by Katie King
Chapter Thirty-eight
Later in the morning the children were over at the church, after which they were going to see Angela to give her the cards they had made for her the previous evening.
Gracie had set off for the hospital already to see how Angela was, and she was going to do a little shopping before coming back. Gracie liked prattling away about this and that to the little girl, saying to Peggy one evening that she got more sense out of Angela than most of the people she was used to speaking with. And that Angela now knew just as much about Kelvin Kell as Gracie herself did.
It was very cold at Tall Trees as Roger hadn’t had time to set and lay the fires, with Peggy telling him that they could manage as everyone except for her was going to be going out and so he should just leave for Leeds, and she had an extra feather eiderdown that she could put on top of the bed, and so she and Bucky could snuggle up under it as they listened to the BBC on the wireless, with Gracie lighting the fires when she got in.
And this is what they did, although Peggy discovered with dismay that soon she was finding it very hard to make much sense, if any, of what the radio broadcasters said.
The words seemed jumbled and out of order, and she was having difficulty opening her eyes.
She lay further down in bed and tried to sleep – everyone was always telling her these days how restorative sleep could be. But it wasn’t to be in this case as Peggy felt very nauseous all of a sudden.
She stumbled to the lavatory, the floor tilting this way and that as she made her way along, clutching at the walls and the furniture for support, she felt so dizzy and clumsy, but once she hung her head over the toilet bowl she found that she wasn’t able to be sick.
A shooting pain in her abdomen and down in her rectum made Peggy think she was perhaps about to have violent diarrhoea, but no, that wasn’t the case.
She tried to urinate, but started to panic when she couldn’t squeeze even a drop out.
None of this felt right. She was hot and she was cold, both at the same time, and she looked at her left hand where once she had so proudly worn the wedding ring with which Bill had pledged his love for her, to see a drop of sweat inch across her palm, immediately followed by another and then another.
Something was very, very wrong, Peggy just knew, and she was all alone in a cold house, no fires having been lit that day and with the snow deep outside, with no telephone, and until somebody came home, which she wasn’t expecting for a long time yet, totally cut off from the outside world.
She tried to make it back to her bedroom, but by now she was so disorientated and dizzy that she could only crawl along the floor, not realising she was heading in the wrong direction to her room and so was moving further away from it rather than closer.
She realised she was going to vomit but there was nothing she could do about it, having no choice other than to void her stomach as she knelt forlornly in the hall.
And with that she fell unconscious, lying half on the arctic-chill flags of the hall floor and half on a none-too-clean carpet runner that was one of three lying down the length of the hall, her flimsy cotton nightie doing nothing to keep in her body heat, and with her wedding ring on its gold chain around Peggy’s neck lying on the carpet beside her face, being softly brushed by each erratic breath she struggled to take.
Nearly two hours later, the children came into Tall Trees through the kitchen door.
‘Brrr, it’s as cold in here as it is outside,’ said Connie. ‘Auntie Peggy, are you awake?’ There was no answer. ‘I think she’s asleep, I’ll close the kitchen door so that, we don’t wake her.’
The children started a game of ludo but their hearts weren’t in it. Tommy was very quiet anyway as he couldn’t stop thinking about his granny, while the twins and Larry were feeling peckish as they had been racing each other on their way back from the hospital, but they weren’t used to coming into the kitchen and there not being a grown-up on hand who would, as a matter of course, ask them if they wanted something to eat.
Jessie got up and went to the bread bin, where he tracked down half a slightly stale loaf. It was shop-brought bread, very like what he and Connie had been used to back in Bermondsey, and so it was nowhere near as tasty as Mabel’s bread, even when it was fresh and slathered in butter.
Still, it was better than nothing as they were all very hungry, and then Larry found some dripping in the metal-covered meat cool box that was in a dark place on the stone floor of the large pantry, and so the children set about having some bread and dripping for their lunch.
