The Midwife's Daughter

by Patricia Ferguson

  ‘Won’t let you what?’ Joe was uneasy. He didn’t want to annoy the nurses, perhaps do something wrong without knowing it.

  ‘Cuddle him. ’Case I fall asleep. Lemme have him, Joe, do.’

  Over in the cradle the baby made a very small snuffling noise. Quietly he got up, leaving the flowers on the coverlet near Gracie’s hand, and crossed the room to look at it. Only its face was visible, it was so tucked up and wrapped. It looked very small for something that had caused its mother such agony. But then look how small a bullet was, he thought.

  He leant over the cradle, peering in closer. It was all forehead, hardly any nose, chin almost non-existent, little bug-eyes tight shut. There was a dark mauve line all across one cheek, a bruise from the steel forcep that had dragged it free.

  It was all such a painful mystery.

  ‘Most deliver; but some never will,’ Violet had said, in the hospital waiting room. She had feared the worst, but hoped for the best, she said. She had trusted in Him. What else was there? We were all in His hands.

  Joe looked at his son, who left to himself would never have delivered. And what exactly was the point, he asked himself, of that? Just the waste of it made him feel – what? Something familiar, he thought. Pointless waste, crazed mismanagement, lousy planning. And then bluff heartlessness pretending to be in charge, telling lies while the dead piled up. Christ. It was familiar alright.

  ‘Joe?’

  He straightened, turned.

  ‘Isn’t he lovely?’ Her smile was heart-breaking, so much her own in her altered face. He looked down at the baby again. So far he had not so much as touched it, let alone pick it up. It looked breakable. Suppose he dropped it!

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Joe, please!’ murmured Grace. So he slid both hands under the wrappings – it was all warm, alive! – and picked the swaddled thing up. It was very light and bendy. He felt it twist in his hands, what was it up to?

  ‘Put your hand under his head!’ said Grace, gasping with urgency, he was doing something wrong already, but quickly he cupped his hand beneath the thing’s appalling half-made head, took the step towards Gracie, set it down between her arm and her side, and stepped back, breathing again.

  Grace almost laughed. ‘Your face!’ But the tiny movement of her laughter hurt her; he saw her face change, become intent, and then at last relax again. Slowly she worked her other arm free of the sheet, which was tucked in very firmly, and curled it over the bundle of baby. She looked down at it, into the small face. The eyes were very firmly closed, Joe saw, as if the thing were resolutely asleep.

  ‘He likes his kip,’ he said finally.

  ‘Oh I hope he wakes up, so you can say hello,’ said Grace. ‘I want to call him: Barty. Is that alright? It’s short for – for …’ Her voice trailed away. She was nearly asleep again, he saw. She was worn out! And of course they were giving her stuff.

  ‘Grace?’

  There was a pause, then: ‘Short for Bartholomew,’ said Grace, suddenly rousing. ‘D’you like it?’

  ‘’S fine. You mean – after the lad in the picture?’

  She smiled, her eyes closed again. She whispered, ‘Barty Small.’

  ‘Small Barty,’ said Joe, and she smiled again.

  She slept for a while, the baby unmoving in her arms. Visiting hour ticked slowly by, peacefully. He sat and watched her breathe, in and out, so softly. I had no idea, he thought once more at her quiet face. I had no idea it could be like that, honest. Even though I knew women died sometimes. I didn’t know it was like that, before. I didn’t know.

  Sooner or later, he told himself, he would be able to not think about it. One thing he had learnt: you can leave anything behind you. Or perhaps not behind you, exactly, but beneath you. You could let all sorts of stuff sink slowly to the bottom, lie there deep in the mud, hidden most of the time; all of the time if you were lucky, and took a bit of care how you trod.

  So many things she would have liked to say, but she was so deliciously sleepy. The baby snug in the crook of her arm. Sometimes she dreamt that she was awake, and sitting up, and undressing him as she longed to, having a good look at him all over, it seemed essential somehow. Turning him over to see his dear little perfect back, his comical tiny bum, Look, Joe, isn’t he sweet, look! and laughing.

