To Have and to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  Lois’s eyes were concerned. ‘You shouldn’t be standing in weather like that for hours on end. I think maybe you are doing too much. How about an early night?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Carmel said.

  ‘Go on up then,’ Lois said. ‘I’ll finish this washing up and bring you a nice hot cup of tea.’

  Carmel nodded her head, too weary to argue. She mounted the stairs laboriously, for the baby lay heavily on her now. She had barely reached the bedroom when she felt the water gush from her and she let out a cry of anguish as a sudden pain caused her to collapse to her knees.

  Lois galloped up the stairs to find Carmel in a sodden nightdress kneeling in a puddle of water and she knew, early or not, this baby was struggling to be born. She lifted Carmel to her feet as she cried out that it was too soon.

  ‘Look,’ Lois said, ‘there is no help for it. Now I am going to get Ruby to sit with you and then I am away for the midwife, all right?’

  Carmel nodded, knowing she would feel better with Ruby beside her. Only a few minutes after Lois left, Ruby was in the door.

  She put her arms around Carmel when she saw the tears on her cheeks. ‘Don’t take on so, ducks.’

  ‘But it’s far too early.’

  ‘The babby don’t seem to think so.’

  ‘But will it be all right?’

  ‘Course it will,’ said Ruby confidently. ‘But we got to give the little mite every chance possible. Now you come up and sit in this chair while I strip your bed and have it made up with the special sheets to protect the mattress.’

  Carmel nodded again. The pains, each stronger than the last, were making talking difficult and she was immensely glad a few minutes later to sink back into bed and hold on to Ruby’s stout hand. When Lois came back with the news that the midwife had gone out to a confinement and hadn’t got back, Carmel was inclined to panic.

  ‘Come on now,’ Ruby said. ‘What you getting in a state for? There wasn’t never trained midwives in my day. You just had some neighbour woman who had done it a few times before and knew what was what. And I have attended enough births to know what to do, I reckon.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Course I am,’ Ruby said. ‘And the first thing we want is hot water.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Lois said, glad to have something to do.

  When the door closed behind Lois, Ruby smiled. ‘You hang on, bab,’ she said. ‘We’ll get through this together and I’ll not leave your side until it is over.’

  And she didn’t, not once. Lois made reviving tea that Carmel was glad of, and later sandwiches she couldn’t touch, but Ruby sat beside her holding her hand, or wiping her brow with the cloth she had ready. As the night wore on Lois dozed in the chair by the bed. Sometimes Carmel would drop off from sheer exhaustion, to be woken by the pain minutes later, but always Ruby would be there, a constant by the bed. When Carmel cried out with it, Ruby was there to soothe and to comfort.

  ‘Oh God!’ Carmel gasped, when the pain was coming in relentless waves. ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Not long now,’ Ruby said consolingly. ‘You are doing fine.’

  Carmel didn’t feel as if she was doing fine. She felt as if she was being rent in two. By the early hours of the morning, she felt as though she had entered a tunnel of pain and there was no respite from it, and she screamed out against it and raised her knees to her chin.

  Ruby swiftly roused Lois. To Carmel she said, ‘I am leaving you for two minutes to scrub my hands. I want a take a look, all right?’

  Carmel’s face was bathed in sweat, she was panting like an animal and her eyes were pain-glazed. Lois approached the bed and, feeling immense sympathy for her friend, took up her hand and held it tight.

  And then Ruby was back and had the bedclothes raised. Then she was saying, ‘Push, bab. We’re nearly there. Honest to God.’

  It seemed to Carmel that Ruby, now at the foot of the bed, had said the same thing for hours. ‘I have pushed,’ she panted. ‘I can’t push any more.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ said Lois, still holding her hand.

  That angered Carmel. ‘No I can’t,’ she declared. ‘What the bloody hell do you know about it?’

  The words had barely left Carmel’s lips when she was assailed by the biggest contraction yet. She gave a sudden scream of agony and holding Lois’s hand so tightly the bones crunched together, she gathered up every vestige of strength and pushed with all her might.

