Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
I think of my seven dollars. “I understand.”
“I could start you at three fifty, if you’re interested. I would need you to start today.”
“You’ve done me a good turn, Mrs….”
“Mrs. Milne,” she replies, then she squints again. “I suppose you’ll need a place to live, too.”
“I was going to look for notices in the newspaper.”
“I’ve a small room in the basement where the last chambermaid lived. You can have it for fifty cents a week.”
She returns my dollar, and I return the key to room 21. And there I am, set up. The Lord Himself must have had a hand in it.
Now I must make something of myself. Sure, and Damien’s not here to distract me, though I dream of him every blessed hour.
I close myself away in the rooms while I clean, letting tears fall when they will.
In North Bay, I have no fear of crossing paths with Mr. Carboni round the next corner, so I get on with the work and finish quickly.
Mrs. Milne, who is sharper than she looks, mind, notices my hard work.
After one month, doesn’t she give me a raise.
Then she asks if I would care to train for the reception desk as well.
’Tis sweet as pie, making the money I’ve dreamed of.
Working at reception, I sit more and lean over less, which is a comfort.
My stomach grows heavier by the day, but I got myself a big tunic to wear over top so no one sees my secret.
My back aches terrible bad sometimes, and my poor feet as well, so that I have to sit down and rest like an old crone.
Ah, what would Granny say if she saw me now?
I can practically hear the clucking of her tongue, and doesn’t the memory of it make me smile.
But there is sadness as well, sharp as nettles. Damien is not here to see how well I am doing, nor Bianca, nor Granny, nor Da. I am alone here in this cold place. When the baby comes, everything will get harder, but I will have no one to help me.
Just get on with it, Granny grumbles.
I am feeling more comfortable here, settling in fine, when doesn’t the rug get pulled from under me.
I pick up a newspaper left behind by a guest, and there it is on page six, plain to see: the investigation into Mrs. Evans’s murder continues.
Mr. Carboni has been questioned then cleared, but they’re still hunting the killer.
The article does not print Damien’s or my name, but it does say “the waiter and the chambermaid” are still wanted for questioning.
The nightmare is not yet over. I fear it might never be. Bianca is the killer, but since she’s gone, no one but me knows the truth. Ah now, but that’s not right. I should have said me and Mr. Carboni.
I’ve read the papers every day, looking for a story on Damien. A body found on the tracks. There’s nothing. He’s just gone.
On Christmas Day, Mrs. Milne invites me to dinner with her husband and herself.
I’m ever so grateful for the meal and for being included.
She is not the same at all, but Mrs. Milne reminds me a bit of Mrs. Evans, in the way that she teaches and cares.
The ham is grand, the potatoes melt in my mouth.
The only meal I remember that surpassed this was a beef bourguignon that Damien once smuggled into the alley for me.
North Bay is the coldest place on earth, of that I’m sure.
In Toronto, we had plenty of snow, but nothing like the shrieking winds that scream over Lake Nipissing in January, caging me inside when I long for fresh air.
Mind you, I cannot avoid the cold altogether.
Mrs. Milne gives me her old winter coat and boots, which is a blessing.
Not only are they warmer than anything I own, they are big, thanks to her size.
The fur coat that Stan gave me so many months ago no longer fits, but it makes a thick blanket when I am shivering in my bed at night.
Granny would be glad to know that I have started to attend church once more.
I like Father Charles, the priest here. He is young and kind.
One day, I work up the courage and enter the confessional, feeling sick with shame.
I confess to him that I am carrying a child, then I admit to him that I was never married.
I explain that my beloved and I had planned to marry, but that he died before we could.
“Father, if only we could have married here. Right here. With you to officiate.” Sitting there in the quiet, holy space, I gasp in a sob. “If only.”
I lose myself in the memory sometimes, and it happens that day, in front of the priest. The terrible images of that day have never left me, though I’ve tried.
I push them away often enough, but they always come back: his fallen body, the slackness of his broken face, the hot blood pulsing onto the ground.
That is not how I want to remember my love, but it seems that is all my traitorous mind will recall.
I brace, expecting disgust and shame from the priest. Well now, he does not give me that at all. Think of it. Instead, he suggests that God might be trying to ease my shame and my grief by granting me the greatest gift.
“Let me remind you of what James said. ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.’ This baby you carry is a gift from God. Its life came out of love, and it will be a reminder of that love for the rest of its life. Love and appreciate this gift.”
I have never heard anything like this before, and I argue out of habit. “But I am unmarried, Father.”
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ ” Behind the confessional wall, I think he’s smiling. “Nowhere does it say that a fatherless child should not come to God.”
I listen in amazement when he suggests I come to him with any questions about the baby, when the time comes. He helped his mother raise ten children, so he says. Father Charles is the first real friend I make in North Bay.
