Bay of Secrets

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘We do indeed,’ said the first man. He leaned in closer and Sister Julia had to strain to hear the words. ‘We are living in a world of National Catholicism now, you know.’

  Ah. Sister Julia understood his meaning. She had read a newspaper which a woman had left at the clinic in which General Franco was described as ‘the man sent from God, who always appears at the critical moment and defeats the enemy’. Those words – strong words – had stayed in her mind. The newspaper was Arriba, admittedly the press of the regime. Nevertheless, Sister Julia had thought. Nevertheless. It was a joining, was it not? The Nationalists and the Catholic Church. Who then was in charge?

  Una, grande y libre. There was another motto heard on the streets these days. ‘From the Empire towards God.’ Had her church become a political animal? And if it had – what repercussions would there be?

  At the clinic, two women – both madras soltoras, single mothers – were nearing the end of the first stage of labour and due to be wheeled to the delivery room.

  Sister Julia said the morning prayers more hurriedly than usual and Dr Lopez arrived early for his round and took charge, the midwife and nurse also in attendance. Sister Julia stood beside the bed of one of the women, Lenora Sanchez, holding her hand, trying to offer prayer and comfort.

  ‘Help me, Mother, help me, Mother,’ moaned Lenora.

  ‘Your mother will not help you now,’ said Dr Lopez grimly. ‘You must ask your forgiveness of God. You must repent your sins and give up your child to God’s good grace.’

  So. Sister Julia rubbed the woman’s back as the contraction came. Now the pains were not far apart. Lenora had not then agreed to give up her child for adoption. Had she wanted to become pregnant in the first place? Presumably not. Did any single mother? But it happened and once it had happened … ‘It is a terrible thing,’ the doctor had once said to Sister Julia. ‘But in some countries it is legal to take a child’s life – even before that child is born.’ Not so in Spain. Abortion was deeply frowned upon. What then were women such as Lenora to do?

  Dr Lopez shook his head in despair. ‘I must see how dilated you are. Nurse!’

  Lenora’s legs were stirruped and spread. Dr Lopez craned over her as he made his examination.

  ‘Be still,’ Sister Julia murmured. ‘Be still.’ The position she was in seemed to be making the pain worse. When had women been forced to lie down to be delivered so that they were denied even the help of gravity? When had inventions like the stirrups been introduced so that the doctors might see more clearly and the woman in labour be able to barely move?

  Dr Lopez turned to the midwife. ‘She needs to go to the delivery room now. The child is coming.’

  Lenora screamed as if to confirm this fact. But she gripped Sister Julia’s hand and she could sense the excitement there too, the passion of childbirth.

  ‘Hush now,’ said Sister Julia. ‘God is with you.’

  ‘We shall see,’ snapped the doctor.

  But the midwife was busy with the other mother-to-be, a girl giving birth for the first time, a girl not much more than a child herself who wanted nothing more than to be free of it, once her child was born.

  ‘Stay with her,’ said Dr Lopez, reassessing the situation. ‘Sister Julia will take this woman through.’ He seemed to dismiss Lenora with a wave of his hand.

  She screamed again.

  Sister Julia did not like the look of her. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was white. ‘Can we give her some pain relief, doctor?’ she asked. She unstrapped the woman’s legs and prepared to move the bed. The junior nurse hurried over to help her.

  ‘It is too late.’

  Another scream, long and piercing.

  ‘“In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children”,’ Dr Lopez bellowed at her. ‘Genesis.’ He came closer to the bedside and looked down at poor Lenora. ‘“Because you have eaten the forbidden fruit.”’ Abruptly, he turned from her.

  Dear God. Sister Julia was aware of the doctor’s belief that women must suffer pain in childbirth because of Eve’s alleged sin, but was it truly God’s will for women to experience such pain? The doctor – and others – might ask why women like Lenora had allowed their virtue to be taken away so freely. Had they not worried what might happen to them? What position they might find themselves in? Sister Julia thought of Paloma. She was safe now that she was about to be married. But Sister Julia could see how some men might take advantage of a poor foolish girl who was ready and willing to be flattered. Men who were unscrupulous and who showed women little respect; men who used charm and perhaps even force to get what they wanted.

