The Hidden Years (28 page)

Doggedly she walked on, faster now. After all, what need
was there now to walk slowly? Doggedly she pleaded with her child to
wait. Bitterly she chastised herself for what she had done. Grimly she
told herself that she was panicking for nothing, that her baby wasn't
due to be born for at least another four weeks, and then, just when she
had managed to reassure herself that panic was all it had been, the
pain came again.

Vic saw her coming down the hill and frowned. She had no
business straying so far from the house, not in her condition. She
reminded him of one of his young and skittish ewes, unused to the
burdens of motherhood.

As he watched, he saw her stop and clasp her stomach. Too
far away to see her expression, he could nevertheless visualise it, so
graphically telling were her actions.

He discovered that he was walking, almost running towards
her without realising he had made the decision.

She was over two miles away from Cottingdean and half a
mile from the farm. As he moved he summoned his dogs, setting them to
guard the flock.

Liz hadn't seen the shepherd. She was too caught up in her
own physical needs, in trying to cope with the waves of pain that
battered her. She knew she must reach Cottingdean, but each succeeding
wave of pain slowed her down, confusing her, so that when Vic reached
her, she was crouched over, hugging her arms around her body, her eyes
wide with pain and shock. She saw him and yet did not see him, too
engrossed in her fear to be aware of anything other than her immediate
needs.

Vic spoke her name and took hold of her arm gently,
hesitantly, watching her as she focused on him, pain giving way to the
realisation of his presence, shock giving way to relief…

As she recognised him, Liz felt her animosity towards him
evaporate in the relief of knowing she wasn't alone any longer. She let
him take hold of her and guide her down the path, struggling against
the pain to tell him through chattering teeth, 'Vic… the
baby…'

He looked indulgently at her. She was so very strong that
sometimes he forgot how young she was as well. Too young to be married
to Edward… He frowned. Those were thoughts he should not be
having. They were married. She was Edward's wife.

'I must get back to Cottingdean. In…'

Vic had seen how close together her pains were. He knew
already that there would not be time to reach Cottingdean. There might
not even be time to reach the farmhouse. He knew that it was unusual
for a first birth to happen so quickly, and that often when it did it
could be followed by heavy, sometimes fatal bleeding. It always caused
him concern when one of his first time ewes went into too speedy
labour. Now, as he silently guided Liz towards the farmhouse, that
concern was intensified tenfold.

When she realised where he was taking her, Liz stopped
dead and stared at him, fear clouding her eyes. 'No, Vic. I must get
home… the baby—'

'Will come too soon for us to get there,' he told her
quietly. 'The farmhouse is closer…'

Liz felt her heart jump in her breast. What was he saying?
How could he know? And yet sharply she knew that he was right, and
panic struck through her. 'Dr Holmes…'

Vic saw the fear in her eyes and pity washed through him.
He didn't tell her what he knew: that there would be no time to summon
the doctor, no time for anything other than allowing the child to be
born, but something in his touch on her arm reassured her, and numbly
she allowed him to urge her over the last few yards of the track and
across the farmyard.

She had never been inside the small farmhouse before. The
kitchen was pin-neat, its table scrubbed as clean as her own; the
homely smell of stew cooking in the range reached her nostrils. She was
surprised to discover that she felt hungry, and then abruptly the pain
struck her again, fierce and compelling, turning her mind in upon
itself, so that she had only a dim perception of Vic guiding her
upstairs and into the small cold bedroom where his grandfather had once
slept, and which was now bare of everything but its bed.

Liz felt the mattress dip beneath her, was aware of firm
hands removing her smock, of a quiet, firm voice speaking calmingly to
her, as the pain raged and tore at her, only to retreat and then rage
anew with jagged tearing force.

She heard herself cry out and someone answer, she felt the
force of the new life inside her demanding its own autonomy, she felt
the fear of the peril of giving birth both for her child and for
herself. She realised she must have cried out those fears, because
someone answered them, reassuring her, calming her.

