‘Next one,’ she says, and as she speaks a living fountain of warm flecked water gushes on to the bed as the cawl bursts. ‘Don’t you go pushing now!’ The woman’s foot still braced against her, Mrs Dimond bends as the head keeps on coming, and when the pain stops the outer doors, now thin as cloth, have parted so well that a large oval of wet thin dark curls, the back of the baby’s head, elongated by its slow passage through those tight inner places, shows through, resting there.
‘Slowly now,’ says Mrs Dimond, waiting. ‘Let him come on his own.’
Minutes pass. ‘Softly now.’
With the next pain the nape of the child’s neck at last clears the narrow way, and the gates part, the mother screams once, and the whole head rises, goes on rising, and at last comes free. Now a strange compound beast lies on the bed: a panting woman, her nightdress folded up to her breasts, and down between her parted legs someone else’s slick, wet, drowned little head, face-down.
‘Now then,’ says Mrs Dimond, and slides her right middle fingertip past the back of the head, making sure that during its long secret sleep the baby has not coiled its own lifeline cord about its neck: sometimes babies hang themselves alive that way, and you must loosen the loop if you can. The pointed little head makes no movement. Every feature of the face below is congested, swollen. Its cheeks have a deep blueish tint.
Mrs Dimond can see the mother’s heartbeat in the fluttering skin over her ribs. Her own heart too is beating fast. With her dry and steady left hand she unbuttons the front of her blouse, so that she can reach inside more easily.
‘Over soon.’ A coal shifts in the fire. Two slow minutes pass. Then one more. The baby’s head is bowed, meek.
Then Rosie stirs, and whimpers, and Mrs Dimond bends, her hands a net to catch the baby as the blue little face at last turns towards its mother’s left. The mother gives a bursting yell as first one shoulder and then the other slip through, and then in a rush of warm fruit-smelling water, the child and its great bouncing jellified rope of twisted white cord come free.
‘There now,’ says Mrs Dimond joyously. ‘Praise be!’
The mother lies collapsed, limp as a dead woman, her eyes closed.
Mrs Dimond takes out and shakes open the folded square of flannel warm from the front of her blouse, covers the baby’s wet little body with it, and lifts it clear of the mucky gathered water between the mother’s legs. In Mrs Dimond’s hands the baby wakes alive, and sets up a good clear crying.
‘A lovely girl!’
At once the dead woman stirs, laughing with a sort of surprise, as if she had for a moment forgotten that all her pain and labour had a cause and an outcome. Herself again, with the half-wrapped bundle of damp baby clutched to her chest, she greets her daughter, and the happiness in her voice is part of Mrs Dimond’s deep reward.
‘Hello!’ crows Rosie to her first child, and only daughter. ‘Oh, hello, you! Hello!’
As if in reply the baby forces open her swollen little eyelids, and her clear eyes glint in the lamplight. She stares up at her mother from her blood-stained wrapper, alert, astounded, fearless.
Mrs Dimond is still at work. She grasps the firm glistening rope of cord, feeling the strong pulse in it. For a moment or two more mother and child are still one; then the transmitted heartbeat fades, stops, and they are two different people, forever more.
Straight away, Mrs Dimond thinks, the cord accepts its death. Its gristle instantly loses the gloss and vigour of life. From the special bag she takes the two twists of clean twine, ties one tight ligature, ties two. In their happiness the mother and daughter barely notice her take up her big well-sharpened scissors and sever the cord right through, between the two knots. All is well, no blood seeps from either side.
‘Put her to your breast, mother,’ says Mrs Dimond, ‘so we can all rest easy.’
All three laugh a little at the baby’s instant enthusiasm. ‘She knows what she likes,’ says Mrs Withers, dabbing at her eyes. Mrs Dimond is tired; it’s nearly five in the morning, and in any case, for private reasons of her own, she has not slept well for some time. Luckily the afterbirth doesn’t linger, and she has to wait only twenty minutes more before Rosie gives a sudden gasp and the nasty thing comes sliding out, a warm solid flop between her legs, baby’s side first, slithery membranes trailing after, and all of it limp as a jellyfish.
