The Silent Tide (36 page)

She lay for what seemed like a long time, the pain dulling now, drifting in and out of sleep. She knew she ought to be worried about what was wrong with her, worried about the baby, but somehow it was easier not to. As the medication got to work, she felt only a blissful peace.

She was woken again by the violent swish of metal curtain rings and blinked in the sudden harsh light. When she raised her head, she was horrified to see a group of men in white coats staring down at her.

‘How are we, Mrs Morton?’ The most senior and grizzled of them wore a lugubrious expression. ‘You don’t mind my students, do you?’ The three younger men stared as though she was some peculiar specimen in a jar. One had an awful crop of acne. Another kept pulling at his collar and clearing his throat. The third was ghostly pale with red-rimmed eyes and the slight tremor of the hungover. Her fingers plucked at the sheet.

‘What’s the matter with me?’ she asked the senior doctor. ‘Where’s my baby?’

‘There’s no need to be anxious.’ The doctor sat on the bed and felt her pulse. ‘Your daughter’s doing very well now, though we were worried for a while, I must say.’

‘A . . . girl?’

‘Yes,’ he said, surprised. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’

She shook her head. A girl, she’d never imagined a girl. Her mother-in-law had said the Mortons only had boys.

‘I suppose I should ask to see her.’

‘Of course you should,’ he said, squeezing her thigh through the bedclothes. All in good time. She’s been very poorly, but has rallied splendidly. How are you feeling? You have been in the wars. Forceps, haemorrhaging. What a lot of trouble you’ve given everybody.’ The students all tittered.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ she said, not sure if he was serious. ‘I’d like very much to see my husband, please. And I am rather hungry.’

Hugh was allowed in to see her during the afternoon. He’d brought some early daffodils from the garden, which a nurse whisked away to arrange in a vase.

‘Oh Hugh,’ she said, when he bent to kiss her, holding his face against her cheek. She was so relieved to see him that she started to cry. Everything hurt and she felt so weak, and sort of empty, too.

‘My dear, dear girl,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

‘I don’t remember what happened,’ she said in anguish and so he told her.

The baby had taken a little while to breathe after the birth, and after she came to life at last, the midwife experienced difficulty delivering the placenta. Rather than wait for the ambulance to come from Ipswich, the doctor had taken mother and baby to the hospital in his car, she laid out on Hugh’s lap in the back seat, the midwife in front holding the child.

‘It was the worst moment of my life. I really thought you were going to die,’ he said quietly, hugging her.

‘All I remember is wanting to sleep,’ she said, stroking his hair.

During the afternoon she was allowed out of bed and Hugh pushed her in a wheelchair to a room down the corridor which was full of small cots. A nurse brought the little girl swaddled in a sheet for them to see. Isabel was appalled. The baby’s head with its twist of black hair had been squeezed into an odd shape and there were dark bruises on her temples where the forceps must have gripped it. She put her hand out to touch the small red face, but the nurse stayed her.

‘It’s because of germs,’ she explained. ‘It won’t be long. She’s doing very well, drinks plenty of milk, don’t you, my precious?’ The baby gave a lopsided yawn. Its eyes rolled unfocused. Isabel thought she’d never seen such an ugly creature.

‘She does look a little strange,’ Hugh said doubtfully.

‘That’s not unusual with forceps, the poor little pet,’ said the nurse, and bore the baby away.

As Hugh wheeled Isabel back to the ward she tried to shut out an awful thought. That it was difficult to see how the misshapen scrap of humanity she’d just seen had anything to do with her.

‘Hugh, are you sure there isn’t anything wrong with it?’

‘You mean with her,’ Hugh said, looking at her curiously. ‘No, they say probably not.’

The following morning when Isabel awoke, she was upset to find her breasts were bursting with milk, and after some consultation amongst the staff the baby was brought to her. One of the nurses showed her what to do, but Isabel hated clamping this small alien creature to her tender breast, and although the baby made feverish attempts at sucking it didn’t seem to get any milk and cried, and the whole thing was painful and somehow disgusting.

‘Never mind,’ the nurse soothed. ‘I’ve a nice bottle of warm milk here.’

Isabel handed the baby back with relief.