Outside it grew dark, the winter's afternoon fading into
dusk: Vic had seen more births than he could remember, but each one was
something special, something magical… a moment out of time
when a man might feel immortal to witness such a wonder… but
never more so, never more intensely, or more humbly than this moment
when he witnessed the birth of this boy child.

Any embarrassment she might have imagined feeling in such
circumstances had long ago faded. Liz felt nothing but gratitude and a
rare, intense moment of bonding that went beyond any form of words as
Vic handed her her child. She felt no awkwardness or self-consciousness
when he placed the child against her breast, so matter-of-fact, so
tender, so wholly instinctive were his movements. When he told her that
he must lift the bed, she accepted it without question, not aware, as
he was, of the heavy flow of blood caused by the child's birth.

From somewhere he had produced a sheepskin in which to
wrap the child, telling Liz that it would preserve his body heat.

'I think I shall call him David…' she told Vic
sleepily.

'It's a good name,' he agreed quickly. 'A royal
name…'

She was tired, her body drained and exhausted, and yet the
euphoria of having given birth made her cling determinedly to
consciousness.

Vic, not wanting to alarm her, sat with her, silently
monitoring the dangerously weakening loss of blood. It had slowed, but
not stopped. He suspected that she would need stitches where the birth
had torn her. By rights he ought to leave her and summon help. Edward
must be frantic with worry.

He said as much, but she clung to his arm. 'No…
Please stay with us… There's so much…' She
stopped, frowning, shaking her head in negation of her own thoughts,
her own needs. What was it she wanted to say to him, to share with him?
He was a stranger to her, even more so than Edward, and yet they had
shared something so special, so intimate that for the rest of their
lives the three of them would be inextricably linked. She shivered
suddenly. 'Talk to me…' she said. 'Tell me what you want out
of life, Vic…'

And so he did, watching her while he talked, not allowing
her to see his relief when the bleeding slowly stopped and the colour
started to seep back into her face.

She would make a good mother, he saw approvingly, watching
the easy, instinctive way she handled her child. He, at least, was
healthy, well formed despite his early arrival, tugging eagerly at her
breast.

This was the look of a Madonna, he recognised, watching as
she smiled down at her child and reached out to touch his cheek. A
sharp stab of envy tore through him. Suddenly it was not enough that he
had his hopes and his plans. Suddenly he wanted more—suddenly
he wanted her, he recognised, trying to push the knowledge away from
him, to deny it before it was born, but already it was too late and the
knowledge that there could never be a time when she would lie in his
bed nursing his child was like a sore place in his heart.

'Go on,' Liz instructed him, lifting her gaze from her
son. 'You were saying—about getting a new ram…'

Edward was thrilled with his son. He even approved of the
name she had chosen for him, but Liz suspected that he could not quite
forgive her for allowing David to be born so intemperately, and in such
a horrible place— with only a shepherd in attendance.

He was a little short with Vic for several weeks after
David's birth, which Liz felt guiltily was her fault, suspecting that
it was really at her that his anger was directed, not realising that
Edward was exhibiting an instinctive male awareness of another man's
interest in his mate.

Ian Holmes was full of praise for all that Vic had done,
treating the circumstances of David's birth so matter-of-factly that
Liz was intensely grateful to him.

'You were lucky that Vic was on hand. You couldn't have
asked for a better midwife. After all, he's had far more experience of
birth than I…'

Edward didn't like that comment, saying distastefully that
sheep were a far different thing from ladies.

'Not when they're giving birth,' Ian told him
forthrightly, not adding that, but for Vic's prompt action, Liz might
very well have bled far more seriously than she had.

As it was she made a speedy recovery from the birth, and
was now glowing with health and pride. Her child too was
thriving…

From somewhere someone had produced two goats, and these
were now providing the rich milk that Liz was forcing herself to drink
for David's sake. Ian had warned her that the poor diet they were all
forced to endure might result in her milk not being sufficient to
nourish her baby.

