A Carriage for the Midwife (25 page)

‘Yes, indeed, if ye please, sir.’

‘Good, then have your scissors at hand. Now, wait for a pain to start, and place your forefinger just within the opening, thus, to shield the child’s head from the blades. There, that’s right. Now, when the pain is at its height, take your scissors and make your cut
here
, at an angle, directed away from the back passage, like this –
now
.’

Guided by his finger, Susan closed the blades of the scissors firmly on the stretched skin, and cut a slit about two inches long from the back of the vaginal opening, just as the child’s head was being pushed down by a contraction. Parnham told her to keep her palm pressed against it, using a wool pad to stem the oozing blood. Her heart thudded with apprehension: might she have cut the girl for no good reason? The head remained unborn at the end of the contraction.

‘Wait for the next one, miss. We may have made the cut a little too early. The right timing is crucial with this. Now we must wait and she must push.’

To their mutual relief, two more contractions brought the head thrusting through.

‘Well done, Signora Trotula,’ murmured Parnham as Susan wiped the child’s face and put her forefinger in the mouth. Shoulders, arms, trunk and legs followed swiftly with a gush of water and blood, and Hannah was the mother of a daughter.

‘Ye can hold her just as soon as I ha’ tied and cut the cord, Hannah,’ smiled Susan, thankful beyond words at the success of her experiment.

‘And here comes the after-burden,’ said Parnham in satisfaction. ‘How is it with the child?’

The baby answered for herself with a series of ear-splitting howls that drowned Susan’s reply.

‘In God’s name hand it to the mother, else we’ll be deafened!’

A smiling Hannah held out her arms, and while she gazed in wonder at her baby, Susan had a question for the surgeon.

‘Why d’ye call me T-Trotula, sir?’

‘Ah, she was a learned woman doctor at the University of Salerno some six hundred years ago,’ he replied. ‘She did great things for women and their babies, like making a cut to widen the outlet – just as you have done, my dear, just as you have done today. But now you must mend that cut, so fetch some strong linen thread and a large sewing needle.

He stood behind her as she put in the stitches, with Mag holding Hannah’s hand.

‘Be quick and firm, place the stitches deep – three or four will suffice,’ he told her. ‘There now, ’tis done – and all thanks to you, signora!’

Before he left he took a look at the woman who had been delivered by the forceps a week before, and advised that she should start suckling her baby.

‘Get her to drink a couple of glasses of porter a day – no spirits, mind – and see that they all have water to wash themselves. Good!’

He left by the back door, having tethered the mare in the yard. Susan saw him out, and he laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘I had no thought of doing this place a service when I sent you here, Madam Trotula, but that is what I have done,’ he said seriously. ‘You will change everything for these poor women, and I will support you. On that you may rely.’

He rode away, looking back to smile and wave to her, and then she ran up to the dormitory to tell Rose of Hannah’s good news and what had happened in the birth-chamber.

But Rose never heard it. Just as the new baby had drawn her first breath, she had quietly drawn her last, and Susan could not wish her back to a world that had treated her so cruelly.

Parnham’s words proved to be true, for Mistress Lucket ousted Mother Jarvis from the birthing room, and as the weeks went by it was remarked that women recovered more quickly from childbirth, more babies survived, and there were fewer cases of childbed fever. Susan’s insistence on clean linen and the use of soap and water at every birthing was quoted outside the workhouse walls, and with Dr Parnham as her champion, her authority grew steadily. With the help of Miss Glover and money donated by the surgeon, she began to hold classes to teach the orphans their letters, turning a deaf ear to the ridicule of the Crokers and Mother Jarvis.

However, they had early discovered her most vulnerable point, and used it to humiliate her whenever they could.

Mad Doll.

The flitting apparition that haunted the House was held in awe by the inmates. There was no escaping from the grey figure that drifted daily and nightly along passages and up and down stairs, suddenly appearing in doorways or standing unnervingly at a bedside. Stories were told of her that were to become part of workhouse lore for a century to come.

