Women of a Dangerous Age (31 page)

‘You're going to do nothing of the sort,' objected Don.

‘Of course I am.' She heard how stubborn she sounded and tried to justify herself. ‘Besides, he's always said I must stand on my own two feet and get out of my difficulties on my own.'

‘He's a proud man.' Don gazed at one of the tiny photographs in which Eric was on a picnic rug, squinting into the sun, laughing at the photographer. Unrecognisable from the man he had become. ‘It will have taken a lot for him to dig out these and send you the cash. The least you can do is accept graciously. He's trying to make it up to you.'

‘Don's got a point.' Lou was still looking at the photographs. ‘Let him make his peace in his own way.'

Ali looked at them both and, seeing they meant what they said, grasped Don's hand and squeezed. ‘I guess you're right. As usual.'

‘This must be a mistake.' In Lou's hand was a picture of a graveyard. Beyond a rusted wrought-iron gate set in a high stone wall stood a modest but nonetheless forbidding Presbyterian church surrounded by ranks of unadorned granite gravestones. The sky was clouded, the trees angled sharply by the wind. ‘What's this doing here?'

‘That's where she's buried,' said Ali, taking the picture and staring at it.

‘That's why we're going to Scotland,' added Don as he put his arm round her.

Ali moved into the security of his embrace. ‘Yes, Don suggested that we go there to see her grave for ourselves. To begin with I thought it was a terrible idea but now I kind of want to. I hope it'll be some sort of resolution for us. I can't hope for more than that.'

‘It's near a small village on the south coast of Scotland,' Don explained. ‘We'll be going up for a week to explore.'

‘I don't know what happened in her childhood,' added Ali. ‘I don't even think I ever met my grandparents. But I want to see where Mum grew up, some of what made her the person she was and where she died. And then when we next visit Dad, I'm going to ask him more. I want to understand her better. To really understand what happened, if I can. I hope he'll tell me everything he can now.'

‘Does he know you're going?' Lou slid the photographs back into the envelope.

‘We're going with his blessing. I even asked him if he wanted to come too, but he said he didn't feel up to it.' Ali still held on to the photograph of her with her mother.

‘This is the best we can do, under the circumstances, to
bring them a little closer,' said Don, and kissed the side of Ali's head.

 

Later, as Lou sat on the bus, she could only think about the change in her friend since they'd first met. Gone was the reserve that had characterised Ali on the Indian trip. Seeing her with Don made Lou see how happy they were together, relaxed, content and loving. How instrumental Don had been in getting Ali to start mending fences with her father. While happy for her, Lou was also quite clear that what her friend had achieved was no longer what she wanted for herself. It was almost as if she and Ali had reversed roles, finding in each other's lives what they now wanted for themselves. She leaned her head against the window and gave a small private smile.

A month later, an ear-splitting din interrupted Lou's dream, checking her pursuit along a beach by a black panther wearing one of her floral cocktail dresses, and returning her rudely to the real world. She knocked her mobile onto the floor as she switched on the light, then groped for her reading glasses. She reached down the side of the bed, guided by the Take That ringtone at full deafening volume. Since her sad and secret passion for Mark Owen had waned a little, she'd been meaning to switch the tone to Louis Armstrong for weeks. Years of anxious waiting up until the small hours for their teenage children to return home meant her alarm bells were primed – even now. A phone call in the middle of the night could only mean one thing – the police. What every parent dreaded. Something terrible had happened to one of them. With adrenalin pumping, she checked the caller ID – Nic.

‘Mum! Where are you?' Nic's voice wobbled.

‘Nic? Are you all right?' She was propping herself up, still struggling through the fog of sleep.

‘Of course I'm not! They've started the induction. I thought you were going to be here.'

‘I'll be with you in half an hour.' She didn't point out they had agreed with the midwife that she didn't need to be there till ten. Nothing would happen straight away. Already half standing, Lou was organising her thoughts as she gathered the random clothes within her reach. This was not the time for sartorial considerations. Not even for Nic. Anything would do.

This was such bad luck. Nic had made a birth plan of military precision, which covered every single procedure: the drug-free labour, the water birth, Lou as her birthing partner. How thrilled and deeply flattered she had been to be asked. The invitation was proof that, despite the occasional glitches in their relationship, deep down Nic did love her. Their relationship did matter to her, even if it wasn't quite the one of which Lou had once dreamed. Over this year, they had become so much closer thanks to the pregnancy, thanks to Hooker. However, neither of them had chosen to imagine any complications. Nic's blood pressure had risen a couple of days earlier and showed no signs of lowering, so she'd been admitted to hospital the previous afternoon to be induced this morning. She had insisted Lou went home to sleep but of course Lou had lain awake worrying, only dropping off in the small hours. She dressed quickly and dashed to the bathroom where she splashed her face with cold water to bring her round before she got behind the wheel of her car.