  Lenora hung on to the sides of the bed, her eyes wide and dilated. ‘I am a woman,’ she panted. ‘And I am alive.’

  ‘So we see,’ said Dr Lopez.

  Lenora cried out again. And they still hadn’t got her out of the medical room. The other women were becoming distressed now. But Dr Lopez remained as cool as a mountain stream as he moved away to check on the other mother in labour.

  Was he leaving Sister Julia in charge? She tried not to panic. ‘Gas and air, doctor?’ she asked. He often administered this late on in labour – when he chose to do so.

  ‘No need.’ He turned and touched his nose. ‘Doctor knows best, Sister Julia,’ he said, almost flippantly, apparently oblivious to Lenora’s screams. ‘She is to be a mother. She will manage.’

  An unmarried mother. A mother who wished to keep her child. They moved the bed into the delivery room. Sister Julia rearranged pillows and sheets and tried to make Lenora as comfortable as possible. Were they fallen women, as Dr Lopez said? Or were they simply women who had some life in their bones? She fetched some water in a bowl and dipped in a flannel. But it was true that a single woman pregnant with an unwanted child presented a social problem. And if Sister Julia doubted his methods … The clinic and the adoptions encouraged and arranged by Dr Lopez at least provided a solution – for both mother and child. No one could deny that.

  It was a difficult birth. Sister Julia did not think she had ever heard a woman make so much noise. Lenora was in pain and she had a streak of wildness in her too. However, Sister Julia comforted her as best she could and Dr Lopez delivered the child. There did not seem to be any complications.

  Dr Lopez handed the baby to Sister Julia while he delivered the afterbirth and checked that all was well with the mother.

  ‘A healthy boy,’ Sister Julia told Lenora as she began to wash him. His cheeks were already flushed with colour, there was a dark fluff of hair on his little head. He was a darling.

  ‘Indeed.’ The doctor looked up from his examination. ‘But I think I must be the judge of that, thank you, Sister.’

  ‘Of course, doctor.’ She bowed her head.

  When he had finished, Dr Lopez nodded at Sister Julia. ‘As soon as you like, Sister,’ he said. And then he left the delivery room.

  There was a fixed procedure. After a baby was born to a mother, Sister Julia must take the infant to the doctor as quickly as possible, so that a proper examination could be carried out.

  ‘Let me hold him,’ begged Lenora. She was quieter now and calm. She had that look of peace about her that women wore after childbirth. When Sister Julia saw that, she had to remind herself: this experience was not for her. She would never know what Lenora had known – that passion and pain, that losing of control, that marvellous and momentous feeling of giving birth.

  Sister Julia hesitated. Most of the women wanted to hold their newborns to their breast; they wanted to keep them by their bedside and watch over them. But she was not supposed to allow that to happen. ‘Just for a moment,’ she said. ‘Then I must take him through to be examined by the doctor.’

  ‘Phoof,’ said Lenora. ‘You can see he is as healthy as a young horse. What does he need to be examined for?’ She held him close. ‘My love,’ she murmured. And kissed him softly on his forehead.

  Sister Julia was moved by the simple gesture of affection. But, ‘It is procedure.’ And she took him
back. ‘However would it be,’ Dr Lopez had said, ‘if there was a health problem with one of these children? How would it look if a baby died before I had even had a chance to examine it? What sort of a reputation would my clinic have in this case?’

  And if he were to lose his reputation – Sister Julia did not need to be reminded of this – then he could no longer help these children. He could no longer do what he always referred to as ‘God’s work’.

  ‘I will bring him back soon,’ Sister Julia promised.

  But she did not. She took the baby down to the doctor and then was sent to help in the medical room. It was some hours later when she returned to the delivery room only to see Dr Lopez already standing at the door.

  ‘Alas, Sister,’ he said. He was holding his crucifix in his hand.

  Alas? Sister Julia felt the dread of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. Alas? She followed him inside.

