Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  She had spotted something lying on the desk that was round and flesh-coloured with what looked like a raspberry stuck on top.

  ‘It’s a paperweight,’ explained Dimpsie, ‘shaped like a breast. It’s been in the shop for several years but no one’s shown the least interest in buying it so I’ve brought it home. I think it’s rather witty, actually.’

  ‘Do you?’ Evelyn looked at it again. A dribble of red paint from the nipple had run into the pink part, which was beginning to flake. Her eyebrows went up. ‘How extraordinary.’

  My father did not come home that night and was half an hour late for surgery the next day. Despite murmurs of unrest in the waiting room he hummed as he took off his coat, flexed his arms above his head and came over to the desk to look at the list of appointments. He seemed perfectly unconscious of my presence, as though occupying another, far happier planet. I thought of my mother that morning, uncharacteristically silent as she had driven me into the town. After I’d got out, when she thought I wasn’t looking, she had leaned her head on the steering wheel. I had never hated him so much.

  The patients whizzed in and out. Tom was evidently in a decisive mood. By half-past eleven only Mrs Mansard was left in the waiting room and I began to look forward to an early lunch with Dimpsie at the Singing Swan. As I started to put away the files, I wondered if it might be possible over beans on toast to breach the silence on the subject of my father’s love affairs. Sex affairs would be a better description, I thought angrily. I heard the front door bang and the next moment the waiting room was taken up by a giant of a man accompanied by a young woman.

  ‘Where’s t’e doctor?’ he demanded, bringing an enormous fist down on the appointments book. ‘We must see him right away. Me girl’s in trouble.’

  I was about to ask if it was an emergency when she let out a low groan rising to a scream like a factory siren and sank to the floor. I picked up the telephone to ask my father to come quickly but he must have heard her yell for he was kneeling beside her before I had time to press the intercom button.

  ‘Marigold, ring for an ambulance,’ he said after a cursory glance.

  He and the giant lifted the girl between them and carried her into the consulting room.

  Emergency services said they would send a helicopter as the road from Carlisle was blocked with drifting snow. Tom appeared in his shirtsleeves in the doorway. ‘You’d better come in, Marigold. I may need help.’

  I hopped in, wondering what use I could possibly be to anyone in my hobbled state. The girl was lying on the examination couch, her knees apart, grimacing and screeching.

  ‘How long’s she been in labour?’ Tom asked the giant, who was pacing the floor and clutching his head.

  ‘Two days, near enough.’

  ‘All right. You go outside and wait.’ Tom pushed him towards the door. He tried to resist but my father said more urgently, ‘You’re just in my way. I need room if I’m going to be able to help her. Look, I can’t promise anything. You ought to have brought her in long before this.’

  Then the poor man went away without another word.

  ‘Marigold, in the cupboard – a metal box marked Obstetrics.’

  I found it and took it over, averting my gaze from the sufferer not only because I am extremely squeamish but also to save her embarrassment. But she was probably past caring about modesty. Two days! I had seen plenty of films in which women made granny knots in the bed rails and pleaded to be put permanently out of their misery. I covered my face with my hands as Tom burrowed between the girl’s legs.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ he said, ‘fully dilated.’ The girl yelled loud enough to damage our eardrums. Not that I blamed her one little bit. I was close to yelling myself. ‘Breach,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll try and turn it. Marigold, come here and hold her hand.’

  Tentatively I patted the girl’s shoulder. She seized my hand and appeared to derive comfort from sobbing into my sleeve. I was only too willing to take her into my arms. For one thing it prevented either of us from seeing what was going on at the other end. Also, I would have run naked to Carlisle and back, with both legs in plaster casts, if it would have brought her relief. God knows what Tom was doing. The girl gave several shattering shrieks.

  ‘I can’t turn it. Where’s that fucking ambulance? What’s your name?’

  ‘Nan. A-h-h-h-h!’

  ‘All right, Nan. Don’t push if you can help it. I’m going to do an episiotomy. Stay where you are, Marigold. I’ll pop in an anaesthetic.’

  I could not have moved if I had wanted to. Surprisingly for such a small girl, Nan had a grip like Mr Universe. Tom went over to the cupboard. I caught a glimpse of a large syringe. I dislike injections of any kind but there are some parts of the human anatomy that ought never to have needles stuck in them. I made a vow never to have sex again.

