Eggshell Days (31 page)

He put his rough splintered hand where she told him, and tried to take the strain. He knew that what she needed was force against force, but he was nervous of making it worse and he couldn't bring himself to press as hard as his instincts told him to. A strange moan kept coming out of her mouth but he could tell she didn't know she'd made a noise. Her taut, swollen torso shifted under her thin white shirt.

“I think these are just the early ones,” she tried to say bravely when the contraction subsided. “I think they're going to get a lot worse than this.”

He wiped her face with the flannel she boiled with the dishcloth and the tea towel every day. Her light hair was curling and damp round the edges of her face and she looked different, like a kid in bed with a temperature. They didn't have a watch or a clock so he was counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi under his breath.

“I'll put some music on,” he said. “What d'you feel like listening to?”

Mog shook her head and lay back on the pillow. Dean stood, pleased to have an excuse to look away. His legs were shaking and his hands fumbled through the wicker basket of tapes. He slotted a battered cassette the midwife had given them into their precious machine.

“When did we last charge the battery?” he asked, in a desperate attempt to hang on to normality, but she was too far gone for distraction. Her eyes were fixed on a distant internal horizon that he would never be able to reach, no matter how hard he tried.

Ambient ululations—whale noises or womb beats or something—filled the space, making the atmosphere even more surreal. He badly wanted a spliff.

As the plaintive baying on the tape began to compete with Mog's increasingly uninhibited wailing, the noise of a car engine broke through and Dean lost his last reserve of calm. He lurched from his stool, leaped across the floor, through the door and down the steps in one seamless stagger.

“Don't go,” Mog shouted. “Please stay, Dean. Please!”

“I'm not going anywhere. There's a car out there. I'll be back in a minute.”

Dean waved at Jonathan who felt a physical jolt at the promotion from stranger to friend. He had the Bedford Twin Steer aluminum sump pump in the back of his car between the fishing nets and the beach buckets, but he had a feeling that was no longer why he was here. For once, he had managed to be in the right place at the right time.

“Mog's having the baby,” Dean screamed across the car park. “She's having the baby.”

Jonathan turned to the four children in the car—his three and Scott—and spoke calmly. “Okay, looks like you may be rock-pooling on your own, kids.”

“Why? Who's that man?”

“That's Dean.”

“He looks mental,” Scott said.

“I think he's trying to tell me his girlfriend is having their baby.”

“Uuugh,” Jay said.

“Gross,” said Scott.

“So she won't be able to show us the sandhoppers?” Asha asked.

Jonathan didn't answer. He was too busy making sure he didn't run over Dean, who had his hand on the driver's door before the car had stopped moving. He saw his terrified face and remembered that alarm, that incapability to believe that anything good could possibly come out of such pain, that complete male helplessness, that awful creeping knowledge that you had led someone you loved to this place and now you had to leave her there.

He could have told Dean to dump it all there and then, because the place Mog was in would soon turn out to be so maternally absorbing, that she wouldn't necessarily notice if he was there or not. But Dean wouldn't have listened.

“Thank fuck you're here, mate,” he blubbered. “I don't know what to do. We didn't have time to get into the village for the bus, or anything. It just started happening and she couldn't walk. I don't know what to do, man, I don't know what to fuckin' do.”

“Well, the first thing you've got to do is calm down,” Jonathan said in the measured voice he had heard Sita use with Jay lately. He hadn't noticed Dean's swearing, and if the children had they weren't showing it. With his dreadlocks pulled back off his face into a ponytail, Dean looked like a baby himself.

“Okay? Calm down,” Jonathan repeated, getting out of the car. “Have you called an ambulance?”

“Haven't got a phone. She didn't want me to leave her. I thought I was going to have to…”

“Dad?” said Jay, who had got out of the car after him.

Jonathan put his hand on Dean's shaking shoulder. He felt paternal, a hundred years old. “Come on, it's going to be fine. Mog is going to need you to be strong.”

