Chapter 12
12
C aro pushed back against the cushion of the glider chair, trying to get herself comfortable. Across the floor she could see Kay and Helen squatting down on the baby stools like a couple of giant children. They were chatting away, just like little girls. She smiled and turned back to the rows of cots opposite. Of course, Kay’s initial reaction was right. Nine hundred pounds for a cot that one baby would use, for one year, was an outrageous expense. But so was her hair every six weeks and her Botox every six months. And she could always sell the cot afterwards, or pass it on to charity. She stretched her foot out and slapped it down to stop the glider mechanism. The movement was making her feel dizzy and it was slightly reminiscent of the water-bed one of her exes had had. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. A person to whom she had once attached so much importance and she couldn’t even remember his name? She tapped her fingers lightly against the polished wood. So much about her life that had once seemed desperately important was sliding away, crumbling like a landslide under the force of Teutonic and welcome change. She was ready; it was coming and she was ready. She glanced up, saw Kay and spread her hands on the arms of the chair ready to stand. The cot, yes. This chair, no.
‘Helen’s just coming,’ Kay called.
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘Not sure, but she’s on her way.’
‘Fine.’ Caro pinched her lips together, still visibly annoyed. Helen was probably in the toilet again. Hardly a surprise given the amount of alcohol she’d knocked back. Lawrence’s behaviour was outrageous, but having spent the best part of twenty years watching the men she worked with dot every single i and cross every single t making sure their financial backs were covered, Caro wasn’t even surprised by what had happened. She’d witnessed even the most (outwardly) devoted of husbands nesting secret eggs. It didn’t shock her. It made her more thankful than ever that she’d never handed the financial reins of her life over to someone else. And surprised, all over again, that she had, for so long, envied Helen. Well, that was all over.
‘Here she is!’ Kay called.
And from nowhere, Helen appeared, holding out a small carrier bag.
‘What’s this?’ Caro looked at Kay.
‘Don’t ask me,’ she said.
‘It’s just a tiny, tiny thing.’ Helen offered a placatory smile.
‘Helen.’ Caro took the bag. ‘I said we weren’t?—’
‘ You said you weren’t buying anything. That doesn’t mean that I can’t. Does it, Kay?’
‘Course not.’ Kay glanced down at the other small carrier Helen had stuffed in her handbag. ‘Of course not,’ she repeated.
‘Go on.’ Helen grinned. ‘Open it.’
‘OK.’ Despite herself, Caro smiled. She eased the bag open and pulled out the baby-grow and as she did huge hot tears popped. The baby-grow was snow white, tiny and perfect and real. So very real. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, her fingers tracing the delicate lemon trim. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
Helen stepped forward and put her arms around Caro’s neck. ‘It’ll be alright,’ she said.
And that was the last thing Caro heard. As she leaned into the embrace a bright needle of pain speared her from the inside out, clean as a surgeon’s knife, blinding as the sun.
‘Caro—’ Helen gripped her shoulder.
But the blade of pain sliced again and sent her sideways, half on, half off the glider where she hung, suspended in a spasm of pain, hands clutching her stomach.
‘Caro.’ Kay bent.
And then Caro fell, and the baby-grow dropped from her fingers and landed beside her in a tiny crumpled heap. In her head voices echoed. She could see feet, feel the salt of sweat on her top lip and all the time, needles punched away at the soft, soft lining of her belly. Kay’s face appeared. What’s the matter? she thought she said, but at the same time was aware that her lips remained pressed tight together. She felt pinned to an apex of pain, more dazzling than the sun. And then somewhere, far away at the edge of being, she felt a thick wet warmth between her legs, and everything went black.
* * *
‘Sorry, love. Family only.’ The paramedic seated at the head of Caro’s stretcher looked up at Helen and shook his head.
‘I have to,’ Helen pleaded. She had one foot on the back step of the ambulance, could see the top of Caro’s head, a patch of forehead glistening white above the sickly pale blue of the stretcher blanket. ‘ I have to come. ’
‘She’s in good hands.’ A second paramedic, who had been strapping Caro in, jumped now from the ambulance to the pavement. As he did he brushed against Helen’s shoulder. ‘We’ll take care of her,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’ And he began unlatching the door, getting ready to close it.
‘But…’ Helen spun to Kay. ‘One of us has to be with her! One of us has to go.’
A step behind, clutching the carrier bags of baby-grows, Kay nodded. Her face was as white as Caro’s.
The driver shut the first door, locking it into place. He shook his head.
’Please,’ Helen urged. They were less than a foot apart. ‘Please.’
Again, he shook his head.
Helen dropped her chin. Defeated, she stepped back straining to see through the gap to where Caro lay.
