Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  Ridiculous! How could she stand in the shadow of a modern hospital with its panoply of drugs and doctors, its high-powered science and wonder-brained machines, and hark back to superstition? Yet other cultures had. Ancient peoples, wise and civilised, had still prayed to the moon, looked to it for portents. Anyway, science hadn’t put an end to suffering. Casualty was proof of that.

  A driver hooted and slowed down, trying to chat her up, a motorcycle roared by on the other side, a tom-cat screeched and lusted in an alley. She hardly heard them. She was still numbed by the vastness and the grandeur of the sky, even in this-squalid part of London. She could feel again that strange, brooding presence, as if Hester were alive and watching her, reliving her own child’s birth in Susie’s crisis.

  She turned back to the hospital, felt the fug engulf her as she pushed open the door. Fear screamed back like the siren of an ambulance. The queue at the desk was longer still. Jennifer took her place in it, standing behind a small ill-smelling woman who wore a coat above a torn and grubby nightgown. This time, she would take a firmer line, insist on joining Susie wherever they had taken her.

  While she waited, she skimmed the newspaper, trying to distract herself with foreign affairs and sporting triumphs. All seemed puny and unreal. Her eye kept shifting to the Edward Ainsley story, which she somehow feared to read in case it beset her with new guilts. Yet it was only about the Frasers and their younger cousin, Wanda, who was still alive in Hamilton and had been dug out by reporters.

  ‘Over home-made apple wine, Wanda, 78, but looking younger, revealed that the infant Edward had been simply handed over to his foster-parents without any legal papers or formal adoption procedure. Edward left the country—and his mother—without even a birth certificate—so Wanda claimed. Her cousin Alice also told her that …’

  Jennifer stopped. Her heart was pounding, her hands clammy on the newspaper. Here was her own solution, and one so obvious and so easy, she was astonished that it had never occurred to her before. All she had to do was to follow the Frasers’ example—not adopt the child, but simply take it over—cut out snooping social workers, or fussing forms in triplicate, side-step all those footling rules and checks. Susie would have the baby, but she would take it home with her, and no one need even know what they were doing. It would be Susie’s child in theory and in law, hers in simple fact.

  She shut her eyes, slumped against the wall. She had to think this out. Was it wrong, perhaps, to wriggle through the red tape, unfair to the child itself? She had been insisting just the other day that the baby’s interests must come first and last. Yet didn’t love count more than anything—love and total commitment? No one could love this child as much as she did, identify with it so strongly and so totally, and before it was even born. It was Hester’s child, Susannah’s child, her own lost, renascent baby.

  All she had to do was to dodge the busybodies, evade the bureaucrats and get Susie’s co-operation. Susie would play along. She must simply pretend she had changed her mind and now planned to keep the child herself. There was still a host of problems—where to live, what to live on, how to break the news to Lyn while keeping it from Matthew. But she would overcome them. Hester had helped her, pointed out the way.

  She wiped the perspiration from her forehead. People were pushing past her in the queue, bumping into her. Her body was on fire, burning with a birth, a genesis, which had not yet reached the bare black world outside. The child might still be at risk, but it was her child now, her risk. She was no longer just the father, the provider, but the womb, the source, the home.

  ‘Jennifer Winterton.’

  She jumped. She had lost her place in the queue, but the tannoy was crackling out her name. She rushed back to reception.

  ‘Are you the one who brought Susan Grant in?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I am. How is she?’ Jennifer tried to steady herself against the desk. Was the baby all right? Born, thriving, sickly? ‘Where is my friend? Can I see her’

  ‘Well, not tonight, I’m afraid. She’s been sedated.’

  ‘Sedated?’ Jennifer’s voice was wilting and fainting itself. ‘Wh … what happened? What’s wr … wrong with her?’ They wouldn’t give a pregnant woman sedatives. Susie must have lost the baby. She had been sedated after her own miscarriage. Drugs to drown a death.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got the details.’ The receptionist was checking someone else’s card. ‘They just phoned down to tell you not to wait.’

  ‘But I’ve been waiting hours and hours. And what d’you mean, ‘‘phoned down’’? Where is she?’

