Eggshell Days (32 page)

Mog was already having one.

“Little pushes, Jon, if she can—try and get her to control them. Gentle pushes if she can.”

“Okay, Mog, with me, little breaths like this.”

Sita heard her husband doing what they had done together with each of theirs. She quickly brushed away a couple of tears.

The contraction ended. Mog was whining intermittently. She could feel her energy leaving her. “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.”

“I bet it does.”

“Tell her she's doing well, to think how well she's doing. Come on, encourage her.”

“Good girl, Mog. Nature does this all the time. You're doing really well. Be brave—you'll soon have a baby. Come on.”

Another contraction came.

“And again?” Jonathan asked his wife.

“What can you see?”

“The head still.”

“Keep her going.”

“Go with it,” Jonathan told Mog. “Go on, push. I can see the crown. Maybe even the forehead.”

“That's it,” Sita said down the phone, hearing Mog's familiar noise. “Good girl. Push as hard as you can.”

“Push,” urged Jonathan. “As hard as you can.”

With one heave, the baby's head found its way out into the world, face down. It wasn't just blue, it was a deep shade of navy. Jonathan's heart banged against his chest.

“There, the head is out. Good girl,” he said, already imagining the worst. He thought his own heart had stopped for a minute. “Sita? Remember Jay?”

She heard the sheer panic.

“Is it blue? Feel around the neck for the cord, feel for the softness of the cord. It's probably still pulsating. You'll be able to put your fingers under it if it's there. Can you do that?” She knew it was the equivalent of him asking her to jump out of an airplane.

“No,” he said.

“Yes you can, you can. Imagine it is me. Imagine it is Lila in there. Please, quick Jon.”

Jonathan put his fingers gently round the squashed wet little head of Mog's baby. “Yes. I can feel it.” It was warm and throbbing and very very soft.

“Loop it over the baby's head. Hold the baby gently, don't pull it. See if you can gently loop it over.”

He put his fingers under the cord and eased it out. For a moment, it felt as if it was too short, or stuck, but the blueness of the face, the thought of Sita and Lila, made him try again. It came in a trice, a quick slip.

“It's there,” he told Sita.

“Good. Now watch this little miracle. The head should turn to the left or the right so it can get its shoulders out. You can ease them out if you want. Don't worry if it's still blue.”

Sure enough, the tiny throttled head shifted.

“Yes,” he spluttered down the phone. “Yes!”

“Oh, Jon, well done! Bloody good for you! Well done!”

Jonathan put his hands back round the baby's neck, and with a slither and a gush of fluid he delivered the baby up onto Mog's stomach.

“There's Mummy,” he said, “Look, it's Mummy. That's it. Towel, Dean, quick.”

The new father laid a light-brown towel and a knitted patchwork blanket over his silent child. Mog tucked it in and laid her hands on the small still body as she said, “Hello, hello, hello,” over and over again, stroking the baby's rumpled, choked face.

“He's a little boy,” Dean wept. “A little boy, are you? Hey?”

“I can't hear anything,” Sita said quietly. “Jon, is the baby breathing?”

“I can't tell.”

“Are the waters clear? Tell me if you can see any meconium—dark fluid.” On the other end, she let the tears roll. The sensation of salt water on her cheeks was almost alien, it had been so long.

“I can't.”

“Wrap the baby, darling, and keep it warm. Dry it as quickly as you can.”

“It's wrapped.”

“No!” Sita heard Dean shout as if he had come out of a coma. “Why is he blue?”

Everyone felt the same surge of alarm.

“Rub the baby gently with another towel, little circular movements to get its circulation going,” Sita shouted. “Wipe round his mouth and nose, get the mucus out of the way if you can.”

“Yes.”

“Jonathan? I'm waiting to hear a cry. I really need to hear a cry.” Even her voice was strained to the limit now.

“So do I. Shall I smack him?”

Everything was very, very quiet.

And then it happened: a little mew, followed by a slightly louder one which turned into a soft bawl.

“There it is! That's it!” She could tell Jonathan was crying too now.