‘Listen to that cat,’ said Connie, and they all stopped chewing.
Connie was right – Bucky was making an almighty racket. ‘I think he must like dripping – shall we give him the bowl,’ which was now more or less empty, ‘to lick out?’
But when Connie went to the door to the passageway to let Bucky in for a snack, Bucky refused to come in, instead running away from her down the hall yowling furiously.
‘’Ow odd,’ said Aiden.
‘Daft ’apporth,’ said Tommy.
Bucky’s cries sounded more frantic.
‘It sounds like he’s trying to tell us something,’ Jessie added cautiously.
Connie stuck her head into the hall. ‘Eeuw, it smells really bad out here. Aunt Peggy, I think Bucky has been sick.’
There was no reply and so Connie crossed the passage. To her horror, there was no sign of Peggy in her bed.
Bucky’s yells were now verging on screams, and all the children felt a prickle of apprehension. Something felt very ominous indeed.
Connie looked one way down the corridor, and then gave such a gasp when she looked the other way.
‘AUNTIE PEGGY!’ she cried, and ran towards her aunt’s prostrate body, which now was looking blue with cold.
The boys charged out of the room in a tumble and the children stood in a semi-circle around Peggy, taking care not to stand in the sick.
Larry leant down and peered at her closely. ‘She’s breathin’.’
Jessie took control.
‘Connie, get as many eiderdowns as you can to cover her up as she’s freezing,’ he commanded. ‘Tommy, you’re the quickest runner by far, so you go to the hospital and see if you can find James. Larry, you know the lady in the caff best – June, is it? – you run for her. And Aiden, you run and see if you can find Gracie – she’ll be in one of the chemists looking at lipstick and stockings probably. I’ll stay here with Connie, and we’ll look after Peggy.’
With that the boys shrugged themselves into their coats and scarves as quickly as they could, and then raced off.
Jessie watched them go and then went to get a cushion to put under Peggy’s head.
He and Connie didn’t dare try to move her – she looked heavy under the eiderdowns, and they thought she had fallen down onto the cold floor too far away from either her bed or a sofa for them to be easily able to get her onto something softer.
It felt as if time was standing still, and that Connie and Jessie were watching their aunt and their baby cousin die.
It was the worst feeling they had ever had.
Instinctively the twins drew close together and held hands. Connie started to cry, and so Jessie removed his hand from hers, placing a comforting arm around her shoulder instead.
All the boys found who it was that they were looking for.
Tommy and James were back first, having run all the way, not caring if they slipped and slid on the icy pavements. The hospital only had one ambulance and it was currently on a call, but James had instructed his team that the moment it was back it was to be sent to Tall Trees.
James ran to where Peggy lay, taking her pulse and then sending the children to the kitchen so that he could check under her nightie to see if her waters had broken.
June Blenkinsop arrived next, very short of breath, as she and Larry had also been running. She took one look at Peggy, who James had now carried with extreme care to her bed where he was sponging her face clean, soft
ly lifting her hair so that he could wipe her brow and neck, and June hurried to put the kettle on to boil while she sent the children round the house to find every hot-water bottle they could. There were always a lot of hot-water bottles in a house like Tall Trees, she insisted, and they would help warm Peggy if the ambulance took some time to arrive.
As Jessie and Larry hunted through the bedrooms on the first floor that weren’t their own, Tommy having galloped over to see what he could find in the room above the stables, Jessie realised that Angela’s accident, and Larry’s bad time in Harrogate, and the horrible incident over the apples that had injured Larry so badly (not that he had ever uttered one word to suggest he was in pain), and Larry having run so quickly to get June, had somehow diminished Jessie’s suspicions and wariness of his former enemy. Larry seemed to have changed for the better, and so Jessie thought maybe he deserved a chance.