I’m sorry, Mrs Winters. There is no heartbeat.
The years collapsed, slick as a card trick in a gambler’s hands. The knot in her stomach tightened, goosebumps sprang, her mouth dried. In panic, she turned to the paramedic and although her voice was hoarse she managed to get the words out. ‘She’s losing her baby. Please… please don’t let her go through this alone.’ From behind, a hand slid into her own and squeezed it. Kay.
The paramedic’s face softened. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the pavement. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Just one though.’ And he turned to Kay. ‘I can’t take you both. Just one.’
Kay released Helen’s hand. ‘Go on,’ she urged. ‘I’ll meet you there. Go on.’
‘Are you sure?’ Twenty-four years ago, Caro had been by Helen’s side. Of course, she should be the one. She didn’t even know why she was asking.
‘Mind now.’ And the paramedic swung the second door across, Helen slipping into the ambulance just before it closed.
‘Look after her.’ As the door swung shut, Kay’s voice fell away.
Helen inched her way to the flip-down passenger seat, her lips pressed tight together, a slow churn of terror in the pit of her stomach.
‘Seatbelt.’ A voice called and she turned. She’d almost forgotten he was there, the first paramedic at the head of Caro’s stretcher. Hands trembling, she reached for her buckle. The engine started, loud vibrations rattling through, and slowly the ambulance moved off.
The siren was on, but like a shadow lifting, the sound was always ahead, slightly out of reach, and possible therefore for Helen to imagine that it wasn’t meant for Caro at all. Not really. In fact the only indication of speed and urgency was the fact that she had to plant her feet firmly on the floor and press down, as if she were in a waltzer at the fairground.
Caro, veins full of painkiller and sedative, didn’t stir.
Helen leaned back against the cold leather of the passenger seat and closed her eyes. It would be better if it stayed that way. If Caro slept through all that was coming. Because, for Helen, what was coming was clearly remembered.
The bright red splatters on the floor of Selfridges, and the dark ground-coffee smears left across the delicate stitching of that glider chair had signposted in as brutal and visceral a way as was possible exactly what was coming. The ordinary path of miscarriage, as bloody and tragic as any celebrated battlefield, immediately recognisable to a veteran like Helen.
Silent and ashen faced they had crouched either side of a barely conscious Caro and said nothing. Either to Caro, or to each other. What was the point of words?
‘Is there supposed to be this much bleeding?’
Startled, Helen opened her eyes, willing herself back into the moment. The voice in her head was horribly loud. As if it were only yesterday. Is there supposed to be this much bleeding? She’d asked over and over again. Pleading with any medical professional who had crossed her path, the same question over and over.
‘Try to relax,’ the paramedic said.
And a drench of ice cold goosebumps showered down Helen’s spine. She hadn’t asked the question. It hadn’t been her voice. It hadn’t been her memories.
It had been Caro.
She leaned forward. Caro’s hand, on the black buckle of the strap that crossed her chest, had clenched so tight the knuckles were white. She wasn’t asleep. She was awake. Awake and holding on with every sinew to something that was already gone.
‘Caro,’ she whispered and put her hand over the top of Caro’s. It was rigid and cold.
Caro made a strange low sound, a mix of groan and vowels as her head twisted left to right.
‘Caro.’ Helen tried to stand.
‘I feel sick.’ Now Caro stuck her neck out and tried to raise her head.
Helen undid her buckle.
‘ Sit .’ The paramedic snapped his head at her and glared at the buckle.
Hastily Helen refastened it.
‘Sick,’ Caro mumbled, blue deltas of veins panning across the paper-thin skin of her forehead.
The paramedic leaned forward. ‘Can you turn onto your side?’
‘Ohh…’ And already Caro was on her side, knees folded up in the blanket. ‘Ohh…’ she called again, loud, long, wobbly. Her head went back, her teeth bared and a thin sorry seeped through and then the paramedic was on his feet and moving around the stretcher and lifting the blanket and such a stench of shit and iron-rich blood filled Helen’s nostrils that she gagged and the only way to stop herself from puking was to slap her hand across her mouth. And from deep within her handbag, she thought she heard a low humming sound. Her phone. Someone was ringing her phone.
The paramedic was between her and the stretcher now, his gloved hands smeared with blood. Again Helen undid her buckle and this time slipped quickly across into the next empty chair, closer up to the head of the stretcher where she leaned forward and took Caro’s hand and pushed Caro’s hair back from her brow. ‘It’s alright,’ she whispered, tears streaming down her face. ‘It’s alright. You’re going to be alright, Caro.’
Her phone had stopped humming and immediately started again.
‘The baby,’ Caro whispered, eyes shut. ‘Is the baby alright?’
