Bells of Bournville Green (28 page)

Every so often someone would call out ‘Ban the H-Bomb!’ or ‘Make Peace not War!’ and there would be a ragged cheer of agreement. Somewhere ahead someone was strumming a guitar and singing. As she looked round Greta saw that there were quite a few people her own age on the march. Students, she thought. They looked different, educated and intelligent, and she felt intimidated by them.

But it was exhilarating as the crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square for the speeches, more and more filing in until the middle of the square round the fountains was a sea of people, sending the pigeons scattering out of their usual haunts towards the grey sky with an alarmed flapping of wings, and she gazed across at the sunlit faces of the buildings. They had all changed places and now Greta was squeezed in between Anatoli and a young man who she thought was from the Leeds group behind and facing the grandest building she had ever seen.

‘That’s the National Gallery,’ Anatoli told her. Smiling wistfully, he added, ‘Edith and I spent some fine afternoons there when we were courting, when I still lived here.’

There was a ripple of applause through the crowd.

‘Ah now – we are supposed to listen.’ Anatoli winked down at her. ‘Are you feeling all right my dear?’

Greta nodded, but suddenly she did feel rather weary. She wished she could go and perch on the side of the fountain, but she didn’t like to push through the crowd, so she stood still, hoping the speeches would not go on for too long. She looked round the square at the statues, leaning back to catch the soaring height of Nelson’s Column.

‘Where’re you from?’

The young man standing next to her, wild-haired, with black-framed spectacles and dressed in a dark blue duffel coat, repeated the question, smiling down at her.

‘Who me? Oh – from Birmingham,’ she said, flustered.

‘I didn’t see you on the march,’ he said. She heard his northern accent. ‘Have you just joined us today?’

‘Yes – we just drove down. Cheating a bit, I suppose.’

‘Well,’ he laughed, and Greta saw that he had a handsome, kindly face, ‘better than not coming at all. I joined the march because I’ve stayed down here over Easter. But I’ve joined in with the Leeds lot because that’s where I come from.’

Greta wasn’t sure what to say, but she didn’t want to look like a dumb cluck, so she asked, ‘You’re a student then?’

‘Yes – at the LSE. London School of Economics. I’m studying French and Economics, second year. It’s hard work, but I’m glad I came.’ He seemed happy to have someone to talk to. ‘My Dad’s not so sure about it all – they never had much education. It can drive a bit of a wedge between you at times. We don’t really see eye to eye. They treat me a bit like a stranger when I’m there now. Tiptoe round me, like. That’s why I stay down here for the holidays if I can. I’ve got a friend who lets me lodge with his family.’

‘Oh,’ Greta said. ‘That’s nice.’ She liked the way he was talking to her, like an equal, and the way he had told her about his family. He leaned closer.

‘Are you a student?’

‘No.’ He had not noticed that she was pregnant either. ‘I’m out at work.’

‘Ah – what sort of work?’

‘In a factory,’ she admitted. ‘I work at Cadbury’s.’

‘Well, that’s what I’d be doing if I hadn’t . . . Well, I s’pose I just went for it. Tried for summat else. I didn’t want to be like my Dad, see?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Must be a nice place to work though? Not like the factories round us.’ She realized he was worried about sounding like a toff because he was a student.

‘Yes – it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there since I was fifteen.’

The young man looked thoughtful. ‘Sometimes, when it’s really hard down here, I think I should have just stayed. Done what they wanted. The work’s hard, least I find it is. And I don’t find it easy to fit in, being a northerner. Bit of a fish out of water. Anyway, damage is done now, I reckon.’

He laughed at himself and she laughed with him.

Before too long someone else in the crowd beckoned him and he moved away with a goodbye nod in her direction. Greta realized she had not even asked his name, but she had liked the way he talked to her, as if she was someone worth talking to. Although he was a student he didn’t seem so different from her really, struggling to work out where he fitted in. It made her feel better about herself.

As the marchers dispersed later that afternoon, Edie suggested they go and find some fish and chips before driving all the way back to the Midlands.

‘You must be starving, Greta,’ she said.

