This must be it. The thing she had been dreading for the past six months was happening. Her baby was coming, at least a month early, and the secret she had managed to keep hidden – for her bump was small as if it knew it should remain invisible – was about to spill out in a tangled mess.
She paced the room. There was no pain now. Perhaps it was a false alarm and she could get out and have it in one of the more remote fields or hidden on the ledge on the headland? She grabbed a cardigan and a blanket, knowing that she wasn’t being rational but desperate to avoid having it where she might be discovered. And then the pain came again.
It was harder this time, more insistent. An all-encompassing spasm that seemed to paralyse her body and then made her legs quiver. She clutched at the bedpost, concentrating on squeezing her fingers, and willing the baby to stay in. The mirror on her dressing table was tilted up and she caught sight of her face, tinged green, and her body hunched like an old woman’s. What have I done, she wanted to whisper, though she seemed incapable of speaking, the pain was so total. Then, incredulous: What is happening to me?
A brief reprieve, and she found she could move again and think clearly. At least her mother was out, at Wadebridge market, for the day. Only James and her father were on the farm, and, in the house, Joanna and Alice. Perhaps it would be possible to flee? She could see why ewes hunkered down, found a private place in which to give birth. If she could just hide away from here, keep the trauma of birth away from the farmhouse and only return when she had safely delivered this baby, then perhaps her parents might be more willing to accept it.
She made for the door, blanket clutched in her hand, but as she did so there was a tentative knock and Alice sidled in.
‘Shut the door.’ Her words came out as a hiss.
Alice’s mouth dropped and the colour drained from her face. ‘Are you all right?’ she said, hands flailing by her side, catching at air.
‘I’m having a baby.’ She spat the words before the pain surged once more: a wave that picked her up and carried her along. ‘I’m having a baby,’ she just managed, again, her voice softer and more plaintive this time, before it cracked and she had to swallow to stop herself from sobbing.
Alice, in a fog of shock, just stood there.
‘It hurts,’ Maggie said, as the pain began to subside enough for her to speak. ‘It hurts,’ she repeated, suddenly furious that Alice couldn’t see.
And then, finally, the pain pushed her so that she said something she would never have contemplated saying otherwise: ‘You might have to help me.’
‘But I know nothing about babies.’
‘You know about lambs.’
‘That’s lambs.’
‘And you’ve seen calvings.’ She gasped. ‘It’s no different. Ah!’ Another spasm and she was speechless, her silence stretched out with pain.
Alice lowered her voice and spoke gently, as if she were a small child, or simple. ‘It’s a baby, Maggie. It’s different from an animal. I really think it is.’
‘No … It’s not.’ The pain was gone, and she was able to speak normally, but she had to be quick. ‘You’ve got to help me. There’s no one else.’ Her sharpness masked a biting fear.
Alice looked down at her stomach then up at her, eyes huge and brimming with anxiety. Maggie felt a rush of fury. ‘I can’t do this alone, can’t you see? Besides,’ she gasped as her stomach tightened and she clutched at the bedstead. ‘You owe it to Will.’
‘To Will?’
It came out in a rush. The truth: so clear and sweet and problematic. ‘It will be your nephew or niece.’
She looked at Alice, willing her to understand, her eyes frank and frightened. Alice flushed – the unspoken truth acknowledged at last.
‘Oh!’ she said, and bent down, hiding her face. When she stood back up, her cheeks were still pink and she dragged her eyes towards Maggie as though it were an effort. ‘Of course I’ll help,’ she said.
‘You’re going to have to help me cut the cord, when it comes out. Like Father does with the lambs.’ In between gasps, Maggie began to be practical.
‘I don’t think I can cut you.’
‘Not me – the cord. Yes, you can. You’ve watched Father, lots of times. Oh!’ She bent forwards, doubled up in pain.
‘Is it getting worse?’
She nodded, unable to speak.
‘You’ll need to clean my sewing scissors.’ Her voice had returned to normal. ‘With some water from the copper. Can you manage that?’
‘Yes, of course. But I can’t leave you.’