Mrs Dimond has never liked the look of afterbirth, the inner surface so threaded and embossed with thick twisted blood vessels, the outer lobes the colour and soft texture of calves’ liver, flesh at its fragile fleshiest. Still she examines it, as Dr Summers has insisted she must. Quickly the thing grows clotted and cold as she spreads the membranes, the double bag that held the baby’s long watery sleep. There’s the hole she made leaving. No part seems missing. She tips the whole slimy nastiness into newspaper and folds it into a parcel. In the morning Mrs Withers’ boy Martin can take it to the end of the garden and bury it there. Some she knows just put it straight on the fire, but Mrs Dimond can’t abide the smell.
She washes out the bowl, and in Dr Summers’ honour drops a little more potassium permanganate into it before giving her patient a good wash in the bed, and, with Mrs Withers’ help, rolling her to and fro so that they can take away all the sodden newspaper and the mackintosh and make up the bed afresh. Mrs Withers has brushed and re-plaited her hair for her, and gone downstairs to see about a bit of breakfast. Dawn is showing through the gingham curtain, and one or two birds are already singing.
‘Is there blood coming away, down below?’
Rosie, Mrs Bertram Quick again, shakes her head. It’s possible to see, now, how very young she is, though of course Mrs Dimond has delivered even younger, in her time.
‘Then I will take my leave. Sleep tight now.’
‘Oh, Mrs Dimond, wait, take my hand, oh thank you, thank you, you were so kind. I don’t know how I would have managed without you. You were like a mother to me.’
‘Get away,’ says Mrs Dimond rather crossly, scenting dramatic carryings-on, of which she disapproves, and ruffled at the accusation of mere kindness, when she has been doing her duty and God’s will, as well as earning an honest living. ‘You must pay for the soap and the fixings, and for my time. I’ll wait upon you a week,’ she adds.
‘Don’t go. Please. May I ask – what’s your name? Please?’
Mrs Dimond considers this fresh attack with suspicion. ‘Why?’
The girl in the bed smiles. Fresh and rosy as the dawn, thinks Mrs Dimond, surprising herself.
‘I just wondered,’ says Mrs Quick. ‘I need a name, you see.’
‘What about your husband then, won’t he want a say?’
‘Of course.’ The smile fades abruptly.
At the door Mrs Dimond turns. ‘I’ll bid you good day,’ she says austerely, but turns back before she closes it. She meets her patient’s eyes again. How strange to have shared so closely, and to part so entirely! An impulse towards the girl on the bed surprises her again, by its strength and sweetness. Fresh and Rosie as the dawn. Afterwards, telling the story to her sister, she will dare to wonder aloud whether even then some part of her guessed the truth: that after her long unblemished and devoted career as the parish’s best handywoman, this was to be her very last completely untroubled delivery. And a good one it had been too, neat as you like, praise be.
She smiles at Mrs Quick, Rosie, her own rare oddly playful smile. ‘It’s Violet,’ she says, and closes the door behind her.
In her heart she was a dissenter, and never took Communion; but there was no Chapel within practical reach, and in any case St George’s Silkhampton was safely Low, so on her way home Violet Dimond called in as usual for a moment of communicative quiet. The birth had been a gift, and she must show proper gratitude. And she had difficulties of her own to consider.
Nearly a month earlier, on the ninth of February, she had suffered from a terrible nightmare. The ninth of February had been a special date for Violet for the last fourteen years; th
ough one year she had been busy at a childbirth, on all the others she had marked the anniversary by staying up until midnight, sitting at her kitchen table with a lit candle, a small china cup set beside it. The cup was of white china, with a blue bird painted on it. On the ninth of February fifteen years before, this cup had held a drop of good milk, and Violet’s daughter Ruth had drunk from it, though her little hand had trembled so much with fever that she could barely raise it to her lips. It was the last thing she had held.
During her latest vigil though, when Violet had lit her candle and set the precious cup beside it, and sat quietly in prayer for a while, she had fallen asleep.
