Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘No, that’s fine. Take your time, please.’ Jennifer almost laughed out loud in relief. Far better to be alone with just the boys. They would ask fewer awkward questions and with any luck she could steer them away from the subject of husbands and babies altogether. They were approaching the table now—Susie just behind—giggling and ragging each other, plates piled high with cakes.

  Susie put her plate down, then whispered something to Hugh, who repeated it to Robert, who passed it on to Charles.

  ‘Just going for a pee,’ mouthed Susie. The boys collapsed in fits.

  She was back in just two minutes.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Jennifer. ‘You can’t even have got to the door.’

  ‘Ssshh …’ said Susie. ‘Listen!’

  There was a sudden crash of chords from the piano and then the strains of Happy Birthday To You tinkled across the room.

  Susie grinned. ‘They’re playing your tune—see?’

  ‘Oh, Susie, you didn’t ask?’

  ‘Course I did. Why not? Hush up now and enjoy it.’

  The pianist had started the tune a second time. All the boys joined in now with the words, Charles waving his knife around as a conductor’s baton. Jennifer blushed crimson. Everyone was looking at her. Yet she was touched, despite herself. Her birthday was official now, truly celebrated. Susie had placed a gigantic piece of sticky chocolate gâteau on her plate.

  ‘And that’s your birthday cake. Sorry about the candles. You’ll have to imagine those.’

  Robert screwed up his eyes, drew in his breath and let out a huge puff.’ ‘All blown out!’ he said.

  Everybody laughed. Jennifer picked up her fork and started on the gâteau. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Since it’s my birthday, we all get a wish.’

  The boys sat silent for a moment with their eyes shut. Jennifer couldn’t wish herself. There were too many priorities clashing in her head, too many people clamouring for good fortune—Lyn, Susie, the baby, Edward, Matthew … She bit into her cake, smiled around at the five cropped heads. At least she had her family.

  Hugh was standing up. ‘Can anyone request a tune? Or does it have to be your birthday?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. Go and charm the pianist.’

  ‘I don’t know what to ask for, though.’

  Jennifer was filling cups. ‘How about Baby mine? For Susie’s baby—babies.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s from Dumbo. The mother elephant sings it to her baby.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, Jen! I know I’m big, but …’

  Hugh made a face. ‘I’m not going to ask for that. It sounds worse than wet. You go, Robert.’

  ‘I’ll go.’ Jennifer stood up. The pianist looked lonely—a sad old man, cut off from all the feasting, sequestered at his piano in the corner. No one was taking much notice of him. He was just background music, part of the general ambience, like the Christmas decorations.

  She stood behind his shoulder, watched his gnarled fingers race across the keys. ‘Thank you for your playing,’ she said. ‘I’ve really enjoyed it.’

  He smiled, continued the finale to The Lady Is A Tramp.

  ‘I wondered if you could play Baby Mine? You know, the thing from Dumbo. It’s for a very special baby.’

  ‘Of course, Madam. What’s the baby’s name?’

  Jennifer paused. ‘S … Susannah,’ she murmured. Why had she said that? The baby wasn’t even born, and when it was, the adoptive parents would select the name themselves. They were bound to get it wrong—choose something trivial or commonplace. She wanted the child to have a romantic name. Susannah had been both beautiful and beloved, and somehow connected with them all. She had been Matthew’s mother, Hester’s predecessor, the boys’ long-deceased and never-seen grandmother, the young and alluring mistress of Hernhope. Even Lyn had had a strange and special tie with her—worshipped her ghost and memory as a boy. Susannah would come to life again if the baby bore her name. And it was close to Susie’s own name, so the child would retain something of its mother.

  The pianist was easing his cramped fingers before launching into the melody. Jennifer leant against the wall, mouthed the words of the song.

  Baby mine, don’t you cry;

  Baby mine, dry your eye.

  She felt close to tears herself, tried to blink them back as the whole bustling restaurant blurred and trembled. The baby wasn’t hers, would soon be snatched away by some anonymous Super-Mum. The pianist was spoiling the tune, jazzing it up with unfeeling syncopation. The words were sickly, sentimental. Susie would have scoffed at them, the boys described them as ‘worse than wet’. But she was crying for something beyond the easy sentiment.

