The Secrets We Left Behind

by Susan Elliot Wright

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll be having the baby at home, with you and Scott helping me.’

  Jo was silent as what Eve was saying began to sink in. ‘You mean . . . no, you can’t mean . . . are you saying it’ll only be me and Scott?’

  Eve nodded, then smiled and took Jo’s hand. ‘Don’t be worried about it, Jo; it’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll tell you what to do when the time comes.’

  ‘But . . . but you can’t, can you? I mean, I’m sure they won’t allow—’

  ‘I told you, it’d not a question of being allowed; I will bear my child where I choose, attended by the people I choose to attend me.’

  ‘But what does the doctor say?’ Jo persisted, convinced no doctor would sanction such a crazy idea.

  ‘What doctor?’

  ‘Your doctor, or the hospital doctor – I don’t know, wherever it is you go for your antenatal check-ups.’ She knew all about antenatal check-ups from when Pat was expecting the twins.

  ‘I don’t have a doctor,’ Eve said quietly. ‘I don’t need one. I never get ill.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Well, if I ever get ill, I know what remedies to use to make myself better. The cure for everything is in nature, I‘ve told you that before. Foods, plants, oils – you just have to— ’

  ‘Yes, I know but . . .’ Jo pulled her hand away from Eve’s and reached for her cigarettes. ‘Bloody hell, Eve. Having a baby’s not like having a cold or getting toothache.’ She lit a cigarette and threw the pack down onto the pebbles as she exhaled. ‘You can’t just have a baby on your own.’

  ‘But I won’t be on my own, will I? I’ll have you two.’

  Jo looked at Scott, who was sitting cross-legged, head down, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands dangling between them. ‘What do you think about this? Don’t you think it’s crazy?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not crazy. A bit out there, perhaps; but not crazy, no.’

  Eve was smiling again. ‘See? You just need to get used to the idea, that’s all.’

  Jo shook her head, took another drag of the cigarette.

  ‘Listen, Jo, I know it seems mad, but that’s because our society forces women to go against nature. Women give birth unaided all over the world. Sometimes they have their mothers or sisters or friends to help, and sometimes they’re completely alone. And it’s easier; they give birth more quickly, they recover faster and they’re happier.’

  Jo thought back again to that documentary she’d seen, where three wives of the same man were talking about the most recent birth among them. The woman had given birth in a mud hut, attended only by her mother and the two other wives, and had been up and about the same evening, getting ready for the many visitors who were expected to arrive later that night bearing good wishes and lucky charms to bestow on the new arrival. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I can see it might be a good idea if everything goes normally. But what if something goes wrong?’

  At this, Eve’s expression changed and she flicked her head in irritation. ‘The main reason I want to do this without doctors and midwives is that it’s their interference that makes things go wrong.’ She pulled her yellow cotton sundress on over her head and started to get to her feet. ‘If my mum hadn’t had a midwife, then my brother wouldn’t have died. And if he hadn’t died, my mum and dad probably wouldn’t be dead, either.’

  ‘What?’ Jo blurted out. ‘How come?’

  Eve’s face had flushed red and she was clearly fighting back tears. ‘Right after it happened, my mum had terrible headaches and she kept telling the nurses and doctors that she knew something was wrong in her head. But they just said it was the grief and she’d get over it in time.’ She wiped away a couple of tears that had spilled out while she was speaking. ‘After she died, they said her blood pressure must have been through the roof, and yet no one took any bloody notice.’

  ‘Eve,’ Scott said, taking her arm. His voice was full of tenderness. ‘Evie, are you all right?’

  ‘I will be.’ Eve leaned against him. ‘But I want to go back. I need to be on my own, just for a little while.’ Scott nodded, then stood and held her silently for a moment before she broke away. ‘Sorry to be a party-pooper.’ She glanced at Jo and gestured towards the cool box and the bags of stuff they’d brought down earlier. ‘You two stay. I’ll see you later.’ She smiled briefly, assured them she’d be fine, then turned and made her way slowly up the beach, just as the first few drops of rain began to fall.