She had often dreamt of Ruth in the years since her death, but always vaguely. She would wake up knowing that she had had a blessed glimpse, never more, though that was better than nothing. This time she dreamt with what felt like ordinary daytime clarity that she had come back from market on a Wednesday afternoon and gone to put the kettle on, and instead found herself walking by Rosevear Lake, miles away; and standing on the bank alive again, her dark eyes sparkling as before, was Ruth, holding out her arms, and dancing with excitement. Wild with joy that the terrible misunderstanding about death was over at last, Violet ran towards her, aware even in her delight that the child was too close to the water, but the faster she ran the further away Ruth seemed to be; Ruth, oh come away from the edge, begged Violet, running without motion, watching helplessly all the time as her daughter turned and slipped and fell into the deep grey cold of it, struggled in the water, calling out for her, choking and drowning –
Violet had awoken, with her heart bucketing like a runaway train. She had fallen asleep instead of keeping vigil; the dream was no more than she deserved, she thought. But a few nights later, in her own bed, the nightmare had come again, and then again. Not even prayer could banish that final image for long.
In the church, Violet sat in silence for some time, thanking the Almighty for the continuing miracle of childbirth, and thinking other less precise prayerful thoughts. It was quiet, though she could just hear the increasing sounds of early-morning traffic outside. You were so kind, so motherly, said the girl on the bed. Presently Violet’s head sank on her chest, and she noticed that the aisle was strangely thronged with small children all crouching in silence, their little heads bowed, as if in prayer, but then one of them looked up, and was Ruth struggling and calling out for her, Ruth choking, drowning –
Gasping, Violet awoke.
And there of course she was, alone in the blessed peace of the church. She trembled as she pulled out her handkerchief to wipe her face. Its folds, its clean smell, soothed her. The normal traffic noises went on distantly rumbling outside. She felt that she had heard them all the time, that she had dreamt without being fully asleep. But then she had slept so badly, these past weeks.
Why now these horrors, when she had not mentioned Ruth’s name to a living soul these fifteen years? She stood up, and the movement turned something in her memory, and showed her the crouching, silent little children. At once it seemed to Violet that there was some meaning in them that she might grasp, if she tried. It was as if her mind was like a jar of muddy water. If she let it stand, would it clarify?
Painfully, for her knees were not what they were, Violet knelt right down upon the cold stone of the church floor. She set down her scarf and the special bag, and knelt in silence, her eyes closed, picturing the children bowed as if in prayer.
Several minutes passed. Then she gave a little start, and looked up. It had occurred to her suddenly that the nightmare, though so painfully of her lost treasure, might not, strictly speaking, be her own. Was it possible, after so many years, and so many spent apart?
There was only one way to find out, thought Violet, shifting to sit down on the pew behind her: she would have to go and ask.
‘Lord help me,’ said Violet aloud: not exactly in prayer.
2
Three days later, just past nine in the morning, Violet took two guineas from the old tobacco tin hidden beneath a loose tile in the front-room fireplace, picked up her big tin market box, and left her house. It wasn’t market day, though. She crossed the quiet square and set off up Northern Road towards the railway station.
There was no one else waiting on platform three, for the coast. There was a Waiting Room, she knew, and through it a Ladies’ Waiting Room, probably empty at this hour of any actual Ladies, but it was safer, she felt, to stay out on the platform, to catch the very first glimpse of the distant approaching train. Violet walked to the far end of the platform and sat down on the market box in the mild sunshine. She rarely travelled alone, and remembered that the tiny faraway stage only lasted a moment or two before the immense hurtling fury of arrival, and doors flung open, and the fearful scramble to get in or out, the shouts and the clouds of steam and whistles blowing.
But things went smoothly enough. The third-class coach stopped almost right in front of her, the door opened easily enough, the market box slid itself in with no trouble, and no one else got in or out at all. Safe for at least ten minutes, Violet looked about her. The carriage seats were wooden slats painted navy blue, with thin musty-smelling purple cushion-things to sit on, and framed pictures, screwed into the wooden walls above the seats, of lovely Cornish places to visit – a ruined castle, a meadow where some children were having a picnic, and two different sunny harbours with boats. After a few moments she recognized one of these last as a pale elongated and impossibly tidy-looking version of Bea’s own village, which made you wonder at least, she thought, about the others.
