A Carriage for the Midwife (47 page)

Susan raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘Indeed? And why should that be o’ interest to me?’ she asked coldly. ‘’Tis time ye went back to see that woman who delivered last night and lost a deal o’ blood.’

Lizzie disappeared at once, and Susan heard her talking in a low tone to Mrs Smart in the hallway. She frowned and shook her head in sheer vexation at the news: there would be no other topic of conversation until that simpering creature was delivered of her child, to be followed by a daily report on its progress.

As she was putting on her bonnet and cloak to go out on her visits, Sophia called, asking if she had heard the news.

‘Yes, Sophy, Lizzie and her mother always hear o’ such things the day before they happen,’ Susan replied tartly.

‘And d’you think the child will be in greater danger for birthing a month before its due time, Susan?’

‘I ha’ no idea, Sophy. Ye’d best ask that Mrs Whatshername – her they’ve sent the gig to Belhampton for. ’Tis no concern o’ mine,’ answered Susan stonily, and Sophia could have bitten her tongue.

‘Oh, Susan, I’m sorry, but Rosa is Henry’s sister, and would have been mine if he and I—’

‘Yes, Sophy, I’m sorry too, but I care no more f’r the Calthorpes o’ Bever House than they cared f’r Polly when she lay dying. And now ye must excuse me, I ha’ calls to make.’

Sophia stared helplessly at her friend’s retreating back. There seemed little prospect of her cousin Edward becoming rector of Great St Giles while his wife still retained such enmity against his family.

When Mr Turnbull was awakened just before midnight, his heart plummeted. He had felt apprehensive about Mrs Osmond from the start, and the arrival of a messenger on horseback confirmed his misgivings. Sure enough, as soon as he entered the birthchamber he sensed an unseen Visitor waiting in the shadows: a presence he had encountered all too often in thirty years as unlicensed physician in Beversley.

The women stood anxiously round the bed – Mrs Gertrude Calthorpe, her elder daughter, Mrs Hansford, Mrs Ferris and two maidservants. Rosa lay on her back with glazed eyes and wine-laden breath. Mrs Madingley, flushed and perspiring, could not conceal her dismay.

‘First I thought ’twas a head presenting, then it felt like a breech, and now . . .’

She drew back the sheet, and Turnbull gave a horrified gasp when he saw a tiny arm protruding from the mother’s body.

‘’Twas the shoulder I felt, not the breech, and the pressure has pushed this down,’ muttered the midwife. She and Turnbull both knew that the head could never come through with the shoulder blocking the outlet: when a shoulder presents there is no mechanism for delivery.

Turnbull beckoned to the midwife to consult with him in the corridor outside the bedchamber.

‘What is to be done? The contractions will split the womb,’ he whispered frantically.

‘She’s not getting much by way of contractions now. The womb is in inertia,’ replied the midwife.

‘Then the child is trapped within her and will suffocate,’ said the apothecary between chattering teeth. ‘Neither she nor the child can be saved, with such total obstruction of travail. Oh, my God, woman, what is to be done?’

He remembered how Polly Lucket had died with Osmond’s sons still within her womb. Was this a terrible justice being visited upon the man? Turnbull shuddered.

‘She might be saved if the child were sacrificed,’ whispered Mrs Madingley, and Turnbull could have groaned at hearing his own thoughts put into words. ‘A hook passed in to sever the head, and then to drag forth the body piecemeal.’

Turnbull wanted to put his hands over his ears. ‘I cannot do it, I would not dare, madam. Can you do it?’

‘Not I, ’tis no part of a midwife’s duty, I don’t keep hooks and suchlike. Is there a doctor we can call on?’

‘There’s one in Basingstoke, but – oh, if only Parnham were here and not in Paris!’ Turnbull was shaking from head to foot, and Mrs Madingley saw that she would have to take the lead.

‘Look, Turnbull, the child is small, a full month before its time. It may be possible to deliver it if I pull on the arm and you press down on the belly from above. ’Tis the only chance, and we must try it.’

‘We shall have to tell the family of the risks, and obtain their permission,’ said Turnbull, his face deadly white.

Mrs Gertrude Calthorpe was distracted to the point of hysteria, Osmond was dead-drunk in an armchair downstairs and Mr Calthorpe told them to go ahead and save the child if they possibly could, even if it meant the loss of an arm.

