitting down at the table beside her daughter-in-law, she had lost interest in Lottie’s work.
‘When do you reckon the baby is due?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Lottie mumbled.
‘Well, I reckon it must be soon after Christmas. After all, my Thomas was only home for a short while, wasn’t he? It doesn’t leave much leeway. Oh, Lottie, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to go on, I know you must be hurting as much as I am myself!’
Eliza made herself busy pouring tea and adding milk and sugar, but her hand trembled and the spoon hit the side of the cup and a little spilt into the saucer.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Oh, Eliza, don’t apologize to me!’ exclaimed Lottie. She took the cup and saucer and blotted the few drops in the saucer with her handkerchief. ‘Come and sit down, do. Drink your tea and you’ll feel better.’
‘But how are you managing? Do you feel all right? No morning sickness or anything like that?’
‘No, I feel fine. Very well in myself, in fact.’
As Lottie said it, she realized it was true. She did feel very well, despite her recent unhappiness and her preoccupation with Jeremiah. And as she thought this, the child within her moved. She had felt slight tremors over the last week or two but this time it was a definite move, though perhaps not quite a kick.
‘Eliza!’ she cried. ‘He moved, really he did! Give me your hand, quick.’
She took hold of her mother-in-law’s hand and laid it on her belly and, obligingly, the baby moved once again.
Eliza laughed. ‘It’s a fit one, that’s for sure, and strong an’ all. Oh, Lottie, thank you for this. My little Tot’s bairn! Though maybe it’s a girl; you seem very sure it’s a lad.’
‘I don’t know, I just think it is,’ replied Lottie. Her eyes took on a faraway look, which Eliza had seen in so many mothers at a time like this.
‘It must be four and a half months, Lottie,’ she said softly. ‘You’re halfway there.’
‘Yes, that’s true and past the time of losing it, aren’t I, Eliza?’
‘I think so, I hope so, pet.’
The child could not be Jeremiah’s then, thought Lottie. Was she pleased or sorry? Pleased, of course, she admonished herself silently. In her imagination she had thought he just might be; sometimes she ached that he should be. By, she was a stupid, foolish girl. She finished her tea, before standing and reaching for her jacket, which she had hung over a chair.
‘I must go now, Eliza,’ she said and bent to kiss her. ‘I like to get home before dark and besides, I have things to do. Tomorrow I want to get a start on my new book. Give my love to Peter, will you?’
‘Of course I will. What is this book going to be about?’
‘Oh, I have a few ideas,’ Lottie replied. ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve sorted them out in my mind.’
‘Well, give me some warning if you write about bossy mothers-in-law, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll sue you,’ Eliza said lightly. She also rose to her feet and walked out to the street with Lottie. ‘You will come back soon, won’t you?’ she asked. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose touch with you now.’
‘I will, of course I will,’ Lottie assured her.
She walked quickly off down the street, turning at the corner to wave, but Eliza had already gone in and closed the door. She walked on to her little house by Prebends Bridge and let herself in, closing the door behind her. It was cold indoors; the fire in the grate had died out. She shivered as she went through to the yard and collected kindling and filled the coal scuttle, ready to mend the fire. Once it was ablaze she sat before it in the gathering dusk and stared into the flames. Oh, she was tired – tired and lonely. The house was incredibly quiet, with no sounds penetrating from the outside. She put an arm across her stomach. Was it swelling now with the new life she carried? She waited, barely breathing, for the baby to kick or make any sort of movement, but he did not. For the moment she almost thought she had imagined his presence there inside her. But of course she had not. In four or five months he would be a living, breathing reality, her very own, and she would never be lonely again.
Lottie lit the lamp on her desk and closed the curtains so that she was enclosed in a little world focused on her desk. She opened her notebook and inserted a sheet of foolscap into her typewriter and, after a moment’s thought, started to type. She had only a few pages before the end of the chapter she was on and she was determined to get them finished. To do that she had to forget about everything else – the baby, Jeremiah, her mother-in-law – everything and everybody, and she succeeded in doing just that.
It was almost ten o’clock when she finally took the last sheet out of the typewriter and laid it on top of the others. She sat back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head and yawned largely. Immediately thoughts of Jeremiah crowded in on her. Oh, he was a lovely man, he was indeed. A lovely married man and there was no way of getting over that fact.