Susan felt herself stiffen whenever Mad Doll appeared. Although she tried to hide her feelings and treat the deranged woman with kindness, always defending her against teasing and ridicule, her own unease showed sufficiently for her enemies to note it and sneer in her presence. Had they but known it, their gibes were less painful to Susan than her own secret revulsion towards the poor creature who had borne her, the mother she could neither love nor forgive. The very sight of her was a hateful reminder of everything that Susan shrank from remembering.

And she could never tell a soul.

THE POST-CHAISE APPROACHING
along the Portsmouth Road was a moving cloud of chalky dust; the hair and uniforms of the two naval officers sitting aloft were white with it, and at intervals they spat it out over the side.

Two miles short of Beversley, Lieutenant Calthorpe turned to his companion in eager impatience.

‘Let’s get down, Henry, and walk ‘cross country. ’Twill be the best way to our journey’s end.’

First Lieutenant Hansford grinned, for he had been about to say the same thing. They called down to the coachman to stop, picked up their rolled sailcloth bags and leaped to the ground, where they struck out across farmland, through ripening corn that shimmered in waves under the July sun. Every step they took brought new pictures into view – a still group of red and white shorthorns in a meadow dotted with tall ox-eye daisies; half a dozen fine fat sows with their piglets, let loose to root in an oak plantation; every aspect of the rural scene gladdened the eyes and rejoiced the hearts of men lately released from the harsh confinements of life at sea.

They reached a tree-crowned summit of rising ground from where they looked down at the familiar valley; on the far side stood the beech grove, and behind it Edward could see the red chimneys of Bever House. Somewhere down there in Beversley was his sweet Susan, perhaps at the Bennetts’ farmhouse, or attending a woman in childbirth; or she might even be at Glover Cottage, consulting with his cousin Sophy and Mrs Coulter.

‘Susan, my own dear love, if I did but know where you are, I’d be straightway at your side,’ he murmured under his breath.

His friend either heard the words or guessed at them, for he clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Call with me at Glover Cottage on your way up, and see if Sophia has news of a certain young lady’s whereabouts!’

‘Gladly, Henry – and wherever she is, I shall go there before I show myself at home,’ replied Edward, his heart leaping at the possibility of seeing his darling so soon, perhaps within the hour.

‘Good! Let’s go down and cross the Beck by the flour mill, and go up through Crabb’s Lane to the main street. Come on!’

They hoisted their bags on to their shoulders, and were down by the Beck within a quarter of an hour.

At twenty-two the younger Calthorpe brother looked much older than the Oxford graduate of a year ago, when he had enlisted in the navy. He had felt there was no choice, with Osmond and Henry engaged in the war that had dragged on from year to year, and after an abbreviated training at the Portsmouth Naval Academy he had been recommended by Lieutenant Hansford to be rated as a midshipman on a troopship where half the crew had never wanted to go to sea: they were pressed men.

With Henry as his commanding officer, Edward had learned fast. His dark blue eyes were sharper and deeper-set, and his skin was roughened by all weathers and the salt of air and diet. His limbs had hardened into a muscular agility that matched the knowledge he had acquired, the brutal sights he had seen: the gaunt, unshaven faces, the hoarse shouts from the lower decks where punishment lashings exposed the bones beneath the flesh. Edward had learned to steel his heart where once he might have tried to intervene; discretion was often the better part of valour in the King’s navy, especially in time of war. Far from desiring to serve their country, men deserted at the first opportunity.

Gone for ever was the reticence of Edward the boy; the man now home on shore leave knew exactly what he wanted from life, and was determined to claim it without unnecessary delay: before he returned to sea in three weeks’ time with the two stripes of a lieutenant, he would be married to Susan Lucket.

Susan! The memory of her sweet face had so often come between him and the life around him, shielding him from its baser effects, and not only aboard ship. There were temptations enough in a seaport where drink flowed freely and the favours of town women were not only cheap and available but actively thrust upon callow youngsters. And only Edward knew how close he had come to succumbing.

It had been a fine spring evening when he had walked up out of the port to the wooded hill above it, simply to get away from tavern company. A young girl had followed him, and as soon as they were alone among the trees she had sidled up to him with a pretty smile and said she was tired of walking. Would the young gentleman sit down with her? He had rather awkwardly agreed, and when they were seated on the tussocky grass, he had asked her name. Her voice was soft and beguiling.

