A Soldier's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  But all very well for Davy. If he had to go to have a tooth out, would he be so brave?

  She told him so and had him grin at her. ‘Well, don’t you think it’s daft, putting up with three days of that just to avoid a minute’s discomfort?’

  ‘A minute’s discomfort?’ Brian blazed, sufficiently angered to take his hand away from his cheek once more. ‘This is a bloody back toof! Comin’ through already rotten.’

  Brenda raised her eyebrows towards her other brother. ‘Then you’re right, Davy. He should have it seen to. It could be an abscess.’

  ‘Could be a wisdom tooth,’ said Davy before his brother could reply.

  ‘It’s a bit early for ’im ter get wisdom teeth.’

  ‘Some do come through early.’

  ‘Why don’t you two shut up!’ Brian burst in. ‘Talkin’ over me ’ead as if I was a bit soft in it. I got a toofache – I ain’t dim. Talking about me own teef over me own ’ead.’

  Brenda couldn’t help laughing. Poor Brian. His cohort of girlfriends should see him now, all pale and wan and suffering. No wonder he was stuck at home, not daring to let any one of them to see him like this. But maybe pale and wan and suffering was what drew some girls to a man, wanting to mother and comfort. Right up Brian’s street, that.

  She sobered with him glaring at her, but she couldn’t help feeling so comfortably happy here with all her family. She had not been allowed to do a thing to help Mum; a pouting Vera had been asked to help instead, and she felt like an eastern potentate sitting here in the comfortable chair with her feet on a stool, her stomach stuck out in front of her under the flowered blue smock she wore, and Harry glancing over at her every now and again, he proud as a peacock.

  What a contrast it made with yesterday. There was always an awkward feeling to Harry’s parents’ place. His dad was cheery enough, and there had been a lot of his aunts and uncles and cousins there to temper the atmosphere, but she always had the sensation that his mother was forever summing her up even as she chatted sociably to her: did she treat her son as he ought to be treated – the breadwinner and master of his own home; was she trying to establish her own will over his; would she be a proper mother to his child? It would leave her tense, and afterwards snappy towards Harry into whose ear she could not help suspecting his mother had dropped a casual word while they’d been there.

  Not so here. Harry and her father got on ever so well together and Mum was usually all over him like the sun shone out of his backside at times. Sitting here, she felt she could view the future with much more confidence, and Harry joining the TA in November hadn’t been as bad as she’d thought, especially after Mum had encouraged her with advice on what she could do during the times he was away.

  It was true, since he had begun leaving her with one evening a week to herself she’d even started to look forward to it. Once a week he’d come home from work, eat his evening meal then go off to the local drill hall for lectures and things. He’d come back full of it, what he had been doing, the mates he was getting to know. Last week he’d come home clutching one and sixpence for having introduced a workmate who’d signed a paper. Harry had taken her to the pictures on it, in the ninepenny’s, to see Gary Cooper in The Plainsman.

  For the time being, Harry had been given a set of overalls to do his training in, free of charge, and a forage cap. After being in it for six weeks he’d get a proper uniform. ‘They don’t measure yer,’ he’d chortled. ‘They just look at yer and give yer the nearest size from the store. I’m gonna look a right prat in it, I bet.’ Still, seeing him all dressed up going off to his drill hall equipped with the silver-topped swagger stick she wrongly imagined they’d give him as well – not real silver, but it would look good – she’d be so proud of him.

  She was proud of him. He was doing something towards getting that little home she hoped for one day, giving her his attendance money which she put religiously away in the post office. There was not much in it yet, but it would accrue. He got paid too for weekends away and for that fortnight at summer camp and his boss would have to pay him as well – yes, their savings would soon mount up.

  *

  The doctor had given her a rough idea of when the baby could be expected.

  ‘Sometime around the second week of January,’ she told her mum and Harry’s. ‘Or it could be a bit later, it being me first, so he said.’

  Harry’s mother had cuddled her and said she would be fine. She already had grandchildren from Harry’s two sisters, and it came to Brenda that she derived satisfaction now from the fact that this baby would be by her son. Her own mother cuddled her and said she couldn’t wait to be a grandmother for the first time ever.

