A Mother's Duty

by June Francis

  ‘You think this is it? Oh heck! What should I do?’ Annie’s voice held a note of panic. ‘Should I go and get the big fella? Or should I get Hannah?’

  Kitty was determined to keep calm as she faced her cousin, but she was now starting to feel fraught. ‘John’s gone to the docks. Where’s Nancy?’

  ‘She went out.’

  ‘She’s got no right to go out! She’s supposed to be keeping an eye on me! Dr Galloway said I was to go into hospital but now it’s come to it I don’t know if I want to!’ Her fingers trembled as she gripped the edge of the table. ‘People die in hospitals.’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t go then?’ said Annie, alarmed. It wasn’t like her cousin to talk in such a way. Perhaps she’d had a premonition? ‘Should I get Mam?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kitty put a hand to her head. ‘I’d better go and change and find a bag and stuff some things in it. I might just walk up there.’

  Annie looked at her as if she had gone completely doolally. ‘Perhaps you should just sit down and take it easy.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit down,’ cried Kitty and sallied forth into the lobby like a ship in full sail.

  Annie followed her.

  Nancy was standing at the chiffonier arranging flowers. She looked at Kitty and dropped a carnation. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re back. I am going to have a baby,’ said Kitty distinctly and began to climb the stairs.

  ‘Of course you are, Kit dear,’ said Nancy hastily, exchanging glances with Annie. ‘You’d best get off to the hospital right away.’ She left the flowers and hurried after Kitty.

  Annie followed and whispered to Nancy, ‘She’s acting strange. She said she doesn’t want to go the hospital. She thinks she’s going to die.’

  Nancy said in alarm, ‘She has to go to the hospital. She can’t have the baby here!’

  ‘I think she’s changed her mind now because she said she’s going to walk, but she could still change it back again.’

  Nancy bit her lip and caught hold of Kitty’s arm, bringing her to a halt on the first landing. ‘Listen, Kit dear! Malcolm says everything is beautifully hygienic in the maternity hospital. No septicaemia and trained midwives there to look after you.’

  ‘I know.’ Kitty’s smile flashed briefly and she pulled her arm out of Nancy’s hold and carried on upstairs. Nancy had started calling Dr Galloway Malcolm in the last week.

  Nancy and Annie followed her and Hannah, who had been sweeping the bedrooms, came out of one of the rooms and called, ‘Hast thee started, missus?’

  ‘Her waters have broken,’ said Annie, leaning over the bannister rail. ‘You’d better start praying.’

  ‘Is she going the hospital?’ Hannah left the Ewbank and hurried after them.

  ‘I shall walk to the hospital,’ said Kitty, sitting down on the stairs abruptly and taking several deep breaths.

  Nancy squeezed in beside her. ‘But what if the baby starts coming on the way? Perhaps we should get an ambulance?’

  Kitty shook her head. ‘It’s not going to come yet, believe me.’ She rose to her feet and went on up the flight of stairs, packed a bag with those things she deemed necessary, and set out for the hospital with Nancy.

  Kitty laboured for the rest of the day whilst a fraught John walked the surrounding streets accompanied by Nelson. Every time he came to the hospital he would go inside and enquire after his wife, but it was not until half past midnight that Kitty gave birth to a nine-pound boy.

  As they held up her screaming baby she could not believe he was her son. Her emotions were all in confusion and the darkness of the depression that suddenly overshadowed her outstripped the tearing and searing pain she had endured. She turned her face away and stared unseeingly at a far wall. The baby could not be a boy. It was a girl, all through her pregnancy it had been a girl.

  When John came to see her that evening she lay against the pillows not even attempting to put on a bright face for him. His happiness was obvious. It shone in his eyes.

  ‘A McLeod laddie to achieve the things I never achieved. Thanks, darling Kit! You can’t imagine how I feel at this moment. He’s all that I could wish for.’

  He’s not what I wished for, she thought bitterly. There was a sensation in her chest which felt like a lump of sandstone had lodged there.

  ‘I’ll work! I’ll slave! I’ll do anything so he can have his chance,’ said her husband, lifting her hands to his lips and smothering them in kisses. ‘You’ll see. One day you’ll be proud of our son.’

