Red Sky in the Morning

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘You’ve a lovely baby girl, Anna. She looks a bit premature, but she’s beautiful and what a pair of lungs!’ Pat laughed and held up the wriggling infant. Swiftly, she wrapped the baby in a piece of flannelette sheeting. ‘I’ll see to you in a minute, my pet,’ she murmured. ‘Here, Eddie, you’ll have to hold her for a moment. I must get the placenta.’

  ‘Me?’ Eddie looked startled.

  ‘Yes, you, Eddie Appleyard. I don’t see anyone else handy.’

  Eddie sat down in the battered old armchair he had brought from his barn for Anna and held out his arms. Gently, Pat laid the tiny infant in the crook of his elbow and watched Eddie’s face soften as he looked down at the baby girl. If Pat Jessop had not known Eddie so well that she believed every word he had told her implicitly, at that moment she could have believed that the child was indeed his. Watching his tender expression and the gentle way he held the child, as if she were the most precious being on God’s earth, brought a lump to Pat’s throat. There were going to be plenty of the village gossips who would believe that he was the father once this news got out. But no one would hear it from Nurse Jessop.

  ‘Now then,’ she said briskly, turning back to the new mother, who was lying quietly with her eyes closed. Anna’s cheeks were red with the effort of giving birth, but it was not the colour of robust health. The young girl was very thin and Pat wondered if she would have enough milk to feed the child naturally.

  ‘Now, Anna, you’re lucky you don’t need any stitches, but we’ve got to get the afterbirth away. I’ll have to massage your tummy.’ Drowsily, the girl opened her eyes and frowned. ‘That hurts.’

  ‘Sorry, love, but I have to do it.’ When that did not produce the desired effect, Pat said, ‘Can you cough, ducky?’

  Anna made a little noise in her throat.

  ‘Come on, Anna. A real good, deep cough. Right from your boots. That’s it. Good girl,’ Pat exclaimed as the placenta came slithering out. ‘That’s what I wanted. Now we’ll get you cleaned up and you can rest while I wash the baby. Then you can hold her.’

  Pat glanced at the girl, but she had closed her eyes again. She lay passively all the time while Pat washed her and changed the sheets, which the nurse had had the forethought to bring with her.

  ‘It’s amazing how many times I have to use me own sheets.’ Pat laughed. ‘And I’ve brought you some baby clothes too. I keep a few spares. Now, you have a little sleep whilst I wash the baby and then you can hold her.’

  To Pat’s dismay the only response Anna made was to turn her face to the wall.

  When she had washed and dressed the baby, Pat sighed as she sat in the chair beside the warm fire, holding the child close. She brushed her lips against the tiny infant’s downy hair and asked softly, ‘What’s going to happen to you, little one?’

  The firelight was a soft glow on Pat’s round face and glinted on her blonde curls, which were usually tucked neatly away beneath her district nurse’s severe hat. Her blue eyes were troubled as she looked up and asked quietly, ‘What’s going on here, Eddie?’

  Eddie moved closer to the fire to sit beside Pat. He passed his hand wearily across his forehead. ‘I don’t know, love, any more than you do. All I can tell you is – ’ he glanced across to the bed in the corner, but Anna was now sleeping – ‘it looks like she’s run away from home. She’s desperate that no one should know she’s here. She didn’t want me to fetch you, even though she was obviously in pain. She’s terrified someone is going to find her. Her family, I suppose.’

  Pat nodded and sighed. ‘Same old story, I expect. She’s got pregnant and her family’s given her a hard time about it. She’s either run away or – ’ her tone hardened – ‘they’ve thrown her out.’ There was silence between them before Pat added angrily, ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you, after what we’ve all been through in the war, that folks would have learnt to be a bit more understanding. It breaks my heart to think of all the poor little bairns born in the war that’ll never know their fathers, even some of ’em born in wedlock ne’er mind those that weren’t. And there’s a few of both sorts round here, let me tell you. Ee, what’s the world coming to, Eddie? What’s the world coming to?’

  Eddie was silent, unwilling to admit, even to Pat, that his own wife had shown the same lack of compassion towards Anna.

