Her words were more reassuring than her face, which was streaked with sweat and dried blood, as if she had been working in a slaughterhouse. Easy enough, I thought. If that was easy, then what in God’s name was difficult? My own body was clenching itself. I picked up the baby and rocked it, soothing us both. The baby was a boy. I had never thought of its being anything other than a girl.
‘We shall need plenty of hot water, Lizzie,’ said Hannah, putting both fists to the base of her spine and pressing as she did when she had backache. She was trying to recover herself but her face was haggard. There was something piteous in it that I had never seen before, as if she were looking to me to help her.
‘It’s all right, Hannah, I’ll see to it,’ I said. I had taken for granted Hannah’s mania for order, and that she would always work like a horse. But now I saw that she was an old woman, and I had never noticed it before today.
She was right; we’d have to wash everything. I could send for Philo to help and we’d do the work together. Or better, I’d tell Philo to take the washing home, where we had a proper wash-house. All the linen would fly in the air as if there had never been any blood. The rain had stopped now and the sun was chasing clouds over the sky.
‘You must rest, Hannah, you’ve been up all night.’
There was still the butcher-shop smell in my throat, making me gag. I tucked the baby close, went to the window and undid the catch.
‘For the love of God, do you want to kill us all?’ cried Mrs Rowe.
I bent over the baby, to hide my face. There were red marks on his cheeks, like minute strawberries. A fine boy, Mrs Rowe had said, but he felt so light, as if he might vanish away again as suddenly as he had come. I wondered if my mother had seen him yet. She was so deeply asleep, as if she might never wake again. Her shocked, still face was a thousand miles from us, in another world.
‘I have an errand now,’ said Mrs Rowe. ‘I’ll be back directly,’ and she nodded at Hannah as if it had been agreed between them. I went into the kitchen and told Augustus to call in a boy from the street and give him a penny to fetch Philo. He went clattering down the stairs and I heard him calling, then in a few minutes he was back, rubbing his hands as if he had done great things.
‘The room is clean now,’ said Hannah, coming in with the laundry ready in its sack. ‘You can come in.’ Her voice was always level when she spoke to Augustus and she was never angry with him as she was with me and Mammie.
‘Will you come in with me, Lizzie?’ said Augustus. ‘I think Julia would like to see the child.’ I rose and followed him. As we entered my mother’s room I saw Augustus glance at the books propping up the bed, notice that they were his and hesitate as if he would have liked to stoop and read the titles. My mother’s eyes were still closed. She was white and sunken, but I had got a grip on my fear. The bleeding was stopped. It had left her weak and besides the night had exhausted her. Of course she wouldn’t be awake. There were good reasons why she should look like that.
‘When she wakes, she will be more herself,’ said Hannah. Augustus stood there, looking down at my mother. I could not read him.
‘Julia,’ he said, very quietly. He kept his back to me. My mother’s hand lay on the covers but he did not touch it. I thought it was no wonder. It was his touching that had brought her to this. ‘Julia, we have a son.’
I stepped back. He had not held the baby, but it was his. Augustus was the father and here they were, the three of them: mother, father and child, even if it was I who held the baby and not my mother.
Hannah came forward. She did not exactly displace Augustus, but she wiped my mother’s face with lavender water, and he moved aside.
‘I have to watch her closely, until Mrs Rowe comes back,’ said Hannah.
‘What has she gone for? Where has she gone?’ asked Augustus sharply.
‘To the cook-shop, to fetch herself a steak and kidney pudding.’
‘Any of us could have done that. She ought to have remained here, with Julia. I suppose she will fetch herself a pint of porter with it. I told Julia that she ought to have a man-midwife, but she would not listen to me.’
‘Mrs Rowe has been on her feet all night,’ said Hannah. ‘I told her I would send a boy to the cook-shop, but she wanted the air. She’ll be back directly.’
‘I’m sure she ought not to think so much of her stomach, in her situation.’
