Moon Rising (33 page)

She'd been pleasant enough a couple of days previously, when it was just a question of asking questions and conducting a brief examination to confirm what I already suspected, although her tone had changed once she understood what was wanted. Even then she'd been keen to assure me that the operation was simple; the only problem being that we had to be discreet. If she agreed to do it, then I must swear not to implicate her under any circumstances. This had been said as much to Bella as to me. Now, grimly, with the door shut and the kitchen lamps lit, she asked whether I'd brought the money. I had, and in the collection of coins I tipped out of my purse lay the equivalent of three weeks' wages. I suspected that Nan Mills charged as much as she felt her clients could afford, and was thankful I'd not told Bella about the cheque.

She took one of the lamps and indicated that we should follow her up the circular staircase to the floor above, where a small back room was closely curtained against prying eyes. There was a long table, such as might be found in any good kitchen, with layers of newspaper spread over it, and a wooden chair and wash-stand to one side.

To my surprise, having expected a bed, I was asked to climb on to the table and lie down with my knees up. Nan folded back my skirts and placed a thick wad of paper beneath me, then turned aside to wash her hands. She told me to spread my knees wide, and, when I hesitated, became impatient. ‘Come on now, we don't want to be here all night.' The hands that pushed my knees apart adjusted the set of my ankles, and then moved in from there. To my intense discomfort and embarrassment, she placed one hand on my abdomen while pushing the other inside me, feeling and probing with fingers that had no respect for my tender parts.

On that unforgiving table I felt naked and exposed, like a goose at Christmas subject to the prize-fighting fists of the cook. Bella was seated on a chair, head down and chewing her fingernails, obviously preferring not to watch. I didn't blame her. Wincing, trying not to cry out, I bit my lip instead. It seemed a nonsense to be told to relax, but at last, as Nan withdrew her hand I heaved a great sigh of relief, in my ignorance thinking the whole thing was over.

But as I moved she stayed me with a dry laugh. ‘Nay, lass – we haven't started yet.'

From a cupboard in the wash-stand she took out a slim leather bundle and unwrapped it. My heart leapt with fear as I saw scissors and a thin knife, and long metal instruments that looked like meat skewers or crochet hooks. Bella shook her head and reached for the gin. This time I almost snatched the bottle out of her hand, took one hefty swig and then another, the thought of sick hangovers infinitely preferable to the coming ordeal.

Fear made it worse, of course. And being threatened. Nan Mills made it terrifyingly clear that if she was to perform the operation safely, I must keep very still indeed. She had to find the neck of the womb and insert a probe in order to pierce the membrane; she did not want to pierce me by mistake, she said, just because I was stupid enough to wriggle at the wrong moment.

Putting the gin aside, Bella took my hands instead. I was intensely thankful for that, as I was shaking so badly I began to be afraid that a sudden twitch might kill me. Nan arranged my knees to her satisfaction, then felt inside me again, all the while telling me to push out, not clench up. The next moment I felt something graze me deep inside, something at once sore and sharp that prompted an involuntary clenching of every muscle. Bella gripped tight, but even as I whimpered it was over, the hand was sliding out and my stretched and bruised parts were miraculously flexing back into place.

While I lay there in a haze of gin and dizzy relief, with tears pouring down my face, Nan Mills issued instructions I was incapable of taking in. Then she took her instruments and went downstairs.

Bella helped me up and wiped my face. ‘We've to go down – there's some medicine she wants you to take.'

I was beyond protest. My legs felt like twine but with Bella's assistance I managed the stairs. Nan was pouring boiling water into a cup, and I thought gratefully of tea. But it was a herbal tea, a spicy, slightly bitter drink of raspberry leaves and ginger, that she said would help the action of the womb. I was to take it three times a day for a week, and must expect a heavy flow of blood.

Feeling dizzy and confused, I found myself outside in the darkness. Bella put her arm around me and suggested going back to her house until I felt better. It was kind, but I dreaded feeling worse; and anyway, couldn't bear the thought of Isa's prying eyes. I wanted peace and quiet, a measure of order and cleanliness, and, most of all, what I had come to think of as my own bed.

