The old man was Davey Hamilton Mike Hamilton's father -an outspoken, blunt countryman of Nanny's age, a man wrapped well for the weather in boots and gaiters, tweeds and a hat. 'Yon lass needs medical attention, Nurse!' he said. 'Winter clothes. A warm bed. Hot food. She cannae stand.' He was supporting Flora, who, wearing a lightweight coat that would not fasten round her, no hat and thin leather shoes, was obviously all-in, too weak and cold to talk.
No doubt Davey Hamilton had spotted her as, unknowingly, she trespassed on his land. There was no law of trespass but this farmer investigated every roaming pair of feet that crossed his land. He was well known for pointing out to any walker whom he found there the nearest public footpaths, and for exaggerating the dangers of not sticking to them.
He made no mention of Flora's condition, nor did he ask any questions on the last few yards to the cottage. He had no need to ask. He was as shrewd a judge of human and animal behaviour as could be found in a week's march of his farm. He was a silent man who had never been known to gossip, but all the same, Nanny would not tell Ruth. She thanked him and said, 'Will you stay for a cup of tea?' because she could not think of anything else she might do.
'No,' he answered dourly. Then, to Flora, whom they had laid on the chintz cushions of the drop-end settee. 'Next time the Luftwaffe falls oot the sky, don't try climbing yon hill to watch 'em, lassie.'
When he'd gone, though Flora protested that she only wanted to sleep, Nanny made her drink steaming tea. There was a bathroom upstairs but it took for ever to heat enough water to fill the tub, and today there was no time. While Flora took her tea, Nanny fetched the zinc bath and placed it before the fire, then filled it with jugs of hot water from the tap over the range and cold from the kitchen. 'You are chilled through,' she said, 'and I'm not leaving until I see you fed and warmed.'
She had not seen Flora undressed for a few weeks and now she hid her alarm at the network of stretch marks that streaked down the girl's body. They went from below her heavy breasts almost to Flora's knees. Her upper arms, too, from armpit to elbow were stretched - purple striae which would never fade completely.
Flora stepped into the tub and sat down. 'I didn't want to see the crashed aeroplane. 1 was making for the main road.'
'What?' Nanny said, shocked.
'I want to get away from here,' she said quietly and firmly.
'Why?'
'I'm trapped. I'm here because i have nowhere else to go.'
'You're not a prisoner.' Nanny was hurt at being likened to a jailer.
Flora picked up a flannel and held it to her face with shaking fingers, through which she whispered, 'It's not your fault. But if i told Lady Campbell, I couldn't stay here. My baby is kicking. I've started to love it and think I'm doing the wrong thing.'
Nanny was right. Mother love was coming into the equation. She said, 'But how could you keep a baby, lass? You've no home.'
'It’s wrong, Nanny. Don't you see? This choice shouldn't be forced on people.'
'Flora, dear, what choice have you?'
Tears were streaming down Flora's face now. 'Animals don't have to pay for their dens or nests like we do. They defend their homes and their young to the death. They don't give up their babies because they can't afford a roof over their heads and food to eat. All God's creatures have a right to forage for food and build a shelter. Why isn't it my right? It shouldn't be in any government's power to deny them to anyone. Why am I less important than a fox or a bird?'
'It's the way things are organised, I suppose.' There was a hard lump in Nanny's throat. 'What were you going to do if you found a way out of here?'
'Stay with my friend Jessie. She'll have me and the baby till I got on my feet.' Flora's confidence was returning as warmth seeped into her.
'Think of the bairn. It will have a better life at Ingersley.' Nanny believed this to be true, otherwise she would never have gone along with this illegal adoption. Even now, she could take Flora to her friend Jessie's home. Ruth would lose face, of course, and Gordon would have to be told that the adoption had fallen through. But what kind of life would that be for this precious unborn baby? What sort of life would they have if Flora, penniless, had only temporary shelter in Leith, the city dock area? Nanny said gently, 'Your child will have the best of everything at Ingersley. You could never give it all that.'
'I know,' Flora cried softly as she squeezed the flannel and watched the water run over her swollen abdomen. 'I'd be cheating Lady Campbell if I take all her kindness and refuse to hand the baby over.’' She raised pleading eyes and said, 'But it doesn't stop me wanting to keep it. Can I come and visit?'