  ‘But you’d better be careful, Eddie, letting her stay here. She can only be seventeen or eighteen at the most. Legally, still a minor.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to report her, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Pat said swiftly, ‘but you ought to talk to her when she’s stronger. Make her see that she should at least get in touch with her family.’

  ‘She’s never mentioned anything about her family, and when I’ve tried to ask her about herself she clams up.’

  Pat glanced across at the bed in the corner. ‘Mm. Something’s not right, Eddie. Have you seen that scar on her fingers?’

  Eddie stared at her and then shook his head.

  Pat held up her right hand and with her left forefinger, made a slashing movement across the first two fingers on her right hand. ‘She’s got a nasty wound across here. A deep cut, I’d say. It’s healed now, but it’s not an old scar. I reckon it’s been done about six or seven months ago. About the time,’ she added pointedly, ‘that she would find out she was pregnant.’

  There was silence between them, each busy with their own thoughts, until Eddie said, ‘I’d better check on the sheep.’

  Minutes later, he put his head round the door. ‘There’s one going into labour and there’s not much room in there—’

  ‘Well, you can’t bring it in here.’

  Eddie shrugged and was about to disappear again when he paused and asked, ‘What about you? Do you want me to take you home?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll stay here the night.’ She cast a coy look at him. ‘Though what it’ll do to my reputation, I daren’t think.’

  ‘Well—’ Eddie scratched his head.

  Pat laughed. ‘Go on with you, you old softy. I’m only teasing. I must stay here till morning anyway and make sure Anna knows how to feed her baby.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Eddie said and looked relieved. He grinned at her before disappearing back into the neighbouring room.

  How nice it was, Eddie was thinking as he knelt beside his ewe, to have a woman with a sense of fun and a bit of sparkle about her. Yes, that was the word he would use to describe Pat Jessop. Despite the sadness she had experienced in her own life, there was always a sparkle about her.

  It was two o’clock in the morning before Eddie came back into the kitchen, washed himself thoroughly in the sink and sat down wearily in the chair beside the fire. ‘The rest seem OK for the moment. What a day!’ He leant his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t offer to come and help you. It’d’ve been just like the old days,’ Pat said softly. ‘How’s the lamb?’

  ‘Fine and healthy and suckling straight away.’

  ‘Mm,’ Pat said dryly as she glanced towards the sleeping girl in the corner of the room. ‘I’ve always said the animals can teach us a thing or two.’ She paused and then said, ‘Tell you what, Eddie, you nurse this little mite for a moment and I’ll make us some tea and then you get a bit of rest.’

  ‘What about you?’ Eddie asked as Pat gently placed the sleeping infant in his arms.

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m all right. Quite used to the odd sleepless night, but you’ll have to take me back to the village in the morning. I’ve me rounds to do. In fact’ – she smiled impishly – ‘you’d better get me back home before it’s light, else there’ll be gossip.’

  Eddie chuckled softly, but his eyes were now on the baby in his arms. ‘She’s a bonny little thing, ain’t she?’

  ‘She is,’ Pat agreed, once again watching the gentle expression on Eddie’s face and feeling the prickle of tears behind her eyelids.

  In her job, Pat Jessop rarely let her emotions get t
he better of her. It didn’t mean she didn’t care. Far from it. Her compassion was what made her so good at her job and loved by all her patients. But the whole village knew that Eddie’s marriage was not all that it might have been. And Pat’s tender heart went out to the man who had been her friend since childhood.

  ‘Funny woman, that Bertha,’ was what the gossips said. ‘Her dad was a right ’un. Affairs? He ’ad more women than I’ve had ’ot dinners. And what he didn’t get up to in the war was nobody’s business.’ Here, the storyteller would tap the side of his nose and nod knowingly. ‘Black market. Mind you, if you wanted owt, you knew where to go. There wasn’t much that Wilf Tinker couldn’t lay his hands on.’

  ‘Where is he now then? Dead?’