  She would wake up again sure for a moment that this had really happened, it had seemed so real and vivid. But there he was, dear Joe, white as a sheet still, like the boy in the kitchen at Wooton that time, her mother teasing, ‘You reckon they like cake?’

  At other times she dreamt of unlikelier things. She stood in the Post Office, stamping the big brown envelope with two of her stories inside, addressed to The New Age. Had she really done that, or just thought about it? She would certainly do it soon, just as soon as she was better. What on earth had held her back?

  Violet crying. That was unlikely. That had happened. Cups of peculiar tea, they had happened, raspberry leaf tea to ease the pain, except that it hadn’t, Mammy, had it? It had been torture for Violet, Grace suddenly understood. Her labour had tortured her mother. She should not have been there at all. But I wouldn’t let her leave; I would have died, if she had left me, I would have despaired and died, I know it. Though when I wasn’t frightened I was happy all that time, waiting at home for the baby, being like everyone else. Everyone withdraws from the world and lives in secret then. I felt so normal, a normal married woman at home. I felt free. Staying at home sewing baby clothes. Little nightdresses embroidered with flowers. All my life a confinement; but this one set me free.

  The baby held out for her to see, his whole body a beautiful colour, so pale, faintly, why, faintly violet. Mammy, he is like a violet, not the ordinary purple ones, the violet violets, lovely enough, but no – he is like a white violet, that have the faintest most beautiful hint of lilac to them, so that they match the darker ones, they are all part of the same, the same flower

  That woman! I will not let her touch me, get her out, get her out of my house!

  Grace waking up, completely wide awake for a while, despite the laudanum, waking up in the dark of the first night after, thinking for a moment that Sister Wainwright was still in the room with her. Staring all round at the strange place, the completely unfamiliar hospital room, until someone spoke to her, and soothed her, and it was Aunt Bea, who stayed there until morning, in case she woke again, but she didn’t, she had a lovely long sleep, and no dreams, not when she knew Bea was there to watch over her.

  She awoke again, and Joe was there, and the baby, Barty, snuffling a little at her side. The room was bright and warm, and Joe was smiling. All the same Grace knew something was different. Was it the room? No. It was Joe, perhaps. No. The baby moved a little, trying to kick his little legs as he had kicked them inside her for so long, but the swaddling blanket held him fast. Was he different?

  ‘Joe? Can you take him, put him back?’ At least, that was what she meant to say, but when she opened her mouth it was strangely difficult to speak. He was leaning over her. She could see the pores of his skin, a blood vessel broken in one eye, threading across the white. She remembered how closely once she had seen Dr Summers, as he stood at the end of the bed promising to keep a close eye on her, the white of his stubble, his lank greying hair, Dr Summers who had broken his promise and never come at all.

  She had been asleep again!

  The baby not there. Good. Shouldn’t be there when she felt so strange. She felt light, very comfortable, as if she lay on a freshly turned feather bed, soft and warm. She was drifting away on it, she thought. But there was something she ought to say to Joe first. Don’t let them, she began, but it seemed somehow that the words had not come out at all. She took a deep breath, surprised a little at how it seemed to bubble in her chest, as if there were water down there, very odd, but she took no notice, it wasn’t important.

  ‘Joe –’

  ‘Gracie, Gracie!’

  What was up with him? Surely he knew there was nothing to
be afraid of now?

  ‘Don’t let them say – don’t let them say he …’

  The room full of people; but there was already nothing anyone could do.

  Dr Summers had made a fair recovery, but there was no question of his ever working again. His speech was still affected, and he could only walk, slowly, with the help of a stick. He was aware too of a continuing sense of confusion in his own mind, and a tiredness that no amount of sleep seemed able to alleviate. He had already sold the practice: thank heaven he had engaged Heyward when he had!

  Not that he had ever quite taken to the man, personally. But he was competent and energetic. Young, in a word.

  ‘Darling?’

  Dr Summers looked up from the newspaper that had slid forward on his lap. His wife had her head round the drawing-room door.

