Pearl in a Cage (7 page)

Mid-morning, she scalded a little, diluted it with boiled water, added a pinch of sugar, sat Elsie on the cane couch and handed her the baby and bottle. They got an inch of milk into that shrunken little belly, and two hours later she took an inch more.

Gertrude lost that day, but it was a hopeful, satisfying day — or it was until Ogden's oldest boy came riding down her track just after seven.

‘Who wants me now?' she greeted him.

‘It's the stationmaster's wife, Mrs Foote. He said it's her time.'

‘It can't be,' she said, then bit her tongue. No use arguing due dates with a fifteen-year-old boy. ‘I wonder if you could fetch my horse up for me, love, while I grab what I need. He's in the bottom paddock behind the orchard.'

It had to be a false alarm. She hoped it was a false alarm, or that babe could come backside first and Amber didn't need that. Nor did Gertrude, not after losing the last one. It was too hard on the heart, too hurtful to the soul, when a grandmother delivered her own dead grandson.

She hadn't planned to deliver this one. Vern had promised to take Amber down to Willama before it was due. There was a nurse down there who ran a house where expectant mothers could stay close to the hospital. That had been the plan. Amber had never been one to stick to plans.

She changed the babe's sheeting napkin and considered how long she might be gone, considered leaving Elsie in charge. But she couldn't. Having got the taste for goat's milk, that wee stomach was demanding it every couple of hours. If things went bad in town, Gertrude could be in there all night. She'd have to take them in with her, drop them off with Ogden and his wife, which she couldn't do on horseback.

‘I'll take the cart, love,' she told the boy. ‘I might get you to give me a lift with a few things before you go.'

He carried Elsie's mattress out; she carried Elsie, then went back for the baby. She filled a jam jar with scalded milk, almost
forgot the titty bottle, placed them with other bits and pieces into her basket, her every action reminding her of nights long ago, of lifting Amber from her warm bed and carrying her into a stranger's house. Too many of those nights, and that little girl knowing too much too early. No choice back then, as Gertrude had no choice right now. Life might have been a whole lot easier for Amber had her grandparents made old bones. They hadn't. Life was what it was; life was all there was, and folk had to do the best they could with what they were handed.

The door slammed shut and Gertrude stood checking her mental list. Out to the cart then, where she used the spokes of the big old metal-rimmed wheel as a ladder. Her seat was a backless bench — her cart no fancy rig. With a click of her tongue, a flick of the rein, she encouraged her horse to pull. He was an all black gelding she'd named Nugget, and he preferred carrying her to pulling her cart, but she got his head turned for town.

 

Norman was waiting at his front gate. She tied the reins to a cartwheel, which made an effective brake, then, Elsie and the baby looking comfortable enough on their mattress, she went inside to take a quick look at Amber.

Maisy was with her, and one of Norman's aunts, and it was no false alarm. Her waters had broken and that baby was in a hurry to get out. He came headfirst an hour later, a good size for an eight-month baby.

‘He's got the Hoopers' long limbs, darlin',' she said.

He didn't offer the newborn's wail, which was of no immediate concern though it became a slight concern when Gertrude's usual tricks failed to raise it. She took him out to the kitchen table, away from Amber's eyes. There was a handful of Norman's relatives out there. Seventy-five per cent had left town after the funeral; Amber's batch had stayed on. Gertrude cleared them from the kitchen before clearing the babe's airways. She slapped his little feet, expecting him to protest her treatment, needing him to protest.

‘What's wrong?' Amber called from the bedroom. Gertrude didn't reply. She didn't know what was wrong.

Maisy came to the kitchen door to see, and found Gertrude breathing her own breath into her grandson's mouth. She'd birthed ten of her own; she didn't ask what was wrong. She knew.

‘Get me a couple of basins, Maisy. Quick. Hot water in one, cold in the other.'

Knew her voice sounded too urgent but there was urgency now. She only had so much time to get him breathing and she didn't want to think about how much of that time she'd already used up.

A stoneware basin and one of enamel were placed on the table. She dipped tiny feet into the cold water, then into the hot, attempting to shock him into gasping that first breath. She sat his tiny backside in each basin.

‘Mum! Mum!'

Shook him. Blew in his face. Tried the water again. The hot was cooling. And Amber was howling.

