The Yorkshire Pudding Club

by Milly Johnson

  How could her mam have gone through all this and then left her?

  The weekend was full of terrific thunderstorms that gave everyone some cool respite from the unrelenting August heat, but on Monday the rested sun fired up again with a vengeance. Elizabeth set off to the hospital for her last visit to the consultant, puffing like an old tired train. She parked in the nice wide mother and toddler spots in the hospital car park and plodded across to the high square building in her flat ballet pumps. For someone who had power walked everywhere on heels since she was sixteen, it was nice to be forced not to rush. Even if she had wanted to, snail’s pace was all she could manage these days.

  The appointments were running over half an hour late, but she was quite happy sitting with a bottle of orange and a Women by Women, which apparently was the magazine for the ‘woman of today’, whatever that meant. Am I a woman of today? she mused, concluding that she probably wasn’t. Her thoughts had been too firmly in the past for too many years than was good for her. Now she should not only move forwards, but make up some time too.

  ‘Elizabeth Collier,’ called a nurse eventually, and Elizabeth put down the magazine, scooped up her bag and went straight through to Mr Greer, clutching her notes and her urine sample.

  ‘So, how are you keeping then?’ he said, as she tried to make a dignified climb onto the couch after her blood pressure had been taken.

  ‘I’m tired, I know that much,’ she replied, and he nodded sympathetically. She had only gone up two steps and it felt like she had just scaled Everest.

  ‘Yes, the weather we’ve been having doesn’t do ladies like you many favours, does it? I expect you enjoyed the rain at the weekend as much as the ducks did.’

  ‘I feel like a duck the way I’m waddling these days,’ she replied, but Mr Greer was concentrating too hard to laugh. He felt around and manipulated her stomach gently, then he said, ‘Hmmmm,’ in a way that made her immediately start to worry.

  ‘You’re presenting breech,’ he said.

  ‘Am I?’ she said, a cold sweat breaking out at the back of her neck. The word ‘breech’ had a strong association with ‘Caesarean’, which led onto ‘emergency’, which led onto the sorts of fears she didn’t want to think about in detail.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said Mr Greer, ‘but you’ll probably find that his position might cause you quite a lot of heartburn.’

  ‘It does already,’ said Elizabeth. The baby’s head was like a coconut under her breast.

  They listened to the baby’s strong heartbeat and Mr Greer addressed Elizabeth’s fear balance with a few ‘excellent’ comments.

  ‘I think I’ll see you again in two weeks, just to make sure. The nurse will make an appointment for you,’ said Mr Greer eventually, with a gentle smile as he helped her off the couch. ‘Have you anything you’d like to ask me in the meantime?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth, who had, but she suspected even nice Mr Greer, with his vast experience, would not be able to answer how to guarantee that she would love her baby. And how not to die in childbirth.

  Chapter 46

  Thank the Lord I ended work when I did, thought Elizabeth, who checked her watch and pictured herself getting off the train from Leeds at this time and heading back to her car for home. Unless, that is, a leaf had landed on the track at Carlisle and disrupted the whole country’s network.

  Instead, she was sitting out in the garden, basking in the mid-August sun, and had been doing some small sketches with watercolour pencils that she would later frame for the baby’s room. There was a cat, a rabbit, and a duck, all of them bright and colourful with not a thick black line in sight. Elizabeth loved the sun and she thought the baby just might be enjoying it too. She felt that he was content, in his warm, watery cocoon; she was imagining that he was sleeping and dreaming of growing up to be a footballer, which at least would explain why his leg kept shooting out.

