‘But I have to …’ Flora protested.
‘No you don’t. I’ll pop back to the house twice a day when I’m working to give you your meals in bed. It won’t be for long.’
Nanny did not expect her to go until the middle of June, the date Flora said the baby was due. And if there were serious signs of complications, then her first duty was to her patient and the laws of her profession. A doctor would be called. Flora would be sent to hospital, and Gordon and Ruth would have to make arrangements to adopt the baby in a proper, legal manner.
Six weeks later at Ivy Lodge, on a soft spring morning in April, Flora crawled out of bed as the ever-present pain in her back stabbed through her. She could only make it from the bedroom to the kitchen on her hands and knees. She dropped to the floor and between gritted teeth vowed, ‘I will never, never again be dependent on anyone for anything when I am over this.’
The coconut matting grazed her knees and shins as she crawled across the kitchen. She hauled herself up at the back door and caught sight of her reflection in the little mirror. ‘But will I ever be over this?’ she said out loud to her reflection. Her red face was bloated and shiny. Her eyelids were puffy. She could barely see her eyes. The abundance of flaming hair hung in lank strings.
Then, ‘Yes, I will! I will get over it. I may be only sixteen but I am no longer a child. I’ll be a mother and I’m going to keep my baby.’ She remembered the last talk she and Gran had had. Gran said that it was a rare female who could love another’s child. Nobody could ever love her baby the way Flora would. She had hidden a sharp knife under her pillow. ‘I’ll force Nanny to help me get away.’ She had her ticket and a letter offering refuge in Canada. Nanny had given her more than enough for board and lodging until the boat sailed. She would not take the money from Lady Campbell but would escape with her baby to Canada, where Nanny’s sister Dorothy and brother-in-law John were expecting her.
Outside the back door the world smelled of new grass and fresh-turned earth – of new life that had burst free of winter. Flora was barefooted and there, not more than six inches from her toes, a proud stand of daffodils nodded, brave and clean in the spring air that washed over her. She put up her arms to lift her lank hair to the breeze and knew a quick tightening of her, load. The heaviness had gone. A welcome tightening was happening, low down, where something warm and wet flowed, unstoppable, down the insides of her thighs.
She looked down, startled. Her waters were breaking. She closed the door, grabbed a towel and a clean sheet that hung from the kitchen pulley. She was not afraid, but oddly excited, as she found she could now walk back to her bed and climb in. With the folded sheet beneath her, she waited for Nanny to arrive.
When Nanny popped back to Ivy Lodge to give Flora her lunch, she found that the labour was in the early stages. Flora was comfortable and Nanny drove straight back to Ingersley to tell Ruth to be prepared. She did not voice her worries about this premature delivery. The baby might need an incubator or prove not to be strong enough to take from its mother. And Nanny was having grave doubts about the adoption. The passage to Canada had been paid for by Ruth, and Nanny had given Flora money to tide her over, but with the birth being six weeks before the boat sailed Flora could easily change her mind and come back demanding her baby. Also, Gordon would surely never have contemplated adopting the child if he’d seen such a lack of maternal feeling in Ruth.
At this moment, though, Nanny was angry. Ruth was coming down the stone steps dressed for riding. Nanny had forbidden the riding a month ago and told Ruth that an expectant mother would not ride a horse during the last three months. Now, standing three steps below her on the flight at the front entrance, Nanny, her face set and determined, said, ‘You are going nowhere today! Cancel all your arrangements. The baby will be born before midnight.’
‘That leaves plenty of time. I can be home by mid-afternoon.’ Nanny took a step towards her.
‘I don’t think you can have heard me. I said, you will go nowhere.’
Ruth glowered but did not attempt to pass Nanny. She said, ‘Are you threatening me?’
Nanny was losing the semblance of patience she had so far shown. She said, ‘Go inside. At once!’
Reluctantly, Ruth obeyed, leaving the great oak door wide open. Nanny closed it and followed Ruth up the staircase, where sunlight slanted in at the glass cupola, revealing tiny, agitated dust motes that danced above the threadbare edges of the carpet as Ruth’s booted heels disturbed them on her furious way. The moment she realised that Bessie the housemaid was nowhere to be seen, she turned on Nanny and hissed in temper, ‘Are you threatening me?’