Switching on the ignition, she then waited a moment,
opening the windows, letting the early morning breeze finish the job the water had started. By the time she pulled up at the hospital, she was wide awake. The breeze had dropped already. It was going to be another hot day that would suck the air from the city. She rushed to the labour ward, to be shown to a delivery suite where Nic, her face pinched and anxious, was propped up on a bed with a midwife examining her. Electrodes were planted on her stomach and paper showing a graph of the baby's heart rate spewed from the monitor beside it. Around her was the paraphernalia of equipment associated with assisted births.

‘Mum. Oh, thank God, you're here.' Nic reached an arm out towards her. ‘I'm so scared.'

Lou took her hand and went to the head of the bed where a plastic chair held Nic's overnight bag. At least she'd had the foresight to pack it a week earlier although at the time, her over-preparedness had made Lou laugh. ‘Everything's going to be fine,' she soothed, brushing Nic's hair back from her face. ‘You're in the best place.'

That day would be one of the longest Lou could remember. Watching her daughter suffer without being able to relieve her discomfort was like a slow torture. Just before lunchtime, the midwife broke Nic's waters to speed up the process, and her contractions began in earnest.

‘Jeeesus!' she yelled. Then groaned, ‘Why didn't anyone warn me it would be this bad?'

Lou busied herself in Nic's bag, digging out a flannel that she wet at the basin before wiping away the sweat on Nic's forehead. Her daughter brushed her away.

‘You've got to call Max, Mum. I tried earlier but he didn't answer.'

‘But I thought …' Hadn't Nic told her months ago that he didn't want anything to do with the baby?

‘Don't think. I didn't tell you we'd been seeing each other again, because I knew exactly what you'd say. My mobile's in my bag.' She waved a hand towards the small cupboard by the bed, before another wave of pain took her over.

What should Lou say? Should she be encouraging and hopeful, or hostile towards the young man who had absented himself at the first hurdle? She poured a glass of water for her daughter, then went outside to make the call. Leaving the building to get some air. She stood at the back entrance by a huge concrete urn filled with sand and a million cigarette butts, staring up at the sky, waiting for Max to pick up.

A wasted-looking man in a wheelchair with a drip attached to his arm watched her, puffing away as if his life depended on it.

When Max eventually answered, he sounded distant although he was polite enough, thanking Lou for letting him know what was happening. He made no offer to come and she thought it not her place to insist. Presumably he was at work where it would be difficult to talk. After he'd hung up, she stared at the phone. Nic had definitely given her the impression that the news of the pregnancy had blasted a crater-sized hole through their relationship. Perhaps the situation was retrievable after all and the baby would have a father to play a part in its life. She hoped so for Nic's sake.

She braced herself for her return to the delivery suite, when she remembered Hooker. She had spoken to him the previous evening and briefly this morning but had promised to keep him updated. Whatever difficulties lay between the three of them, he was Nic's father, and he deserved to know what was happening.

Unlike Max, Hooker was immediately full of concern. ‘But it's too early.'

‘We know that, Hooker,' she said, summoning every ounce of patience. ‘But only a couple of weeks. We talked about this last night. Sometimes other circumstances dictate when babies come into the world.'

‘Isn't there a danger? What if something goes wrong?' Hooker's distrust of hospitals had been ingrained ever since the time when his arm, which he'd broken in a rugby game, was set badly enough to have to be rebroken and reset. After that, he would rather eat nails than place one foot in another.

‘Nothing's going to go wrong. She's in the best possible place.' Lou was calm but insistent. Again. If she could make herself believe that, then she could make him believe it too. ‘I'll call you as soon as there's some news.'

‘I'm coming over now. I must see her.'

She couldn't remember him ever volunteering to visit anyone in hospital. But of course his urgency stemmed from his desperate desire to repair the rift that still existed between him and Nic, to put his broken family back together.

‘No, you're not. Nic's better on her own right now. There's nothing you could do.' The distance that existed between
them now made it easier for her to be assertive without being aggressive. ‘I'll let you know when to come. For now, just keep the boys in the loop for me.' As she moved a cigarette butt off the path with her foot, she noticed for the first time that in her hurry to get here she'd put on odd shoes: a black quilted pump and a red one.

‘But shouldn't I be there too?' He hesitated as the in appropriateness of his suggestion dawned on him. ‘I could wait outside.'

Eventually Lou convinced him that any reunion with his daughter was unlikely to take place while she was pushing a baby into the world. ‘And don't call me, Hooker. I'm switching my phone off now.'

The afternoon passed with, at one point, Nic making the reluctant decision to abandon the remnants of her birth plan and agree to the offer of an epidural.

‘Oh, Mum,' she wailed, shaken by another contraction. ‘This wasn't meant to happen.'

‘Darling, they know what they're doing. It'll be all right.' She stepped out of the anaesthetist's way as he gave Nic a consent form. Wishing there was a way of alleviating her daughter's panic, she gripped onto her hand and listened. Nic was talked through the procedure and signed the form, tears streaming down her face.

‘But this isn't what I planned,' she moaned. ‘I want it to stop. Now.'

