A Carriage for the Midwife
Contents
Part I: 1767–1774: The Growing Years
Maggie Bennett was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, in 1931. She worked as a nurse and midwife for many years before marrying and moving to Manchester where her two daughters were born. Having been an avid reader and scribbler all her life she took a correspondence course in creative writing after her husband’s death in 1983, and won the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Award in 1992.
A Carriage for the Midwife
is her third novel.
A Child’s Voice Calling
A Child at the Door
Dedicated to the Staff of the Maternity Department at
Trafford General Hospital, Manchester,
And including Midwives and Nursing Auxiliaries,
Past and present, living and dead.
With affection and profound admiration.
‘And when I was born, I drew in the common air . . . and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.’
‘For all men have one entrance into life, and the like going out.’
From the Apocrypha, The Wisdom Of Solomon, chapter 7, verses 3 and 6
‘
DON’T ’EE RUN
on too far ahead, Poll!’ Susan warned her younger sister. ‘Oi ha’ to keep hold o’ Bartle’s hand, an’ his little legs won’t go as fast as yourn!’
Polly turned round and made a saucy face.
‘Watch yerself, Sukey. There be two fine young men comin’ up behind ’ee!’ she called.
‘Aye, keep yer skirt down, little maid!’ grinned old Goody Firkin, the beggar woman who had tagged herself on to the trio of ragged children making their way up through the beech grove to Bever House.
Susan smartly pulled her young brother to the side of the path as a well-built boy of about eleven shot past, completely ignoring them. He called over his shoulder to another boy further down the wooded track.
‘Make haste, Ned, or they’ll have slit the beast’s throat and strung him up before we get there!’
‘You go on ahead, Osmond, and I’ll follow,’ panted his younger brother, who was not as eager to witness the pig-killing in their father’s stable-yard, though the rector had let them off the last half-hour of their morning lesson for the purpose. Young Edward Calthorpe’s face was flushed and his wavy light brown hair dishevelled; his shirt had come untucked from his nankeen breeches, and his stockings were dirtied and torn from falling headlong over a beech root. When he caught up with the little group he eyed them warily, being half-afraid of Goody Firkin; she lived down at Ash-Pit End where the turds from the midden buckets were thrown. She had a trick of lifting her skirts up above her skinny knees – sometimes even higher, so the blacksmith’s son had said. The village children teased her from a safe distance, yet here was this bright-faced little girl of about seven, chattering away to Goody as if to a grandmother, making the old woman cackle with mirth. Now she was smiling at him with friendly curiosity in her grey eyes, and he felt drawn to her, enough to overcome his awe of Goody Firkin.
‘Are these your brother and sister?’ he asked politely.
She bobbed a curtsy as the other two stared round-eyed.
‘Aye, master, Oi be Susan Lucket, only folks calls me Sukey, and this be my sister Polly and our little brother Bartle – he’s only four. We be come up from the Ash-Pits fur the pig-killin’. ‘Twill be fine sport!’
She had a high, wide forehead that gave her face a heart shape. Her straight brown hair was pulled back and tied with a strip of calico, and her shapeless frock was of the same material, coarse and hard-wearing, woven by the inmates of the House of Industry at Belhampton, that dreaded place also called the workhouse.
Edward Calthorpe felt half ashamed of his own well-stitched clothes and leather shoes. On Susan’s part she saw a son of the gentry, a healthy, fair-complexioned boy with dark blue eyes, as distant from her as his father’s carriage horses were from the carrier’s poor hack.
‘Turn round, Bartle, the young master don’t want to see yer bare arse,’ she said quickly.
Hearing an outburst of shouts from the direction of Bever House, they all hurried on up the track and into the stable-yard where the huge boar had arrived from Squire Hansford’s piggeries, led by young Henry Hansford, a tall lad of thirteen or so. An excited crowd of outdoor servants jostled with spectators from the village, and Mr Calthorpe adjusted his hat and his expression as befitted a landowner and Justice of the Peace. He frowned at the sight of the notorious old beggar woman and the rough, bare-footed children trooping in. The poor of Beversley were a constant thorn in his side.
The children gazed round the yard open-mouthed, especially at the two little Calthorpe sisters in their neat, clean frocks, standing beside the most beautiful young lady that Susan had ever seen; she wore a grey gown and a wide straw hat, and her blue eyes were just like Edward’s. Susan wondered if she were their mother.
All attention was now focused on the great pig whose eyes glinted suspiciously on each side of its massive head, as if it knew that the babble of voices boded no good. A roar went up as the pig man grabbed its back legs, deftly tying them together with a rope while two farm hands seized the front quarters. The beast toppled over on to its side, to the cheers of the onlookers, and four men then heaved the great pink and black body over a slaughtering-stool cut from an ancient tree trunk. While Osmond Calthorpe and Henry Hansford shouted and jeered at its furious grunts and struggles, the pig-sticker approached it head-on with a long, sharp knife. The Calthorpe sisters clung to the young woman’s skirts, and Edward found himself shielding the three Lucket children, who shrank within his encircling arms; forgetting his own nervousness, he suddenly felt much older. They pressed closely, burying their faces in the soft cotton of his shirt when the hideous death-howl went up; it quickly turned to a bubbling, gurgling suffocation as blood choked the air passages.