Around
the time David was six months old three things happened which were to
have, in varying degrees, a profound effect upon their lives.

The first of them arrived in the form of a totally
unexpected visitor who presented herself at Cottingdean's unused front
door at precisely four o'clock on a warm early June afternoon, just
when Liz had settled both David and Edward down for the nap which had
become part of their daily ritual. If she was ever forced to count her
blessings, foremost among them must be Edward's love for their son. It
surprised her how easy it was for her to think of David as 'theirs'.
From the very first moment he had set eyes on him Edward had loved the
little boy, handling him with a tenderness and wonder that always made
Liz herself marvel.

Any doubts she had had about the wisdom of her marriage
had faded the moment she'd looked into Edward's eyes and seen in them
the pure shining love of a father for his child, and known that it was
a love that would never tarnish.

If it hurt her to remember the laughing, handsome man who
had given David life, then she was determined that only she would know
it.

David was Edward's son. He fussed over the baby far more
than she did. At first she had seen that he disliked the fact that she
was feeding the baby herself. In his world ladies simply did not do
that sort of thing, but Ian Holmes had some radical ideas and beliefs
springing from his tough Northern upbringing and, as he ruthlessly
pointed out to Edward, Liz's milk was a far more economical and, in his
view, far more healthy way of feeding the child than any amount of
shop-bought formulae.

It was true that David had thrived marvellously, and now,
at six months, he was a placid, plump baby, with a shock of dark hair,
serious blue eyes that were slowly changing to grey, and sun-warmed
skin from the long hours his mother spent working in her garden with
David tucked into a basket at her side.

The goats had done their work, and someone—she
suspected it was probably either Ian Holmes or young Vic—had
prevailed on Jack Lowndes to spare her two of his men early in the
spring to do the heavy digging and clearing in the kitchen gardens.

Conscious always of their lack of money, Liz had insisted
on retaining what had once been the escaliered fruit trees around the
walls, and these had been pruned back as hard as she dared, in the hope
that they might with care and nourishment be persuaded to grow and
fruit. Now, in June, when she walked in this garden that was her own
special province, early in the morning, after she had fed the hens and
checked that the goats hadn't escaped from their tethers, her heart
swelled with achievement as she studied the neat rows of growing
produce.

With her aunt's thrifty training, she was already planning
ahead to the autumn, when she would bottle, preserve and make jam with
as much of the soft fruit as she could, looking to the winter ahead.

Visitors of any kind were a rare enough occurrence. The
village believed in keeping itself to itself, and Liz was too conscious
of being neither fish nor fowl in the social pecking order to make
overtures of her own. To have a visitor therefore on a Monday
afternoon, when any housewife of good sense must surely be engaged in
thankfully completing the task of her Monday wash, was surprising
enough; but one who presented herself at the front door, which was
never used, caused Liz to frown as she wiped her hands on the overall
she was quickly removing.

The only downstairs room that was really habitable was the
kitchen. Edward now seemed resigned to the fact that they were
virtually living in it and had made no comment when Liz, with Vic's
help, had dragged down from the attic two ancient armchairs, their
covers worn and damp but their springs still intact.

All through the spring evenings she had worked hard on her
borrowed Singer making loose covers for them from an old pair of damask
curtains she had found in the attic.

The flagged floor now gleamed with cleaning and polishing,
the pewter winked shiningly from the bare scrubbed floors, and the
range always gave off a welcoming warmth.

As she walked through the hall, Liz grimaced. She had
fallen into the habit of using the back stairs, which were more
convenient for the kitchen, and since David's birth she had not had any
time to spend trying to restore any more of the house to some sort of
order. Now, with the warmth of the summer sun and its strong light
pouring into the hallway, she was freshly conscious of its state of
dilapidation.