by Judy Nunn
‘Beth,’ Norah opened her mouth to call, but the words didn’t come out. The world spun for one dizzying moment, and then, it seemed in slow motion, the stairs rose up to meet her.
Beth dropped the mug and the plate and stood frozen, horrified and helpless, as Norah pitched headfirst down the narrow stairway, a tumble of arms and legs, her belly bumping shockingly on every step. Then Beth flung herself forward onto her knees in a desperate attempt to cushion the final blow of landing.
Norah’s head struck her painfully in the ribs and Beth fell onto her side, holding the girl to her, as Norah’s body crumpled and slithered to a halt at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Norah?’ Beth struggled to her knees. Gently she rested Norah’s head on the floor and searched for signs of life, but the girl seemed shockingly still. ‘Norah?’ Oh God, don’t let her be dead.
A guttural sound escaped Norah’s throat, and her body spasmed. The baby, Beth thought, the baby was coming.
It was then she noticed the blood on the lower steps. She pulled aside Norah’s dressing gown. Both it and her nightdress were soaked in blood.
Beth was shocked but she kept her voice steady. ‘Don’t you worry, girl,’ she said, just in case Norah could hear her, ‘don’t you worry.’ And she raced out through the kitchen to the Putmans’ back door.
She was back in a matter of seconds, Nellielumbering behind her, and behind Nellie were the Putman boys, Spotty and Geoff, dragged from their beds and still half asleep.
Delirious, barely conscious, Norah was moaning and clutching her belly.
‘Get the midwife, Spotty,’ Nellie ordered.
‘Don’t bother with the midwife,’ Beth countermanded, ‘it’s old Mack we need. And as quick as you can.’ Wide awake now, Spotty dived for the front door. ‘Tell him she fell down the stairs, and tell him she’s bleeding,’ Beth called. ‘There’s a lot of bleeding, tell him.’
‘Gently, gently,’ Nellie said as, upon Beth’s instruction, Geoff lifted Norah onto the old grey-pink sofa. Then, ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she whispered as she saw the blood, ‘I hope Mack gets here soon.’
‘Scissors from the sewing room upstairs, Geoff, and cotton,’ Beth ordered. ‘Nellie, there’s hot water on the stove.’
‘I’ll get a bowl, and I’ll fill the kettles and saucepans for more.’ With uncharacteristic speed, Nellie made for the kitchen.
Beth pulled Norah’s nightdress well up over her belly. If old Mack didn’t arrive in time, then she and Nellie must deliver the baby. They knew what to do, they’d both assisted at births before.
But there was no baby coming. There was nothing coming out of Norah but blood. Was the baby dead? Was Norah dying? She was still breathing but she’d lost all consciousness now. Dear God, please let Mack be at home, Beth silently prayed. Get here quick, they’re both dying, I know it.
To the working class of Surry Hills Old Mack was a hero. He’d ceased working long hours in 1900, the year he’d turned sixty-five, and his practice was no longer open ten hours a day, but Dr Alastair McBurney was always available to those in need. In the poorer streets of Surry Hills, it was sometimes hours before a doctor arrived at the scene of an emergency, by which time the patient was often dead, but Old Mack was different. Old Mack dropped everything and was there in minutes.
Geoff charged downstairs and handed Beth the scissors and thread, averting his eyes as he didso. It made him feel sick, all that blood coming out of a woman.
‘Go and get Ben,’ Beth said. ‘He should be here.’ Unseemly as it was for a man to be present at the birth of his child, he should certainly be present at the death of his wife.
‘Right.’ Geoff was out the door in a flash.
The women bent Norah’s knees up and parted her legs. They looked for a sign of the baby but they couldn’t see a thing for the blood. The old grey sofa was crimson by now, and as fast as Nellie sponged between Norah’s legs, the blood kept pumping out. Beth and Nellie, both strong women, reliable in a crisis, were sick with helpless panic.
‘Dear God in Heaven, Nell, what do we do?’
The front door opened and Old Mack stood there, Spotty Putman at his side.
‘Put her on the floor,’ Mack panted, taking his Gladstone bag from Spotty. He’d run three blocks in two minutes. A body his age wasn’t used to it.
