by Val McDermid
Terrified at the responsibility, Allie edged forward and grabbed one of the woman’s flailing hands. Somehow it was simultaneously clammy with sweat and sticky with blood. She turned to the man, whose expression had turned piteous. ‘What’s her name?’
‘J-J-Jenny,’ he stammered. Then, more firmly. ‘Jenny. She’s not due for another fortnight.’ He fished a battered packet of No. 6 out of his jeans, jittered a cigarette out of the packet and sparked up, dragging the smoke deep into his lungs.
‘Baby’s got a whole different schedule,’ Danny muttered, shrugging out of his overcoat and pushing up his sleeves.
Allie gripped Jenny’s hand and stretched out to push her thick dark hair back from her sweating face. ‘It’s going to be all right, Jenny.’
‘Fuck you, fuck do you know?’ Jenny yelled.
‘My pal knows what he’s doing.’ Allie gave Danny a pleading glance.
‘That’s right, Jenny.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘I was brought up on Emergency Ward 10. You need to take some deep breaths, darling. I can see your baby’s head, your wean’s determined to get out into the world. But the bairn needs your help. Needs you to stop fighting it.’ He leaned forward. Allie didn’t want to think about what he was doing. Just the thought of slimy blood and whatever else was down there was making her stomach churn.
She turned back to face Jenny, whose eyes were rolling back in her head like a frightened horse in a Western. ‘I know it’s sore,’ she said gently. ‘But it’ll soon be over, Jenny. And then you’ll be holding your wee one in your arms. You’ll be a proud mammy, and all this will just be like a bad dream, honest.’
Jenny convulsed suddenly, screaming again, crushing Allie’s hand in her grip. ‘That’s good, Jenny,’ Danny gasped. He was sweating as hard as Jenny now. ‘Push again.’ He waited. ‘Now breathe. A deep breath for me. I can see a shoulder. Now push again, darling. You can do this.’
The next twenty minutes passed in a blur of blood and sweat, Jenny’s moans, Allie’s encouragement, Danny’s anxious glances and a chain of cigarettes from the father-to-be. Allie kept repeating the same meaningless phrases. ‘You’re doing great,’ and ‘You’re a star, Jenny,’ and ‘Nearly there.’ She was aware that other people had formed an audience around them. Then all at once, Danny had a red and purple bundle in his arms and the thin wail of a newborn baby struck a counterpoint to Jenny’s groans.
‘Well done, you’ve done amazing,’ Allie said.
‘You’ve got a son.’ Danny turned to grin at the man behind him, whose knees gave way as he collapsed on to a seat. Tears sprang from his eyes.
‘I love you, Jenny,’ he cried, his voice thick and hoarse.
‘I still fucking hate you,’ Jenny sighed. But the rage had gone from her voice.
One of the other passengers produced a towel. Allie kept her face turned towards Jenny, determined to avoid what was going on at the other end. She helped Jenny sit up, inching her along the seat so she could prop herself up against the window. Then Danny passed Jenny the baby, wrapped in the towel, his little face scrunched up against the assault of sights and sounds and sensations.
The father staggered to his feet and pushed through to Jenny’s side. He kneeled down beside them and kissed his son, then the new mother. ‘You’re incredible, Jenny,’ he said. ‘I love you. Gonnae marry me?’
Jenny looked down at him, and in the moment, Allie saw a hint of steel behind her exhausted eyes. ‘Fuck me, Stevie. If I’d known that was all it would take to get you to ask me, I’d have fell pregnant ages ago.’
Danny leaned over and muttered to Allie, ‘Great quote, that’s a strapline if ever I heard one.’ He registered her surprised expression. ‘It’s a page lead at the very least, Allie. Maybe even the splash.’
‘If it is, it’s your story,’ she said. ‘You saved the day.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s a woman’s story. You know that’s what the desk will say.’
He had a point. She was growing accustomed to the twisted logic behind the allocation of stories. It had taken years for women reporters to gain a toehold in national tabloid newsrooms. Eventually it had dawned on the bosses that some stories benefited from what they called ‘a woman’s touch’. Allie understood perfectly the motivation behind her hiring. That didn’t mean she had to collude in it, though. ‘You delivered the bloody kid,’ she protested.