  For a second or two there was deadlock and Carmel felt herself weakening. But Lois and Ruby wouldn’t let her give up. Suddenly the pressure eased, she felt the baby slither between her legs, new-born wails filled the room and Ruby announced, ‘You bloody clever girl, you. You have a beautiful daughter.’

  Carmel took the baby from Ruby, who had wrapped her in a shawl against the chill of the room, and peeled back the covers and gazed at her, this perfect little person she and Paul had created. She had stopped crying and lay passive in Carmel’s arms with her little fingers and toes and even tinier nails, her milky blue eyes trying to focus so that a little frown was developing in her brow at the effort. And Carmel realised she loved every bit of her and couldn’t understand that she had ever thought she wouldn’t be able to love this little mite, that she even might resent her.

  At that moment she knew with certainty that she would tear limb from limb anyone who harmed one hair of her baby’s head.

  The birth was over and mother and child doing well by the time the midwife got there, totally exhausted because she had been up all night. She was full of praise for the way Lois and Ruby had coped, and said although the baby was premature, she appeared healthy.

  ‘She is a little sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Have you a name for her?’

  Carmel nodded. ‘Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Though I will call her Beth, which I prefer to Lizzie, and then Eve for my mother.’

  ‘Fine names both of them,’ the midwife declared, and then gave a sudden yawn.

  ‘You best be away to your bed,’ Ruby said. ‘You look all in.’

  ‘I am tired,’ the midwife said. ‘Course, I have been at the other place all night, though I’ll tell you, if the government hadn’t had a rethink on the blackout and allowed shaded torches and shielded car headlights to be used, I reckon the woman would have had to manage on her own, because it was in an area I wasn’t familiar with. My job was made very difficult for a few months unless the babies chose to be born in the hours of daylight, and you know as well as I do that they are not that accommodating.’

  Ruby chuckled. ‘Indeed not,’ she said. ‘They come when they are ready. This scrap, for instance, shouldn’t be with us for a few weeks yet.’

  Carmel had put the baby to the breast and her eyes were closed in blissful contentment.

  The midwife said, ‘Doesn’t matter how many times it happens, it always strikes me as some sort of miracle.’

  Carmel couldn’t have agreed more and went over in her head the letter that she would write to Paul to tell him of this wondrous event.

  The path to the house was nearly worn down by the wellwishers who called to see the baby, all bearing gifts. Jeff wanted to buy everything new and the best for his first grandchild, but Carmel told him not to.

  ‘Ruby has everything kept from when hers were small, packed away in the attic,’ she said, ‘keeping it for her own children. But she said as they seem in no hurry to produce and the stuff is gathering dust, I might as well have the use of it. After all, will Beth mind one jot if her pram is brand-new or not?’

  ‘No, but—;’

  ‘But nothing,’ Carmel said. ‘What I really would like is for Paul to be home beside us where he belongs. I know that cannot be, but my next desire, might be just as impossible.’

  ‘And what is that, my dear?’

  ‘It’s to have my brother Michael and my sister Siobhan over here to be godparents to their little niece.’

  Jeff was delighted there was something he could do for his daughter-in-law that would
please her. ‘You shall have that, my dear,’ he promised. ‘And I will go to Ireland myself to see to it.’ And he felt a little thrill of excitement run through him at the prospect of seeing Eve again.

  ‘Oh, but—;’

  ‘You must let me do this for you,’ Jeff said. ‘If Paul were here I am sure that he would attend to it, but I will deal with it in his stead. You arrange the christening and I will see that they will be there for it.’

  Jeff didn’t ask why Carmel didn’t just write to her brother and sister and ask them to be godparents, which surely was the normal way of going about things.

