by Annie Groves
Her mother. She’d be devastated, inconsolably grief-stricken. Charlie had been her favourite. Charlie had been her son. Had been. How was Bella going to tell her?
Her father would have to be told as well. Charlie was his son too. No, Bella corrected herself carefully, Charlie had been his son. There would be things to be done, arrangements to be made, a church service to be arranged, people to tell. She’d have to ring the nursery and warn Lena that she wouldn’t be coming in.
‘Stay in bed until the baby comes – but that means for weeks. I can’t do that.’ Grace glanced wildly from the doctor to Seb, standing at the side of the bed in his RAF uniform, looking so handsome and so protective, his hand holding her own as they both turned to the doctor.
Dr Raines had just retired when the war had started, but he’d come back into practice so that his son, who had taken over from him, could join up. He was bald with a slight stoop, his manner normally reassuring but right now he was looking grave.
For once, the prettiness of her bedroom, with its pink counterpane matching the cabbage roses she and Seb had stencilled onto the distempered walls when they had moved in, were failing to lift Grace’s spirits.
‘I’m sorry, Grace, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to,’ the doctor told her firmly.
‘But why, when all that’s wrong with me is that my hands and feet are a bit swollen and I get tired?’
Sunlight shone through the dormer windows and Grace could smell the scent of the climbing rose through the open window.
‘I’m sorry, my dear, I really don’t want to worry or upset you, but I’m afraid things are rather more serious than that.’
‘Serious?’ Seb demanded whilst Grace put a protective hand across her swollen body, her heart beginning to pound with anxiety.
She’d been cross with Seb when he’d insisted on calling out the doctor just because he’d come home early and found her lying down and feeling sorry for herself, but now it seemed that Seb had been right to be concerned.
‘What is it that’s wrong with me, Doctor?’ Grace wanted to know.
‘It’s what we call toxaemia,’ he answered her carefully. ‘It’s a condition that arises sometimes in pregnancy.’
‘Toxaemia?’ Grace had never heard the term but then she had never worked on a maternity ward. ‘Is it…is it serious?’
‘It can be.’ The doctor’s smile was no doubt intended to reassure her, Grace knew, but instead she felt thoroughly upset and alarmed.
‘How—’ she began, but the doctor shook his head.
‘The best thing you can do right now for baby and for yourself is to rest. What we need to do is to keep that blood pressure of yours from going any higher.’
Helplessly Grace looked at Seb, needing him to ask the question she could not. He didn’t let her down, but then she had known that he wouldn’t. He was the most wonderful husband and would be an equally wonderful father. A small sob shuddered in Grace’s throat, and Seb’s hand tightened on hers.
‘And if it does?’
‘Well, initially we would have to take Grace into hospital to see if we could get it down.’
‘And if you can’t?’ Grace demanded.
The doctor looked towards the window, avoiding eye contact with either of them.
‘Toxaemia is a very serious condition that can kill both the unborn child and its mother. If it can’t be controlled with bed rest and the mother’s blood pressure kept down, it can result in the mother having fits after giving birth and going into a coma. To avoid that, the normal procedure is to bring the pregnancy to an end, or perform a Caesarean operation if the pregnancy is advanced enough.’
‘You mean that you’d kill my baby?’ Grace’s voice was weak with shocked horror.
‘It would be the only way to save your life.’
‘Seb…’ Grace appealed, reaching for her husband’s hand.
‘It’s all right, that isn’t going to happen to…to us. Dr Raines is only telling us what could happen if you don’t rest, isn’t that so, Doctor?’
‘Yes, indeed. My nurse, Nurse Williams, will come round twice a week to keep an eye on you and take your blood pressure, but I’d be a lot happier if I knew that you had someone with you to make sure that you do stay in bed.’
And, Seb decided, showing the doctor out, he would be a lot happier if he knew that there was someone here with Grace whilst he was at work, in case she took a turn for the worse.
