A Carriage for the Midwife (48 page)

‘Merciful God, it’s still alive,’ breathed Mrs Madingley.

‘Now ye must turn her over on to her back, so that the child’s head can—’ began Susan, but before the women could move Rosa again, the little body slipped out spontaneously – the shoulders, the left arm, the swollen and discoloured right arm, and then, smoothly and easily, the head came through.

And so a daughter was born to Rosa Calthorpe between two and three o’clock in the morning. Jael Ferris wept as she watched Susan sever the cord and hold the little body in her hands, softly blowing upon it and discovering a feeble heartbeat. The baby’s chest jerked, drawing in air, and within half a minute she gave a thin cry.

But Death had not yet left the chamber. Susan handed the baby to Mrs Madingley, and turned to the mother.

‘We must get her back on the bed again,’ she told Jael, and together they lifted the limp body. A brisk haemorrhage from the overstretched, paper-thin womb followed the delivery, and continued until the after-burden was expelled. Then with her left fist in the birth-passage and maintaining pressure on the belly with her right hand, Susan compressed the womb until the bleeding slackened. The twin spectres of a limp, lifeless baby and a serious loss of maternal blood were always to be dreaded at the end of a long travail; but this child was alive, though small, and with a hugely congested right arm – and the mother’s bleeding had been brought under control. Susan felt a lightening of the air in the room as the the grim Presence departed.

‘Turn her over on to her left side, keep her warm and let her rest,’ Susan told Jael. ‘’Twill be a long time afore she recovers from this.’

Heaven grant that childbed fever doesn’t follow on all my handling inside the womb, she added to herself, and was thankful that the child was small – scarcely five pounds, as it turned out – or version would have been impossible. Or fatal.

It was time to bring in the two new grandmothers and a whey-faced Mr Turnbull, who shook Susan’s hand and could not speak for emotion. His open admiration for her skill and dexterity was followed by the praise and gratitude of the whole family. Mrs Calthorpe wept her thanks and called Susan a daughter of the house; Selina kissed her, and Caroline was clearly overawed at this elevation of Edward’s low-born wife whom she must now call sister.

Susan accepted their homage with a gracious calm, though in fact she was floating in that happy state of triumph and relief that all midwives experience when a long and difficult travail ends with a live birth; and in the present circumstances her exultation was intensified by her new status with the Calthorpes of Bever House: a strange and heady sensation indeed for the girl from the Ash-Pits! She saw that the events of this night had ended the enmity between herself and Edward’s family; it had been driven out by the birth of a child.

‘Rosa’ll need very careful nursing, and I’ll come back to see her later,’ she told Mrs Calthorpe. ‘And the baby’ll be wanting a wet-nurse to suckle her. I know a girl with a good supply o’ milk above a year who’s fed several babies and a pair o’ twins since her own was weaned – she’s slow-witted, but her milk’s as good as a wiser woman’s. I don’t know about the baby’s arm, whether it’ll be o’ use. We can but wait and hope.’

While Mrs Ferris promised round-the-clock care of mother and baby, Mrs Madingley quickly made her excuses and took a hurried leave of Bever House. She wanted nothing laid at her door if the mother should die of childbed fever or if the child’s arm should wither and become useless.

When Susan went downstairs she was offered breakfast and whatever payment she cared to ask for by Mr Calthorpe, who threw his arms around her and called her his daughter.

‘We shall be forever in your debt, Susan. Edward shall hear every detail of what has happened this night.’

‘I want no payment, sir,’ she insisted, and for the first time saw Edward’s father for what he was, a well-intentioned man who had done his best to shoulder the duties he had inherited, not helped by having a silly, shallow-minded wife; there was no harm in him, and she was happy to return his embrace. Even so, she was relieved not to see Osmond, who had taken to his bed overcome with emotion, so it was said.

‘The Bever carriage awaits you whenever you wish to leave, Susan,’ said Calthorpe, and although she would have liked to walk home in the freshness of early morning, she thought it better to accept the offer graciously; so once again she stepped into the imposing conveyance.

‘May Cottage, madam?’ asked Jude deferentially.

‘No, Glover Cottage, please,’ she said on a sudden impulse to surprise her friend with a spectacular arrival at this early hour.

But Sophia was ready and waiting, having heard from Mrs Decker about the Bever carriage being sent for the midwife, and she flew out of her door to greet Susan.