  ‘I don’t quite get it,’ Jo said, after she’d gone. ‘I can see why she blames the hospital for her mum dying, but what happened with the midwife? I mean, it must be terrible when a baby dies, but it does happen sometimes, doesn’t it? Was there something wrong with him?’

  Scott shook his head, then sighed as he started to explain. A student midwife had been looking after Eve’s mum while the main midwife attended to someone else. When the baby started to come, much more quickly than anticipated, the terrified student had called for help, but had then tried to delay the birth by pushing on the baby’s head. The child had suffered severe brain damage resulting in cerebral palsy and had died as a result. The inquiry that followed found the hospital responsible and also suggested there may have been a link between the trauma of the birth and the high blood pressure that caused Eve’s mum to have a brain haemorrhage. ‘So all that was bad enough,’ Scott said, ‘but then her dad went into a terrible depression, packed Eve off to a relative one day and chucked himself under a train. That’s why it’s all cemented together in Eve’s mind; her mum had wanted to have the baby at home, but he’d insisted she have it in hospital, so obviously he blamed himself.’

  By the time Scott had finished telling her the story, tears were streaming down her face. No wonder Eve was terrified of doctors and midwives.

  *

  Rain lashed at the windows and drummed on the roof of the thinking room as Jo sat looking out at the grey sea. There was something quite comforting about the sound of the rain against the glass. She leaned her forehead against the cool window; the rain had been torrential for hours, and had brought with it a break in the oppressive heat, a slight freshening of the air. Just then a jagged fork of lightning flashed against the darkening sky, followed by a low, distant rumble of thunder. She stood up, walked back and forth across the tiny room and then opened the window a little wider. She felt restless, and she wanted to hear the rain more clearly. Maybe it was the fact that the air had cleared, but she felt invigorated all of a sudden, confident that she could help Eve deliver her baby, that Eve was right about it being a straightforward procedure if handled properly from the start. It was, after all, the same thing that the books she’d been reading were saying, only they were obviously assuming a trained midwife would be present. A movement in the garden below caught her eye. ‘Eve!’ she shouted down. ‘What are you doing? You’re getting drenched!’ But the sound of the rain drowned her voice, so she went down the three flights of stairs to the basement and opened the back door. Eve was standing in the middle of what was once a lawn, head tipped back and eyes closed until Jo called her name. ‘Oh, there you are, Jo,’ she said, she was smiling again. ‘Come out here and take advantage of this gorgeous rain.’ Jo grabbed a plastic bowl that was lying on the floor and held it over her head as she went up the steps. ‘Oh Jo,’ Eve said. ‘Put the bowl down. Just enjoy the rain on your skin – it’s wonderful!’ She held her arms out wide and tipped her head back again so that the water pounded her face and streamed down her neck. She was still wearing the thin cotton sundress but it was so wet that it was transparent, and you could clearly see her protruding belly-button and her swollen breasts through her dress. Jo felt a pang of envy. She’d stopped wearing a bra herself soon after she’d moved in, but her own tits looked pathetic when compared with Eve’s gloriously full ones. She discarded the plastic bowl and allowed the rain to soak her through to the skin. It wasn’t as cold as she’d expected, and it did feel quite refreshing. The garden smelled of warm rain and wet earth, and of the rich, earthy
scent of the tomato plants. The many plants that Eve had grown in pots and tended so carefully were always limp at the end of a hot day, despite their regular diet of washing-up water, but now they were noticeably perking up after the long weeks of drought. Even in the light that spilled into the garden from the house, you could see that everything was becoming greener. And there Eve stood in the middle of it all. With her full breasts, the swell of her pregnancy, the way she was smiling as she tilted her face to the heavens, she resembled some sort of maternal goddess, like a statue erected to the worship of nature, of fertility and fecundity. Of course Eve would be able to give birth successfully; why had Jo ever doubted it?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Over the next few weeks, they made preparations. They read everything about childbirth that they could lay their hands on; they bought waterproof sheeting and brandnew towels and they cleaned all the main areas of the house, especially the living room, which they’d decided would be the best place to deliver the baby because it was nearer the kitchen for hot water, and because the room was big enough for all three of them to sleep in if necessary. They scrubbed floorboards, wiped down the paintwork, took anything that was washable to the launderette, and made up the birthing bed – a single mattress raised up on several pallets – at one end of the room. Scott varnished the little wooden cradle and put it next to the birthing bed, where it gradually acquired a mattress made out of a foam off cut, some new-looking brushed-cotton sheets, a Winnie-the-Pooh quilt from a jumble sale, and two navy-blue shawls, one rather badly knitted but the other quite passable. Jo had found a wool shop that was closing down; there were only dark colours left but she bought a huge cardboard box full of wool and two pairs of knitting needles for 35p. The first shawl was a bit of a practice run, but the second had turned out rather well, and Eve loved them both anyway.