  ‘It’s Mrs Dimond. Will you see her?’

  Immediately he felt something like panic. His heart gave a great painful thump in his chest.

  ‘I’ll tell her you’re not well enough,’ said his wife quickly, clearly seeing some of this in his face. But he called her back before she could close the door.

  ‘W-w-wait. A minute. Please.’ He took some breaths, he could hear himself panting. Calm down, he told himself. This was no use. This womanish weakness. ‘Let her … let her … come in,’ he said at last.

  ‘Darling, please,’ said his wife, coming into the room and standing over him. ‘It will upset you too much. Perhaps another time, yes?’

  He shook his head. ‘Now,’ he managed. ‘Now.’

  ‘I’ll tell Jane to bring you some tea,’ his wife said, clearly disapproving, but she went away, and then the door opened, and he heard Mrs Dimond’s quick footsteps, saw her black skirt. He raised his eyes to her face.

  Ah.

  Bea sat down facing him, on the other side of the fire.

  ‘Didn’t want to ask your Missus to let me in,’ she said lightly. ‘Reckon she always knew.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never.’ But his heart leapt at her closeness.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Bea. She drew off her sister’s lacy shawl. ‘Heard you was off soon,’ she said, her tone gentle. ‘So I’ve come to say goodbye. You moving where your lad is?’

  ‘My – daughter,’ he said, effortfully.

  ‘Won’t hardly know the place without you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘For your loss.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she said, but then she always was unaccountable, he remembered. Her tone was almost playful, except that her eyes were not.

  ‘And I wanted to ask you –’ she looked straight at him – ‘well, what would you have done? If it had been you, not him, that night. Will you tell me? Please.’

  What was the point of that, he wondered, wretchedly. What was the good? There was no bringing Grace Gilder back. Surely in any case she knew already; her sister would have told her: he might perhaps have tried the forceps, though the set used by Heyward were of a type unknown to him. But anyone who had worked with him as long as Violet Dimond had would know that with the head so high and labour so hopelessly obstructed he would probably have given the child up for lost, waited until it was dead, and ended the whole sad business with a discreet craniotomy.

  Mrs Dimond might not know to call it that. But she would know what it was. And surely not so long ago, he thought, women like her, uneducated, untrained, with no medical man to fall back on, would have undertaken such acts themselves; there was no choice to be made.

  That was what he would have done for Grace Gilder, done to her, if all had indeed happened as he had heard. That was what Violet Dimond would already have told her sister. Grace and her husband so young, after all. A second child would almost certainly have fared better. So many women lost the first and went on to manage perfectly well.

  He had not been there, though, he had been lying half-senseless in his bed. It had been Heyward’s choice, his decision, and heaven knew it might have worked. But in effect, thought Dr Summers, Heyward had saved the child at the expense of the mother. Of Grace.

  ‘What would you have done? Will you tell me?’

  ‘I really … cannot say,’ he said at last.

  ‘Liar,’ she said softly.

  ‘No, I wasn’t … there, Bea. I’m so very sorry. So … sorry.’ Tears came into his eyes, in case she chide him for not being brave enough, God knew he had chid himself for it often enough, but she only leant forward, spoke more intently:

  ‘No, just you remember,’ she said, ‘it was all my fault. Everything. All of it, d’you see?’

  What on earth did that mean? Before he could speak again he heard Jane on the landing, shifting the tea tray in her hands before opening the door. Bea heard it too.

  ‘Goodbye, my love,’ she said, her tone friendly, and she quickly leant forward again and kissed his cheek. Then she picked up the shawl, and was gone.

  The Statue

  11 November, 1921

  Standing at the drawing-room window upstairs Norah Thornby watched the men outside in the market square dismantle the scaffolding, slide the poles on to a cart, heap and fold the yards of damp canvas. For nearly a month there had been a sort of structured tent out there on the cobbles. It had been a gloomy enough sight on its own account, but she regretted its passing. Now there was so much more to see.