Nanny, short of breath after the climb, was not going to allow her any more leeway. ‘If that is how you see it, then yes.’
Ruth changed her attitude instantly, as only Ruth could. She shook back her hair and removed her tweed jacket. The riding clothes still fitted her perfectly. The only concession she had made to the appearance of pregnancy was to wear two very thick jumpers one on top of the other and to leave her jacket buttons undone. She said, ‘Then will you please call in at the farm on your way to Ivy Lodge. Tell the Hamiltons I’m not well.’
Nanny’s hands were itching to give her a smart slapping. But she said in the same controlled voice, ‘Light a fire in the nursery to make it warm. Place a hot-water bottle in the crib. Sterilise the feeding bottles and be prepared.’ She added, ‘You will give Bessie the afternoon off while you do all this. That is, if you are still bent on keeping this adoption a secret?’
Ruth smiled now, disarmingly. ‘What time do you think the baby will be born?’ she asked, as if she were awaiting a delivery of oats. She had not once concerned herself with Flora except to give Nanny, at Nanny’s insistence, the hundred pounds in notes, which she said was not to be handed over until the baby was in its crib here at Ingersley.
Nanny said, ‘You must wait. You must go to bed and wait just as a real mother does.’
With that she went to her room and collected the baby clothes and the Moses basket for the return journey to Ivy Lodge. Though the success of her encounter with Ruth had buoyed her up, on the drive back Nanny was in turmoil. She went by the main road, passing on the hill sheep with baby lambs at foot, and in the fields farmers and field workers planting cabbage under a great wide, clean-washed sky.
It was Nanny’s favourite time of year. She used to push Gordon out every afternoon in his pram along these lanes. She could recall every expression on her darling’s little face, and a cold hand clutched at her heart every time she thought about the danger he was in. She whispered his name out loud now. ‘Gordon, you don’t know what you’re asking of me’ – for though she loved him as a son, Nanny knew that her first duty was to the mother she would deliver and the baby soon to be born. If Flora wanted to keep the baby, then, regardless of everyone’s feelings, it was Nanny’s bounden duty to help her.
Tears came to Nanny’s eyes as she turned on to the rough lane – tears for Flora, who might only know the pains of childbirth and not the joys of motherhood; and tears for herself, for if Flora could not part with it, then Nanny would never again have a baby to call her own.
Flora managed to raise herself high on the pillow, despite the pains that were coming fast and strong. It was dark outside and in the dim light from the lamp she could just see the comforting figure of Nanny setting out her things: a kidney dish covered with gauze, containing antiseptic lotion; string to tie off the cord; and sharp scissors. Everything – padding, cotton, binders and a heap of muslin squares – had been there for hours.
She managed to say, before falling back into the pillows as another pain took her, ‘What’s the time?’
Nanny turned round. She was wearing a large white apron over her grey dress, and over her face and mouth a gauze mask. The birth must be imminent. Flora groaned, tried to hold her breath, then breathe deeply. Nothing worked. The pains grew stronger. Sweat broke out on her brow.
‘It’s nearly midnight. Soon be here!’ Na
nny assured her, and came to sit beside her to mop her forehead with cologne soaked cotton waste. ‘Hold on to my arm when the next one comes.’
‘It’s … it’s … coming … Oh!’ Flora’s face contorted into a grimace as she grabbed Nanny’s arm on the edge of the scream as pain overwhelmed her. Then the pulling and stretching pain ceased and suddenly it was as if a train were rushing through her and she found herself bearing down, grunting, sweating, gasping for breath.
‘Good girl! Keep going!’ Nanny encouraged, but Flora was beyond obeying Nanny now. Every last ounce of strength and energy was going into this impossible struggle to push her baby out.
‘Stop pushing!’ Nanny ordered. ‘The head is nearly out. Now clamp your teeth together while breathing through your mouth.’
Orders and pains were coming together relentlessly, until with a cry of, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ and one enormous, sustained effort, it came slithering, sliding out into the world, into Nanny’s hands.