  As Eve grew larger, she left the house less and less, finding it increasingly tiring to make the long trek down into the basement then up the back steps and round to the front again. She continued to make her jewellery and bags, and when, halfway through September, they discovered that not only was there a bumper crop of blackberries from the bushes that had all but taken over their own garden, but there were yet more in the garden of the empty house next door, not to mention fruit trees heavy with apples, pears and plums, Eve duly went into production, making pounds and pounds of jam – plum, pear, and blackberry and apple. She also used the damaged fruit and the last of the summer’s vegetables to make what she called ‘interesting and unusual’ chutneys. Jo and Scott loaded up the shopping trolleys and sold the home-made preserves at local markets and at a stall they set up on the A21 just outside the town. With Eve’s efforts and the wages Jo and Scott brought in – he was working in pub and hotel kitchens again now the season was over and the busking wasn’t so lucrative – they continued to bring in a surprisingly respectable amount of money. Scott had started to talk about going back to finish his teacher training and looking for what he called a ‘proper job’, much to Eve’s dismay. ‘We’ll be tied down, Scotty,’ she said when he mentioned it one night. ‘I don’t want us to have to live like that.’

  ‘It’s all very well living this way when it’s just us,’ he argued, ‘but once the baby comes, things’ll be different. And what if we get kicked out of the house? We can’t doss down in any old squat once the baby’s here.’ Jo watched Eve’s expression change from defiance to compliance as she reluctantly agreed that things would have to change. Jo, who hadn’t thought more than three months or so ahead ever since she moved here, began to wonder what would happen to her if they were kicked out of the house. Because if Scott found a flat that he could afford to rent – he’d mentioned this a couple of times – Jo was pretty sure the arrangement wouldn’t include her, despite what Eve had said about the baby having three parents.

  *

  One afternoon a couple of weeks before the baby was due – which was the first week in November, according to Eve’s calculations – Eve complained that she was fed up and she wanted to go out. After the long, dry summer, it had rained almost every day for the last few weeks and she’d barely left the house. Now the rain had eased off, she felt restless. Jo suggested they go down to the seafront for the Hastings Day celebrations. Hastings Day had been an annual festival since 1966 when it had first taken place in commemoration of the Battle of Hastings. It used to always be on the Saturday nearest to the date of the battle – 14 October – but this year, for the first time, the celebrations were spanning four days. There were marching bands, drum majorettes, live music, a medieval banquet – all sorts of things were going on and Jo had been dying to go and see what was happening, but Scott wouldn’t be home until the evening and she hadn’t wanted to leave Eve on her own. She enjoyed feeling responsible for Eve, who, limited by her increasing size and crippling tiredness, had started to rely on Jo more and more.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind coming with me, Jo-Jo?’ Ever since Jo had told her the childhood name her mother had used, Eve had taken to using it too. If anyone else had done so, Jo might have resented it, but, in fact, it felt right somehow.

  ‘Mind? You’re joking – it sounds brilliant, especially the bonfire tonight – and the procession.’ But then she began to have doubts. She looked at Eve. ‘Do you think you’ll be all right standing for so long, though?’

  Eve smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, I’m sure. As long as I’ve got you to hang on to on the walk back – I can’t see myself making it up the hill too easily without you!’