  ‘She’s been taken to Maternity. You should have gone there in the first place, in fact, instead of coming here. But don’t you worry—its all been sorted out now. She’s in very good hands up there.’

  Maternity? That surely meant Susie was in labour. Maybe even a Caesarian or a stillbirth.

  ‘Now, you just pop off home, my dear, and phone us in the morning. Your friend will be brighter then, and I expect they’ll let you …’

  ‘But what’s wrong with her? No one’s told me anything. She could be dead for all I …’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. Maternity’s a completely separate department. They have their own procedures, and quite frankly we’re far too frantic here to be checking on patients upstairs. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a queue of people waiting …’

  Jennifer turned away, groped to the door, out into the street again, turned the corner to the bus stop. The waning moon—unlucky moon—shone thin and leering in the sky. Cars and buses rumbled past, the roar of Southwark’s night-life. She hardly noticed. London had gone suddenly deathly silent, even a ten-torn lorry muffled like a hearse. All she could hear was a muted whimper from the cold glass box which caged her in. ‘My baby’s dying … dying.’

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Jennifer knelt by the tiny perfect coffin—doll’s coffin, toy coffin—gleaming brass hinges bright against the elmwood. The flowers around it didn’t smell. Stiff, unfeeling lilies, their cold wax noses turned away; wreaths twisted and distorted into staring circles; soft petals pierced with pins. The wreaths were mourning, not the people; tears oozing from the swollen yellow eyes of pale narcissi; roses hot and flushed.

  Jennifer trampled over them, snapping stems, crushing stamens. She had to reach the body, hold it, cradle it. She tried to lift the coffin, staggered under its weight. How could a seven-month foetus drag her down like that? She smashed her fist through the casing, ripped wood and brass apart. She was entangled in the winding-sheet, starched white linen choking round her throat. She fought, tussled, nose-dived into consciousness. She was sitting up in bed with the sheet wound round her shoulders and all the blankets tumbled on the floor. ‘Susie,’ she shouted. ‘Susie!’

  No answer. Flowers fading, coffin changing shape into a bedside table, marble chapel blurring into the concrete grime of Southwark. She fumbled for her watch. Ten to eight. How in God’s name had she slept so long? Slept at all? Last night she had tossed and fretted, added her own darkness to the night’s. Now, light had come and morning—clear mocking morning with a spume of frost. She pulled on two sweaters and a pair of Susie’s dungarees, pounded to the call-box on the corner of their street. London was just yawning into life—milkmen clattering bottles, tetchy morning traffic beginning to rattle through the streets. The phone-box was empty and unvandalised. She almost kissed the willing working coin-slot as she fed it her ten-pence piece.

  ‘Maternity Department, please.’

  Why did they take so long? She had no more coins and if she got cut off before …

  ‘Oh, hallo … yes.’ She started to explain, raised her voice as a lorry thundered past the phone-box … No, I’m not her mother. She hasn’t any relations—well, not around. You see, she …’

  Why were they so suspicious? Something must have happened—something serious—and they didn’t want to confide it to a mere acquaintance. She tried again.

  ‘I look after Susie. The name’s Winte
rton—Jennifer Winterton. You’ll see it on her notes. I’m down as next-of-kin.’ The phrase was solemn, binding. She was next-of-kin to Lyn, as well—torn between the two of them—except she had hardly thought of Lyn these last few hours. Her sole concern was Susie and her baby.

  ‘Look, all I want to know is …’

  She was talking to empty air. The pips had gone, and with no more coins to quiet them, she had been abruptly cut off. Only husbands got the facts, in any case. She would have to go in person and confront Sister or a doctor. She glanced at her watch. Only eight-fifteen, and a Sunday into the bargain. She would probably interrupt an on-the-wards Communion service.

  She walked out into the street, turned her steps in the direction of the hospital. At least she could find the ward and sit outside it—wait all day, if necessary, refuse to leave until she had some news of Susie.

  ‘Indigestion?’ Jennifer was almost shouting. ‘But she had labour pains, Sister. I was with her, I brought her in myself.’

  ‘No,’ insisted Sister. ‘Colic. It’s quite easy to confuse them sometimes. Both are cramping, intermittent pains and both roughly in the same area. And remember that Susan’s never experienced a real contraction yet, so how was she to know the difference? Also, she was panicking, which made everything seem worse.’

