The Rocking Stone

by Jill Rutherford

  He pushed me to one side and I fell awkwardly against the kitchen chair trying to protect the baby. By the time I righted myself the front door had slammed and I could hear Tom running down the street.

  I sat on the chair and sobbed. My struggle for happiness had come to this. Our marriage was ruined, we couldn’t mend this breach. I felt desperately sorry for Tom, for the baby to come, and for me. So I curled my ball of emotions even tighter, pushing it into the back corner of my inner-most feelings. I needed to keep control because I knew one thing: I couldn’t let Tom find Dudley.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I threw my coat on and rushed out into the early evening air, as best my huge belly would allow. It was cold and fresh and the air smelt sweet and I thought how strange was that sweetness in the midst of my anguish. I searched for a couple of hours and forced myself into each pub I passed – just in case Tom was there. I frantically hoped he would be, as it would mean that he wasn’t looking for Dudley. But it was a fool’s errand and I finally went home and started to prepare some supper for Tom and his mother, thinking that something ordinary and mundane would settle my nerves. I was surprised that Mrs Mallow wasn’t home yet, but glad too.

  She came home later in a quiet mood, saying she’d had a difficult meeting at church and had a headache. She wanted to go to bed without any food. That suited me fine. I waited up for Tom, hoping and hoping that he hadn’t found Dudley. It was the only thing left for me to do. Impotency hung from me and sapped my strength.

  He finally came home at midnight, brought home by two of his pals, drunk out of his mind: legless. They got him up the stairs and put him to bed, where he snored all night stinking of beer and cigarettes and I remembered my wedding vows, ‘For better or worse’, so I climbed into bed next to him and tried to sleep. It was a fruitless task as all I did was worry that he had found Dudley and done something terrible to him.

  The next morning, I got up and left Tom still snoring. I went downstairs and made a pot of tea. As usual, Mrs Mallow’s inner compass worked its magic and she came down two minutes after the tea was made. She looked pale and drawn and I said, ‘Are you all right? You don’t look well?’

  ‘No, I’m not feeling very well. I think I’m starting a cold or something. But I’ll be all right soon, don’t worry about me, it’s not serious. Let’s have a nice cup of tea, that’ll put me to rights.’ We sat in silence, which was unusual for her, and then she disappeared to the privy.

  Tom got up then, coming downstairs with his braces down and his shirt buttoned up all wrong. I jumped on his dishevelled state as an excuse to fuss over him and try to get some sort of rapport going between us after our terrible row. He pushed me away as I tried to fix his shirt buttons and said he had a bastard of a hangover. I poured him some tea as he sat with his head in his hands over the kitchen table. I plucked up the courage to ask, ‘Did you find Dudley?’ There was no answer, so I asked again, and again.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he finally snapped.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Damn you,’ he yelled. ‘I told you I can’t remember, now leave it, woman. Leave me alone.’

  I busied myself by making breakfast, stale bread with a hunk of cheese was all I found in the cupboard, so I made toast with a bit of cheese on the top, and called to Mrs Mallow to come for her breakfast. She appeared shortly afterwards and sat down opposite him. Tom didn’t eat a thing and was like a bear with a sore head.

  ‘Where did you go last night?’ his mother asked him, none too gently.

  He glared at her. ‘I told Kate and I’m telling you too, I don’t remember last night. I went into the pub and drank my miseries away. Now leave me alone.’ I’d never heard Tom speak to his mother in such a dismissive way before.

  It was cold and I shivered in my thick dress and cardigan, my feet as cold as the ice that was around Tom’s heart. I tried to touch his hand but he pulled it away as soon as he saw what I was about to do. He could remember our quarrel then. I wondered again if he’d found Dudley. He didn’t have any new injuries on him that I could see, but then, he was a miner, and miners were always sporting cuts and bruises. I felt so alone, sitting there between those two people who were now my family but were strangers.

  Mrs Mallow decided to go back to bed and I was left alone with Tom, who said he was going out and would not be back until the end of his shift tomorrow morning. I didn’t try to stop him.

  I had to find out about Dudley, so I decided to go to his lodgings and ask if he was there. He wasn’t, and that made me worry more. Had Tom found him? And done something awful to him? Did I have a murderer for a husband?