  Of course the newly set figure and its plinth were still shrouded. Before the scaffolding came down someone, presumably from the studio, had loosely wrapped it in some thin black material, which was to be ceremonially drawn away that morning. Until then the statue did not officially exist, despite its size. It was taller than Norah remembered. She left the window and walked over to the piano. Yes; she could still see it. Soon there would be no safe room in the whole of the front of the house.

  You’ll get used to it, Norah told herself. Don’t fuss; of course you will. But the implications of getting used to the statue were painful in themselves.

  Presently her mother came bustling up the stairs: ‘Nearly there, isn’t it wonderful!’ She stood beside Norah at the far window; the last laden cart was being slowly trundled away. ‘There’s to be a small cordoned-off area,’ she said, ‘for the committee, and for Lady Redwood. So we needn’t go down much before the time, you know.’

  Norah’s mother had been a founder member of the committee, had written countless letters, organized and attended meetings and fund-raising events, planned and cajoled and consulted.

  ‘It’s been exhausting,’ said Mrs Thornby. ‘But it had to be done. We all serve our country in our own way; and this has been mine.’

  Norah made no answer, though as usual when her mother said something along these lines she felt an instant physical response: her stomach seemed briefly to heave itself over and burn a little, as if it were blushing, and her ears filled with buzzing noises. She was used to these small discomforts though, and had learnt not to make any attempt at actual speech until they had gone away; it seemed that they affected her voice, made her sound hard and unkind, and one simply must not so address poor Mamma. But at least nowadays the difficulty had a name: she had recently come across the phrase in a newspaper, and recognized its truth – Mamma was Pre-War. She was better off being Pre-War too; there was no point in trying to argue with her, or explain why other people might feel differently, might be irrevocably Post.

  The whole statue idea, of course, was essentially Pre-War, even though it was supposed to be about commemoration. Everyone on the Memorial Committee, thought Norah, was Pre-War, to a man, to a woman. The engraving on the plinth was surely Pre-War: officers were to be listed first, then the men. But the sculptor the committee had finally decided upon had, thought Norah, rather surprisingly – or accidentally – turned out to be Post.

  Some months before, she had been prevailed upon to accompany her mother to the sculptor’s studio in Pimlico, to inspect the work-in-progress. It had been a cold grimy hole of a place too, in some scruffy warehouse-type building down a s
eries of dank alleyways. Norah had felt very seedy in the taxi; hollow, detached. Predictably enough, shown the almost-completed work, Mrs Thornby had burst into tears of … well, Norah had wondered, tears of what, exactly? Not happiness, certainly. Not really sorrow. Tears of generalized emotion. Tears of teariness.

  While the sculptor, Anthony Something, or Something Else, don’t know don’t care, thought Norah, dashed about finding her mother a chair, and fussing about glasses of water – and how on earth had he expected her to react, anyway? Norah had become suddenly aware of her own violent trembling and quickly sat down on a packing case nearby. Until that moment she had not realized how much she had been dreading seeing the statue herself. Nor had she understood how much she had feared that her mother, directly or indirectly, on purpose or without meaning to at all, would somehow have caused the sculptor to make the soldier look like Guy.

  It was strange: the appointment that brought them to the studio had been made weeks before; she had done her best to get out of it; she had been sleeping badly ever since the date was confirmed, and had felt so wretched for the last few days that one of the other secretaries at the office had asked her if she were ill; and yet she had not made any of the connections now so obvious to her. She had been full of nameless dread, when all the time she should have been full of a named variety, she thought, and put a hand to her mouth, to hide the mad shameful snigger.

  The statue was beautiful, she thought. He wasn’t Guy, thank heaven, nor anyone else she knew, though he was about Guy’s age, a slender thing, his head bowed, leaning both hands on his rifle, the uniform just hinted at. He could have been Guy from the back, she thought, rising to walk around him; so slightly built, just a boy. But of course that was true of lots of real living young men anyway, boys who gave your heart a little pang as they jostled past you in the street; she couldn’t blame Anthony Something for that.

  ‘Not quite what I was expecting,’ Mrs Thornby had said, recovering in the taxi on the way back to the station.