They did as they were told, and Mack opened his bag as he knelt beside the woman. His decision had been instant. The moment he’d seen the blood gushing from her he’d known that he had no choice.
‘Boiling water, and lots of it,’ he said to Spotty.
‘Already hot on the stove, Spotty,’ Nellie instructed her son, and she and Beth watched as the doctor set to work.
Old Mack took his scalpel from his bag. No point in wasting time with chloroform, the mother was unconscious, in profound shock. It was highly unlikely she would live anyway, and every second counted if he was to save the baby.
He made his midline incision, cutting from the umbilicus to the pubic area, exposing and folding apart the section of yellow fat. Then he started to cut his way through to the wall of the uterus.
The two women stood watching in horror.
‘Dear Father in Heaven,’ Nellie crossed herself, ‘he’s murdering her.’
‘We have here,’ Old Mack said, his voice calm but his hands working quickly and efficiently, ‘either a ruptured uterus or a placenta praevia. Iam hoping for the latter.’
Beth nodded, not understanding a word he was saying, but reassured by the sound of his voice. She watched, shocked, unable to take her eyes from the gruesome spectacle.
The wall of the uterus was now exposed. It was intact. Good, Mack thought, some hope remained. If the uterus had been ruptured, the abdomen would have been filled with blood and the baby’s chances for survival would be minimal, the mother’s most certainly nil.
‘The baby’s head has bumped onto the head of the placenta,’ he continued as he began cutting his way through the uterine wall, ‘and the placenta is leaking blood and blocking the passage from the womb.’
He could see the baby now, curled limp amongst the blood and gore, but he couldn’t tell if it was dead or alive. ‘A placenta praevia, we call it. Not an uncommon event, but a most unfortunate one.’ He finished cutting. ‘A Caesarian section is the only way.’
He reached his hands inside and lifted out the baby. Holding it upside down by the ankles, he smacked it sharply on the bottom and handed it up to Beth. ‘Upside down and keep smacking,’ he instructed as he clamped the cord. Then he turned his attention once more to the mutilated woman on the floor. There was little chance of her survival, but as yet she was still alive. There had even been moments of semiconsciousness throughout the operation, when she’d emitted low groans and moved her head slightly.
Beth held the baby upside down and slapped its bottom. It was blue. Quite blue. And flaccid. It was dead, surely. She heard a faint gurgle. Material dribbled from the baby’s mouth. Breathe, Beth begged, breathe, and she slapped it again.
Then, miraculously, there was a loud squawk, like an angry chicken, and the baby squirmed. It breathed. And Beth held a living creature in her hands.
‘It’s a girl,’ Nellie whispered.
‘Good, good,’ Mack said without looking up. He’d removed the placenta, dumping it in a bloody mess on the floor beside him and, with the flat of his hand, was cleaving a plain in the uterus. ‘Beth, tend to the baby. Nellie, I need that hot water, and clean hand towels and tea towels, whatever you can get.’
They formed a line, Spotty and Nellie kneeling beside the doctor, Spotty plunging the hand towels into boiling hot water, scalding his hands as he did so, then partially squeezing the towels dry and handing them to Nellie, who squeezed them again and handed them to Mack. Mack then packed them into the uterus.
Throughout the procedure the old doctor kept checking Norah’s vital signs, expecting any moment to call a halt to the proceedings. She must have lost half her blood volume, they needed to get fluid int
o her. She was dying, and it was doubtful she would reach the hospital alive. Even if she did, Mack thought, she would die there. Of blood loss or infection. But in the meantime, somehow, the girl was hanging on and Mack was doing everything he could.
Norah was floating now. Somewhere beyond pain. A number of times she’d been shocked from her oblivion by a pain so unbearable that she’d prayed for death. And she’d gratefully accepted it, sinking into comfortable darkness. Then, only moments later, the agony had returned. When would it end? Let me die, she’d prayed and begged as she’d drifted on the border of life and death.
In the instant, however, that she’d heard the cry of her baby, Norah’s prayer had changed. She would embrace death happily but, please God, not until she had seen her child. Please God, let her live long enough to see that the baby she had borne was healthy.