'No, Flora.' It came as a sudden cold certainty to Nanny that Ruth would stop at nothing if Flora ever came looking for her child. It sent a shiver down her arms, though she was up to her elbows in warm water as she soaped Flora. 'Go far away. Never come back.'
'Where could 1 go?'
'How would you like to go to my sister in Canada?' Nanny asked. Since the beginning of the war, from the Dominions and the USA, offers to take children had come pouring in. Nanny had received three letters from her younger sister in Canada, each more urgent than the last, in which Dorothy begged her to return, saying, 'We are registered as your host family. Secure a passage. No need to write. Telephone when you land. We are waiting for you.'
Nanny saw a look of hope on Flora's face, then watched it fade as she said, 'I'd need a lot of money.'
'A hundred pounds is enough.I have a little as well.'
Nanny knew it would be the best solution for them all if Flora went far, far away. 'I'll see the emigration people in Glasgow and set the wheels in motion.'
'If I take the money, accept the passage - what will happen to me?'
'You have to put it behind you,' Nanny said with a shake of her head. 'There's no other way. You are young. You can make a fresh start.'
'And then I marry - and my husband need never be told?' Flora looked down at the purple stretch marks, then up at Nanny, who need not voice what they both knew. It would be impossible for Flora ever to hide from a future husband that she had already been through the mill of childbearing. Flora gave her a bleak smile. 'I want my baby.I don't want another man.'
Nanny said, 'You still love Andrew?'
Flora drew herself up in the water, her eyes flashing. 'I can't stop loving him. You can't help your feelings, Nanny!' Then she said, 'But1despise what he's done. He deserted me disowned me and my ...' she spread her hands across her swollen body, '... and his baby!' Then, shaken by her own vehemence, she said more softly, 'I put my trust in Andrew and he's broken his promises. He wanted promotion and success more than he wanted me.' She looked down at her swollen body again. 'I'm sixteen! That's all. I feel like a woman of thirty-six.' Then, anxiously, 'I'm going to be all right, aren't I? My mother died having me. I was a very big baby.'
Nanny went on soaping and sponging until the warmth of the water seeped into Flora, warming her through. She said, 'You'll be all right. You are a big, strong girl, you know. And I'll be with you.' But she was worried. Women who carried as much water as Flora was carrying -for her ankles and fingers were twice their normal size -were in danger of heart failure, soaring blood pressure and thrombosis. 'From now on, lass, you will have to spend the rest of your time in bed. You must not put your feet to the floor.'
'But I have to .. .' Flora protested.
'No you don't! I'll pop back to the house twice a day when I'm working to give you your meals in bed. It won't be for long.'
Nanny did not expect her to go until the middle of June, the date Flora said the baby was due. And if there were serious signs of complications, then her first duty was to her patient and the laws of her profession. A doctor would be called. Flora would be sent to hospital and Gordon and Ruth would have to make arrangements to adopt the baby in a proper, legal manner.
Six weeks later at Ivy Lodge, on a soft spring morning in April, Flora crawled out of bed as the ever-present pain in her back stabbed through her.
She could only make it from the bedroom to the kitchen on her hands and knees. She dropped to the floor and between gritted teeth vowed, 'I will never, never again be dependent on anyone for anything when I am over this.'
The coconut matting grazed her knees and shins as she crawled across the kitchen. She hauled herself up at the back door and caught sight of her reflection in the little mirror. 'But will I ever be over this?' she said out loud to her reflection. Her red face was bloated and shiny. Her eyelids were puffy. She could barely see her eyes. The abundance of flaming hair hung in lank strings.
Then, 'Yes, I will! I will get over it. I may be only sixteen but I am no longer a child. I'll be a mother and I'm going to keep my baby.' She remembered the last talk she and Gran had had. Gran said that it was a rare female who could love another's child. Nobody could ever love her baby the way Flora would. She had hidden a sharp knife under her pillow. 'I'll force Nanny to help me get away.' She had her ticket and a letter offering refuge in Canada. Nanny had given her more than enough for board and lodging until the boat sailed. She would not take the money from Lady Campbell but would escape with her baby to Canada, where Nanny's sister Dorothy and brother-in-law John were expecting her.