‘Yes, I am a bit,’ Greta said, though in fact she did not feel all that hungry. Instead she felt a bit sick, her body stretched and heavy from all the standing and walking around. As the afternoon wore on she had kept getting niggling pains through her, her muscles tightening painfully. Edie had warned her that this would happen towards the end.

‘It’s your body getting ready for the birth,’ she said. ‘Like practice contractions. Anatoli used to say it was like an orchestra tuning up!’

Some of these ‘practice contractions’ had started coming on late in the afternoon, and the last one had almost taken her breath away.

She couldn’t finish her fish and chips. Not liking to say anything, she longed to be back in the car, able to sit and rest. Surely then these sharp pains which seemed to turn her body into a tight muscular drum would let up and she could have a doze and feel better.

At last they reached the car and the children crawled in thankfully, exhausted by the day. Peter and Naomi fell asleep almost immediately; Naomi huddled in Janet’s arms. Ruth, awake and bright as a button, sat on Martin’s lap in the front, chattering to him. Greta sank on to the seat, more grateful to sit down than she had ever been in her life. She took a deep breath, and as she did so her body contracted again so that it took her all her self-control to keep quiet. But she was beginning to feel really frightened and her thoughts whirled. Please make it stop! She gripped the leather strap inside the door. What was happening? It was too early for the baby to be coming, so why was she having all these pains? She must have just overdone it today, walking around London. The pain eased off again and she sat back and closed her eyes as Anatoli drove off. If only she could just sleep through the journey and be safe home in bed!

There was a lull and she sank thankfully into the darkness.

‘Poor Greta – we’ve really worn her out,’ she heard Edie say, and then she was unaware of anything, and must have dozed for a few moments, until another pain jerked her awake and she gasped at the force of it.

‘Are you all right, dear?’ Janet asked, next to her.

‘Yes . . . Thanks . . .’ Greta managed to say. Maybe this would be the last, she thought. It would all be all right. But she was close to tears of pain and panic. How could this be happening when she was stuck here in a car in the middle of London?

More pains came, and soon there was one so bad that it made her cry out.

‘Oh goodness, Greta – whatever is it?’ Janet cried.

‘You’re having contractions, aren’t you?’ Edie said, leaning round. ‘I thought so! Oh my goodness, I knew you shouldn’t have come!’

The pain took its grip in her again, built until it was like being clenched between enormous jaws. She felt sweat break out on her forehead and back, and then it began to die again.

‘Oh God!’ Greta cried. ‘It’s the baby – I think I must be starting!’

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Once she had admitted what was happening, the pain seemed to take her over, coming in wave after wave. She was aware of Janet trying to help loosen her clothes, tugging at the little sash on her smock blouse, and her voice saying,

‘It’s all right dear, you’ll be all right. We’ll look after you . . .’

One of the children was crying somewhere, and she heard Martin saying, ‘The only one I can think how to get to from here is St Mary’s . . .’

It was dark in the car, lights from the street flashing past, and then suddenly there was a muddle of being lifted from the car and everything was very bright. She was on a stretcher and being rushed along a white, glaring corridor. Everyone she recognized seemed to have vanished. They took her to a room, lifted her on to a bed, and as the pains came and went, searing through her, a nurse undressed her and she was draped in something pale and rather stiff. Everything felt like a bad dream.

In a lull between the pains, a black face loomed over her, framed by a rounded bowl of black hair.

‘I am your midwife,’ she said in a calm, deep voice. ‘Now, let me have a look at you.’

‘Where is everyone?’ Greta cried, panic-stricken. ‘I don’t even know where I am.’

‘Ah now – you need not worry.’ The midwife pronounced every word very precisely and slowly. ‘You are in St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. And you have someone waiting for you outside. Your father, is it? He is very worried about you.’

‘I’m not supposed to be having it yet!’ Greta wailed. ‘It’s too early.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the woman said, as if nothing on earth could throw her from being calm and steady. ‘You’re doing all right. It’s going quickly, dear – it won’t take you long I don’t think. You just do your breathing exercises, all right?’

Greta had had a few instructions on breathing in labour, and she tried to put them into practice. But at the height of each of the contractions the pain wiped any thought of counting from her mind and she just wailed and groaned.