‘Oi be Meg, sir, an’ Oi knows well how to pleasure a fine young gen’leman like yeself, sir.’

And within half a minute she had guided his hands around her waist and pressed her rosy lips to his mouth. It all happened so quickly, and he was taken by surprise at his body’s response: the instant hardening as his blood surged, the immediacy of his desire to take what was being so freely offered.

He returned her kiss, and let her lead his hand inside her bodice to touch her flat little chest. His other hand seemed to find its own way under her skirt and between her warm thighs as they sank down together on the ground.

‘Oh, Meg . . .’ His breathing had quickened with his pounding heart, and he closed his eyes as she found his lips again. While his senses reeled in the moist warmth of her kisses, he felt her prying hands busily unbuttoning his breeches in a curiously practised way, as if she had done this many times before and was in a hurry to get to the point of her business with him. He shuddered to recall how close he had come to taking her there under the whispering leaves; but it was the touch of those nimble hands that made him stop and seize them. They were a child’s hands. He looked at her bare feet, also very small to belong to a girl engaged in such trade as this.

‘Meg – Meg, how old are you?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Oi’ll be fifteen come midsummer, sir, but Oi knows well how to—’

Edward sat up sharply, realising with a shock that he had been about to ravish a child.

‘We must stop this, Meg,’ he gasped. ‘’Tis sinful, and with such a little maid as you are—’

‘Don’t ’ee worry, sir, ’ee ain’t the first,’ she assured him cheerfully. ‘An’ Oi knows just what gen’lemen—’

‘May God forgive us, and myself more than you, Meg!’ Horrified at such wickedness, Edward leaped to his feet, aware of how foolish he must look. Yet conscience-stricken as he was, he felt he had an obligation to remonstrate with her and try to persuade her to turn away from a life that would surely destroy her if she persisted in it.

‘Listen to me, Meg. How long have you been – er – pleasuring?’

She gave him a wary look. ‘Not long, sir.’

‘And do your parents know about this?’

‘No, they be in the country, sir. Oi live wi’ me sister Jenny an’ her little girl, two year old. Jenny works at the Bishop’s Table, that be an inn down there, sir –’ she gestured towards Portsmouth below them – ‘an’ Oi be larnin’ to do the same as her, like, to pay fur me bed an’ board, sir.’

‘Good God! And do you not know the dangers of such a life, girl? The harm to your health, your character, your – your immortal soul?’

‘Oi dunno about me soul, sir, but me belly’d be better fur a slice o’ bread an’ bacon,’ she retorted, straightening the thin kerchief over her narrow shoulders. She was disappointed at the way her handsome bluecoat had turned out. Trust her luck to get a canting preacher!

A wave of self-disgust swept over Edward. What a despicable hypocrite he must look, straight from the pages of Molière, doing up his buttons and brushing the dead leaves from his jacket after he had come so near to using the services of this poor child-whore!

‘Come, Meg, and I will take you back to the Bishop’s Table and speak to your sister.’

He held out his hand to help her to her feet, but she pouted and gave him a sidelong look.

‘There be little joy in goin’ back wi’ nothin’ in me pocket, sir.’

He delved into his own pocket and drew out a handful of silver and copper coins. Her eyes widened.

‘Be them all fur me, sir? Oooh! Jenny’ll be that pleased! Thank’ee, sir, Oi thanks ’ee well!’

Stowing the coins away in a little purse beneath her skirt, she reached up to kiss him in childish delight.

‘’Ee be a right good’un, sir!’

And turning quickly on her bare heels, she ran off down the hill with her prize money, leaving Edward to ponder on the fate of girls like her, sick with remorse when he thought of Susan, and how he had so nearly betrayed her.

And yet the encounter with Meg had been a reminder of his frequent longing to hold Susan in his arms as his lawful wife. His manhood would rise at the contemplation of how it would be when he took her to bed; how often he secretly imagined melting her virginal whiteness in the flame of his passion, until they were blended together into one flesh . . .

Henry’s voice broke in on his thoughts. They had come up Crabb’s Lane and reached the main street, where Miss Glover’s cottage stood back from the other dwellings in its pretty garden.