The Drowning Lesson (7 page)

The baby came early anyway. It was a wet Sunday afternoon in November and Adam was on call. Alice had an English comprehension to finish while I worked on my laptop.

Zoë lay on the floor with a colouring book, crayons scattered around her. The driving rain against the windows isolated us peacefully from the rest of the world. The pregnancy was thirty-seven weeks; with the girls, I had gone full term, so I ignored the contractions when they started. When my waters broke, I stuffed a towel between my legs and carried on; I only realized I'd been groaning when Alice pushed the phone into my hand. ‘Get Megan.'

‘Sofia is here, Ally. Let's just …' I clenched my teeth. I'd forgotten what labour was like.

Alice stared at me, white-faced. ‘I want Megan.'

‘I'm coming round now.' Megan's voice on the phone was decisive. ‘I'll take you to the hospital, the girls will come with us, and then we three will go shopping
for supper. Andrew will be fine till we get back and they can sleep at mine.'

By the time we reached the hospital the contractions were more frequent and I was unable to walk. Megan found a wheelchair and pushed me to the ward. I could hear the girls' light footsteps skipping down the long corridors behind her.

An hour later Adam arrived, out of breath. By then Duncan, the senior obstetrician, had been called. The baby's heart was slow to recover between contractions. The pain was relentless. I hardly noticed Adam. I'd had epidurals with the girls – things had been better organized. It was too late now. All I wanted was a Caesarean but I didn't ask. I'd cope. I always coped.

Other parents push around us on the platform looking anxious, but at least they are smiling. Dad just stares at me, his mouth turning down at the edges again. First term at medical school. Brown leaves curl on the train tracks.

He speaks so quietly I have to lean close. ‘It's tougher than you think, Em. If you feel like giving up, remember –'

‘Give up?' I laugh but my chest hurts. ‘Watch me, Dad.'

He laughs too. We say goodbye
.
He is swallowed into the crowd, one head among many; he turns to wave before he disappears completely, still smiling.

How would you give up, even if you wanted to? Like how exactly? Do you let go? What do you let go of? What would it
feel like? There is a poster on the wall opposite, advertising holidays: there's a train on a track, on a green field, leading towards a white cliff and sea. Would it be like falling off a cliff into water? Like drowning?

Thirty agonizing minutes later, in a hot slithery rush, I pushed the baby out and lay back, sweat-soaked and gasping for breath.

‘It's a little fella,' Duncan said. His tone carried the same serious delight as if he had been presenting me with an important award. A boy. How was that possible? I'd been so sure it would be a little girl. Adam squeezed my hand, his eyes full of tears.

Before I had time to stop him, Duncan had clamped, then cut the cord. I felt a moment of anger: all the papers I'd read on the timing of this showed it was better to wait. Then the baby was whisked to the bassinet to be checked by the young paediatrician. Adam followed closely. He'd been smiling broadly, but suddenly his face fell. My irritation about the cord faded. Something was wrong.

‘What's happening?' I raised myself on one elbow, craning to see.

‘Nothing. He's lovely, beautiful, fine,' Adam said heartily. The list was chilling.

‘Then why –' Before he could answer I leant forwards and vomited into the cardboard pan on the bed. Even as I was retching, I was trying to see what
was happening in the little huddle by the bassinet. ‘For Christ's sake!' I lay back, feeling giddy, as the midwife took away the pan. ‘Someone tell me what's wrong.'

‘Here's your son.' The paediatrician put the baby into my arms.

A blotchy stain covered his right cheek, a brilliant strawberry map printed on perfect skin, the edge laced with indentations. I looked at the rest of him: well-shaped rounded head, a dusting of fair hair, tiny neat ears. Thin little fingers flickering next to his face. My eyes went back to the birthmark. The girls had been perfect, I hadn't expected this, I wasn't prepared. The paediatrician was a new registrar I hadn't met before.

‘This looks like a strawberry naevus, unless it's a port-wine stain. Where's Mr Sutton?' An older paediatrician, he and I often worked together at difficult births. I wanted his gruff truthfulness now, not this nervous boy.

‘His day off. I'm covering,' he said apologetically.

‘We need to scan the lesion.' It was simpler to think of it as a surgical issue. If it was a port-wine stain, it might be linked with an underlying arterial-venous malformation that would need treatment.

‘Of course, though I'm sure it's a typical strawberry naevus. It'll get bigger for the first few years, then fade completely.' The registrar paused and blushed.
‘As you know. We'll keep you in for a couple of nights as he's three weeks early but there shouldn't be any problems.'

I tuned him out. As I brought the baby to my left breast, he turned his head inwards, the small mouth seeking the nipple. From this angle the red stain was invisible. He might have been completely normal.