  Jennifer relaxed her grip on the chair-arm. The news was miraculous and maddening both at once. Typical of Susie to stuff herself with cream cakes and then kid them all that she was in labour and in danger. She had been buying wreaths and winding-sheets when Susie needed Rennies. And yet it still seemed so … unlikely. Perhaps she hadn’t understood.

  ‘I’m sorry Sister, but I want to make absolutely certain I’ve got this right. Susie hasn’t had the baby yet?’

  ‘Good gracious, no! It’s not due for seven weeks. All she delivered was—if you’ll forgive me, dear—the entire contents of her bowel.’

  ‘Oh, gosh—poor love!’ Jennifer was grinning with relief. It was comedy, not tragedy, diarrhoea, not death.

  ‘Can I take her home, then?’ Call it home, make it sound repectable—a three-bedroomed semi with a steady loving husband warming up Susie’s slippers, brewing cups of tea.

  ‘Well, no, I’m afraid you can’t. She’s still under observation.’

  ‘But I thought you said the pains were …’

  ‘It’s not the pains we’re bothered about—they’re all over now. She’s got a bit of blood pressure.’

  ‘Blood pressure? You mean toxaemia?’ Jennifer possessed more obstetric textbooks than Sister did herself.

  ‘Well, only a very mild form. All she needs is rest and proper care. We’ll keep her in a while, so we can check on everything and make sure she doesn’t do too much. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to …’

  ‘May I see her, Sister? Please.’

  ‘Well, just for ten minutes and only if she’s still awake. She was very difficult this morning, I’m afraid—ranting and roaring and trying to discharge herself. We had to give her something to calm her down, and I’m not inclined to wake her if she has dropped off. Wait here a moment, will you, and I’ll go and see.’

  Jennifer prayed she’d be awake. She wanted to check on Susie herself. Sister might be hiding something. Toxaemia could be dangerous, as much for the child as for its mother. She remembered one of the books threatening convulsions, premature labour, even foetal death. She sat staring blindly at the strip of floral carpet, seeing foetuses in the flowers, until she heard Sister’s footsteps returning along the passage.

  She sprang to her feet. ‘Is she all right? Can I go through to the ward now?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, dear. She’s fast asleep and it would be foolish to disturb her when she needs the rest. In fact, she could really do with a full day’s peace and quiet. Leave it till tomorrow, will you? And try not to look so tragic. She’s doing fine.’

  Jennifer let herself into the bedsit, stared at the tangled bedclothes, the messy floor and cluttered surfaces. She had hardly realised before what a pigsty she had let the place become. The emergency had brought her to her senses. Things would have to change. She set to work at once with brush and polish, scrubbing and shining with a wild excess of energy as if she had gone into labour, pouring her relief and resolution into squalid chores so that they became something of a sacrament.

  By lunchtime, she was finished—except there wasn’t any lunch. She shook the stale and dusty dregs of a packet of Frosties into a soup-bowl, ate them dry. She had forgotten to buy milk, and yesterday’s was sour. How had she ever had the cheek to stand up and tell the world how to run their kitchens or store their home-made cheeses? She swallowed the last crumbs, rinsed her hands, stared in the mirror above the sink—hated what she saw—the messy hair, the mannish dungarees. She changed into her own skirt, hunted for a clean blouse, paused a moment as she was doing up the buttons. Whatever her appearance, she was still espousing women’s lib ideas—having a baby via a surrogate mother, planning to look after it without a husband’s help.

  And yet it was only from necessity. She would have far preferred the baby to be swelling out her own womb, put there by a husband who was still around to see it born and fledged. There was such drama in conception—two people coming together and creating a third out of their passion; three hundred million spermatozoa rushing for a single egg; a tiny cell, smaller than a pinprick, growing into a full-scale human being who might turn out a Messiah or an Einstein, and all within a uterus which started off a mere two and a half inches long. Yet the women at the clinic seemed so stolidly unamazed, slouching there with their legs apart, yawning, snuffling, comparing swollen ankles. Pregnancy for them was a burden, not a miracle. All the excitement and high feeling it might have released in them seemed to have poured into her, instead, seeped even into her dreams—swollen scarlet dreams where she was hugely pregnant and chidbirth was a kind of sacred orgasm, a letting-go, a noisy, messy, heaving, panting climax—part of that same climax which had flung the baby there nine months ago.

