The Secrets We Left Behind (29 page)

The woman had looked slightly taken aback and hadn’t yet managed to form an answer, when Jo felt Eve’s hand on her arm. ‘Leave it, Jo,’ Eve had said quietly. ‘You
don’t know what’s behind it.’ Jo’s anger had subsided as she watched the woman continue along the beach.

‘Happiness is only a cause for guilt,’ Eve was saying now, ‘if the pursuit of it causes pain or unhappiness to someone else. Life is a gift, and it’s our duty to make the
most of it.’ She looked down at her bump. ‘And we owe it to this little person to be happy, too. Do you hear that, baby?’ She smiled, as if the baby could see her.
‘You’re going to be born into a gorgeous, happy, happy family.’

‘I can’t wait for him or her to be born,’ Jo said with a smile. ‘It seems like you’ve been pregnant for years.’ She felt a tiny whisper of sadness as she
thought of her own briefly imagined baby.

‘It does to me, too. But it’s not that long now; she’ll come when she’s ready.’

‘What if it’s a boy?’ Jo teased.

‘It isn’t,’ Eve said, finishing the last of her cornet. ‘I’m going to call her Lily.’

‘So anyway,’ Jo lay back down again, wriggling her body into the pebbles to try and get comfortable. ‘Do you know who your midwife’ll be yet?’ She’d spent
quite a while in the library reading up on home births, and now felt quite knowledgeable on the subject, but they hadn’t discussed details yet. She hoped there wouldn’t be a problem
with Eve wanting to give birth at home. Jo herself had been born in her parents’ bedroom, and Pat next door had been going to have her baby at home until they discovered it was twins, but
Eve’s home was a squat. True, they had water and electricity, but even so . . .

At first, she thought Eve hadn’t heard her, so she repeated the question.

There was a pause before Eve answered. ‘There won’t be a midwife.’

Jo looked at her. ‘You’ve not abandoned the idea, have you?’ She felt a prickle of disappointment; for all her concerns, she was becoming increasingly excited at the prospect
of being so close to an actual birth. ‘So . . . ?’

Eve had lain back down and given no indication that she planned to explain any further. Jo loved Eve, but God, she could be maddening sometimes. ‘So,’ she continued.
‘What’s happening then?’

Eve answered drowsily, as though Jo had woken her unexpectedly from a nap. ’What do you mean, “what’s happening”?’

‘Oh Eve, for God’s sake!’ Jo raised herself on her elbow to look Eve in the face. ‘You know what I mean.’ At that moment, she spotted Scott loping down the beach
towards them, guitar slung over his back, cool box in his hand. The crowds were thinning out now as people packed up their towels and picnic baskets and headed back to boiling cars for a tortuous
journey home, or to their hotels or B&Bs to take cooling showers and to smooth Aftersun on sunburned skin before heading out to spend the evening on the pier or in a pub garden.

‘Hey,’ Scott said, his shadow falling over Eve’s body. ‘How are my two favourite sun worshippers then?’ He set down the cool box, wincing and shaking his arm to
show how heavy it was, swung his guitar off his shoulder and settled himself next to Eve before reaching down the back of his neck and pulling his T-shirt off over his head. Jo found herself
looking at his hairless chest, now the deepest brown she’d ever seen on a white man. A slight flutter in her stomach reminded her that, even though they only rarely slept together now, she
still quite fancied him.

‘Eve’s being mysterious again,’ she said, trying to lighten her voice to hide her irritation.

‘Eve? Mysterious?’ He was grinning as he planted a kiss on Eve’s swollen belly. ‘Surely not.’

‘I want to know what’s happening with the birth, that’s all, and I was asking about the midwife. I just want to know whether they’re going to let her have it at home,
that’s all.’ She saw a glance pass between Eve and Scott.

‘You’d better tell her,’ Scott said to Eve, his voice serious now.

‘Tell me what?’ Jo said, looking from Scott to Eve and back again.

Eve sighed, took off her sunglasses and sat up. ‘Okay. Jo, I need you to understand something. This is my baby – our baby – and “they” have no right to tell me
where I can or can’t give birth.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll be having the baby at home, with you and Scott helping me.’

Jo was silent as what Eve was saying began to sink in. ‘You mean . . . no, you can’t mean . . . are you saying it’ll
only
be me and Scott?’

