Time's Echo (31 page)

‘You okay?’

Drew was watching me. I tried to keep my expression neutral, but I was certain now. Ned might not be there; Hawise wasn’t there; but their neighbours were. There was no point in trying to
convince Drew of that, though.

Moistening my lips, I closed the file at last. ‘You’re right, it must just be coincidence,’ I said.

‘It’s not proof, Grace.’ I didn’t like the way he seemed to be able to read my mind. I just hoped he hadn’t been able to read it earlier.

‘I know.’

In a way, Drew’s insistence on a rational explanation for everything was comforting. When everything I had ever believed to be true was shifting and crumbling, his steadiness was something
I could hold onto. ‘I know, I do,’ I said and, without thinking, I reached out and laid my hand over his.

Perhaps I meant it as reassurance. Or perhaps I just wanted to touch him.

Drew looked at my hand and then he looked at me, and when his fingers curled around mine, I wondered if he could feel the pulse running erratically beneath my skin, twitching and jumping and
shivering in anticipation.

Yes – touch, I thought, as I turned my palm up to meet his. I needed the here and now, not the there and then. I needed to forget about Hawise and Francis Bewley, and lose myself in the
present, in touch and in taste, in the slow build-up of sensation and the urgent glittery rush.

‘Do you want to search for another name?’ Drew asked me, and I shook my head slowly, letting out a long breath.

‘No.’

He smiled then, a smile that blew the smouldering embers inside me into a flame. ‘Then why don’t you come here instead?’ he said, and my final thought for a very long while
was: Thank God, thank God,
at last
.

Pain. Wave after wave of it, wrenching and twisting and tearing me apart. My knuckles are white, my throat arches tautly back as I scream. The straight back of the birthing
chair presses into me.

‘No,’ I said when they brought it in. ‘I’m not ready. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a baby after all.’

But Eliza Skelton, the midwife, only laughed – not unkindly – and bustled around closing the shutters and directing Alison to stoke up the fire while, trapped by my unwieldy body, I
lay on the bed, my eyes swivelling in fear like a skittish horse.

The air is suffocatingly sweet with the smell of the almond oil they have rubbed into my swollen belly. The linens are all clean. The midwife has laid out her knife and her binders. Below, in
his study, Ned is praying. Everything is ready.

Everything except me. I am not ready for this pain that devours me, and I scream for it to end.

Sweat pours off the women who have gathered. Agnes is here and Margery, who the moment she knew that I was carrying Ned’s child became brusquely protective. She might not approve of me,
but she will do anything for the child, and I am glad she is here. Or I was. Now I can’t think of anyone or anything but the agony that consumes me. I hurl abuse at Eliza, who doesn’t
seem to understand that I am dying from it.

‘Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus . . . ’ I howl. ‘Help me,
help
me, you lardy sow!’

‘Hush now.’ A familiar firm voice cuts through my moans. They have called for Mistress Beckwith to quiet me, and when she lays a hand on my forehead I feel the pain’s terrible
grip on me ease just a little.

‘Mistress,’ I choke out pitifully, clutching the chair until I think my fingers will dig into the wood. ‘Make it stop.’

‘You must be patient, Hawise,’ she chides me. ‘You must endure, as we all do. It is our lot.’

‘But why does it hurt so much?’ I am whimpering with it, my breath so jerky I can hardly speak.

‘We suffer for our grandmother Eve’s sin,’ says Mistress Beckwith. ‘She did eat the apple.’

Pain fastens its teeth into me and shakes me like a dog with a rat. ‘I wish it had choked her!’ I cry, and Mistress Beckwith tucks in the corners of her mouth so that she
doesn’t laugh. ‘It’s not funny!’ I accuse her, and she does laugh then.

‘Come, it is not so bad. Not long now, and you will have a fine babe.’

I don’t want a baby any more. All I want is to lie quietly and feel that my body is my own, and not a plaything for pain to punch and pummel. But there is an irresistible force building in
me, stretching, stretching, stretching me until there is nothing but the dreadful ripping and tearing inside me.

‘One more push.’

It might be Eliza’s voice, but it is faint and seems to come from miles away, from another world where there is no pain, no darkness.

‘I can’t . . . I can’t . . . ’

Why did I ever think I wanted a child? It is killing me. The pain is worse than I could ever have imagined.

‘Nearly there, lovey.’