Upstairs in their bedroom Grace told herself that she mustn’t cry – or panic. She could feel her heart thudding heavily, her face was burning and her horrid swollen fingers throbbed. Did that mean that the blood pressure was rising?
She could hear Seb coming back upstairs.
‘I don’t want you to be here on your own, Grace,’ he told her, ‘not after what the doctor has said. I’m going to telephone your mother and ask her if she’ll come and stay.’
‘No, Seb, don’t do that. Dad would hate Mum being away, and she’d hate it too really. She’s got Sasha to think of as well, with what’s happened to Bobby, and Luke fighting in Italy. I’ll be all right. You heard the doctor; he said that if I rested then—’
‘Yes, I heard him,’ Seb agreed grimly. ‘You need someone with you whilst I’m at work, Grace, someone who won’t just make sure that you rest, but someone you can turn to if…if you need to.’
Someone who could call the doctor if she took a turn for the worse was what Seb really meant, Grace knew.
‘But that means family, Seb, and there’s no family here.’
‘Yes there is,’ Seb astonished her by saying. ‘Or at least the nearest thing to it.’
‘What do you mean?’ Grace demanded, but Seb wasn’t listening.
‘You stay here and don’t move until I get back. I won’t be long,’ he promised her.
Although Emily recognised Seb – his wife, Grace, had invited her and Tommy round to tea several times after Francine had recognised Tommy – it was still a surprise to find him standing outside her front door, but of course she invited him in and took him through to the kitchen, offering him a cup of tea as she did so.
Shaking his head, Seb told her, ‘I need your help,’ and then quickly explained the situation. ‘Grace hasn’t got any proper family here in Whitchurch and I thought, well, Tommy is her cousin, and you are his mother, but…if I’ve done the wrong thing—’
‘The wrong thing? The wrong thing would have been if you hadn’t come to me,’ Emily told him forthrightly. ‘Of course I’ll help. I could come over after Tommy’s gone to school, and then Tommy could come to your house, and do his homework there whilst we wait for you to get in. You’ll be busy, I expect, with the invasion and everything.’
Emily’s practical, calm manner immediately made Seb feel better. She might not be Jean but he suspected that Emily would look after his Grace and their coming babies every bit as caringly as though she were her mother.
‘Emily? You’ve asked Emily to come here every day and stay here all day with me? Oh, Seb, how could you? What will she think of me – me, a grown woman, needing to be looked after?’
Seeing that Grace was working herself up, Seb caught hold of her hands and held them in his own, asking her firmly, ‘Where would you rather be? Here at home with Emily looking after you or in hospital?’
‘I can’t go into hospital and leave you here all on your own, and besides, I don’t want to take up a bed someone else might need.’
‘Good, that’s settled then. Emily will be here in the morning.’
‘Gavin, it’s the memorial service for Charlie tomorrow. I know how busy you are but I’d really like you to come with me.’
They were in the kitchen and Gavin had just come in from work. Both Davie and Janette were in bed, and after weeks of cold silence from Gavin, and an even colder shoulder turned towards her in bed, Lena had decided that enough was enough and that it was time for her to ‘say something’. Asking him to go with her to Charlie’s memorial service was a good way of beginning thin
gs, Lena reckoned, because it gave her a legitimate reason to remind Gavin that they were husband and wife.
Knowing beforehand that he was likely to refuse didn’t make her misery any less painful when he demanded brusquely, ‘Why?’ but Lena wasn’t going to let herself be hurt into backing out and pretending that everything was all right. Not any longer. She had a right to know where she and the children stood. If Gavin didn’t love her or want her any more then it was up to him to say so.
‘Well, to help me do what I can to support Bella, for one thing, and for another, because you’re my husband. Bella’s been left with all the hard work and arrangements to do, despite the fact that her dad’s been round at her mum’s goodness knows how many times since they got the news, and stayed overnight one night. Bella says she wouldn’t be surprised if, now that Pauline has gone off with someone else, her dad moved back home. Taken Charlie’s death really bad, both her mum and her dad have.’
