Queen of the Mersey (45 page)

‘I’m hardly likely to sleep at all. The baby kicks like mad all night long.’

‘Does it?’ He looked astonished. ‘I can’t imagine it being real.’

‘It’s real all right.’ Mary grimaced.

‘I wonder if it will be a boy or a girl? You know, I hadn’t thought of that before.’

‘I don’t think about it much either. Sometimes, all this,’ she swept her eyes around the room, ‘seems very unreal, and one day I’ll wake up and find it hasn’t happened.’

‘You know,’ Duncan said, ‘I often feel the same.’

Late in February, she found herself unable to keep still, unable to settle to anything. She managed to snatch only a few hours’ sleep a night. Duncan started getting up first and fetching her a cup of tea. ‘Have you had a bad night?’ he’d ask sympathetically.

‘No worse than usual,’ she would reply. She felt enormously heavy and badly in need of a crane to turn her over. She’d lost some weight, but not enough to make much difference. Her spots had completely gone.

‘If you ever need anything in the middle of the night, just give us a shout,’ he said one morning. ‘A drink, a hand with turning over, or just to talk. It might help if you went for a walk before bedtime. We could stroll along the beach.’

From then on, every night after they’d eaten, they’d walk along the sands. She linked his arm, she had to as she needed his support. Sometimes, they came back via South Road, turning right into Crosby Road, then down Cambridge to the Esplanade and home, where Duncan would make cocoa for them both and a sandwich for himself.

One night, halfway along South Road, she paused in front of a shop with a display of tiny clothes in the window. ‘I haven’t got anything new for the baby,’ she said. ‘Mam’s given me loads of things, but they’re all secondhand.

They might even be third-or fourth-hand, for all I know.’

‘We can’t have our baby wearing fourth-hand clothes,’ Duncan said indignantly.

‘Let’s make a list of everything we need and we’ll get them on Saturday. It’ll need a bed too, and a pram.’

‘Queenie’s offered to buy us a pram.’

‘Good for her.’ He thought the world of Queenie who’d bought him a tie pin back from Greece. It was nice to know that there was one person left who didn’t hate him.

It was almost April, the last day of term and Duncan’s final day at school. He seemed almost cheerful when he left. Mary had asked the other night if he’d written to his family telling them to expect him home shortly.

‘Not yet. I keep hoping another, more appealing idea will hit me. But it hasn’t, yet.’

‘Once you leave school, you won’t have a job.’

‘I’ve enough money to tide me over – tide us over. I was thinking about what you said the other week, about doing something exciting. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel quite as hopeless as I did. I might even stop teaching and do something different.’

Mary didn’t feel even faintly hopeless. The future looked very bright, as did the view, she noticed when she looked out of the window and watched Duncan get into the little blue car he kept parked outside. The sun shone brilliantly, making the water glisten and turning the sands into a gleaming patch of gold. A woman pushed a pram, a toddler at her side – a little boy wearing Wellingtons and a duffle coat. Every now and then, he would desert his mother – she assumed it was his mother – to try to capture one of the gulls pecking at the sand in search of scraps.

She eased herself down on to the settee with a groan. She’d wash the dishes and tidy up later. After only a few minutes, she felt the urgent need to go to the lavatory, and uttered another groan as she struggled to get up. Halfway, she felt a wave of pain pass through her stomach.

A contraction! She’d had her first contraction! The baby must be coming early, though it might be a false alarm. She stumbled into the lavatory, then to the kitchen where, for some reason, she began to wash dishes like a mad woman, worried the baby might come before she’d had time to dry them. She made the bed and tidied up with the same, desperate panic. She was dusting the mantelpiece, only dusted the day before, when she had another contraction that made her double up in agony.

The baby was definitely on its way. By the end of the day, she would be a mother. She thought of another day, in this very room, when she’d pressed herself against Duncan, teasingly, thinking it was nothing more than a game, regretting it now with all her heart. ‘This isn’t what I want,’ she whispered.