‘It’s a boy – a beautiful boy!’ Nanny said, and she held him up so that Flora could see and hear his first cry of surprise as his little lungs filled with air.
Flora lay limp and exhausted while Nanny tied off the cord, washing the squealing infant, wrapped him, then weighed him on a hand-held brass scale and put him into her arms, saying, ‘He’s only four-and-a-half pounds, but he’s perfect. Listen to that cry.’
Flora gazed down in wonder on the tiny crumpled face of her son, felt the solid little body moving under the shawl then, before she could speak, another pain came, violent and short. She thrust the infant towards Nanny. ‘Oh, God! Oh, help!’ she cried as the pains came faster and faster.
‘It’s the afterbirth,’ Nanny said, but she quickly laid the new-born infant at the foot of the bed and returned her attention to Flora.
‘It’s not!’ Another pain came, stronger than before. Flora drew up her legs, held on to her knees, gave an almighty cry and bore down with all her might.
‘Oh my,’ Nanny cried as the second baby appeared, a larger baby, crying lustily the second its head emerged. ‘Another boy!’
The afterbirth slithered out. Flora closed her eyes, then opened them to watch Nanny, so calm, wrapping and tying a second cord, wiping the baby, swaddling him in one of the muslin squares then placing him in the crook of Flora’s arm. ‘Eight pounds, lass. No wonder you were so big. Identical twins. They shared a placenta.’
He was the most beautiful thing Flora had ever set eyes upon. She put her right arm out for the other baby and gently, tenderly held both sleeping, snuffling new-born boys, a beatific smile on her face. ‘Don’t take my babies, Nanny,’ she whispered as she looked from one to the other. Then she smiled to see Nanny gather the smaller babe into her own arms and sit upon the edge of the bed, the infant held to her bosom, her eyes bright with tears, which began to roll down her cheeks as she gazed from Flora to the baby she was holding and then back to the one she would for ever afterwards think of as her own.
‘I must. I must take one, my child,’ Nanny said. ‘I’ll take this little one. The bigger baby will be better able to stand the long journey to Canada.’
‘Nanny …?’
‘Yes?’
‘You will love him? When he’s old enough – tell him I loved him, too.’
Tears were streaming down Nanny’s face as, still cradling the baby in her arms, she leaned over and kissed Flora’s troubled brow. ‘I’ll be the next best thing to a mother to him. But we must never tell anyone there were two. Nobody must know. Only you and me.’
Flora was drifting off to sleep, her baby tucked up in bed beside her and Nanny’s voice a soothing background. She was saying she would drive her to North Berwick in two days’ time to register the baby – what would Flora call him?
‘Alexander Andrew,’ Flora managed to say. ‘Rest now,’ Nanny said. ‘I will have to get you out of here in two days’ time.’
‘Nanny – you come too. We could all go to Canada …’, but Flora’s eyes were closing in deep, relaxing sleep. She woke again for only a few moments to see Nanny tenderly wrapping her firstborn son in a fine wool shawl and placing the sleeping baby into the padded Moses basket. Nanny put her finger to her lips and whispered, ‘Get some sleep. I’ll be back.’
Flora thought about the knife under her pillow. She had no need of it. There was nothing she could do. It would be hard to flee with one baby; with two, impossible. She kissed the head of the dark-haired infant beside her, who slept on peacefully. ‘Forgive me, son,’ she said. ‘I hope you find your brother one day.’
Chapter Nine
The approach to their home port, Greenock, was along one of the fairest sea gateways in the world, and after seventeen days at sea Andrew felt a great weight lifting from them as they rounded the Mull of Kintyre and sailed past the gaunt rock of Ailsa Craig. His second trip as temporary probationer sub-lieutenant on Atlantic convoy escort duty was over.
Four hours ago he’d come, sodden wet, off watch and gone down to the mean slit of a two-berth cabin that three officers shared. It was June and hot on land, but out there, even in summer, Atlantic gales sent waves crashing over the bridge, soaking the top layer of clothing of the watch-keeper. On night watches he wore two of everything; oilskins, gloves, clumping sea boots, balaclavas and still the water found its way everywhere, filling the boots, pouring down the neck of his jerseys.