  She wished he would go away. She only wanted to be left alone, but no one was going to allow that. She had to breastfeed her baby and it was as much as she could bear to touch him, only by pretending could she do that. He could not be a boy. She had prayed for a girl and God would not have let her down. The baby was a girl, she told herself. She did not want a boy.

  Two weeks later Kitty and her baby came home to the Arcadia. He was to be called after his father, so John said, but Kitty had made no response. Even when Ben arrived home from school and went down the sunlit yard where the baby lay in his pram and immediately declared, ‘We’ve got a real Little John now,’ she could not bring herself to accept his words.

  Ben gazed down at the face almost concealed by a pink bonnet, glanced at her and said in disgust, ‘What’s he wearing that for? Pink’s for girls.’

  ‘That’s what I told your mother,’ said a grim-faced Annie, who was unpegging nappies from the line. ‘But she said she knitted it for him so he’s got to wear it.’ She shot Kitty a worried glance.

  ‘He looks daft.’ Ben pursed his lips. ‘When’s he going to be big enough for me to play with?’

  ‘You’ll be working by the time he’s your age,’ said Annie. ‘Anyhow, don’t you go wishing his life away. He’s a luv’ly baby. Let’s enjoy him.’ She unfastened the ribbons on the bonnet and eased it off. ‘There now, beautiful boy,’ she said.

  Hannah, at the other end of the line, sniffed. ‘Pity it was another lad. The missus wanted a girl.’

  Ben said swiftly, ‘You won’t cut off his tail like you were going to my mouse, Hannah. Ma wouldn’t let you.’ He looked at his mother but she made no response.

  ‘Of course she wouldn’t,’ said Annie, chuckling. ‘He’s a lovely, healthy baby and that’s the main thing. And good! There hasn’t been a whimper out of him all afternoon.’

  ‘Thee waits till he gets to bed,’ said Hannah morosely. ‘He’ll wake us up soon enough demanding attention like all his sex.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with sex,’ said Annie loftily. ‘I’ve got five sisters and I can tell you they made demands on Ma all right. I remember our—’

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Hannah cutting in ruthlessly. ‘Thee’s besotted. I don’t know why thee don’t find a man of thy own and breed. Then we’d all have a bit of peace.’

  ‘Because I’m a one-man woman that’s why,’ countered Annie. ‘But he went away and—’

  ‘Didn’t want thee, did he?’

  ‘That’s enough, Hannah,’ said Kitty, some memory from the past stirring her to defend her cousin. ‘It’s time the vegetables were prepared. And Annie,’ she turned to her cousin, ‘perhaps you could go and get me some Nestle’s condensed milk and a couple of feeding bottles and teats. I’m not going to have the time to feed this baby myself the way I did the others.’

  ‘I’ll feed him for you,’ said Annie eagerly, and hurried indoors.

  That suited Kitty down to the ground. All she wanted to do now was to get back to work and ignore the baby. But he could not be ignored. When Mick came home he said the baby had his mother’s eyes.

  ‘He’s like the big fella, too,’ said Annie who, having followed the instructions on the tin of milk carefully, was now doing her best to persuade the baby to take to the rubber teat by holding him against her breast in her best surrogate mother fashion, but he was baulking at it.

  ‘Figures,’ said Mick and disappeared upstairs to revise for
his next exam.

  Teddy’s reaction was a bit different to Mick’s. He gave the baby a cursory glance and said to Ben, ‘He’s a threat to you, mate. You won’t be the baby in the family anymore, so there’ll be no more spoiling, shrimp.’ He then went off to change his clothes.

  Ben gazed down at the baby but could not see how he could be a threat. He was so tiny in comparison with him and, besides, his mother did not seem to be giving him any more attention than she did the cat. He went out to ride his tricycle, practising whistling, which he had just managed to master.

  It was a couple of weeks before John realised that Annie was bottle-feeding little John. The baby seldom woke in the night and Kitty breast-fed him first thing in the morning and last thing at night when he was around. There was another thing that was bothering John about the baby. He had put off saying anything because he knew she was disappointed, but now something had to be done. He wasted no more time seeking her out.