  In the morning, she folded the dreams away with her pyjamas. But they floated up again and hovered round the bedsit, superimposed themselves on the photos in her textbooks—women in labour, women giving birth. She was haunted by those photographs—the expressions on the faces—wild, rapt and animal. Susie merely scoffed. ‘Easy for you to go into fucking raptures, mate, when you won’t be left with stretch-marks and saggy breasts.’ But it was the marks and scars she craved. They were the price of a baby, the proof that you had borne it, gone through that most intense of all experiences.

  She squatted down, dragged her suitcase from underneath the bed. It was full of baby clothes. She had ignored what Susie said and prepared the whole layette—just as well, since she was going to need it now. She spread them out on the counterpane, rolled on the bed herself, laid her face against the babygrows, stroked the soft gauzy fabric of the nightdresses against her breasts. Strange to feed a baby, feel a tiny mouth pulling on the …

  ‘Balls!’ she heard Susie saying. ‘Boobs weren’t made for babies, but for flagging down the blokes—which is what you need, mate—a good hard screw with a hunk of male who doesn’t think he’s bloody Michelangelo. Then you’d stop slavering over babygrows!’

  Jennifer grinned to herself, returned the clothes to the case, swaddling them in tissue, securing the lock as if she were hiding away the evidence of some secret vice. The room seemed strangely quiet without Susie’s raucous voice. She would visit her tomorrow, as soon as they allowed it—take her flowers, grapes, even forbidden chocolates. Susie must be spoilt this time. Not only did she deserve some extra cossetting, she had also to be persuaded into accepting Mrs Jennifer Winterton—slut and sham—as official foster-mother.

  The doctor’s room was half the size of Sister’s—more like a generous cubby-hole. The doctor himself was swarthy, with long dark hairs protruding from his nostrils and small restless hands. He had just informed Jennifer that Susie had settled down now, and her blood pressure had stabilis
ed.

  ‘I’m afraid there is a problem, though.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘We’ve just had the results of her tests and they show she’s developed rhesus antibodies in her blood. They won’t affect her, but they could harm the baby.’

  Jennifer swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand. I thought …’

  ‘Well, you know she’s rhesus negative …?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She had known that from the start. Susie’s blood had been checked on her very first visit to the antenatal clinic, but they had told her quite distinctly that there were rarely any problems with a first child.

  ‘Well, if a rhesus negative mother has a rhesus positive baby, she can develop antibodies against it which filter across the placenta and attack the child’s red blood cells—almost as if they were gunning down an invader.’

  Jennifer gripped the arm of her chair. ‘B … but I was told that only happened when …’

  The doctor cut her short. ‘If Susan hadn’t missed her last antenatal appointment, we’d have picked it up then. We always try to emphasise how vital those check-ups are. You see …’ The bleeper in his lapel was emitting a high-pitched whine. ‘Excuse me.’ He stood up, edged towards the door.

  ‘But, Doctor, I still don’t understand how …’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m needed on the ward.’ He was already on his way. ‘You can see your friend now, but no excitement please.’

  Excitement. Jennifer stared out of the window at the blank and sullen sky. London had never looked more dreary. She had visited Susie yesterday, just for half an hour. She had seemed a trifle weak and sleepy, but far more normal than she had even dared expect. She had returned home elated and relieved. The crisis was over, mother and baby fine. But this new complication had set off all the alarms again. She had read up all she could about what was called the rhesus problem when she first knew Susie’s blood group. It was an involved and complex business, made still more strange by the fact that Susie was a first-time mother. Only in second or subsequent pregnancies could a rhesus negative mother make these rhesus antibodies—so the textbooks said—or if she had received a blood transfusion. Susie hadn’t. So what in God’s name had gone wrong? Was Susie some rare exception, some medical enigma which could put her child at risk? Thank God she had decided against adoption. Adoption meant delay. Nothing could be finalised or certain until three months after the birth. A child like Susie’s, already sick and threatened, must be swaddled in love and security from the moment it drew breath. She must discuss the matter with Susie right away.