Dimly I am aware of hands, of encouraging voices and purposeful movement, but my body is lifted up on a tide that bears me on and on, until there is a huge cry – a shout that rings in my
ears – and I realize that it is mine, and suddenly everything has changed. The women are drawing the pain out of me and I slump in the chair, exhausted.

‘Just one more push . . . Ahhh, that’s it.’

There is a murmuring, a slap and a thin wail. I open my eyes. ‘My baby. Is the baby all right?’

‘A girl, but she seems healthy enough.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘In a minute.’ The baby’s cries rise as Eliza cuts the cord and they wash her briskly and swaddle her in clean linen.

And then, at last, they put her in my arms, close to my heart.

Her face is red and scrunched up, and her mouth is open in a yell of fury at being wrenched from the comfort of my womb, and all I can do is stare at the miracle of her. She was inside me and
now she is here at my breast, and the world has changed completely. The pain forgotten, swept away by a giddying rush of love so fierce it takes my breath away.

I am beaming with joy as I lift my head to thank Eliza for her care of me. ‘I’m sorry I was rude to you,’ I say and she nods. She has seen it all before. With one finger I
stroke my baby’s cheek. ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?’

‘Aye, she’s a bonny one.’ Margery leans over to admire my daughter as the midwife is too busy clearing up. Perhaps every mother thinks her baby is beautiful? None can be as
beautiful as mine, though.

I exchange a smile with Margery, her past rudenesses all forgotten now that we share the utter belief in the wonder of my child. As Margery coos, her slab-face softened, I glance over her
shoulder and surprise a strange expression on my sister’s face. I can’t put a name to it, but it sends a sliver of unease into my happiness.

‘What are you going to call her?’ Margery asks, following my gaze. She expects me to say Agnes. Margery approves of Agnes, who is very devout.

I should say Agnes. She will be godmother, with Eliza, the midwife. The baby should be named for one of them, and it would do honour to my sister. But there is no joy in Agnes and, holding my
daughter in my arms, I want so much for her to know only happiness. It is a foolish hope, I know, for what life can be purely happy? Still, it is what I want, and all at once I have a picture of
Elizabeth, my friend, and the times we laughed together.

‘Elizabeth,’ I say, and I look down into my daughter’s face. Agnes doesn’t need to know that I have not named her for the midwife. ‘Her name is
Elizabeth.’

She has stopped screaming. She is perfect, with a tiny nose, a tiny bud of a mouth and eyes that stare unblinkingly back into mine. ‘My Bess.’ I will do anything to keep her safe, I
vow silently, to keep her happy.

Anything.

The stench of rotting fruit clogged my nose, making me gasp and gag – and I woke up, still retching. For a while I just lay there, drawing shuddering breaths as I
adjusted to the fact that my arms were empty. I was empty and sore and close to tears, and I ached for Bess.

She wasn’t there. She would never be there for me.

Wretched, I rolled over to clutch the pillow next to me for comfort, and my fingers closed over a soggy, sagging apple.

I didn’t stop to think. Jackknifing out of the bed, I stumbled away from it in horror and leant back against the chest of drawers, my pulse thundering and my stomach heaving. It was
several minutes before I could bring myself to pick up the apple and throw it out of the window.

It left a repulsive stain on the pillow. I stripped off the pillowcase and tossed it into the laundry basket with a shudder. Only then could I flop back into bed, turn my face into the mattress
and weep for the baby I had never had.

Much later, when the misery had subsided to lethargy and I was listlessly watching the shadows shift over the ceiling, I remembered Drew.

My hand went instinctively to my neck. The jade pendant was still there, nestled in the hollow of my throat, but the amulet Vivien had given me was gone. I had taken it off the night before, I
remembered. It was lumpy and awkward and it kept getting in the way, bumping between Drew and me, frustrating our frantic attempts to press skin against skin. I had been too giddy with lust to
remember what Vivien had said about not taking it off. I had taken
everything
off, except the pendant, which was so unobtrusive I barely noticed it any more.

In spite of myself, my mouth curved at the memory. It had been so good to give in to desire, to let my mind spin away and my body take over. Drew might be dry and precise in the way he thought,
but his hands were sure and his mouth was wickedly warm. It had been a long time since I had felt that heat, that rush, that breathless excitement, and afterwards I had sprawled languid and sated
beside him, my body cheering.

But it had been a mistake.

