The Heart Beats in Secret

by Katie Munnik

  ‘No, I’m fine. I just remembered a message I need to send back to Aberlady. But a telegram would be faster, wouldn’t it? Oh dear, I can’t think this through.’

  ‘It’s not to Stanley, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s not at home. It’s just the neighbour. I didn’t tell her I was coming into the city and she’ll be beside herself.’

  ‘I only wondered. You’re flushed, dear. Sit down. You should rest.’

  ‘I’m fine. I am.’ A telegram would be best, so Mum gets me organized and we walk down to the post office in Bruntsfield.

  ‘We won’t pop in on the Morningside aunts,’ she says. ‘It would be too sudden for them, and you will want to see about the telegram as soon as possible.’

  Such a lot of trouble to cause, I think, but I just nod. I picture the telegram boy on his bicycle, the faces at the windows all along the street in Aberlady. Well, perhaps it serves them right for all their staring and muttering. Let them worry that he’s coming to them. Let their hearts stop just a little. Miss Baxter’s won’t, so that’s all right. She’ll wonder and she might worry for me but only for a moment. When she sees him at her own door, she’ll not panic. She won’t mind that I’ve sent word like this. She’ll be calm and curious, that’s all. Not like the rest of us on the street. She won’t feel the kick in her heart at all.

  There are allotment gardens down on Bruntsfield Links, too, and Mum makes a comment about pushing golfers out of the way to plant potatoes in the holes. It’s so strange to see the grass shrunk away, the black of the soil and green blades of vegetables. Strange, too, to see the railings cut away in front of the terraces, and the darkened windows in all the flats. But the jackdaws are the same. They haven’t been scared off by all the changes. They swoop close over the new gardens, their overlapping calls chew chew and gentler than the ragged rooks by the sea. I watch as they wing circles around the church spire, then glide down with grace to hop on the grass, with grey hoods and silvered eyes.

  Mum and I walk briskly together, matching strides. I feel as if I could walk forever, but when we stop at the post office and my mother goes in to see about the telegram, I lean against the wall and feel things change. A tightening. A swoop. Here and, in a moment, gone. The bricks are cool to the touch. I pay attention.

  On the way back across the Links, I don’t say anything. It isn’t anything anyway, is it? Just another strange pregnant feeling. A pause. A shift. A change. It comes and goes. It isn’t anything. I keep stride with my mother, and she glances at my face, holding my arm more tightly now.

  ‘There,’ she says. ‘You have grown strong, haven’t you? You’ll be fine.’

  At the flat, I don’t want to sit down, I’ve stayed too long already. I tell her I should be heading back to the buses, but she lays a hand on my arm and tells me to wait for the others.

  ‘They will all want to see you, you know. They won’t forgive me if I let you go. And your father, too. It has been a long while since you’ve seen him.’

  So I stay and I don’t sit down because the baby is low and it’s better on my feet, rocking the weight, swaying a little, then walking up and down the worn carpet while my mother smiles. I follow her into the kitchen and she slices bread. There are children on the drying green outside. I can hear their voices, calling, singing, the sound of a ball thrown against a stone wall, rhythmic, and then my mother hands me a plate.

  ‘Eat, my dear. You need your energy. Even a little will help you on your way.’

  ‘I’ll eat back home. Don’t waste your ration on me.’

  ‘But you’ll be staying here tonight. You can’t travel like that. You aren’t comfortable. Would you like a chair now?’

  ‘No, I’m fine on my feet.’

  ‘It’s starting, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s too early. I’m just feeling sore.’

  ‘Let’s walk a little more to loosen up, shall we?’ We walk up and down the hallway again and she says that there won’t be buses back to East Lothian in the evening now. It is too dangerous with the raids and besides, the telegram was sent, and no one would worry now. Best to settle in. Walk out the cramps. Eat if I could. The family will be home soon for their tea, and don’t begin to worry there, the stew is already cooked. Mainly turnip and potato, and a handful of greens, too, because they’re full of iron.

  ‘I think I should lie down.’

  ‘All the excitement of travel and I’ve walked you too far now, haven’t I? And talked too much. You need to rest.’ She takes me into the girls’ bedroom and helps me out of my brassiere. ‘You can sleep in your slip. I’ll tell the others to be quiet when they come in.’