  ‘I’m so proud of yer, luv. I’ll be there ter ’elp yer, luv, when it’s time.’

  ‘I’m having it in hospital, Mum.’ She’d been booked into the London Hospital for months. ‘I’ll be in good ’ands.’

  ‘Yes, well, of course yer will. But I won’t be far orf.’

  The kiss Brenda gave her mother was warm and affectionate. If she had been having it at home, Mum would have been right there by her side, helping the midwife. Mum and Dad were paying for some of her stay, bless them, since her own meagre weekly contributions to Hospital Savings benefit could hardly cover it all. She wished she had gone in for the larger amount, but on Harry’s pay that had been impossible, what with insurance and other bills going out every week.

  Harry looked worried when she told him the possible dates. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured him. ‘I’m going ter be fine. Yer mother said.’

  She couldn’t help adding that last remark a little caustically, if with a laugh. But he still looked concerned.

  ‘It ain’t that, Bren. I know yer gonna be fine. It’s just that around that time I’ll be away on a weekend trainin’ course. I might not be ’ere.’

  She could feel the shock register on her face. And with it anger that he could be so unhelpful. ‘You can’t be away, Harry!’

  He looked crestfallen. ‘I don’t want ter be. But I’m a soldier, luv. I ’ave ter do what I’m told.’

  ‘You don’t!’ she blazed at him. ‘You’re a part-time soldier, that’s all, and we ain’t at war. Yer going to have to tell them the situation and ask for compassionate leave, or whatever they call it. You’re a volunteer. They can’t make yer go away at the very time yer wife’s ’aving her first baby.’

  They were compassionate. With no problem he was told that should his wife begin labour the weekend he was to go on the training course, he’d be excused. He relaxed. So did Brenda, even though, try as she might, there remained a tiny seed of resentment deep inside that never quite seemed to disappear as January arrived. ‘You’d better be here,’ a voice inside her kept telling him as he went blithely off to work and on a Friday to his drill hall. Somehow the joy of seeing him in his uniform had now paled.

  Brenda lifted her head as a dull ache presented itself around the lower part of her back. She’d had backache before, but this was different.

  She’d asked Mum what to expect when the baby started but all Mum had said was, ‘You’ll know,’ a perplexed expression on her face as she tried to recall how she had felt at the outset of her four babies, mixing it up with the sharp agony of the one that had been a miscarriage.

  ‘It’s a sort of dull achy sort of feeling from what I remember.’

  All she could remember was the vicious contractions of her muscles, producing such pains that she had just screamed her lungs out with it until the birth allowed its blessed relief. How could she tell her daughter what that had been like? What? And frighten the poor little cow out of her wits? She’d find out in time, poor little bitch! What women had to go through. If men had to go through it . . . At those times she had wished with all her heart that they did. Or that they could be there beside the poor sufferer to really see what she was going through. ‘Once the baby’s ’ere, yer forget all about it immediately,’ she said encouragingly, hoping that would suffice.

&n
bsp; Brenda waited. It was just before mid-morning. Slowly the pain went and she had no more trouble after that. Maybe it had been just one of those things. She did not tell Harry, there was no point, and had a good night’s sleep. Next day the ache returned, at first a mere trace of itself, sometimes almost non-existent. Now it was late afternoon and the ache became suddenly more pronounced, a sort of throb, raising a definite question mark in her head. Yet all she could think was, damn, she was in the middle of doing ironing. A disembodied twinge of annoyance swept through her; it would be inconvenient at this moment to be carted off to hospital. Harry’s dinner was cooking. Stew. In the oven a rice pudding simmered, its surface just beginning to brown. With an inborn sense of urgency she unplugged the iron, turned the gas off under the stew on the hob and switched off the oven. She was about to take the rice pudding out when a great stabbing pain caught her in her middle.

  ‘Ooh!’ Breath hissed through her teeth. From out of nowhere panic tore through her. Harry! How was she going to get hold of Harry? An hour would go by until he came home. And her mum. How was she going to get hold of Mum? Mr Stebbings downstairs – he had a telephone. ‘Use it whenever you have to,’ he had reassured her. Well this was an emergency.