  The next few days were a torture and there was no sign of Dudley. Soon, it was Sunday, the day when Dudley came for dinner. I helped Mrs Mallow with the preparations, and she said she’d got some parsnips from town, especially for Dudley as it was his favourite vegetable. I hated them, but I didn’t say anything as the wonderful aroma of the meat in the oven and the roast potatoes cooking alongside filled the kitchen. We had meat of some sort on a Sunday. It was always the cheaper cuts and not too much of it as it had to last us for the next few days in various kinds of dishes. It was our best meal of the week and we all looked forward to it.

  On Sunday mornings it was my job to scrub the table and kitchen chairs with carbolic soap. Scrub out the grime of a week of coal dust so that they were nice and clean for the Sunday tablecloth and our best clothes. The specialness of Sundays encouraged us all to keep to our best behaviour and added an extra dimension to our special meal.

  We waited an hour for Dudley and Mrs Mallow kept our dinner warm on the gas stove. She sat in her armchair and kept looking at the clock on the mantelpiece, uttering every so often, ‘Where is he? He never misses his Sunday dinner. There must be something wrong. Why isn’t he here?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Mam, leave it,’ Tom snapped. He’d been dozing in his armchair but had woken up in a temper. ‘Why are you so concerned about him? We’re better off without him. Let’s start our dinner, I’m starving.’

  ‘No, let’s give him a little more time. I know he’ll be here. He must have been delayed.’

  ‘Yes, in the pub,’ Tom snapped again, getting up and sitting at the table. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’

  ‘But I’ve got parsnips, he loves parsnips,’ Mrs Mallow said.

  ‘Look, that’s enough. We’ve waited long enough, parsnips or no bloody parsnips.’

  We ate our dinner in silence. It was only just warm and dried up and none of us enjoyed it.

  ‘I wonder what happened to Dudley,’ Mrs Mallow said as she and I washed up. ‘It’s not like him.’

  I wondered why she was so concerned about him and then realised that she might be thinking the same way as I was. Tom. Had he done something to Dudley?

  I tried to hide my concerns so suggested we go to his lodgings to see if he was ill or something, hoping against hope that he would now be there. I’d prefer an ill but alive Dudley to a dead one who my husband may have killed.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ve never known him to miss his Sunday dinner.’

  ‘Shut up about that bastard,’ Tom shouted from his armchair.

  His mother retaliated. ‘Don’t use that kind of language on a Sunday, young man. We have standards here and I’ll not allow it.’

  Tom looked thunderous, but didn’t say anymore.

  As Mrs Mallow and I approached Dudley’s lodgings, we could see his landlady on the doorstep, talking to her neighbour.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Toms,’ said Mrs Mallow, ‘is Dudley in?’

  ‘No, Mrs Mallow. I haven’t seen him for a few days. Sometimes, he stays over with one of his mates but not usually for so long. But I wouldn’t worry too much,’ she said, laughing, ‘he’ll turn up, bad pennies always do.’

  ‘Yes, well, you’re probably right,’ Mrs Mallow said. ‘When you see him, please send him up to us so we know he’s all right, although why we should worry about him, I don’t know. He can take care
of himself.’ And with that, we made our way back home in silence, lost in our own thoughts.

  The night Tom found out about the rape was the last anyone saw Dudley. Everyone was talking about his disappearance so it was easy to ascertain he’d been drinking in The Clarence pub until about nine ‘o clock, saying he was going to The Bunch of Grapes as he’d arranged to meet someone there. He was drunk leaving The Clarence and had bought a half bottle of whiskey to take with him. He never arrived at the Bunch of Grapes. People assumed he’d got himself into trouble again and had decided to make a quick exit. He’d threatened to, ‘Get out of this God forsaken hole’ many times. Others said someone’s husband had found him and beaten him and thrown him in the river. Everyone was glad really, and no one wanted to look for him, especially me, who was convinced that Tom was that husband.