Adam touched the baby's head reverently. ‘It couldn't matter less about the mark, Em. You won't even notice it in a few days.'

My eyes filled with tears. Duncan rested his hand briefly on my shoulder. ‘Time to do the repair work. Ready, Emma?'

The midwife guided my ankles into stirrups. A needle slipped into my bruised flesh like a bee sting and then the anaesthetic began to numb my perineum.

‘John, after my father?' Adam cupped the tiny bloodstained foot.

‘Samuel.'

‘Where did that come from?' He bent to kiss the curling toes.

‘Alice. She's reading
Lord of the Flies
. It was going to be Samantha for a girl.' But the faint image of a tiny dark-haired girl had disappeared, bleached out under the bright lights.

‘What wrong with John?' he asked.

‘Let's please Alice for once.'

‘Samuel. Sam.' He walked around testing the name. ‘I like it. I'm sure there was a judge in the Old Testament called Samuel.' He smiled. ‘It means “heard by God”.'

I was too tired to smile back – even my voice was thin with exhaustion. ‘It's a name, Adam, not a biblical reference.'

A name Alice had got from
Lord of the Flies
for a boy who faced fellow tormentors, as this child might unless the mark faded before school. In the silence I could hear the squeak of thread as Duncan pulled it through the layers of tissue, the click as he cut the end. I closed my eyes and slept.

The front door opened downstairs. Silence followed. Adam's head would be tilted while he worked out where the screams were coming from. Four seconds passed, maybe six, then his feet came fast up the stairs. From the timing of the thuds, he was missing every second step. The bedroom door was flung open, letting in a rush of cold air. A light dusting of snow lay on his shoulders, His dismay seemed to fill the room and then he moved rapidly to the cot, pulling off his coat.

‘Jesus, Em.'

The screams took on a downward, shuddering tone, Adam threw off his jacket, picked Sam up and began to walk rapidly backwards and forwards, cradling the baby against his chest.

I typed a couple more references. The digital clock at the corner of the computer read midday: feeding time, according to the chart I'd made the night before. I moved to the bed. Adam kissed the top of Sam's head and put him into my arms, then he sat
down next to me, his face in his hands. The weight made the mattress dip and I half fell into him. He smelt of the cold, the tang of alcohol wipes, the hospital world.

Sam's wet face turned into my breast. As his mouth fastened onto my sore nipple, it was as though hot needles were piercing me. Adam, audibly wheezing, pulled out his inhaler and took a puff.

The small sounds of snuffling and swallowing seeped into the silence; I was too tired to explain that I'd been trying for a routine. The days and nights had blurred into a cycle of feeding and crying, an exhausting round, unlike anything I could remember. I probably wasn't producing enough milk.

Adam's voice was muffled in his hands. ‘Can't you take a few weeks completely off just to settle him?'

‘How much time have you taken “completely off”?' As I twisted round to speak to him, Sam was pulled off the nipple and started crying again.

Adam didn't answer. I settled Sam against me. Energy seemed to drain out of me as he sucked. The naevus was uppermost, the red skin shining where the tears had tracked. I looked away. From here I could read the results of the comparison paper on ventouse deliveries that were still on the screen. Somehow I had to finish editing it for next month's
Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Adam lifted his face from his hands, following my
glance. He got up, walked to the computer and picked up the little chart I'd made, with its columns and boxes. ‘What's this?'

I didn't answer. He knew what it was.

‘Breastfed babies can't be fed to a routine at four weeks.' He gave a little laugh. ‘Think of the girls.'

‘I am thinking of the girls. They were never like this – Sam cries for food after half an hour. I'm awake five, ten times a night.'

Alice had hardly cried. She'd been wakeful, but peaceful. I remembered gazing for hours at the minute perfection of her face and toes. I'd worked while she slept. Zoë had been predictable: she slept, fed, played. I used to pick her out of the cot, just to hold her. She'd smelt of new bread and baby soap.

Adam returned to sit next to me. I braced myself to avoid rolling into him, I hated him for that little laugh and didn't want to touch him, even by accident.

‘I know it's hard.' Adam stroked Sam's hair. ‘Do you think he could be extra hungry? He may need more milk than Alice or Zoë did. Boys are hungrier than girls.' He smiled.

Sam was smaller than the girls had been at this stage; he didn't need so much food. I pushed myself further away along the edge of the bed.

‘I've been wondering if this could be, you know, some sort of postnatal depression.' Adam didn't look
at me. His tone was cautious, almost apologetic. ‘They say it's more common with babies who are premature.'

Sam had come three weeks ahead of time. That was all. I wasn't depressed, I needed to work and sleep, I was exhausted all the time. These facts didn't add up to an illness, but if I objected Adam would think he had a point. He might even ask our GP to come round.

