Orphans of War (33 page)

The nurses were chatty, uninvolved and told her exactly what to expect: ‘We’ll call you if there is any change. Poor dear won’t be long before she slips away.’

Grandma would hate to be referred to like that, but Maddy was too tired to protest. All she wanted to do was go to sleep and soothe her aching back.

In the morning Maddy was halfway to the stables when she changed her mind about riding Monty. She felt so tired and achy, as if she was coming down with flu. Then she recalled it might be Gloria’s day off so there
might be a chance of a bit of young company. Carrying her briefcase full of homework just in case no one was there and she could read through her notes under the Victory Tree, she sniffed the springtime air along the lane with relief.

It was one of those special Dales mornings, the rough breeze chilly from the snowy tops of the fells, birds chattering, darting among bare twigs along the grassy bank topped by the dry-stone wall that led from the house to the hostel. There were primroses in the shady banks and clumps of purple violets, coltsfoot and lush green foliage. Everything was springing alive again, bringing summer ever closer, when she must give birth too.

To her relief she saw Gloria hanging out her smalls, her flame hair twisted under a headscarf like a gypsy. She looked up and smiled.

‘Maddy, you’re back at last…What’s the latest news? I heard things weren’t so good,’ Gloria said.

Maddy shook her head wearily. ‘Cup of tea on the go?’

‘I can do better than that. Hot Vimto, Bovril, dandelion and burdock–name your poison,’ Gloria laughed, picking up the wicker laundry basket and heading for the steps. ‘It’s a grand day for a line of washing.’

‘Am I glad to see you…It’s awful up there. Everyone’s waiting for Grandma to die. I thought she’d go on for years. Aunt Plum is like a shadow, flittering around at everyone’s beck and call.’

‘I hear as it was her as found her. They’d had a row, poor Mrs Plum. I hear his lordship’s living in London
for good. They say the Brooklyn will be up for sale soon as old Mrs Belfield’s gone…’

Maddy wasn’t listening as she felt a strange warm wetness running down her legs. She felt down to see where she’d wet herself. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried out.

‘What’s up?’ Gloria said, and then saw the pool on the stone slab. ‘Crikey, what’s that?’

‘Nothing, I’d better go. I’ve just wet myself, would you believe it–at my age!’ She made to go back up the steps but a stabbing pain tore through her belly and she doubled up. Gloria rushed to her side. ‘You’d better come inside and quick. Is it diarrhoea?’

‘No…I don’t think so…I think I’m in labour,’ Maddy croaked, unable to look Gloria in the eye. She had been reading up on childbirth in the reference library on the sly.

‘You are having me on! Pull the other one, Lady Jane,’ Gloria roared, stepping back to take a closer look at her friend. She saw the panic on Maddy’s face and knew it was no joke. ‘What’ve you been up to in Leeds?’

‘Not there, here, last summer, Dieter and me, we got caught. It shouldn’t have happened but it did. I’m having a baby but not yet, surely not now!’

‘Does anyone know up there?’ Gloria nodded in the direction of the hall.

‘Of course not. No one knows but you. You have to help me. It’s coming early and I don’t know what to do.’

‘How early?’ Gloria asked, her freckled nose and sharp eyes glinting with concern.

‘I don’t know but it’s not due for ages.’

‘If we lie you down and rest, happen it’ll stop. Come on, lean on me and I’ll get you upstairs. There’s only Alice Nuttall staying, and she’s on early shift, then she’s having her hair permed at Susan’s. There’s no one at home but me.’

Gloria helped her up the stairs to the top bedroom. It was a jumble of unironed clothes, magazines piled on a single bed, make-up tumbling over the dresser and a little cracked mirror in a frame. ‘You lie down and I’ll boil the kettle like they do in the films.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know, but that’s what they always say, and towels, loads of towels to mop up the…Oh, and newspaper for my bed. I don’t want any mess on it. It’ll have to be
Picturegoers–
that’s all I’ve got. There might be a
Gazette
in the common room. Crikey, Maddy, it were a good job it were my day off.’