  The back garden at Rhymer Street was small but perfectly formed. There was a little stone-flagged patio with a table and chairs, where she had spent many a pleasant sunny afternoon after school with her Auntie Elsie, soaking up the day’s last rays and tucking into a glass of Ribena and a Golden Syrup sandwich. Roses flanked either side of a little ragged path, which cut through the flowerbeds to a second shaded area where Elizabeth had bought her auntie a swinging seat in the sales with her first wages. They had put it at the top of the garden where Sam was now buried and where her Auntie Elsie’s ashes had been scattered too, and where Cleef always sat, strangely enough. He was there now, motionless in sleep, except for his snakelike black tail periodically tapping as if in impatience. There was nothing to the back of the house but allotments and, give or take the distant sounds of the odd car in the neighbouring streets, it was usually peaceful and quiet.

  She was just dropping off, savouring the warm feeling of the baby squiggling inside her, when she had the weirdest feeling that she was being watched, and it sent her catapulting back into full consciousness. She jerked up as she saw the large figure looming at the back gate.

  ‘What are you–some mad stalker?’ she shouted, shielding her eyes from the strong light.

  ‘I was just working out if you were asleep or just resting your eyes. I didn’t want to wake you,’ said John.

  ‘You did wake me,’ she said.

  ‘I knocked at the front.’

  ‘I was here, falling asleep, in the back.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, mock contritely. He didn’t tell her that he’d been watching her, savouring how serene she looked, sitting there with her face raised to the sun and her hand resting lightly on her tummy.

  ‘Come in if you’re coming then,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you a drink, there’s some beers in the frid…’ She tried to get up but fell back again, cursing. ‘Hang on, I’ll give it another go!’

  ‘I’ll go, Miss Weeble,’ he said, coming in and pushing her gently back down. ‘What’s that?’ and he indicated the jug on the table.

  ‘Lemonade,’ she said.

  ‘Fancy a shandy?’ he said.

  ‘Shandy drinker? You?’ she teased.

  ‘It’s very refreshing on a day like this. By heck, it’s hot; I bet you’re glad you’ve finished work.’

  ‘I was just lying here thinking the same,’ she said, stretching her legs out and putting them up on the chair. She looked like she had elephantitis, judging by her ankles. Did celebrities get all these unglamorous symptoms, she thought, or was it just normal people? She couldn’t imagine Demi Moore giving interviews about her piles, although so far so good, she had escaped that particular symptom–unlike Janey, who was suffering and imparting too many details for the others ever to enjoy a bunch of grapes again.

  Boobs like watermelons, swollen fingers, battery acid heartburn…she didn’t think her body could ever go back to normal after all these changes. There was even a weird brown line that had appeared on her stomach, from her navel down, that made her wonder if she had started to split in half until Helen told her it was a normal linea nigra–a simple, bog standard ‘black line’. At least Miss Ramsay’s lessons had come in useful for translating the language of pregnancy if not for conversing with any Roman soldiers who happened to be touring the area. She only hoped she could say a big fat goodbye to the chronic backache after the baby’s birth. She didn’t half envy Janey when she said George gave her those lovely back-rubs every night.

  ‘How you feeling then?’ John said, bringing two half-glasses of beer out, topping them up with lemonade and setting them on the little wrought-iron table.

  ‘Fat, lumpy and kicked to death. I think I’ve got Pele in here.’

  ‘Can I?’ he said, stretching his hand out tentatively.

  ‘Be my guest!’ said Elizabeth. Even a woman in the market had asked that question and she had found, oddly for her, that she had been proud to show him off. John put his hand down carefully on her stomach and the baby wriggled underneath it.

  ‘He’s saying hell
o,’ said Elizabeth, grinning.

  ‘Wow!’ he said, smiling with fascination; he could actually see her tummy changing shape, lifting and shifting. ‘Look at him go!’

  ‘Tell me about it!’

  ‘Is everything all right with you? You know, blood pressure and all that?’

  ‘I think so, but I went to see the consultant this morning and he wants me back in a fortnight ’cos the baby is the wrong way round.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know really, only that it would be better if he was the right way round. He said I hadn’t to worry, so I’m trying not to think about it.’ She shrugged and swallowed and he could see that she was worried, despite the bravado act. She shifted his hand to a higher place on her stomach. ‘Look, see this hard bit? That’s his head.’