“I can't, I can't, I can't. She was all right when we got up, and then…”

“We'll call an ambulance.”

“She's not going to die, is she?”

“No, she's not.” said Jonathan. “She really is not. Don't worry, I know what it's like. I've been through it three times myself. It's okay. It's nature's way. But it's bloody terrifying to watch, I'll give you that.”

“Can you come and see her?”

“I will. I'll just deal with this lot. This is Jay.”

“Hi,” said Jay.

“Sorry, mate,” said Dean, nodding at him in apology.

“Get your nets,” Jay mouthed through the window to Scott. “Dad, what do you want me to do with Lila?”

“Leave her in the car until she wakes up. Keep checking her, will you? And don't wander off too far. And keep an eye on Asha. And don't go into the sea.”

“Dad, I'm thirteen, not three,” Jay said, looking at Dean for approval but Dean was heading back into the bus.

“Yes, I know. I'm sorry. But Scott—”

“Scott is fine.”

“Good. Keep it that way. No showing off.”

“Come on, you two. Leave Dad to deal with this.”

Scott legged it out of the car and onto the beach as fast as he could, making sure he got as far away as he could from any possible blood or tears. He'd seen enough of those at home.

“Jonathan?” Dean shouted, reappearing. “She's just had two in the space of a minute.”

“Two what?” asked Asha.

“Go with the boys,” Jonathan said. “Be a good girl.”

The inside of the bus looked different from the other day, smaller and scruffier. The sofa along the window was now a bed. Mog was lying on it, propped up with pillows, her legs open. When she saw Jonathan, she pulled a red Indian throw over herself.

“Hello,” she said weakly. She sounded muffled, as if her body was conserving its strength.

“Hi, Mog. Don't worry.”

She nodded and Jonathan saw a surge of energy ripple across her stomach.

“Here's another one,” she said, bracing herself with a rush of panic. Her whine was barely audible at first and then, from her guts, it became an uninhibited groan. Oh shit, Jonathan thought, watching her bear down.

“Are you pushing?” he asked, failing to hide the alarm in his voice.

“Why? Is that bad?” Dean said.

“Do you feel like you need to push?” Jonathan repeated. He tried for eye contact.

“I think so,” Mog sobbed. “I don't know. I don't know what to do. It hurts, it hurts.”

Something bigger than him snatched at his insides. He scrabbled in the back of his mind for some forgotten piece of knowledge. First stage, transition, second stage. She was well into the second stage. Sita's labors had been long and slow but Mog had dived straight in at the deep end.

“You'll be okay. I'm just going to call an ambulance,” he said quietly, hoping to God there would be a signal on his phone.

“No!” Mog shouted. “No, I don't want to go to hospital. No!”

Jonathan sat on the stool and took her clammy hand. Dean had taken up a new position by the door. He looked ready to run at any time.

“I don't think you've got time to get to hospital even if you wanted to, but listen, we can do this between us, if we all take things calmly, okay? Here's what we're going to do. Dean, you're going to hold Mog's hand and help her to take some long, deep breaths. Try not to push at the moment. Resist the urge if you can by doing lots of little quick puffs. I'm going to phone for an ambulance for back-up and then I'm going to call my wife and she's going to talk us through this, okay?”

He thought of the hushed calm of the delivery suites at the Portland Hospital in London where all three of his children had been born. Then he looked at Mog on the tangled heap of blankets on the sofa from the tip. Some of Dean's fear crept into his own thoughts.

“I'll be back in a minute.”

In the car, a round, healthy Lila was sound asleep in her chair, her chin almost on her knees. Was her perilous journey into the world really only six months ago? His fingers trembled over the buttons on his mobile as he called for the ambulance. A pristine map in the driver door pocket told him the beach's proper name and even the grid reference for it. It was his old self's finest moment.

Then he pressed the speed dial button for Sita.

She answered immediately. “Jonathan? What's wrong?” She was on the attack again.