Outside the back door the world smelled of new grass and fresh-turned earth - of new life that had burst free of winter. Flora was barefooted and there, not more than six inches from her toes, a proud stand of daffodils nodded, brave and clean in the spring air that washed over her. She put up her arms to lift her lank hair to the breeze and knew a quick tightening of her, load. The heaviness had gone. A welcome tightening was 'I happening, low down, where something warm and wet flowed, unstoppable, down the insides of her thighs.
She looked down, startled. Her waters were breaking. She closed the door, grabbed a towel and a clean sheet that hung from the kitchen pulley. She was not afraid, but oddly excited, as she found she could now walk back to her bed and climb in. With the folded sheet beneath her, she waited for Nanny to arrive.
When Nanny popped back to Ivy Lodge to give Flora her lunch, she found that the labour was in the early stages. Flora was comfortable and Nanny drove straight back to Ingersley to tell Ruth to be prepared. She did not voice her worries about this premature delivery. The baby might need an incubator or prove not to be strong enough to take from its mother. And Nanny was having grave doubts about the adoption. The passage to Canada had been paid for by Ruth, and Nanny had given Flora money to tide her over, but with the birth being six weeks before the boat sailed Flora could easily change her mind and come back demanding her baby. Also, Gordon would surely never have contemplated adopting the child if he'd seen such a lack of maternal feeling in Ruth.
At this moment, though, Nanny was angry. Ruth was coming down the stone steps dressed for riding. Nanny had forbidden the riding a month ago and told Ruth that an expectant mother would not ride during the last three months. Now, standing three steps below her on the flight at the front entrance, Nanny, her face set and determined, said, 'You are going nowhere today! Cancel all your arrangements. The baby will be born before midnight.'
'That leaves plenty of time. I can be home by mid-afternoon.' Nanny took a step towards her. 'I don't think you can have heard me. I said, you will go nowhere!'
Ruth glowered but did not attempt to pass Nanny. She said, 'Are you threatening me?'
Nanny was losing the semblance of patience she had so far shown. She said, 'Go inside. At once!'
Reluctantly, Ruth obeyed, leaving the great oak door wide open. Nanny closed it and followed Ruth up the staircase, where sunlight slanted in at the glass cupola, revealing tiny agitated dust motes that danced above the threadbare edges of the carpet as Ruth's booted heels disturbed them on her furious way. The moment she realised that Bessie the housemaid was nowhere to be seen, she turned on Nanny and hissed in temper, 'Are you threatening me?'
Nanny, short of breath, after the climb, was not going to allow her any more leeway. 'If that is how you see it, then yes.'
Ruth changed her attitude instantly, as only Ruth could. She shook back her hair and removed her tweed jacket. The riding clothes still fitted her perfectly. The only concession she had made to the appearance of pregnancy was to wear two very thick jumpers one on top of the other and to leave her jacket buttons undone. She said, 'Then will you please call in at the farm on your way to Ivy Lodge. Tell the Hamiltons I'm not well.'
Nanny's hands were itching to give her a smart slapping. But she said in the same controlled voice, 'Light a fire in the nursery to make it warm. Place a hot-water bottle in the crib. Sterilise the feeding bottles and be prepared.' She added, 'You will give Bessie the afternoon off while you do all this. That is, if you are still bent on keeping this adoption a secret?'
Ruth smiled now, disarmingly. 'What time do you think the baby will be born?' she asked, as if she were awaiting a delivery of oats. She had not once concerned herself with Flora except to give Nanny, at Nanny's insistence, the hundred pounds in notes which she said was not to be handed over until the baby was in its crib here at Ingersley.
Nanny said, 'You must wait. You must go to bed and wait just as a real mother does.'
With that she went to her room and collected the baby clothes and the Moses basket for the return journey to Ivy Lodge. Though the success of her encounter with Ruth had buoyed her up, on the drive back Nanny was in turmoil. She went by the main road, passing on the hill sheep with baby lambs at foot, and in the fields farmers and field workers planting cabbage under a great wide, clean-washed sky.