He looked down ruefully at his bloodstained hands and the streaks on his jumper and trousers. ‘Exactly. I’ve suffered enough. You know the kind of shit I’ll get from the guys in the newsroom. It’ll be, “Ooh, Matron,” like I’m in a Carry On film every time I turn around. Plus they’ll want a picture byline of the reporter on the spot and that could screw me up for doing any undercovers. Once I break this story I’ve got on the go, I’ll get the chance to do the big investigative stories. Look, Allie, all you’ve got to do is say it was some mystery man who refused to give his name.’
‘What? And get bawled out by the news desk for coming back with half a story?’
Danny scanned the bystanders and saw the guard keeping a cautious distance from the group of well-wishers round the new family. He stepped across to him. ‘I’m a reporter on the Clarion,’ he began.
The guard took a step back. ‘I never did anything wrong,’ he said hastily.
‘No, pal, nobody’s even hinting at that. But it looks like we’re hogging the limelight if we do a story about me birthing a baby on a train stuck in a snowdrift. But see if it was to be you in the story? You’d be the hero of the hour. And it’s not like you didnae come for help, right?’
The guard looked confused. ‘But all these folk saw what really happened.’
‘They’ll forget all that, they’ll just tell all their pals about seeing a baby born on a train. My colleague here’ – he pointed to Allie – ‘she’ll write the story. Jenny and Stevie, they don’t care who gets the credit.’ She had to admit, his smile was charming.
‘I don’t know . . .‘ The guard was wavering.
‘You might even get a commendation or a raise or something.’ He turned back to Allie. ‘Have you got a camera on you?’
She nodded. ‘In my bag.’ She always carried her compact Olympus Trip 35 around with her; her first news editor had instructed her not to leave home without it. ‘There’s never a bloody pic man around when you need one,’ he’d said.
‘Away and get it,’ Danny told her. ‘They’ll want pix.’
3
Allie pulled the final story pad from her typewriter and carefully separated the top sheet and the copies, screwing up the messy black carbons and throwing them in the bin. Top copy for the news desk, second copy for the copy taster, third copy for the picture desk, and the faded pink sheet for her own desk drawer.
She added each of the pages to the bottom of its pile then did a last read-through.
Station staff in Glasgow got a surprise yesterday when a train arrived with an unexpected extra passenger.
Jenny Forsyth went into labour on the 2 p.m. Waverley to Queen Street train which had been stranded in a snowdrift.
But thanks to the quick wits of guard Thomas Mulrine, 47, Jenny arrived in Queen Street station as the new mother of a bouncing baby boy.
Jenny, 23, and her boyfriend Stephen Hamilton, 25, were returning to their home in White Street, Partick, when the drama unfolded.
Heavy snow had blocked the line between Falkirk High and Linlithgow, leaving the train stranded.
Before the snowplough could free the trapped carriages, baby Craig decided to put in an early appearance. Alerted by Jenny’s screams of pain, Mr Mulrine took over and delivered her son to applause from her fellow passengers.
And if that wasn’t drama enough, Stephen was so pleased by the safe arrival of his son that he got down on one knee and proposed to Jenny.
A delighted Jenny said, ‘If I’d known that was all it w
ould take to get him to ask me, I’d have fallen pregnant ages ago.’
The proud dad said, ‘Craig wasn’t due for another fortnight so we thought it would be fine to go through to Edinburgh to bring in the New Year with Jenny’s mum and dad. I never thought in a million years she’d end up giving birth on the train.
‘I don’t know what would have happened if the guard hadn’t stepped in. He was the hero of the hour.’
But Mr Mulrine denied he’d done anything heroic. ‘It’s my job to take care of the passengers. I’ve never had to deliver a baby before, though. And I hope I never have to do it again. Luckily my wife had one of our three children at home, so I did have some idea of what to do. But it was a big responsibility. I’m just glad it ended as well as it did.’
The train was finally freed half an hour later and completed its journey to Glasgow without any more surprises.
