With Love at Christmas

by Carole Matthews

  She struggles out of her clothes and lies back on the seat so that I can have a look. Rick switches on the interior light.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ I say when I look at Chloe. My mouth goes dry. ‘The head’s crowning.’

  ‘I knew it,’ she wails. ‘I knew!’

  ‘I don’t think we can go any farther, Rick,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll have to do it here.’

  ‘No!’ Chloe cries out. ‘I don’t want my baby born in the car.’

  ‘Can’t we look for a farm, or something?’ I ask. ‘Perhaps there’s a barn nearby.’

  ‘She’s not the bloody Virgin Mary, Juliet,’ my husband snaps. ‘Even I can tell there’s no time. We’ll have to cope. I’ll phone the emergency services.’

  Without waiting for further argument, he punches 999 into his phone.

  ‘Breathe,’ I say to Chloe. ‘Remember what you did last time.’

  ‘Last time I had every drug known to man,’ she reminds me, ‘and it still hurt like fuck!’

  ‘You can do it,’ I assure her, gripping her hand tightly. ‘You can do it.’

  Chloe cries out. It looks as if she’ll have to cope. This baby isn’t hanging about.

  ‘It’s coming,’ I say. ‘I’ll put my coat on the seat.’

  ‘Use my fleece,’ my daughter says. ‘Your coat will get ruined!’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Needs must,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll need the fleece to wrap the baby in.’

  I strip off my coat and lay it down. ‘Settle back.’

  ‘Don’t let it happen here, Mum,’ she pleads.

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do.’ I grip both of her hands and make eye contact with her. ‘Listen, Chloe. I want you to focus. We can do this. You’re my brave girl. Right?’

  She nods, despite the fear in her eyes. Chloe leans back against the door, legs out on the back seat of the car. Never before have I wished that we had one of those great big hatchback cars that we could spread out in.

  Rick, on the phone, talks to the operator at the other end.

  ‘My daughter’s just about to have a baby in the car,’ I hear him say as I try to make Chloe as comfortable as possible. She’s not panicking so much now, and seems a lot calmer. I, on the other hand, can feel perspiration running down my arms despite being in just a thin blouse. My palms are damp and I wipe them on my skirt. ‘Can you please send an ambulance as soon as you can?’ He reels off our location. ‘I’m to stay on the line,’ Rick tells me. ‘I’ve got a lovely lady to talk to and she’ll give us all the instructions we need.’ I see a gulp go down his throat and know that he’s as worried as I am. He pats Chloe on the shoulder. ‘We’ll just do as the operator says, and there’ll be nothing at all to worry about. It will be a piece of cake.’

  ‘Pass my handbag,’ I tell him. In there I have some gel wash that I keep for cleaning Jaden’s sticky fingers. Rick finds it and I squirt it onto my hands. I ignore my banging heart and my trembling fingers, and instead, smiling at Chloe, I ask, ‘Ready for this, sweetheart?’

  Tearfully, she nods back.

  I choke back a tear too. ‘Then let’s deliver this baby.’

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  ‘Have we got any blankets or towels?’ Rick relays from the operator at the other end of the phone.

  ‘In the boot. There’s a picnic rug and a plastic bag with a couple of clean towels in it.’ I keep some old, scruffy ones for rubbing Buster down if he’s got too muddy to be allowed into the car when we’ve taken him for a walk in the woods. They may not look their best, but at least they’ve just been washed. Who knew that they would come in so handy?

  ‘I’m scared, Mum,’ Chloe says.

  ‘No need to be.’ I sound so assured that I could almost believe myself. ‘You’ve done it before. This may not be as comfortable, but you can cope.’

  Rick comes back with the rug and towels. I wish he could get into the back with us as I feel as if I need all the hands I can get, but there’s simply no room. ‘Thanks,’ I take them from him. ‘Put the Christmas songs on the CD player. That’ll keep us all calm.’

  For once, Rick doesn’t object and the sounds of Johnny Mathis singing ‘When A Child Is Born’ fill the car. How appropriate!

  ‘The operator says not to rush,’ Rick offers. ‘Take your time. Nice and slow. The baby will come in its own time.’