They bound her breasts to make her comfortable, but it was several days before the engorgement went away. Meanwhile the baby was brought to her at regular intervals so she could give it the bottle, and she watched its greedy gulping with alarm.

Hugh wanted to call her Lorna, a character from one of his favourite novels,
Lorna Doone.
Isabel agreed, liking the sound of the word – Lorn. It sounded like forlorn, which was how she felt.

The weather on the day Hugh fetched his wife and daughter home was the grimmest Isabel could remember for a long time. The short January day was dark and stormy. Rain beat down so hard the windscreen wipers were useless. The baby in her lap cried weakly the whole journey and Isabel was terrified that the car would crash and kept telling Hugh to go slower. ‘We’re already going at the pace of a funeral procession,’ he snapped back.

Hugh’s mother was waiting in the hall with Mrs Catchpole and her daughter Lily to greet them. They all stood around as though uncertain what to do next.

‘She’s a funny little thing,’ Mrs Catchpole said doubtfully as she peeped into the bundle of blankets. The baby’s cries were no longer weak, but growing in volume and urgency.

‘She’s hungry,’ Isabel said despairingly. ‘But she’s not allowed anything more for two hours.’

‘Poor little mite,’ Mrs Catchpole said. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I ought to get on with lunch.’

‘Why don’t you take her upstairs?’ Hugh’s mother suggested. ‘Put her in her cradle. She’ll soon settle if you leave her. Babies need to learn who’s boss.’

But Lorna didn’t settle.

An hour of crying later, Mrs Catchpole was asked to warm a bottle of milk. Lorna drank it down quickly but still she cried. As the daylight faded, she cried more and louder. Isabel fed her again and winded her, changed her nappy, and put her down to sleep. She cried. Isabel picked up her again. She still cried. Mrs Catchpole filled the baby bath. Perhaps warm water would soothe her.

Naked, little Lorna looked sinister – like a witch’s manikin was Isabel’s unpleasant thought, her skin the colour of uncooked sausage. She wasn’t plump like the pictures of the blond babies in the doctor’s surgery in London. Her eyes were navy, not clear blue. When Isabel had first bathed her in hospital, there had been a crop of fine dark hair over her back, and although thankfully most of this had fallen off, patches of it remained, giving the impression of mange. The bruises were healing and the squeezed length of her head wasn’t so pronounced, though it was still an odd shape. Looking at her now, Isabel felt a swell of pity for this little creature. She waited for a rush of love. Nothing.

This was her secret, the secret she’d had to keep for the two weeks since Lorna had been born. She did not love her child. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, what to do about it. She couldn’t even tell anyone. During that fortnight she’d been cosseted at every turn. Nurses had helped her feed Lorna. They’d taught Isabel how to wind her after the feed, how to bath her and dress her. They’d packed Lorna away in her cot to sleep in another room so that Mother could rest or chat to the other women and generally bask in the wonderful aura of new motherhood. Life had passed very pleasantly, and yet she’d felt completely numb about the whole experience.

During visiting hours she’d received Hugh, and once or twice her mother-in-law who, on the second occasion, brought Jacqueline, whose London couture drew the interested eyes of the other new mothers. Once her own mother had come, travelling all the way from Kent by train, staying the night at the Mortons’ and returning the following day. Isabel had thought she looked grey and drawn, and didn’t dare speak of her own miserable secret. After her mother said goodbye, Isabel felt so completely alone that she cried for an hour.

The truth was, she felt there was something missing. She couldn’t be a proper woman , could she, if she didn’t love her child.

She looked around at the other mothers, nursing their babies or cradling them to show older brothers and sisters. She’d seen some who were anxious about whether they were doing things right, or weepy with hormones and tiredness, but what she hadn’t seen was indifference. Why did she , Isabel, feel no reaction at all to her child except pity?

‘Why were you unlucky enough to get me?’ she whispered now to the infant on the towel on the bathroom floor. The baby stared up at her, puzzled. She was a child with a perpetually puzzled expression.
Oh dear, she’d get cold. Isabel wrapped her carefully in her towel and picked her up to take into the other room and dress. She was halfway through doing so when she discovered that Lorna’s nappy needed changing again and had to take her back into the bathroom.