‘What about you, Lena? You must have taken it really bad as well, seeing the way you felt about him. And no, I won’t go with you to the church. I’ll put up with a lot ‘cos we’re married now, and man and wife, and we’ve got two kiddies to think of, but I’m not going into church and seeing my wife cry over another chap who means more to her than I do.’
Lena, who had been standing beside the kitchen table, stared at her husband in bewilderment.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘Charlie doesn’t mean anything to me. You know that.’
‘I thought I did,’ Gavin agreed grimly. ‘But that was before I saw the way he was cuddling you out on the street, like he had the right…like you had given him the right, that weekend he came home.’
‘Cuddling me?’ Lena had to sit down. Her head was spinning and her body had gone all weak.
‘I saw the pair of you, Lena. I was up the ladder pruning one of the trees and I saw you.’
‘What you saw was me telling Charlie to go and get lost,’ Lena told her husband firmly. ‘I told him straight that I’m a respectable married woman now who knows when she’s got a good man in her life, and that there was no way I’d ever be daft enough to be taken in by someone as worthless as him a second time. And as for me shedding tears at his funeral, the only tears I’ll be crying will be for poor Bella, who’s worried sick about her Jan, and who’s being run ragged by her selfish mother, who never lifts a finger to do anything for herself. I’m surprised at you, Gavin, I really am. I can’t believe you’ve been thinking like that for all these months and never said a single word. How could you think something like that after all we’ve bin to one another, and after I’ve said how much I love you and how grateful I am to you?’ Lena paused for breath.
Gavin might not have said anything about what he’d seen, but he thought plenty about it. Not a day had gone by without him thinking about it and what it must mean.
‘I know the way I was before we met,’ Lena continued, ‘and that my behaviour wasn’t what it should have been, going and getting meself into trouble like I did. Heading for a bad end, I was, and no mistake, and it’s thanks to Bella and you that I didn’t end up on the streets. The last person I’d shed tears over is Charlie, and the fact is that whilst I wouldn’t ever wish anyone dead, I’m not sorry that he has gone. For one thing, it means that he isn’t going to be around to maybe cause trouble for our Janette when she gets older, and I wouldn’t have put that past him. A real nasty streak he had, speaking to me like he did when you saw us.’
There was no mistaking Lena’s indignation or the honesty of what she was saying, Gavin recognised, but there were still questions he wanted answered.
‘Very well then, if it was all as you say it was, how come when you came home you didn’t say anything to me about having seen him? Why keep it a secret?’
Lena could hear the anxiety mixed with male pride and pain in Gavin’s voice. Was this what all the misery of these last long months had been all about? Mingled with her relief, Lena felt exasperation.
‘Why do you think I didn’t tell you? Because I knew how you’d take on, and the last thing I wanted was you going round to Bella’s mum’s and sorting Charlie out man to man. A fine thing that would have been for Bella to have to cope with, after all she’s done for us. Not that there wasn’t a minute when Charlie was acting like he thought I’d be willing to jump into bed with him, that I didn’t wish you’d been there to put him in his place, ‘cos I did. I don’t know, Gavin, there’s me been thinking all these months that you’d stopped loving me and that you were wishing you hadn’t married me, and all along you was thinking that I was still daft enough to go hankering after Charlie. I can’t pretend that I’m not upset that you’d think that of me.’
‘I was jealous,’ Gavin admitted, going over to her. ‘Jealous and like a bear with a sore head on account of that jealousy. As for me not loving you any more,’ his voice thickened, ‘that will never happen, Lena. The fact is that every day I love you more. You and the kiddies mean everything to me.’
‘You’ve hardly bothered with little Davie,’ Lena couldn’t help reproaching him. ‘You’d never think that he was your own and—’ She broke off and looked at Gavin, small patches of colour burning along her cheekbones as she demanded, ‘You’re never thinking that he isn’t yours, I hope, because if you are—’
Immediately Gavin shook his head. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then…’
‘I just didn’t want Janette thinking that Davie was more important to me than her,’ Gavin told her sheepishly. ‘I remember as plain as day my sister saying how put out she felt when I came along and pushed her nose out of joint because I was a boy. I don’t want our Janette growing up feeling like that.’