  You’re so precious to me,

  Cute as can be …

  The child was precious, worth waiting for, worth working for, even if she only caught a glimpse of it before it was handed over to a Mr and Mrs X. It was no good her resenting them, when she couldn’t rival what they had to offer. The baby’s interests must come first. It needed two parents to cherish it, a double dose of security to undo its unlucky birthright, a stable settled home with everything checked and vetted. Maybe she could somehow get to know them, find out where they lived and become a sort of Auntie to the child. Aunts could be important—second only to mothers.

  She closed her eyes, shut out everything but the tune’s refrain.

  Baby of mine,

  Baby of …

  She jumped. Someone was tugging at her arm. It was Charles, face flushed, tie askew, his normally quiet voice rising in panic.

  ‘Auntie Jennifer—quick! It’s Susie. Something’s happened to her. She’s having dreadful pains and …’

  Jennifer dashed across the room and back to their table, hearing the tune swoop and gallop after her in almost mocking irony. Susie was slumped across two chairs, clutching at her stomach. Her face was creased with pain, little drops of sweat beading her forehead. Several waitresses had gathered round, customers interrupting each other, trying to take charge.

  ‘Take her to the rest room …’

  ‘Phone a doctor …?’

  ‘Isn’t there a doctor here …?’

  Jennifer pushed through. ‘What’s wrong, Susie? What happened?’ She tried to keep calm, block out the sickening image of her own miscarriage.

  ‘Help, Jen! I’ve got these awful cramping pains. They came on suddenly and …’

  ‘Try and relax, darling. You must stay quiet. Can you manage to do your breathing? In, two, three, four … nice and slowly—remember what they told you. Now you stay here while I go and phone an ambulance. I’ll only be a moment.’

  ‘No, don’t go away! Don’t leave me.’ Susie was almost sobbing now. Robert burst into tears himself.

  ‘I‘ll go, my dear.’ The fat woman in fox furs was one of the crowd of onlookers. ‘There’s a phone-box on the landing by the picture gallery.’

  ‘It’s out of order,’ chipped in someone else. ‘I’ve just been trying to use it myself. You can’t get any dialling tone. And there’s mile-long queues by all the other phones.’

  ‘Hurry!’ groaned Susie.

  ‘Look, I’ll take her to the hospital.’ A younger woman with reddish hair already had her coat on and was fumbling for her car keys. ‘My car’s parked just two streets away. It’ll be quicker than an ambulance by the time we’ve found a phone and then waited for them to get here.’

  ‘Yes, but maybe an ambulance would be safer—you know, in case she needs …’Jennifer’s voice trailed off. Mustn’t frighten Susie.

  ‘The baby’s not due yet, is it?’ The red-haired woman sounded mercifully calm.

  ‘No.’ Jennifer lowered her voice. She didn’t want the boys to hear. ‘Still seven weeks to go. But …’

  ‘Let me drive her, then. She’ll be OK. I’ve had four myself, you know.’

  The boys were looking scared and cowed. More and more people were crowding round their table, offering suggestions and advice.

  ‘Look, plea
se move back. My friend can hardly breathe.’ Jennifer picked up a glass of water, held it to Susie’s lips. ‘Come on, darling, try a little sip. This lady’s very kindly offered to drive you to a hospital. D’you think you can walk just as far as the lift?’

  ‘Y … yeah, I s’pose so.’

  Jennifer turned back to the boys. ‘Now you stay here until Mrs Chenies gets back. Tell her not to worry. I’ll phone her from the hospital and explain what’s happened. All right?’ She took Susie’s arm. ‘Lean on me, Susie, and get up very slowly. That’s it. Feel OK?’

  Susie nodded, took one faltering step, then let out a sudden piercing yell. ‘Oh, Christ! Oh, help! The baby’s sort of … shifted. I’m going to have it, Jen—I know I am—I’m going to have my baby in bloody H … Harrods!’

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Tiny beads of blood trickled on to the scuffed and dusty lino of the Casualty Department. Jennifer sat and watched them—droplets pooling, darkening, turning from scarlet into stain. The muscly youth beside her was bleeding from the arm and leg, the tall one opposite had two black eyes and was nursing a badly swollen wrist. There had been a fight after a soccer match and the place was full of brawny drunken football fans. The worst cases had been rushed through to the emergency room. Susie was in there with them, the doors firmly shut and insisting NO ADMITTANCE. Jennifer had been told to wait. She had been waiting, waiting, waiting ever since. She had tried to make enquiries, check on Susie’s state, but the nurses, rushing to and fro, had only time for patients.