Suddenly, all talk merged.

“You did it.”

“It was you.”

“He's beautiful. Look at him, look at him.”

“I love you.”

“I'm so proud of you.”

“I'm sorry. I'd forgotten how.”

“So had I.”

“Look at us.”

Jonathan held the phone to his cheek as closely as Mog held her cheek to her little boy.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

“You complete hero,” Sita told him. “Well done, Jon, well done.”

“Sita, can you come? I want you here.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'm on my way.”

And as Jonathan looked at Mog and Dean and their baby son, the blue of the fresh newborn face slowly and certainly turned to pink.

“Thank you,” he said, into the phone, walking away for his own private moment. “I don't know what I would have done without you.”

“You'd have coped.”

“No, I wouldn't.”

“Yes, you would.”

“But thank God for you.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

“Just remember that,” she said. “I'll see you in a minute. Put the kettle on.”

“I will. I love you, Sita.”

“And I love you too, Jon. I really do.”

*   *   *

In the garden, Maya was waiting for an “I'm me” moment to arrive. She hadn't had one for a while, not since Mum had started locking herself in her sewing room. She was really looking forward to one—that funny, slightly spooky feeling that she was the one and only, that confirmation that she knew exactly who she was. They never came when you summoned them, though.

“Whatever she's supposedly making in that bloody room, it'd better be good,” Niall had said sarcastically at supper last night, when Emmy's chair remained empty yet again. “It isn't anything,” Maya had told him in secret later. “I know what Mum's like. She won't let me in to have a look. If she had done something, she'd show me. I bet it's just a load of half-started stuff like it usually is. I bet she's not working at all. Can't you smell the smoke?”

Now that Maya knew eggshell days were a continuing theme, she had decided she could more or less ignore them. She had even nearly been brave enough to go to the beach with the others without asking, in a defiant stand against her recent enforced grounding, but she'd lost her nerve at the last minute when she'd seen the red rims of Emmy's eyes. Better to make her own fun outside, within shouting distance but out of hissing range.

There were some things still to be thankful for. In London she would have been cooped up in the flat, forced to be in a bad mood too. She could remember all too clearly the way she used to feel before venturing into her mum's tiny bedroom once the tiny television in the tiny sitting room got a tiny bit boring, and asking her in a tiny voice when she was going to get up. It was about being a tiny bit frightened of getting shouted at, a tiny bit frightened of seeing her mum crying again, and a lot of being utterly bored with it all.

Now she could look on the bright side. At least she wasn't the only one who had to deal with them. At least she had Niall on tap whenever she wanted him. At least everything here was the opposite of tiny, even if it was the bad mood.

She ran between the massive granite gateposts that led to the main road, and hopped back over the low brick wall. As she landed, she felt the boggy marsh mud seep into the gap between her ankle and her trainer. The noise it made when she pulled her foot out was lovely, but she was too concerned about the hacksaw and the pruning shears in her pocket to do it again. She patted the side of her coat. The tools she needed to cut a big enough gap in the bushes to get the yellow dinghy through were safe inside, ready for work.

She and Jay had discovered the dinghy in the store, folded up behind the tractor. At first they'd ignored it, stepping on it, thinking it was an old coat or something, but then she'd noticed the rope and the oarlocks.

Jay had only started to help once she'd shouted, “Boat,” so really it was more hers than his. If she'd shouted, “Old coat,” he wouldn't have bothered.

Never mind, she thought philosophically, you live and learn. When you find something you would prefer to keep all to yourself, you keep your mouth shut. He had found the foot pump, though, and he'd made his calves ache by inflating it so quickly, so she'd promised she wouldn't take it on the water without him. But he'd have to hurry up. If he wasn't back by the time she'd finished cutting back the bamboo, she'd told him, she would carry on without him.

*   *   *

Emmy sat at her sewing machine, her bottom aching from the hours and hours she had sat in the same position. The chair was hard and the wooden base pressed into her increasingly fleshless buttocks. She wouldn't be surprised if she had a bruise, or the equivalent of a bedsore, if she could find the time to look.

