The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (4 page)

Madeleine raced for the linen cupboard.

An hour before, when the pains were not as close together, she and her mother had gone through Dr Philpott’s list of
Equipment for the Lying-in Room
. Her mother had tried to make a game of it, but Madeleine hadn’t been fooled. They had both clung to the doctor’s words with a fervour that would have delighted the Reverend McAllister, had it been aimed at God.

A mackintosh for the woman to lie on
had been the first challenge, as her mother didn’t own one, and Madeleine’s was far too small. The alternatives were
brown paper smeared with pitch
, which sounded horrible, or
oilcloth
. The kitchen tablecloth was pressed into service.

A tablet of soap
was easy enough,
a skein of worsted and a pair of blunt scissors
were snatched from the work-stand in the drawing-room, and instead of
lard or cold cream
they took the almond and glycerine face cream from the dressing-table.
Flannels, napkins and baby clothes
were waiting in the linen cupboard – ‘top shelf, Maddy, use a chair, and be
careful
,’ – and Papa’s eau-de-cologne stood in for
a bottle of Condy’s fluid
, whatever that was.

‘
. . . and finally,
’ said Dr Philpott, ‘
hot water and a brisk fire.
’

The brisk fire was easily managed, for before Hannah left she had obviously suffered pangs of guilt, and filled all the coal scuttles to overflowing. But Madeleine didn’t even want to think about the hot water. That would mean braving the geyser in the bathroom, which her mother adored, but Madeleine hated and feared. A fickle cast-iron behemoth, it squatted above the bath, its eerie blue flame for ever aglow. When you turned on the tap it spat steam, scalding water, and, on very bad days, drops of molten lead.

To Madeleine’s intense relief her mother said it wasn’t time for the hot water yet. Reassuringly, she seemed to have at least some idea of what was going on. She knew the right position she ought to adopt even before Madeleine read Dr Philpott: ‘
on the woman’s left side, with her knees drawn up
’, and she knew that ‘
the woman must refrain from crying out
’. She even managed it most of the time. But she wouldn’t let Madeleine help her out of her afternoon gown, and flatly refused to raise her nightgown to her knees, as Dr Philpott said she should. ‘No, Maddy, absolutely not. You’re far too young as it is. And for goodness’
sake
, look away when I tell you to.’

But there were alarming gaps in her knowledge. She had no idea what most of Dr Philpott’s items were for, or even when the baby was due to arrive. And at times, when she thought Madeleine wasn’t looking, she would stare wide-eyed into nothingness, as if trying to ward off some malevolent presence.

It was clear that the only person who really knew what to do was Dr Philpott. Madeleine pictured him with ginger eyebrows and a long bushy beard. Like God, but a good deal nicer.

The gaps between the spasms were narrowing, and her mother was beginning to look exhausted. Sweat plastered her hair to her temples, and dark circles ringed her eyes. ‘What wouldn’t I give’, she muttered, ‘for a good stiff dose of chloroform.’

‘What’s chlor— what’s that?’ said Madeleine.

‘It’s why I’ve put up with Dr Baines all these months. A large brandy wouldn’t go amiss, either.’

They had a bottle of brandy in the dining-room – Madeleine knew because she’d tried it once in secret – but Dr Philpott strictly forbade alcohol. He said it caused something called
flooding
, which was clearly a very bad thing.

‘My poor little Maddy,’ her mother said suddenly.

Startled, Madeleine looked up from Dr Philpott.

‘You oughtn’t to know about any of this. You ought to go on believing that babies arrive in cabbage patches. Or is it gooseberry bushes?’

‘I like the one about the stork,’ muttered Madeleine.

Her mother wasn’t listening. ‘You see, I thought I had more time. This wasn’t supposed to happen for another three weeks.’

‘Is that why it hurts?’

‘No. It’s supposed to hurt.’ Her face twisted, and she sucked in her breath through her teeth. ‘If anything happens – don’t remember me like this.’

Madeleine shied away from what she meant.

This time the pain went on for longer. Then another one came, and another, and suddenly there were no more gaps. Her mother started crying out bad words, and Madeleine dropped Dr Philpott, and her mother shouted at her to turn away and not look round for
anything
– and to just keep reading, keep bloody
reading
.

