Common Ground (35 page)

And standing here alone looking into the blackness, I'm struggling with even blacker thoughts. There is that niggling, inconvenient question refusing to budge:
If the government is refusing to listen to science and reason, who or what is it listening to?
The news of the appointment of Owen Paterson as Secretary of State for the Environment is not merely a death sentence for thousands of badgers, but a cruel and cynical twist from a government that once pledged to be ‘the greenest ever'. Paterson is an avowed supporter of fracking to extract shale gas and an opponent of renewable energy subsidies but, most incomprehensibly of all, he is an open climate-change denier. In the name of ‘global trade' he is making promises to tear down any environmental red tape around big business, burn more fossil fuels and support the expansion of the UK's airport capacity. Yet the government
knows
the physics is unanswerable: climate scientists agree that carbon emissions are dangerously heating up the planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that most of the global temperature rise since 1950 is due to greenhouse gases and deforestation, and that a further increase of 2°C would be catastrophic for humanity. There is no debate; eminent scientist after eminent scientist agrees that it is our consumption causing the unprecedented ice melt and global temperatures and sea levels to rise. The proof is everywhere that we are beckoning catastrophe and yet he, the environment minister, is refusing to meet with the chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It is like watching a car crash in slow motion. It just makes me think,
Why? Is there something inherently wrong with us? Is there something immoral at the core of our species?
These are dark days when those elected to run our world pour scorn on scientific consensus for short-term gain and to protect the interests of mining, oil and gas corporations. Dark days when the ultra-rich beneficiaries of endlessly increasing global growth know the consequences of continuing to produce carbon emissions, yet invest hundreds of millions of dollars to clandestinely influence political agendas, lobby government and finance ‘think-tanks' to rubbish climate-change data. Dark days when you realise you are bringing a life into a world that you're not even sure you can trust any more.

When the first liquid grey light steals through the yard, it takes me by surprise. I blink and peer out at the familiar shapes forming in the silver-black – the log shed, the little flowerbed, the back gate, the trellis coiled with a climbing rose gone wild. Eastwards a hairline crack in the black has opened above the rooftops. It is fascinating thing, vanishing to a tiny point like a bronze road into another dimension. Then, from above, a muffled cry breaks the silence. It comes again, clearer now. Rosie is calling my name in a voice I've never heard before. I drop the mug in the sink and run, taking the stairs two at a time, but before I even reach her, I know what it means.

For the past nine days we have had a hold-all packed and ready, stashed in the corner of the bedroom by a Moses basket, similarly primed: cleaned, blanketed and waiting for occupancy. In our ‘hospital bag' is an array of oddities to ease the journey ahead – flannels, drinking straws, an iPod filled with relaxation music and affirmations. And, sitting on top, my tatty notebook. After a few hours the contractions have quickened in frequency but our house isn't very far from the hospital and two phone calls later, we're still at home. Still waiting. By ten o'clock all that remains for me to do is to make sandwiches.
Mum will need her strength
we're told in the NHS leaflet, also tucked into the bag, like an invite to a party. Even so, it seems an absurdly mundane task when every six minutes, counted out carefully on the oven clock, Rosie is doubling over, gripping my arm and riding a sea-swell of internal pressure for sixty seconds, sighing, breathing, humming. I hold her, support her body and rub her back as she crests each surge, then dash back to peeling the boiled eggs and mashing them up with mayonnaise. ‘What about the smell?' she asks, leaning on the sofa recovering her breath. ‘Won't egg mayonnaise stink out the place?' I point out there'll probably be worse smells to contend with in a maternity ward and then admonish her for always worrying about others, even now, while secretly thinking how wonderful that is. But we are out of bread anyway. We both laugh. Amateurs; so excited and so frightened. After another contraction passes I dash to Sainsbury's around the corner. The world outside the door is superficially the same – cars and traffic lights; a clear October day, born cold and growing colder – but it feels like I'm on a different frequency, a different rhythm, and numb to everything else. It's like being caught in a tractor beam radiating from somewhere beyond, a warm, nervous energy that is pulling me steadily and unstoppably towards a place where nothing will ever be the same again. It's only when I run to the checkout clutching a loaf that I discover I've left my wallet at home. ‘My wife's about to have a baby,' I mumble, ‘I'm sorry.' I'm halfway out of the door when the girl on the till calls me back. Her eyes search my face for something. Honesty, perhaps. She curls stray bright-red hairs behind her ear as she checks the aisle behind me. Her purple shirt moulds around a distinct bump of her own. Five or six months, I'd guess. ‘Here,' she says, handing me the bread. ‘Take it. Bring the money another time.'

