What he was thinking of was that if Jack turned up, as he probably would later in the afternoon, he’d no doubt be expecting Don to meet him in the Blackthorn at eight o’clock, same as any other Saturday night. Never mind that he’d worried his wife sick, and obliged Don to engage in this ridiculous half-hearted hunt for him. Well, he’d be in the pub on his own. Don couldn’t go, even if he wanted to, because of Liz. But the truth was, he didn’t want to. He was tired of Jack’s half-baked theories about nationhood and freedom. Jack would have to do without him tonight. But would he find anybody else soft enough to keep him company?
‘Come on, son,’ he said to Billy. ‘Let’s get hame and see how your mother’s daein.’
They stopped briefly at the Gordons’ house and Don reported to Sarah that he’d had no luck and suggested that if Jack still hadn’t turned up by early evening she should think about contacting the police. He couldn’t help her any more – not, at least, till Liz had had the baby. Everything he said seemed to wound Sarah. She looked like a woman utterly alone – which, he thought as he hurried back home with Billy on his shoulders again, she doubtless was, Jack or no Jack.
They’d been away two hours, more. When he opened the door Liz was coming down the passage towards him from the kitchen, brisker and slimmer than she’d been for months. ‘Where have ye been?’ she said, just as she had earlier. But it wasn’t Liz, it was Joan Drummond. She said, ‘Ye’ve tae get doon tae the hospital quick as ye can. Bill took her in aboot forty minutes ago. Billy’ll be fine wi us.’
There was another woman in the house, emerging from the kitchen now. There was a lot of steam behind her, and Don could see what looked like sheets draped over the side of the Belfast sink. It was Betty, the next-door neighbour. ‘Don,’ Betty said.
‘What’s gaun on?’ Don said. ‘Why does she need tae go tae the hospital?’
‘She came on a lot quicker than she expected,’ Joan said.
‘But she said she wouldna be ready for oors,’ Don said. ‘I would never have gone oot if I’d thought ony different. And why’s she at the hospital?’
‘She got frightened,’ Betty said. ‘She started bleeding. She sent me roond for Dr Logan but he’s away oot fishing. Mrs Logan said tae get an ambulance but it was quicker tae get Bill. Luckily he and Joan were at hame,’ she added reproachfully.
‘Liz said tae say sorry tae ye, but she couldna wait,’ Joan said. ‘Though what she needs tae say sorry for beats me.’
Don didn’t know Joan that well. He’d never heard her nippy like that and felt a momentary twinge of sympathy for Bulldog. But none of that was important.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m away.’
‘If ye run,’ Betty said, ‘ye’ll catch the bus on the half-oor.’
Don ran.
§
Things get jumbled in your head. Not at the time of their happening perhaps, but afterwards, when you try to tease out the strands, recall the order in which they occurred. When what you are facing is triumph or disaster, one or the other, everything has definition, force, threat. It demands a response. The nearest thing in peacetime to being under enemy fire. It’s later that the confusion sets in, the overlapping, the fuzziness of detail. At the time you deal with it, you cope. Later you wonder how you did.
It was raining again. Don was intimidated by the hospital, a blackened pile with turrets and dripping rones. Inside, some of the decor had been modernised, but the whole place still had an air of gloomy Victorian philanthropy. It was part of the National Health Service now, but only at some abstract political level did he think of it as belonging to him in any way. Physically, emotionally, what he felt mostly was that he was an inconvenience to the people who worked there; that his presence somehow detracted from the efficiency or purpose of the building as staff came and went through the entrance hall; that he was taking the shine off the polished linoleum by stepping on it.
He approached the reception desk and asked about Liz. ‘She’s aboot tae hae a bairn. There was an emergency, she was bleeding. A neighbour brought her in his motor.’ The man at the desk frowned when he spoke of the bleeding, as if it were neither necessary nor appropriate to mention it. He asked Don to wait while somebody was contacted. He pointed out a bench near the door where he could sit. An orderly appeared, was given instructions and went away again. There was a big clock on the wall behind the desk. Twenty minutes passed. Half an hour. Don, struggling to contain himself, was on his feet every time a nurse or doctor came by. He went back to the desk.