  Paul had described to him how it was in that household, and he had described the house too, but still Jeff was shocked. That Carmel had come from such beginnings and that her mother, the gentle Eve, who had made such an impression on him, should continue to live in such a place, shocked him to the core. He felt the bile rising in him for Dennis Duffy, who allowed his family to live in such a way

  Eve had been amazed to see Jeff at her door. He had given her no notice that he was coming, for he couldn’t risk being refused. But while she was embarrassed that Jeff should see how things were for her in her real life, Dennis was inclined to be belligerent. Jeff had expected this—again it had all been explained to him—and he watched the man’s expression change and pass his tongue over his lips as Jeff pulled from his bag a large bottle of single malt whiskey.

  ‘I thought you and I might wet the baby’s head, one grandfather with another. What do you say?’ he said to Dennis.

  It cost Jeff dear to sit at that table drinking with such a man. Dennis Duffy was the very type of person Jeff despised: one who didn’t want to do a decent day’s work and yet would keep his family starving and not care a jot about it as long as he had his beer money. As for taking a drink with such a character! By choice he would rather take poison, though he liked a drink as well as the next man—more than like, if the truth was told, though from the time Carmel told him she was pregnant he had taken a grip upon himself, knowing that with Paul away, he would have to keep a weather eye on Carmel and the child. Paul would expect it of him.

  Jeff was aware too—sickeningly aware from the nervous, subservient attitude she displayed around her husband—that Eve was afraid of him. Later he was to see how terrified the children were. Even the times that he had returned to the house the worse for wear he had never raised his hand to his wife. His sons too had never felt even the flat of his hand as they were growing up. Their discipline, as every other aspect of their care, had been left to Emma and Jeff despised a man who beat his wife and children.

  He would rather have laid his length on the cobbles outside the door than make a friend of Dennis, yet he knew that to get Dennis to agree to let Siobhan go to England—he imagined Michael would make his own decision—he had to push down his natural instincts. So he sat on with Dennis, drinking one glass of whiskey after the other.

  Dennis was well away by the time the two made it to the pub, where Dennis introduced Jeff as his daughter’s father-in-law, over here to wet the wee baby’s head, no less.

  ‘He’s a grand fellow altogether,’ Dennis declared.

  ‘The grand fellow’ followed the same procedure for the next three nights, plying the man with drink until he had to help him home, though he took little himself. At the end of the third day, he said that if Dennis allowed Siobhan to go to England he would lay down twenty-five pounds behind the bar for him. In Dennis’s befuddled state, twenty-five pounds was the sort of money he had never seen—a fortune. By then he thought Jeff the best in the world anyway, and so he shook him by the hand and said he was a fine man, a true gentleman, and he could do what he liked with Siobhan.

  Jeff accepted the acclaim and the promise, but trusted the man not a jot. So, as arranged, the following day he called for Siobhan while Dennis was sleeping off the excesses of the night before. He was to take her to Dublin where Michael would join them. He had arranged accommodation for the night. First, however, he wanted to get Siobhan some new clothes, and he also wanted her to have her hair done properly.

  Before he left, he pressed twenty single pounds into Eve’s hands, brushing away her protests that it was too much. ‘It is nowhere near enough, my dear lady, and from now on I will send you money regularly, included in the letters Carmel sends you so as not to arouse suspicion.’

  ‘You are very good.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Jeff said softly. ‘I am not so good, but I am a very rich man. Twenty pounds is like a drop in the ocean for me, but I would like it if you will take it and try and make life easier for you all. I know you will do that for you are a loving, caring mother. That has been so apparent in just the few days I have been here.’

  The tears were flowing freely down Eve’s face and a lump rose in Jeff’s throat as she turned those glistening eyes on him and said, her voice husky with the tears she had shed, ‘You are the kindest man I have ever known.’

  Jeff wished he could take her in his arms as he had Carmel, and kiss her cheek, but he knew such behaviour would be inappropriate and could possibly be misconstrued so he contented himself with shaking her hand warmly.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Siobhan and Michael were both enchanted by the baby. They arrived two days before the christening, which was to be on 21 January, when the baby would be twelve days old. Carmel noticed her sister’s resplendent new clothes straight away and guessed they were a present from Jeff.