  The red-haired woman who had driven them from Harrods had departed long since. It had been a nightmare journey. The first hospital they tried turned out to have no Casualty Department. They were directed to another one, just half a mile away, but a set of broken traffic-lights had jammed up the main road. Susie’s screams competed with the honking of impatient horns. In the end, they did a U-turn and sped across the river to Susie’s own hospital where she was booked to have the baby. At least it had a Casualty and Jennifer knew the way.

  She eased her aching bottom on the uncomfortable wooden bench, inched away from the Millwall supporter’s bulk. It was another world from Harrods’ velvet chairs and whipped cream opulence. They should never have gone to Harrods in the first place. Susie had been pushed and shoved by crowds of Christmas shoppers, then sat and stuffed herself with an absurdly lavish tea. If anything happened, she would be to blame. She had become too lax with Susie, let her live her lazy, feckless way, even begun to follow it herself. She had even allowed Susie to miss her last appointment at the hospital. She hated the check-ups as much as Susie did—the hours and hours of waiting in a stifling basement room, the endless repeated questioning and form-filling, and—at last—the few rushed minutes with a doctor, a different one each time.

  But now fate had paid them back, stranded them in the hospital for an even longer time and in far less happy circumstances than their normal routine check-up. At least the antenatal clinic had decent wallpaper—even a few pictures—a scrap of carpet, proper vinyI chairs, whereas here in Casualty, it was public lavatory walls, spartan wooden benches, windows with no curtains to conceal the bleak dark night outside. Antenatal promised new life, new hope; Casualty threatened pain and death. A sick old man with sores was slumped on the bench like a dirty sack, mumbling to himself; a small jaundiced infant whimpered in its mother’s arms. At least it had its parents. Susie’s baby had nothing—no home, no father, no heritage, no name. She was the baby’s father. The special bond between them had grown stronger every week. Susie had conceived the child at almost the same date she had conceived her own, just a year before, so the baby was a successor and a substitute.

  She jumped to her feet. She had to be with Susie, know what was happening to her, make sure the doctors understood how precious her child was. She strode towards the emergency room. The doors were creaking open, a body on a stretcher-bed being wheeled and jolted through them, trundled along the corridor past the sign which said HOSPITAL WARDS—ADMISSION. Jennifer was shoved aside, pushed into a corner. She glimpsed only a white blanket swaddling the body like a gigantic bandage, long blonde hair tousled on the pillow.

  ‘Susie!’ she whispered. She tried to shout, stop the trolley, but fear made her voice as limp and pale as gauze. She rushed up to a nurse, begged her help.

  ‘Sorry, my dear, I know nothing at all about it. I’ve only just come on. We’ve had a call from Ambulance Control—an emergency admission. Wait a moment, please, and I’ll try and get somebody to help you. It’s chaos at the moment.’

  Gone. A tannoy message was booming over the loudspeaker, doctors dashing in from other departments. The stretcher-bed had already disappeared. Jennifer tried to fight her way along the passage in the direction it had gone. Where were they taking Susie? Why had she lain so still against the pillow? Susie was never still. All the way in the car from Harrods to the hospital, she had been swearing and moaning, throwing herself about.

  Perhaps there wasn’t any baby. Just a bloody mess in a slop-bowl like her own unhappy foetus. No—Susie’s baby was thirty-three weeks old. A child could live at less than that. It weighed three or four pounds by now, was sixteen inches long. She knew all the facts and figures, had pored over the baby books and handouts which Susie hardly glanced at. There would be hair on its scalp, tiny nails which didn’t reach the fingertips, eyelashes and eyebrows.

  A group of hospital porters was blocking her way, sweeping her back towards the double doors. The ambulance had just arrived. An overdressed woman in a crêpe de Chine two-piece stumbled out of it, tucking her ranch-mink coat round a small, fair child slumped half-unconscious in a wheelchair. His face was ashen-pale beside her own perfect mask of blusher, shiner, eye-gloss. Only her voice had cracked.