‘Go to her, Maisy.'

Maisy didn't argue. She went. Only Norman standing at the door now, his eyes afraid. Gertrude looked at his eyes but couldn't hold them. She turned to the bold-faced clock on the mantelpiece eager to tell her how much time had passed since the birth. Too much. Way too much.

This was her grandson, her flesh, her blood. Here was the little boy she'd lost to the crazy sod she'd wed. Here was one of the Hooper line. He had the brow, the hands, and he was dead. And her girl was crying for him and Gertrude wanted to cry for him.

No time for that now. She wasn't the grandmother tonight, only the failed midwife.

‘Get your family around to the hotel, Norman,' she said, hating him at that moment, cursing him for loving her pretty, moody girl and for giving her grandsons she couldn't make live.

‘Norman,' Maisy yelled. ‘Norman! You're needed in here!'

He left the doorway. His parson uncle took his place there.

‘It will be better for all concerned if you move your family over to the hotel for the night,' Gertrude said. ‘She'll need . . .' Amber was screaming. God knows what she'd need.

The parson left the doorway and Gertrude wrapped the tiny boy, kissed his little dead face, then carried him to the bedroom where Norman and Maisy were attempting to hold Amber down on the bed.

‘He didn't breathe, my darlin'. I couldn't make him breathe.'

Amber snatched him, crushed him to her breast. ‘Useless backward old fool,' she screamed. ‘Get out! Get out!'

Her anger was ugly. It had always been ugly. She needed a punching bag tonight and Gertrude had always been a convenient punching bag, always swinging back for more punishment. She left the room, walked out to the front verandah, out to the gate.

Her horse heard her. He muttered his disapproval. She'd forgotten him, forgotten she'd left Elsie and that baby out there at the mercy of biting mosquitoes.

‘God help me,' she said and she went to them.

They were sleeping, or silent. She walked to her horse to lean a while against him, her chin lifting, her eyes staring hard at a starry sky, and each star blurring, growing tails. Wiped her eyes, wiped them again, clearing the blur. Her tears weren't going to help anyone tonight. A couple of deep breaths might.

Heard the side gate slam, didn't know if someone was coming or going until she heard a male voice praying, then two male voices — Norman and his uncle, or perhaps the cousin. Prayers could give comfort to some. She doubted they'd comfort her girl.

Who could have imagined this night? She'd seen it all so very differently. What more could she have done? What would Archie have done?

Amber was right in calling her a backward old fool. She was untrained in the modern ways of healing — just a grandmother with an enquiring mind and a desire to fix what was broken. All she knew she'd learnt from Archie, on Archie. She'd lanced her first boil one night when his hands were shaking too hard to hold the knife. He'd talked her through the stitching up of his own head. Just a girl then, a fool of a girl thrown into situations she couldn't control, but learning from them.

‘A brat will birth itself if given half a chance,' he'd said. He was right. She'd seen it happen many times. He'd been right about most things medical, but she'd known more about life, about people, and she knew now that she had to get that baby over to Ogden before its little belly started making demands. She was easing it from Elsie's protecting arm when Amber screamed and Maisy came at a run through the front door.

‘They've taken it away from her, Mrs Foote.'

Gertrude pushed the stranger's infant at Maisy. ‘Take her over to your place, love. I didn't know this was going to happen. Take her and run. I'll come by later,' she said.

God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform . . . or perhaps the devil had his own tricks up his sleeve that night. It's inconceivable how tiny lungs, how immature vocal cords, can raise the racket they do; surprising too, just how far a baby's wail will carry in the night. Such helpless beings, all they have is their wail and God gave this baby a beauty.

Amber howled a reply, believing her child, like Lazarus, had been raised from the dead. And Gertrude ran, passing the parson in the gateway. Punching bag or not, she was needed in there.

‘Bring him back. Make him bring my baby back.'

‘Shush, darlin'. Your baby couldn't live. Shush now my darlin' girl.'

Screaming, fighting the hands holding her. ‘Liars, all of you. I heard him.'

‘It's that dead woman's baby, darlin'. A little girl.'

Charles, the parson, carried the stranger's baby into Norman's house. He put it into Amber's reaching arms.

And the world calmed.