  ‘I’m putting it in now. You won’t feel much.’

  Nan and I were clutching each other as though going down for the last time, our heads pressed together, sweat and tears transferring themselves from her cheek to mine. She uttered a prolonged shrill squeal like an officer being piped aboard, then went limp.

  ‘I think it’s worked,’ I said to Tom. ‘She’s gone to sleep. Thank heavens!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool! I’ve only given her a local. She’s fainted. Just as well. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  I glanced round to see him brandishing a wicked-looking blade. ‘You’re not going to cut the baby out!’ I cried in horror.

  ‘If I don’t the mother may die. And the baby most assuredly will. Now come here and open that pack of dressings. There’s going to be plenty of blood. Shine that anglepoise directly on to the perineum.’

  I did as I was told, getting an involuntary glimpse of frightening anatomical details.

  ‘Hold that leg … she’s coming round. For Christ’s sake, hold her still!’

  He brandished an instrument like a giant pair of nutcrackers. I clutched Nan tightly in my arms; for a few dreadful seconds Tom and I seemed to be engaged in a tug-of-war, with her body as the rope. He cursed descriptively and told her to push for all she was worth. Nan bawled and all was confusion and horror as flecks of blood flew onto my sleeve. Then he shouted, ‘All right! It’s coming! One last push!’ and the next moment a high-pitched cry rose above our cursing and screaming, the wail of an infant dragged forcibly into the world. The moment I heard it, a rush of entirely unexpected emotion made me weep uncontrollably.

  ‘I’m going to cut the cord. Find something to wrap it in – something reasonably clean.’

  I held out a towel. Tom placed something with waving limbs, streaked with blood and white sticky stuff, into my arms. It stopped crying, knitted up its tiny forehead and opened its eyes. I looked into blue-grey spheres like black pearls. They flickered about a little and then fixed for a moment on my face and widened as though astonished. I saw a question in them. If the baby had been able to speak it might have asked ‘Who are you? Who am I? What is life?’

  ‘Hello, you darling little thing,’ I crooned, broken-voiced with love. It was the first time I had held a baby. It was so real, so warm, such an individual presence, and yet a moment ago it had not existed. It had been alive, of course, but out of sight inside Nan. I smiled as it stared solemnly back at me and flourished a tiny fist. Then, remembering with sorrow that this was not my baby, I laid it reverently on Nan’s chest. She stopped screaming and looked with amazement at the tiny monkey face gazing up at hers.

  ‘Blimey!’ she said, expressing my own feelings exactly. We exchanged glances of wonder. The baby remained calm, looking at its mother’s face. It parted its violet-pink lips. ‘Blimey!’ said Nan again.

  ‘You’ll have to push again,’ said my father. ‘We want the placenta out.’

  There was a brief bad moment, then I saw something out of the corner of my eye that was dark red and glistening, which Tom put into a plastic box. ‘That’ll have to go to the hospital with you so they can be certain it’s all come out. Now,’
he had returned to the business end, ‘I’m going to put in a couple of stitches. Can you feel that?’

  ‘Ye-ho-o-w!’ cried Nan.

  ‘Nan, dear.’ I bent over her. ‘What are you going to call your baby?’

  ‘Oh-oh-oh!’ she wept. ‘I don’t know. It hurts like buggery!’

  ‘She’s so pretty. What about a lovely flower name like Lily? Or Primrose? Um …’ I struggled to remember the names of the flowers in the bouquets that were presented during curtain calls. ‘Mimosa perhaps? Or Carnation?’

  My father gave a shout of laughter. ‘You can’t call a child after a tin of milk. Besides, it’s a boy.’

  ‘No! Is it? Oh well, not a flower then. Except there was a boy called Narcissus. What’s your surname?’

  ‘It’s … ow-aarh! … O’Shaunessy.’

  ‘Narcissus O’Shaunessy. Too many s’s. Hopeless if you had a lisp.’

  ‘All right. That’ll do for the moment,’ said my father standing up. ‘They can tidy her up at the hospital.’

  ‘Well done!’ I squeezed Nan’s hand gently. ‘You were so brave. I’d have made much more fuss.’

  She wiped away tears with the back of her hand. ‘It did bloody hurt.’

  ‘I can’t bear to even think about it. I’m hopeless when it comes to pain.’