  Holding her stomach although the pain seemed to have diminished a bit, she opened the kitchen door to the iron staircase. A bitter January wind laced with flecks of snow hit her full in the face, whipping the shining pageboy hairstyle she’d achieved after washing it yesterday into a ragged mass of light brown strands. Wrapping her apron tight about her, realising that she should have gone back to get her coat, she began her descent.

  The steps were still ice-covered from this morning and it was taking her ages, with her huge bulk. She descended one step at a time, hands almost sticking to the iron rail as she gripped it with both hands for support so as not to slip. She was sure the skin of her palms might come off on the frozen iron. Twenty steps down, it felt more like two hundred, the ground never seeming to get any nearer. Ten steps and the pain caught her again, this time quite viciously, making her stop and cry out.

  Standing there halfway up in the air, in her flimsy slippers, the wind dragging at her hair, her loose apron, her extra-large skirt, her bare legs, tearing her breath away, all she could do was call out a faint and ineffectual, ‘Help! Someone ’elp me!’

  She hadn’t bargained for this, it had not entered her mind. She had pictured perhaps waking up one morning, reaching over to the sleeping Harry and saying with a dart of joy, ‘Darling, it’s started.’ He would go for an ambulance, then pick up her small, already-packed suitcase and help her gently down to the street with the expert assistance of an ambulance driver and nurse.

  This reality frightened her. What if she had the baby on these frozen steps? What if it died of cold?

  ‘Oh, God! Help!’ The wind carried her voice away. Apart from that, the world lay empty and silent, at least close to, for she could hear the main road traffic building up with people beginning to leave work for home.

  There came another alarm with the thought of people leaving work. It was Thursday, and Mr Stebbings’ shop was closed for the half-day. She was alone here. All alone.

  ‘Coo-eee . . . Brenda, wotyer doin’?’ The call was like a wonderful full orchestra playing the most beautiful music. Joan Copeland was leaning over her landing. Brenda looked up and almost lost her footing in her relief.

  ‘Oh . . . Joan . . . I’ve started. I’ve got such pains an’ I’m all on me own.’

  ‘I’ll come down.’ In seconds, despite her fifty-odd years, the woman was down her own stairs through the dividing gate in the fence, the gate never locked, and up Brenda’s, and with a lot of huffing and puffing and ‘careful-now-dear-take-it-slow,’ leading her back into the warmth and safety of her kitchen.

  Getting her to a chair, she shut the kitchen door with a bang, leaving the blustery, snow-spattered wind outside.

  ‘Now, you just take it easy, luv. I’m puttin’ the kettle on – make yer a warm cup o’ tea.’

  ‘There ain’t time . . .’

  ‘There’s plenty of time. It’s yer first. It ain’t goin’ ter come inter the world not at least till termorrer. We’ll wait till yer ’usband gets home. I’ll stay wiv yer. What time’s ’e ’ome? Then ’e can go fer the doctor what can ring the ’orspital and send an amberlance. Now, you orright, luv? I’ll get that kettle on. I bet yer dyin’ fer a cuppa.’

  She was terribly thirsty, she hadn’t realised. Seconds later she was twisting to fresh pain. Mrs Copeland looked startled.

  ‘That’s quick. Should of bin ’alf an hour before yer got anuvver one. ’Ow long was yer out on them stairs?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Brenda sobbed. ‘Ten minutes? It felt longer.’

  Mrs Copeland nodded, relieved. ‘It could of bin longer then. But yer could of caught yer death of cold standin’ out there. Right, we’ll get yer that cuppa and warm yer up.’ She took a long sniff of the aroma of stew. ‘Just done is it? Well, we’ll get some of that down yer. It’ll ’elp give yer strength fer yer ordeal ter come. You’ll need it, luv.’

  Not at all encouraged regarding this ordeal, Brenda meekly allowed herself to be given a cup of tea, and ate some of the stew which she had to admit tasted delicious to her, together with a couple of thick slices of buttered bread. ‘That’ll ’elp too. Blessed ’ard work ’avin’ babies.’

