A Mother's Love (4 page)

It took so very many pushes, the sheet rope straining under the pressure, Harriet felt she would burst at the seams, or force the footboard clear off the bed. It seemed to go on for hours – her awful, grunting scream with each contraction, not like her own voice at all but like an animal, and Mrs Mason bellowing, ‘Push, woman, Push!’

She lost count of the times she collapsed, begging to be left in peace, her body slowly losing all power to respond, her bloated abdomen like a great dead bladder of lard refusing to shift its load. Then, when there seemed no more breath or ounce of energy left in her, something wet slithered from between her thighs in a great gush.

Pain vanished like magic, leaving her numb. The midwife’s sharply satisfied ‘Yes!’, mingled with Mrs Hardy’s protracted sigh, ‘Bless it, the dear little thing!’ only just reached her exhausted mind.

‘Girl,’ stated Mrs Mason in succinct triumph. Boy, girl, it didn’t matter to her so long as she brought it live into the world. She had been bringing babies into the world – or at least the East End – for nigh on twenty-five years and nothing frustrated her more than a stillborn after all her hard work.

‘A luvly little girl,’ Mrs Hardy enlarged, to ensure Harriet had comprehended. ‘I’ve never seen one born so easy – not a first one anyway. Twelve hours ain’t bad, y’know, for a first. And not even a doctor’s ’elp needed. What’re yer going ter call ’er, Mrs Porter?’

When there was no response from Harriet, she turned to the new grandmother. ‘How many grandchildren does that give you, Mrs Williams?’

There were tears in Mary Wilson’s eyes as she smiled over at her, ignoring the misnomer. ‘Five. My other daughters have two each.’

Mrs Hardy was washing the child free of blood and mucus while the midwife busied herself relieving Harriet of the afterbirth with a fierce pressure on her abdomen that made Harriet cry out and Mrs Mason click her tongue in exasperation at such silly nonsense from the mother.

‘There, all nice and clean,’ Emma Hardy announced, surveying the child wrapped in a soft linen sheet and woollen shawl. The sweat still damp on Harriet’s forehead, her body limp from exhaustion, the swathed bundle was laid in her arms for her to view her achievement.

A purely reflex action made her glance at it. There, framed by the satin frill of the shawl, was a diminutive version of Will. Creased from its entry into the world though the tiny face was, there was no mistaking the likeness.

Harriet felt the whole of her insides flinch.

‘No!’ She heard the shriek of her own voice. ‘Take it away!’

Three pairs of eyes stared at her in disbelief. The tiny bundle was taken up almost on the rebound by her astounded mother as, twisting her head from Mrs Wilson’s mystified gaze, Harriet burst into gulping spasms of uncontrollable sobs.

‘What about Catherine?’ One hand gently rocking the cradle, Mary gazed down at the scrap within. ‘Or Emily? Or Sarah? That’s a nice name. After your Aunt Sarah. You’ve always been fond of your Aunt Sarah.’

Harriet shrugged. Her aunt lived in Cadogan Square on the far side of Victoria Park. Widowed when Harriet had been small, and fiercely independent, she earned her living doing beadwork and embroidery at home, making tassels and braiding for dresses and furnishings. The silk skeins were delivered each week in parcels from some employer in Regent Street. As a child, Harriet had been fascinated by all the beautiful colours, the sheen of silk strands pinned to boards to be deftly woven into amazingly intricate designs.

‘Sarah then?’ Her mother’s voice cut across her thoughts.

‘If you like,’ Harriet murmured without interest. Her mother gazed at her in astonishment.

‘Don’t you care what you call her?’

No, she didn’t care. The baby was one day old, and she was still tired. They said it had been an easy birth. They hadn’t had to go through it. Twelve hours. Twelve terrible hours. It was a wonder it hadn’t been born dead. Trust it to be awkward and come into the world lively as a cricket, strong as a lion. A weakling might have slipped away, left her free to forget Will and carry on her life. But there it was, the image of Will. Through its lusty crying, she seemed to hear Will’s voice: ‘I’ll make you pay, you’ll see.’ The lace-trimmed cradle her parents had bought shuddered to each frantic kick – the child was alive and well, there was no denying it.

