Monsoon Summer (35 page)

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CHAPTER 49
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I
hardly slept for the next two nights thinking of the jail in Cochin—the broken lights, the cracked concrete walls, the stink of pee and Dettol.

If Appan was right and they made an example of me, I would lose everything: my work, my reputation, Anto, Raffie, the honor of the family.

I was also baffled and horrified to think that Mrs. Nair's baby died, when it left us so bonny and thriving and with her so happy. And these clammy, sleepless nights brought me face to face with every bad thing about me: my arrogance, my stupidity, my cowardice in bailing out of the midwifery course with only a month left to go. Why had I done that?

A judge and jury would want clear facts about the Home—figures, account books, official approvals—and mine were shot through with holes and inconsistencies. Straining to remember conversations Daisy and I had had at Wickam Farm, my brain felt too numbed to recall them with any confidence. The Home had been set up in pre-Independence days, a time when proof of En­glishness was pretty much all you needed to be a do-gooder in this country and be applauded for it. Now the law would see me as a half-qualified, incompetent busybody, and the fire would further complicate things.

* * *

I poured my heart out to Anto that night. We were back in Fort Cochin, and we sat up late on the veranda and talked long after Raffie had gone to bed. I reminded him that he'd warned me during that awful row in Trivandrum, “Kill one baby and they will kill you.”

“Let's hope you weren't right,” I said. “But you know, I didn't lie about my qualifications. I thought I'd never have the guts to do another delivery again.” Anto tightened his clasp on my hand; he waited awhile in case there was more I wanted to say.

“Do you know something?” He shifted on the swing and sat closer. “You've never really told me what happened that night.”

“I don't know if I can.”

“You don't have to.” After a long silence, he peeled my hands away from my face and looked at me dubiously, not sure he wanted to hear this either. After a few more minutes I started slowly, with a feeling of creeping shame, but then it came out in a rush because it was, I suppose, the confession I needed.

“It was a summer evening, at the end of the war. I was happy as a clam: the last part of our exams were over and I'd done well and I was one month shy of being fully qualified. I had no one apart from Daisy to tell the good news to because, well, you know my mother would hardly be throwing her hat in the air. So, I was cycling over Westminster Bridge with a bottle of gin in my pocket and a cake so I could celebrate with Josie, who was working at Thomas'.

“Josie sneaked me into her room. She'd been on duty for hours. I was pooped too, so we lay on her bed and drank some gin, not a lot, a glass or two, and were just going off to sleep when there was an air raid, and the hospital was full of casualties, and then . . .”

“Kitty, you're shaking.” Anto put his arm tighter around me.

“About midnight, there was a pounding on the door. A young girl had been found in a bus shelter on Lambeth Road, just behind the hospital. She'd gone into labor and was petrified, what with the bomb and the fires, so they'd brought her in. No room for her, so
they made up a quick bed in the corridor. A friend of Josie's, who knew I was studying midwifery, asked me to help out. All the other nurses were busy; no one questioned it. They just told me to get on with it. It was the war: policemen, firemen were delivering babies. So I did. It was very frightening with the roof shaking and the lights going out, but it was a fairly straightforward delivery, and I was pretty pleased with myself.

“We put the baby—it was a boy—in an air raid helmet because it was still pretty hot, but then I don't know what happened, honestly don't know.” I started to sweat and shake just thinking of it. “The baby made this awful sound—it was like a crow or something—and then it began to fit and I didn't know what to do. You know the thing about being a good midwife is being able to react to change very quickly but also to keep calm, and I just didn't.

“I'll never know exactly what I did wrong: maybe I didn't clear his lungs properly, or if I hadn't had the gin, I would have been more alert, but there the baby was, frothing at the mouth, and then it went blue and started choking on its tongue, and the mother was shouting: “Do something! Do something!” She was completely mad with panic. And I didn't, or at least I tried, but not the right thing. I ran to get someone instead of doing the right thing myself. But I didn't know what the right thing was. I got lost in the corridors looking for help. When I came back, it was dead.” I had the usual clear memory, as I said this: the mother howling, the baby in the tin helmet in her arms, its lips turning blue.

“Oh, Kittykutty,” Anto said when I had finished. “Why didn't you tell me before?” He stroked my hair. “Why are you so sure it was your fault? A congenital heart problem, all kinds of things.”

“I couldn't bear to; I felt so disgustingly stupid. I've never properly forgiven myself for going to a party and ending up killing a baby. Don't tell me it wasn't my fault. I was there, and I panicked, and maybe if I hadn't had the gin . . . and I've only just thought of this, but although I'd delivered babies by then, it was always under
supervision. I was no good in an emergency—head knowledge but no experience, the very opposite of the midwives we're training. Any one of them would probably have known what to do.”