‘I really need tae find oot what’s gaun on. If ye tell me which ward she’s in I’ll go masel.’
‘Oh ye canna dae that,’ the man said. ‘Somebody will be with ye in a minute. Just take a seat.’
A minute. Another. Ten, eleven, twelve of them. More clip-clopping shoes, uniformed nurses. There were three sets of double doors leading off in different directions from the hall, and one set in particular was forever swinging to the passage of nurses, porters, cleaners. A few lost-looking men and women came in and approached the man behind the desk, who seemed to relish the power he exerted over them, either directing them to some other part of the building or sending them away altogether. It was the visiting half-hour, six till half-past. Don should be part of this vague disruption to the hospital’s routine, surely? He stood up again, but the man at the desk caught his eye at once and shook his head, sending him back to the bench. He wondered where Bulldog had got to. He’d kept an eye out for the Austin on the way in but hadn’t seen it. Bulldog must have gone home.
Don looked at the clock again, then at his watch. It was approaching seven. The last of the visitors scurried out, glancing questioningly at him. He was about to get up again when a doctor in a white coat arrived at the reception desk. The man behind it pointed at Don. The doctor came towards him and Don met him halfway across the space. Close up, the doctor looked tired and grey. He was maybe about fifty although it was hard to tell.
‘Mr Lennie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Dr Lang. I gather you’ve been here a while.’
‘Nearly two hours. Naebody’s tellt me onything.’
‘Well, we’ve been very busy, you know.’ As if Don had accused him of slacking.
‘How’s my wife, doctor?’
‘Your wife’s in labour. She’s doing very well.’
‘I wasna wi her when she was brought in. My neighbour brought her. She needed tae come in because she’d started bleeding.’
‘Yes, we’ve managed to stop that. We’ve given her a transfusion.’
Don searched his eyes for news, good or bad, but Lang was giving nothing away.
‘Is she gonnae be aw right?’
‘She’s a strong, healthy woman, Mr Lennie. There’s every reason to suppose she’ll be perfectly fine. We’ve stabilised her condition and now it’s simply a question of letting nature take its course.’
‘The birth, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘And is the baby aw right tae?’
‘As I said, your wife’s in labour as we speak.’
‘Will everything be aw right though?’
‘Yes, we think so.’
They stood in silence. Lang, it seemed, had given him all the information he thought he required.
‘Can I see her?’ Don asked.
‘No, not at the moment. Look,’ Lang said, ‘why don’t you go off and get something to eat, a cup of tea or something? There’s nothing you can do here.’
‘I’d rather wait.’
‘Well, suit yourself, but you’ll be here some time. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’
He gave the impression of someone devoid of emotion. Maybe it was because he was tired, and afraid that Don was going to weep, or become violent or hysterical, and that was the last thing he needed. His mouth twitched – a kind of smile – and he said, ‘She’s in good hands, Mr Lennie. Try not to worry. Everything is under control.’ Then he turned and left. Don sat down again.
Ano
ther hour passed. Outside the light was all but gone. It was a quiet night in the hospital, apparently. There didn’t seem to be anybody but himself waiting. Waiting for what? For his wife to be well, to have given him a second son? Or for some awful, heart-stopping news he couldn’t bear to consider?
Despite himself, he suddenly felt ravenous. He thought, Lang’s probably right, he’s the doctor after all. I may as well nip out and get a bite.