I thought what a hypocrite he was, when he’d no doubt had a good hot dinner before settling down to play cards, and then his new bread and cold bacon in the morning. He still had his back to us. He reached out and patted the pillow beside my mother’s head, but still he did not touch her. He turned then and I saw that his eyes were bleared.
‘My poor Julia,’ he said. ‘Come, Lizzie, we must let her rest. Hannah will stay with your mother.’
I did not want to leave her, but there was the baby. He was Augustus’s son but that could not shake the tenderness that flooded my body. I crooked my elbow high to shield the baby from the draught as we passed through the corridor into the kitchen. He should be kept close to the fire to keep warm. He must be hungry, but I had no idea what to give him. I had heard of babies drinking goat’s milk and taking arrowroot, but this baby was so small. My mother had said she would nurse the child herself, as she had suckled me. My father had been horrified; he had wanted me sent out to a wet-nurse. But she had got her way and now fashion had caught up with her. All the fine ladies liked to be painted with their babies at the breast.
She looked so ill. I could not see how she was going to feed this baby and I knew next to nothing about how to look after it. Hannah was too old for it: that was suddenly, startlingly clear. We were all like stopped clocks without Mammie to set us going. The bare sight of her lying there, shut in on herself and bled of all her strength, made me feel helpless, abandoned, as if I were a child again.
I was not a child. I was responsible for the baby until Mammie could take him. There was no time to indulge any other feeling. I must find out how to get milk for him, and how to feed him, how he should be clothed and how he should sleep.
But Augustus clapped his hands together. ‘The child must be sent to a wet-nurse. Hannah must make some enquiries, and find a clean, decent woman in one of the cottages at Westbury.’ He was full of purpose now, happy with it, and I was silent. What if my mother came to herself and found the baby gone? She would look so wild – she would think that it had died and be frightened …
‘I think we should wait,’ I told him. ‘The baby is fast asleep. I will make enquiries about food for him. We can wait until my mother wakes and tells us what she wants to do.’
‘A clean, decent woman. There must be a suitable creature. A child of nature, unconfined – I would wish my son to share the upbringing of Rousseau.’
‘But Rousseau hated wet-nursing.’ This at least I knew, because my mother’s views on the subject were formed by Rousseau’s Émile, which she had read aloud to me until I yawned.
‘The great philosopher’s mother died when he was nine days old. His genius was fed by his wet-nurse.’ And Augustus beamed on me with the kindliness he always felt when he bested anyone in an argument. I wanted to protest but I could not be bothered to enter into an argument about Rousseau.
‘She looks very bad,’ I said instead. The baby was making little sounds, more creaks than cries, but I was afraid they would grow stronger. If he began to scream he might never stop. I began to walk up and down the kitchen, rocking him.
‘She will be much better when she wakes,’ said Augustus, as if he knew. But he did not. He had turned pale at the sight of blood, and left the room. I doubted if he had ever held a baby before. He knew nothing except how to hand the work over to someone else.
The door opened. It was Maria Rowe, smelling of meat pies, fresh air and something else besides … Augustus was right, she had had a nip for sure. She tugged off her cloak and threw it on a chair by the fire.
‘Now, let’s be having you,’ she said
, reaching for the baby. She didn’t care tuppence about him catching cold now, but stripped off the flannel to examine him closely. The stump of the cord must be dressed, she said. The baby must be given sugar-water. The baby’s face contorted and flushed purple and it began to shriek, but she took no notice and did not attempt any comfort. She set it on a flannel in her lap where it rolled helplessly. Its arms and legs flew out and its hands snatched the air. She seized it between her hands and lifted it high so that it drew up its legs, screamed and voided a thin stream of blackish tarry stuff on to the flannel.
‘A fine boy,’ she said, laughing at him.
I wanted to snatch the baby from her. His whole body was purple now and he was screaming steadily, without tears. His sex was wrinkled and too big, surely, for his tiny body. He had a barrel chest and skinny, dwindling legs. What if he were to turn out like Augustus? But the midwife seemed to think that everything was as it ought to be. She wiped him down with a damp cloth, dressed the cord stump with an ointment she whipped out of her pocket and then wrapped him up again with bands of clean flannel, trussing him over and over until he looked like a caterpillar gone into a cocoon.