  ‘Crikey, that’s solid!’ he said, feeling it. ‘Can’t believe you’ve got a little baby in there. Really, it’s amazing.’

  ‘I know. I still can’t quite believe it myself yet.’

  ‘So when are you seeing Bubble and Trouble again then?’ he said, taking his hand away before it outstayed its welcome.

  ‘Well, I’m seeing Janey tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the hospital for a walk around.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Half past five.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  ‘What do you want to walk round a hospital for?’

  ‘Company for you.’

  She thought about it for a second. Where was the harm in it? Janey was taking George. Helen was not going; she had already been with her mother to the posh private hospital.

  ‘Okay then, if you’re that desperate for something to do with your spare time,’ she found herself saying.

  ‘What time shall I pick you up?’

  ‘I’ve to be there at five thirty.’

  ‘Yes, you said and I was listening, you know. Say five past then, that’ll give us plenty of time to get parked up.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, smiling far more than she intended to.

  At exactly five past five the next evening, the horn tooted outside Elizabeth’s house. She noticed that John was all dressed up when she got into the car and smelled of a delicate but manly aftershave. He scrubbed up quite well out of his builder’s garb. Very well, actually, and it was nice of him to make the effort. It made her feel quite special and a bit fluttery in the stomach area.

  They met Janey and George in the main foyer. Janey gave her a knowing wink.

  ‘Bringing your boyfriend, I see?’ she said as the two blokes were talking together in front of them.

  ‘Get stuffed,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He’s just saving me from being a raspberry.’

  ‘Gooseberry,’ corrected Janey. ‘He’s a bit dressed up, isn’t he?’

  ‘Can’t say as I’d noticed,’ sniffed Elizabeth.

  ‘Anyway, come on. Mandy “Just Say No” is here already.’

  They all wandered over to the rest who were congregated by the lifts. After a couple more arrivals, Mandy clapped her hands and welcomed them all. Marc with a c and Pam were still wearing their name badges, and Elizabeth wondered if they had one ready for the baby when it arrived–Ffreddy with two fs, probably. They all waddled off behind Mandy to the Labour Suite. Elizabeth had been imagining something a lot more archaic than the softly painted room with the serene pictures on the wall and beanbags and big cushions all over the floor.

  ‘Some women like to move about in labour and work with gravity,’ Mandy said, then demonstrated how they might use the beanbag, which was much the same position Janey conceived in, if she remembered correctly.

  ‘…Although obviously you can’t get up and do that if you’ve had an epidural,’ Mandy continued, managing to imbue the word with all the qualities of the anti-Christ. She then took them just to the door of the Special Baby Unit and explained that if a baby was premature or needed some intensive treatment, this was where the nursing staff would bring him or her. There was a mother in there gazing at a baby, but luckily she looked quite smiley. Janey was glad they didn’t go in there; she had not let thoughts in of either herself or her baby being poorly, not even when Elizabeth went through that funny phase about dying in childbirth–and she did not want to start entertaining them now.

  Following this, they had a look around the ward. There were some individual rooms with televisions in, as Helen was likely to have–that, and a butler–but most had four beds in them with baby stations at the side that looked like rectangular goldfish tanks.

  ‘They’re alarmed,’ said Mandy. ‘You’ll have a unique key to deactivate it when you want to lift up your baby. Very security conscious we are at Barnsley.’

  They clustered around a mum with her ten-hour-old baby asleep in a tank at her side. He was wrapped up in a pistachio-coloured blanket and he looked like he was peeping out of a perfectly iced little cake. The new mum looked totally knackered but sublimely happy. Elizabeth put her hand on her stomach, trying to reconcile the fact that a baby as big as that was in her tummy, and it freaked her out a little and she came over a little woozy. John saw her rock and his hands closed on her arms to hold her up.