“The children are fine. I'm at the beach and Mog from the bus is in the second stage.”

“The beach?”

“What should I do?”

“Mog from the bus? What are you talking about?” Her voice was sharp, impatient. “Where's Lila?”

“She's asleep, right next to me, in her car seat.”

“Who's Mog?”

“The pregnant girl from the bus on the beach. I think she's about to have the baby. Like, imminently.”

“No, I'm not with you. Start again. Which beach? What bus?”

“I haven't got time to explain fully, but I met some travelers at the beach. I thought I told you.”

“Jonathan, we haven't been talking, remember?”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

There was a silence while she assimilated the last two words. “So am I.”

“Can you help me?” he said.

“Why?” Her tone was a little softer.

He told her everything again, more slowly and in order. It didn't make much sense but she understood one thing: he really did need her.

“I can't do this without you,” he said.

“I'm right here.”

“Thank God.”

“First things first. Have you called an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic, good, well done.”

“But I don't think it's going to get here in time.”

“Hang on.”

He heard his wife speak into her desk intercom to the receptionist. Her measured efficiency made him feel a whole universe better.

“I'm back. I've stopped all calls. We'll do this together, okay? You tell me what's happening and I'll tell you what to do about it.”

“Yes.” His voice was tight.

“Jonathan, are you all right?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes. Listen, I'm going to give you instructions, okay?”

“Yes. Yes, that's what I want.”

“You won't mind me bossing you about? Giving you orders?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the first thing to do is to get something, a blanket or a towel or something, to keep the baby warm when it arrives. We don't want to waste precious time looking for something once the baby's out. That's really important.”

Jonathan heard the word “we” and started to accept again that there might actually be a baby and not a tragedy at the end of all this.

“Okay, I'm going back into the bus,” he said. “If I lose the signal, I'll phone you back. Or you could try me.”

“Yes, don't worry.”

“Dean,” he said, leaping back into the bus, “I've got my wife on the phone. She's a doctor, and she's done this loads of times before from both ends. It's water off a duck's back for her. I'm going to take instruction from her and pass it on to you, yes? Okay, Mog? My wife is called Sita, she's right here, and she's really good at this kind of thing. We'll be fine now.”

Dean nodded.

“She says we must find something to keep your baby warm. A towel, or a soft blanket or something.”

“I'll talk to you about water off a duck's back later,” Sita told him when he came back on the phone. “How far on do you think she is? Can you see the baby's head?”

“Not from where I'm standing.”

It was her turn to think of the Portland. Jonathan had kept a safe distance from the sharp end of his children's births. He wasn't going to enjoy this. “You are going to have to look, Jon.”

She heard him take a deep breath.

“Mog, do you mind if I just take a look to see if the baby's head is visible? Is that okay? Imagine I'm a midwife.”

“Well done,” said Sita. “Stay calm, help her to take long breaths. What can you see?”

Jonathan put his hand gently on Mog's left knee and parted it a little, but as he bent down to check the phone fell from under his chin.

“Dean, if I give you instructions, do you feel able to carry them out? I can't talk to Sita and do this at the same time.” It was more appropriate anyway, for Dean to be close to Mog in that way.

Dean shook his head. He was holding Mog's hand and wiping her forehead with the wet flannel. Drips ran down her face and she pushed him away.

“I … I … no, I … I don't think…” he said. He looked green.

“Don't make him, darling,” Sita said when Jon picked up the phone again. “You'll probably be more useful. Keep putting the handset down. I can hear you.”

“Okay, Dean, it's okay, you just hang on to Mog. Sita, I'm putting the phone down on the sofa.”

Sita heard the soft calm of his voice. “There it is. Hey, wow, I can see the baby. I can see dark hair.”

Mog and Dean squeezed hands.

“Yes,” he said, back on the phone. “I can see it.”

“She's really close, then. You arrived just in time. Right, just let her push the baby out at her own rate now. The next contraction, she'll want to push, so let her.”