The midwife and apothecary approached the bed, but were halted by a cold, clear command from the tall woman at its head.

‘You will not pull on the child’s arm.’

Everybody in the room turned to look at Jael Ferris, her black eyes now hollow and red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

‘You will not pull on the child’s arm.’

‘Then what in God’s name are we to do, Mrs Ferris?’ moaned Gertrude Calthorpe, raising a haggard face to the woman who had been her trusted personal maid and nurse to the family ever since Miss Glover had left Bever House. ‘What shall we
do
?’

‘Send for Madam Trotula,’ ordered Mrs Ferris.

‘Yes, send for her at once,’ echoed Turnbull fervently.

Mrs Calthorpe glanced wildly round, then flew from the room and down the stairs to where her husband paced the hall.

‘We are to send for Madam Trotula – Edward’s wife – so tell Berry to go out again on Quicksilver to May Cottage,
now
!’ she cried.

Mr Calthorpe shook his head. ‘No, Gertrude, if we are asking Edward’s wife to come to Osmond’s, we must send the carriage for her. I will call Jude and go with him myself. And pray that she may show more mercy than her sister received from us.’

Turning his back on his wife, he strode out to the stable-yard, calling for Jude and the hands to wake up and get out the carriage and horses.

Susan had not slept. The summer night was full of strange and disturbing sounds: the distant yelp of a fox, the call of a night bird, the rustlings and scamperings of field and woodland all seemed unnaturally magnified. She started up with a cry when something stirred in the semi-darkness, but it was only the curtain moving in the breeze from the half-open window.

She got out of bed and went to look up at the night sky. Was Edward awake in his college room, his thoughts on his coming ordination as a priest in the Church of England? How would he receive her offer of an annulment? Would he accept his freedom to find a proper wife? Or would he refuse, and live out his life like one of those priests of the old Roman faith, celibate and childless? He was constantly on her mind.

And so was something else. What was happening at this moment at Bever House? Lizzie and her mother had murmured to each other, shaking their heads; and Lizzie had left a candle burning in the window beside the front door of May Cottage as was their practice when a call was expected.

Great St Giles’s clock struck one.

When Susan heard the distant clatter of horses’ hoofs, and iron-rimmed wheels, she knew that it was the sound of her destiny approaching. She stood absolutely still as the Bever carriage drew rapidly nearer and pulled up outside the cottage, its four lamps blazing in the dark.

Lizzie Decker emerged from the room she shared with little Kitty, pulling a woollen wrap over her nightgown.

‘All right, I’m coming!’ she called in response to knocking at the door. ‘Susan, are you awake? ’Tis the Bever carriage waiting below. They’ve come for you!’

Susan still did not move. She seemed rooted to the spot as she heard the door being opened and her father-in-law’s voice in the little hallway. He was asking for her.

What should she say?

Should she give the same reply that Mrs Calthorpe and the rector had given Joby?
Be off with you!

When Polly lay dying with Osmond’s chidren, no pity had been shown to her. Susan could now reply.
And I care nothing for Osmond’s third child
.

What should she say?

Hardly conscious of moving, she found herself standing at the foot of the stairs. Mr Calthorpe was on his knees before her, pleading brokenly through his tears.

‘Susan – Madam Trotula – I have come to ask your forgiveness for the wrong done to your sister, and to beg you to come to my son Osmond’s wife, who is likely to die with her child if nothing can be done to deliver her. The carriage is here for you. Oh, Susan, for Edward’s sake show mercy and come to her!’

What should she say?

The answer came to her quite simply. She was a midwife, a member of an honourable calling from time immemorial, bound by duty to attend women in travail: and that meant
any
woman, good or bad, a barbarian or an infidel, an enemy of England or of her own kin. The Egyptian midwives in the days of Moses had defied the Pharaoh’s order to kill every Hebrew baby boy at birth, because of their sacred duty to save life, not take it. And so must she, Susan Calthorpe, save Osmond’s child if she could.

If she refused, she was no midwife.

Calthorpe waited for her answer, and Lizzie stood aside, candle in hand, as Susan gave it.

‘Give me two minutes to dress and get my bag.’

‘Thanks be to God,’ murmured Calthorpe, rising from his knees, and two minutes later he assisted her into the carriage. Jude picked up the reins and gave his clucking signal to the four horses; the harnesses tautened and creaked, and the carriage moved off. Susan thought that the whole of Beversley must have been wakened by the commotion.