Drifting in her blackness, Norah talked to God. And the two of them made a bargain. God told her that He had given her a healthy baby. A girl, He said. She’d wanted a girl. And He promised her He would let her hold her baby. In return, she promised Him her life. It was a very good bargain and, as if to shake hands on the deal, God took away the pain and Norah sank into blissful, pain-free unconsciousness.
Ben sat at Norah’s bedside, holding her hand, praying the only way he knew how. Not directly to God, that would be hypocritical, he’d never done it before, why should God listen to him now? But he begged forgiveness and promised to be a better man if only Norah could live.
She’d been in Sydney Hospital for over a week, barely conscious, in a fever, no-one expecting her to live through each day. But somehow she had.
Ben hadn’t realised how much he loved her. He hadn’t even been sure that he did. He certainly hadn’t loved her in the beginning. He’d resented having to marry at the age of twenty-two, and he’d resented the fact that his wife seemed to think she was above the common herd of Surry Hills. There’d even been times when he’d thought, as his mother had, that Norah had trapped him into marriage.
Nevertheless, he’d done all the right things by his new-found family, worked hard and supported them well, but for the first two years of his marriage, he’d not been faithful to his wife. His sexual liaisons had been more a rebellion than anything; they’d meant little to him and he’d kept them discreet, but they’d been his way of showing his resentment, if only to himself.
Then, shortly after his son’s second birthday, Ben had suddenly realised that he was happy. He loved young Tim more than life itself, and Norah was a good mother and a good wife who had given him a fine son. As the years passed, his fondness for Norah grew to a deep affection. But he’d not recognised it as love. Not until now.
Ben looked down at the thin pale face, almost as white as the pillow upon which it rested. ‘You can do it, Norah girl,’ he whispered. ‘You can do it, I know you can.’ He said it every five minutes or so. The nurses and doctors told him that she couldn’t hear, but he said it anyway, just in case.
The doctors and nurses were right, she couldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear him because, during her moments of semiconsciousness, she was too busy talking to God.
I must see my baby, she was saying. You promised me. I cannot die until I’ve seen my baby.
At the end of the second week, her eyelids flickered open. She studied the room. A white ceiling, white walls. Where was she? Someone was holding her right hand. She turned her head and there was Ben, leaning back in the bedside chair looking tired, very nearly asleep.
‘Where’s my baby?’ she whispered.
Ben heard a sound, something more than the rasping of her breath as she struggled for daily survival. He was jolted awake. He looked at his wife. Her eyes were open.
‘Norah?’
‘Where’s my baby?’
They brought her baby to her, positioning it in the crook of her left shoulder. She couldn’t move her arms, so they bent her left elbow and placed her left hand on the baby’s chest. Then they draped her other arm over her body so that she was embracing the child. She turned her head on the pillow and looked down at her baby.
It did not matter at all to Norah that she could not move her arms, for she could move her fingers. And she touched the skin of her little girl’s face, and felt the tiny hand clutching hers.
The nurses left the mother and father and baby alone. Just for a little while. It was a miracle, they said. A miracle that she’d regained consciousness at all.
Ben watched his wife silently. Then, ‘I love you, Norah,’ he whispered. The words were more to himself than to her.
But Norah heard him. Ben’s voice. He was sitting on the other side of the bed, she could turn her head towards him if she wished. She was loath to take her eyes from the baby, but Ben had told her that he loved her. He’d never said that before. Slowly she turned her head.
Good heavens, he’s crying, she thought. She’d never seen him do that before either.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I love you, girl.’
She smiled as she closed her eyes. God had given her much more than they’d agreed upon in their bargain. How very kind of Him. But frustrating too. She really didn’t want to die now.
‘There was blood everywhere. Spotty Putman told me. They had to throw out the old sofa. Red with my mum’s blood it was, that’s what Spotty told me.’
RobbieO’Shea was deeply impressed. Tim had known he would be, Robbie was always enthralled by stories of blood and gore.
They were sitting on the grass in Hyde Park, the pup gambolling about them, chasing the sticks they threw. Except the pup wasn’t a pup any more, he was fully grown. Huge and gawky and clumsy, and far bigger than Kathleen had ever anticipated. ‘If he gets too big, we have to get rid of him,’ she’d threatened, but Robbie had got round her, as he’d known he would.