It was Nanny's favourite time of year. She used to push Gordon out every afternoon in his pram along these lanes. She could recall every expression on her darling's little face, and a cold hand clutched at her heart every time she thought about the danger he was in. She whispered his name out loud now. 'Gordon, you don't know what you're asking of me' - for though she loved him as a son, Nanny knew that her first duty was to the mother she would deliver and the baby soon to be born. If Flora wanted to keep the baby, then, regardless of everyone's feelings, it was Nanny's bounden duty to help her.
Tears came to Nanny's eyes as she turned on to the rough lane -tears for Flora, who might only know the pains of childbirth and not the joys of motherhood; and tears for herself, for if Flora could not part with it, then Nanny would never again have a baby to call her own.
Flora managed to raise herself high on the pillow, despite the pains that were coming fast and strong. It was dark outside and in the dim light from the lamp she could just see the comforting figure of Nanny setting out her things: a kidney dish covered with gauze, containing antiseptic lotion; string to tie off the cord, and sharp scissors. Everything - padding, cotton, binders and a heap of muslin squares - had been there for hours.
She managed to say, before falling back into the pillows as another pain took her, 'What's the time?'
Nanny turned round. She was wearing a large white apron over her grey dress, and over her face and mouth a gauze mask. The birth must be imminent. Flora groaned, tried to hold her breath, then breathe deeply. Nothing worked. The pains grew stronger. Sweat broke out on her brow.
'It's nearly midnight. Soon be here!' Nanny assured her, and came to sit beside her to mop her forehead with cologne soaked cotton waste. 'Hold on to my arm when the next one comes.'
'It's..it's..coming.. Oh!' Flora's face contorted into a grimace as she grabbed Nanny's arm on the edge of the scream as pain overwhelmed her. Then the pulling and stretching pain ceased and suddenly it was as if a train were rushing through her and she found herself bearing down, grunting, sweating, gasping for breath.
'Good girl! Keep going!' Nanny encouraged, but Flora was beyond obeying Nanny now. Every last ounce of strength and energy was going into this impossible struggle to push her baby out.
'Stop pushing!' Nanny ordered. 'The head is nearly out. Now clamp your teeth together while breathing through your mouth.'
Orders and pains were coming together relentlessly, until with a cry of, 'I ca
n't! I can't!' and one enormous, sustained effort, it came slithering, sliding out into the world, into Nanny's hands.
'It's a boy -a beautiful boy!' Nanny said, and she held him up so that Flora could see and hear his first cry of surprise as his little lungs filled with air.
Flora lay limp and exhausted while Nanny tied off the cord, washing the squealing infant, wrapped him, then weighed him on a hand-held brass scale and put him into her arms, saying, 'He's only four and a half pounds, but he's perfect. Listen to that cry.'
Flora gazed down in wonder on the tiny crumpled face of her son, felt the solid little body moving under the shawl then, before she could speak, another pain came, violent and short. She thrust the infant towards Nanny. 'Oh, God! Oh, help!' she cried as the pains came faster and faster.
'It's the afterbirth,' Nanny said, but she quickly laid the new-born infant at the foot of the bed and returned her attention to Flora.
'It's not!' Another pain came, stronger than before. Flora drew up her legs, held on to her knees, gave an almighty cry and bore down with all her might.
'Oh my!' Nanny cried as the second baby appeared, a larger baby, crying lustily the second its head emerged. 'Another boy!'
The afterbirth slithered out. Flora closed her eyes, then opened them to watch Nanny, so calm, wrapping and tying a second cord, wiping the baby, swaddling him in one of the muslin squares then placing him in the crook of Flora's arm. 'Eight pounds, lass. No wonder you were so big. Identical twins. They shared a placenta.'
He was the most beautiful thing Flora had ever set eyes upon. She put her right arm out for the other baby and gently, tenderly held both sleeping, snuffling new-born boys, a beatific smile on her face. 'Don't take my babies, Nanny,' she whispered as she looked from one to the other. Then she smiled to see Nanny gather the smaller babe into her own arms and sit upon the edge of the bed, the infant held to her bosom, her eyes bright with tears which began to roll down her cheeks as she gazed from Flora to the baby she was holding and then back to the one she would for ever afterwards think of as her own.
The Weeping Tree Page 20