  Chloe cries out again. Rick grabs her hand while mine are busy. ‘Hush, love,’ he says softly. ‘Nearly there. Nearly there. Easy goes.’

  Rick and I exchange a glance and I nod at him. The baby isn’t that far away now, if you ask me, and we need a bit more of Rick’s soothing voice.

  ‘I’m frightened, Dad,’ she says.

  ‘No, you’re not. You’ve got me and Mum here. We’ll make sure it’s all OK.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she sobs.

  ‘Pant,’ I say to Chloe. ‘Short breaths. Only push down when you can’t help but do anything else.’

  My darling daughter does exactly as she’s told. The sweary, belligerent version of her disappears and a focused, mature adult slips into her place.

  ‘Come on, Baby Joyce,’ I cajole. ‘You can do it.’

  Chloe bears down again, clutching at Rick.

  ‘The head’s coming,’ I tell her. ‘One more little push.’ Both Chloe and I are sweating profusely.

  Rick takes one of the smallest towels and mops Chloe’s brow and then mine in turn. ‘You’re both doing really well,’ he says. ‘You’re fantastic.’

  Wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my arm, I support the head with both hands. I can see tears rolling down Rick’s face too. ‘Not long now.’

  Chloe, teeth gritted, pushes again.

  ‘Good girl,’ I say. ‘It’s here. Baby’s here. The head’s fully out.’

  She gives a relieved sob while I glance up at Rick, anxiously. I don’t want to worry Chloe, but this isn’t as it should be. My heart races. Rick looks down and he too, instantly, sees what’s wrong.

  ‘The cord’s round the baby’s neck,’ he tells the operator in measured tones. He waits for a reply and then says to me, ‘See if you can slip a finger underneath it and then gently ease it over the baby’s head. There should be enough slack.’

  My fingers shake as I find the umbilical cord and try to release it. As Rick says, it isn’t tight and I do it without fuss. Relief washes over me. The baby is out of danger and is now free to be born.

  ‘One more push,’ I say to Chloe. ‘Good girl.’

  Crying out, my daughter bears down and, a moment later, a slithering bundle of bloody, slimy life slides into my hands. ‘That’s it! You’ve done it.’

  Chloe collapses in tears.

  ‘The operator wants to know is the baby pink and breathing?’ Rick asks softly.

  The baby lets out a disgruntled squall that fills the car. It’s a beautiful, beautiful sound.

  ‘Oh yes!’ My new grandchild kicks out and, fists balled, arms flailing, makes its presence in the world known. Bright pink and yelling.

  ‘Wipe the mucus from the nose and mouth,’ Rick relays.

  I take one of the towels and gently wipe the baby’s face, which wrinkles up in disdain. I laugh out loud. Oh, this is going to be its mother’s child!

  ‘She says to put the baby on Chloe’s chest and keep it warm. Don’t touch the umbilical cord or the placenta, the paramedics will deal with that. They’ll be here soon. Any minute. Just wrap the baby up and keep it warm.’ Rick grins. ‘The operator says, “Welcome to the world, Baby Joyce.”’

  ‘Tell her thanks for all her help.’ I can hardly speak for crying.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rick says into the phone. ‘Thanks so much.’ Then he hangs up and, dropping the phone into his lap, sags back against the seat, eyes closed. That’s one worn out grandad.

  Swaddled in one of Buster’s dog-walking towels, I place the baby on Chloe’s breast. ‘Well done, Chloe. I’m so proud of you.’

  Chloe, still crying, cuddles her baby to her. ‘What have I
got, Mum?’

  ‘You’ve got a little girl,’ I tell her. ‘A beautiful little girl.’

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  An hour later, and Chloe is in the back of an ambulance cuddling her new daughter in her arms. The baby has been cleaned and is wrapped up tightly in Chloe’s fleece, which has, thankfully, replaced the dog’s towel.

  ‘It’s a shame she wasn’t born in a Porsche,’ Chloe says, smiling down at her child. ‘You can’t really call a kid Corsa, can you?’

  ‘No,’ I agree. ‘You can’t.’ Definitely not. I’ll make sure of that. She hands my new granddaughter to me. ‘She’s beautiful. Look, Rick.’