Norman's daughter, named for her paternal grandmother, was a Duckworth in the making. Still three months short of her fifth birthday, young Cecelia Louise was loud and chunky. She made Maisy Macdonald's twin sons look like midgets. The past week spent over the road in a house so filled with Macdonald children, her own demands had gone unheard. She was home now.

Her grandmother, who had gone missing, was still missing. The other one, the Granny one who wore trousers, was there, but worse than that, there was a baby stuck to her mother's chest. Young Cecelia Louise was not pleased with the alteration to her lifestyle.

‘Why did her come here for?' she demanded, fists on her hips, in perfect mimicry of her missing grandmother.

The
her
, aimed at Gertrude, was intentionally misunderstood. ‘She's a tiny wee girl who has no mummy, so your mummy is taking care of her.'

‘I don' want dat fing and you too here. I want my granmuver here!'

Amber passed the infant to her mother and reached out to her daughter, but Cecelia Louise had lived through a wretched week and she wanted her mother to know about it. She threw herself to the floor where she lay on her back screaming and kicking herself around and around in circles.

Norman, drawn from his mother's room by the noise, stood in the doorway, watching a fine display of spleen and wondering
what freak chance of good luck prevented his daughter's head hitting the leg of the bed or dressing table. His mother had made herself responsible for her granddaughter's training. He'd had little to do with the girl, and had no idea of how he might interrupt her outrageous display.

‘Pick her up and put her on the bed,' Amber directed.

Norman approached tentatively, reached for and caught a solid ankle, which halted his daughter's foot-stamping circles but increased the intensity of her scream. He released her.

‘When are they removing . . . it?' he asked.

Amber was buttoning her gown. The infant's belly not yet full, her meal put away, she added her tremulous wail to Cecelia's.

‘They're waiting until the weather cools down,' Gertrude said. Vern and his wife had agreed to deliver the infant to the city, though no one yet had claimed her.

‘And while he waits for the cool change, bedlam reigns in my house, Mother Foote.'

‘I'm keeping her alive, Norman,' Amber said.

Out of her mind with grief on the night her son died, she may have convinced herself the child was her own. She'd changed a lot of napkins since.

‘Does the world require one more fatherless brat?' he said, clearing the doorway as Gertrude vacated the room, taking a portion of the noise with her, but leaving behind the whirling, screaming dervish.

‘Lift her onto the bed,' Amber said again. ‘She'll hurt herself down there.'

‘What in God's name is wrong with the girl?'

He did as he was bid. He grasped his daughter's wrists, heaved her to her feet and set her on the bed. She slid off to the floor. He caught her, lifted her a second time, with similar results. On his third attempt, he hauled her screaming down the passage and into the nursery where he sat her on her bed and held her there.

‘Your mother is indisposed, Cecelia. You will remain here until you calm.'

She had other ideas. She kicked him low in the stomach and was off the bed and out the door before he got in breath enough to moan to the ceiling. ‘My house is crumbling, Mother. My house is crumbling.'

 

The cool change arrived in the early morning of the eighth day of January, the temperature plummeting to a pleasant seventy-eight degrees. Norman, freed from house and noise, was walking his station platform, enjoying the breeze, when Vern came across the lines.

‘Morning, Norm.'

Norman offered a tight smile. ‘Pleasant to feel a breath of air at last, Mr Hooper.'

Only since his relatives had used Hooper's house as a hotel had he been on speaking terms with Vern.

‘We'll be heading down to the big smoke this afternoon,' Vern said.

Joanne saw her Melbourne doctor three or four times a year. There were doctors in Willama, an hour away by car on a good day, but the best doctors were in Melbourne and Joanne Hooper could afford the best.

Vern took his cigarettes from his pocket, slid one into his mouth and offered the tin. Norman, as had his mother, had long craved the acceptance of Woody Creek's upper-crust. She'd gone to her grave without that acceptance. Now here was Vern Hooper, not the conventional upper-crust but certainly one of the town's leading citizens, standing on the railway platform offering his cigarettes and seemingly in no hurry to leave. Norman wasn't a smoker. His mother had not approved of the habit. But she wasn't watching, and he was growing accustomed to not having her watch his every move, so he took a cigarette, accepted a light and puffed blue smoke into the morning air.