Along with such miserable discomfort, of course, was the ever-present danger from U-boats. In five days’ time they would be back at sea and he would be pulling men aboard: burnt men from blazing oil tankers who would not live; maimed and half-drowned sailors from the merchant ships that were the U-boats’ targets.
His officer training course had taken only six weeks and his posting to the Iris had begun on 14 May. Only two days earlier, after the British debacle in Norway and Hitler’s invasion of the Low Countries, Mr Chamberlain had lost the vote of confidence and resigned and Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty,had become Prime Minister. Andrew heard their new leader’s broadcast: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ All who listened breathed a sigh of relief, and Andrew echoed in his heart the Prime Minister’s confident certainty of victory. Churchill’s unshakeable faith in himself was a beacon in a frightened world.
Now, standing at the rails with the comforting scents of land and home assailing him, Andrew watched the navy-blue bow waves break in frills of white as they set course for the Great and Little Cumbraes, Rothesay and the passage northwards along the spectacular Clyde coastline under a golden sun and a high drift of misty white clouds. Cloud shadows raced across the hills and banks of the pastureland and darkened the patches of pine and birch and oaks that towered over little ferry jetties and tiny stone cottages.
It was peaceful along this stretch of safe water and hard to believe that four hundred miles south-east of here thousands of British fighting men were under fire as they were brought home by an armada of small boats from the shores of Dunkirk.
From his aft station Lieutenant Sergeant Verne called out to him, ‘We’re going in. We’ll have a few days ashore.’
Andrew grinned. ‘Good,’ he said. He needed leave. It was those few precious hours of normality that they all lived for – for wives, girlfriends and family. They would be going alongside in a couple of hours, for their anchorage was a mile offshore at the Tail of the Bank. On previous trips they had waited there, swinging on the anchor cable, served by supply boats and taken off for only a few hours’ leave by liberty boats. He was longing to get home to Edinburgh, hoping against hope to find a letter from Flora waiting for him at Greenock.
Downstream from them as they neared Greenock was a vast pool of convoy shipping. The ships, the liners and merchant vessels, which were all under the Royal Navy’s control now, would be there one night, gone the next morning and replenished with scarcely a day’s delay as sea traffic ebbed and flowed. Andrew’s heart went out to the mothers, teachers and children – the Bundles from Bri
tain – who had to run the gauntlet of U-boats and torpedoes before they reached the welcome of their hosts in Canada and America.
From the window of the flat she had found in his absence, Ma was looking out for him as Andrew strode across The Meadows in the heart of the city. He waved and she came down the stairs to meet him at the main door, wearing a blue linen costume. The new way of life and her improved status obviously suited her.
She was thrilled to see him and to show off their new home. ‘Eh! I’m fair away wi’ myself,’ she said as he kissed her and wrapped an arm about her. ‘You look braw in your uniform. I’m that proud of ye!’
He lifted her off her feet. ‘I’m proud too, Ma! Proud to be an officer.’ He smiled, put her down and said, ‘I don’t know much more than before, but I’ve learned how to handle men who I once saw as my mates, how to salute and how a naval officer responds to the loyal toast.’
‘How long have you got?’ Ma asked as he followed her up the stone staircase of the close.
‘Three days. Then I have to be back in Greenock to join the corvette.’
She laughed. ‘A corvette? What kind of boat is that?’
‘They are broad-beamed, low in the water – built like the old whalers,’ he said. ‘But they are Clyde-built and as sound as a bell.’
‘How big? How many of a crew?’ She opened the door of the second-floor flat and stood back to let him go first into their new home.
‘She’s two hundred and three feet long, nine hundred tons. A crew of eighty men. It’s crowded and cramped, wet and noisy and …’ He was grinning from ear to ear as he looked around him. ‘And she pitches and rolls and swings in the least breeze.’ He was astonished at the size of the flat he was paying for.
Ma proudly showed him the bathroom. He marvelled at that to please her while she said, ‘You are in charge of this boat?’
‘No, Ma. I’m the lowest commissioned rank. I do normal duties during the day and at night I keep watch.’
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