Unable to answer, Helen nodded. With clumsy hands, she reached for her phone. ‘Kay,’ she whispered, ‘it’s?—’
‘Mum!’ Libby’s voice spiked with fear. ‘It's coming…’
‘I’m sorry…’ Caro moaned.
‘The baby…’ Libby gasped. ‘It's coming.’
And by the foot of the stretcher, the paramedic unwrapped a kidney bowl.
Helen went limp with panic. ‘Lib…' Her voice broke. Inches away she could smell the dry starch of the paramedic's uniform. He had tongs in his hands and she could see his concentrated expression, the movement of his arm, scooping and scooping and then a wad of white paper blotting and blotting.
Caro’s lips moved but no sound came out.
‘Mum,’ Libby whispered, ‘I'm scared.’ And her daughter’s voice burned like a flame against her skin.
‘I'm here,’ she answered, watching as the paramedic took a strip of gauze and lined the kidney bowl as carefully as if he were preparing it to receive a gift for the gods. ‘I'm here,’ she said.
* * *
I doubt you’re in labour, dear.
Two taxis, one train, uncountable texts and an hour and forty-three minutes later, Helen hurtled through the doors of the maternity unit just in time to hear the sturdy, red-faced midwife make her pronouncement.
Not in labour? The words reached her like a white flag. Thank God! But, not in labour? So she could have waited until Caro had been admitted? At least until Kay had arrived? Because leaving as she did, with Caro pale and sedated on a stretcher was the worst thing she thought she'd ever done.
Go, Kay had urged over the phone.
She won't know, the paramedic had said, with a short blunt tap on Caro’s vein and another vial of painkiller going in.
Still…
Panting and stooped, handbag swinging, she put a hand on her beating heart and tried to catch her breath. Libby had needed her, Libby had cried. How could she not have left? But not in labour! Shredded by the journey and the stress, she looked across at Libby, who stood by the admissions desk, supported by Lawrence. Her face glistened with sweat. One arm cradled her bump, the other clutched a square of pale yellow material that Helen recognised immediately as the comforter she'd snuggled Libby in as a baby. That Libby had snuggled herself against as a child, left close by enough to reach as a teenager and had now fallen back upon as a mother-to-be. The sight of it pierced Helen. Threw into sharp focus once again how much of a child her child still was.
Seeing her, Libby gasped. ‘Mum, thank—’ But her voice was felled by the spasm of pain that pulled her head back. ‘ Oh God! ’ she gasped. ‘ It hurts. It…’ And her shoulders dropped, her legs buckled. Lawrence scrambled to keep her upright.
Not in labour? Helen found her breath and pulled it in, deep and steady, right to the bottom of her lungs. If her daughter hadn’t had her father to support her she’d have collapsed on the spot. Not in labour, my arse! She dashed forward.
Lawrence’s face had frozen into a cartoon expression of fear and bewilderment, still, together they manoeuvred Libby to a waiting wheelchair and managed to get her into it.
‘Three minutes,’ Libby gasped. She peered up through curtains of hair. ‘The gap was three minutes.’
‘Okey dokey, then!’ The red-faced midwife said cheerily and bustled Helen aside to grab the handles of the wheelchair. ‘Let’s get you admitted. Grandma can follow!’ she called over her shoulder and was gone, with just the brush of the swinging doors as evidence she’d ever really been there.
Standing in the sudden silence, Helen watched the doors swing themselves shut.
‘Are you going?’ Lawrence asked.
She looked at him.
‘You can go. She just said.’
Helen startled. The midwife had said grandma can follow . Grandma . She hadn’t even twigged that was her role now.
‘What about you?’ she answered and something sashayed to the front of her mind. Sly and self-conscious, but determined to be seen. Something ￡100,000 shaped. Her eyes narrowed.
‘I'll umm…’ Light on his feet, itching to move anywhere but the direction in which his daughter and soon to be grandchild were heading, Lawrence ran his hand through his hair. ‘I need to re-park the car?’ he said, cloaking the statement as a question they both knew he’d already answered.
‘Of course.’
And for a moment they stood looking at each other. Not now, Helen. Not now. It wasn’t hard to listen to, this whispered internal entreaty. Libby needed her mother. Everything else must and could wait. So, she thought as she turned to follow, nothing new under the sun then.
There was no need to ask for directions. No need to stop any of the blue scrubbed doctors or nurses, or stand and try to decipher which way the yellow arrows on the polished hospital floor might lead. Oh no. Helen could hear Libby the moment she stepped through the doors.