It's a kind act, one that could get her into bother, and I'm touched. I read the name badge pinned to her fleece and smile. ‘Thank you, Lauren.'

An hour later our bags are by the door, coats on top and I'm pacing the hall itching to do something. Rosie is back on the phone to the maternity ward. The contractions are getting stronger and the midwife is asking when she last
definitely
felt the baby. When Rosie explains it was sometime during the night I hear the voice at the other end click into a different gear: ‘OK, right. Well, you need to come in now. We'll have to check the baby's heartbeat.'

There are things I remember from coming here for Rosie's scans: the surprising hugeness of the hospital, its coraltoned brickwork and blue railings, the buddleia now gone to seed in beds by the steps, the warmth of the corridors and the smell of disinfectant. What I missed on previous visits were the two photographic portraits of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh staring down benevolently from the walls. Opposite them, so it appears like the Duke is struggling to make sense of it, a map explodes the hospital's many floors and wings into details. It's like a disassembled diagram from a car manual, too much to take in. I just see random words: Radiology, Cardiology, Chapel, Restaurant, X-ray. ‘It's down here,' says Rosie and off we squeak down the corridor, her arm on mine, pausing each time she begins to feel the pressure within to adopt our practised positions: interlocking arms and hands the way ballroom dancers do just before the music starts.

The tawny owl has flown from the walls of the Antenatal Clinic along with the rest of the menagerie of animals. Other signs have replaced it: more tinselly adverts for baby photographers and a poster-paint globe cupped in a human hand.
Heal the World
, it instructs in rainbow letters tacked above. In a small room off to the side, Rosie sits up on a bed as a cardiotocograph asserts the vivacity of our baby's life via twitching needle and a jagged mountain range drawn along a roll of graph paper. Half an hour later and satisfied with the topography, the midwife beams at us: ‘All good. You can probably go home now, to be honest.' She lifts up the half-watch clipped to her pocket. ‘Baby could be hours away yet.' But we don't go home. Instead, we're moved up a flight of stairs to an empty observation bay. It is a peachy room in every sense, filled with clean beds, each with a pay-for-TV monitor suspended on an arm above it. The screensavers flick in sync between live news and adverts. After another contraction passes, we take the bed by the window. A horse chestnut folds its rusty leaves up against the glass. Beyond it, over a security fence, a few dog walkers and runners are crossing a thick, flat swathe of green edged with trees. It's a view and a half. You can see a long way from here, a long way back.

The maternity wing overlooks the Stray, the 200-acre horseshoe of common ground created in a famous gesture during the land enclosures in 1778. This wasn't to be ‘common' in the sense understood before the acts were passed; it wasn't to sustain the landless or dispossessed poor. The Stray's limited grazing rights or ‘Cattlegates' were strictly for those copyholders recognised as previously holding tenancy over the ground, and of the fifty cattlegates allocated, the devisees of baronet Sir Thomas Ingilby received twelve. Rather, the Stray was a gesture to appease the new and emerging class of landowners concerned that the privatisation of the mineral springs here would damage the wider area's reputation as a burgeoning English Spa. Responding to their petitions, the King (through his title ‘Duchy of Lancaster') bequeathed them the land with the promise it would remain open common where all and sundry could enjoy free and unfettered access to the medicinal waters for ever,
without being subject to the payment of any acknowledgment whatsoever for the same, or liable to any action of trespass, or other suit, molestation, or disturbance whatsoever, in respect thereof
. Protected by law, this gift set in stone the future of the rural hamlets of High and Low Harrogate as well as the older township they fell under: Bilton-with-Harrogate. It created the environment whereby a grand resort could rise and flourish, attracting visitors to its wide avenues and tree-lined parks, its hostelries and assembly rooms. And, importantly, the unique concentration of springs set amid this rolling curve of public green. Those were different times. With the spa industry drying up for good in the 1930s, the Stray now finds itself tussling with the legacy – Harrogate is a tourist hotspot, residential jewel and conference venue that requires space more than it does springs. Zoom out and you see these 200 acres surrounded. Hemmed and threaded with roads, the Stray is now encroached from every direction, squeezed by the fine, imposing architecture of the ‘old' town on one side and, on the other, the density of streets, houses, churches and schools that form its southerly suburbs.