She took her suitcase from under the bed, not sure whether to go to the maternity hospital in Southport now, or wait until the contractions were becoming more frequent. She decided to go now, badly in need of company, not wanting to be alone with the pain, wishing Mam was on the telephone so she could call her. Perhaps she should phone Duncan. Since they’d decided to separate, they’d become friends. But did she want him there in the intimate hours before the birth? And afterwards, with the staff congratulating him on becoming the father of a child he didn’t want and might never see again after he’d gone back to Scotland?

Oh, but she needed someone, and Duncan was the only friend she had. She picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the school.

Duncan Maguire was nowhere to be found. The classroom was empty when the school secretary went to say his wife urgently wanted to speak to him. Then she remembered; all the classes in year five had gone to the Odeon in Waterloo to see Richard III, which was included in that year’s English O-level syllabus. The cinema had arranged a special showing for schools in the area and the headmaster thought it would be a treat for the children on their last day at school before the Easter holiday. The secretary somehow doubted this.

She wondered if she should ring the Odeon and ask the manager to put a notice on the screen, but it seemed a bit extreme. It would be best to phone the wife and explain the situation, see what she thought. But when she rang the Maguires’

number, there was no reply. ‘Well, it can’t have been all that urgent,’ she said to herself, replacing the receiver in its rest.

By this time, Mary had also remembered about the film and was on the train on her way to Southport. The contractions were coming about every quarter of an hour and she was worried the baby might arrive any minute. She looked around the carriage to see if there was anyone who looked up to giving a hand with the birth, but there were only two very elderly men arguing over something that happened during the First World War, a young woman with her arm in a sling, an enormously fat man having a conversation with himself, and a middle-aged couple who seemed to be deliberately ignoring each other. The woman looked reasonably capable, but the pair got off at Formby.

She was relieved when the train drew into Southport and the baby was still in place. A porter leapt forward to take her suitcase.

‘Shall I put you in a taxi, luv?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I think you’d better.’ She hoped the driver would know what to do if she gave birth on the back seat.

It was almost midday when Duncan got back to school and was told of Mary’s message. Wordlessly, he rushed out to the car and drove home, half-expecting to find Mary prostrate on the floor and a baby crawling around the room. But the flat was empty, as well as being beautifully tidy, he noticed. He looked under the bed, saw the suitcase had gone, ran back to the car and set off for Southport. He had no idea why he was in such a hurry to get there. Perhaps it was because he knew the child about to be born would be his only child.

He found Mary on her own in a room adjacent to the delivery room. ‘She’s being very brave,’ said the nurse who showed him in. ‘The contractions are coming every minute, but there’s not been a peep out of her. Sister Fitzgerald will be along soon. Any minute now, and your wife will be ready to deliver.’

Mary’s face was wet with perspiration. She looked very young, hardly more than a child herself in the plain white hospital gown, damp curls sticking to her forehead.

‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ Duncan said softly. ‘I didn’t get your message until about an hour ago. I came as fast as I could. I wish you hadn’t been alone all this time.’

The eyes that turned on him were glazed with pain. ‘Hold my hand, Duncan,’ she whispered. ‘I need someone to hold my hand, really hard.’

The hand was damp and slippery. He clutched it as hard as he could, but Mary clutched his even harder when another contraction came. Her body seemed to convulse, then relax. She uttered a sigh. ‘What was the picture like?’

‘Good, but I’d sooner have been here with you.’

‘I wish you’d been here, too.’ Two tears ran down her pale cheeks. ‘I’m sorry about everything, Duncan. If only we could go back in time and do things differently.’

‘I’m just as sorry, but don’t think like that, Mary, not now. We can’t go back.

What’s done is done and we just have to live with it.’

Mary’s lips twisted in an ironic smile. ‘Yes – a baby neither of us want!’

Another nurse in a dark blue uniform, presumably Sister Fitzgerald, entered and said briskly, ‘Out in the corridor, if you don’t mind, Mr Maguire. It’s time your wife went next door.’

Duncan paced the corridor for what seemed like hours; eleven steps one way, eleven the other. Afterwards, he discovered it had been little more than twenty minutes. He badly needed a drink, a cigarette, something to calm him. A different nurse appeared and fetched him a cup of tea that didn’t help a bit, though he went in search of another when he’d drunk it. When he returned, noises were coming from the delivery room. Mary was shouting, Sister saying something in a loud voice. There was a slap, then the sound of a baby crying – no, not crying, more yelling its head off. It sounded extremely angry.