  She had one pain during that time which convinced her she must have been out on those stairs longer than she’d thought after all. She had stopped shivering by the time Harry came home. Opening the back door he let in a blast, closing it hastily and saying with easy good nature, ‘Bloody weather – glad ter be ’ome,’ followed by an equally easy, ‘Watcher, ole gel!’

  Looking up, he frowned to see her sitting white-faced on a chair with Mrs Copeland there in attendance. ‘What’s the matter, Bren?’ he burst out. ‘You orright?’

  ‘The baby’s coming,’ she began, but Joan Copeland intervened.

  ‘What I want you ter do, Mr ’Utton, is go fer the doctor and get ’im ter ring fer an ambulance. This weather, best get ’er inter ’orspital soon as possible. Yer never know, it could worsen and she’d be stuck ’ere.’

  Harry’s face had gone white. He tore open the door, clattering down the icy stairs with no care that he could slip. Joan turned to her charge, her florid face lit by a big motherly grin. ‘Yer orright now. I’ll stay till ’e gets back.’ And never had Brenda been so glad of a friend as she was at this moment.

  Chapter Seven

  Harry’s face held an expression of proud achievement as if he himself had given birth to the baby.

  ‘They say yer can’t call yerself a man till yer’ve ’ad a daughter,’ he announced after he’d kissed her and then, very cautiously, the crumpled little cheek almost smothered by the shawl. He seemed to have forgotten that all along he had referred to the unborn child as him.

  Propped up with pillows, sitting up as best she could, sore from the stitches, Brenda held her tiny darling to her. ‘Where’d yer hear that?’

  He was looking at the baby. ‘Don’t know. ’Eard it somewhere. I feel more like a man than I’ve ever felt. Sort of protective I s’pose. Responsible.’

  He lifted his eyes to his wife. ‘And what abart you, Bren? You feelin’ orright? The ’ospital said you’d bin fine an’ it all went well.’

  She nodded. His total confidence in the hospital’s assurance meant he had no conception how she felt, how she had been, what she had gone through. It felt as though the baby had been trying to take her insides with it in getting into the world. She was now left aching, and occasionally winced at a small blunt stab. She’d expected to be completely free of all pain, just as she had been the moment the baby popped into the world, and had gone into a panic at this first stab, thinking something awful had gone wrong.

  ‘It’s tor be expected, m’ daarlin’,’ soothed the nurse with the Irish accent who had been with her through much of the labour. ‘Ah, it’ll go
in a little whoile an’ yor’ll be as roight as rain.’

  It was as Mum had said, she had forgotten the pain, now a dim memory only, but she could not forget the fear that had gone with it. Fear of the unknown, of being left alone, of feeling certain the gas and air she was being given was doing nothing to alleviate the agony, of being told to bear down, to push when she had no strength left except to give way and cry out, wasting her breath, as they told her. It had taken sixteen hours. And to think she’d had that idiotic illusion of giving birth on those ice-covered stairs at home. Then one last push and out it had popped like a little wet rabbit. The pain had subsided like magic, leaving only these odd twinges which she now knew would soon fade away. With Harry here beside her she felt only joy at what she’d achieved, but the memory of that fear would never leave her.

  ‘It was yor first,’ said the Irish nurse when she’d mentioned it. ‘Most new mothers don’t knor what tor do. Yor’ll be orlroight with orl the orthers.’

  All the others! She wasn’t sure if there would be any others. For the present this was quite enough.

  ‘What’ll we call her?’ she asked Harry before the rest of her visitors descended on her two at a time to see the little one.

  All the fathers were at bedsides the length of the long ward speaking in hushed, whispering voices. In a while it would erupt with relatives and the place become filled with their gabble. Later they would depart, and the nurses would resume their work, quick, efficient and quiet.

  She had seen it all as she waited for her pains to restart. All during that quiet night and next day she had waited, embarrassed that it must have been a false alarm. But they’d examined her and said she should stay.

  Imagining what lay in store for her, she had sat with empty arms watching the others with their babies until by now she knew the procedure, feeling she’d been in here months instead of only a day, in this other world far removed from all that felt normal – the everyday world had ceased to exist. She’d listened to the faint rumble of distant traffic, but it seemed to have no connection with anything here, like stars seem to have no connection with the earth.