Chapter 29 Lilias
Lilias
In the hallway of her house, Nadine was looking at Lilias in horror.
“What?” she said. “Is the baby coming? Jesus. What the hell were you thinking of, coming here in that state? And all over a boy who wasn’t even your own flesh and blood.
This is all I sodding well need. Come on, I’ll take you to Edna. She’ll help you.”
But Lilias was doubled over with pain now, crying out and incapable of speech. Nadine headed for the door. “Wait here. I’ll go and fetch her,” she said resentfully, then the door slammed shut and Lilias was alone.
“I can’t hang about, Edna. Mickey’s taking me out to the country at two. Wouldn’t she be better off somewhere else?”
“This baby’ll be born by one thirty, I reckon, so you don’t need to worry yourself. That’s it, love, a nice big push.”
The voices reached Lilias as if from a distance.
She was lying on Nadine’s hall floor with a cushion beneath her head, and the pain was relentless.
Each time she felt it couldn’t get any worse, a band tightened around her middle, and she screamed, beads of sweat trickling from her hair and into her eyes.
In the absence of water, Nadine had rooted out a dusty bottle of beer, which Edna helped Lilias to drink in the brief respites between contractions. As she drank, wincing at the bitter taste, she thought of Harry drinking his beer at the air-base dance; Harry’s feet walking along this hallway.
She couldn’t have Harry’s baby with Harry’s wife watching.
“I’m sure I . . . could get somewhere else, with . . . a bit of help,” she gasped, but then a new wave of pain struck her, and she screwed her eyes shut tight to deal with it as her body began to push once again.
“I don’t think so, love,” Edna said kindly. “This baby ain’t waiting for no one.”
The next time Lilias resurfaced from the pain, Nadine was nowhere in sight.
“She’s gone to finish off her packing.” Edna told her, catching the direction of her gaze. “Poor cow; what she’s had to go through lately.” And she shook her head, her mouth a tight line across her face.
Thoughts of David brought tears to Lilias’s eyes, and she reached up a hand to wipe them away.
“Eh, don’t fret, love. You’ll be fine, you’ll see. Not long to go now.” Edna looked to be in her late sixties, a salt-of-the-earth matriarch type, and Lilias thanked the Lord for her presence, despite her less-than-clean hands and her grubby apron.
“The baby isn’t due for another four weeks. It’s too early, isn’t it?”
Edna straightened from taking a look between Lilias’s legs. “Babies come when they’re ready to come. And by the looks of things, this one’s ready right now. Next push and the head will come out, I reckon. When the pain comes again, push just as hard as you can, all right?”
Right on cue, as Lilias nodded, the pain returned, even more violently than before, threatening to split her right in two. She bellowed and screamed, pushing with all her might.
“That’s it,” Edna encouraged her. “Good girl. I can see the head now. Another big push and it’ll be here.”
Lilias screwed up her face and pushed once again. There was a rushing feeling, and a profound sense of relief, and then Edna was busy between her legs again, her face all smiles. “Here she is, a little girl.”
Gasping and exhausted, Lilias pushed herself up on one elbow to see Edna rubbing the baby with a towel.
The next moment, it started to cry, and Edna held her out to show Lilias.
There was just enough time for Lilias to see that her daughter’s features were exactly like Harry’s before the air-raid siren started up outside in the street.
“Oh, Lord,” Edna said. “Hold the baby for a mo, will you, Nadine? Just got to deliver the afterbirth, if Jerry will let me.”
“No,” Lilias protested weakly, but it was already too late.
Nadine had hold of Lilias’s daughter and was taking a good look at her.
Then, as Edna busied herself with the afterbirth, and the air-raid siren wailed outside, Nadine looked straight at Lilias, her face filled with such hatred, Lilias was left in no doubt whatsoever she knew her husband had fathered the child in her arms.
Slowly, still staring at Lilias, Nadine stood up. “I’ll get this little one to safety in the shelter, shall I, Edna?” she said. “You can follow on when you’re ready.”
“No!” Lilias cried again, stretching out one hand, but Nadine was already heading for the door with the baby.
“Good idea, Nadine,” said Edna. “We’ll see you there shortly. Sh, it’s all right, love. The shelter’s not far away. You’ll soon have your baby in your arms, don’t you fret.”
But when Lilias finally reached the shelter with Edna, Nadine and the baby were nowhere to be seen.