Presently the train began to slow down in the first of what Violet knew to be a series of frequent short stops. She put her gloves on ready and then tore them off again to find her ticket. She allowed herself a little daydream, in which she had been somehow able to let her sister know she was coming, and Bea had been pleased, and so come to meet her, cheerily waving as the train pulled in. This made her real anxious loneliness much harder to bear, which served her right, she told herself, for drifting into such idle nonsense in the first place.
But it was as easy as before, the platform similarly quiet. It was not quite ten as she set off, not down towards the scabby old boats and fishy dereliction of the real working harbour, but in the other direction, inland along the deep hedged lanes; for it was not at home that she wanted to catch her sister, but at work. It was a pleasant enough walk, but for the market box. She had to keep stopping to shift the strap of it from hand to hand, for it was full of cakes – three dozen tiddlers and three good plate-sized, packed in many layers of newspaper – but the walk was only a mile and presently she arrived at the great gates. These stood open; there seemed to be no one about. Before her lay a winding carriage drive, for once real gentry had lived here.
Violet sat down for a moment on the market box, to gather her strength; it would be shameful, she felt, to bother the Almighty about what mood your sister was in. Then she made her way crunchily down the gravel drive, set about on both sides with fairly tidy lawns, past the great front door, and turned right towards the back, expecting all the while to be challenged, ready to answer any sharpness with her own.
At the side of the house was a door, half-open. The corridor inside had a working look to it, bare worn floorboards. Violet nudged the door open with a corner of the market box and went inside. Smell of cabbage. A big bare staircase to her right, dark corridor ahead.
‘Hello there?’
Far away, from some other floor, she could hear a strange rhythmic noise, which resolved itself soon into the sound of children, chanting something aloud. From closer at hand came another flattened hubbub of childish voices. While she hesitated, a door opened, and a girl with big round cheeks, dressed as a kitchen maid, came bustling down the corridor with a bolt of washing in her arms, and singing under her breath, until she looked up, saw Violet, looked again, gave a little snorting scream, and leant back thud against the wall, clutching at her washing, face slack with fear.
Fo
r an instant Violet herself did not understand: it had been so long since she and Bea had pulled this particular stunt, though once it had been one of their dearest occupations.
‘I’m her sister,’ she said, and nodded her head. Don’t worry, you’re right, said the nod: there really are two of us.
‘Oh my Lord!’ said the kitchen maid, now eagerly grinning.
‘I’ve come a-visiting,’ said Violet firmly. ‘She in the kitchen?’
‘In her sitting room. Shall I show you?’ After that the maid couldn’t speak for tittering. Violet followed her hunched shaking shoulders through several dark corridors, arriving at last at a half-glazed door, the window curtained with lacy net. ‘Missus! Mrs Givens!’ burst out the kitchen maid, rapping on the door, her face scarlet. ‘’Tis a visitor for you!’
The door opened, and Bea looked out. She nodded coolly at Violet: ‘Morning. Come along in,’ then turned to raise an eyebrow at the kitchen maid, who instantly stopped grinning and scurried off back the way she had come. Bea closed the door.
‘Vi.’
‘Bea.’
In the past shared ownership of the same face had often irritated Violet and Beatrice. As little girls they had fought all the time, rolling one another ruthlessly across the cottage floor and banging one another’s heads against table leg and coal box; as bigger girls they had traded stinging slaps and sudden pushes, and as young women their stand-up rows had still sometimes ended with one or other of them flinging herself wildly at her sister’s head to claw at hairstyle or best blouse, once in public, so that they had been pulled apart by variously appalled and rapturous neighbours. But those days were long gone.
‘Tea?’
Violet nodded. ‘Brought you summat.’ She indicated the market box. ‘Plenty for all on ’em. And one or two left over. Look.’ She opened the lid, and at once the room was full of the honeyed fragrance of fresh baking. ‘Raisins and currants.’
The Midwife's Daughter Page 3