  Lenora’s eyes flickered open. She looked at them both and Sister Julia saw the same look of dread on her face that she herself was feeling. She put a hand on the bed rail to steady herself. Surely not?

  ‘Where is my baby?’ Lenora looked from left to right, her eyes growing wild with fear. ‘What have you done with him?’

  ‘I am very sorry.’ The doctor’s voice was heavy with grief. ‘But your child has been taken by God.’

  Taken by God? But the child had seemed so healthy. Sister Julia crossed herself.

  ‘No!’ Lenora’s wail was heart-rending. It was a cry of pure grief.

  Sister Julia hurried to her side.

  Dr Lopez nodded. ‘There was nothing I could do,’ he said. ‘But rest assured that your son has passed on from this earth to heaven.’

  ‘It cannot be! It is not true!’ Lenora tried to grasp the doctor’s arm. ‘Give him to me. Give me my boy!’

  ‘Hush, Lenora.’ But Sister Julia did not know what to say.

  ‘He has gone to God, I tell you.’ The doctor held the crucifix in front of him. ‘Be happy for him. For he has been saved.’

  Lenora burst into a fit of uncontrolled weeping. Sister Julia put an arm around her and tried to offer some words of comfort. But in truth the words stuck in her throat. Lenora was inconsolable.

  Dr Lopez was about to leave the room when she shrieked at him. ‘Let me see him. Let me see my baby!’

  Of course she must see the child. Sister Julia moved towards the door – about to go and fetch him, for he must surely still be in the examination room downstairs – when she heard the doctor’s reply.

  ‘I cannot give permission for you to see your child,’ he said. ‘You are in no fit state. It is not healthy. It is not good for you.’

  Sister Julia dithered. This was true enough. It had not occurred to her, but she had to admit that hysteria would do no one any good. There were other women to think of and besides, this poor woman could lose her sense of reason, being confronted by such a trauma.

  ‘I must see him!’ Lenora insisted. But she sounded less forceful now. Grief had overtaken her. She was crumpled, beaten.

  And Sister Julia thought for a moment of her mother’s expression when she had left her at Santa Ana Convent that first time. She too had been defeated.

  ‘What was wrong with him?’ Lenora whispered. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘An infection in his heart,’ Dr Lopez replied immediately. ‘It was very sudden. A malfunction. No one could have known.’

  No one could have known. Life and death. These things happened. Sister Julia had seen more than her fair share. Mothers were often poor and undernourished; they were unhealthy and had perhaps passed dangerous germs on to their unborn infants.

  But poor Lenora was suddenly beside herself. ‘No, no … ’ she cried. She tried to drag herself out of the bed. She was becoming hysterical.

  The doctor’s expression changed abruptly from sympathy to irritation. ‘Sister Julia,’ he snapped, ‘a sedative, if you please.’

  Sister Julia scurried off for the sedative. She could not believe it. The child had seemed so healthy. And yet … She couldn’t rid herself of that feeling of dread.

  *

  ‘Children are born without the natural defences of you and I, Sister Julia,’ Dr Lopez said sadly as he accompanied her out of the delivery room. ‘Sometimes we cannot protect them and we cannot save them. It is God’s will to take them at once. We must accept this.’

  Sister Julia bowed her head. She knew that he would have done everything he could to save the child. He was upset himself – though he hid his emotions well. ‘And she will see her child later when she is calm?’ she asked him.

  ‘I think not.’ Dr Lopez was brusque. ‘What good will it do to brood on the past? She must look to the future now.’

  Sister Julia wrung her hands. Lenora needed to see her son – she knew that. She needed some sense of closure – or she could be traumatised for who knew how long. Sister Julia remembered that look of peace on her face after her child had been born. All those long months of the baby growing in her belly, all that pain experienced in order to deliver him into the world. And now this.

  ‘I am sure that if I could talk gently to her for a moment, she would be able to cope with the sight of her baby,’ she said. ‘It might help her contemplate her future without him.’

  ‘Her dead baby, Sister,’ the doctor reminded her.