  I don’t know if it was the ordeal over Dudley, but my baby was three weeks late. Tom came in from work at the end of the third week while I was sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of haddock in front of me. It was my favourite and Mrs Mallow had saved up for it and given it to me as a special treat. She thought I would have a bad time of it soon and needed all my strength. It was sweet of her but I did wonder if she was more concerned for the baby than me. But it did neither of us any good as when Tom came in and smelt the haddock, looked at my plate and then at his mother’s and his own plate, which held a hunk of bread and some jam he said in a spiteful voice, ‘Oh, it’s all right for some, they get haddock for their tea, us working men have to make do with bread and jam.’

  I saw red at his selfishness and picked up my plate, haddock and all, and threw it into the grate, shouting, ‘I don’t want it, go to hell.’ With that, I stormed upstairs as quickly as I could and lay on the bed, and within an hour I went into labour as my first baby tried to get born. I was too small for the baby, or he was too big for me, either way, both of us got into a lot of trouble.

  Mrs Mallow was my midwife. I didn’t want her sharing this intimate moment and putting myself in her power, but I had no choice. A proper midwife was for people with money to spare. We didn’t have that luxury. She roped in the next door neighbour to help. Between them, they had ten children, so were qualified by experience alone.

  I was in agony and in labour for two days. The baby just wouldn’t come. I kept looking at my mother’s pictures of Italy on the wall opposite the bed and praying to them to help me. As if they could! I was that desperate.

  I was only just conscious and dimly aware of Mrs Mallow saying, ‘The baby’s in the breech position.’ Then the neighbour examined me and agreed. ‘We need a midwife,’ she said.

  Mrs. Mallow told me later that when she told Tom we needed a midwife he insisted on fetching the doctor. ‘I don’t want my wife and baby to die and hang the cost,’ he’d said, running out of the house.

  It touched my heart and I couldn’t help hoping that the love we once shared was still there, deep down. But even that thought was drowned by the ever worsening pain and the doctor arrived just as I thought I was going to die. I’d settled my own mind to it and I didn’t care. I was in agony and just wanted it to end. Two days of it had left me weak and defeated. What did it matter about Dudley? What did it matter about Tom and his dark thoughts? Or even his love – if it was still there, that is. I decided then that if I got through this alive I would never let anyone get close to me again. I’d always keep a distance. It was the only way I could cope.

  I don’t know what the doctor did in my semi-conscious state, but Mrs Mallow told me the baby was pulled out with forceps. I remember the relief as the baby left my body and the doctor saying in a gruff voice, ‘Get rid of it. He’s dead.’

  I lifted my head and just caught sight of Mrs Mallow taking the baby to the dressing table where a drawer was awaiting the birth. I vaguely remember her fiddling over the baby, moving very swiftly and she told me afterwards that she was cleaning out his mouth and nose as fast as she could. She held him upside-down and slapped him several times but the baby stayed silent. She fiddled some more, I couldn’t see what she was doing and I wanted to shout to her, ‘It might be Dudley’s, let it die.’ But I couldn’t. Poor little thing, it wasn’t his fault. Finally, a weak cry came from the baby and the doctor looked over and said, ‘It’s alive! My God, I thought there was no hope for it.’ He went over then and attended to the baby and I passed out. When I came round, the baby was in his drawer, all washed and smelling sweet, looking puckered and pink. Mrs Mallow put him to my breast and he sucked like his life depended on it, which it did of course. As he suckled, I looked at his hair. It was pitch black, just like Tom’s, with a little curl on the ends. The relief was so overwhelming, I started to sob. Damn me and my emotions, and in front of Mrs Mallow too. But I couldn’t stop and that started the baby off. Mrs Mallow patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘There, there. It takes some women that way, don’t worry, you’ll be alright.’ She meant well, and I pulled myself together, thinking it’s not Dudley’s, it’s not Dudley’s. I realised then that I hadn’t quite believed that it wasn’t his. But it wasn’t and I was overjoyed.

  I named him James, Jim, and to hell with Tom if he didn’t like it. He wanted to name a boy Tom, but I wasn’t having that. A baby deserves its own identity, not his father’s. So Jim it would be. I’d read a book where the hero was called Jim and I’d loved him. To my surprise, Tom didn’t demur. When he saw the baby and his black hair he knew, as I did, that it wasn’t Dudley’s. And love shone out of Tom’s eyes once more.