Madeleine snatched Dr Philpott from the rug and retreated to the foot of the bed. She couldn’t find the right page. The words kept jumping about and getting blurred. ‘It says – it says – to bear down and push.’

‘I
am
pushing! Ah, Jesus God!’

‘
After one final push,
’ Madeleine shouted over her mother’s cries, ‘
the head appears, and a minute or two after this, the body.
’ She stole a fearful glance at her mother’s long white foot pressed against the footboard.

‘Turn
away
,’ gasped her mother. ‘Don’t
look
!’

Then she screamed – a terrible, wrenching scream as if she were being torn apart – and Madeleine clapped her hands over her ears and dropped Dr Philpott again. But she could still hear the screams, and the slap of bare feet against the footboard, and the creak of the bedpost as her mother pulled on the sheet.

Then there was nothing. Silence reverberated round the room. Madeleine kept her ears covered and her eyes tight shut.

From behind her came another cry. It was smaller and wilder than her mother’s, but just as piercing. It went on and on, rhythmic and unvarying, as if from a pair of bellows being tirelessly worked.

She turned round.

Her mother lay with her eyes closed and her pale lips slightly parted. Her face was shiny with sweat, her eyelids so fragile that they reminded Madeleine of pastry rolled too thin. The nightgown still tented the second bustle – as well as a smaller, twitching lump below it.

The baby, Madeleine thought numbly.

The rhythmic cries came at her in waves, along with an awful smell like chicken innards on the turn. The nightgown was splotched with red. ‘Mamma,’ Madeleine said in a small voice. ‘You’re wounded.’

To her bewilderment her mother smiled. It began as a faint stretching of the lips, then widened into a grin – as if, with a little more strength, she might actually laugh aloud. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ She paused for breath. She was silent for so long that Madeleine thought she had fallen asleep. How could she sleep with all this noise?

Without opening her eyes, her mother said, ‘It was easy. So much easier than the first time.’

Easy?
thought Madeleine.

‘Pass – the scissors and thread, Maddy. Read the bit about cutting the cord. And – back turned. I mean it.’

Madeleine passed the scissors and the worsted, then stooped reluctantly for Dr Philpott. She didn’t want to read any more. She felt shaky and sick. She wanted to put back her head and howl. If the wretched baby could do it, why couldn’t she?

Turning her back and wiping her eyes with her fingers, she scanned the page. ‘Um.
With the worsted, tie off the cord
– is that the right bit?’

From behind her came a murmur of approval, almost inaudible beneath the baby’s cries.

‘. . .
t-tie off the cord about two inches from the navel
,’ Madeleine read. ‘
Then tie it off two inches below that and cut, using the scissors.
’ She frowned. ‘
The infant is thus separated from the mother, and lives its own life.
’

Through the shrill rhythmic cries she heard the rustle of the nightgown and the soft flump of her mother subsiding onto the pillows. ‘You can turn round now,’ she said.

Madeleine didn’t want to turn round. She wished the baby would go away. Or at least be quiet. ‘
Wrap the infant in warm flannel
,’ she read aloud.

An exhausted sigh from the bed. ‘Sorry, Maddy. I think you’ll have to do the rest.’

Madeleine stole a fearful glance at the bloodied nightgown, which was twitching horribly. She would rather jump out of the window than tackle whatever lay under there.

‘Go on,’ her mother urged. ‘Fetch one of those napkins that you left to warm over the fender.’

With a sickening sense of doom, Madeleine put Dr Philpott on the floor and did as she was told. Then she approached the bed.

What she saw when she lifted the nightgown made her recoil in horror. It wasn’t a baby; it was a devil. A slimy, spindly, crumpled, blotchy purple,
angry
little devil, smeared with blood and disgusting cheesy-looking stuff, and howling so furiously that she couldn’t even see its eyes. And beside it lay a terrible reddish-purple mound of jelly stuff, like a second devil that had followed it out.

Black dots floated before her eyes. Her stomach heaved.

‘Go on,’ urged her mother, ‘don’t let her catch cold.’

‘Which one?’ said Madeleine between her teeth.

‘What?’

‘Which one do I wrap up?’

Her mother laughed. She actually laughed. ‘The one who’s crying, of course.’

Madeleine felt a flash of pity. Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen it yet. She still thought it was a normal baby.