Jeremiah was also sitting by himself in his office, his lamp being the only one lit in the building. He felt enormous guilt a
s he thought of poor Harriet. She was his wife and he had let her down. Thank the Lord she would never know how badly he had let her down.
The office was cold; the fire in the small grate had gone out while he was editing the weekend’s edition of the paper. His eyes ached and he felt deathly tired. He should have done as his father had advised and gone home long since. He would, but first he would close his eyes for a short while.
It was almost eleven o’clock when he woke up, shivering and absolutely freezing cold and feeling even more guilty, for he had been dreaming of Lottie. How she was, the feel of her in his arms. It had to stop.
Twenty-Nine
Lottie plucked the sheet of foolscap from the typewriter, read it through and frowned. What was she thinking of? The words sounded stilted in her head. No one reading them would want to read on to find out what came next, nobody at all. She crumpled the page in her hand, rolled it into a ball and threw it on the back of the fire.
What she needed was a break and a breath of fresh air – maybe that would stimulate her ideas. Maybe she was writing the wrong book. The doubt plagued her. Her story was loosely based on the story of her own mother: Minnie her name had been. Not that Lottie knew much about her mother or where she had come from, but what she knew of her she had used her imagination to add to. Mainly it was the stories she had made up as a little girl about her mother: how she was really from a well-to-do family, landed gentry perhaps, and how she had run away with a penniless orphan and what had happened to her as a consequence. A story of melodrama and tragedy.
Now she could see it was silly and worthless and she had been wasting her time on it. Readers wanted happy endings, not tales full of woe. She would have to change it. Not now, though. She would have to think it out properly and just now she was finding it hard to think about anything but Jeremiah, even though she had not seen him for months.
She had read all about his wife’s death of course; her funeral too. She had thought about sending a note of sympathy but agonized over what to write, and in the end wrote nothing. As time went by the opportunity slipped away, until it was just too late. The weeks turned into months, until it was almost time for her baby to be born and she was occupied with her new novel and preparations for the birth. Eliza was her mainstay.
As the weather grew colder, her thoughts wandered back to Jeremiah, as they did so often these days. Depression fell on her like a blanket of snow: cold and all-pervasive. She had not been in to the office for weeks; she could not bear for him to see how swollen her belly was or how drawn her face was. And though her belly was swollen, her arms and legs were like sticks. She looked an absolute fright, she did indeed. She stared at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece one day. She had to pull herself together, she thought; feeling sorry for herself never worked.
A knock at the door made her start. She went down the stairs and stood behind the front door thinking, hoping, he might have come to see her, though why she should think that she didn’t know, he never came to see her nowadays.
It would be the postman. Of course it would be the postman, who else would come knocking at her door at that time of the morning? It was barely seven o’clock, the cathedral bells were chiming the hour. Her hair was still plaited loosely, with the plait over one shoulder, but that didn’t matter when it was just the postman. She drew the bolt on the front door and opened it.
It wasn’t the postman, it was Jeremiah standing there. Taking off his hat and tipping his head so very politely. And she had always thought it was Quakers who did not remove their hats for anyone except the Lord. Though what that had to do with anything, she couldn’t think.
‘I’m sorry to call so early in the morning,’ he said. ‘I was passing by as it happens …’
Lottie’s mouth had dropped open when she saw him but now she collected herself and closed it. Where on earth could he be going, passing her door so early in the morning? She thought it even as she opened the door wider and stood to one side.
‘Do come in,’ she said. Her face felt hot. She was sure it must be red as fire and she was very conscious of her untidy hair and the old shirtwaister dress she had pulled on before she came downstairs, just until she had cleaned up the house a little.
Jeremiah walked past her through to the kitchen-cum-living room and stood on the clippie mat before the fire, with his hands behind him.
‘Lottie,’ he said, gazing keenly at her with his dark blue eyes, which seemed to be able to see right into her mind.
‘Yes, Mr Scott?’
‘I want the truth now, do you hear me?’
‘There is nothing wrong with my hearing,’ she replied. She pushed her spectacles up on the bridge of her nose, before folding her arms over the bulge under her apron. Standing before him, she had to look up at him, which was a distinct disadvantage. So she gestured towards a chair.
‘Sit down, do,’ she said and sat down in the rocker. Jeremiah hesitated for a split second, then sat down himself.
‘I want to know the truth,’ he said. ‘Is the baby mine?’