Mr Mulrine radioed ahead so there was an ambulance waiting to rush mother and baby to nearby Glasgow Royal Infirmary where they were checked over by medical staff who pronounced both to be fit and healthy.
A spokesman for British Rail said, ‘We’re delighted that Craig arrived safely. We will be giving this very special baby a free train travel pass for life.’
Fourteen paragraphs. A touch on the lengthy side, but it was a slow news day and she might get away with it. She’d snapped half a dozen pics of the happy family, with and without the sheepish Thomas Mulrine, and handed the film over to the picture desk as soon as she’d arrived in the office. She’d already had to endure the heavy-handed banter of the picture editor and his minions. ‘At least they’ve all got their eyes open,’ he’d said grudgingly, after taking the piss out of the Christmas party photographs that took up the first half of the film.
Allie distributed her copy and was halfway back to her seat when Gavin, the night news editor, shouted her name. She made her way cautiously back to the U-shaped arrangement of desks where the news executives held court. Gavin Todd was a skinny whelp of a man whose suits hung on him as if his bony shoulders were a hanger. Everything about him was a work in progress, though not in the right direction – his hair was thinning and greying, his posture had grown even more hunched in the few months Allie had been there, and the proportion of whisky to tea in the Thermos he brought to work seemed to be rising steadily. Every night, he’d start on the flask within ten minutes of the day shift leaving. At nine on the dot, he’d be off to the pub for his break. She’d been there a few times and watched him sink five large measures of whisky – ‘wee goldies’, he called them – in just over an hour. Then he’d buy a quarter bottle to keep him going till he departed at some random point between one and two in the morning.
She eyed him warily as she approached. Early in the shift, Gavin resembled a normal, reasonable newsdesk jockey. Which was to say, dealing with him was a bit like juggling a grenade whose pin was on the point of clattering to the floor. But as the whisky took hold, his speech and his brain grew slurred and his frustration spilled over into querulous complaint. ‘This copy,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’ Better not to engage till you were sure which Gavin you’d be dealing with.
‘You were there, right? You were on the spot?’
Allie nodded. ‘Aye, I was.’
‘So what’s this?’ He slapped the sheets of paper against the edge of the desk. ‘How come it’s not an “I” piece? You should be milking it, Burns. The other papers’ll have the story by now. The only thing making this exclusive is you being there.’
‘But it’s not my story, Gav. The drama, that’s all about Jenny and the guard and the marriage proposal.’ She felt a crushing sensation in her chest. Was she ever going to get the hang of this? Everybody else seemed to operate on instinct, an instinct she didn’t possess.
Before Gavin could get into her ribs again, the night editor materialised at his elbow. Arnie Anderson was the opposite of Gavin in almost every respect. Corpulent and cheery, black-haired and bearded, he took his breaks in the office canteen rather than the pub, stuffing himself with the home-made soup and pies that were permanent fixtures on the menu. ‘Nice wee piece, Burns,’ he boomed.
‘Should have been an “I” piece,’ Gavin whined. ‘The lassie was there. That’s the exclusive.’
‘Gavin, Gavin,’ Arnie let out an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. He gave an expansive gesture at the picture desk with his beefy arm. ‘The pics, that’s the exclusive. That’s the splash. Something cheerful instead of the endless bloody blizzard stories that everybody’s sick of already. We’ll go across five columns with the pic. But we’ll have to give it a turn on to page two to get all the copy in. And that means we’ve got room for you to do a five-par sidebar about your dramatic train ride, Burns.’ He dismissed her with a wiggle of his fingers. ‘Are you still here?’
Allie retreated, leaving Arnie leaning over Gavin’s shoulder, pawing through the stories in his basket. She inserted a fresh copy pad into her typewriter and stared at the blank page with a mixture of terror and hatred. ‘I need it by nine,’ Arnie shouted at her as he turned towards the back bench, where the decisions about layout and content were made.
