Hester had never seen Tom overwrought before. The pain of his wounded shoulder and his worry for her were taking their toll of him. Nevertheless, he even tried to lift her to carry her up the stairs, but she stopped him.
‘Oh, no. I can walk without your help. You mustn’t try to do too much, Tom. Think of your poor arm.’
‘Damn my poor arm!’
He insisted on helping her up the stairs, holding her to him whenever the pain swept over her, which it did in ever-shortening intervals.
Even in her agony Hester could not help thinking what a comic pair they made: the wounded man and the heavily pregnant woman clumsily mounting the stairs together. Finally Tom manoeuvred her through the bronze doors and on to the bed.
‘Stay there,’ he told her—as though she could do anything else! ‘I’ll rouse Miller and send him for Alan. God grant he arrives in time.’
She heard him run downstairs, calling for Miller, Mrs Hackett and the little maid. Why not the cook? Hester thought giddily, and then all thought disappeared and she clutched at the sheet and stuffed it into her mouth.
I will not scream! I will not! The stoicism of her early years was back with her again.
When Tom returned he had put on his fine coat to conceal his bandaged shoulder and was carrying extra towels and sheets.
‘Mrs Hackett’s boiling water. She seems to think it’s the thing. Sit up, and we’ll have your clothes off, my love. You said that you wanted me with you when the baby came, and you’ve got your wish.’
He eased her into her night rail, never mind that his face, like hers, was livid with pain from the efforts of undressing her. He tore up a sheet, dragged one of the great chairs over and tied the ends of the rope he had made from it around one of the arms. He gave her the other end.
‘Pull on that when the pains come, my darling. It will help you to bear them.’
Hester looked up at him, her eyes huge, and murmured weakly before the pain tore at her again. ‘Is there anything you cannot do, Mr Dilhorne?’
He held her hand and kissed it. ‘I can’t bear the pain for you, my love, or I would. It’s your first child. Alan always said that they were slow so he should be here in time. Now, you’re going to drink this down, Mrs Dilhorne. It’ll help with the pain.’
He handed her a glass of unwatered brandy, which she drank obediently, remembering the brandy which they had drunk together on their first night of love.
Then the pain took her again and, between that and the effect of the brandy, past and present became confused so that sometimes she was alone in her room at Mrs Cooke’s and sometimes she was with him in the long nights of their loving.
Time crawled by.
Tom stayed with her, wiping her sweating face, even though she scarcely knew that he was there. Once she stirred, caught at his hand and said weakly, ‘You’ll never know how happy you have made me, Tom.’
There was something in her tone that made it sound as though she were bidding him farewell. He shuddered at the sound. No child was worth the loss of his dearest love and for the first time he contemplated the sterile wasteland of his life if he lost her.
He clutched her hand, and bent his suffering face over it. Mrs Hackett came in with the hot water. For once there was pity on her hard old face, for there was no doubt that he was feeling Hester’s suffering keenly. Later she brought him dry towels and fresh candles, and told him to rest a little while she looked after Hester.
Her pains were now coming thick and fast, a sign that the child was ready to be born, but when he propped her up, and called on Mrs Hackett to help with the delivery, nothing happened, even though Hester co-operated with him. He had seen this happen in childbirth before, and it was not a good sign. Just as he was beginning to give up hope he heard the sound of Alan’s carriage on the gravel sweep before the house.
Dizzy, almost ready to lose consciousness himself, he ran down the stairs to greet Alan, who had Sarah by his side, for she often acted as his aide in childbirth.
‘By God, Alan,’ he said before he took him up to the bedroom. ‘There’s something wrong, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘All fathers think that,’ was Alan’s quiet reply. ‘Let me take a look.’
After examining Hester, though, his face was grave, and later, when the child still showed no signs of being born, he began to worry. He had soon seen that Tom was carrying an injury and, leaving Hester with Sarah, he examined his shoulder and told his friend to try to rest.
‘No, I can’t leave her,’ he had panted.
‘You can’t help her even if you stay with her,’ Alan told him quietly. ‘I won’t disguise the fact that she is very weak and I fear for both her and the child. If it comes to it, do I save the mother or the child?’
Tom turned savagely away from his friend. ‘For God’s sake, Alan, what a question! The mother, of course. I cannot lose Hester now. You’ll never know what she was prepared to do for me tonight.’
‘I can guess,’ said Alan, who had heard Hester’s ramblings. ‘I’ll do my best for them both—and for you. But the matter is out of my hands. In childbirth God disposes. If matters become desperate I promise to send for you.’
Banished from his Hester, his love, the star by which he lived, so that should she now die, his life would become meaningless, and all that he had striven for would turn to ashes, Tom sat in his chair, his head in his hands.
He had married her almost in jest, thinking that she was just one more possession which he had acquired on his way to power and domination, and now she possessed him. They were twin souls whom an unlikely fate had blessed with one another, and if she were to die now, then what was left for Tom Dilhorne?
Inside the bedroom, Alan and Sarah laboured together to save Hester, if not the baby, for it was, Alan saw quite plainly, coming down to that. Once, Sarah came out to find Tom standing in the corridor, his good shoulder propped against the wall. His face was ghastly.
‘Oh, Tom, at least sit down,’ she said, shocked by his appearance. ‘You are making yourself ill to no purpose.’
He refused.
