by Allie Burns
Mother wrinkled her nose and rolled the bassinet back and forth. ‘I’m quite looking forward to becoming a grandmother to a little ray of sunshine.’
‘And how about London? Are you missing it?’
‘Don’t gloat – it’s unseemly …’
A twinge stabbed her side. She put her hand to it. Then it came again. A lightning strike of pain flashed across her belly, forcing her forwards. The teddy bear slumped to the floor.
‘I’m fine,’ she wheezed. Her mother surveyed her from a safe distance.
‘It won’t be long now,’ Mother said.
*
Mrs Tipton cooed as she stepped into the nursery room.
‘Very cosy, very cosy indeed.’
‘I think it’s the perfect start for him, for all of us,’ Emily agreed.
‘It’ll not be long now,’ Mrs Tipton said. That was all anyone said to her now.
‘I hope so,’ Emily said, rolling the bassinet back and forth.
As she held the door open for Mrs Tipton a heavy splat of water hit the floorboards. Then a hot pain shot through her, a sudden tightening sensation that snatched her breath away and made her shut her eyes tight and scream. There was a great darkness, a tunnel that pulled her downwards.
Mrs Tipton called for Mother, for Daisy, for the doctor, for Jesus and the Lord himself.
Emily opened her eyes, got her fingers to the call button. The pain fell away but the air still reverberated from the force of the screams.
Mrs Tipton shook her hand now that it was free again. ‘My goodness you’ve a grip on you.’
Mrs Tipton called again for Mother, while steering Emily down the corridor.
‘In here.’ Emily pointed to her room. Mrs Tipton directed Emily towards the bed, and apologised before taking a peek up Emily’s under skirts.
‘Goodness me, baby’s on its way.’
Before Emily could cry out ‘no’, the pain came again and threw her back against the bed’s rails.
Mrs Tipton gripped her hand this time.
‘I’m here now.’ Mother arrived. The pain had subsided and Emily slumped back in the bed. It was softer behind her back.
Mrs Tipton went off to fetch hot towels, fresh linen. Everything was blurry; the room danced. Emily’s legs couldn’t hold her up.
The tide of the pain rose and fell. She couldn’t say for how long it went on. Her bedroom curtains were drawn, but the glint that pushed through faded after a while. The sun had passed over the top of the house.
‘The baby’s in a rush,’ Mrs Tipton said. Emily gasped for breath. Fought the pain. She must stay strong to see this through.
‘Where’s Theo?’ she asked.
Neither said anything.
‘We’re here for you now,’ Mother said.
‘Things have slowed down.’
‘Maybe it’s changed its mind,’ Emily panted. She must keep going. Resist the urge to close her eyes and sink.
‘You’re doing very well.’ She fought against it as she slid down the dark tunnel again. She pulled at her own skin, slapped herself. She opened her eyes, saw the doctor, the new one, the old one hadn’t come back from the war. She slumped forward again. The pain came.
Ether. Morphine. Episiotomy. Alien words.
‘No ether,’ she called. ‘No. I want to do this. No ether,’ she yelled as pain ripped through her, smothered her like a hungry flame. Then darkness came.
*
She awoke to a rattling cry coming through the wall and the urge to do something, though she wasn’t sure what. The room was dark. Her head thumped so badly she had to lower her head straight back to the pillow. When she moved her legs and put her feet to the floor, down below burnt like hellfire.
The crying stopped. Her head was too full of wool for her to work it all through, her legs too watery to take her own weight. But the baby was crying.
The door between her own room and the nursery was locked so instead she hobbled, clutching her stomach, down the hallway.
‘Emily darling. You were right – it’s a boy.’ Shards of light haloed Mother’s body.
‘Is he all right?’ Her voice came from the other side of the room. In the candlelit nursery, Mother sat in the nursing chair, the baby in her arms. His mouth was pushed wide by a rubber nipple.
‘You’re unsteady on your feet. Come and sit down.’