He walked into the town past the Toll Tavern, a bar he had been in twice, once just before the war and once on returning home after it. A rough, comfortless place full of men seeking oblivion, possibly preceded by a few jokes and a fight. A sickly yellow light was cast against the bottle-thick glass of the windows. Further down the street was Rinaldi’s Café. Joe Rinaldi had been interned in 1939 on the Isle of Man and his place had had its windows smashed, but his wife, Maria, had repaired the damage and reopened for the rest of the war, supported by some locals but struggling against the aloofness and gossip of others and the constant attention of the police. Joe had got home in the spring of 1944, six months after Italy had surrendered, and seemed to bear no malice towards the town that had treated him and his family so poorly. Maybe he felt lucky: a cousin had been lost when the Arandora Star, packed with internees being sent to Canada, was torpedoed by a U-boat. The café did a fair trade these days, in spite of the austerity. Folk seemed determined to demonstrate that they themselves had never held any suspicions about good old Joe, let alone flung bricks through his windows. It was a quarter to nine. The smell of frying was irresistible. Don went in.
There were a few other people inside – mostly young couples, and a group of boys in one corner – but, apart from Joe, nobody he recognised. Was he getting too distant now he stayed up in the village? In the past there would always have been some familiar face in Rinaldi’s.
He ate his supper with a mug of tea in one of the booths. The Light Programme was on the wireless but at nine o’clock Joe switched over to the Home Service. The news was all about Borlanslogie. The inrush had left a huge crater on the surface and, to try to stop more moss and water cascading in and blocking up what little air supply the trapped men had, volunteers had been filling the hole with tree trunks, straw bales, pit props, anything that might slow the rate of collapse. But firedamp was still the main problem. There was phone contact with the trapped men but it was sporadic, and the men themselves were growing weak from want of food and water. Various fire brigades had supplied dozens of respirator sets and the idea was, once a passage had been made, to take the kits in, instruct the men in how to use them, and bring them out one at a time along a chain of rescuers, also wearing the apparatus, stretched along the gas-ridden roadway, a journey of more than a mile. That was how things had been several hours earlier – hours that seemed to have swollen into weeks since Don had been reading the paper – and now, the newsreader was saying, the long and difficult liberation process was under way, and would go on for several more hours. There were eighty-nine men to bring out, and a further seven who were missing, presumed dead.
Sitting there with the food filling his belly, the low chat of the others in the background, the radio news, the sounds from the kitchen and the heat and smells of the café combining in a kind of cheap luxury, Don almost dozed off. Bits of news about the miners mingled with images from the war, images of Liz in a room full of nurses and Dr Lang, Liz pushing and straining, the bloody head starting to emerge. He hoped everything was all right. He’d seen animals give birth – a horse in Italy, cows and sheep at Hackston’s Farm – but a human birth was women’s business – apart from the doctor, if a doctor was needed – and men like him were not encouraged to know about it, nor did he particularly want to. He kept imagining blood, because that was what Betty had told him: she’d started to bleed. He’d seen plenty of blood during the war, blood spilled through violence, and birth could be violent too, though in a different way. He didn’t like to think of Liz involved in anything violent. He thought of her in bed with him, hot and eager but not violent, and always under the sheets with the lights out. This was the outcome, what was happening now in the hospital.
And he kept thinking of Jack. He couldn’t help it: Jack kept appearing between the newsreader’s words about the miners and Dr Lang’s words about Liz. Huge crowds have formed at the pithead as relatives wait anxiously for word of their menfolk. Your wife’s in labour. She’s doing very well. The presence of highly flammable gas, known as firedamp, means that great care has to be taken in breaking through to the buried men. We’ve been very busy, you know. A great insurance. If you have a supply of potatoes you’ll never starve. And Sarah Gordon: Jack likes things tidy. We don’t like clutter. Your wife’s in labour. She’s doing very well. It’s one of the greatest rescue operations in the history of Scottish mining. What do they think they’re signing up for? The people don’t yet know what they want, they can’t articulate it, but something is happening deep within them. They were bringing the men out one by one, after two days in the tomb. The earth giving birth, rebirth, to all these men, but keeping its tribute, the missing seven it had swallowed. And meanwhile his bairn was fighting to be born, and Liz was fighting to let him be, and doctors and nurses were there to assist them in that effort, and yet some other undefined force was preventing it from happening. And Jack was somewhere, struggling with whatever dark thing it was that gripped him inside. And Sarah was at home with her daughter, alone, waiting anxiously for the word that would not come. Don knew something bad was happening, and something good, that a tortured, torturing battle between two forces was going on across all their lives, across the whole world. If he had any faith he’d say it was God versus Satan, but that was fairy-tale stuff. This was about human beings struggling in the vastness of the universe, a much scarier concept.