  The sheets are cool and the pillow smells of home. I wish my sisters would come and wrap their little arms around me, nuzzle little faces into my hair and bring in the smell of the garden, too. Another swoop and a tightening getting tighter and it’s starting to hurt. I pay attention. I breathe into the pillow, hold on, let go.

  It’s almost midnight when the sirens start, jolting me, and fear floods in with the wheeze of the sirens. Then pain pushes up against me, squeezing out my breath. My mother is there, her arms around me. She says the children are away, wrapped in blankets, hiding in the shelter in the garden. We shouldn’t be scared by the loud noises. We shouldn’t be scared, she says, and she rocks me, telling me the children are safe, and so are we. She gives me words of prayer and they are comfort. God is close. The planes will pass over and she will stay, she will, she says, and she repeats herself, she will stay. She says I am strong. Then she shows me how to breathe, how to find the space in between the pushes and she pulls me to standing, helps me lean against the chest of drawers, holding on, learning, letting the keen of the sirens be the blood within me. I let go of the fear. She rubs my back. I breathe.

  The doctor will come soon to check on you she says.

  Then a cool cloth to wipe my face, a warm blanket around my shoulders. Waves, wind. Breath and time dark as the room, pushing against me, with me, blind.

  You can push now. Words in the dark and still the planes and sirens and the sound of far-off guns down the coast. In between, I learn, I’m taught by breath and by spirit and I learn to approach, to squeeze past and through, pushing away from the voices and the cotton sheet gripped in my fist, but not beyond the sounds and now I’m carried among them up along the searchlight beams, out over the water and into the dark, the guns steady, steady below.

  Then comes a small, high, furious wail above it all and I’m pulled back down to earth, afraid that the planes will hear the baby’s voice and find us in the dark. I open my eyes to the grey-blue room, my mother’s face close at the end of the night, pale and smiling. Then with absurd appropriateness, the all-clear cuts through, its continuing note like a psalmic amen and now I can feel something warm against my knees, soft and wriggling.

  ‘It’s a girl.’

  When dawn comes, my mother rolls away the heavy blinds and the wind catches the white curtains, blowing them big-bellied into the room like sails and it makes me laugh because I see that Felicity’s eyes are as blue as the sea. Deep, deep blue.

  The zoo was hit that night and Milton Road down near Portobello Park. But not the railway and none of the churches. In the shelter in the garden, my brothers were sure that Arthur’s Seat had crumbled. They heard the crack, they say. Rockslides and earthquakes and maybe a great big hole. As soon as the sky was light, they ran down to the Meadows, blinking, and saw that it was still there, its bulk still holding the city in place. When they tell me all this, their faces are flushed, relieved, and laughing with the thought of it then serious again when they remember to worry about the giraffes. I hold Felicity in my arms and when they bend down to look at her face, I see that they are gentle, too.

  I stay at the house for a week. My sisters take turns holding the baby, sitting with their bottoms right against the back on the chesterfield, a cushion balanced on their laps for support. My mother washes me with warm water, brushes my hair and h
elps me to my feet. She makes me porridge without the sugar and the salt is good on my tongue. I feel like a sailor home from the sea, the floorboards uncertain, untrusted underfoot. I don’t walk far.

  When my milk comes in, I dream of butter, of tigers running circles around the garden trees, turning and churning. Isn’t that how the poem goes? My sisters might know. Felicity must dream only of milk, her small mouth nursing even in sleep, her skin pale and creamy.

  She is ten days old when we climb back on the bus to Aberlady. My mum comes, too, just to get us settled. She carries a bag filled with things she’s collected: nappies, blankets, soft cloths for swaddling and for after the bath. On the bus, my breasts ache and the baby fusses, turning her mouth towards me, but that will have to wait until we get home. We see the shore at Seton Sands, the rocks and the grey gulls out on the water. I watch for gannets, or seals. It is warm on the bus, the window open and sky clear and blue with summer ahead and Felicity in my arms.