It was all back in my mind now: the wash of green light; the blackout curtain, the smothered cry the girl had made as she'd tried herself to bring the baby back to life.

“And now I've done it again,” I told him. “Appan said the lawyer's baby died. It's so hard to believe because it was such a good delivery for us both, but maybe I did do something wrong.”

“Kitty.” He took both my hands in his. “The first thing to do is to go down and talk to Dr. Annakutty. Thanks to your work, they will have the proper records now.”

“No, we don't! That's the point. The records were burned in the fire.”

He bit his lip. “Well, Dr. A. is a well-respected woman. She'll vouch for you.”

“That's the point.” I stared at him. “The last time I spoke to her, she swore she had no idea I wasn't qualified.”

“What!” Anto's grip on my hand tightened. “She can't do that.”

“You don't know her, Anto, I do. She can be a number one bitch. If it goes to court, she's quite likely to use me as a scapegoat: a baby has died, the mother's a lawyer. I didn't have the right qualifications. I'm her perfect get-out-of-jail card.”

“The other nurses?”

“I can't count on them. They're all too new and terrified of her.”

“Maya?”

“No, she's a straw in the wind whenever Dr. A.'s around, not that I blame her for that.”

“We'll think of something.” He was sounding a little desperate himself. “Kitty,” he added after a long and thoughtful pause, “going back to what you said earlier. Do you imagine that there is a single nurse or doctor in the world who doesn't feel they have blood on their hands? We're human, we make mistakes. You did the best you
could. The alternative that night was what? To say to that girl in labor, ‘Sorry, love, can't help: I'm one month shy of my finals, deliver your own baby.' Conscience absolved, girl left screaming. That, in my opinion, would have been the greater sin.”

“Ah, sin, Anto,” I said, remembering how they'd wrapped the baby in a towel and taken it away. “I wish I were a proper Catholic sometimes, and could empty it all away.” Like the rubbish on Monday, I thought.

“It doesn't work like that,” he said. “I wish it did.”

Then Raffie woke us crying. He was always unsettled when he came home from Mangalath, his favorite place in the world.

Anto ran upstairs and brought him down. Raffie sat on his lap, rubbing his fists in his eyes and looking blearily around.

“Oh, Anto.” The two of them seemed suddenly, inexpressibly dear. “What if I do go to jail?”

“You won't,” he said, but I saw the strain on his face. “Take your little worry bead and give him a hug.” He handed me Raffie. I tried not to squeeze him too hard, as I prayed to a God I wasn't sure I believed in.

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CHAPTER 50
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W
hen the monsoon came the following week, it was almost a relief to be imprisoned inside the house. But when the rains stopped, I couldn't sit still. I left Raffie with Kamalam, took a taxi to Alleppey and boarded the backwater ferry to Champakulam, Maya's village—the place I'd set out to with such excitement almost two years before.

If it hadn't been for the giant knot in my stomach, it would have been a lovely trip. An earlier shower of rain had left a fine net of diamonds on the hibiscus and palm trees; the rice paddies on either side of our boat were intensely green.

When we arrived at the village, I went to Saint Mary's, the Christian church where we'd done the first midwife class. The streets leading there were puddled and potholed and the whole place looked even scruffier than I remembered it, with debris from the monsoon washed up on its shores.

The church was empty. I sat near a lifelike wooden snake wound around a statue of the Virgin Mary. The snake had a malevolent look, as if to say, I could strike you at any time, and you would never know. I didn't pray to God. I prayed to Dr. A. and to Maya. Please help me. You're my only chance.

An old man was sweeping up leaves outside the church. I showed him the piece of paper with Maya's name and address on it. He put down his brush and pointed very precisely left, then right, in the direction of a scattering of small houses. I thought I'd followed his
directions, but the alleyways got narrower and narrower, and one dusty lane hung with washing looked pretty much like another. I was sweating and flustered by the time I got to a bicycle shop and showed my piece of paper again. A man covered in axle grease led me a street away to a flimsy door, which opened when I knocked on it.

If it hadn't been for her familiar gap-toothed smile, I wouldn't have recognized her, she looked so small and squashed.

“Maya,” I said, “I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I'm in trouble. I need your help.”

“You mustn't stay, ma'am,” she said with a panicked glance over my shoulder. “My husband will be back soon; he's at the toddy shop.”

But she let me in anyway. I was shocked at how small and squalid the house was when Maya was so meticulous at work. The sitting room, with its broken chair and two stained charpoy beds in the corner, was so low-ceilinged, I could barely stand up. It stank of curry.

“My boy is here,” Maya said, looking anxiously at me. The grim-faced boy who used to deliver her to the Home got up from one of the charpoys. There was a large gauze bandage on his left arm. He snarled something to Maya and shot out the back.

“He is shy with visitors,” Maya said, looking crushed and ashamed.