Each time she looked at it, she felt Will’s hands on her, groping, his lips wet against hers, his tongue forcing its way into her mouth, his breath hot, gasping his lust, his weight pounding her into the mattress. She was glad to feel dislike for his child. It was a measure of getting back at him – though he couldn’t know that. Or perhaps he did, from where he’d gone. Harriet hoped with all her being that it was Hell.

She shuddered, thinking of the dream that had begun the second night after she had pushed … no, after Will’s accident, her thoughts quickly corrected. But the dream, recurring three times now, denied that it was an accident, condemned her out of hand.

She would be in her nightdress. His hand on her elbow, he would be pushing her up the stairs, his hand trembling with lust for her. Suddenly she would find herself naked, filled with terror of the pain she would suffer when he took his fill of her. Pushing him away in dread of what was to come, she would see him receding, becoming smaller and smaller, his broad handsome face surprised, his arms outstretched as if he were flying. Her arms, too, would be stretched in front of her. He would no longer be there but she would still feel her palms on his chest and the sensation would fill her with a sense of evil. That was when she would awake to her own muffled cry, the sensation still on the palms of her hands.

As Harriet drifted off to sleep again, she would dream that her mother had come running to her cry, was holding her, soothing and rocking her. Then her mother would ask her what she had dreamed. Harriet would be afraid to tell her in case her mother guessed the truth, but her silence would proclaim her guilt and her mother would recoil, her face full of horror. In a quandary as to what she should do about it, her mother would tell others – others eager to share the awful secret. The police would hear and Harriet would be taken away and held in a cell, then led down a cold stone corridor to where the hangman and his rope waited.

It didn’t end there. Dropping down, down on an endless rope, she would see the Devil’s face below her, shining orange with fire, grinning up at her – except that it was Will’s face, his handsome smile demonic. ‘I’ve got you!’ The words would echo as though in a cavern, and she knew that his unending use of her was to be her everlasting punishment for what she’d done. She would push him from her as she had pushed him to his death; would try to claw her way upwards, but the downward descent would become more rapid as he reached up to catch her. It was the sensation of falling that always jerked her back, drenched in sweat, to the reality of morning that in itself felt unreal.

Sometimes the dream seemed to carry on into her waking hours; hung upon her all day like a shroud, as it hung upon her even now.

‘Are you feeling faint, Harriet?’ Her mother’s hand on hers jerked her back to reality. ‘My poor dear, you’ve gone a ghastly colour. A drop of water … Shall I get you a drop of water?’

‘No.’ Harriet winced, then gazed around the solidly furnished bedroom, avoiding her mother’s anxious eyes. ‘I was thinking of Will, that’s all,’ she conceded, which was better than saying nothing.

‘That’s all?’ Mary’s face shadowed with sadness and self-reproach that she should overlook her daughter’s pain of grief in her own hastiness to watch over her health. She almost moved forward to cuddle her, but she had tried that several times. Each time Harriet had pushed her away as though her closeness alarmed or annoyed her. Instead she touched the arm briefly beneath the sleeve of the silk nightdress, surprised to find how cold it was, and hurried over to the small washstand on the pretext of tidying up.

Will’s shaving mug, brush and razor still sat on the narrow shelf above the basin; his strop still hung on its hook, the leather black and shiny at each end, the well-used centre scuffed to a dull buff of raw leather. Quickly, Mary gathered up the things, unhooked the strop and thrust them all into the side drawer. Harriet mustn’t be reminded of Will’s absence any more than need be. Nothing must be allowed to cause her to fret with the baby to feed. Any more grief could stop her milk and perhaps bring on milk fever. Harriet had to live now for the baby’s sake. Will would have wanted that.

The baby began to mew. Mary turned resolutely and took the mite up from its crib. Now wasn’t the time to pester Harriet about names.

‘Ready for a feed, I think,’ she announced. ‘She sounds hungry.’

She was having a task getting Harriet to feed the child properly. When Harriet made no move to assist, she herself plucked at the neck ribbons of the nightdress and with clinical detachment, so as not to cause Harriet embarrassment, began folding back the material from the girl’s right breast, the harder of the two. Even so, she sensed a drawing back, one hand hovering as though Harriet wished to shield herself. Mary tutted, irritated by her daughter’s unnecessary coyness.

‘Harriet, this is a natural thing, you have to feed her.’ Harriet relaxed reluctantly and let her hand fall away.