Her foot pressed determinedly down on the pedal, her hands splayed on the meter of red satin as it trundled through the machine. On the floor were piles of fur, net and canvas. On the shelves were bags of zips, velcro, buttons.

She seamed, she zig-zagged, she reversed stitch. She smoked, stood up, walked around, had a think, then she sat back down again and set the stitch selector from smocking to stretch.

She was working like a woman possessed, because she
was
a woman possessed. She was pushing herself beyond her limits for the second time in her life, whipped on not by her own body but by the demons in her mind. She had to exorcise them. She
would
exorcise them. She
would
rise out of these ashes. She had to.

She made blind hems, fancy hems and buttonholes. She smoked some more, carefully, out of the window, away from the fabric. Then she cut out appliqués, ignoring the sore pads on her fingers from all the scissor use, tacked in zips and attached velcro. When she made even the slightest error, she unpicked and repositioned. This had to be good. This had to be her best. She urged herself on. Come on Emmy. Push yourself. Believe in yourself. Show everyone you can do it. Get a life.

As she sewed, and pinned and tucked, she dreamed up things to say to Cathal, words to comfort Niall, examples to set Maya. When she thought she could do no more, she stretched her limbs, oiled the machine, replaced the needle, adjusted the bobbin. I will show them, she thought. I'll bloody show them. What she didn't realize was that she was already way into the second stage of showing herself.

*   *   *

There was a lot of weed on the surface of the pond which Maya decided to use to her advantage. If it was anchored by the green sludge, the dinghy was less likely to drift off before she was ready for it. She freed her trainers from the mud, took up the broom handle and pushed it as far as she could into the squishy ground. Then, using it as a stabilizer, she put one foot and then the other into the boat. It wobbled a little and Jay's pumping efforts began to look less impressive.

The front section could do with more air but she decided that the water was collecting in the bottom because she had climbed in too clumsily, and she was pleased with herself for bringing a beach bucket to bail it out.

She pulled the broom handle out and balanced herself with it. As soon as she found a little confidence in the floating properties of her vessel, she took her coat off and sat on it. The water permeated both the coat and her jeans, immediately soaking her bottom, not that she cared. Then she poked her stick into the bank to launch herself off, looking around for the oar she had brought from the store, a squat plastic paddle. She needed it to clear a path through the tangled weed, but it wasn't in the boat. Then she remembered. She had left it on the road, on the other side of the wall by the posts. Damn. Anyway, it was too late. She was away from the bank.

The boat could barely fight its way through the vegetation without help and she started to use the bucket. The water wasn't as cold as she'd thought it would be, but it was smelly, reminding her of rotten eggs or school cabbage.

If she could get to the other side of the pond without falling in, she would claim it as a success. She'd have to pick some of the yellow rhododendrons as proof, though, otherwise Jay would never believe her.

*   *   *

Cathal had his proof but it had got him nowhere, and there was nothing left to do. He was giving in and leaving. As the wheels of his car crunched their way reluctantly down the drive, he wished he had at least been able to say good-bye to Maya properly.

He hadn't slept for more than three hours at a time for the entire duration of his stay, which felt a lot longer than a mere five nights. He could see the last few grains of sand in the egg timer of opportunity dropping through the glass. He had tried everything he could to encourage Emmy to see it from his point of view, but she couldn't. He had even tried to persuade himself to bulldoze through regardless, to tell Maya and Niall himself, to push on with disclosure, to deal with the fallout single-handedly. But he just couldn't do that, either. The only fatherly thing he could possibly do was to leave, and so restore the mother to the child. Everything else would have to wait.

A dull envy lingered in him as he pulled himself away. Apart from Emmy, everyone at Bodinnick had made him feel welcome. He wished he could have responded more enthusiastically, been freer with his usually easy sense of fun and his gratitude, behaved less like a guest and more like just another member of the household. But he had been permanently wary of his responsibilities, straitjacketed by a fear that Emmy would turn it against him. He had never reacted to warmth quite so gingerly.