Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 (32 page)

 
          
Tucker
left shortly after Richard did. He just took the car and went.

 
          
“You’d
better walk on back up to Honeycomb, girl,” he said as he left. “There’ll be no
sense out of Mabs for an hour or two.”

 
          
Mabs
strode the room, up and down, up and down. She seemed to have forgotten Liffey,
who drooped over her belly, willing the pain away. The floor seemed to shake
beneath Mabs’s footfall, although surely it was made of solid stone. Mabs
seemed larger than life, like a giantess.

 
          
Liffey’s
baby was quiet. Liffey knew it was apprehensive: she had not known it like that
before. All right, said Liffey to her baby, reassuring where no reassurance
was, all right. She made a conscious effort to modify her own mood, to lessen
shock and fright, to accept pain and not to fight it, as Madge had once tried
to teach her, while Liffey had refused to learn.
Little
Liffey, long ago, refusing Madge’s knowledge that the world is hard and you’d
better learn to manage it.

 
          
All
right, Mother, you win.

 
          
Liffey
stood up. Blood streamed down her legs. It was bright, almost cheerful.

 
          
“Mabs,”
said Liffey, “can I use the phone?”

 
          
Thus
the habit of politeness spoke, foolishly. Madge would just have grabbed before
worse befall.

 
          
Worse
befell: Mabs, barely pausing in her pacing, answered by ripping the telephone
wire out of the hall and throwing the receiver across the room and breaking it.

 
          
“Mabs,”
said Liffey, “I’m bleeding.”

 
          
“Good,”
said Mabs.

 
          
Liffey
went to the door.

 
          
“Tucker,”
she yelled, “Tucker!” There was no reply. There were tyremarks in the dust of
the yard. Tony and Tina were gone. A swallow swooped down, and up again, and
was gone. It was quiet. The dogs did not yap and prance as they usually did.
They sniffed around, the rich red smell of Liffey’s blood, perhaps too strong
and strange for them.

           
Liffey had another pain now of a
different kind—a more patient, slow, insistent pain, travelling round from back
to front, as the uterus, damaged as it was, began the business of taking up the
cervical canal.

 
          
“Mabs,”
said Liffey, “get me to hospital.”

 
          
“Can’t,”
said Mabs. “The car’s gone.”

 
          
There
was a trail of blood wherever Liffey moved.

 
          
“Mabs,”
said Liffey, “I’ll die.”

 
          
“Good,”
said Mabs.

 
          
Audrey put her hand
trustingly into
that of the curate. Hers was warm and small. His was cold and bony. They were
alone in the vestry, and he wished they were not.

 
          
“What’s
bothering you, Audrey?”

 
          
Audrey
sang loud and lustily in the choir but gave the impression in church of being
some kind of emissary from a foreign power, and not a particularly friendly one
at that. It might, he thought, have had something to do with the way her eyes
roamed, with prurient speculation, over the males in the congregation. Most of
them were elderly.

 
          
“It’s
my sister Debbie. She’s ill. She needs the doctor.”

 
          
“Then
surely your mother will fetch one?”

 
          
“My
mum’s not like that.”

 
          
“But
why come to me? Why not go straight to the doctor?”

 
          
He
knew the answer even as he asked. Audrey did not even bother to reply. Audrey
fancied him. She did not fancy the doctor. He wished he were back in
theological college. He did not know why he felt so helpless. Audrey’s hand,
which he had thought to be so childish, moved like an adult’s in his,
suggestively.

 
          
“My
mum says Debbie’s just constipated, but I know she’s not, because she keeps
messing her pants, and I’m the one who washes them so I should know. And my mum
keeps on giving her buckthorn.”

 
          
“What’s
that?”

 
          
“It’s
all right for the cows, I suppose. It’s just berries she boils up.
Makes your mouth green.”

 
          
The
curate took back his hand. Audrey looked disappointed and concluded the
interview.

 
          
“Anyway,”
she said, going, “I really am worried about Debbie.”

 
          
Liffey
stood bleeding in the yard of Cadbury Farm.

 
          
Mabs
had slammed the door behind her. The piercing pain was worse: her brow was
clammy,
her clogs were full of blood. She took them off.

 
          
Well,
thought Liffey, no good standing here. No good screaming, or crying, or
fainting. No use lying down either. If I do nothing I will simply bleed to
death. If it was only me, I wouldn’t mind. I really wouldn’t. I am not sure, on
my own
account, that
I wish to stay in the world,
considering its nature. What about you, baby? She felt the touch of its spirit,
almost for the last time, still clear, still light and bright, almost elegant.
The baby didn’t have to want to live, it
was
life. She felt the touch on her hand, and there was little Eddie, standing in
front of her, looking up at her, mumbling something incoherent, talking about
Debbie. He pulled her forward, down the lane towards the road.

 
          
Liffey
started walking.

 
          
“Only
blood,” said Liffey aloud. “Not even the baby’s blood.
My
blood.
Lots more where that came from, Eddie.”