‘No, not whilst Hester is in such agony. Oh, God, Sarah, I’m such a selfish brute and she’s such a little thing. She knew how much I wanted a child. Not once in all these months of suffering has she ever complained.’
‘Don’t give up hope,’ said Sarah earnestly. ‘Alan thinks that he can save them both. Childbirth is never easy at the best of times.’
‘But this is Hester, and I have never cared for anyone else—and there is nothing I can do to help her, nothing. If I could I would bear all her pain, but I can’t… It will break my heart to lose her.’
He began to sob, his face in his hands, his body shaking with the violence of his grief.
Sarah had never thought to see hard Tom Dilhorne so broken. She swallowed. ‘This is not like you, Tom—that I should have to ask you to be brave.’
‘No, I am quite unmanned, as you see.’
He seized her by the wrist with such strength that she almost cried out. ‘You must promise me that if things go wrong you will let me in. I must be with her.’
‘Of course. You must trust us, Tom. If the worst comes to the worst, then we shall fetch you at once.’
The night wore on. Slowly, Hester began to fail. She had been in pain for so long and was so weak that she started to drift away on a tide of peace where neither pain, nor joy, nor any sensation could reach her.
Her inward Mentor, aroused by Jack Cameron’s threats, had helped her at first, but had been silenced by her protracted agony. The claims of will and self were silent, too. Alan, looking down at her, saw what he had sometimes seen before: a look of resigned and accepting peace, and he knew what it meant. He was losing her.
Sarah, on the other side of the bed, saw it, too. Her face a mask of grief, she asked her husband, ‘Shall I fetch Tom?’
‘No!’ exclaimed Alan violently. ‘Not yet. I’ll not fail them. At least I’ll save Hester.’
On hearin
g Tom’s name Hester’s eyes had fluttered open, only to close again.
Alan, bent down, put his hands under Hester’s armpits, lifted her into a sitting position on the bed, and placed a bolster in the small of her back.
‘Hester!’ he said urgently. ‘Look at me.’
Her eyes opened. He willed them not to close.
‘Do as I tell you. For Tom and the baby.’
Tom and the baby, her Mentor whispered, suddenly coming to life again. Think of Tom and the baby. Don’t sleep. To sleep is to die. Remember, Hester, Tom and the baby. You do want to see the baby—and to see Tom with the baby, don’t you?
At first Hester wanted to ignore the urgent voice. To awake, to return to life, meant pain and suffering. All that she wanted was peace—and freedom from pain. Tom would not want her to suffer.
The voice came again, louder and stronger. Think of Tom and the baby—you don’t want to leave him alone, do you? Remember how much you love him.
‘Yes,’ she replied in a voice so weak that Alan could hardly hear her. ‘I do remember. I want to see Tom again—and the baby.’
‘Take Sarah’s hands in yours,’ said Allan, meeting her eyes which now seemed to recognise that he was there, ‘and when the next pain comes, don’t reject it, don’t ignore it. Scream, Hester, scream as loudly as you can. Accept the pain, ride with it, and then I can help you.’
Even as he spoke the pain came again, so strong that it seemed to rise from the depth of her being. So powerful was it that Hester felt that she was being torn in two. Her scream was her first; as Alan said later, it was her stoicism which had been destroying her. The scream contained the same anguish as the one she had made when she had thought that Jack Cameron had killed Tom.
Outside, Tom put his face in his hands at the sound.
Inside, Sarah was dragged towards Hester by the strength of her grip.
Alan shouted, ‘Good! And again!’ seeing the next spasm strike her. ‘You’re nearly there. Push, Hester, push with all your strength.’
This time she pushed but did not scream, feeling a terrible relief which Alan shared with her in a different way, when a tiny, black-haired child shot into the world, to land on the bed between her legs, squalling defiance.
Alan, after handing the baby to Sarah, turned back to care for Hester, only to cry out, ‘By God! There are two!’
A sandy head had appeared to signal the reason for Hester’s size, her weakness and the prolonged labour.
The second child was born without difficulty. Sarah wiped Hester’s sweating face again and placed the first baby on her right arm. Alan lifted the other, still wet, and also squalling loudly, on to her left.
‘Two,’ said Hester with wonder. The joy of the birth, successfully achieved, was filling her. Her poor bruised body and her dreadful weakness were to be accepted, not given in to, or resented, for they had brought her this prize.
‘Two, you clever girl,’ said Alan, ‘and both boys.’
‘No wonder I was like an elephant,’ sighed Hester weakly. ‘Two little Toms. Does he know? Oh, I must show him.’
‘Alan will fetch him,’ said Sarah.
‘And you are not to tell him that there are two,’ said Hester with a touch of her old mischief.
Alan, Sarah and Hester were to say afterwards that the only time that they ever saw Tom Dilhorne disconcerted was when Hester showed him their twin sons, saying, ‘Tom and Alan.’
He stared at the two angry boys, shouting their fury at leaving the warm haven of their mother’s body.
But, being Tom, he recovered quickly, as he always did.
‘Compound interest, Hester, my darling. You said that you knew all about percentages when we first met.’
Finally, when Alan and Sarah gave him the two howling boys to hold for a moment, he said to the room at large, ‘Dilhorne and Sons, Hester, Dilhorne and Sons.’
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3703-2
HESTER WARING’S MARRIAGE
First North American Publication 2004
Copyright © 2000 by Paula Marshall
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Hester Waring's Marriage Page 26