Mother stood. Emily lowered herself with a wince into the nursery chair and then Mother slotted the floppy bundle into her arms, warm and heavy. Mother unplugged the bottle from his lips. His little face creased, his lip quivered, his eyes tightly shut while he bleated.
‘The doctor said you should rest. You were terribly unwell. He advised us to make up an emergency formula – cow’s milk, sugar and honey – until you were strong enough to give him the nourishment he needs from these small little feeds, until your milk comes in.’
Emily held the bottle aloft, wondering if the milk came from Lily, her troublesome cow. Mother admired the baby over Emily’s shoulder. ‘He’s full now.’ Mother’s voice was soft. ‘You can try and feed him later.’
‘You should have woken me,’ Emily said. ‘When he was first hungry.’
Mother leant forwards to kiss his creased-up, red forehead.
‘Emily, I’m not sure you appreciate how very ill you were. Your baby needs a mother who is well enough to take good care of him. And look, isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’
Mother left her. She weighed him in her arms, a warm little bundle. Lifting the blanket to better see him, she traced her finger around the shape of his velvet face. The candlelight flickered and she mistook it for her own heart flowing with gold.
*
When the baby awoke for the next feed she was there, beside him, waiting for him. She wouldn’t let him down, not ever again. She’d always be there for him. She stroked the tip of his nose, dipped close to drink in the scent of his new skin. He had a mop of dark curls like his Uncle Cecil.
She leant over his bassinet all night. She ached and stung. Her eyelids drooped. Once or twice she dropped off and awoke with a start, but she couldn’t leave in case he needed her.
‘Did the baby nearly die?’ she asked the doctor when he made his call.
‘You had a difficult labour,’ he told her, ‘but you’ve both made it through. You’re both fighters.’
‘Did I nearly die?’
The look on his face, the second he took to answer, told her that she had come close. She had nearly perished, and left her baby without a mother. She’d almost abandoned him before he’d even opened his eyes, taken his first breath.
‘He is doing well. You just need to see that he gains in weight and keeps growing.’
She could do that. She could feed him and keep him alive. She would watch him grow. He had to keep getting heavier. And she would be strong for her baby.
‘You should rest. Sleep when baby sleeps. You won’t benefit from watching him sleep.’
She nodded. But she wouldn’t go to bed – not yet, not when he might need her.
‘Make sure she eats,’ he muttered to Mother as he left the room.
*
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ Mother sat beside her, resting her clasped hands on her lap. ‘And I want to tell you now, get it out in the open and then I want us to move forwards. Without any arguments.’
Emily’s eyes were still heavy, flitting open and closed.
‘You were right to bring me back here. I can make decisions for the family. And I have begun by accepting Wilfred’s suggestion to sell. And he’s making it easy, he is going to buy us out.’
‘Right.’ Through the fog she tried to concentrate on Mother’s words. Mother had conceded that Emily was right about something; either that or the morphine was making her hallucinate. She’d taken a decision. They would sell their share of the house to Wilfred, and with the proceeds set up a new life. It was perfect, what she’d hoped would happen, and yet there was something in Moth
er’s tone that told her it wasn’t.
‘The problem is the farm; there won’t be one any more. He’s going to close it down.’ She pushed herself upright. ‘Now don’t start carrying on about how you’re going to live in that farmhouse. You’ve no husband and a baby. It simply wouldn’t work.’
‘It would if Martha was with me. We could run it together.’
‘And who’s Martha? You don’t mean the ex-housemaid? Oh for goodness’ sake. You had your time; now you need to be responsible.’
‘Don’t sell the farm to him,’ Emily said. ‘Exclude the farm from the sale.’
‘It’s too late,’ Mother said. ‘I’ve accepted his offer. It’s time for a fresh start. Now everyone in the village thinks you’re a widow it makes sense that we would want to move away.’
Emily pulled her hand away. It was her mother of old, knitting socks for soldiers by the fire, ashamed of a daughter who would never follow the script Mother had written for her.
The fog in her mind had burnt away now. It was all very clear, but she was pinned to the bed by an invisible hand, while a fire burnt inside her.
‘If you go through with this, I won’t ever forgive you,’ Emily said.