“I won't stay long,” I assured her, “but Maya, please listen.” I told her in a rush about the lawyer, the possible tribunal. I could hear her breathing heavily while I spoke. Twice she went to the door and peered out into the street.

“What can I do?” she asked, when I had finished. It wasn't an offer of help, more a passive acknowledgment that the universe was not designed to give us what we wanted. “I have no job now. Everything has ended for me also.”

“Do you miss it, Maya?” I said.

“No.” The eyes turned towards me were bruised and weary. “It's too hard. My husband and son don't like it.” I heard, out in the street, a shout, the whirr of a bicycle wheel going by. She jumped up and stood at the door, desperate for me to leave.

“Sorry, Miss Kit.” I stood up to reassure her.

“Maya,” I said, “if there's a tribunal, will you speak up for me?”

“What is a tribunal, ma'am?”

“Three government men will ask us questions about the Home and the work we did there. You won't have to say anything that isn't true.” Maya looked dubious.

“Our aim was to make things better, you said that yourself.” I didn't like the note of whiney self-justification in my voice, but what could I do? She shook her head, twisted her hands. The boy began calling from the back of the house, a monotonous roar like that of a trapped calf, with a hint of threat in it. A scum of rice had boiled over on the stove and was dripping down the side of the saucepan.

“Sorry, madam.” Maya could no longer disguise her panic. “I can't help.”

Before she closed the door behind me, she gave a small, sad wave, a wave that felt like the final good-bye to the joyful, practical, funny colleague she'd grown into at the Moonstone. I feared for her, and I feared for myself. I'd lost my first ally.

* * *

I went to the library on Lily Street to see if I could find any legal books on the minimum statutory requirements for a midwife in India. I also wanted to check if there was anything in writing about the origins of the Moonstone, hoping it might mention the collaboration with Daisy Barker, the Settlement ladies, and the Indian midwives they'd worked with.

In a mood of increasing despair, I read through back issues of the
Hindu
, in the hope of seeing some stray announcement, but all
I saw in the social columns were memsahibs cutting tapes or opening flower shows, long-gone polo and cricket matches, but no news items, nothing. The library, like so many Indian institutions, was in a state of hectic renewal.

Next I plucked up courage to go see Dr. Annakutty. It was three weeks since our last meeting and she already had a new job as a locum at a small government-sponsored clinic on the edge of town. Dr. A., as grand and impersonal as ever, ushered me into a sparsely furnished cubicle on the first floor of a flat-roofed modern-looking hospital. She told me this new job of hers was a logical progression from the Home. In the past, she'd stressed that Indian women liked female midwives because their husbands didn't want another man looking at them. Now she sang a different tune: “We have twenty-five beds here, solely for the women, and we have gorement funding to pay them a little reward when they use our facilities. The doctors here are very kind to the women; they don't want them to be frightened of them. It's important for us to wean ourselves from US and English medicals.”

When I told her my problem, she said immediately, “Sorry, can't help. I thought from Miss Barker you were qualified, and we're busy here now.” She couldn't wait to get rid of me, and every fiber of every nerve ending in her face and posture said so. Case closed, and there was nothing I could do.

Struggling through the heat on the way home, trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together, I realized that deep, deep down, I didn't blame them particularly. Maya was poor and desperate: why put her life on the line for an Englishwoman who must seem to her to have been already magnificently rewarded by the world?

As for Dr. A., she was ambitious and had already paid a high price for her right to work. Why risk that for a half-qualified foreigner? I was going to have to face the music alone.

To cheer myself up, I bought sweets from the
barfi
man who
was near the beach by the fish market. A twist of brightly colored sweets for Raffie, a sesame ball for me.

I walked the last few blocks home slowly. I put the packets of treats in my left hand and opened the door.

“Anto,” I said seeing him there. “You're home early.”

“Yes.” He was trying to smile.

He had a manila envelope in his hand with a government stamp in the corner. “This came for you,” he said. His voice sounded unusually trembly. “I opened it, and they've set the date.”

* * *

The one relief on the morning of the tribunal was that Glory, who was too ill to travel yet, was still convalescing at Mangalath. With any luck, I thought, she need never know about this, and neither need Amma and the rest of that house.

I woke up with a sense of dread so strong, I could not eat. I took a walk to the Home, where most of the old building had been pulled down and the trees were still blackened. I tried to summon up the good times: the prayers and dancing in the mornings, the gales of laughter as Rosamma had produced the plastic baby from her sari, the cries of the newborns from the ward, but as I stood in the ruined garden, my mood was bleak.

I was about to leave when I heard a sound behind the tin hut, a soft scraping, a murmur of voices. Behind the hibiscus bush I saw two local women sitting on their haunches tending a row of dusty geraniums that had somehow escaped the fire.