In a calmer moment she wondered who was waiting outside. It sounded like Anatoli, or Martin perhaps. He was a doctor after all. But she hoped, longingly, that it was Anatoli. She just yearned to see someone familiar between these frightening white walls.

And then she could think of nothing as the pains overwhelmed her and there were other people in the room and she was being told to
push!

But there was something wrong, more people there, and she felt her lower body being lifted, and when she looked up there were someone’s legs being held up in the air in stirrups and she thought, I wonder whose legs those are, and then a voice said,

‘We’re going to give you a bit of help here . . .’

There was a terrible tearing, stretching feeling, as if she was going to crack apart, and then, in the silence, a tiny snuffle.

‘Oxygen,’ someone said curtly, and the baby was whipped away.

Greta heard herself moaning. Then there was silence.

‘My baby . . . ?’ she whimpered.

The midwife appeared, looking solemn. Greta felt her hand taken and held with a gentle pressure.

‘You have a little girl,’ the midwife said softly. ‘But she is small – she came early. They are just doing some work on her to help her breathe.’

‘Will she be all right?’ Greta tried to sit up.

‘No – don’t move! We hope so, dear – now lie still.’

The eternal minutes which followed were an agony. She felt the midwife washing her.

‘I want to see her. I want my baby!’ she said, sobbing. There seemed to be nothing else in the world at this moment, except her bond with this tiny creature after all the two of them had gone through together. She could hardly bear it that they had taken her away and that the midwife looked so worried. What was it they were not telling her?

‘Ssshhh, it will be all right,’ the woman said in her strange, springy English.

Greta lay, weak and frightened, tears running down into her hair.

There was a flurry of activity and a man appeared and brusquely called the midwife away. Greta realized he was a doctor, and lifting her head, she saw a small, bundle being handed over. There was no sound from the bundle, only a terrible silence. She watched, paralysed, as the midwife turned to her, her face terribly solemn. Greta couldn’t breathe . . .
Oh God . . . Oh God . . .

The woman looked across at Greta, and after what seemed a terribly long time her face broke into the most beautiful smile.

‘Here she is,’ she said. ‘Your little girl . . .’

All pain forgotten, Greta pushed herself upright, her heart pounding with excitement. The bundle was laid in her arms and Greta saw a crinkled, yet somehow familiar face. She felt she recognized her at once, and her heart expanded out to her in a way it had never done to any other being before. Almost as soon as she was in Greta’s arms, the little girl began to snuffle and cry.

‘Is she all right?’ Greta said anxiously.

‘She has had some oxygen. They were worried because she is a little premature,’ the midwife told her. ‘But she seems very strong. Now she wants to drink – offer her your breast, dear.’

As the baby began to suck, everyone was smiling, the midwife, the nurse who turned from clearing up the room to watch, and above all, Greta.

‘She is almost six pounds,’ the midwife told her. ‘That’s a good weight. If you had carried her to term she would have been a very big size!’

Greta couldn’t stop staring at the little being sucking confidently on her nipple. She and Trevor had made this little miracle! She felt a pang of misery – how Trevor would have loved seeing her. He would have been so happy! More tears ran down her cheeks.

‘Oh you little love,’ she said, wiping one of her tears from the little girl’s cheek. ‘You’re mine – you’re my little girl!’

‘Now – we need to take you to the ward, and she must go to the nursery. It is far too late to have a visitor on the ward.’ She eyed the clock on the wall, which Greta was amazed to see said one o’clock. It was the middle of the night!

‘Just before you go, there is someone to see you. You must be quick, this is not really allowed!’

She went to the door and spoke to someone outside. Anatoli’s face appeared round the door, a little anxious and then, at the joyful sight of mother and child, his face bloomed into smiles as well.

‘My dear girl – what a marvellous thing! A little daughter!’

He came straight to her and kissed her, perching, quite oblivious of hospital rules, on the side of the hard bed, his arm round her shoulders. Greta’s tears began to flow again.

‘You waited – all this time!’ she said, overwhelmed. She felt so full of love for him, and gratitude, this man who was more than a father had ever been to her. Fancy his caring enough for her to wait out there faithfully all these hours!