  ‘Oh no.’ The teller would warm to his tale, saying triumphantly, ‘He’s inside.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘S’right, but the family don’t want folks to know. As if we don’t all know already.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was near the end of the war. Several of the farmers were having ducks pinched in the night. Course, good source of food, weren’t it, on the black market? Well, Wilf’s driving his old van one night along a country lane in the middle of nowhere when the local bobby stops him. “I ain’t no ducks,” Wilf ses straight away and then, of course, the bobby looks in the back of the van and finds half a dozen of the little beggars. Still alive, mind you, in a sort of coop and covered over with sacks to muffle the quacking. Daft part about it was – ’ at this point the storyteller would be almost overcome with mirth – ‘the bobby’d only stopped Wilf ’cos one of his headlamps was showing a bit too much light. He weren’t even looking for ducks.’

  All this ran through Pat Jessop’s mind as she watched the infant lying in the strong arms of Eddie Appleyard. She felt guilty that she had played a part in his present unhappy marriage. Much as she had adored her husband and never once regretted falling head over heels in love with him and marrying him, she did regret that this had perhaps precipitated Eddie into taking up with Bertha Tinker. If only he hadn’t, she reflected, then maybe now . . .

  ‘Here’s your tea, Eddie,’ she said, placing it on the floor beside him. ‘Let me have her.’ She held out her arms once more for the child. ‘Drink that and then get your head down for an hour or two. You’re going to have a few busy days and nights ahead of you.’

  In the early hours, before it was quite light, Pat woke Anna.

  ‘I’ll have to go soon, ducky, and I want to make sure you know how to feed the little mite.’ Whilst Anna made no effort to resist Pat unfastening her clothes and putting the baby to her breast, she made no attempt to hold the child against her. She refused even to put her arms beneath the baby to support it. The baby girl nuzzled against the reluctantly offered breast but made no attempt to suckle.

  ‘They sometimes take a bit of time to learn how to do it. Come on, love. You must hold her. She can’t do it all on her own.’

  But the girl lay with her head turned to one side, her eyes closed, and refused even to look down at her child.

  Pat sighed but continued to support the child, holding her so that the tiny mouth felt the red nipple. After what seemed a long time to the man watching, the baby began to suck.

  ‘There’s a clever girl,’ Pat talked soothingly to the child. ‘That’s wonderful. Sometimes they take a lot of coaxing,’ she told the new mother, ‘but this little one knows what’s good for her. Don’t you, my precious?’

  Eddie looked on, glancing anxiously from child to mother. It was all right whilst Pat was here, but what was going to happen once she had to leave? Would the girl go on rejecting the child? He knew what to do in the animal world when the mother acted this way, but if it came to dealing with a human being he was lost. He thought about the night Tony had been born. Pat had brought him into the world too and he remembered Bertha’s arms reaching eagerly for her son. Whatever else she might be, Eddie could not fault Bertha as a mother. The only sad thing about it was that whatever love Bertha had to give was centred upon the boy and there was none left for her husband.

  Pat lifted the baby away from Anna and immediately the infant opened her mouth and began to yell.

  ‘My, my, you’re letting us know you like it now you’ve got the hang of it, aren’t you?’ Pat laughed and put the baby to her mother’s other breast.

  Still Anna made no move to look down at her child and Pat and Eddie exchanged a worried glance.

  At last the baby’s hunger was satisfied and she fell asleep.

  ‘There now, Anna, you can go back to sleep again. You must mind you get plenty of rest. I think she’s going to be a very demanding baby. But you’re young and strong and you’ll cope as long as you’re sensible and take care of yourself as well as the child.’

  Anna lay with her eyes closed. She made no sign that she had even heard Pat, let alone understood what she was saying.

  As the light of dawn filtered into the cottage Pat wrapped the child and laid her in the deep armchair. ‘She’ll be safe there till you get back, Eddie.’ She cast an anxious glance back towards the bed. ‘I’m worried about that lass, though,’ she said quietly. ‘I think I’ll ask the doctor to take a look at her. If he can get out here in all this lot.’

  Eddie nodded. ‘Whatever you think best, Pat. But once I’ve taken you back, I shan’t leave her for long. I might have to go down to the house . . .’ They exchanged a look. ‘But I’ll come straight back.’

  ‘Fetch me again tonight, Eddie.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’

  Pat nodded firmly. ‘I am. Besides by the look of some of those ewes in there, you could use another pair of hands.’