I have found a good place here, and I am content.
I still clean rooms, but I have never minded that.
There is great satisfaction in restoring an untidy room to its earlier order.
Then I move to the reception desk in the afternoons, and I feel I’m moving up in the world.
I am finally allowed to look guests in the eye and ask how I can help them.
I like to think how proud Damien would be.
But this luck cannot last. I know this. Mrs. Milne will not want a baby in the hotel, and I have been dishonest about that from the beginning. She summons me to her office one afternoon in March.
“Mrs. Ryan,” she calls me, still believing I am a widow. “There is a matter we must discuss.”
I know it in that moment. She sees me. She will push me out the door into the melting streets.
“When is the baby coming?”
My face is on fire. “Mrs. Milne, I—”
Her lips purse. “You are embarrassed. I understand. You should have told me the truth, but I know why you did not. Would I have given you the opportunity to work here if I’d known your condition?
I am forced to admit that you were correct not to tell me, because I certainly would not have hired you.
And that would have been my mistake, for you are a conscientious worker and have improved my hotel tenfold.
” She reaches across the desk and places her fingers on my forearm.
“I have spoken with Mr. Milne about the matter, and we have agreed that you and the baby may stay. If the child is unruly and disturbs the guests, we will reconsider the arrangement, of course.”
“Of course,” I breathe. “Oh, Mrs. Milne, you’ve put the heart back in me. The worry’s been gnawing at my guts, it has. I cannot put off making big decisions any longer.”
“It will be soon, then?”
I lay my hand on my belly. ’Tis hard as a giant nut. At night I lie awake with my hand just there, feeling the little one move. I’ll miss this feeling, I think.
“I believe it will be in just a few weeks, ma’am.”
One rainy day only two weeks later, she asks me to go out and pick up some sheets she has ordered.
I pull my old grey scarf over my face and step outside, into a right loud thunderstorm.
I have only walked two blocks before a terrible spasm grips my stomach, and I stagger sideways to lean against a shop’s brick wall.
When it comes again, my knees let go. I crash onto them and curl up under the rain, gasping.
I taste blood, but ’tis only I bit my tongue when I fell.
“Miss? Are you all right?”
A woman appears above me, umbrella held overhead. She has thick grey curls and thick glasses, and I try to answer, but pain steals my words. She scowls.
“Are you sick? Get ahold of yourself and go inside.” Then she sees how I am grabbing my stomach. “Where is your husband?”
I shake my head, helpless. She’s sharp, I can see, and she leaps to the correct conclusion. Her lips tighten with judgement, then she marches on, mind made up that I’m of the divil himself, not someone to help. I blink at her receding figure, hurting in so many ways.
Thank God, another woman runs out from the shop and squats beside me.
“Are you all right? Oh! Is the baby coming? Can you stand? Please come in, out of the rain.” I lean heavily on her, surprising myself for taking advantage of a stranger, but faith, I’d not manage without her.
When we are inside, she runs and grabs a blanket for me.
“Aren’t you the girl from the Queen’s Hotel? ”
I nod, and she sends a shop assistant running.
Minutes later, Mrs. Milne appears. She thanks the woman, gathers me up, and somehow manages to get me back to the hotel.
Another woman arrives before long, and Mrs. Milne leaves me in her care.
She’s a midwife, she tells me, setting up a chair at the foot of my bed.
I say nothing as she lifts the blanket and examines me, but I watch her face. When she smiles, I breathe again.
Granny told me over and over about the women in my past who suffered in childbirth on the Fortitude.
She liked to harp on the pain and the hardships, going on until I couldn’t bear it another minute.
Now I know she was right. Faith, Granny was always right, in her own way.
I now understand the looks of pity I’ve gotten from women passing by, spying the swollen belly beneath my coat.
They knew what was coming: things were about to get much harder for me.
Did the women on the Fortitude feel the same, I wonder, as they waited for the storm to break?
For hours on end, the midwife rubs my stomach, my back, and my shoulders, encouraging me, distracting me, comforting me. At last, I feel an urgency, and the midwife sits up straight, hands at the ready.
“Almost there, dear. Almost done.” She peeks under the blanket. “Yes, that’s good, Mrs. Ryan. I can see the baby’s head.”
I scream when the pain suddenly becomes sharp as fire, and I could swear I’m about to die.
But I’m not dying, she reminds me. I’m giving life.
I’m living through the greatest miracle of all.
I feel Damien’s hand squeezing mine, helping me through it, and in the next moment, I hear the tiny miracle screaming through newborn lungs.
The midwife is smiling as she wraps the baby in a towel, then lays the bundle in my arms. “Congratulations, Mrs. Ryan. It’s a girl, and she is perfect.”