  ‘My s … son. Swallowed my sl … sleeping pills. Found him on the floor. I thought I’d locked them up, but …’

  The doors slammed shut behind her. Another child in danger. Once you had borne a child, you could never take life casually again. All the hazards were shouting from the walls: GERMS CAN KILL, FIRE COSTS LIVES, YOUR HOME CAN BE A DEATH-TRAP! No wonder Susie wanted the baby adopted. Nine months was worry enough, without the years and years which followed. The cord was never totally cut. Yet she herself craved the risks and troubles of that tie. She would gladly change places with Susie now, be fighting and suffering for a baby, joined and fused and one with it, rather than separate, unattached.

  She marched up to the desk. The queue of new patients was even longer now. A punk boy with a cropped head and an earring was nursing a tattooed arm which had swollen and infected. Pus seeped between the scarlet hearts and flowers. His girlfriend was dragging on a joint, ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ sign. The receptionist, besieged by forms and phones, shouted above the screeching of a toddler.

  Jennifer trailed back to the bench. She couldn’t waste the nurses’ time by demanding special treatment, when six-year-olds had swallowed sleeping pills. She picked up a tabloid newspaper which had been discarded on the bench. She must distract herself, clamp down any panic. There was blood on the pages, like a real-life illustration to all the horror stories it contained—cars wrecked in smash-ups, girls raped in alleyways, Catholic bombing Orangeman, Arab fighting Jew. On an inside page, was a small excited paragraph on the Edward Ainsley affair. She flushed as she read the details. The entire Casualty Department seemed to be reading over her shoulder, pointing fingers at her. And yet, in reality, nobody had spared her so much as a glance. All were too intent on their private pain and problems. Anyway, even in a decent dress and make-up, no one would now connect her with the Mrs Jennifer Winter-ton of just six months ago. Fame had broken like a wave, flung her ten feet high, then crashed her down again, leaving a dirty tide-mark of flotsam round her life.

  And yet the book itself was still Big News, Edward still floundering in a flurry of speculation and froth of adjectives. She glanced at his photograph—that portly, balding figure who was Lyn’s own half-brother, yet, eyes apart,
looked so little like him. Secretly, she longed to meet him, had even considered writing to him, trying to heal the breach. Yet she feared him, also—feared that injured pride and outraged sense of justice. He would see her as an adversary—someone who had stifled him as an infant, to cheat him of his rights, then sold his mother’s secrets to the world, vulgarised and cheapened Hester, betrayed her love of privacy. Matthew, too, would use the word betrayal if she tried to contact Edward. The two were duellists. Yet, both men had been crippled from the start. Both had lost a mother, one by desertion, one by death; both grown up suspicious and reserved. Susie’s offspring mustn’t turn out like that, but be cherished and protected. Jennifer’s hands were trembling on the newspaper. She tried to read the paragraph, couldn’t concentrate. Susie herself kept tangling in the print, her pale scared face superimposed on Edward’s scowling one.

  Jennifer’s head was throbbing, her bottom sore and aching from the bench. The room had been designed to add every additional discomfort to the patient’ s pain—rigid wooden seating, glaring lights, stifling foetid air. The whole room reeked of Dettol, mingled with the still insistent smell of vomit where one of the Milwall crowd had thrown up his supper and his last six beers. There were no spare seats left now, and people were standing, or leaning against the walls. Some of the patients were simply skint or homeless, and had shambled into Casualty for free heat and light or company, the mother of the overdose whimpering there beside them.

  ‘My baby’s dying—dying.’

  Jennifer longed to help her, restore her son to her. Yet what could she do or say? Every patient was alone with his own grief, locked into it as if it were a soundless, airless glass cage where you could see other people, but nobody could hear you or stretch out a helping hand.

  She groped to her feet, stumbled to the door, slipped across the foyer to the shabby street outside. She needed a breath of air, a moment’s respite. The cold black night was like a compress on her face after the sweltering glare inside. She stared up at the sky. The moon was waning, its thin-lipped smile turned towards the west. A waning moon was unlucky—Hester had written that so many times—unlucky to sow crops, then, unlucky to marry, unlucky to be born. She shivered suddenly. Supposing Susie’s baby was …