The door suddenly opened and Sister stuck out her head. ‘You’ve got a little girl, Mr Maguire. She’s a lively one, I must say. No, you can’t come in yet,’

she said sharply when Duncan made a move towards her, ‘your wife needs tidying up first.’

Duncan stepped back, the tea in his hand forgotten. He was still in exactly the same position when the door opened again. ‘You can go in now. Mother’s very tired, but baby isn’t. I think she’d quite like to go to a dance or something.

Would you like me to take that cup and saucer off you, Mr Maguire? Or are they attached to your body permanently?’

Mary couldn’t stop talking, but hardly a word entered Duncan’s brain. All he could do was stare at the baby in her arms. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her eyes were wide open. She was staring straight at him! She just knew he was her father. God, she must be intelligent. The eyes were very blue, very large, very wise. She was waving her arms, as if trying to escape from the tight confines of the blanket in which she was wrapped.

‘Isn’t her hair the most gorgeous colour?’ Mary babbled. ‘Have you noticed her nails? They’re perfect. And she’s got toes, ten altogether, the nails are just little pink dots. Would you like to hold her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Be careful with her neck, no her head. I mean, her neck’s not very strong, so be really careful.’

He had a baby, a daughter. He gingerly picked up the tiny bundle, conscious of the fragile bones, the soft flesh, the waving arms, the blue eyes, the little feathery curls that were an unusual dark gold. The pink mouth was opening and closing, like a fish.

‘She’s saying something,’ he murmured.

‘Earlier, she smiled at me, but Sister Fitzgerald said it was just wind.’

‘Sister Fitzgerald doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

‘That’s what I told her.’

They smiled at each other, just as the door flew open and Vera sailed in.

‘You’ve had a girl! The nurse told me. Oh, let me see her. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, if she isn’t the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen. If only your dad was here to see her.’ Vera burst into tears. ‘How much did she weigh? She looks a big ’un.’

‘Eight pounds, two ounces.’

‘What are you going to call her, luv?’

‘I dunno, Mam. I hadn’t given a thought to names. What do you think, Duncan?’

‘I don’t know either,’ Duncan muttered as he handed over his precious baby to her eager grandma.

‘What’s your mam’s name?’ Mary enquired.

‘Flora.’

‘That’s a lovely name. Shall we call her Flora? Your mam’ll be pleased.’

‘Flora would be just fine.’ It was the name of the Roman goddess of flowers and spring. Duncan had written to his parents just before Christmas and told them he and Hester had decided not to get married, giving no reason. He hadn’t mentioned Mary or the baby that was on its way, assuming, once he’d left Liverpool, that this part of his life would be over and he would do his best never to think of it again. But how could he forget he was the father of such a remarkable little girl?

I should have gone away before she was born, he thought bitterly, never set eyes on her, never known if it was a boy or a girl.

‘How did you know to come, Mam?’ Mary asked her mother.

‘Laura came to Glover Street and told me. She’d heard you’d rung the school, so called the hospital and they said you were here. She brought me in the car. One of these days, I’ll just have to get a telephone of me own.’

‘Is Laura still here?’

‘She’s waiting outside to take me home.’

‘I wonder if she’d like to see the baby?’

‘Shall I ask her?’ Duncan offered. He wanted to see Laura to say goodbye and how sorry he was for everything – that’s if she was willing to speak to him. He’d let her and Roddy down badly.

Laura was reading a book propped against the steering wheel. She looked up, surprised, when he knocked on the window. The surprise turned to shock when she saw who it was. She rolled the window down. ‘Yes?’ she asked in a cold voice.

‘Mary wants to know if you’d like to see the baby. It’s a little girl, Flora.’

‘That’s a pretty name. Congratulations, Duncan,’ she said in the same cold voice. ‘I’ll go and see her, yes, if only to please Vera.’

‘And I’d like to say …’ He paused.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing. Just goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, Duncan.’ She got out of the car, locked the door, and marched stiffly away.

Duncan watched until she disappeared into the hospital. Then he leant against the car, buried his head in his hands, and began to cry. Instead of being over, it seemed to him that the worst of his troubles had only just begun.