  Eddie returned to the cottage later, bringing the puppy back with him from the stable, just in case Bertha heard its yapping and decided to investigate. As he opened the door, he found the baby crying again, but Anna had made no effort to get up from her bed. She was just lying there with her eyes closed, a tiny frown furrowing her brow as if the noise was irritating her.

  At once the puppy trotted across the floor and, taking little runs, tried to jump up onto the bed, barking excitedly. Anna opened her eyes, leant down and lifted it onto the bed. She fondled its silky ears and even smiled gently at it. Eddie watched in disbelief to see that the girl could fuss a dog and yet turn away from her own child. Determinedly, he crossed the room and lifted the puppy from the bed and carried it to its basket in the opposite corner.

  ‘Stay,’ he instructed sternly. The little thing whimpered, but lay down obediently, its nose resting on its paws, its eyes large and appealing.

  Then Eddie picked up the child and carried her to the bed. ‘This is the one you should be taking notice of. You must feed her, love. You’re all she’s got. Come along now.’

  But Anna turned her face towards the wall again and refused to answer.

  ‘Look, lass. I don’t want to have to do what the midwife did—’ He bit his lip at the thought of having to put the child to the mother’s breast himself. He took a deep breath. ‘But I will, if you force me to it, ’cos I’m not going to stand by and see her go hungry.’

  Suddenly, she turned her head to face him angrily. ‘I don’t want it,’ she cried out passionately above the noise of her child’s crying. ‘I hate it. I don’t care if it dies. And me along with it. Just leave us. Let us both die. It’d be for the best.’

  Appalled, Eddie stared at her. Then he said firmly, ‘This little mite doesn’t deserve to be spoken about like that. She’s done no wrong.’ He couldn’t prevent the obvious emphasis, but immediately he regretted his words.

  Anna raised herself on one elbow. For the first time there was real spirit in her tone. ‘What right have you to judge me? You don’t know the first thing about me. You don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’ She lay back down again. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering with us, anyway. Just let us be.’

  ‘
If I just “let you be” as you put it, you’ll let this little one die, won’t you? And then you’ll be in trouble yourself.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she muttered. ‘’Cos I won’t be here either.’

  ‘Don’t talk silly, Anna,’ Eddie said. ‘Sit up and feed this little one. Come on.’ His tone was authoritative now, but still it had no effect. The girl turned her whole body away from him and her child and lay on her side facing the wall.

  Eddie sighed and laid the baby back in the big armchair. There was nothing else for it. He’d have to feed the child himself the way he sometimes fed motherless lambs.

  For the rest of the day Eddie tended the baby and his sheep. He warmed milk on the fire and dipped a teaspoon in boiling water to cleanse it. Then, when it was cool enough, he sat with the child on his knee and painstakingly spooned the milk into the baby’s mouth.

  He kept his eye on Anna, but spoke to her only briefly to give her some food.

  ‘Anything else you want?’ he asked abruptly. Anna shook her head, unwilling to meet his gaze.

  It wasn’t that he was deliberately punishing her, it was just that he didn’t know how to deal with her callous treatment of the child. To see her fondle the puppy but turn her back on her baby had made him angry.

  Late in the afternoon another ewe gave birth to a healthy lamb. Eddie placed the newborn creature to the mother’s teat and at once the lamb began to suck, the mother patiently giving herself to her young.

  From her bed, Anna heard the bleating and could picture the scene – the new mother and her offspring. When Eddie came back into the room, Anna had raised herself on one elbow and was looking across the room towards her own child, lying quietly now in the chair.

  She glanced briefly at Eddie, but then lay down again and closed her eyes. She was sore and ached all over. And she was tired, so very, very tired. All she wanted to do was lie here and not have to move ever again. For months she had tried to ignore the inevitable. And since Eddie had brought her to this cottage, she had begun to feel that, perhaps, she could begin to live again, that the nightmare would begin to fade. But now, after the birth, she would have a daily reminder. Every time she looked at the child, the memories would come flooding back. Anna was fighting an internal emotional battle that the man could know nothing about, nor even begin to guess at.