One I recognized: she had come into the clinic the victim of violent intercourse that had left her bleeding. I'd stitched her up as tidily and gently as I could during a long and tearful session that had lasted an hour. Nurses had brought her chai and a meal.

Now she looked shy when she saw me and covered her face with the end of her sari. At her feet was a jam jar of water. Her friend had
brought a rusty trowel. To the right of the hibiscus they'd erected a tiny shrine with bricks scavenged from the center, a plastic goddess inside. The woman we'd treated sprang to her feet when she saw me, about to run, before her friend stopped her.

“We are here to keep the garden going,” the friend announced boldly. “This is a nice place.”

That was all, but it meant a lot on a morning full of dread for me.

* * *

Eleven a.m.

Anto was pale and we barely spoke as he drove me to the Government Hospital on Fort Street. When we parted, he told me not to worry: whatever happened today, the tribunal would almost certainly only be saber rattling, and I was not alone. I hardly heard a word, I was so nervous. Inside the hospital, I was taken in a clanking lift up to a sterile room on the fourth floor.

Three frowning men looked up as I entered. They sat behind a long table in the middle of the room. The empty chair facing them was mine. A youngish man wearing a turban and a dark Western suit stood up. His eyes were watchful, hard.

“Madam,” he said, “today we are convened by the Medical Council of India to inquire into the specific matter of the Matha Maria Moonstone Home for Expectant Mothers and your role in it. My name is Dr. Diwan; these are your other interlocutors. To my right” (a busily scribbling man looked up), “Dr. Vijay Masudi. To my left, Dr. Mohanty. All of us are elected officials of the new Indian government. We have a high level of expertise and experience.”

The fluorescent light above my head was so bright, his face became a blur.

Dr. Diwan opened a bulging green file with a fresh piece of paper on top.

“Your first birth name, please.”

“Kathryn.” Kathryn, my punishment name, only used by my mother or a headmistress, in times of trouble.

“Surname?” The pen scratched on.

“Smallwood.” Safer to give my maiden name.

“From what country you are hailing?”

“England.”

“Address?”

Wickam Farm seemed the logical choice for this. I could barely remember the other ones.

“Can we see your certification to practice medicine?”

“Here.” I tried to smile confidently as I handed it over, but there was a strange wobble in my lip and my mouth was dry. Dr. Diwan took the certificate, read it with forensic concentration, held it up to the light as if it were a dud pound note, passed it to his colleagues, and handed it back to me.

“Midwifery certificate?” Dr. Diwan's expression did not change.

“I don't have one.”

He narrowed his eyes, poked his tongue through his cheek.

“You don't have one? How is this possible?” Concerned glances at his colleagues. He went through his papers again.

“You see,” he said, scratching his forehead, “I have it here that you've been delivering babies at the Matha Maria Moonstone Home for Expectant Mothers.”

“I was.”

“Under supervision?”

“Almost always.” I heard the rumble of trolley wheels above my head, somebody crying. I took a deep breath. “There were one or two times, when we got very busy, I was the person in charge.”

“Dr. Annakutty was the head of your home.” Dr. Diwan brandished a letter, in her handwriting. “Was she was aware of your lack of qualifications?” He did not wait for my reply but picked up a letter and read it out loud in a voice that drilled through my eardrums.

“ ‘In November 1948, I was informed by Miss Daisy Barker, one of the trustees of the Settlement, the charitable trust operating from Oxfordshire, that she was sending a high-quality nurse to us. I worked with her in good faith. At no time did I check her qualifications because I was assured that the British Government had done so.'” It was hardly a rousing endorsement.

“So, here we get to the nub of the thing.” Dr. Diwan's eyelids drooped. He knotted his fingers and stared at me directly.

“Who runs this charity, and under what authority? We have no proper record of it on our books. We have correct permissions on our books”—he referred to his papers—“for the Dufferin Fund ladies, and a number of Catholic charities from overseas. You're not here.”

I kept my voice as steady as I could. “Are you sure there is no record? Our founder, Daisy Barker, worked in India for years before Independence: first in a Bombay orphanage, then setting up this home.”

He opened his hands wider. “Miss Smallwood. I can't conjure facts from nowhere. Was this Miss Barker a qualified doctor?”

I stared at him. “No.”

“Under whose authority was she here?”

“I don't know.”

The three men exchanged incredulous looks. Dr. Masudi shook his head and sucked his teeth.

“Madam,” Dr. Diwan said at last, “do you not think it an act of extreme presumption for two Englishwomen to come to our country with no clear understanding of our religions, or proper medical qualifications, and instruct our women in childbirth? How would you feel if the situation was reversed?”

“It wasn't like that.” A mouse squeak of desperation in my voice. “Our aim was to work alongside Indian midwives to learn from them too.”