  It took much longer to walk down to the seafront than usual, because Eve could no longer move quickly. As they walked, Jo stole a glance at her now and again, dismayed at the changes the latter part of pregnancy had brought about in her friend. She looked older, and a weariness had settled about her features; she’d lost her glow and that spark of energy that made her seem as though she was always on the verge of something – about to smile or laugh, about to sing, about to leap up and start painting a new mural on one of the walls. Jo hoped the change wasn’t permanent. Then she remembered poor Pat, just eighteen and the mother of twins, careworn and frumpy. But she hadn’t known Pat pre-pregnancy, so maybe she’d always been like that.

  The celebrations were in full swing when they got down to the front. They stood for a while watching a mime artist, then they wandered further along to watch the morris dancing and then a team of junior acrobats. They didn’t fancy the re-enactment of the battle that was happening up near the castle, so they went onto the pier in search of tea and doughnuts before the main parade began. Jo hoped the break would revive Eve enough to get her through the next couple of hours. They made their way to the part of the beach where the bonfire would be lit and stationed themselves where they’d be able to watch the fire, but also have a good view of the parade. Over the last week or so, the organisers had been building the huge bonfire from broken furniture, driftwood, bits of old fences and other unwanted materials. Because of the weather, they’d had to work under a tarpaulin, but now the structure was revealed, there was a great deal of excitement about lighting it. The whole thing was cleverly constructed to resemble a ship; a galleon. Its size and shape couldn’t fail to impress – and it was all made from rubbish.

  The parade was colourful, noisy and wonderful. Jo felt like a child again, out for a day at the fair or the pantomime. Enchanted by the spectacle, she watched what seemed like a never-ending parade of morris dancers, brass bands, the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, the drum majorettes, and scores of children and adults in medieval costume on their way up to the castle for the next re-enactment.

  By the time the parade finally thinned out, it was beginning to get dark. The castle, illuminated against the sky, looked magnificent tonight, and Jo marvelled at the fact that it had stood there, nine hundred years before, looking down on the proceedings just as it did now. The crowds lining the road started to disperse now it looked like there was nothing more to see, but as pushchairs were wheeled away and fathers lifted tired
toddlers onto shoulders, Jo could just make out a deep rhythmic thudding in the distance. ‘Listen,’ she said to Eve. ‘Can you hear that?’ But almost before she’d finished speaking the sound had become much clearer and was unmistakable.

  ‘Oh goodness, I love the sound of drumming,’ Eve said, ‘especially when it gets really loud and you can feel it in your belly.’ She smiled and looked down at her bump. ‘Listen, baby, can you feel that?’ Then she looked up. ‘Oh, look, here they come!’ The drummers were part of a torch-lit procession that was snaking its way down to the promenade and along the coast road. The flickering flames of the torches made a fiery ‘S’ shape in the darkness, and the smoke that swirled around the procession added a sense of drama. The drummers were led by a tall, thin man wearing a black cloak and a top hat – he reminded Jo of the very first time she saw Scott. The man’s face was painted white and his long hair flowed out behind him as he walked. The others, mainly men, were walking three or four abreast, beating drums of varying shapes and sizes. They all had wild hair and painted faces; some drummed with their hands, others used drumsticks, but all were grinning manically and throwing their arms around elaborately as they passed, some of them dancing and making mad faces at the crowd like demented court jesters. The drumming was so loud now that that Jo had to shout to tell Eve that she could indeed feel the sound reverberating in her guts. Behind the drummers, the torch bearers followed at a slower, steadier pace. There were women as well as men, and all wore long white robes and solemn expressions as they held their smoking torches aloft. They too had white-painted faces.

  As Jo watched them making their steady way along the route, she was suddenly aware of a dark chill of sadness that replaced the excitement she’d felt only moments ago. There was something about the drumming, about feeling it physically at her very centre, that stirred up a profound sense of grief, not only for her mum, but for her granny, for the cat they’d had when she was a child; even for the baby she’d briefly imagined she might be carrying. But stranger still was the intense sadness she felt to be connected with the here and now, as though she was grieving for something she had not yet lost.