‘You will,’ Mother said. ‘The idea of an educated girl like you living in that damp old farmhouse, with a baby, was simply preposterous and you’ll thank me for saving you from it one day. Now’ – she pulled the cover back up over Emily’s chest – ‘you get some rest. You need your strength.’
Chapter Thirty
May 1919
A letter had arrived for her. Daisy had brought it up with her morning tea.
‘Will we see you up today?’ Daisy asked. Emily hadn’t been downstairs for three days, wasn’t sure she wanted to ever again be in her Mother’s company. Once she re-entered Mother’s sphere she’d be surrendering to afternoon teas and house calls and there’d be no more crops and weekly trips to the market.
‘A Yorkshire postmark,’ Daisy commented.
She handed the tea tray, the letter and the miniature dagger-like opener to Emily and left. Emily set the tea tray down on the dressing table catching a glimpse of herself. Her hair was lank; free of pins it hung down by her face.
‘Mrs Tipton has called twice now,’ Daisy said. ‘She’d love to see the baby. And she asked me to tell you, you’re not to worry about the ole man. He knows everything, and he doesn’t blame you.’
He’d forgiven her, but he’d be leaving the farm at the end of the season, and he wouldn’t be handing the reins over to her.
The letter stayed unopened on the dresser, the tea un-drunk, while Emily leant over the bassinet as the baby opened and closed his mouth in his sleep as if he was dreaming about milk.
The letter still lay on the dresser. It could be from Theo. He might have returned after all, and he might take her and the baby far away from here. The stationery was familiar, but the handwriting wasn’t Theo’s. It was fatter, more curvaceous, and the tail of the y in her name curled around on itself like a pig’s. She sliced the envelope along its ridge, gutting it, and pulled out the entrails. Perhaps Theo was staying with his father. She unfolded the letter and her gaze skittered across the inked words.
To Emily,
I am writing to tell you something that I hope is a terrible mistake, a mix-up of some sort, but I fear the worst. I found a letter from you in Theodore’s trouser pocket. I don’t know what might have passed between you in the war; I must assume that there was some sort of a romance, but I must ask you not to write to him again.
He wasn’t a well man after the war. He wandered off and ended up in New Zealand. He’s home again now and his boys need their father. I don’t suppose you meant to cause us any harm. He might not even have told you about us, but it would be the kinder thing to leave him be and to let us be a family again.
Mabel Williams
She ran to her basin and was sick. It splashed the porcelain and the wall with a brown-flecked bile. How could he have done a thing like that? She retched again, but she was empty, her head hanging low beneath the hand and arms that rested on the basin. How could she have done a thing like that? Marry a man who was capable of becoming angry and violent, who dropped in and out of her life when it suited him.
She dropped to her knees by the bassinet, her mind spinning. When she did find the strength to push herself to her feet, white shapes swirled in front of her eyes. She swayed and waited for the images to disappear. She was observing herself from above. She wasn’t inside any more; she’d been pushed out of her own body. She’d married a criminal. What would Mother say to that?
She lifted John, opened the nursery door, descended the stairs. She kept going straight, straight through the door, out of the house, down the path. Straight. Straight. Straight.
*
She ended up at the rose garden with the baby in her arms. She just arrived there, with no memory of leaving the house, even. She pulled John close to her chest, tilted him away from the glaring sun.
One hand pulled at a stubborn rose bloom that leant forwards into the garden. The woody stem creased but the flower stayed in place. Her thumb caught on a thorn and dragged across the pad to leave a slit that oozed her blood. Still one-handed, she tore off the crimson petals, one by one, tossed them to the ground behind her.
‘Whatever are you doing out here …’
Mother’s strides slowed. She edged towards Emily now. ‘Emily, my dear. The baby – he’ll feel the cold, even on a sunny day like this.’
The bloom was stripped bare now. Just its yellow, fertile centre remained bare. As Mother moved towards the baby, Emily pulled him tighter.