Lou remembered how Nic, rather like her grandchild, had been in no hurry to be born at all, taking a long thirty-two hours of labour, running the show her way right from the start. Lou had screamed at Hooker to take her home,
she couldn't stand the pain any longer. At that point, it was too late for an epidural. ‘Darling, you're going to have to take their advice. You don't want anything to happen to the baby.'

Another couple of hours passed, interrupted by the midwife regularly returning at half-hourly intervals to monitor Nic's blood pressure. The baby was staying firmly put. At six thirty, Lou left the room to get a sandwich and to call Hooker and the boys. When she returned, she found Nic surrounded by gowned medical staff.

Her daughter's face was bewildered as she listened to one of the midwives explaining something.

Lou rushed to her bedside. ‘What's happened?'

‘Her blood pressure's up and so's her temperature,' the midwife explained. ‘We're going to prep her for an emergency Caesarian. Are you going to come into theatre with her?'

Nic answered for her. ‘Of course she will. She's my mum. I need her there.'

Lou squeezed her hand and stayed by her side as she was transferred onto a trolley and wheeled to the operating theatre. While Nic was readied for the operation, Lou was given a blue gown and cap to wear. By the time she entered the theatre, a screen had been hung in front of Nic's stomach to shield her from the procedure. Lou took a seat by Nic's shoulder.

‘Is there anything you want?' she asked quietly, feeling powerless as well as intimidated by the amount of activity on the other side of the screen.

‘God, Mum. I feel sick.'

‘Shhhh.' She stroked the damp strands of hair from Nic's forehead.

On the other side of the bed, a midwife talked Nic through what was happening. ‘Deep breaths in and out. You'll feel the pressure as they help baby come out …'

Nic shut her eyes, concentrating on her breathing while Lou tried to calm her own nerves, not daring to think of what she would do if something happened to Nic or her baby. She swallowed hard as the obstetrician explained what he was doing while he cut into her daughter's belly. She wiped the sweat from Nic's forehead.

The minutes crawled by, Lou praying there would be no complications, forcing herself to remain calm so that she could help Nic to relax. ‘Shhh. Everything's going to be fine,' she whispered, stroking her cheek.

Nic's eyelids fluttered, her face pale.

‘You might feel a bit more tugging in your tummy.' Beyond the screen, the obstetrician was bent over the bed with his colleagues. ‘Come on, little one. Come and meet your mum. A little more manoeuvring …'

The wait seemed an eternity.

Then: ‘There you go, a baby girl.'

Nic's eyes flew open.

‘Congratulations.' The words were immediately followed by the unmistakable sound of a baby's first cry: lusty and insistent, outraged at being dragged from her comfortable home.

Lou felt an overwhelming rush of relief and excitement, comparable only to her feelings at the birth of her own children.

Nic smiled. ‘Thank God. No football then.'

Lou couldn't help but laugh, so relieved that everything was going to be all right. A tear ran down her cheek.

Within moments, the baby was weighed, wrapped up and placed in Lou's arms. Mother and daughter looked in wonder at this bloodied scrap of humanity. Lou felt her eyes brim as she held her granddaughter towards Nic. Her first grandchild. The expression on Nic's face was beatific. Lou couldn't remember ever having seen her look so radiant.

‘Hallo, you,' she said and kissed her baby. ‘Oh, Mum, she's beautiful.'

A little later, Nic had been stitched and given a side room off the post-natal ward. Lou sat by her bed still enjoying the extraordinary post-birth delirium, far too excited to feel tired. There was a tap at the door and a bouquet of flowers was carried into the room, hiding the bearer. They were moved to one side to reveal an anxious Hooker. Lou saw how nervous he was about Nic's reaction to him being there and hoped her daughter would be generous. She looked at her.

‘I called him,' she explained. ‘I had to. He should be here too.'

For a moment, she thought the blinds were going to come down, shutting Hooker out. She stared at her odd shoes, tensed, waiting for him to be dismissed.

But when it came, Nic's voice was pleased. ‘Dad! I'm so glad you've come.'

‘Are you OK?' He moved towards her.

‘Bit sore but fine really. Mum was with me all the way.' She exchanged a smile with Lou.

‘Where's the baby?' Hooker looked around the room in alarm.

‘She's in the baby unit being monitored. But it's all routine. She's a bit underweight but she's breathing on her own and they say she's going to be fine.'

‘We've got a granddaughter, Hooker,' Lou said.

‘Violet,' added Nic proudly.

‘Violet.' For a moment, Lou thought he was going to object to the name. But then his face filled with pleasure and pride. ‘My little girl. I can't believe it.' He sat on the other side of the bed from Lou, leaning forward to kiss Nic's forehead. She clasped his hand.

‘I'll see if I can scout out a vase or three for those flowers.' Lou exited the room, leaving Hooker and Nic to talk alone. Perhaps Violet's birth would be enough to make them build the necessary bridges. As she turned towards the nurses' station, a familiar-looking young man in a white T-shirt, black jeans and jacket walked past her, his concentration miles away. She looked back at the spiderlike figure making off down the corridor.