‘Susan, dearest Susan, you’ve worked a miracle!’ she cried, opening her arms to the woman of the hour. A detailed account of the night’s events was demanded, and Susan spoke of her new lightness of heart now that her anger against the Calthorpes had vanished, risen like morning dew when the sun’s warmth turns it to vapour; though she admitted that she had been thankful not to see Osmond.

‘Ah, Susan, one day you will learn to pity him,’ Sophia told her earnestly, having heard from Mrs Hansford of his troubled nights and dreams of Polly and their baby sons, a constant, reproachful image that he vainly tried to banish by drinking.

‘How proud Edward will be of you, Susan! Oh, thanks be to God that you were there to save their lives!’

And as the days passed the news from Bever House continued to be good. Rosa remained pale and languid for some time, but did not fall victim to childbed fever, and Susan put this down to Mrs Ferris’s good care. The baby was named Gertrude after her grandmother, and thanks to a plentiful supply of milk from her wet-nurse, she steadily gained weight. Selina Calthorpe had been taken aback when Susan introduced the wet-nurse, a big, placidly smiling girl whose own child, now toddling, looked uncommonly like a little monkey; but catching Susan’s eye, Miss Calthorpe decided not to remember certain stories last year at the House of Industry.

Little Gertrude’s right arm lost its purple, swollen appearance and became soft and flaccid. A doctor came out from Basingstoke to give his opinion in exchange for two guineas, and told the parents no more than Susan and Mr Turnbull had done – that they would have to wait and see how the child’s arm did. Meanwhile Susan advised stroking it, gently bending and straightening the elbow joint in imitation of natural movement.

Everything was going well. A joyful letter arrived from Edward telling Susan that words could not express his admiration, his loving gratitude; and in the circumstances of her new status at Bever House she actually began to hope for deliverance from the shadows of her childhood; that she might now leave her past behind and become a proper wife to Edward and a mother of his children. It seemed like the turning of the tide . . .

Until one day at the beginning of September when Miss Calthorpe drew her aside and said there was something she had to tell her.

‘I know it’s not my business, Susan, but I feel it my duty to let you know,’ she said diffidently. ‘If you were ever to blame me for
not
speaking—’

‘What is it, Selina? What should I know?’ asked Susan, suspecting some case of concealment of pregnancy.

‘It’s – er, it’s about that poor Mrs Dolly Lucket. She’s taken to her bed and Mrs Croker thinks she may be declining. I thought you ought to be told, in case you wanted to, er . . .’

Her words petered out to an awkward silence, and Susan looked so dismayed that Selina almost wished she had not spoken.

‘I see. Thank ye, Selina,’ Susan said at length. ‘Yes, ye did right to tell me.’

She knew she would have to visit, and take Joby with her. The thought of confronting that unquiet spirit again filled her with the utmost reluctance: so many dark shadows lurked in their shared past, fear and horror and guilt and defilement.

Unforgotten and unforgiven.

In the solitude of her room, Susan covered her face with her hands. Vain hopes! What was done could never be undone.

‘
I HAVE TO
go to Belhampton this afternoon on business, Susan. Would you like to come with me?’

Sophia threw out the casual offer with a nonchalant air, as if the idea had just occurred to her.

‘I hadn’t thought o’ going out, Sophy, but – well, I may be taking Joby over to the House one day this week or next, so I won’t come today, thank ye.’

‘But that’s better still. I’ll take you both. Two o’clock this afternoon,’ said Sophia decisively.

‘But Dan Spooner may be needing Joby at the forge.’

‘I’ll speak to Spooner and ask him to allow Job a couple of free hours,’ countered Sophia, and Susan knew then that Mad Doll’s decline must be known in the village, and her friend was urging her to visit without further delay.

‘I don’t want to give you the trouble, Sophy.’

‘’Tis no inconvenience. I’ll set you and Job down at the House, and call for you on my way back. ’Twill give you about an hour.’

And she was gone before any further objections could be made.

Susan suppressed a shiver of apprehension. It was kind of Sophy to give up her time, but she would have preferred to drive herself and Joby in the pony-trap on this particular occasion. She had thought of going at the end of the week, and
today
gave her no time to prepare herself. At least Sophy was going on into the town, and not accompanying her to the bedside: that would be intolerable.

Sophia Glover breathed a sigh of relief; pretence of any kind was completely against her nature, but her apparently impulsive offer had been carefully rehearsed, following a visit from a worried Selina Calthorpe.