Drew fell asleep, and I dozed for a while, but couldn’t settle. His arm was hot and heavy over me, and the familiar sense of suffocation began to steal over me. What was I doing, getting
involved with a man like Drew? I knew instinctively that he wasn’t a guy who would be interested in a casual relationship, and I couldn’t offer him more than that.

Disentangling myself from him, I slid out of bed and dressed without waking him. Quietly I let myself out and into Lucy’s house next door, to dream not of loving, but of giving birth.

Now I lay in bed and churned with confusion, memories tumbling over each other, blurring and fragmenting until I couldn’t tell one from the other. The warmth of the hand sliding over my
skin: had that been Drew’s hand, or Ned’s? Had those been my sighs and soft gasps, or Hawise’s? Who had I shared the night’s shattering pleasure with?

The memories beat at me, intercut with the intense emotions of giving birth. My breasts ached, my heart ached. Was this what it was like to lose a child? I wondered. To go through the pain and
the overwhelming joy, only to wake to emptiness and loss? Grief rose up, overwhelming me, and I wept again: for Bess, for Hawise, for myself.

I hated crying – it smacked too much of losing control – and I struggled to pull myself together, scrubbing the tears furiously from my face. Bess was gone.

My body felt battered and I had to move very carefully, but I showered, washed my hair and put on a summer dress, hoping to lift my mood. I had left Vivien’s amulet at Drew’s; I
would have to go and get it, and apologize to him while I was at it.

But when I knocked on his door there was no answer.

Somehow I got through the day. I had two classes that afternoon and, as I walked into the school, I couldn’t believe how many babies I passed. I’d peer into prams,
racked with longing, or watch yearningly as a mother held a baby strapped to her front. And all the time the need to hold Bess again beat at me. I didn’t need that chilling whisper to remind
me any more.

On the edge of King’s Square I paused to watch a young mother bending over a pram. Her baby was crying, the thin, high wail of a newborn, and when I felt wetness at my breasts I started to
tremble. I had to pad my bra with tissues when I got to the school. I went into the Ladies and shut myself in a stall, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes. I was producing milk for a
baby that I knew didn’t exist, but I ached and ached for her anyway.

I have to stay in the room for three days. Usually I would rail at the confinement, but I am sleepy and sluggish and happy just to watch my daughter. Ned is allowed into the
room to see me and Bess. He looks drawn, and I remember that he has already had a wife and child who died. My confinement hasn’t been easy on him, either.

Ned picks Bess up and smiles first at her and then at me, and I wonder how I could ever have thought of him as homely.

‘She is a beauty,’ he says. ‘Like her mother.’ And when he kisses me, my heart soars at my good fortune.

‘We should give some thought to her godparents,’ he said. ‘Your sister, as she is a girl, and the midwife, but what about your sister’s husband too?’

‘No!’ I say instinctively, pulling myself up against the pillows in a panic. I don’t want Francis anywhere near my daughter. ‘No, Ned. Please. You haven’t asked him
yet, have you?’

He looks puzzled. ‘Not yet, no. Why, what is it that distresses you so, Hawise?’

‘Nothing.’ There is no point in trying to explain. He won’t understand. ‘It’s just . . . Francis will be no benefit to her,’ I argue in a rush. ‘Can we
not ask Mr Beckwith if he would stand as godfather to her, Ned? He is a man of good repute.’

‘As is your sister’s husband,’ Ned points out.

‘Mr Beckwith has better connections,’ I say with an edge of desperation. ‘And Agnes is already godmother. We do not need Francis too.’

‘Very well,’ says Ned, obviously prepared to indulge me. ‘It shall be as you wish.’

I let out a long breath that I haven’t realized I have been holding until then, and smile brilliantly at him. Francis is Agnes’s husband and I cannot keep him from seeing Bess, but
at least now he will have no claim on her. He should have little interest in a girl child, but still, I will keep her out of his way as much as I can. I do not trust him.

The neighbours come to see Bess and to keep me company. Having a child has made me one of them. I am not different any more. I am a mother who suffers in childbirth, just like they do; who feeds
her baby at her breast as they do. It is as if I have passed an unwritten test and stepped from one world into another. There was my life before Bess, and now there is this life, with Bess at its
heart. It feels strange to me sometimes. All my life I have been the odd one, the one folk eye askance. I have never felt as if I belong. But now, suddenly, I have a place. I can be just like
everyone else. I am bound into the neighbourhood by the miracle of childbirth.