He paid for his meal and set off back to the hospital. It was now nearly ten o’clock, and he’d miss the last bus home. He’d have to go round to his mother and father’s and sleep the night on their floor. He’d go up to the hospital, see what news there was, and then he’d walk back into town and chap their door.
A different man, a night porter, was on the desk, with a newspaper folded open where he could read it discreetly. Don gave his name again and explained what he was doing there. The man seemed friendlier than his predecessor. ‘Haud on a minute, Mr Lennie, I’ll see what I can find oot for ye.’ He picked up the telephone and dialled while Don stood a few paces away. The man called him back. ‘A nurse is coming doon tae see ye. Dinna worry, everything’s aw right.’
A few minutes later a young woman – younger than him, anyway – appeared through the swinging doors. ‘Mr Lennie?’ she said. ‘Aye, that’s me,’ he said. ‘I’ve good news for you. Your wife has had a baby boy. They’re both fine.’
‘See?’ said the man at the desk. ‘What did I tell ye? That’s grand, so it is. Congratulations.’
He put his hand out over the counter and Don, in a kind of dream, took it. He felt himself sink within himself as he did so, hearing again the nurse’s words: they’re both fine. He’d not realised how stiffly he’d been holding his body against the prospect of bad news. When he let the man’s grip go he felt weak, unanchored, and without thinking put out a hand to steady himself on the nurse’s arm.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Aye, aye, I’m fine.’ He laughed. ‘Like them! It’s just … well, it’s been a long day, and she wasna awfie weel tae begin wi. I’m glad, that’s all. It’s a relief. And they’re baith fine, really?’
The nurse smiled at him, a genuine, warm smile. ‘Your wife’s exhausted. She’s sleeping. But she’s strong, she’ll be back to normal in no time. And the baby’s very healthy-looking. A good set of lungs in him.’
‘That’s grand,’ said the other man again, beaming at him. ‘Dae ye ken what ye’re gonnae call him?’
‘Charles,’ he said without hesitation, but speaking more to the nurse. ‘It’s my faither-in-law’s name. O
or first wee boy, he’s called William efter my faither. But he’s aye just Billy tae us, so I doot Charles’ll be Charlie soon enough.’ He stopped, aware he was rambling. The nurse still had the smile on her face, and he saw her bonnie, shining eyes, and, pressed back under her cap, the dark curly hair that looked like it was about to escape at any time. He thought of Liz, strong and solid-framed, a bonnie woman too but plain-built, and here was this wee, lithe, neat-looking nurse in front of him, and he couldn’t help comparing them. She’s like an angel, he thought.
‘Did ye … were ye there at the birth?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘I didn’t do anything really. But after your baby was born, I took him away and washed him.’
He saw how young she was. Seven or eight years at most between the two of them, but what a difference that was. It made him feel ancient. And she’d seen his son come into the world. For all that he’d witnessed during the war, she’d seen more than he ever would.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I canna thank ye enough.’
She blushed. ‘Nonsense. That’s what we do. Babies are born every day. It’s different when it’s your own though, isn’t it?’
For a moment he thought she was speaking about herself, but of course she couldn’t be. She was looking at him, waiting for him to answer.
‘Aye, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘This is oor second, though. Ye get used wi it.’
And the Land Lay Still Page 23