Jessie felt he had changed too. He didn’t feel scared of Larry any more – it was as simple as that. How had that happened? The more Jessie mulled things over, the more he realised that he didn’t feel scared of Tommy either. He couldn’t put his finger on any one thing that had happened to tip the balance in his favour with either lad, but it certainly was a good feeling not to be scared any longer.
Larry looked across the room to Jessie, laughing; he had just discovered not one, but two hot-water bottles pushed down to the bottom of Roger and Mabel’s bed, and even though he was terribly worried about Peggy, Jessie found himself grinning back in return.
It was a while before Gracie got back to Tall Trees as it had taken Aiden a while to find her as she wandered from shop to shop. Immediately she set to cleaning up the hall, as she knew Peggy would be mortified if Roger and Mabel came home to an ugly pool of vomit that nobody had dealt with.
At long last the ambulance arrived and Peggy was gently positioned on a stretcher. She was still extremely cold and her teeth could be heard audibly clattering against each other as she was shivering and shaking so violently.
James’s face was very grave as he climbed into the back of the ambulance with her. He didn’t take his eyes off Peggy, not for a single second.
June and Gracie glanced at each other with concerned looks, but they didn’t dare say anything in front of the children gathered round.
They understood that without a shadow of doubt there was a very real possibility that Peggy and her baby were both going to die.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Miracles can happen.
Peggy came to, on a darkened ward, lit by a dim light from somewhere behind her bed.
Panicked, she tried to sit up as she didn’t know where she was, but she couldn’t move. There was something wrong with her mid-section, she could feel it. Well, feel wasn’t the right word as she realised she couldn’t feel anything below her arms. But she knew all the same that there was something very wrong.
She gave a wail of anguish, and immediately James sprang awake from the chair in which he’d been dozing beside her bed, and a nurse, who must have been right outside the door to the ward, walked briskly in.
‘Where am I? What’s happened?’ Peggy said huskily, her voice parched.
‘Shh, Peggy, shh,’ said James, as the nurse angled her head so that she could take a sip from a glass of water. ‘You gave us all a terrible fright. But everything is all right now, I promise. I had to operate so you will be feeling the effects of the anaesthetic, and if your stomach is hurting it’s because I had to perform an emergency procedure called a caesarean section to deliver your baby—’
‘But it’s too early.’ Peggy’s wails became howls, exacerbated by her inability to sit up. ‘I’m only just seven months gone. The baby will be too small to survive.’
‘Peggy, it’s okay, trust me. You are the mother of a beautiful baby girl. We’ve got her in another ward just now as she is small and we are checking her over and doing some tests. But so far she looks perfect, and on the big side considering you were only seven months along.’
Peggy clasped James’s hands in gratitude as she sobbed hot tears of relief.
Her grip was so strong that she quite crushed his fingers.
James found himself looking intently at Peggy’s hand, and at his own within it.
Today he felt he had explored somehow the mystery of life itself, and he felt humbled. It had been a close-run thing as Peggy’s pulse had dipped precariously, while the baby had been still and sluggish to breathe.
James realised that he had never operated on somebody he had known, and although he had only met Peggy twice, nonetheless this had made it a very emotional experience for him, especially as he knew that while all babies were special and precious, this was a baby that was desperately wanted as Peggy and her husband had waited so long to conceive, and that to lose her would be a tragedy of untold proportions.
James hadn’t expected to come to Harrogate and to find himself emotionally touched in quite this way. He thought he would be making difficult decisions, yes, surely, and guiding his team of doctors, but he knew how to do that.
It was with the quiver of that baby girl’s tiny fingers as she stiffened and clutched her fists in his direction and then – joy! – had finally taken her first breath that he felt quite undone. Just thinking about it now, he felt tears spring to his own eyes, and hurriedly he blinked them away so that Peggy wouldn’t see.
Such a little thing, yet so determined to survive. And somewhere in Germany right at the same minute James was pretty certain that there would be another tiny baby trying just as hard to live and breathe as Peggy’s was. It made the war seem so senseless, so futile.