There was plenty of milk. The small breasts were tight and shiny, laced with mauve veins, the nipples already oozing opaque droplets of bluish liquid, tiny opal beads. Harriet eyed them with distaste.

When she didn’t attempt to take the baby from her mother, Mary tutted again and laid the baby in the unwilling arms, gently pressing the small, screwed-up face against Harriet’s nipple, guiding it. Responding to the warmth of its mother’s breast on its cheek, the smell of milk, the tiny head bobbed, puckered mouth instinctively searching for the source of the smell that meant nourishment. The protrusion found, the mouth nuzzled briefly then greedily began to suck.

Harriet winced. ‘It’s hurting.’

‘It’ll hurt more if she doesn’t take from you. It’s bound to feel peculiar the first few times, but you’ll soon discover it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world.’

Harriet thought not, but didn’t say so. She endured the noisy guzzling in silence. This was what Will had reduced her to, a feeding machine for a brat she already loathed because it was his.

As the nipple came free, Mary moved to transfer the child to the other side. ‘Do we call her Sarah, then?’

It was more confirmation than question, but she expected a reply. She drew in her breath when none came. Harriet was being too apathetic for Mary’s peace of mind. It was unnatural. Her lips tightened, but only momentarily. The whole situation was unnatural: a man’s child born on the very day of his burial, who wouldn’t be apathetic? What Harriet needed was to have her mind made up for her.

The baby had fallen asleep, already full. Mary lifted the sleeping scrap. ‘Sarah it is then,’ she said firmly as she placed the child back in the crib in a sort of baptismal gesture.

Emerging from the cool dimness of St Leonard’s, Matthew Craig briefly narrowed his eyes against the brilliant May sunshine. Behind him, the church with its park of neat walkways and its graveyard of gothic tombstones was a haven amid the chimneypots and narrow side streets of Shoreditch. Before him the intersection of Old Street, Hackney Road, Kingsland Road and Shoreditch High Street gave a sense of space in a clutter of poverty. Matthew felt suddenly pleased with the world.

On weekdays these streets would be alive with traffic. Today, although the odour of horse dung, powder-dry from a rainless week, hung warmly pungent on the air, peace reigned. If any trams or buses ran on Sundays, there was none in sight, but a cab stood at the kerb, nosebag slung between the wheels, the nag ready to move off with a flick of the reins and the driver alert for any fare coming his way.

Matthew decided against hailing him. He needed to stretch his legs. A stroll towards Liverpool Street station, something less than half a mile further on, would do him good. He would get a cab from there to Waterloo Junction, and then a train to Winchester. He had all day to get home.

He had never been in the East End before. He had stayed the night with an old friend from his Oxford days, David Symonds, and had been kept awake half that time by the drunken commotion below his window, gusts of laughter, singing, colourful curses in ripe Cockney slang – and the discomfort of a strange bed. Only after midnight had peace descended, though even that had been broken by a hollow yowling of cats echoing through the alleys.

The following morning the sight of churchgoers dressed in their Sunday best had revived his confidence enough to venture into an unfamiliar church. Sunday morning service was very much part of Matthew’s family life. David was not one for church, so Matthew had made his farewells as early as decently possible, hoping to find a church somewhere on the way home and enjoy a quiet hour or two.

It had been good to see David again. When they had come down three years before, David had gone into his father’s firm of solicitors, Peeker, Stymes & Symonds, whose offices were in Kingsland Road. His parents’ home was in Highgate, but David had a flat near the office, needing to be independent, but for all that, was a credit to his father. Matthew had been more a disappointment to his.

‘A waste of good money,’ he had complained. ‘All you seem to have gained is a bit of knowledge at the expense of a lot of wisdom.’

Matthew’s brown eyes, which contrasted starkly with his fair hair, took on a musing look as he remembered this conversation. It would have been wisdom to have let his father have his way and to have gone into law, but wisdom hadn’t come into it. A love of words – not legal words but beautiful, flowing, magic words; words to make readers shiver with pleasure – dominated Matthew. Except that he was burdened by an inability to set them down magically. So he had found others who could, and got them to do it for him. He’d started up a monthly journal; a very modest monthly journal which a small inherited trust just about managed to finance – because he was also burdened by a sympathy with those woman who for years had been demanding a right to a political voice. This sympathy having transmitted itself to his journal, that was what it became – a political women’s journal,
Freewoman
, which the general public weren’t overly inclined to subscribe to.