The words came far apart. ‘Alice … I’ll be … all right …’
Still Alice hovered.
‘Go,’ she said, once her voice had returned to normal. ‘I’ll be all right. Honest. Just go, please.’
She was keening by the time Alice had raced back from the kitchen, clinging onto the bedpost; her face, she could see from the mirror, beetroot and perspiring. The pain had grown more intense: as if she was being ripped apart or seared. The room tipped and righted itself; segued from a crisp chill to an oppressive heat.
‘Oh, my Lord!’ Joanna, all of a fluster, pushed past Alice and came to her side, put her arm round her to stroke her back as if she had done this many times.
‘You told her!’ she managed to get out, glaring at Alice.
‘I didn’t mean … She saw me.’ The girl pointed at Joanna.
‘And it’s a bloody good job I did.’
Somehow, Joanna had found an old sheet and was placing it beneath her; mopping up the floor, which was slippery and wet.
The maid ducked down and glanced up beneath her legs.
‘Oh, my love, I can see its head. It’s starting to crown.’
She whimpered and then her embarrassment was forgotten in a fresh crest of pain.
‘It’s all right, my love. You’ve done so well. Now, I think that soon you’re going to want to do some pushing.’
‘Aaarrrgh.’ She started weeping properly. Great big wet tears, for it suddenly seemed too much, this fear and pain.
‘Now. When you think you need to push, you do so. Just like going to the privy.’
Alice flashed Joanna a look.
‘It’s no use being coy, Alice,’ Joanna reprimanded her. ‘Being coy didn’t get her into this state.’
The tears came faster then: shame heaped on to pain.
‘Oh, my lover, I’m not blaming you.’ The maid paused. ‘Goodness knows but he was lovely.’
‘Aarrgh … I want to …’
‘You push. That’s right, you push. Alice, stroke her back.’
‘Aaarrrgh …’
‘That’s right. It’s coming! It’s coming!’
She bent between her legs while Alice put her arm round her, and what might have felt irritating was curiously comforting.
‘It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s crowning!’ Then: ‘Here it comes; your baby!’
Something slithered out between her legs: hot and wet, more animal than human. A dark head, slick with a creamy grey waxiness, a bundle of tiny, wrinkled limbs.
‘Waaaaah.’ The bedroom filled with a different cry, tentative at first then swiftly furious. The baby was red, and its mouth, above a writhing body gripped by Joanna, was a black hole that seemed to take up its entire face.
‘We need to keep it quiet.’ She was trembling with shock.
‘Here: the scissors – you do that bit, Alice.’ Joanna smiled at the girl, who looked as if she was going to be sick. ‘Go on: you need to do it.’ And Alice cut the translucent cord, with its streak of red running through it, and separated her from this child.
‘It’s a beautiful boy.’ Joanna was wrapping the baby in a towel, smoothing away some of the creaminess. ‘Quite tiny, I’d say; a scrap of one. I think he’s very early. Here – you take him.’ The maid handed him over, and Maggie found herself holding her son.
It wasn’t as she imagined, this first cuddle. He was red, squished, furious, and yet she couldn’t get e
nough of him. She stroked his cheek with one finger and kissed his forehead, breathing in the heady stench of blood and brine.
She smelt his damp, dark hair, caressed his skull, as delicate and vulnerable as a bird’s egg. Drank him in: her tiny, ugly-beautiful scrap of a baby; reading his face for any trace of his father, any clue that he wasn’t just hers.
He was so small. That was what she kept thinking: his hands so wee, his fingernails minuscule, like the tiniest flecks of sand. His nose wrinkled in a snuffle, and his blue eyes – not Will’s, not hers – stared at her, unsmiling.
‘Hello, baby,’ she whispered. His mouth opened as if he would mew, and she shushed him and held him tight.
‘Does your mother really not know?’ Joanna asked the question Maggie didn’t want to contemplate.
‘I don’t think so.’ She shuddered. ‘He’s so early. I thought he wouldn’t be here for a month, at least. I think I thought I would have him at school or at Aunt Edith’s.’