  ‘You all right?’ he bent to her ear and whispered.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, just a bit hot,’ she said, not wanting to draw attention to herself; but she wasn’t fine, not really. She felt totally shell-shocked.

  Janey was even more excited now. The hospital visit just made her realize how close she was to the big day. She couldn’t wait to meet her little baby and, almost more than that, she couldn’t wait to see the baby in George’s arms. They had actually started talking sensibly about names now but she did not want it set it stone, just in case the baby did not suit the name when she saw it. Her parents, apparently, had been going to call her Bonnie–except she arrived into the world all red hair and snarls and looking anything but.

  George was not enthusing so much on the subject of the baby at the moment. Yes, he was excited, but he did not want to see Janey in all that pain. He’d had a sneak look at Four Births when she had gone to bed and had had to switch it off and swig a big brandy.

  Janey asked the others back to the house for a drink after the visit was over, but John said immediately that he couldn’t as he had somewhere to go, and apologized.

  That’s why he was all dressed up, Elizabeth thought. It wasn’t for me, it was for afterwards. She knew immediately what the ‘afterwards’ was–it had to be a date. That would explain the nice aftershave and the smart shirt. She was an unexploded bomb of hormones, fears and insecurities and went quiet and had to concentrate hard to stop tears flooding her eyeballs. The drive home seemed so very long.

  ‘You feeling okay?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. It’s just that there’s a lot to think about.’

  ‘Aye, well, you’ll be forty in just over a year. No wonder you’re getting worried,’ he teased gently, trying to make light of things.

  ‘You’ll be forty in just over a year yourself,’ she tried to joke back, but it didn’t work and came out flat.

  ‘Aye, but I’ll always be younger than you!’

  Not if I die in childbirth.

  She didn’t mean to think that. It just slipped into her head again, as strong as the day when Simon first put the thought there. John braked outside her front door and turned around to take a long hard look at her, because there was definitely something up with her.

  ‘Want me to come in with you for’–he checked his watch–‘five minutes?’

  That slight action wasn’t lost on her.

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’m just done in,’ she clipped. ‘Thanks for coming with me but I don’t need your five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll see—’

  However, she had shut the car door and was gone into the house before he could get the rest of his words out, and it was more than obvious to him that she would not let herself be followed in.

  Once inside, she threw herself into her chair and rocked vig
orously, listening to his car drive off, following the sound of it, wondering where he was going, who he was seeing.

  What did you expect him to do? she thought. Hang around for ever? Put his life on hold for you?

  Elizabeth didn’t know. She didn’t know anything any more, except that she was alone and confused and very, very scared.

  Chapter 47

  It was probably the stupidest thing they had ever done, even stupider than Elizabeth copping off with the disgusting Wayne Sheffield, even stupider than Helen’s first Saturday job in a florist with her pollen intolerance, even stupider than Janey’s penchant for puffball skirts in the 1980s with legs like hers. Watching a video about four real births outranked all those stupid things, especially whilst eating a Deep Pan pizza that was looking more and more like a placenta by the minute.

  The water birth had looked very calming at first, until the woman started screaming in agony, and not even the wondrously happy look on her face when the baby arrived about five years later could make up for the full horror of what they had just witnessed. The ‘normal’ birth, woman on table, legs splayed, pushing and groaning a lot, featured a ventouse and then a forceps delivery. The baby arrived with a pointy head like an alien from Planet Ugly and a bruised swollen face, screaming the narrator into second volume place.

  ‘I think I’d scream if I had a chuffing Dyson sucking me out as well,’ said Janey, who was most categorically not looking forward to the birth experience now as much as she had been. She kept reminding herself to keep focusing on the beautiful little baby she would have at the end of all the pain, but the picture kept slipping away from her as if it was coated with mind grease. She tried to tell herself that she might be one of the lucky ones who only did two pushes and a shove anyway. It had been known, her midwife had said at the last antenatal; not everyone had long drawn-out labours, and she cited some welcome examples.