‘How’s things?’ Maddy tried to act normally but the pain gripped her again. It started in her back and then gathered like a tight lasso around her stomach.

This wasn’t right. Dr Klein had suggested she wasn’t due until June, and this was only early April. In her head she knew she should send for Dr Gunn. Better just to lie here and see if it settled down. She couldn’t think straight for the pain. Her slacks were soaking wet, sticking to her legs. Her corset needed unhooking. She felt she was bursting inside.

They struggled to get her clothes off and Maddy into one of Gloria’s old nighties. Gloria rushed down for a basin and a pile of dishcloths, then down again
for magazines and the one newspaper. Up and down, her curls bobbing and her cheeks pink.

Between them, they stripped the bed and put towels and papers over between each pain.

‘We ought to call Dr Gunn. If it’s early he’ll know what to do. I’ve never done this before…you’ll have to tell me what to do.’

‘But I don’t know either,’ Maddy confessed.

‘Didn’t you read up?’

‘Only a little bit. I didn’t want to think about it until I had to. I’m sorry…’

‘Then we’ll just get on with it as best we can, keep everything clean and the baby warm. How funny her up in Brooklyn passing over and another life coming in her place. They’ll get one hell of a shock when you show your face with a bundle in your arms.’

‘But it’s too soon. It won’t be right.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Next door’s babby in Peel Street was a seven-month job–and they hadn’t a stitch for it so her gran went and bought a lace burial gown off the second-hand barrow, so as not to waste her money but he’s three year old now, bright as a button, not a mark on him. They just kept him warm by the bread oven until he was up to fighting weight. Babies survive, you’ll see.’

Maddy said nothing, knowing this one would be just over six months old not seven. It seemed like for ever, lying on the bed. Alice came and went to the shop for fags and then on to her hair appointment, unaware that Maddy was hiding upstairs with a flannel in her mouth to stop her groans.

‘Are there only the two of you here now?’ Maddy whispered. If she screamed now she might give the game away.

‘The Old Vic’s like a morgue these days. I’m thinking of packing it in with the Gunns. Babies are hard work and Heather is a right little mitherer, whines all day. Shall I go and fetch someone?’

‘No!’ Maddy gasped as the pain hit her again. ‘Not yet…please don’t leave me, I’m so scared.’

Gloria couldn’t think what to do next. Maddy was in agony and had been sick in the basin, tossing and turning and crying out. Giving birth must really hurt.

Mrs Gunn had gone into a nursing home for two weeks and came back clean, slim and smiling with her bundle of joy as if it were a trip to the seaside.

Gloria knew how babies were born but what to do when they came out was another matter. This labour was going on for hours and she was scared. The kettle was boiled dry for hot-water bottles, on the little electric ring.

It made sense to wrap the babby in hot towels to keep it warm and clean, but they had nothing but clean dishtowels, the ones kept in the second drawer on the left for best, utility towels with red stripes at the end. They would do for a start, and she might be able to snaffle a few bits from the Gunns’ nursery to tide them along. It would give Maddy time to think.

In her heart Gloria knew she ought to go for help, no matter what Maddy insisted–but then she might be in trouble for delivering a baby without help. There
wasn’t really time. Her pains were coming so fast now. Maddy’s face was covered in sweat and she kept asking for sips of water. It was hard to know how to comfort her in this state.

‘I need to push now,’ Maddy groaned. ‘Help me!’

‘Like a number two?’

‘Yee…s.’

‘Oh Lord. You’d better squat down like the natives do, then. They can deliver theirs behind a bush and then go back to work, so the missionary said,’ she offered.

‘Well, that’s a lie! This is bloody hard work…oh…Gloria I’m scared.’

‘So am I,’ she whispered, peering between Maddy’s open legs, fearful of what might be there.

Maddy screamed and pushed and something slithered out in a gush–a purple bundle onto the towel and the
Gazette.
It had a cord dangling.

‘We have to cut the cord. Bitches bite on them and clean up their pups,’ Gloria suggested. They’d both seen enough lambs and pups born to know the score.