Fresh air sobered me, and in spite of everything we managed a reasonably steady progress back to Newholm. Bella insisted on staying overnight and I was glad of that; the bleeding had started and we were both apprehensive, not knowing what more to expect. Next morning I felt weak and unwell, but bound myself up and elected to go to work as usual.

Having lately impressed the housekeeper with my diligence, I was able to gain a little forbearance for my malady. I said it was something I'd eaten, which gave an excuse for frequent visits to the privy, where at least I could sit down for a few minutes. By mid-afternoon, however, although the bleeding had stopped, I had pains in my stomach and back and was beginning to feel light-headed. One of the other girls took over the ironing and made me sit down in the linen room. Not long afterwards I keeled over in a swoon, and came to on the floor.

The housekeeper was not pleased by the inconvenience, but, after issuing several dire threats and warnings about taking time off for illness, finally gave me permission to go home. By then I was feeling too ill to care. For a while I sat on a public bench on the west cliff, wondering whether to go looking for Bella who had gone home that morning, or to carry on to Newholm. In spite of the distance the latter seemed easier, certainly more straightforward, if only I could keep putting one foot in front of the other. How I managed to cover those two miles I'll never know, but after many stops along the way I staggered down the path and into the cottage.

I remember going into the scullery and pumping water into the ewer. I remember it being too heavy for me to lift, and feeling distraught because I knew I had a fever and needed plenty to drink. Everything hurt and my ears were buzzing and all I wanted to do was lie down and shut my eyes, but I had to have that water. I drank some, poured some more away, then lurched across the kitchen with it. In the bedroom, shivering violently, I started to undress, but was suddenly seized by agonising pains. Nausea gripped, then came the urge to evacuate, so powerful it was all I could do to get to the privy and sit there through spasms of agony, groaning and gasping for breath, convinced that I was dying.

And without Bella, I would have died. Not quite then, perhaps, and certainly not from the pain alone, but I could not have survived the ensuing fever without care and attention. Although my memory of the next few days is unclear, I know Bella arrived at the cottage not much more than an hour or so after me. She said she'd been worried all day, and after waiting near the hotel about the time I should have left, finally plucked up courage to call at the tradesmen's door and ask for me. When she heard the tale from one of the kitchen maids, she set off for Newholm at once, running most of the way.

I owe her my life for the way she looked after me, for cleaning me up and putting me to bed, for nursing me so well and so unfailingly through the delirium that followed. The fever kept me in its grip for days, with endless dreams of water and falling, of bloody wounds and accusing fingers, hissing snakes and erotic visions that turned into nightmares of rape and impalement and dead men walking. Amidst the parched desert of my agony I had moments of clarity in which I recognised Bella, anxious and hollow-eyed as she bent over me, feeding me water from a spoon, or wiping the sweat from my face and breast. Then I would drift away again and be terrified, surrounded by pale, drowned faces with seaweed hair and sightless eyes, or black-clad devils with pitchforks, prodding me back into the flames.

But it wasn't the devil who had me in his grip, nor even Henry Irving at his most sinister. It was, in effect, childbed fever, which had snatched my mother's life away, and came so close to taking mine.

That summer was the last I spent in Whitby. Looking back, certain moments stand out vividly, moments that had nothing to do with Bram, except that that summer everything had something to do with him. Yet when I think of it now, even our involvement was like an echo of something that had its origins before I was born.

I remember standing on the bridge, watching the fisherlasses along the quay, knives and fish flashing like silver in the sun, gutting and packing so fast their hands were impossible to follow. They were cheerful, confident, a joy to watch, their arms and faces bronzed by the sun. Their voices carried across the water, the accents of the Scottish girls reminding me of my mother, bringing a lump of loneliness to my throat. In need of comfort and reassurance, I remember wondering whether that young woman who was my mother would have understood the anguish of my predicament, or castigated me for its foolishness.