Never mind, she told herself dully. It’s not the baby’s fault. It’ll just have to be done
.

Finally, Lorna was clothed in nappy, gown and jacket and laid in the bassinet to sleep. Isabel withdrew, closing the door, then went to her own room and lay down on the bed. She wasn’t tired exactly, just lacking in energy. She lay staring at the ceiling for some moments, thinking of nothing.

There came a short cry from the other room, but she hardly noticed it. Anyway, the nurses had told her crying was healthy. There came another cry, longer this time, and soon the baby was complaining lustily , then yelling at full volume. Still Isabel lay there.

Hugh opened the door and put his head round. ‘The baby’s crying,’ he said.

‘We’re to leave her,’ she replied. ‘That’s what they said at the hospital.’

His brow wrinkled. ‘How long for?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and withdrew. The baby cried on. Isabel stopped hearing it and slipped into sleep.
‘For God’s sake.’ Hugh had come in again. ‘I’m trying to read, Isabel, this noise is terrible.’

Isabel raised her head sleepily. She had no idea how much time had passed, but the baby was still crying.

‘I can’t do anything about it,’ she said. ‘Maybe your mother can help.’

‘My mother says she doesn’t remember about babies,’ he said, ruffling his hair. ‘I’m afraid it’s up to you.’

‘I suppose I’ll go then,’ she said, swinging her feet onto the floor.

‘Right. Thanks,’ he said. He held the door open for her, and while she went across the landing to the nursery he hurried away downstairs.

She opened the door. The noise immediately doubled in volume. She stared into the cradle . Lorna had kicked off her bedclothes and lay, fists clenched aside her head, her screaming mouth a great chasm in a purple face. Her whole body was convulsed.

Isabel stood watching, her arms crossed, feeling completely detached. It was how Hugh’s mother found her a few minutes later.

‘For pity’s sake,’ Lavinia said. She picked Lorna up, laid her against her shoulder and rubbed her back. Lorna gave a great belch, mewed a little and fell asleep.

Emily

The day of the redundancies was horrible, as though an Angel of Death passed overhead. No one knew who would be chosen. Everybody sat at their desks pretending to be busy. All appointments had been cancelled. The office was abuzz with rumour. Two of the sales reps had lost their jobs, it was being whispered. There were fewer bookshops to visit these days. In Emily’s office, four pairs of frightened eyes looked up when Gillian’s assistant Becky came in, her small young face pale with shock; it was not to summon any of them to Gillian’s office, however, but to inform them that George had been made redundant.

‘Oh no – poor George!’ Emily was puzzled, and genuinely sorry. George had been the golden boy, the charming one. She wondered who he’d annoyed, or perhaps that wasn’t the way things worked. It was pointless speculating, but if George was gone it might be herself next.

But it wasn’t. As she stood with the rest of the department in the boardroom later, she felt a delirious relief, yes, but also anger and survivor’s guilt. They studied a chart on the plasma screen, full of boxes with people’s names, the company’s new reporting structure. Reference Books downstairs had suffered the worst. Emily didn’t know the people there. At one level it all made sense, as readers had moved online, but it must be awful for the staff and she wondered where they would find new jobs.

George, when she went to see him in his office – how he’d managed to get his own office had always been a mystery – tried to be philosophical. He lounged in his chair, feet on the desk, talking with his usual bluff about new opportunities and irons in the fire, but then the bluster petered to a halt.

‘I’m glad you’re all right,’ he told her, ruffling his blond curls. ‘You seem to be making your mark.’

‘Do I?’ she said, cautious, not sure if there was sarcasm in his tone, but she was surprised, too. She hadn’t for a single moment seen things this way.

‘You’ve brought in some good authors. People like you.’ He did sound sincere. Then he spoiled it by adding, ‘I guess they couldn’t afford me any more.’

Typical George. Why did he need to bolster himself in this way? Still, it was probably true. They’d been doing a similar job, she and George, but she’d long suspected that he was paid more than her. Not that she had proof. She’d always felt she’d break some unspoken rule at Parchment if she discussed her salary with others. The company was quite old-fashioned in many ways. But other people dropped hints. Still, out of the two of them it was she who had a job.