  As the bus passes the house, I catch a glimpse of the open window and worry that I’ve left it open all this time. Basil might have got in. Slept on my pillow or worse, in the drawer I set on the top of the dresser, padded with a pillow and ready to serve as a crib. Then, climbing down from the bus, I worry about my door key and the food in the pantry. My ration book. Miss Baxter and the telegram. And I see him standing by the Mercat Cross, uniformed, hatless. Stanley.

  ‘Oh, I so prayed, my dear.’ My mother’s voice is quiet. ‘I so hoped for an answer and that he’d come … oh, here, let me take the baby – please don’t run now – oh!’

  PART THREE

  1

  FELICITY: 1969

  WHEN I GOT OUT OF THE VAN AT THE CAMP, THE first thing I saw was a huge girl down on all fours, scrubbing the farmhouse floor. She didn’t even have a mop, just a rough brush and a bucket of water. She was enormous. She had to squat to get up to her feet, heaving up her heavy belly. Grunting. Grinning. Like this was all great fun or something. I didn’t know where to look or what to say. She stood there in front of me, rubbing her giant belly like it was going to grant her a wish. My own hands fluttered, too, trying to protect my little bump – my barely-there-at-all bump – trying to keep it safe so it didn’t grow ghastly and huge like, like, like that. She must have been having twins. Triplets. She was as big as a landscape.

  Annie had pulled the van right up to the farmhouse door, so I could go right in, which was kind. It had taken us four hours to drive to the camp, down the highway from the city and up into the hills. I’d been a bit nervous at first, partly because Annie had a canoe tied to the van’s roof and I wasn’t sure it looked all that safe. She laughed and said it was fine; she did this every weekend. During the week, it lived in the basement of her church, but she liked to have it up at the lake whenever she was there.

  Once I relaxed, I could see it was a really pretty drive. Lots of trees and old farms. There was a covered bridge, all painted red and about a hundred years old. The land was rocky, and you could see that anyone trying to make a life here would have had their work cut out for them, but it was all beautiful enough in its way. I liked looking out of the window at the fields going past, putting distance between me and the city. But other than the view, a lot of the drive wasn’t great. I had to ask Annie to stop the van three or four times. Anyway, she was cool with it, said there was no point in being embarrassed. It was just my body’s way of saying that it was time to put down roots in one place. Bellies need balance. That’s what Annie said.

  It was just after noon when we left the city and, by the time we got to the camp, I was ravenous. I’d worked myself into a bit of a state about food, which was kind of dumb. I knew where we were going but I’d let myself imagine it as every perfect New World farmhouse with a warm and open kitchen and a table heavy with maple-glazed Sunday ham. There would be an older woman, a real Quebecois farmer’s wife, apple-cheeked and ample-bosomed. She’d welcome me in with just enough pity and a good dose of humour, too, settle me at the table with a hot cup of tea and a thick slice of warm tea loaf dripping with butter. Then everyone else – whoever they were – would come in and join us for a hot meal, and I would feel at last I’d come home. That’s what I wanted. And she’d deliver my baby, of course, along with two or three junior midwives. Maybe one of them would have long shining hair and an old guitar and she’d be singing just as my baby was born, so soft and tender, and I wouldn’t feel sick any more.

  ‘Come on inside and careful on the wet patch, okay?’ the giantess said, holding out a hand and helping me over the threshold. ‘Don’t want you ass-over-tea-kettle first thing here. Look at you, just starting to show. And me about to burst. Scrubbing floors is supposed to help. Which would be great because this little bugger has kept me waiting for almost two weeks.’

  ‘You’re the only one who’s been counting.’ A soft voice behind me, a tall girl, thin as a stick, her fine brown hair tied in a ponytail. ‘Babies know their own time.’

  A big man came through the door behind her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. She looked up at him, smiling, then turned back to the giantess. ‘You know, it’s going to be fine,’ she said. ‘That baby knows what she’s doing. You just need to get yourself ready.’

  ‘And the house, apparently,’ said the giantess. The man went over to the stove and lifted a lid off a large pot. Steam came up and fogged his glasses, so he pushed them up on top of his head, then gave the pot a stir.

  ‘Well, floors need cleaning,’ the girl said. ‘No one wants to have a baby in the dirt.’