I hoped she'd understand; after all, she had fallen in love with my father who, like Bram, belonged to a different class. He was used to a life far above the impoverished existence she'd known as a girl. On the face of it at least. The realities may have been closer than either side liked to admit, but even in households where cash was tight and income heavily committed, there were degrees of pride and gentility, accepted codes of behaviour that people clung to in spite of everything. Grandmother certainly did, and I can imagine my father as a young man burning to rebel, longing to flout all domestic rules and restrictions, particularly after finishing a long and disciplined apprenticeship at sea. He'd met a beautiful girl and fallen in love; and, like some medieval knight, was determined to rescue her from a life of brutal work and poverty, no matter what anyone else had to say.

There must have been opposition, although, if his nature was anything like my own, opposition was probably the thing to harden him. I'd always believed in crossing barriers and breaking conventions, which was why I felt such sympathy with my young and wayward parents. Why I longed to emulate them. At least that was how it seemed to me then. Now, all these years later, I wonder whether it was simply a matter of loneliness and deprivation, of trying to get close to my mother and father by imitating their experiences, their codes of behaviour, their ways of life.

Being young, however, I did not see the pitfalls. The eagerness which led me to embrace life with the Firths swung like a pendulum to land me in the arms of a married man twenty years my senior. There's no doubt that I was dazzled, in love, passionately enthralled; but it strikes me now that I was also looking for a father's love, that I wanted the luxury of being spoiled and cared for, the sense of comfort and protection only an older man could provide. I trusted Bram more because of who and what he was. But that only made the betrayal worse.

Looking back, it still seems strange to me that my brush with death should have been so similar to my mother's. Common enough, some might say, in women of child-bearing years, with nothing so strange about it, except in the recovery. Nevertheless, it was an experience which affected me profoundly, leaving me feeling intensely vulnerable and as though I should waste no more time on hopeless causes.

I knew I was lucky to have survived that fever. In my mother's case, with a stillbirth following so closely upon the shock of my father's death at sea, it's possible she lost the will to fight; but there again, perhaps she simply lacked a nurse with Bella's skill and determination. And that was extraordinary in itself. Even though Bella seemed to have spent half her life supervising her mother's confinements, or nursing the younger children through measles and whooping cough, I never thought of her as a nurse. What she'd done for them was done from necessity; so much was resented, I could hardly credit being the recipient of such voluntary dedication. We had been friends, yes, and in many ways very close indeed, but I believe now that there was more to her actions than that – certainly far more than I was capable of understanding at the time.

Afterwards, when I was recovered enough to know how ill I'd been, how close to death I'd stood, but still feeling weak and very much afraid, she kept thanking me for getting better, for pulling through, simply for
living.
Reasons which seem so obvious now – that I was the life saved, the debt paid for the one taken – were then misunderstood. I thought she meant that my survival was important to her future.

God forgive me, but I thought she was intent on binding us together, and that scared me. Things had changed dramatically since Magnus's death – Isa had returned and was taking over, the boys were planning to leave home, and Bella was no longer needed to stand guard between her father and the rest. She was released from her post, freer than she had ever been in her life before. The trouble was, she had no thought beyond the morrow and did not know what to do with herself. And I thought she was relying on me to provide her with a new role.

I'd had my moments of thinking it might have been easier to die, but with survival came euphoria and a desire for freedom. Alive and aware of it, I was intensely grateful for what Bella had done for me, it was just that I could not envisage the future with her by my side. I wanted to, I tried to, but in truth I wanted freedom more. So I was burdened by guilt as much as gratitude, and wondered how on earth I could ever discharge my debt.

~~~

A decision was required more quickly than I could have imagined. Mr Richardson wrote from the bank to say that one of his father's far-flung relatives, a widow who was also one of his clients, had contacted him regarding a new companion. Her present young lady would shortly be leaving to be married, and Mrs Addison wanted another Baytown girl, because to her they were like a breath of home. She was getting on in years and wanted someone about the place who was young and fit and cheerful, and preferably with a modicum of good sense. Mr Richardson stated that in his opinion I fitted the requirements very well, and that if I would call to see him, we could discuss the situation further.