‘Oh, dear Lord. That might have been worse.’
‘Yes.’ The strength seemed to have gone from her, and she felt her body hunch forwards, protecting the baby and her slackened stomach. She felt deflated and newly vulnerable.
‘Here.’ She realised that perhaps the others might like to hold him, and held him out to Alice. The baby’s mouth opened and his tiny lips quivered. A burst of rage spilled out.
‘It’s all right. He wants you.’ Alice looked fearful and shied away.
Maggie pulled him back towards her chest, where he started to forage.
‘He wants to feed,’ Joanna said, as the baby, mouth pursed, starting rooting. ‘Here – you just put him on.’
Trembling, Maggie watched as Joanna helped him fumble his way across her breast to her nipple and he began to drink, as instinctively as a newborn piglet or lamb. Silence descended for Maggie was exhausted, and the other two seemed briefly overawed. Nothing could be heard save for the odd snuffle and then a gentle whimper of delight.
Thirty
In the end, she had six perfect hours with her baby. Joanna cooked the dinner, and told her father that Maggie had ‘women’s problems’. Well, it was hardly a lie. Alice had helped, but had been so quiet it was a wonder she hadn’t given the game away. Then again, a new grandchild was the last thing Joe Retallick would expect to find hidden away upstairs.
While her father was preoccupied with a cow with milk fever, and her mother remained in Wadebridge, Maggie gazed at this perfect baby, so vulnerable and helpless he couldn’t even hold his head up by himself.
If she put a finger in his hand, he would curl his palm around it as if determined to cling on to her. And if she put him to her breast, he would suck obligingly. A trail of dark tar snaked across her puckered stomach and she marvelled at how efficiently his tiny body worked. He already knew how to feed and poo; how to sleep; how to secure affection. As long as he had her with him, he could survive.
After his second attempt at feeding, he slipped off her nipple, almost apologetic, and fell into a deep sleep. His breath came out in tiny sniffles as if he was taking in the scent of her skin. She traced the delicate curve of his cheek, afraid of touching him too heavily in case he woke up. The top of his scalp felt soft and almost unformed; the dark hairs fine and matted with some sort of lanolin. She kissed his head and breathed in the briny smell of herself and something sweeter: the milky, delectable smell of him.
When he woke, his eyes were bright and questioning. Babies weren’t meant to focus when they were born, she had heard that somewhere, and yet he was alert and quizzical, searching her face as if to find some explanation for why he was here.
He didn’t smile – perhaps that came later – but as his squashed-ness subsided a little, she began to make out a little of Will. His eyes weren’t his, but his mouth was. She touched it lightly and imagined him kissing a girl one day. His ears were delicate curls, the veins glowing through the translucent skin, so that she could almost envisage the blood pumping through his body; carrying the milky goodness she had just given him.
‘Little bunny,’ she whispered, for there was something so vulnerable about him, as though he were a baby rabbit, found cowering in its nest.
Her womb ached and the parts between her legs stung, where they had been stretched, Joanna had told her; it had burned when she’d used the bathroom, and Joanna, whose mother had only just stopped having babies, had got her to wash herself, after that final mess had come out of her, to rinse all the blood away.
The pink water had spiralled down the plughole, and Joanna had put the towels and her sheets straight into the copper still boiling downstairs. Then she had scrubbed the floor clean with Jeyes Fluid, the smell of the disinfectant overpowering the stench of blood, and flung open the windows to waft away the medicinal tang. But no amount of boiling or disinfecting could disguise the fact that there was a baby in her bed, and it could only have arrived one way.
At first, the adrenalin of birth allowed her to ignore this. But once Joanna and Alice had gone downstairs, the exhaustion of the past six hours – and the strain of the past seven months – washed over her in vast, engulfing waves. How could she explain or hide him away? Her half-thought-through plan had been to have him in Bodmin, and then, somehow, to get herself and the baby to Will at Farmer Eddy’s – where, Alice, in a rare moment of confidence, had recently revealed he was. Or, perhaps Aunt Edith – her father’s sister, not her mother’s – would be won over by this baby and persuaded to argue her case. Both scenarios had always seemed optimistic, but she couldn’t believe she wouldn’t manage to keep him. She needed to cling to that hope to exist.
