‘Michael?’ Her moment of calm faith evaporated. Her heart was beginning to beat now with the same fear she had felt when Michael had failed to come home. Perhaps it wouldn’t be Michael’s care and concern that would land her in hospital. Perhaps she was just wrong again and he would turn out to be the same as the others. It would be nothing unusual if he didn’t want to stick around; in fact it would be a bloody miracle if he did. Now he had had sex with her, he would probably just dump her at the hospital to go through it alone, and they’d take the baby away before she even saw it properly. Or he might just leave her here again. He’d leave her and go straight back off to his mother. It was almost a certainty that he wouldn’t stay. People didn’t. Her stomach felt another grip, longer and more aggressive.
‘Michael? Oh, Michael!’ she yelped, and burst into tears.
But not quite as soon as that. Not at half past three in the morning of the following day. But even though I was surprised, I felt no fear at the sound of the van coming into the courtyard. I knew it would be him, somehow, and anything happening at half past three in the morning is enough in itself to suggest a crisis. I remember I pulled on my dressing gown, went down to the door and opened it a matter of seconds after Michael had banged on it, and one look at his face confirmed that it was a crisis. He looked worse than she did, in the time-honoured way of panicking fathers. And she was a funny little thing! She even managed a smile and a handshake, and a ‘pleased to meet you’, like a child dutifully displaying her party manners, though she was stooped over and holding her stomach, and there was a pinched look about her little face. The eyes were huge. Her legs were buckling under the weight of Michael’s jacket and all the blankets he’d put round her. He hadn’t had a clue what to do for her, and keeping her warm was all he had managed to come up with, apart from the important thing of bringing her here, of course. Bringing her home.
The minute I saw her in the light of the hall I knew what was happening. The poor thing’s manners gave out just then and she made the most extraordinary grunting noise, followed by something like an animal lowing. Then she had a fit of simple crying that was girlish and frightened. I saw then the wet stain on the front of her clothes under her stomach. Even though I had never been in such a situation in my life I was quite calm, at that stage at any rate. I thought quickly. She was well wrapped up but still perished, and Michael was shivering with cold and fear. He could hardly speak at first but I managed to get it out of him that the van heater did not work, and that he’d had trouble finding the house again in the dark and in such a state of nerves. Then she piped up that she’d started about four hours ago. I remember I said something soothing about how he had done exactly the right thing and that everything would be all right now that they were here, and I could see he believed me. In fact they both did. Steph looked so grateful I could see she needed some older and kindhearted person to say that everything would be all right. Well, it seemed I was to be that person, and so I took her in my arms and said it again, and then I believed it too.
She couldn’t really stay on her feet. She needed to find a place to lie down, or squat on all fours or however they do it nowadays (I’d read articles and gathered it had all changed). Not their bedroom though, it would be too cold. The heating was off for the night and not due to come on until seven o’clock and it didn’t seem like the moment to go fussing with the timer. Besides which I doubted if she could manage the stairs. I took them into the kitchen and she immediately lay down in front of the Aga and started gasping. Michael and I stared at each other.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said, and he looked relieved.
‘Yes! Yes, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Hot water, you always need hot water, don’t you?’ Actually I hadn’t a clue what people delivering babies were supposed to need hot water for. I’d been thinking of a cup of tea to calm us all down. But obviously Steph couldn’t go on lying on that hard flagstone floor, so I sent Michael upstairs for some pillows and bedding. He was pleased to be given something to do and so then I made the tea after all. Steph was glad of it, and so was he, so it was the right thing after all. Then I left them together and went upstairs to put some clothes on. I felt I was dressing to go into a kind of battle. It seemed a shame that I hadn’t got old clothes suitable for the occasion, such as people keep for messy jobs around the house. I knew I’d never get the marks out.
In what seemed no time at all Steph stopped being cold and warmed up. She moaned and rocked and pulled herself nearly upright when the pains got hold of her, in fact she got terribly hot. When the contractions came, her mouth stretched in an awful grin of effort; her lips cracked with the dryness and her cheeks grew bright red. It was terribly hard work. She was in a lot of pain and it was awful, just watching the pains gradually get longer and longer and the times between them grow shorter. She sweated until her hair was soaked. Michael dabbed her face with a cold cloth and did not once leave her side. She would tell him to rub her back, or she would take hold of his arm with both hands and squeeze tight, hissing and wearing that grin, and all I could do was stand there. I felt so helpless and ignorant. I had no idea how much worse it was going to get, and so I felt frightened too, but tried to hide it. I brought down more bedding, and some towels, thinking we’d be bound to need them at some point. I made more tea, but Steph sicked hers up a short time later. After about an hour and a half I couldn’t bear it any more and got very upset myself. Even though I knew it was out of the question, I said we should get her to a hospital. I was too distressed by the pain she was in to think straight, of course. Because bringing an ambulance or a doctor down here (Michael was in no fit state to drive) and letting strangers in might have risked everything that was important. Who knows where meddling by the authorities might have ended up. There would have been all the business of addresses and names and it would have all got back to the agency and the owners somehow. Not that I had thought all this out at the time. I just wanted the best for her, I wanted something to be done about the shrieking. I wasn’t thinking straight, so thank goodness Michael was. It was Michael who said it was too late for that, and then Steph herself got even more upset and yelled and swore she would not move from here. So on it went, for another two and a half hours. By this time she was writhing, and bawling for somebody to help her, and very soon after that she screamed that it was coming.
But it still seemed to take an age. She half sat, half lay, panting, and got Michael to hold her from behind. She pushed and pushed. I don’t think I have ever seen such effort. Then she shouted at me, as if she really were angry, to see if it was coming yet, and I had no choice but to look, and there it was, this veiny, foreign-looking dome growing and swelling out from between her legs with a long slick of slime and blood. Also, I’m afraid, foul, gingery, wet rags trailed out from somewhere behind her- I’d had no idea that could happen. I cleaned her up. Steph won’t mind my going into such detail; she’ll never know. I’m putting it all down because it was so extraordinary. It’s such an ordinary-sounding thing, ‘having a baby,’ and I had not realised until that night how very extraordinary it is. It crossed my mind that the only other birth I’d ever had anything to do with must have been my own, and it struck me that birth is simply the most puzzling, immense duet between human beings; nothing ever again in the life of mother or child will demand such struggle and mutuality, and possibly forgiveness. So when one witnesses another birth, one is changed. The ferocity of my feelings for that child and for her parents began then, with the sight of her bald blue head as her mother pushed her out of her own body into my arms, and it has never abated.