  My husband comes to coo over her too. The baby’s little red face is screwed up against the light and cold and she looks like she’s thinking of trying her lungs out again. Now that it’s all over, Rick’s looking tired and emotional too. All in all, it’s been a very long day. If I didn’t have my arms full, I’d give him the hug he deserves, but that will have to wait. Instead, I give him a peck on the cheek. ‘Well done, love.’

  ‘I think you had the starring role.’

  ‘Couldn’t have managed without you.’

  ‘Chloe did well,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think she had it in her.’

  ‘Perhaps we need to give our daughter more credit than we do. She’ll come good.’

  While I have the baby, Chloe phones Mitch and tearfully tells him that he’s a daddy for the second time.

  The ambulance arrived minutes after the baby was delivered – by my own fair hands! – which was a huge relief. I’ve never been happier to see those flashing blue lights coming out of the darkness. The two-man crew came and dealt with the aftermath of the birth swiftly and professionally. Now they’ve checked that the baby is all right and that Chloe is too. They both said that they were impressed with my handiwork. By all accounts, I’ve done a good job. The baby is alive and well and has all her fingers and toes. That’s all that matters to me. They’re taking Chloe on to Stoke Mandeville hospital where a bed – somewhat belatedly – is ready and waiting for her.

  The crew have given me a blanket to wrap around myself as my coat is beyond salvage.

  When Chloe hangs up, she’s smiling.

  ‘Is Mitch pleased?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She shrugs self-consciously, but I can tell that she’s proud of herself. ‘He was worried about us.’ She kisses my cheek. ‘Thanks, Mum. Couldn’t have done it without you and Dad. That was a bit hairy.’

  ‘I’d rather you’d have done it the conventional way,’ I admit. ‘But it will be an experience you’ll always remember. We didn’t do too bad between us.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ Chloe says.

  ‘I just wish I could have got you to the hospital on time.’

  ‘It all turned out OK in the end,’ Chloe says in a rare moment of magnanimity. ‘You’re top parents.’

  We all hug each other tightly. This is one night that I certainly won’t forget in a while.

  I go with Chloe in the ambulance, and Rick follows in the car. On the way, I phone Dad and Tom and let them know the news. Dad is all teary and Tom, typically, can’t really hear over the noise from the bar that he’s in. We settle Chloe into the maternity ward, where they’re going to keep mother and baby in just for observation.

  Baby Joyce – as yet unnamed – after her unscheduled rush into the world, is now fast asleep, quite possibly exhausted by the ordeal. It looks like Chloe’s eyes are rolling too.

  ‘We’ll go home now,’ I tell her, ‘but we’ll come back tomorrow as soon as we can.’ My daughter looks so young in her hospital-issue gown that I can’t believe she’s now the mother of two children of her own.

  ‘OK,’ she yawns. ‘Mitch said he’ll come in too, and bring Jaden.’

  That has to be good.

  ‘Can I borrow your fleece to wear home?’ It’s a small price to pay, but my coat has not come out of this unscathed.

  ‘Sure,’ she murmurs.

  I slip on the fleece and kiss Chloe goodnight, but she’s already sinking into sleep.

  I link my arm through Rick’s as we walk back to the car and give him a squeeze.

  ‘All’s well that ends well,’ I say.

  ‘Could have done with a bit less excitement,’ Rick confesses. ‘I think that’s just shaved a few years off my life.’

  ‘It’s given me a few more white hairs too.’ I sigh and make a cloud in the cold air. ‘Makes me feel old,’ I admit. ‘Being a grandmother to two children now.’

  ‘You still look good to me,’ he says.

  I stop in the car park in the still falling snow. ‘Do I?’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  This is not the time to ask him about the woman who’s texting him. We’ve been through too much together tonight. Though it’s eating away at me inside, it could be perfectly innocent and it would spoil the mood of tired elation. I give Rick a sideways glance. Could he really be having an affair? Surely, after all we’ve been through together, we are too tightly bound to let anyone come between us now. At our age, it isn’t just splitting up, it’s ripping your shared history apart. Family is so important to both of us: would Rick really want to do that? I can hardly believe it. There must be another explanation, and soon I must find the time to hear it.