‘There you are, my fine gentleman, that’s you taken care of for the present,’ she said, and sure enough his cries began to calm as soon as he felt himself bound. She held him out to me like a parcel. ‘I must go in to your mother. Do you know how to make sugar-water?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She huffed impatiently. ‘Isn’t there such a thing as a loaf of sugar in the house? You’d think nobody knew there’d be a baby coming into it.’
‘There’s sugar in the cupboard. What must I do?’
‘Scrape a little off the loaf and mix it in warm water. He’ll sleep once he has something in his stomach.’
And then what? I wanted to ask, but I was ashamed of my ignorance. I laid the baby in its cradle and tucked its shawl around it. ‘Sit here, Augustus, and rock the cradle. With your foot, like this,’ I said.
Augustus rocked vigorously, but the baby did not settle. He would take the sugar-water and then sleep: that was what the midwife had said. I got it ready in a little cup, dissolving the sugar in hot water and then adding cold. Would he take it from a spoon? The salt spoon was the smallest we had: perhaps he would drink from that. I picked him up again and tucked him firmly into the crook of my left arm. By this time he was crying furiously again and the noise made me clumsy. I worked the spoon past his gums and tipped it until the water ran into his mouth.
‘You are choking him!’ shouted Augustus as the baby sputtered and went purple. I lifted him quickly, held him over my shoulder and patted his back as I had seen mothers do. I was sweating and my heart beat fast.
‘He’s got to feed,’ I said. ‘Go away if you don’t like it.’
This time I put a very little sugar-water in the spoon, no more than a big drop, and tipped it over the baby’s mouth, but just as I thought it was going in he writhed so that the drop fell on his nose. I wiped it away and then I thought: Perhaps he will take it from my finger. I dipped my little finger in the cup and held it between his lips as his mouth opened for the next shriek. His gums closed around my finger, sucking furiously. He kept on sucking when the drop was surely gone and I had to pull my finger loose. Instantly, he started to cry again. Another drop, another rage of sucking, another fit of screaming. He was sweating too, hot with the passion for his food. But soon we were in a rhythm and he was no longer crying but instead smacking his lips blindly at the air until the next drop came. I went on until I thought he had had enough. I did not want to make him sick. He was sleepy now but he still sucked at my finger and every time I tried to take it out of his mouth he began to whimper. I wouldn’t fight with him. I’d let him suck until he slept.
Augustus was watching us. ‘How do you know what to do, Lizzie? Have you seen it done?’
‘Ssh. He’s dropping off.’
I knew nothing. It was the baby who had taught me what to do.
‘“The earliest education is most important and without a doubt is woman’s work,”’ observed Augustus, and I could not help smiling.
‘I am not educating him, Augustus, merely giving him some sugar-water.’
‘You did not recognise that I was quoting Rousseau?’
‘Rousseau was not at the forefront of my mind,’ I said. Augustus was so absurd and yet … he was smiling too. He bent forward and dabbed gingerly at the baby’s cheek with his finger.
‘He is almost asleep. You have done well with him, Lizzie.’
Hannah came in then. She spoke to me, and not to Augustus. Her mouth was no longer trembling and she had combed her hair back into her cap. But her head nodded faintly, like the head of an old woman.
‘Your mother is awake now, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘She would like to see you.’
10
The baby is to be called Thomas, after Tom Paine. My mother is too weak to draw him to her breast, but he lies against her, wrapped in his cocoon.
‘Lizzie,’ she says. ‘My Lizzie.’ She writhes a little and I lift up the baby for fear he should roll off the bed. This time she does not notice, or protest. ‘I’m very ill,’ she says.
‘It’s all right, Mammie. I’m here.’
‘Where’s the baby?’
‘He’s here. Look, in my arms, quite safe.’
‘I don’t mean that baby, I mean the other baby,’ she says quickly, irritably. ‘Hannah must look for it.’