Eve nodded, then smiled and took Jo’s hand. ‘Don’t be worried about it, Jo; it’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll tell you what to do when the time comes.’

‘But . . . but you can’t, can you? I mean, I’m sure they won’t allow—’

‘I told you, it’d not a question of being
allowed;
I will bear my child where I choose, attended by the people I choose to attend me.’

‘But what does the doctor say?’ Jo persisted, convinced no doctor would sanction such a crazy idea.

‘What doctor?’

‘Your
doctor, or the hospital doctor – I don’t know, wherever it is you go for your antenatal check-ups.’ She knew all about antenatal check-ups from when Pat was
expecting the twins.

‘I don’t have a doctor,’ Eve said quietly. ‘I don’t need one. I never get ill.’ Then she shrugged. ‘Well, if I ever get ill, I know what remedies to use
to make myself better. The cure for everything is in nature, I
‘
ve told you that before. Foods, plants, oils – you just have to— ’

‘Yes, I know but . . .’ Jo pulled her hand away from Eve’s and reached for her cigarettes. ‘Bloody hell, Eve. Having a baby’s not like having a cold or getting
toothache.’ She lit a cigarette and threw the pack down onto the pebbles as she exhaled. ‘You can’t just have a baby on your own.’

‘But I won’t be on my own, will I? I’ll have you two.’

Jo looked at Scott, who was sitting cross-legged, head down, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands dangling between them. ‘What do you think about this? Don’t you think
it’s crazy?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s not crazy. A bit out there, perhaps; but not crazy, no.’

Eve was smiling again. ‘See? You just need to get used to the idea, that’s all.’

Jo shook her head, took another drag of the cigarette.

‘Listen, Jo, I know it
seems
mad, but that’s because our society forces women to go against nature. Women give birth unaided all over the world. Sometimes they have their
mothers or sisters or friends to help, and sometimes they’re completely alone. And it’s easier; they give birth more quickly, they recover faster and they’re happier.’

Jo thought back again to that documentary she’d seen, where three wives of the same man were talking about the most recent birth among them. The woman had given birth in a mud hut,
attended only by her mother and the two other wives, and had been up and about the same evening, getting ready for the many visitors who were expected to arrive later that night bearing good wishes
and lucky charms to bestow on the new arrival. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I can see it might be a good idea if everything goes normally. But what if something goes wrong?’

At this, Eve’s expression changed and she flicked her head in irritation. ‘The main reason I want to do this without doctors and midwives is that it’s their interference that
makes
things go wrong.’ She pulled her yellow cotton sundress on over her head and started to get to her feet. ‘If my mum hadn’t had a midwife, then my brother
wouldn’t have died. And if he hadn’t died, my mum and dad probably wouldn’t be dead, either.’

‘What?’ Jo blurted out. ‘How come?’

Eve’s face had flushed red and she was clearly fighting back tears. ‘Right after it happened, my mum had terrible headaches and she kept telling the nurses and doctors that she knew
something was wrong in her head. But they just said it was the grief and she’d get over it in time.’ She wiped away a couple of tears that had spilled out while she was speaking.
‘After she died, they said her blood pressure must have been through the roof, and yet no one took any bloody notice.’

‘Eve,’ Scott said, taking her arm. His voice was full of tenderness. ‘Evie, are you all right?’

‘I will be.’ Eve leaned against him. ‘But I want to go back. I need to be on my own, just for a little while.’ Scott nodded, then stood and held her silently for a moment
before she broke away. ‘Sorry to be a party-pooper.’ She glanced at Jo and gestured towards the cool box and the bags of stuff they’d brought down earlier. ‘You two stay.
I’ll see you later.’ She smiled briefly, assured them she’d be fine, then turned and made her way slowly up the beach, just as the first few drops of rain began to fall.

‘I don’t quite get it,’ Jo said, after she’d gone. ‘I can see why she blames the hospital for her mum dying, but what happened with the midwife? I mean, it must be
terrible when a baby dies, but it does happen sometimes, doesn’t it? Was there something wrong with him?’