Lottie was very tempted to say yes it was; she even opened her mouth to say so. But how could she? She couldn’t lie to him. In any case, the baby’s birth would prove it wasn’t true, no matter how much she wished it were.
It was all over now, she thought dismally. He would never feel for her as she did for him. If only it had been his baby! Lottie got to her feet and walked to the window, staring blindly down the yard. ‘The baby’s father is …’ she began, then suddenly a pain shot through her and she doubled up with a low cry. Jeremiah moved with such speed that he caught her as she fell.
‘It’s the baby,’ she cried. ‘Help me!’
‘I’ll help you upstairs,’ he replied, turning with her in his arms, but Lottie shook her head.
‘There’s no time,’ she gasped. ‘He’s coming.’
‘What? The doctor?’
‘The baby, you fool! Put me down on the mat!’
There was indeed no time. No time to get a doctor or a midwife or even the woman from next door. Jeremiah Scott found himself delivering the child, a little girl, on the clippie mat before the kitchen fire. And after the first numbing shock, he was automatically acting on the instructions Lottie panted to him between pains, which were coming ever faster, until one pain was running into the next and the baby came into his hands.
Then his own common sense and natural instinct made him wrap the child in a warmed towel, which was hanging over the brass rail above the fireplace, and give her to Lottie, still with the cord attached. Or rather he laid her on her mother’s stomach, for Lottie had fallen back, totally exhausted.
‘I’ll get help,’ he said. ‘Will you be all right? Lottie?’
‘Jane from next door,’ Lottie said faintly. She felt she could not move to hold the baby yet, but she reached down and put a hand on her tiny shoulder. Jeremiah ran to the door, then hesitated.
‘You will be all right?’
‘Go on, fetch Jane,’ she cried and he fled up the yard.
It seemed like an age, but in fact it could not have been much more than a minute before he was back with her neighbour, who took in the situation at a glance and bent over Lottie and the baby.
‘There’s a sharp knife in the table drawer?’ she asked, but he was already taking one out before Lottie could answer. ‘You have a binder ready?’
As Lottie nodded towards the drawer of the press, Jane, knife in hand, looked towards Jeremiah. ‘Go on, this no place for you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll call you when she’s decent.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk up the lane. I’ll not go far.’
Jane nodded and turned back to Lottie. ‘It shouldn’t take long now, I’m well used to helping out when a woman’s time comes. I’ll have you comfortable in two shakes of a dog’s tail. Mind, I’ll get the midwife to have a look at you and the babby, just to make sure.’
Lottie murmured something, but she was tired and shaken by the speed of it all. She w
as happy to leave it to her neighbour, who soon had the tiny girl wrapped in a shawl and lying on a pillow in a drawer from the kitchen press and Lottie herself washed and sitting propped up by pillows and drinking a cup of tea sweetened with two spoons of sugar.
Outside, Jeremiah walked to the end of the lane and back again, hesitated, and then walked to the other end. He stood for a while looking out over the River Wear and the far bank, rising as it did above the city. Beyond, it was possible to see the ancient stone tower of the cathedral and the battlements of the castle. He stared at them for a few moments, thinking of the tiny baby in the cottage. Was she his baby? Maybe not, but it felt as though she were. After all, he had brought her into the world, and though it might be illogical he felt a responsibility towards her. He stood, gazing unseeing into the brown peaty water as a boat with the university rowing team bending over the oars went by, the coach on his bicycle calling the strokes through a loudhailer. The feel of the baby in his arms had been like a miracle, he mused.
Smiling, he turned and made his way to Lottie’s back gate, and after a moment Jane waved from the kitchen window for him to go back into the house.
Lottie was lying on the settee with the baby, still in the press drawer, on a chair beside her. Jane hovered by her; after all, even if he had actually delivered the baby, it was not fitting to leave him alone with the new mother.
‘We have to send someone for the nurse, Sister Mitchell,’ Jane said. ‘I could send my lad, or mebbe you would go, Mr Scott? Then my man goes on shift soon and I have to fix him a sandwich or something for his bait tin.’
‘You go, I’ll stay with her until she comes,’ Jeremiah said blandly, though he was entirely aware of Jane’s dilemma. He pulled a kitchen chair out from the table and took it over to the settee and sat down.
‘Well …’
Jane hesitated, but in the end went out to get her son to run for Eliza.