‘Why don’t you come inside, dear …’
Why did she sound as if she were coaxing a cat from a tree? She held John close. What was wrong with being outside? John had on his gown. It was warm. Surely better out here than hemmed in within four walls.
Norah Peters arrived carrying a posy of Sweet Williams. She stopped a little way short, surveying mother, daughter and baby surrounded by a confetti of crimson petals.
‘Louisa? Emily?’ Norah’s searching gaze travelled from one to the other.
‘We ought to get the baby inside,’ Mother said. ‘Or at least wrap him up in his carriage.’
‘I’ve got him,’ she said as Mother bent to kiss the baby on the head. She shook off Mother’s arm and strode back towards the house. The baby did need to be warm, but she didn’t want to go back in there. The glass cabinets, the windows and the looking glasses would reflect back at her exactly what a fool she was.
But then outside, none of this was hers any more. It would soon all be Wilfred’s. That staked area by the monkey puzzle tree was probably something to do with him. He had plans, and their return here had only ever been temporary. First John had put him in charge and now Mother was going to sign it all away. She just wanted to run. Mother was right about that: she needed to start afresh.
‘Won’t you come inside?’ Mother asked. ‘Could you go ahead, Norah? Ask Daisy to light a fire in Emily’s bedroom.’
It was a warm day. The sun was shining, but she couldn’t feel its warmth, just its hard, unflinching glare.
‘I don’t want to go inside with you,’ Emily said.
Mother laughed, but she was checking Norah’s reaction. ‘Of course you do,’ she said in a high-pitched voice. She pulled closer to Emily’s ear. ‘Not in front of Norah, for heaven’s sake,’ she hissed.
But Emily didn’t care if it would be all around the village. She was used to being on the outside. ‘I don’t want to live with you any more,’ she said.
‘She’s as cold as ice,’ Mother said to Norah by way of explanation. ‘A bad case of the baby blues I’d say. The little one isn’t wrapped very tightly either.’
Norah eyed her as if she were a specimen in a case at the Natural History Museum.
‘It might be for the best if you leave us,’ Mother said.
Norah hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’
�
��It’s fine. Both of you,’ Emily said.
Upstairs, in her bedroom, she sat in front of her dressing-table mirror and her foolish reflection while Daisy fussed about laying the fire. Bashing and clattering, in and out with coal and kindling, poking about, and then tutting when the kindling smoked and the flames didn’t come, until finally a small flame licked at the back of the grate.
Emily’s hair was tangled. Tiredness distorted her face with little hillocks. She had shrivelled onto her own bones since her baby was born.
Mother clucked at the mess in the basin, and then read the crumpled letter and closed her eyes. Her lips flattened into a line. ‘It’s just as well that everyone thinks he is dead,’ she said.
‘I don’t need him,’ Emily said. ‘Neither does John. The two of us will be fine on our own.’
Emily lifted the heavy wooden hairbrush and pulled it down through her hair. It snagged and refused to go through, tumbled to the floor and stayed there.
‘Now, you mustn’t think that I take any pleasure from this,’ Mother said. ‘That man took advantage of your innocence. If I saw him now …’
Emily managed a feeble smile. ‘You drove me into his arms,’ she said.
Mother gawped like a fish. ‘But … what … you … you blame me, for your mistakes?’
‘No,’ Emily said. The mistake was hers and she could admit to that, but if Mother had trusted her to live her own life, if she’d allowed her freedom to be herself, if she hadn’t pulled her close one minute, rejected her the next, Theo would never have been so appealing.
The fog in her head had thickened and the muscles in her face wouldn’t do anything she asked of them. The fire was catching now. Its warmth hadn’t reached her yet. Her mother pulled a chair close and angled it so that it faced the flames.
‘Baby John will be ready for his lunch soon,’ Mother said. The letter was folded, Mother’s finger sharpened the crease, then she buried it deep in her skirt pocket. ‘I know it won’t be easy, but the thing is to try and carry on. Why don’t you sit yourself in front of the fire and feed the baby? It will warm you both.’
Mother encased Emily’s hands with her own warm ones. ‘That formula …’