Scott shook his head, then sighed as he started to explain. A student midwife had been looking after Eve’s mum while the main midwife attended to someone else. When the baby started to
come, much more quickly than anticipated, the terrified student had called for help, but had then tried to delay the birth by pushing on the baby’s head. The child had suffered severe brain
damage resulting in cerebral palsy and had died as a result. The inquiry that followed found the hospital responsible and also suggested there may have been a link between the trauma of the birth
and the high blood pressure that caused Eve’s mum to have a brain haemorrhage. ‘So all that was bad enough,’ Scott said, ‘but then her dad went into a terrible depression,
packed Eve off to a relative one day and chucked himself under a train. That’s why it’s all cemented together in Eve’s mind; her mum had wanted to have the baby at home, but
he’d insisted she have it in hospital, so obviously he blamed himself.’

By the time Scott had finished telling her the story, tears were streaming down her face. No wonder Eve was terrified of doctors and midwives.

*

Rain lashed at the windows and drummed on the roof of the thinking room as Jo sat looking out at the grey sea. There was something quite comforting about the sound of the rain
against the glass. She leaned her forehead against the cool window; the rain had been torrential for hours, and had brought with it a break in the oppressive heat, a slight freshening of the air.
Just then a jagged fork of lightning flashed against the darkening sky, followed by a low, distant rumble of thunder. She stood up, walked back and forth across the tiny room and then opened the
window a little wider. She felt restless, and she wanted to hear the rain more clearly. Maybe it was the fact that the air had cleared, but she felt invigorated all of a sudden, confident that she
could help Eve deliver her baby, that Eve was right about it being a straightforward procedure if handled properly from the start. It was, after all, the same thing that the books she’d been
reading were saying, only they were obviously assuming a trained midwife would be present. A movement in the garden below caught her eye. ‘Eve!’ she shouted down. ‘What are you
doing? You’re getting drenched!’ But the sound of the rain drowned her voice, so she went down the three flights of stairs to the basement and opened the back door. Eve was standing in
the middle of what was once a lawn, head tipped back and eyes closed until Jo called her name. ‘Oh, there you are, Jo,’ she said, she was smiling again. ‘Come out here and take
advantage of this gorgeous rain.’ Jo grabbed a plastic bowl that was lying on the floor and held it over her head as she went up the steps. ‘Oh Jo,’ Eve said. ‘Put the bowl
down. Just enjoy the rain on your skin – it’s wonderful!’ She held her arms out wide and tipped her head back again so that the water pounded her face and streamed down her neck.
She was still wearing the thin cotton sundress but it was so wet that it was transparent, and you could clearly see her protruding belly-button and her swollen breasts through her dress. Jo felt a
pang of envy. She’d stopped wearing a bra herself soon after she’d moved in, but her own tits looked pathetic when compared with Eve’s gloriously full ones. She discarded the
plastic bowl and allowed the rain to soak her through to the skin. It wasn’t as cold as she’d expected, and it did feel quite refreshing. The garden smelled of warm rain and wet earth,
and of the rich, earthy scent of the tomato plants. The many plants that Eve had grown in pots and tended so carefully were always limp at the end of a hot day, despite their regular diet of
washing-up water, but now they were noticeably perking up after the long weeks of drought. Even in the light that spilled into the garden from the house, you could see that everything was becoming
greener. And there Eve stood in the middle of it all. With her full breasts, the swell of her pregnancy, the way she was smiling as she tilted her face to the heavens, she resembled some sort of
maternal goddess, like a statue erected to the worship of nature, of fertility and fecundity. Of course Eve would be able to give birth successfully; why had Jo ever doubted it?

Over the next few weeks, they made preparations. They read everything about childbirth that they could lay their hands on; they bought waterproof sheeting and brandnew towels
and they cleaned all the main areas of the house, especially the living room, which they’d decided would be the best place to deliver the baby because it was nearer the kitchen for hot water,
and because the room was big enough for all three of them to sleep in if necessary. They scrubbed floorboards, wiped down the paintwork, took anything that was washable to the launderette, and made
up the birthing bed – a single mattress raised up on several pallets – at one end of the room. Scott varnished the little wooden cradle and put it next to the birthing bed, where it
gradually acquired a mattress made out of a foam off cut, some new-looking brushed-cotton sheets, a Winnie-the-Pooh quilt from a jumble sale, and two navy-blue shawls, one rather badly knitted but
the other quite passable. Jo had found a wool shop that was closing down; there were only dark colours left but she bought a huge cardboard box full of wool and two pairs of knitting needles for
35p. The first shawl was a bit of a practice run, but the second had turned out rather well, and Eve loved them both anyway.