  ‘Yeah?’ She gave me a wan smile. ‘Well, I’m never goin’ through that again, anyways,’ she said with angry emphasis.

  ‘I’ve heard women say – my mother included – that you forget all about the pain once the baby’s been born.’

  ‘I bloody shan’t! I’m not goin’ te let another man lay his fuckin’ hand on me for the rest of me natural.’

  ‘Wise words,’ said my father, who was standing at the sink washing his hands and arms. ‘But I doubt if you’ll remember them.’ He dried himself with a paper towel then went to the door and opened it. ‘You can come in now, Mr O’Shaunessy. You’ve got a healthy son. A good eight pounds, I’d say, at a guess.’

  The giant came in. Though he was the instigator of so much suffering, I felt sorry for him. His eyes were red as though he had been weeping.

  ‘Grandson, you mean.’ He strode over to where Nan lay. ‘This’s my daughter. And if I ever catch the bastard who got her into this state …’ He stopped and appeared to be suffering some sort of internal conflict. Then he lifted his arm to point a finger at the ceiling. ‘Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.’ His beard waggled fiercely, like Charlton Heston’s in The Ten Commandments. It was an impressive sight.

  ‘Oh, Dad!’ Nan looked annoyed. ‘Don’t go on so. It was my fault as much as his.’

  The giant shook his head. ‘Yer only a little kid. A slip of a motherless girl.’ He appealed to my father, in mingled sorrow and anger. ‘Sixteen, she is. Fifteen when t’at bogger had his way wit’ her. A gent.’ His tone became sarcastic. ‘Looks down on folk like us, I’ll be bound, but ’twasn’t beneat’ him te take advantage of a child who doesn’t know t’e ways of t’e world.’

  Even I, who am so hopeless at accents, had gathered by this time that he was an Irishman. He said gorl for girl and loike instead of like.

  ‘Shut it, Dad.’ Nan turned her head away as if unbearably weary. Another tear slid down her cheek. ‘I hate men. I thought he’d take me away from that bloody caravan, but he didn’t want to know once I was up the duff.’

  ‘Never mind, darling.’ The giant laid a huge hand on her shoulder and dropped his voice to a soft growl. ‘Daddy’ll take care of ye. And I’ll look after t’e little laddie too.’ He pressed a sausage-sized finger against the infant’s cheek. ‘A fine boy. He can’t help who his father was. I’ll make it op to him for being a poor wee bastard. We’ll call him Paddy after me brother.’

  ‘Uncle Paddy was a drunk and a thief,’ said Nan fiercely. ‘He’s my babby and I’m choosing his name.’

  They had no time to argue the point, for at that moment two paramedics arrived. She was placed on a stretcher and carried away.

  ‘T’ank you, Doctor.’ Mr O’Shaunessy wrung my father’s hand. ‘You saved me daughter’s life and the lad’s and I’m grateful—’

  ‘No need for gratitude.’ Tom drew back his hand and massaged it tenderly. ‘It’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘Gosh!’ I sank into a chair as soon as we were alone and pressed my hand to my forehead. ‘What an experience! I feel as though I’ve been taken apart and remade from scratch.’

  ‘You’ve obviously been leading a very sheltered life.’ Tom was putting all the instruments he had used into the sink. ‘Ring Bunker, will you? This lot will have to be sterilized. Damn! I’ve got blood on my trousers and I’m going out to lunch.’ He took a cloth and began to scrub at his knee.

  I was dismayed. ‘Not the Singing Swan?’

  ‘Good God, no! I’m going to the Castle in Carlisle.’

  ‘Isn’t that terribly expensive?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s extremely good. Don’t worry,’ he added, grinning at me over his shoulder as he went out, ‘I’m not paying.’

  I did not need to ask who was.

  ‘It brought it home to me,’ I said to Dimpsie twenty minutes later, ‘how different his life is from ours. I was so frightened that Nan might die. That the baby might die. I was horrified by the pain and messiness. It seemed so … primitive. Barbarous, even. He was marvellously cool, despite everything depending on him. I have to say I admired him tremendously for the way he dealt with it. If the responsibility had been mine, I think I’d have gone to pieces.’

