This Side Jordan (23 page)

Nathaniel was pleased and yet disappointed. He had expected to feel something great.

He took a quick glance at the next cot. It was a European baby and it had no hair. At least his son had hair, a tight black thatch of it, as a child should. Were all white babies born without hair? This baby looked very red and very bald. Nathaniel looked at his son again, this time with satisfaction. He was beginning to feel proud. That was right.

But something bothered him. He soon became aware of what it was. Once he had told himself that this child might grow up to be anything, to be Someone. A doctor, a barrister, an official of Ghana. But not now.

Now he knew what his son would be. He would be reared in the bush and he would grow up to be a planter of yams, a teller of old tales, a drinker of palm-wine.

– Because of your father, my son. Because I did not know what to do.

– Kyerema, here is your grandson. Take him. Is it not enough?

The family would be satisfied but the bitterness of it would never leave Nathaniel. He could not look at the child any longer. He went back to Aya.

‘Isn’t he fine?’ she asked eagerly.

‘Fine,’ he agreed, exaggerating a little for her sake. ‘A fine boy. Wonderful.’

He searched for something to say.

‘He looks like you,’ he added. ‘I think he will be good-looking like you.’

She knew he was saying it only to please her, but she was pleased all the same. She reached out and held his hand.

‘The nurses –’ Nathaniel said, ‘the hospital – what do you think now?’

‘The woman who delivered him,’ Aya said, ‘she was an old woman – not really old, you know, but not young. A big woman, big, like my mother. She was kind, Nathaniel. She was – oh, she was like my mother to me –’

Nathaniel looked at her, hardly able to believe it.

‘Then – everything has been fine?’ he asked. ‘You are not sorry now?’

Aya’s expression changed. The warmth faded and the beauty of her face turned to petulance.

‘I do not like the food,’ she said in a whisper. ‘And the doctor – he came around afterwards, Nathaniel, and I was ashamed –’

‘It is always done, for the doctor to examine –’ Nathaniel explained. ‘A doctor is not like an ordinary man, not then. I have told you –’

He saw with surprise that she was close to tears, and he could not understand the sharp change, in a matter of seconds.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I cannot help it. Oh – the nurses are kind, Nathaniel. But then there is the food – everything is cooked separately and they give it in little dry heaps on your plate. And most I don’t know – how can I eat it if I don’t know what it is? And it has no taste.’

‘It won’t be for many days,’ he said soothingly.

‘There is something else.’

‘What?’

Aya looked doubtfully at the blue plastic screen around the bed on the other side of the room.

‘Do you know who is lying there?’ she hissed.

‘Of course I don’t know.’

‘Mrs. Kestoe.’

‘Her?’

‘Yes,’ Aya went on in a low voice. ‘She has not had her baby yet.’

‘Then what is she doing here? Something wrong?’

‘Oh – no. Yes. Maybe. She came in yesterday afternoon. The pains had started, and then, last night, just before I came in, the pains stopped.’

‘How can it be?’

‘It happens so, sometimes,’ Aya said wisely. ‘Since then, nothing. It is too bad for her.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said insincerely. ‘Too bad.’

‘I am sorry for her,’ Aya said guiltily, ‘but I wish –’

He looked at her suspiciously.

‘What is the matter?’

‘Oh, Nathaniel,’ she burst out, still speaking in a whisper, as though Miranda could understand Twi, ‘she troubled me all the time. Last night, when the pains were bad, all through the
night, she got up and came over here. The nurse was not with me for a long time. I was alone. I was afraid, yes, but I wanted to be left alone. She kept talking and talking, and asking if she could help me –’

Aya began to cry, silently.

‘I did not want her to see me like that,’ she went on, finally. ‘I did not want to talk. I could not remember any English. Oh, Nathaniel! What does she want from me?’

As Nathaniel listened, he remembered. Everything. Were they meant to be grateful, he and Aya?

He rose.

‘She won’t trouble you again. She won’t trouble either of us again. I am going to tell her –’

Aya held him.

‘No –’ she said. ‘You don’t understand. I – I told her to go away.’

He looked at her.

‘You did?’

‘Yes. I had to, Nathaniel! Did I do right?’