  I felt it was my fault the baby had such an unhappy womb to be created in. No wonder he kicked about so much and was reluctant to come into the world. But his sunny nature belied his pre-birth experiences, and although he suffered a perforated eardrum from the forceps and was not my brightest child, in every other way he was perfect. He wasn’t Dudley’s. He was mine and Tom’s first child.

  Even so, my relationship with Tom remained strained and difficult. We lived separate lives and only came together in bed. That was the trouble for Tom still wanted his ‘loving’ as he continued to call it although loving was the last thing it was. He treated it as if it was a bodily function, like emptying his bowels: a little distasteful but necessary and once attended to dismissed as of no consequence as he rolled over and fell instantly asleep.

  There were consequences of course. Over five years, I had four healthy children and three miscarriages. I was pregnant, non-stop for five years. Mrs Mallow took over, which was part of the problem. She took charge of every baby as soon as it was born and I was lying in. I was malnourished and my milk was too weak for the poor things so she decided to feed them on watered down evaporated milk. It was sweet and sticky and gave those poor babies such upset tummies they became even more malnourished than if I’d been feeding them. In the end, she had to admit that she’d been wrong and she started cooking oats, rice or barley and vegetables and mashing it to a pulp. She’d often chew on a piece of apple and give it to the baby rather than swallow it herself. I hated that, but if I’m honest, she probably saved their lives as I couldn’t have cared for them as well as she did because I was constantly pregnant. The fact that none of them died, while around us so many children did, I put down to Mrs Mallow.

  We’d had three boys, who I loved dearly, but I so longed for a daughter. My fourth child nearly killed me. I lost consciousness as the baby slid out. The next thing I knew, Mrs Mallow was calling me from afar and then her voice got nearer and nearer as I regained consciousness. She was sat on the wooden chair at the side of the bed gently rocking the baby who was wrapped in a warm, soft blanket. The one we always kept for the babies. ‘Your baby is waiting for you,’ she said as she got up and put him into my arms. I’d been so weak during the pregnancy I worried about the baby’s growth and was surprised to see he was full size. His black, curly hair was just like Tom’s. His nose and chin were pure Tom too. I opened his blanket up, needing to make sure he had everything he should have. He had two arms and legs and the right amount of fin
gers and toes, but then I gasped. I looked up at Mrs Mallow and she nodded and smiled. It was what he didn’t have that made me the happiest woman in the world. He wasn’t a boy after all – and she was the most beautiful baby girl I’d ever seen – perfect in every way. At last I had a daughter! I looked up at Mrs Mallow again and blinked back the tears that welled up at the same time my smile almost split my face in two. She was looking equally ecstatic as she leaned closer and cooed over her. I vowed then that I wasn’t going to lose her to Mrs Mallow, like the boys. My resolve to stay apart from emotions and love melted away as I looked down on my sleeping baby girl. For her, I’d make an exception. I was going to keep her close.

  Mrs Mallow had arranged with a neighbour who had given birth a few weeks ago and had plenty of milk, that, if my milk proved to be too thin for the baby then she would help out and feed her as much as she could. But I was determined to keep her mine. So, with nervous fingers, I undid the top of my nightdress and gave my small breast to my Meggie. I’d always known I’d name a daughter Megan. Meggie, Little Meggie. I put her to my breast and she took to it instantly, sucking hard for all she was worth. ‘I’ve got some milk,’ I shouted out in excitement. ‘I’ve got some milk.’

  Mrs Mallow bent over us and smiled a loving smile. She had wanted a granddaughter too, I could see. I’d have to be very careful to keep Meggie mine.

  ‘We won’t need the wet nurse now,’ I said. ‘I can feed her.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see how we go. Your milk may be too weak for her.’

  I determined there and then to get back on my feet as soon as possible and sod the laying in. It was old fashioned anyway. I’d heard many a mother say they didn’t want to do it anymore. I’d be one of them. I also knew that Little Meggie would have to be our last child. I’d looked at other mothers and realised that it was those very babies that were the cause of many of their problems. Young women with so many kids looked haggard and twice their age. Lots of them died young, worn out with the whip of pregnancy and progeny. I had to do something or end up like them. Tom and I were too fertile. He used to say he had only to take his trousers down and I was pregnant. Well, one can’t change nature but you can change relationships.