  ‘Not if you’d had his training and experience.’ Dimpsie waved an anaemic-looking chip speckled with burnt fat on her fork. ‘But I know what you mean. All the time he’s dealing with the sharp end of life while you’re standing on tiptoe in sequins and tulle and I’m cleaning the bath.’

  Because I loved her I did not say that these days unless I cleaned it the bath remained dirty. My father seemed to be getting his baths as well as other things elsewhere. ‘It was such a darling baby,’ I said. ‘So tiny and soft and delicate, but you felt a presence. When I looked into his eyes I felt there was a proper person looking back at me.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true.’ Dimpsie prodded at a bit of fried black pudding. She’d ordered a glass of beer with her lunch and I was certain it wasn’t the first drink of the day. ‘When you were put into my arms I knew immediately you were nothing like Kate.’ She sighed. ‘You said the girl was brought in by her father. So where’s the baby’s father?’

  ‘He’s done a bunk. It’s such a shame. Nan’s father said he was a gentleman.’

  ‘Obviously not in the strict sense of the word. I suppose he meant middle-class.’

  ‘Being a gentleman has more to do with style than virtue.’ I repeated Rafe’s lesson.

  ‘It’s disgraceful, anyway. Are you sure they were tinkers?’

  ‘Nan mentioned a caravan she was keen to escape from.’

  ‘Why don’t we go and visit them?’ Dimpsie suddenly looked brighter. ‘We could take them some of the less hideous baby clothes from the shop.’

  ‘Mightn’t they think we were patronizing them?’

  ‘We could just take one or two little things at first and test the water.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t like people who aren’t tinkers visiting them.’

  ‘Well, then we can go away, can’t we?’

  I remembered times during my childhood when Dimpsie had tried to befriend what one might call social outcasts. Two occasions stood out particularly clearly in my memory. There had been the old man who lived in the shepherd’s hut on the top of the moor. It had been Christmas Eve and Dimpsie’s soft heart had been touched as she thought of him all alone when all about were surrounded by their loved ones and, in the case of Tom’s spiteful old mother and his crabby Aunt Bernice, not-so-loved ones. As it was miles from the nearest road, we had walked a long way carrying heavy bags of plum puddings, mince pies and crackers. The three of us had carolled The First No-well outside his front d
oor. A window had opened above our heads and we were told to put a sock in it and bugger off. My mother had attempted to woo him with kind words but he had chucked an iron at us which had hit Kate on the head and drawn blood.

  Then there was the woman who had been ostracized by the townsfolk because it was rumoured she was a Satanist. She had invited us in for a cup of herbal tea before taking off her clothes and dancing in a pentagram. Kate and I had refused to undress but my mother was always game for anything. She had hopped about in the buff while Circe – probably not her real name – had chanted something incomprehensible.

  ‘Come on you two stick-in-the-muds,’ my mother had called gaily, her breasts and stomach bobbing and wobbling like frightened animals trapped in sacks. ‘This is fun!’

  She had changed her tune when Circe produced a live cockerel and a chopper. Kate and I had screamed and run away as fast as our legs could carry us. Dimpsie, naked beneath her coat, had caught us up on the road to Dumbola Lodge, carrying the cockerel under one arm. The RSPCA man was called and soon afterwards Circe moved away. We gave the cockerel to Evelyn and it fathered a long line of handsome, pure white progeny.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ I said reluctantly.

  Dimpsie looked pleased for a moment, then grew thoughtful. She traced the pattern of the tablecloth with the end of her knife. ‘Does your father seem in good spirits?’

  ‘Much as usual.’ I could not bring myself to tell her that he was disgustingly cheerful.

  ‘Oh.’ She looked through the window at a passing car. ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘No.’ Another lie.

  ‘Did he say when he’d be home?’

  I shook my head. All my recent admiration for my father’s handling of the crisis had been replaced by angry contempt.

  17

  ‘Hello, Marigold. You’re looking particularly gorgeous.’

  It was the day of Evelyn’s lunch party and Rafe had come to fetch me. As soon as I heard the car, I swung myself into the porch and shut the front door behind me. I was reluctant that anyone should see the state of the house. Some things, like washing floors and carrying laundry upstairs, are next to impossible with crutches. Dimpsie had been in bed for several days with a rampaging headache. Sometimes she came down in her dressing gown to replenish her flask of tea. I knew it contained mostly gin, but I didn’t like to object. She was desperately unhappy and I had no idea how to help her.