Grimacing and holding the napkin before her as if she were mopping up a stain, she spread it over where she guessed the ‘baby’ lay.

‘It’s all right,’ her mother said calmly. ‘When you were born you looked just the same.’

‘But it’s horrible. It’s got blood all over, and a worm coming out of its belly-button. I’m sure I never—’

‘Yes, you did. The blood is perfectly normal, Maddy. So is the worm. I promise. All babies look like that.’

Madeleine thought about Baby Jesus in His crib, with the Three Wise Men crowding round. She wondered if Miss McAllister had any idea what He had really been like.

‘Now give her to me,’ her mother said. ‘Put one hand under her neck to support the head – carefully. That’s it.’ She was still smiling. She seemed unable to stop.

The baby smelt awful and was surprisingly heavy. It was an enormous relief to deposit it in her mother’s arms.

But the work wasn’t over yet. Dr Philpott said that the purplish jelly thing – he called it ‘the afterbirth’ –
must be caught in a bowl, and burnt as soon as possible
. He made it sound as easy and pleasant as netting a butterfly.

And her mother was no help at all, as she couldn’t take her eyes from the baby, which had finally stopped crying. So it was Madeleine who thought of using the warming-pan to carry the ‘afterbirth’ away, and her idea to throw it out of the bathroom window. The blast of snow on her face felt wonderful, but she was nearly sick as she tipped the monster into the night.

‘What
was
that thing?’ she mumbled, when she’d wrestled the window shut again and returned to the bedroom.

‘I don’t know,’ said her mother dreamily. ‘But the same thing happened with you, and the doctor said it was perfectly normal.’

Madeleine watched her mother hugging the flannel package which contained the baby. She was smiling and crying, and giving little delighted spurts of laughter. ‘We’ve done it, Maddy. We’ve done it! You have a sister. A perfect, perfect,
beautiful
little sister.’

Out of loyalty Madeleine forced a smile, but inside she was churning with disgust. How could her mother still think everything was all right? Couldn’t she see?

All babies were definitely not like this one. Babies were pink, and they smiled at you and looked about with big round eyes.

‘What’, said her mother, ‘does Dr Philpott say next?’

Madeleine retreated to the dressing-table stool. It was a relief to sit down, but she didn’t like being so far away. She wanted her mother to smile and coo at
her
, and forget about the baby.

‘
Wash the woman’s external geni—
’ she scowled at the unfamiliar word, ‘
geni-talia – in warm water and Condy’s fluid, and apply a napkin or sani-tary towel. Change the bed, and bind the woman’s abdomen to prevent flooding. There must be no sitting up or talking.
’ She threw her mother a doubtful look, but she was lying meekly on the pillows with her eyes closed.

‘Don’t go to sleep,’ Madeleine said sharply. ‘Dr Philpott hasn’t said that you may.’

Her mother nodded. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not. But we’ll have to ignore the bit about not talking. Read on, Maddy. You’re doing magnificently.’

Slightly mollified, Madeleine read on. ‘
The mother being quietly settled, and the infant having been washed—
’

Her mother’s eyes snapped open. They exchanged startled glances.

‘I’ve got to wash it?’ said Madeleine in horror.

Her mother studied her, as if gauging how much more she could take. ‘I’m so sorry, Maddy. But remember. It’s not an “it”. It’s a “she”. Your little sister.’

As if that helped.

Half an hour later, Madeleine grimly draped a napkin over the fender to dry and decided that she deserved a medal. Dr Philpott himself should be here, telling her she was wonderful.

She had done almost everything he said, except for the bit about washing her mother. (That had been accomplished in secret, while she was out of the room.) She had even made friends with the geyser, which had belched helpfully into life as soon as she turned the tap. Or perhaps she was simply too tired to be scared of it any more.

Somehow, by the time she had refilled the jug and carried it back to the bedroom, her mother had washed herself and struggled into the abdominal binder and the clean flannel drawers, and the flannel nightgown which Madeleine had put out. She had also taken one of the Barnett’s Hygienic Wood Wool Diapers for Ladies from the packet which Madeleine had fetched at her direction from the dressing-room bureau. ‘How lucky’, Madeleine had said, ‘that you thought to buy those in advance.’ She had been puzzled by her mother’s wry smile.