‘Fuck,’ she muttered. Like all her fellow graduate trainees, she’d read her Tom Wolfe and her Joan Didion, her Nick Tomalin and her Truman Capote. She’d dreamed of swelling the ranks of the New Journalism. But working first on a local evening paper and now on a daily tabloid had been a rude awakening. Even the feature writers wrote in tabloidese, a weird jargon of clichés and shortcuts. Anyone with cancer was ‘fighting bravely’; any woman over the age of fifty was a ‘battling granny’; under fifty, chances were she’d be a ‘blonde bombshell’. By the time the subs had finished with Allie’s copy, she’d have bet a pound to a gold watch that Craig would be a ‘miracle baby’. So where did her ‘I’ piece sit in that shallow puddle?
Allie considered the advice an older colleague had given her in her early days covering magistrates courts and council meetings in Newcastle. ‘How would you tell it to your pals in the pub?’ he’d asked. ‘Ten times out of nine that gives you your intro.’
‘I am NEVER going to have a baby,’ was what sprang to mind. She didn’t need a sub to tell her that wasn’t the place to start a Clarion story. In spite of the anti-Catholic sentiment that still fuelled the paper’s employment policy, mothers were madonnas in this news universe.
Allie rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes: Silk Cut, the smoke of choice for everyone pretending they were weaning themselves off tobacco by going for the mildest possible hit. She tried to stick to ten a day, and mostly she succeeded. Tonight, she might not make it, she conceded wryly, lighting up with a disposable lighter. Another element of pretence – she wasn’t in this for the long haul that a Zippo would signal. She inhaled deeply, her fingers deliberately covering the pinprick holes that were designed to allow some of the toxic smoke to dissipate before it reached the smoker. Who was she trying to kid, she wondered.
In the pause for thought that the cigarette offered her, she managed to come up with something she might get away with. ‘It was supposed to be a routine train journey. Instead, I witnessed a New Year miracle on the tracks between Edinburgh and Glasgow yesterday.’ Already, she hated herself.
She knocked out another four paragraphs that began with a scream, continued through hand-holding and ended with what she thought was the only decent line in the piece. ‘My New Year’s resolution? Take a First Aid course.’
As she typed the final sentence, Gavin slunk up behind her and looked over her shoulder. ‘Are you nearly done? Lucky there’s no news to speak of. Arnie’s giving you a big chance here, the splash and a turnover.’
Allie yanked the copy pad from the typewriter. ‘All done.’
Gavin snatched the story from her and bustled off, ready to take the credit for getting the words delivered in time for the first edition deadline. At the end of the line of desks he turned bac
k to face her. ‘Don’t just sit there, Burns. Make yourself useful. Away and get one of the drivers to take you on a round of calls. Remember, you’re only as good as your last splash.’
4
Allie was not the only Clarion reporter struggling with copy that night. On the other side of the river, in his first-floor tenement flat in Pollokshields, Danny Sullivan was trying to put together a rough draft of the investigative story that he was convinced would change his career from a down-table hack to someone to be taken seriously. Ever since he’d sat enthralled by All the President’s Men one hot summer evening three years before, he’d dreamed of being a Scottish Woodward or Bernstein. He’d have preferred to have been the more glamorous, clean-cut Robert Redford character, but deep down he knew he was more like Dustin Hoffman, scuttling from location to location in badly fitting clothes, tirelessly grafting away at the tiniest lead till it gave up its secrets. But in one key element he knew he was like both Woodward and Bernstein – he recognised he had the makings of a great story. Giving it maximum impact on the page was the hard part. Especially since there were still a couple of yawning gaps.
The seed of the story had fallen into his lap by chance two months earlier. Sunday afternoons meant compulsory attendance at his parents’ flat for dinner. It involved him in a perpetual swapping of shifts and favours so he could make it. Not that Danny minded. He loved his mother’s cooking and he got on fine with his parents. The one bone of contention was his mother’s discovery that since he’d moved away from the family home in Edinburgh he’d given up attending Mass. Initially he’d made work the excuse, but eventually he’d admitted he simply didn’t want to go any more. Marie Sullivan had reacted angrily at first, but his father had worked the Sullivan charm on her and now when the subject came up, she assumed an air of resigned martyrdom. She’d done her best, and if Danny had chosen the road to hell, well, he was a grown man and that was his decision.