  ‘I’d have this baby anywhere. Anywhere, anytime, how about now? You hear me in there?’ She tapped on her mighty belly. ‘You really think this one’s a girl, Rika?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. That’s what it feels like to me, but it’s easier to tell when the labour pains start. I’ll get a better sense of things then.’

  ‘You just watch,’ the man said. ‘She’ll be right. Usually is. Felicity? Bas.’ He held out a hand to me, and his grip was warm and easy. ‘Welcome to the camp. Good drive up?’

  ‘A bit rough in places.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ Rika said. ‘Annie show you the outhouse yet? Or you can use the toilet upstairs, if you like. We just need to be careful not to overuse it. The septic system’s not built for a crowd. Dinner’s just about ready. Carole’s gone missing again, but she’ll surface when she’s hungry. How about you?’

  The room was wide and open, with a kitchen at the back and a long table positioned at the front of the room, surrounded by stools and benches. There was a dresser with open shelves, stacked with plates and mugs, and a sofa against the wall, too, with a red-and-yellow blanket spread along the back. Like something in an Aberlady front room, except then there’d also be velour cushions and a fringed lampshade. Instead, Rika had a rag rug on the wooden floor and, on the table, an embroidered cloth with windmills and tulips outlined in blue thread. There were candles, too, set in glass jars on the window sills and along the dresser shelves, unlit in the bright room.

  Bas lifted the pot from the stove and brought it to the table, while Rika filled a kettle at the sink.

  ‘Tea, Bethanne?’ she asked.

  The giantess sat down on a stool at the head of the table. ‘Yeah. That would be good. You said it helps, right?’

  ‘It can. It might. If the time’s right.’

  ‘If it’s all a matter of timing, then the tea won’t really do anything, will it?’

  ‘It still tastes good,’ said Bas. ‘And honey makes you cheerful and sweet. Works a dream on Rika.’

  ‘Oh, you. I’m always cheerful.’ Rika set the kettle on the burner and brought a stack of brown bowls to the table. ‘Are you hungry, Felicity? Sometimes girls can’t stand the thought of food when they first arrive, but you look like you might be an eater. What do you say?’

  ‘It smells wonderful.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I could smell it as we drove up to the house.’

  ‘These pregnant noses, they are somethi
ng else,’ Annie said. ‘But be warned. Bas’s stews tend to be on the garlicky side. Good, but garlicky.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with garlic.’ I said. ‘Makes the blood strong, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And moose is full of iron and that’s good, too,’ Rika said, passing full bowls down the table. ‘Bas, you say a blessing and then we can all tuck in.’

  ‘Right. Let’s see. What words for today?’ He raised his hands and closed his eyes. Annie and Rika followed suit. Bethanne caught my eye and grinned, then bobbed her head down, too. ‘How about this? We are surrounded by God’s benefits. The best use of these benefits is an unceasing expression of gratitude.’ Bas’s voice was soft and strong, and Annie murmured in agreement. I wondered if we were all expected to contribute something, but no one else spoke and then, after a pause, Bas said amen and everyone picked up their spoons. Moose. Well, I was hungry enough not to let that worry me. It proved a little gamey but beefy, too. I’d need to remember to mention it in my next letter home. Mum would like to hear about moose meat for sure.

  When the kettle on the stove started to whistle, Bas took a teapot down from the shelf and Rika stretched her hands across the table towards Bethanne.

  ‘Want me to feel how the baby’s doing?’

  ‘Would you? Since it’s dropped, I’m not sure about anything any more.’

  Bethanne stood up and went over to the sofa. Rika followed her, rolling up her sleeves and rubbing her palms together to warm them as Bethanne lay down and opened the buttons on her dress. Her skin was taut, and even from the table, I could see the dark line that zippered from her belly button down towards her pubic area. The linea nigra. I’d read about it and seen textbook photos but it was still too early for me.

  Rika moved her fingers over Bethanne’s belly, humming softly, and Bethanne laughed.

  After dinner, Annie walked me over to the bunkhouse. She seemed different from how she’d been in the spring. She smiled more, moved more slowly. In the city, she’d worked to convince me the camp was a good, safe place, and I’d wanted to be convinced. I’d been looking for an answer as much as she’d been trying to help. I wondered if, now that we were past all that, we might be friends.