  ‘I do love you,’ I say. ‘Despite the fact that we’re old and going grey and our knees ache and we can never find time to have sex.’

  ‘You say the nicest things.’ Rick puts his arm round my shoulders and pulls me in close. ‘I love you too.’

  And, this time, to my absolute relief, he sounds like he really means it.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Rick and Frank carried the Christmas lights they’d bought in B&Q from the garage out to the shed. The snow was thick on the ground and Juliet had insisted they both wear wellies. Rick was also under instructions not to keep Frank out in the cold for too long, or ‘there would be trouble’.

  In truth, he was still exhausted after last night’s shenanigans with his new granddaughter making a dramatic entrance into the world. He was definitely getting too old for this sort of thing. But, the fact of the matter was, it was Christmas Eve and if the lights didn’t go up today then they might as well go up in the loft for next year. As he’d bought these in honour of Samuel, it only seemed right to make the effort.

  He’d called Merak first thing that morning to tell him that he wasn’t going to be at work today. Instead, he’d spent an hour cleaning out the back of Juliet’s car. This childbirth was a messy business. It was a good job the seats in there were wipe-clean rather than cloth. Juliet’s coat was beyond salvation, of course, and he threw that straight in the bin. Perhaps he’d buy her a new one in the sales after Christmas. She’d like that.

  Later that afternoon, they were planning a trip over to Stoke Mandeville to see Chloe and the baby at visiting-time. Merak had told him that he’d finish off the job they were on by himself and he’d picked up the van first thing while Rick was still in his pyjamas. He wondered again how he’d manage without the marvellous Merak in his life.

  Together he and Frank piled the boxes of lights on the ground. Rick opened up the shed. He’d put power and light in here, and they were going to have to run the Christmas lights from an extension cable. Inside, he stopped in his tracks. On his sunlounger there was a folded newspaper. A copy of the Sun. Who had been in here reading a paper? No one in his house read the Sun. Had Tom been sneaking out here and invading his personal space? Except that it couldn’t possibly be Tom, as his errant son didn’t ever stay at home long enough to sit down to read a paper. Looking closer, behind the sunlounger, there was something that he didn’t recognise on the floor too. A folded black jumper. A man’s one. It must be Tom. Who else could it possibly be? But what was he doing out here? Nothing remotely useful, that was for sure.

  ‘Want me to make a start, Rick?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Sorry, Frank,’ he said. ‘Went into a trance for a minute, there. Let’s get a move o
n.’

  So he went outside again and draped some of the lights around the edge of the shed, fixing them with hooks that he’d bought for the purpose. The star went above the door, and the pink HO-HO-HO across the window. The hedge that bordered the shed and the pond was threaded with more rope lights. The stylish Christmas tree was set adjacent to the door, which was framed with a pulsing rope. The Santa and reindeer silhouettes were fixed to the side of the shed.

  When they’d finished, Rick plugged them in and the two men stood back and admired their handiwork.

  They flashed, sparkled and glowed.

  ‘Nice,’ Frank said.

  ‘Bloody marvellous,’ Rick agreed, rubbing his hands together at a job well done. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Neil Harrison. It was only a shame that his neighbour couldn’t see this splendid display from his house.

  Juliet came down the garden with a tray bearing mugs of hot chocolate and mince pies for them. ‘Looks lovely. Very colourful.’ She hugged her dad. ‘Samuel would be pleased.’

  ‘I think so,’ Frank answered and, surreptitiously, wiped a tear from his eye.

  ‘Have you seen Tom come down here?’ Rick asked her as he tucked into his mince pie.

  ‘No. He’s hardly been at home for weeks.’

  Rick frowned. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He brushed the crumbs from the front of his jacket. ‘There’s a jumper in there that I don’t recognise, and a newspaper.’

  ‘How odd. Perhaps we’ve got a ghost.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ve got a tramp.’

  ‘It’s a very tidy tramp,’ Juliet noted. ‘There’s never a thing out of place in there.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I don’t want Dad getting cold out here. It’s freezing today.’

  ‘I’ve a few things to do,’ Rick said. ‘Can I take the car, as Merak’s got the van?’

  ‘You’re not going to be long, are you?’