I open the window as far as it will go. About three inches. With no one here to be offended, we eat our egg mayonnaise sandwiches and then conduct laps of the room, arm in arm, returning after each to rest and take in the vista of grass and trees. Dutifully, Rosie plugs in her iPod and closes her eyes. Through her earphones I can hear the faint sound of hypnobirthing affirmations. An American woman with a voice like silk:
The colour violet causes the mind to vibrate; all of nature is in tune with violet. Go deeper. You are a vehicle of nature. In tune with nature. Go even deeper. Now envisage yourself in a soft, green mist. Just as the earth springs forth life so too will your body …

Sitting beside her on the bed, looking through the window, I can just about make out a small, hexagonal stone building, an elegant pump room constructed in the nineteenth century over one of the Stray's famous iron or
chalybeate
wells. It is shut up now like an abandoned lighthouse in a sea of grass, an oddly ornate distraction for those idling in traffic. A toppled turret. Nothing more. A dead king's wishes about free water carry little weight these days. Every spring in Harrogate is under lock and key. I'm not sure what that implies – perhaps they need to be for their own protection – but walking here sometimes after heavy rain I've found patches where those ancient iron and sulphur waters have leached back up through the boggy grass, pooling and puddling again in the Stray's dips and muddy corners. Birds flock to these mineral lagoons just as they have for millennia, before every stone, brick and human story was laid down here. To see that scene enduring among the queues of cars restores me in some small way.

Rosie's waters break at 3:30 p.m., halfway through another loop of the room. A different midwife, Jean – a short, kind-faced woman with glasses and grey hair dyed to blond – arrives with paper towels, checks her watch and makes a note. I'd no idea it was so late. Time has become an elastic concept outside the precise clockwork of the contractions, arriving now every four minutes, and for forty intense seconds. ‘You're three centimetres dilated, too,' Jean says, peeling off a rubber glove. ‘So I think we should move you to the labour ward.' She smiles at me. ‘Let's call it a free upgrade.'

Jean fetches a wheelchair as I pack up our stuff. I have that same punched-gut tension as you feel the moments before stepping on a stage – that edginess. And it won't go. Rosie is pushed down the corridor past idle equipment and boxy incubation chambers, but I don't think she's taking any of it in. Her eyes are becoming more focused after each wave, as though she is staring inwards at something I can neither see nor hear. Past rows of drawers and a bright reception desk, we're shown into a room with a single, high, mechanical bed in its centre and a bathroom to one side. Jean and a nurse move automatically through the space, opening drawers and preparing equipment as they ask questions and strap a blood pressure monitor on Rosie's arm:
Do you want some water? Would you like to try a bath?
Polite as ever, Rosie answers each –
No, thank you
and
Yes, please
– then succumbs again, folding over the bed, interlocking hands with mine and releasing a long humming breath deep into the hospital sheet.

I've never heard of it before, but midwives rely on a kind of data record designed to draw order from the process of birth. It has a name –
Partogram
. It makes the details of labour, such as dilation, the baby's heart rate and the mother's vital signs visible and measurable so that any variations can be identified and investigated. Jean explains that she is starting one and then wires Rosie up accordingly. After handing her a little paper cup with pills in, I watch her write:
Paracetamol (1gm) and codeine phosphate (60mg) taken – declines further analgesia.