  He found her in reception where she was making out menus for the following week. ‘Why is Annie bottle-feeding the baby?’

  ‘It’s better for me,’ said Kitty shortly, not looking up.

  ‘But what about him? It isn’t better for him, Kit,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘What’s up with you? You can’t say you haven’t any breast milk. I know you have.’

  Her head lifted. There were dark circles beneath her eyes because even though the baby slept through the night, she did not. ‘It tires me out feeding him,’ she said.

  His chestnut brows came together. ‘How does it do that? If you’re feeding him you’re sitting down. Feeding him makes you rest, Kit. He needs the goodness that’s in your milk. It makes him stronger to fight disease. And besides bottle-fed babies can end up with upset tummies.’

  ‘Annie knows to boil the bottles and teats.’ She lowered her head again and carried on writing, but her insides were tying themselves in knots.

  John made an exasperated noise and wrenched the fountain pen out of her hand. ‘That’s beside the point. And while I’m at it, will you stop putting pink bonnets on him! I know you’d have liked a girl but he’s a boy and I won’t have you making a cissie out of him. Is that clear, Kit?’

  ‘Perfectly clear.’ She stared at him, wanting to throw herself in his arms, cry against his shoulder and be comforted but the thought that he had managed to give Margaret a daughter and not her held her back. He had failed her.

  ‘Good.’ His expression softened and his eyes searched her face, coming to rest on the unhappy droop of her mouth. ‘Kit, I think it’s time I took over more of the running of this place.’

  A shock rippled through her. ‘No! My mother left it to me. To me! Her daughter!’ Her voice trembled. ‘I can manage perfectly well!’

  ‘No, you can’t,’ insisted John. ‘You’re overtiring yourself. I’ve watched you at work for over a year now and I think it’s time I promoted myself from general dogsbody to manager while you put in more time being a mother.’

  ‘I don’t want to put in more time being a mother,’ she yelled, flinging the menu cards on the floor. ‘This is my place not yours! That baby! He’s yours! Why don’t you look after him and I – and I …’ Her voice broke and she brushed past him and ran out of the hotel.

  She did not stop running until she came to St John’s Gardens behind St George’s Hall. There she sank onto a seat near the memorial statue to the Liverpool King’s Regiment, horrified with the way she had behaved. She did not know what to do. She felt as if her mind and body were encased in a desolation so intense that it was as if she had been bereaved. He would have her locked away. There was something unnatural about a mother who did not want to love her own baby. Love. How could she love it when she longed for that dream baby which had shared her life for the last nine months. How?

  After a while she dragged herself to her feet and turned to make her way home. It was then she saw John sitting on a bench a few yards away. He stood and came towards her, stopping a foot or so in front of her. He looked so unhappy that unexpectedly Kitty’s eyes filled with tears and there was a tightness in her chest which made it hard for her to breathe. She held a tentative hand out to him, which he grasped and pulled through his arm. Neither of them spoke on that walk back to the hotel but she no longer felt so alone.

  The menu cards were still scattered on the floor and she withdrew her arm and picked them up. He went into the kitchen and by the time she followed he had poured out two cups of tea and was sipping his. She sat and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  He nodded. ‘Are you feeling better now?’

  ‘Better than I was.’

  ‘Good. Drink your tea.’

  She did so, relieved that he had not turned down her apology or gone on about her caring for the baby. He only seemed concerned about her wellbeing.

  The bell rang in reception and John left the kitchen. Kitty went over to the sink and washed the cups, gazing out of the window as she did so. Annie was sitting on a chair in the sun, nursing the baby. She was singing a lullaby and suddenly Kitty frowned. What was Annie thinking of? She went outside and called, ‘You’ll spoil him. Put him in the pram.’

  ‘You can’t spoil a baby with love,’ said Annie with a hint of defiance. ‘You should try it yerself.’

  Kitty felt a spurt of anger. How dare Annie, who had never had a child, tell her how to look after her own baby!