  Jeff, watching the sisters greet each other, remembered Siobhan’s almost speechless delight when he suggested taking her shopping in Dublin, and how thrilled and appreciative she was with everything he bought. It pleased him greatly to treat such a person and when she had been kitted out, it had surprised him how pretty the girl was, though not quite as stunning as her elder sister.

  Once the meal was over, the child in bed and Jeff gone home, Siobhan asked to see over the house. She was astonished that Carmel lived in such a place, for though Michael and her mother had described it, seeing it for herself was something else entirely. Siobhan was full of praise, tinged with a little envy.

  She had begun to think recently she would never leave home. In May she would be twenty-one, nearly on the shelf already, and as she had no chance of meeting anyone, little chance of marriage. She was also worried what her father would do to her mother if she were to leave.

  In Birmingham, Letterkenny and its problems seemed far, far away and with her new clothes and with her hair cut stylishly, she decided to push the bad memories and thoughts what she would be returning to, to the back of her mind and enjoy the few free days she had.

  The christening went without a hitch. The church was filled with friends, neighbours and other wellwishers, and Siobhan and Michael held the baby tenderly and gave their responses over a background noise of Beth screaming her head off, which amused everyone.

  Afterwards, many piled into the house in York Road. It had been hard getting any sort of a party spread together with the rationing now of some goods and many others in short supply. However, everyone had helped, and with Lois being such a genius with food anyway, the table was respectable enough. Jeff provided the drinks and the christening party went with a swing.

  Lois commented later how much she liked Siobhan. She was also a great favourite with Ruby Hancock. Carmel realised she had been wrong to be ashamed of her family. The star of the show, though, was of course the baby, who now some giant wasn’t pouring water over her head behaved impeccably. She didn’t mind at all being passed from one to another, and when she was eventually tucked into the cradle, she went to sleep like a dream.

  In the days that followed, the weather wasn’t conducive to exploring Birmingham. Every day snow tumbled from a sky the colour of gunmetal, and was whipped into drifts by the gusting winds, each night it would freeze over. It was far too cold and damp to take the baby far, though the day after the christening Carmel did manage to push the pram up Erdington High Street so that Siobhan could see the range and variety
of shops on their doorstep. She was mightily impressed.

  ‘You must come back in the summer,’ Carmel said, once they were inside again. ‘The weather will be better then and the baby won’t need feeding every ten minutes.’

  Siobhan laid the baby she had been holding back into the crib and said, ‘You know I can’t do that, as if I lived in a normal household where normal rules apply. I don’t even know how I will be received when I go home, because although Daddy said I could come here, he was drunk at the time, and I was spirited from the house before he could wake and possibly change his mind. Now, if he is mad about that for any reason, I will catch it, and you know that as well as I. Surely to God you haven’t forgotten how it is at home?’

  ‘He’ll not lay a hand on you,’ Michael said. ‘I told you.’

  ‘And I told you that Daddy has ways and means and he is like they say elephants are,’ Siobhan said. ‘He never forgets or forgives a wrong he imagines have been done to him.’

  ‘I’ll put the fear of God into him. I have done it before for Mammy,’ Michael said.

  ‘D’you think it made any difference?’ Siobhan said bitterly. ‘Daddy still hits Mammy when you are not around. He just marks her in places she can hide and she says nothing because she doesn’t want you to get into trouble. I would keep quiet if he hit me for the same reason.’ The look on Michael’s face was savage and Siobhan laid a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t feel bad, Michael. We need you with us, not in gaol someplace.’

  ‘Huh, some good I am if I’m not allowed to protect you.’

  ‘We need you for more than just protection,’ Siobhan said. She turned to Carmel and said, ‘Don’t think you have to be entertaining me all the time either. At the moment I am enjoying the peace and quiet and I could cuddle your baby all the day. Sometimes,’ she added wistfully, ‘I don’t think I will ever have one of my own.’