But having this baby more than a month early, and at home, changed everything. To Evelyn, there was nothing more sinful than an unmarried mother. She would throw herself off the headland and be smashed on the rocks if Maggie ever brought such a shame on her family, she had said. The girls taking their babies to the Sisters of Mercy orphanage in Bodmin, or Rosemundy House down the coast at St Agnes, were a different type of girl from her daughter. Some were even put in the lunatic asylum. Girls weren’t just wicked but mad if they behaved like that – and were caught doing it.
But looking at her baby, she couldn’t believe that she had been so very wicked, for the closer she looked, the more of Will she could see – from the whorls of his hair to the perfection of his skin. She had loved him, and nothing had mattered but the intensity of her feelings. It was as simple as that. And so what they had done last summer couldn’t be sinful, could it?
You’re not an animal, though, are you? She could imagine her mother screeching the words, her self-control abandoned. You went through this, too, she wanted to say. You and Father did what Will and I did: you must have, to have me. And there were other babies: a son or two, who were supposed to take over the farm, who died before they were born, far too early. And what about Father’s brother? Your first love, Isaac? You felt as I did, you said, though it was hard to envisage. She couldn’t imagine saying any of this to Evelyn.
There was no way she could avoid her. She had asked Joanna if she could get a horse saddled so that she could ride, with the baby, towards Bodmin and Farmer Eddy’s, but was told she was foolish. There was still blood trailing from her, so how she could ride with a child was anyone’s guess. Joanna couldn’t drive there, even if she knew the way or there was enough red diesel, and as for Alice, she looked so petrified, she was worse than useless.
She looked at her bedside clock. It was three now. She had, perhaps, an hour before her mother returned: one single hour in which to nest with her baby, to drink in his features and memorise the snub of his nose, the dimple in his cheek.
She breathed in the sweet, milky smell of him, willing time to stretch or stop. A single hour before everything would change.
It was her mother’s footsteps she heard first: light and insistent. The tread of a woman with something on her mind.
Ten past four. The door burst open. Dear Lord, she must have known. But he
r mother’s face – slipping from irritation into incredulity – suggested that she hadn’t.
Evelyn took in her daughter, lying propped against the pillows, and the bundle held tightly in her arms.
‘What have you got there?’ Her mouth fell, slack as the opening of a purse, and her eyes bulged as if staring would convince her that what she saw was just a figment of her imagination: the hump of a pillow, a fold in the sheet.
She staggered towards the bed.
‘That’s not a baby?’ Even as she said it, reality struck.
‘You’ve had a baby? You … you.’ Words seemed to fail her.Then: ‘You wicked, wicked girl.’ Her voice rose in disbelief.
Face contorted with rage, she reached for the bundle and, before Maggie could do anything, she had her hands on the baby – wrenching apart the towel in which she had wrapped him; exposing him to the chill air.
‘Careful – be careful with him.’ Maggie felt his heart flutter at the sudden disruption. His sleep broken, he opened his mouth and began to wail in indignation. The sound seemed to startle Evelyn, who shot away.
‘You slattern!’
Maggie felt as if she had been slapped, her mother’s venom striking her like the flat of her hand.
‘You little slattern.’
The insult seemed to have startled even the baby, who suddenly stopped crying.
Evelyn seemed to be pulling herself together.
‘How could you do this to me? To your father? How could you lower yourself like this? With all your chances?’
She paused, eyes blazing with contempt and what looked like betrayal.
‘You stupid, stupid girl. You … little bitch!’
There was a pause punctuated by a gasp of shock from Joanna, who had rushed in with Alice.
‘You knew about this?’ Her mother turned on the maid. ‘Of course you did – and you!’ Her contempt seemed to take in Alice, her face blotched with shock, eyes filling with tears. ‘Of course. You were her chaperone, her alibi.’
The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016) Page 20