But as James looked down at Peggy’s tear-stained face that still smelt weakly of vomit, and her sweat-tangled hair and fingers swollen to sausage-like proportions, with her chubby legs and gargantuan feet poking out from the hospital blankets, he felt blessed somehow at having shared such an amazing experience at the hands of this woman.
‘Peggy,’ James said softly, ‘do you think that if we help you sit up, you might be able to manage a cup of tea and some toast?’
Peggy nodded, and then the nurse added much less gently, ‘And after that I’ll give you a going-over with a flannel and then you’ll be ready to meet your daughter. You’ll want to be able to tell your husband what she looked like the very first time you held her.’
‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ whispered Peggy, as tears pooled in her eyes.
Only now, the first time for a very long while, they were tears of happiness.
Several hours later, it was close to midnight and Peggy looked much better. She was in a clean nightie, and the nurse had indeed given her a thorough wash and brush-up.
Peggy had managed to give her daughter her first feed – this hadn’t proved to be easy and she wasn’t sure the baby had actually taken anything, but the nurse promised that within a day or two it would feel like second nature to Peggy.
Now mother and baby were staring into each other’s eyes, the baby swaddled in a snow-white blanket. These were fathomless, very wise eyes staring up at her, Peggy thought, almost as if her little girl knew all the secrets of the world already.
Peggy offered her smallest finger, and the baby clutched it purposefully, sending a dart of pure love deep into Peggy’s heart.
She peered down to look more closely at the wrinkles in the baby’s face. Her daughter resembled nothing so much as a small and rather grumpy old man, but this made Peggy smile. Barbara had warned her about this, and she had promised Peggy that these gruff looks didn’t last long and that very quickly that impression would be replaced with something much more pleasant. But Peggy didn’t care in the slightest as she inspected her daughter’s frowny face. Every eyelash was clearly visible, and she had Bill’s shock of hair. Her mouth was pink and rosebud, and her fingers quite long and strong. Peggy wasn’t very familiar with newborns, and so she was pleased that her baby wasn’t absolutely tiny, but seemed now surprisingly hale and hearty.
Gingerly she stroke
d a finger across a velvety cheek and then up and across the top of the baby’s head. The baby’s eyes squinted and then closed dozily. Peggy continued what she was doing and then suddenly the baby felt heavier as she fell asleep, the ache in Peggy’s cheeks indicating suddenly that she had been smiling for a long while now.
Bill, I will love and protect our daughter with all that I have, Peggy promised her husband. I will give my life for her if need be. There will never be a baby as loved as she is. She is perfect, just perfect.
Peggy closed her eyes and imagined a starry night sky. She thought of Bill and she hoped that he was thinking of her. Together they had managed to do something extraordinary. It felt immense and very serious.
The baby gave a snuffle and a wriggle, and Peggy opened her eyes to look at her once again.
‘Care for a visitor?’ said somebody in a whisper. ‘Well, several visitors actually. Er, a few more than several in fact.’
Peggy looked up to see a weary-looking Mabel peeping round the screens around her bed.
She smiled. ‘Come on in.’
And with that Roger and Mabel, and Connie and Jessie shuffled round the screen. Then Gracie and June came in, followed by Tommy and Larry and Aiden. It was quite a squeeze but nobody minded in the slightest.
‘These useless streaks o’… er, er, nuttin’ saved yer life, yer shud know,’ said Gracie, clearly having been going to use a rude word but then remembering that Roger and Mabel were standing alongside her. Gracie, smiling proudly, waved a hand in the direction of the children, and Peggy got the point.
Peggy thanked each one of the children individually, and said then that she didn’t have the words to say to them – what a very great thing they had done. She was very proud of them, and she would write notes to all their parents to say what clever and resourceful children they had.
‘I hope this little one takes after each and every one of you,’ said Peggy, ‘and I really mean that. You have given to me the very best Christmas present possible.’