‘Wow! It’s come, Maddy!’ she smiled, while Maddy was pushing something else out that looked like a large piece of liver from the butcher’s. There was such a mess of everything all at once.

‘What do we do now?’ she cried, knowing the baby needed air to breathe. It was so small and not like a baby at all, more a tiny doll. ‘It’s a baby boy,’ she offered gazing down at the little mite, not much bigger than the size of her hand. It lay all curled up and silent.

‘We have to make it breathe.’ Maddy looked down. ‘He’s so tiny and beautiful, I’ll blow in his face.’ She scooped up the limp baby and blew and blew. ‘Why isn’t he breathing?’

‘I told you we should have got help. Dr Gunn would know what to do. Let me have a go,’ Gloria snapped, feeling fear trickling up her spine.

The baby’s skin was still purple, his eyes shut and peaceful, all curled up in his own little world like a little skinless bird thrown out of the nest too soon. Gloria was sweating now with fear. The tiny thing in her hands had veins through its glassy skin and still no breath. This was all going wrong. It should be breathing by now. Then she recalled a film where the doctor dunked the baby in water to shock it into breathing. All she had was cold water left and she raced downstairs to run the tap.

Maddy screamed from the bed, ‘Hurry up!’

Up the stairs she struggled, grabbing the baby and dunking it in the water but nothing happened. Seconds turned into minutes and only then was it obvious that there was no life in this child.

‘You should’ve let me go for help, Maddy. Now what are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know, I’ll think of something,’ Maddy sighed, and lay back, overcome by exhaustion, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep, the baby cradled in the towel by her side.

It was the longest day of Gloria’s life, sitting there, the enormity of what had happened hitting her like a hammer. They had to do something before Alice Nuttall
returned. How could Maddy just turn over and sleep like that?

She stared down at the bundle, knowing it was up to her to do something about it now. Poor Maddy needed her sleep after all that pain and effort. She’d have to go back to the Brooklyn as if nothing had happened. No one would be any the wiser but the mess would have to be cleared away–and fast.

The fire was lit downstairs and she could burn the papers and stuff, but how to give this little thing a burial? Perhaps they should call the vicar, but it was too late now for anything proper. Gloria was on her own with this one. It wasn’t fair to be dumped with such a terrible thing but her friend had needed her and they must stick together.

Perhaps one day when she needed a favour Maddy would oblige. That’s what friends did: helped each other out.

There was no time to shillyshally, she must do the necessary, and quick. Better that Maddy knew nothing more about this. In films midwives took stillborns away quietly and put them somewhere. It wasn’t as if the little mite was ready to be born. He’d never breathed–it was just too soon. In a funny way he’d done Maddy a favour in slipping away so quietly. There’d be all hell to pay if anyone found out.

Gloria took one last look at him, lying like a skinned rabbit, perfect in every way but lifeless. She wanted to cry. This wasn’t right and he’d never stood a chance. It was left to her now to sort out his final resting place.

Maddy’s dreams were full of tunnels with water rushing through and she was trapped on a ledge, but the torrent pushed her out into a swimming pool and there was little Dieter swimming towards her, pink and smiling. As she swam to him he began to sink and she couldn’t reach him or find him at the bottom of the pool. Diving under the water, she was blinded by green murk, feeling around searching, searching to catch his limb, like catching soap in the bath. He slipped from her and she woke in a panic, sweating, but it was only a dream.

Her room had changed into the attic at the Old Vic and then she sensed the soreness in her belly and the towels between her legs. Suddenly wide awake she knew something awful had happened.

She sat up and her head swam. Where was the baby? Where was Gloria? What had happened last night was a fuzz of images. Was the baby still inside her? She felt the flatness of her stomach, someone had battered her insides and she struggled for the gerry pot. Everything burned and there was blood beneath her.

Then Alice popped her head around the door, sporting her new frizzy perm. ‘You’ve had a bad monthly,’ she sighed. ‘They’re such a mucky nuisance. Do you want some more STs? I’ve got some towels in my room. You do look like death warmed up. Shall I make a cuppa?’