During the short journey, her first in the Bever carriage, no words were exchanged, but a whole series of memories paraded through Susan’s head. She saw herself as a girl of twelve, almost run down by this same carriage, and shouted at by the same coachman. That was the day she had caused Edward to fall from his horse, the day Miss Glover had offered to send her to Mrs Bryers’ school. There she had been cold-shouldered by the Calthorpe girls, and Rosa had giggled and held her nose at the smelly child from the Ash-Pits. Yet their unkindness had spurred her on to do better than any of them, and now here she was, more than ten years later, a Calthorpe herself and travelling in the family carriage specially sent for her.

When they drew up at the front entrance of Bever House, Susan recalled the one previous occasion she had passed through it, on the night of the ball – was it only five years ago? She and the Bennett ladies had been put in the charge of a pock-marked maidservant who had taken them up to a room with straw mattresses on the floor. Now she was received by a bowing manservant who took her bonnet and shawl; Mr Calthorpe escorted her up the main staircase and along a corridor to the room where Rosa lay. Here she was respectfully greeted by the distracted Calthorpe ladies and an exhausted Mrs Hansford. Mr Turnbull was overwhelmingly relieved to see her, and they all drew aside to allow her access to the bedside.

Mrs Madingley pulled back the sheet from the semi-conscious Rosa, and revealed the prolapsed arm, now blue and swollen.

Susan knew at once what she would have to attempt: a hazardous procedure she had never done before. She would need assistance. Turning to face the company, she spoke with authority.

‘Everybody’s to leave this room except f’r
you
,’ she nodded to Mrs Madingley, and looked round to find a sensible, trustworthy face. ‘And
you
,’ she said to Jael Ferris. ‘Now, I want clean warm water and towels.’

The two prospective grandmothers supported each other as they shuffled from the room with Selina. Turnbull thankfully went downstairs to talk with Mr Calthorpe over a large brandy, and Susan was left with Rosa and her two assistants, to face the greatest challenge of her career.

Dr Parnham had taught her about malpresentations – abnormal positions of the child
in utero
. He said that it was sometimes possible to turn the child to a breech position by inserting a hand up through the ring of the womb and pulling down a leg. It was called version, and had been performed by the ancient Greeks, and more recently by a Frenchman, Ambroise Paré at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris. There were enormous risks involved, one being rupture of the womb, and the likelihood of childbed fever afterwards. It was also unbearably painful, and Susan was thankful that Rosa had been given frequent sips of wine over a long period, and now appeared to be in a semi-comatose state, with an inert womb. Version must be attempted if her life was to be saved, whether the child was alive or not; there was no point in trying to listen for its heartbeat now.

Susan recalled what her teacher had said: in a case of prolapsed cord or arm, get the woman into the genu-pectoral position, to relieve the pressure on the neck of the womb.

‘Help me to get her off the bed and on to her elbows and knees on the floor,’ she ordered. ‘Then we must let her head go down to rest on her arms.’

Between the three of them Rosa was heaved into an ungainly position on the floor with her buttocks up and her chest down. She had to be supported by Mrs Ferris or she would have toppled over sideways.

Susan washed her hands, dried them on a towel and dipped the fingers of her right hand in the jar of boiled goose-grease from her bag. Approaching Rosa from behind, she passed her hand into the birth passage by the side of the baby’s arm. The ring was fully open, and Susan was able to put three fingers through it and push at the child’s shoulder to make enough room to tuck the arm back inside, flexing it at the elbow.

So far, so good. Now she had to slip her hand completely through the ring and inside the womb; fortunately her hand was small, and she passed it along the side of the child’s body until she found a foot – or was it a hand? Once satisfied that it had a heel, she gripped it between her index and middle fingers and drew it down through the ring of the womb, along the birth-passage and out. Mrs Madingley gave a gasp and a stifled cry when she saw it appear, and Susan continued to pull with a sustained traction until the child’s buttocks appeared and the other leg came down spontaneously. The child was revealed to be a girl. Throughout this critical minute Rosa groaned in agony, and Jael Ferris never wavered in physically supporting her and giving her comfort; Susan gave all her attention to the delicate and dangerous procedure, and as the body advanced, she pulled down a loop of the umbilical cord, and noted that it was weakly pulsating.