  ‘But surely, doctor … ’ Sister Julia knew she was becoming too emotionally involved but how could she help it? Yes, Lenora’s child was dead and it would be upsetting for her to see him. But if she did not see him … ‘I feel that she needs—’

  ‘Oh you do, do you, Sister?’ Dr Lopez opened the door of his consulting room and brusquely ushered her inside. ‘You think you can vouch for her emotions, eh? You feel that you know exactly what this woman requires?’

  Sister Julia summoned all her strength of will – which was hard, because she had been cultivating acceptance and faith for so many years now through prayer at the convent of Santa Ana. ‘I think I do, doctor,’ she said.

  ‘So you know better than I what is good for this woman, do you, Sister?’ His voice was dangerously calm. ‘You, a woman who is part cloistered, who knows nothing of the real world outside this clinic and her own convent? You think you know better than I?’

  ‘Oh, no, doctor, forgive me.’ Sister Julia bowed her head. She had not been saying that at all. How could she possibly know better than he? She had simply wanted to convey her own thoughts, her feelings …

  ‘Be still.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘And listen to one who knows.’

  His hand felt heavy as lead. The weight was one which Sister Julia could hardly bear.

  ‘It would be too sad for her,’ he said. ‘She is in a dangerously vulnerable state following childbirth. Trust me, Sister Julia, it is better this way.’

  *

  Later that day, Sister Julia had occasion to go into the doctor’s consulting rooms to collect a report that he had left there. She saw the death certificate for Lenora’s child and had to stifle a sob. The poor woman was still sedated but soon she would be discharged into the outside world. And did she have anyone to support her, to comfort her? Probably not. It was a heartbreaking situation.

  There was a birth certificate on his desk too – that of a boy who had been born during the night when Sister Julia had not been at the clinic. He was to be adopted. She glanced at it with interest. Frederico Carlo Batista – the surname of the couple who were to adopt him; she herself had shown them into the clinic earlier today when they had joyfully collected their swaddled and wrapped baby boy and without further ado disappeared.

  No mention of course of the little one’s birth mother’s name. Even Sister Julia did not know it, since apparently the mother had been discharged even before Sister Julia had arrived this morning. And it was not on the birth certificate since General Franco had seen to it that the names of the adoptive parents were the only names ever recorded.

  ‘It is a new law. A good law,’ Dr Lopez had tol
d her when she questioned it. ‘It ensures that our young people will receive the right ideological upbringing. They will be brought up to love God; they will be brought up in the right way, the only way a Spaniard should be brought up, in His name.’

  Sister Julia understood the reasons why. But this new law meant that every adopted child would remain ignorant of their roots. That there would be no record of their biological parents, nor even that they had been adopted at all. She could not argue with the doctor’s logic. But did this not flout another fundamental right? The right to know your own origins? And wasn’t such deceit likely to lay the foundations in their damaged country for more and still more deceit?

  Now, Sister Julia memorised the names of the child and of the adopted parents. She checked the discharges book and found the name of the mother who had left this morning. She memorised all the names.

  *

  On the way back to Santa Ana late that afternoon, Sister Julia purchased a plain hardback notebook from a stationery shop in Las Ramblas. She took it back to the convent, went to her own simple whitewashed room and she wrote down the date and all the names. And then she added another. Lenora Sanchez. The name of the woman whose son had died.

  She could not even say why she had done it. She kept it secret and she locked the book in a drawer. But she would continue to do it, she decided. She would stay at the clinic and try to help these women. And she would write down all the names.

  CHAPTER 18

  Dorset, April 1978

  Vivien drove cautiously back home from Pride Bay, glancing in her mirror regularly to check that the baby, wrapped in her blanket and tucked into the basket, was still secure on the back seat. What else could she do? Laura obviously transported her in much the same way – the poor mite didn’t appear to even have a cot to sleep in. Vivien sighed and gripped the steering wheel of her Morris 1000 a little more tightly. And just for a second she allowed herself to think – didn’t Laura realise how lucky she was? Probably not.