‘Oh, Gavin.’
Having Lena hugging him tightly, her tears dampening his neck after all the months when there’d been silence and distance between them had Gavin wrapping his own arms around her, and showing her very determinedly just how much she meant to him and how much he loved her.
‘I’ll just take your blood pressure for you, Grace, and then I’ll go downstairs and make you a cup of tea.’
It was over a week now since Emily had first started helping out and spending the day with Grace, and now she had persuaded Nurse Williams to show her how to take Grace’s blood pressure so that she and Grace could both be easy in their minds between the nurse’s visits.
‘How is it?’ Grace asked anxiously.
‘No change,’ Emily assured her. ‘The doctor will be pleased about that.’
Grace gave her a wan smile. ‘I was so pleased when we learned that I might be having twins, with Mum being one, and then her having Sasha and Lou, but now…’ Fear clouded Grace’s eyes as she placed her badly swollen hands on the mound of her stomach. ‘I’m not a complete fool, Emily. No one’s said anything but I know it would be better, safer, for them if I was only having the one, just in case they have to operate and deliver them by Caesarean section. They’ll be small, you see, with there being two, and if my blood pressure goes up and they have to operate earlier than they should have been born, they’ll be even smaller, and weaker.’
‘It’s thinking thoughts like that and then worrying yourself about them that you shouldn’t be doing,’ Emily reminded her, ‘and besides, from the size of you Nurse Williams reckons that you’ve definitely got a pair of eight pounders apiece in there.’
As always, listening to Emily’s reassuring voice made Grace feel much calmer. Whenever she tried to talk to Seb about her fears, she could see how anxious he himself was, even though he didn’t say so, and that made her feel even worse. Emily, on the other hand, behaved and spoke as though it was a foregone conclusion that Grace would deliver her babies safely without any complications.
‘I’ve brought me knitting with me today,’ Emily told her when she had been downstairs and come back with a fresh cup of tea, the first one out of the pot, just as Grace liked it best, although how on earth she knew that Grace had no idea because she had certainly never
told her.
‘What are you knitting? Something for Tommy?’ Grace asked. When she was feeling really unwell and afraid she would try to imagine her twins Tommy’s age, but these last two days, when she had tried to visualise them she hadn’t been able to. Her heart gave a panicky thud, her swollen hands pulsing with the pressure of her blood.
She must keep calm, Grace reminded herself.
‘In white wool?’ Emily laughed, answering Grace’s question and showing her the several inches of pretty blackberry stitch border she had already knitted. ‘No, I’m doing a couple of matinée jackets for the twins. I remembered I’d got some white three ply I’d bought just in case it ever came in handy, and I reckon I’ve got enough. I had the pattern in a pull-out from Woman’s Weekly. Ever so pretty, it is. I can see the babies in them now. What do you think?’
She showed Grace the pull-out with a bouncing baby on its cover, dressed in a snowy white matinée jacket and matching knitted leggings.
Emotionally Grace touched the border Emily had already knitted. She was having a bad day today and felt really poorly, and touching the soft wool brought all the fears she was trying to bury to the surface.
Seeing her distress, Emily put down her knitting and put her arms around her.
‘I’m so frightened, Emily,’ Grace admitted. ‘I keep trying to imagine the babies here and well, but I can’t and I keep thinking…I don’t want to die, Emily, I don’t want to leave Seb, and sometimes I wake up in the night and…’ Grace gulped and then rushed on, ‘Sometimes I wish that I wasn’t having them…that there wasn’t going to be any baby and that it was just me and Seb again and that everything was all right. And then I feel so guilty, as though I’m not fit to be a mother, and I start thinking that because of that I’ll be punished and the twins will die.’
Emily looked towards the window, trying to imagine how she would feel in Grace’s place, how she would feel if Grace was her daughter.