When the children peeped again, the men were heaving the body up with ropes, to hang upside down from an iron hook set into a crossbeam. A red torrent poured from the veins on each side of the bulky neck into a stoneware bowl. They all gazed up at the object dangling from the hook, like a man’s body swinging from a gibbet.
‘Oh, the poor ol’ pig, he be dead!’ wailed Polly.
‘Hush, Poll, ye’ll stuff yer little belly when ’tis cooked,’ said Susan, glancing up at Edward, who smiled and nodded.
‘Yes, we shall all eat pig-meat at the harvest supper!’
The first excitement over, the two Calthorpe sisters turned their attention to the strange children clustering round Edward and the queer-looking old woman.
‘Is not your mama with you?’ asked the elder girl.
‘Oh, no, miss, she ha’ the babby to look arter, an’ we got two other boys, Will an’ Georgie,’ replied Susan. ‘They be too little to walk wi’ us.’
‘Aye, we ha’ walked a long, long way, ’cross the Beck!’ added Polly proudly, while Bartle gawped at the two rosy-cheeked girls, who stared back at their thin, sunburned faces.
Osmond now appeared, his light blue eyes flickering coldly at the strangers. Susan quickly curtsied, nudging Polly to do the same, and turned Bartle round to face the older boy so that his bare backside was hidden.
‘Who let these brats into the yard, Edward? And the old hag?’
Susan spoke up quickly, with a darting glance at Edward. ‘We be come up to see the pig-killin’, master.’
‘’Tis all right, Susan, there’s no harm in seeing the pig,’ said Edward, giving his brother a pleading look. ‘Father said that the villagers could come up to watch.’
‘But not dirty, lice-ridden beggars like these,’ retorted Osmond. ‘Our sisters will catch some infection! Go along with you, Selina, and you too, Caroline – go and find your skipping-ropes and play.’
Raising his voice he dismissed the Luckets. ‘All right, you’ve seen the pig, now be off – and you, too, old woman. Pooh, that boy stinks like a midden!’
He wrinkled his nose and turned to rejoin Henry Hansford. Susan guided her charges away, but Edward saw Bartle’s round eyes turn longingly in the direction of the kitchen door, from which an aroma of baking drifted across the yard.
‘Wait outside the yard for a minute,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see if I can find you some titbits.’
Checking that his brother’s back was turned, the boy approached the young woman in grey, who nodded and went into the kitchen to speak to the cook.
When Edward returned with a paper bag filled with gingerbread and a handful of freshly baked biscuits, Susan gave a gasp of delight, curtsied gratefully and ran off to catch up with her brother and sister.
But Goody Firkin stood her ground and, to Edward’s horror, raised a gnarled fist in Osmond’s direction.
‘Upstart puppy! Ye be no de Bever but an upstart lawyer’s son!’ she cried, loud enough for everybody to hear. ‘An’ ye’ll answer for’t, as’ll all fine folks who lets the poor go hungry!’
There was a moment of dead silence, and then Osmond reacted with fury.
‘Get after her and give her a good beating!’ he ordered the men in the yard, but they only shuffled and mumbled, and turning round, Osmond saw that the young woman in grey had come up close behind him and was gravely shaking her head. He opened his mouth to defy her, but closed it again, turning away contemptuously. Nobody made a move, and the beggar woman disappeared into the beech wood, leaving the echo of her parting shot in their ears.
Edward gave a silent sigh of relief, and sent a grateful look in the direction of his cousin for her intervention.
Sophia Glover reached the top of the track, and turned to look back at the village nestling in the valley, divided by the wide stream of the Beck flowing from east to west, and dominated by the steeple of Great St Giles. She was in no hurry to go indoors, where the talk would all be of tomorrow’s harvest supper, but paused and breathed in the peace of the September twilight. The last of the corn had been cut, the orchard fruit was gathered, and as the sun sank down towards Wychell Forest, deep shadows stole across the empty fields; the call of a nightjar only emphasised the silence. It was an idyllic rural scene, and yet Sophia’s thoughts were troubled, and she clasped her hands tightly round the handle of the empty basket she carried. More and more these days she wondered what the future held for her; her four young cousins would soon have no further need of her supervision, and Osmond was already almost beyond her control. She longed to befriend the poor of Beversley – like that little girl with her brother and sister, and the poor old woman with them.
A pheasant flew up with a sudden loud flapping, breaking in on her thoughts and heralding the approach of a man with two dogs.