‘Mum, Mum, MUM! ’
She was in the room and by her daughter's side, squeezing her hand, and easing Libby's sweat drenched hair back from her forehead in moments. And despite the mounting terror that stirred and crawled inside her like a furry black spider, somehow Helen managed to keep her voice steady and her face calm.
‘Libby,’ she whispered. ‘You’re?—’
Another contraction exploded, silencing Helen and wrenching her daughter’s body apart, and in the face of it, Helen felt herself slipping into the jaws of fear. Her hand on Libby’s went limp. Nausea balled in her throat. Paralysed and helium-light she floated, and for a brief helpless moment the awesome terror of childbirth, the unnatural meta-physicality of it, struck her hopelessly dumb.
Until Libby moaned her name, Mum.
And Helen came to her senses.
Once again, she grabbed her daughter’s hand, a strength back in her limbs, warmed by love. This was her baby. Her child, and there wasn’t anything in this world, or the worlds above, that could stop her from fulfilling her maternal role. The pain of childbirth may have been God-sent, but the ability to endure it was a woman’s creation. She could get Libby through this, she would get Libby through this.
‘I have to push,’ Libby panted.
‘Not yet, dear.’ The midwife, who had been taking notes on the other side of the bed, put her hand on Libby’s shoulder. ‘Baby’s not ready yet.’ She peered down at her watch and as she did her face drained.
‘I’m pushing.’ Libby was scrabbling at the bedcovers. ‘Help me, Mum.’ And before Helen could get to her feet, Libby had twisted herself onto her side, was on her knees, and grabbing at the bedrail, head down, teeth bared.
In a flurry of movement, the midwife lifted the back of Libby’s gown and bent to look. ‘Baby’s crowning,’ she said, turning to Helen, with as much surprise in her voice as if she’d been offered full-fat rather than semi-skimmed in her tea.
‘Should she push?’ Helen asked.
‘I have to push,’ Libby cried.
‘Push,’ the midwife demanded.
‘Push,’ Helen urged, bending low. ‘Libby. Push. ’ Everything felt outside of her now, even her heart, which was so huge and so loud it couldn’t still be inside her chest. This was it then. They were, all of them, past the point of no return.
But in response Libby twisted her head and whispered, ‘I can’t do this, Mum. I can’t…’
‘Push, Libby.’ Was all she said. ‘You have to push. Now. push. Push. Push …’
* * *
The air was thick and heavy with oxytocin and like an eager passive smoker Helen sucked it in. She was in love. Once again, she knew she was in love, and it was the most intoxicating feeling in the world. She looked down at her grandson. Seven pounds, four ounces. Gorgeous, scrumptious, mouth as clean as a cat’s with a teeny-tiny pinky-wink tongue. She was so in love.
The soft brush of footsteps stirred her and as she looked up, she saw Lawrence standing in the doorway. From deep inside her rosy glow, she watched as he drew up a chair and sat down, her eyes lazily flicking up to the clock. Fifty-five minutes he’d been re-parking the car.
‘How is she?’ he asked in a low voice, nodding at Libby.
Helen looked at her daughter. Libby was propped up by pillows, softly snoozing, exhausted and irrevocably changed in ways she hadn’t yet even begun to imagine. ‘She's fine,’ she said smiling, and watched as relief softened the line of her husband’s jaw. ‘Did you find a parking place?’ she murmured, looking back down at her baby grandson.
‘Helen…’ Lawrence shook his head. ‘This is… it’s not… You’re better at this…’ he finished helplessly. A lump had formed in his throat.
As Helen looked at him, she felt the weight of his words settle on her like protective padding. Of course she was better at this, just as he was better at other things. They were, or had been, a partnership. ‘Would you like to cuddle your grandson?’ she said.
And with glassy eyes, Lawrence nodded.
Helen settled the baby in his arms and sat down, half watching Libby, half watching Lawrence, half watching a silent reel of this extraordinary day play back in her mind. And despite the heady atmosphere, despite the sweet relief that flowed through every vein in her body, details of that conversation with the bank clerk filtered into her mind. She couldn’t help it. The words that she didn’t want to say had already duplicated themselves many times over, and were pushing through, rising up. They would be heard.
She leaned back, pushed her hands through the mat of her hair and held them at the back of her head. ‘Why did you re-mortgage the house?’ she said and even she could hear the note of sadness in her voice.
Lawrence glanced up.
‘I was at the bank earlier,’ she continued. Earlier? It felt like a century ago.
Lawrence didn’t answer. He dipped his head to the baby in his arms.
Did she see a flush of discomfiture? She would never know, because almost immediately he raised his head again and said, ‘Now isn’t the time, Helen.’
And this time, she didn't answer because of course he was right. She pressed her lips together and sat and told herself that it would come. Her time would come.