 
          
But
she wasn’t so sure. She walked as fast as she could, but she was also aware
that that was very slow, because Eddie kept standing in front of her, facing
her, waiting for her to catch up. And as soon as she did, he was off again.
Pain counted now as sensation. It had to. She had no idea what the time was or
how long she walked and bled. The sun glazed in the sky behind the Tor; it was
surprisingly high. She walked into it. She did not suffer particularly. She
travelled because she had to, as a bird might travel to a warmer climate, or a
salmon cross the sea to the river it had to find.

           
The curate, though delayed by
Audrey, presently arrived at a drinks-before-Sunday-dinner party at the new
solicitor’s house, and here he encountered the doctor, who was telling the
solicitor’s wife, not without pride, of the extent to which the old herbalism
was still practiced in the neighbourhood, and the fact that the village even
boasted a wise woman, old Mrs. Tree, who claimed to have cured one of his
terminal-cancer patients with stewed root of Condor Vine—and, admittedly, the
patient was still in remission. The curate, casually enough, mentioned
buckthorn berries and his conversation with Audrey, at which the doctor
groaned, said all Sundays were much the same, left his drink unfinished and his
wife without transport, and took off for Cadbury Farm.

 
          
“His
partner once had a child die from buckthorn,” said the doctor’s wife sadly. She
finished her husband’s sherry. The new solicitor was not going to be lavish
with the drink.

 
          
The
doctor found Liffey just where the lane joined the main road. He took Eddie
into the car as well, since he could not leave a small, half-daft child
standing by himself on a main road. He drove to the hospital, stopping briefly
to talk to a policeman on the way.

 
          
“Aren’t
you going rather fast?” Liffey asked.

 
          
“Not
particularly,” he said. “Why didn’t you use the phone?”

 
          
He
went through a red light as if it wasn’t there at all.

 
          
“It
was out of order,” said Liffey.

 
          
“Where’s
your husband? Isn’t he home? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

 
          
“He
had to get back to
London
,” said Liffey easily. She rather enjoyed the ride; the piercing pain
had dulled and she could now allow the other ones to come and go at will. She
was sitting on a pile of curtains the doctor happened to have in the car, on
the way to the cleaners for his wife. He had prudently put them under Liffey to
save his car upholstery. What funny bright red damp curtains, thought Liffey.
I’m sure I have better taste than his wife.

 
          
Three
nurses and a doctor and a wheeled stretcher, with two drips already set up, one
clear, one red, waited at the top of the hospital steps.

 
          
“I
say!” said Liffey.

 
          
“She
might be drunk or something,” said the doctor. “She’s euphoric. Tell the
anaesthetist,” and hoped they heard him as they ran down the corridor away from
him.

 
          
There
had been valerian and coltsfoot in the elderflower wine; Mabs thought now that
perhaps she had overdone the coltsfoot and made everyone quarrelsome, including
herself. Well, it was too late now. What was done was done. She wiped up the
blood on the doorstep and worked out a story to tell when Liffey’s body, with
any luck, was found, and went upstairs to tell Debbie to stop that racket.

 
          
The
doctor had forgotten all about Eddie, but of course there he was, still sitting
in the back of the car, crying.

 
          
“Christ,”
said the doctor. “This is supposed to be my day of rest.”

 
          
He
sped and jerked Eddie all the way back to the village, and then bumped and
banged him all the way down the lane, and parked amongst the yowling dogs,
because there was nowhere else, just as Mabs came out of the front door with
Debbie’s unconscious, or dead, body in her arms. The doctor got out of the car
and ran, kicking at the dogs. He’d forgotten about the buckthorn berries.

 
          
“The
phone’s out of order,” offered Mabs by way of explanation, “Eddie broke it,
and Tucker’s gone off God knows where, and I came back in from the cows and
found blood all over the step and Debbie fell out of bed and must have banged
her head because I went up and found her like this.”

 
          
“The
blood is Mrs. Lee-Fox’s,” said the doctor, laying Debbie flat, running his
hands over her stomach. She groaned. Good. “Fine neighbour you make—never in
when you’re wanted. She’s in hospital now.”

 
          
“My,
that was quick,” said Mabs. “She was right as rain at lunch.
Had
a bit of a row with her husband, though.
Well, she imagines things.”

 
          
“Why
was the child in bed?”

 
          
“She’s
dirty.
Wets the bed.
She’s got to learn. Is it bad?”

 
          
“Ruptured
appendix,” said the doctor.
“Stands to reason.
Help me
get her in the car, quick.”

 
          
“I’ll
come to the hospital too,” said Mabs. “Might as well. Will Mrs. Lee-Fox be all
right?”

           
“I’d worry about the child if I were
you,” said the doctor, but he’d known mothers like this many a time; the object
of their concern shifted to something more tolerable than danger to their own
child. At least he hoped it was that.

 
          
“Mrs.
Lee-Fox is in good hands.”

 
          
“It’s
a punishment on me,” said Mabs, and began to cry, though what was the
punishment she did not make clear. Eddie had stopped crying. He stayed in the
car while the doctor drove back to the hospital. This time they did not pass a
policeman, and when they reached the hospital the doctor had to stamp and roar
to get attention, by which time he feared all hope for Debbie was probably
lost.

 
          
“Two
emergencies in one afternoon,” grumbled the theatre sister. “You can tell
it’s
Sunday.”