‘You see, Miss Gl— Sophia, I told Madam Tr— Susan about Mrs Lucket over a week ago, and she said she’d visit with her brother, but she has still not done so. I don’t like to speak again.’

‘And you’re sure that she understood the gravity of her mother’s condition, Selina?’ asked Sophia, frowning.

‘I tried to make it plain to her, in fact I said how I’d regret
not
telling her if – well, if poor Mrs Lucket were to die.’ Miss Calthorpe looked perplexed. ‘It’s a strange circumstance, all these years in that place, her own mother.’

‘It is unusual, but Susan’s childhood was unusual, too, in a way that you and I can hardly imagine,’ said Sophia loyally. ‘Thank you for what you have told me, Selina, and I shall act upon it this very day.’

And within the hour she had spoken to Susan and made the arrangement without even mentioning Mad Doll.

Little was said on the drive across the common, and Sophia’s attempt to talk to Joby was unproductive.

‘Do you ever hear from that older brother of yours, Job? What was his name – Jack?’

Susan froze, and Joby mumbled reluctantly. ‘Him went off to Portsmouth to join the navy, so he said. Never a word on him since.’

Sophia stole a look at Susan’s white face, as rigidly tense as if she were going to the gallows instead of the sick-bed of the woman who had borne her.

They reached the House of Industry, and Susan and Joby got down. Mrs Croker had seen the chaise from her window, and opened the door before Susan could pull on the bell rope.

‘Ah, Mistress Calthorpe, yer mother’s all but gone,’ she said with a suitably lugubrious expression. ‘Oi’ll take ye both up to see her, but her’ll not know ’ee, fur sure.’

In fear and trembling of she knew not what, Susan followed the woman up the familiar wooden stairs and along the corridor to where Doll lay in a corner of the infirmary. Susan caught her breath at the sight of the shrunken frame, the face like a skull with papery skin stretched over the bone, the half-closed eyes deep in their sockets. The only sign of life was a regular rasp in the throat and a corresponding slight rise of the chest. Joby stepped back in shock, and held Susan’s arm.

‘Her’s gone down these last couple o’ days, mistress,’ said Mrs Croker. ‘That young Miss Selina tol’ me her’d spoke to ’ee.’ The little piggy eyes gleamed knowingly. ‘Oi tol’ her ’ee’d come if ’ee wanted, and now ’ee’s come just in time, Oi reckon.’

‘Thank ye, Mrs Croker,’ said Susan. There seemed no point in trying to apologise or explain her long absence; the woman knew that there had never been a natural attachment between herself and her demented mother. ‘My brother and I’ll sit here beside her. Miss Glover’ll be coming f’r us in about an hour.’

The woman watched as Susan took hold of the skeletal hand lying on the bedcover, and motioned Joby to sit down on the opposite side of the bed.

‘Be she nearly – will her die soon, Sukey?’ whispered Job, his lower lip trembling.

Susan gave a very slight nod. ‘Yes, Joby, she’ll soon be finished with the troubles o’ this world,’ she answered in a low tone. ‘She won’t wake or speak again.’

But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than Doll opened her eyes. They saw her lips move, and then she moaned softly. Susan leaned towards her.

‘’Tis all right, Ma, ’tis y’r children Susan and Job come to visit ye. ’Tis Sukey,’ she added, though she did not like the associations of the childish name.

‘Sukey – Sukey runn’d away – her runn’d away,’ muttered Doll, shaking her head from side to side. ‘Her bore with it four year, and then her runn’d away and Polly follered arter—’

Susan cut in hastily. ‘Hush, Ma, ’tis Joby here beside ye – remember that little baby boy I helped ye to birth? Wasn’t he a fine little feller?’

But Doll twitched her hand free of Susan’s.

‘Sukey? Be her here? No, no, don’t let her come by!’ she cried, her voice rising in fear. ‘Her bore wi’ un fur four year, and then her runn’d away.’

‘Hush, Ma, don’t fret, ’tis all right now – all right now, Ma.’ Susan vainly tried to soothe her, but Doll struggled to lift her head from the horsehair pillow.

‘No,
no
, not her! Tell her to go away – go back and mind Polly. Sukey ha’ no love fur me ’cause o’ what
he
done, that’s why her runn’d away,’ wailed the tormented woman. ‘Four year!’