‘Yes,’ he said fiercely, ‘you did right.’

Aya’s face grew thoughtful.

‘I heard her crying,’ she said, ‘afterwards. I did not think anything of it at the time – I was in pain, then. But later, when the baby was born, I wondered –’

‘Never mind,’ Nathaniel said coldly. ‘We’ve had to take enough from them. Let it be the other way for a change.’

Aya was scrutinizing his face, sensing a change in him.

‘Did I do right?’ she asked again.

He turned away from her.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Why ask me?’

They left it at that. Nathaniel told her about her mother and Akosua, and Aya told him some more about the birth.
The nurse stuck her head in the doorway – it was time for the patients to have a bath and then tea, and he could return at four if he wished.

Nathaniel had intended to tell Aya that they were going back to the village. But he did not tell her. It might excite her too much. He would wait until she got home. He knew he was putting it off, but he did not know why. Perhaps he was waiting for a sign from heaven.

Nathaniel stepped outside the plastic curtain that screened off Aya’s bed. Only two beds were occupied in the ward. Behind the other screen he heard the faint rustle of magazine pages. He had only to speak to the white woman. Surely it would be easy to call out something, say hello, tell her he hoped the baby would be born soon. It would be easy. All he had to do was open his mouth and say the words. It would be the only chance to speak to her alone. Next time, her husband would be here.

Nathaniel stood by the door for a long moment. Finally he shrugged and walked out, but as he went down the corridor, he had a sense of disquiet, of something lost.

He thought of the woman lying there waiting for her child to be born, leafing through a magazine, crying because she had not been wanted. He wondered how she had felt when Aya said that. Not that he blamed Aya. How could he? The white woman was a stranger. It is not a stranger’s place to observe our pain. But that woman had reached out her hand, and that hand had been struck away. Aya was soft-spoken and gentle, but she was strong and vehement, too. It was odd – he had worried that Aya might be hurt here, in this unfamiliar place, by the callousness of strangers. And it had been the other way round. He felt in a way proud of Aya. And yet he had an inexplicable pity for that other woman.

Nathaniel stopped walking. He half turned to go back. But when he looked over his shoulder he saw that the nurse with the trolley of bowls and dressings was already entering the room.

It was too late, for him.

Nevertheless, in some subtle way he was different, changed. Miranda’s eagerness to know, her exaggerated politeness, her anxiety to please, her terrible kindness – none of it had moved him at all. Only, now, the sudden knowledge that she could feel humiliation and anguish like himself.

Miranda’s labour began again at six that evening. Johnnie was with her. At first, the contractions were light, and Miranda talked to him quite normally, pausing to grimace slightly with each muscle spasm.

Delilah, the African midwife, came on duty at eight.

‘All right, Mrs. Kestoe?’

‘About every fifteen minutes now,’ Miranda said.

The big woman nodded.

‘It will be a few hours yet.’

She shot a disapproving glance at Johnnie as she walked away. He grinned.

‘I think she deplores the presence of a male.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Miranda said, ‘but I don’t.’

Johnnie recalled his interview with the doctor.

‘Not every man is a suitable subject for this kind of experience,’ the doctor had said. ‘However, your wife appears to want you with her very much, and if you feel the same about it, fair enough. Only for God’s sake don’t bother the nurses, or ask stupid questions, or go to pieces at the wrong moment. If you do, they’ll have to turf you out.’

Johnnie had promised and had even contrived to appear fairly nonchalant. But when he brought Miranda to hospital, he
wondered how he could possibly stay. He had a day’s respite, when Miranda’s labour stopped, and he had hoped unreasonably that it would begin suddenly and be over before he could get to the hospital again. But of course it had not happened that way.

Miranda’s contractions grew closer together, and soon she did not want to talk. Her hand tightened on Johnnie’s, until he could feel his bones grating together. Then, as the pain released her, her fierce strength ebbed.

Johnnie made himself stop glancing continually at his watch. Miranda’s face looked bleached and drawn, and her sleek hair was disarranged. Her breath came raspingly. Johnnie choked down the pity and disgust that threatened him. The writhing of her swollen body was almost more than he could stand. The time seemed forever, but it had been, in fact, less than six hours.