‘She was in hospital for a whole two months,’ Tim said proudly. ‘They said it was a miracle that she lived. After she lost all that blood,’ he added, to impress Robbie further.
‘Yeah.’ Robbie was dutifully impressed. ‘She’s lucky all right, your mum.’
Tim wrested the stick from the dog’s mouth and hurled it into the bushes. ‘Go get it, boy!’ he yelled. It was a competition between him and Robbie to see who could throw the stick the furthest.
‘So what are they calling her?’ Robbie asked as the dog lumbered off and disappeared amongst the undergrowth. ‘Your baby sister, what are they calling her?’
‘Emily. It was my dad’s great-grandmother’s name and Mum reckons she likes it.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘What? The name?’
‘No, the baby.’
‘I dunno,’ Tim shrugged. ‘I suppose. It’s hard to tell, she cries a lot.’
The dog crashed its way back through the bushes, the stick in its mouth, and stood looking about, momentarily disoriented.
‘Here, boy!’ Robbie called. ‘Here, boy, over here!’ As the animal romped towards them, something suddenly occurred to Robbie. ‘Hey, Tim,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘We ought to give the pup a name.’
Tim wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. ‘Yep,’ he agreed. It was high time the pup had a name.
They both thought for a while. Tim wasn’t sure if it was the talk of blood which brought Ernie Morgan to mind. He hadn’t thought of Ernie as he’d boasted about the bloodied sofa, but suddenly Ernie was there, as he was every now and then and probably always would be.
‘We could call him Ernie,’ he suggested. Robbie looked at him and Tim felt he owed an explanation. ‘Ernie was big,’ he said. ‘All the Morgans are big.’
But Robbiedidn’t need any explanation. ‘Ernie’s a good name,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll call him Ernie.’
‘It’s aridiculous situation and we should have kept well out of it from the very beginning. Why should the death of an obscure Austrian duke have anything to do with us? And where in God’s name is Sarajevo anyway?’
Charles Kendle was holding forth at
hisdinner table as he always did. And, as always, his son, Stephen, and his grandson, Mark, were offering little opposition. Stephen because he disliked confrontation and still lived in fear of his father, and Mark because he disliked the old man and didn’t want to give him the pleasure of an argument. Twenty-year-old Mark, who invariably disagreed with his grandfather’s views, had often spoken out in the past, only to discover that was exactly what the old man was after.
‘You see, Stephen,’ Charles would triumphantly crow to his son, ‘the boy’s got the guts to stand up to me. Something you’ve never done.’
Mark hated to see his father humiliated, but he hated far more the way his father accepted his humiliation. ‘Why do you take it, Dad?’ he’d ask. ‘Why do you let him bully you?’
‘It’s more peaceful that way,’ was Stephen’s simplistic reply. ‘He’ll always win, why bother fighting him?’
It seemed a fair enough answer, Mark supposed, and for his father’s sake, he stopped rising to the old man’s bait. When his grand-father made outrageous statements in a deliberate attempt to arouse debate, just as he was doing tonight in talking so of the imminentwar in Europe, Mark held his tongue and said nothing. But it didn’t mean that he’d given in to the old man. Not for one minute.
‘If there is a war, then of course we must fight, Charles, and you know it.’
It was old Howard Streatham who spoke out, for tonight the three generations of Kendle men were not clustered alone, as they usually were, at one end of the vast dining table of Kendle Lodge, the butler and maid hovering attentively. Tonight there was quite a party in progress. Mark’s eccentric Aunt Susan, whom he rather admired, was present, along with Howard Streatham, his wife Helen and their eldest son, Godfrey.
‘It has gone far beyond the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The Germans have declared war on France! They’ve threatened to invade Belgium!’ Howard knew full well he’d been teased into debate, but he couldn’t help it, the crisis in Europe demanded a passionate response. He adjusted his spectacles and continued. ‘The British are duty-bound to deliver an ultimatum. If the Kaiser continues to run rampant, why, then the British Empire itself could be at stake.’