He sighed and stood up. ‘My clinic starts in twenty minutes. I just came back to check you were all right.' He looked out of the window at the falling snow, his hand scratching his neck, then he turned to me. ‘I've got the answer. I'll get some bottles and milk powder after work. I'll give him a bottle at night. He'll sleep, you'll sleep. It'll all feel better.'

I didn't reply: if he thought the problem could be so easily resolved there seemed little point.

When he'd left, I put Sam back into the cot. He protested but I ignored him and he began to drowse. I started tapping in the results again.

It wasn't Adam's fault that he thought I was depressed. He was searching for something that made sense. Now that the scan had proved it was a simple strawberry naevus with no underlying lesion, he considered the problem solved. If I told him why I avoided picking Sam up, he wouldn't believe me. It would make no sense to him that every time I looked
at that small marked face I felt the dull weight of failure.

I told Megan, though. She came early one frosty Sunday morning, her cheeks flushed with cold, carrying a basket of knitted toys. She handed Alice a tiny owl with round button eyes. Alice held it up to her face but in a few moments she'd left the room. She had retreated further since Sam's birth; she talked to Adam but answered me in monosyllables, slipping from the rooms that I entered. Adam said it was normal and that she just needed time to get used to the new, bigger family.

Zoë spent hours stroking Sam; it was as though she'd acquired a new pet. Megan had knitted her a baby zebra with deep mauve stripes and Zoë threw her arms around her, shouting with delight. Sam had a white blanket and a small grey elephant with leather ears which Megan tucked into my arms next to him.

‘Take him if you like. He won't break.' I held Sam out to her.

She took him, her eyes wary. ‘He's so light.'

‘That's because I'm not producing enough milk, according to Adam. He gives him a bottle at night now.'

She burrowed her face into the baby's neck. ‘He smells wonderful.'

‘Baby sick and urine. Probably needs a nappy
change.' I was flipping through some papers at my side. It wasn't true. He had a scent like warm hay.

Megan shook her head, her hands tightening around his shawl. ‘He's lovely, Emma.'

My eyes filled with tears. ‘He's not, though. Look at him.'

She gazed fondly at Sam's face and her lips curved into a smile. ‘If you're worried about the mark, how could it matter?'

‘Maybe it shouldn't affect things but it does.' As a child at school, Megan had been rejected because of the way she looked. Of course appearances mattered, she must know that better than anyone. ‘When I look at him, I want to cry,' I said.

‘If I were you, it would make me love him more.' She kissed the top of his head. ‘To me he's perfect.' She glanced at me. ‘You have a perfect family, Emma. You're lucky.'

She gave me a warm hug. This was the nearest she'd come to admitting she minded not having children. It should have been me comforting her but all I wanted was to lay my head on her shoulder and cry.

After that Megan came round often. She organized a cinema outing for the girls and took the cat off our hands early, making good her promise to look after him while we were away. She never seemed to mind caring for Sam if I wanted to work or even
sleep. Sometimes I wondered what I'd done to deserve such generosity. As she was leaving one day after dropping the girls, I asked her why she was so kind.

‘You'd do the same for me.' She must have seen my doubtful face. ‘I've never told anyone else that stuff from my childhood, but I told you. You listened. It felt like you really understood.'

I had understood; it wasn't hard. I knew exactly how the past can live inside you and for a moment my father's face was between us, with his downturned mouth and tear-filled eyes.

As Megan turned to go out of the front door, she glanced back into the hall, which was strewn with toys, the pram and Zoë's scooter. ‘And I love being with the children. It's you who's kind.'

A few days later, she saw me organizing papers on the dining table. ‘Got your certificate?' she asked, rocking Sam in her arms.

I was printing the last documents I needed for my research. I caught the sheets as they shot out of the printer. ‘Mine are done. The girls' last jab is tomorrow.'

Megan laughed. ‘No, the certificate to practise – you know, the Botswana Health Professions Council Certificate. I got Adam's a while back.'

‘I'm going to work from home. That's the point.'
I stacked the sheets together and stepped back to admire the neat piles. ‘There's enough here to keep me going for months.'

‘If you want to gather more data or even observe a clinic you'll need it. Adam's came through quickly.' Sam's eyes were travelling rapidly backwards and forwards under drooping lids. Bending her head, she dropped a kiss on his nose. ‘Just give me your CV, academic certificates and a copy of your passport and I'll sort it for you.'

A couple of weeks later she presented me with the certificate. Later that night I packed it into the case in my study along with my papers, grateful but convinced she had wasted her time. I glanced round the familiar space, the light in the corner, my father's desk, the piles of books heaped on its surface. I snapped off the light as I left, feeling a tingle of apprehension. Despite Adam's organization and careful planning, the maps, the books and the equipment, we were going into the unknown.