Finally, Johnnie could not stay alone with her any longer. He went out to the corridor and found the midwife.

When Delilah saw Miranda, she gave Johnnie an approving nod for the first time.

‘You did right to call me. It will not be long. I will have her moved to the delivery room now.’

‘Can’t you – isn’t there anything you can give her?’

‘I will give her an injection – it will help for a little while, anyway.’

The plump brown face suddenly creased into a smile.

‘Do not worry, Mr. Kestoe,’ Delilah said. ‘It is not as bad as it looks to you. Your wife is quite all right.’

The delivery room was like an operating theatre, all gleaming metal, with glaring overhead lights that drove bright splinters into the eyes.

Johnnie wanted to walk out, to get as far as possible from this weird antiseptic prison. But he could not. Now he had to
remain. And there was nothing he could do. He felt helpless, trapped.

Miranda lay on the delivery table. In between contractions, she shuddered as though chilled to the bone. The contractions were very close now. Her body twisted and her back arched with each wave, but she did not seem conscious of these contortions.

It seemed to him that pain was pouring over her like a wild river, snatching her into its whirlpool. It tore at her muscles, bent her spine to snapping point, tossed her like a matchstick on its cruel and cunning surface. She had to bargain with it for each breath, and each breath won only racked her and seemed almost to split her lungs as though, drowning, she had breathed in water instead of air.

She caught at Johnnie’s arms. Her grip tightened and she drew herself partly up, not seeming to realize she was doing it, as her body was caught in another spasm.

‘Johnnie –’ her voice was a whisper, ‘you won’t leave me?’

It was a moment before Johnnie could reply steadily.

‘I won’t leave you, Manda. I’m right here.’

Then, once more, she was unaware, unrecognizable.

‘Won’t it –’ Johnnie heard his own strangled voice, ‘won’t it ever be over?’

‘It is nearly over now,’ Delilah said calmly. ‘Soon the second stage will start. Then it will not be so bad.’

The waters broke. Johnnie looked at the fluid that gushed from her. He had imagined ‘waters’ meant just that. But this was yellow and thick like pus. How could a living creature issue from that poisonous flood?

Johnnie looked away. The half-formed thought had been in his mind all along. He was certain that his son would be born dead.

He saw now that Delilah and the two junior nurses had strapped Miranda to raised footholds at the end of the delivery table. The apparatus looked like part of a medieval rack.

Delilah was bending over Miranda, trying to get her to inhale gas and air, but Miranda pushed the breathing tube away roughly, as though she did not understand its purpose.

There was no rest for her now. Her body strained and pressed, arched and strained again. Johnnie forgot his own repugnance. Now he felt only fear for Miranda, fear that he would somehow lose her, that she would not return from this pilgrimage which had already taken her so far from him.

She was no longer human. The voice that came from her throat was an animal’s coarse voice. Then a jagged scream, the last cry. Johnnie put his head down on his outspread hands. He closed his eyes. He was shivering, as though with shock. Whatever unspeakable thing had come forth, he did not want to see it.

Then, incredibly, Miranda’s own voice.

‘Johnnie – look.’

He lifted his head. At first he could scarcely believe what he saw. His son had not been born dead. As it happened, it was a girl, and she was quite alive.

The child had only been born for a second and she had not breathed yet, but the small shoulders stirred. Johnnie watched. The baby’s spine was still curved around and her legs folded. There were smears of yellow slime and blood on her body. She looked damp and crumpled. One arm moved. Then she cried, a thin wailing.

Johnnie Kestoe watched his child enter the breathing life that would be hers until the moment of death.

The cord was tied and cut. Delilah wrapped the baby and took her to be weighed. Johnnie looked at his watch. Nearly two a.m.

Then the blood. The placenta came away, and a torrent of bright blood followed. The sight of it did not sicken Johnnie, and for a moment he wondered why. Then he knew. Always, before, he had thought of blood only in relation to death.

He turned to Miranda. She looked tired, but he knew she was all right. Neither spoke for a while.

‘We must’ve been sure it was going to be a boy,’ Miranda said finally. ‘I don’t think we ever discussed girls’ names.’

‘Manda – would you mind very much if we called her Mary?’