‘She will,’ I say, as soothingly as I know how. My heart is so stilled by fear that it seems hardly to beat.
‘Oh Lizzie, it’s coming,’ she says, and her voice tightens with terror.
‘Hush, Mammie, it’s all over. You’ve had the baby.’ But instantly Hannah is there, on the other side of the bed, with the hartshorn. My mother breathes deeply and sighs. Now Hannah is measuring out laudanum, dropping it on to Mammie’s tongue.
‘Swallow, Julia, swallow.’
I see my mother’s gorge rise, and then she swallows. ‘Better,’ she says. After a while, with her eyes still shut, ‘I thought I was dying.’
‘Hush, Julia. You’ll frighten Elizabeth.’
Thomas stirs and creaks in my arms. The smell in the room is appalling. It hits you as soon as you come over the threshold. It is a smell of rottenness.
The first day after Thomas was born, we thought all was well. Augustus sent for the doctor, who examined her carefully and prescribed an ointment of white wine, flour and honey to be applied to her breasts, as she still intended to nurse the baby. On the third morning she awoke with a headache. She shook and could not get warm no matter how many clothes we piled on the bed. By evening she was burning hot. Milk fever, said the doctor, and urged us to apply the ointment more freely. By the next day her stomach was swollen and the smell had begun to fill the room.
‘Take it away, it hurts my head,’ said Mammie in a low, rapid voice. She was flushed almost purple along her cheekbones. Hannah held her wrist and counted her pulse. When she looked at me I flinched from the fear in her face.
‘Take the baby into the kitchen, Elizabeth,’ said Hannah.
Mammie had not let us take the baby before; we had had to steal him away when she was asleep. She wanted him beside her even though the doctor frowned on it. I put Thomas into his cradle and called for Augustus to rock him. There was no answer so I went to look. He was in the parlour, keeled sideways in his chair, asleep. He had been up all night so I could not blame him.
‘Augustus.’
He woke with a jerk. His eyes widened, focused, saw me. ‘Julia—’
‘Nothing’s happened. But come and rock the baby before he cries. I must go back to her.’
She was pushing the covers off her distended stomach, where the pain was. Hannah was carrying away more soiled cloths. I sat by the bedside, took a piece of wet flannel and sponged her face, her neck, her wrists and forearms. There were dark red blotches on her wrists and knuckles. They had come since the morning and they wer
e spreading.
Sponging seemed to comfort her. Gently, I pulled the bedclothes over her again so that she would not catch cold. It was very hot in the room with the fire lit and the windows tight shut, but the doctor said it would be dangerous to let the air in on her.
‘Lizzie,’ she said, opening her eyes, ‘I don’t like these rooms. I don’t think we should stay here. Shall we go back to Hoxton? You liked it there. You remember the little apple tree in the yard? But don’t climb so high, it won’t take your weight.’ She was trying to heave herself up in the bed, but she was too weak.
‘Yes, I remember. There was one apple and I picked it for you but you cut it up and we all had a share.’
‘Yes. Yes. We must go back there. Tell Hannah. What are we doing here, Lizzie? I cannot remember.’
‘Looking after you, Mammie. You are not well.’
‘Don’t be frightened, Lizzie, I’ll be perfectly well in the morning.’
She lapsed into sleep.
‘Is the doctor coming again, Hannah?’ I whispered.
She nodded. We both knew that my mother was worse, even in the last two hours.
‘What can he do?’
‘I don’t know, Elizabeth.’
‘He must do something!’
He had bled her twice. He said it would reduce the inflammation in her blood.
‘She cannot be bled again,’ said Hannah. ‘He spoke of purging her but now he says that with such a flux coming from her, it will do no good.’
‘But she can’t go on like this.’
‘No,’ said Hannah, and now I heard it in her voice: that my mother would not go on. That there would be an end to it. We could not get back to where we had been safe.
The blotches are coming thick and dark. I push up the sleeve of my mother’s nightgown and see that there are purplish patches on her elbows now. Her mouth has fallen open and her breathing is short and harsh.
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