  Kitty walked down the yard. ‘Too much mother-love can restrict a child’s development. Mothers can be overprotective so children have trouble in developing confidence by trying things out for themselves.’ She stared at Annie. ‘I read that in the Echo.’

  ‘He’s only a baby,’ said Annie, shaking her head and looking worried. ‘A baby! It’s not his fault he’s not a girl.’

  Kitty’s eyes glinted. ‘I know that! There’s a pot of tea in the kitchen so go and pour yourself one. Then go and brush the stairs.’

  Annie opened her mouth but Kitty said, ‘Go, please!’

  Her cousin put the baby back in the pram and Kitty sat in the chair she had vacated and held her face up to the sun. Little John whimpered but she ignored him. The whimper became a grizzle and the grizzle a cry. She stood and went over to the pram and shook it. For a moment he stopped crying but she could hear him sucking the back of his hand. She lowered the hood, lifted him out and immediately he turned his head and butted her breast rooting with an open mouth. For a moment she was undecided then she began to unbutton her blouse.

  Once again she sat in the sun struggling with her resentment, grief and sense of failure. Why God? Why couldn’t he have been a little girl? So many of her neighbours and acquaintances had said how nice it would have been for her to have a little girl for a change. A daughter who could understand and share the feminine things of life, but it wasn’t to be.

  Her son tugged on her nipple and she looked down at him. A baby! He’s only a baby, she thought, recalling Annie’s words.

  ‘I know it’s not your fault you’re not a girl,’ she said aloud. ‘I know!’

  He looked up at her. His eyelashes had uncurled themselves and were long, luxurious and tipped with gold like his father’s. She thought of John’s pleasure in him and of how he would have forgone that pleasure because he had not wanted to risk her life. Her eyes filled with tears. She closed her eyelids on them, trying to force them back, but they trickled over and down her cheeks. She thought about how it would have been for him and her boys if she had died, and life was suddenly very sweet.

  Slowly she began to relax, aware that the only noises penetrating the sunny yard were those of the suckling baby and a pigeon cooing under the eaves. The dream daughter faded and the reality of the child in her arms took over. At least she knew how to handle boys.

  John found them there half an hour later and thought at first Kitty had dozed off. The baby’s head nestled against her shoulder and a strand of his silky nut brown hair was curled round one of her fingers. He thought he had never seen such a beautiful sight and
his heart swelled with emotion. Then Kitty’s eyelashes fluttered open and for a moment his love and pride of possession was spoilt by fear. Then she smiled and he dared to kiss her.

  When he lifted his mouth from hers, she said quietly, ‘I can’t feed him all the time, John. I can’t give up everything just to look after him.’

  He was still a moment and she waited with her breath catching in her throat. ‘Just give him what you gave your other sons. That’s all I ask,’ he said.

  She nodded and their lips met again. Then, with her carrying the baby, they went up the yard. Once inside the hotel, she changed the baby’s nappy before settling him back in his pram. Then she went and finished the menus.

  Chapter Twenty

  Everything in Kitty’s life did not become smooth sailing just because she had found it in her heart to accept her husband’s dictate and deal positively with her disappointment. She was less tired, though, because almost immediately John made several changes. He had had a telephone installed, hired a couple of girls fresh from school to come in daily and he bought a Maple washing machine. He also told Kitty that it was wrong of her to expect Mick to work in the hotel after he had finished school.

  The latter was the biggest surprise. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘He knows the ropes. He’ll be a big help.’

  John leaned over the chiffonier towards her and said, ‘I know you want him here, Kit, but stop trying to control his life. Let go of the reins. It would be a waste of his talents if he took over what I presume was Jimmy’s role in the hotel. The lad’s had a grammar-school education. Let him do his own choosing or he might resent your actions in later life.’

  She was shocked by his words. She only wanted Mick to be secure and not have to worry about getting the sack from another employer.

  As soon as her eldest son arrived home she spoke to him but did not immediately say what John had said. Instead she asked Mick what he thought of working in the hotel as a full-time job.

  There was a pause before he answered. ‘I know it’s what you want, Ma, but it’s not what I want.’