Sail Upon the Land (27 page)

‘Now, now, no need for that. Stop making that noise, you’ll upset your baby. Come on.’

Damson tried to shut her mouth but she was wracked by waves of love and pain that threatened to overwhelm the frail barque of her sanity.

‘Move her out of here quickly and get her into a side ward,’ the midwife instructed her assistant. The assistant kicked off the brake and they went in a tearful hurried procession out of the recovery room.

Over the next few days she recovered physically. She wasn’t allowed to feed and bathe her daughter although she hovered and watched. A few times she’d held her, particularly towards the end, but there was no doubt that the midwives had been told to minimise contact. She realised that she must not call her child Melissa, so she chose something that sounded similar and Mellita went on the birth certificate. Both names meant honey after all. The adoptive parents would no doubt change it but at least she had named her on purpose first. She stayed as long as she could by complaining of pain. She was in pain but not from her scar.

When the time came to part she was driven to the social services contact centre by Eva Williams with Mellita in a borrowed car seat beside her in the back. She leant over her daughter trying to imprint the infant face upon her mind’s eye.

She insisted on carrying Mellita into a room painted yellow with a frieze of ducks. Eva Williams was brisk, showing her the Moses basket in which the baby was to be placed and hustling her gently to get it over with. Her heart was beating too fast as Eva stretched out her hands to take Mellita away.

‘Can you leave me alone with her for a minute?’

Eva looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. I just want a moment.’

Eva hesitated. ‘OK then, Damson, just pop her into the basket and let yourself out of the other door. I’ll be by the car. The family will be here in ten minutes and you need to be gone by then.’

Damson sank down on one of the armchairs. What do you do when you have to fit a lifetime of mothering into ten minutes? She knew she must not cry, so she sang wordless lullabies instead and examined her baby’s hands and feet. After what seemed like seconds, she heard movement outside the door and a soft knock. She stood up, holding her little honey close to her pounding heart. Wrapping the shawl about her baby’s tiny body, she kissed her and settled her in the basket, bending over to touch Mellita’s cheek with her own. The baby never made a sound. Then she left.

How could she have done that? Only by slamming an enormous door that reached right up to the stratosphere, across to every horizon and down into the great iron ball at the centre of the Earth.

Someone else would see her baby fill out like a rose coming from the bud. A butterfly packed into a chrysalis emerging into the light. Someone else would worship her and watch her grow.

Damson cycled slowly up the hill towards her cottage. She was tired and unfit at the end of a long cold winter. Her basket sagged on to the front wheel, which made a faint and ominous squealing noise that she could not be bothered to do anything about. She had put a couple of cans of beans, Heinz tomato soup, salad, sliced brown bread and cottage cheese in the basket. Also a pint of milk.

It had been five years since she had bought Swine Cottage and moved to Fenning in Derbyshire, and she still wasn’t quite sure why. Originally it had been about indulging a passion for hill walking and cycling in the wind-scoured landscape, where granite burst through turf like bones in a compound fracture. Its wildness had appealed to her, so different from the safe leafiness of her Home Counties childhood. The colours were muted, the air had a bracing chill much of the time. When she was up on the hills alone, wearing warm weatherproof clothes, the cold wind against her face would almost empty her mind.

She had made no close friends, only acquaintances whose Christmas parties she would attend. Her fellow doctors in the practice were all immersed in their own family lives, and a single woman, particularly one who did not go out of her way to please, was not easily assimilated into the local social scene.

Going home to Castle Hey was always difficult because Margaret followed her around with Boden catalogues, saying, ‘They do awfully nice trousers,’ and offering to ‘get her colours done’.

‘Damson, darling, while I realise you want to blend in up in Derbyshire, I don’t think everyone expects their doctor to wear sludge green and those awful old jumpers. Where do they come from?’

‘Marks and Spencer men’s department,’ Damson muttered. ‘Or these days, Primark. They’re nice and roomy and they keep me warm. It’s cold in Derbyshire.’

‘Why do you live there at all? I don’t understand it. I’m sure your father would like it if you came to live nearer home.’

Margaret’s words cooked up the usual simmering resentment.

Pricking her in her tender places, Margaret would then say, ‘And you’d be closer to your grandparents. They must be getting on.’ Sarah and Arthur had been phased out of the Castle Hey social scene over the last few years. Damson’s visits to them were warm and regular but not so frequent now.

Damson had learned not to blaze up like tinder and Margaret was more restrained now as well. She had decided there was nothing much she could do about Damson, so she made her point by giving her ludicrously inappropriate Christmas presents like a pink mohair shawl or expensive scent. The war between them was colder these days, their shared secret long buried.

The twins took their lead from their mother. They invited her to major family occasions but otherwise did not seek her out. They knew nothing of the baby Mellita. Damson told herself she didn’t mind and could ignore them most of the time. That was until Damson’s mobile had rung at ten o’clock one Saturday night waking her from a doze in front of the television.

‘Damson?’ Is that you?’

She didn’t even recognise Noonie’s voice at first.

‘Damson, it’s Noonie. Are you at home?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’m not far from you.’

‘Where?’ Damson was sleepy and confused, and could not work out why her ultra-cool stepsister sounded so agitated.

‘It’s Ottie, I think she’s ill. Can you come over?’

Damson’s only contact with Ottilie dated from her christening, an adorable baby in a long silk and lace dress that Noonie had purchased from Harrods. No doubt the Victorian cotton and lace Hayes christening robe would be embarrassing in front of all the smart City godparents. Damson realised that Noonie was crying and woke up properly.

‘Where are you exactly?’

‘Hugo and I are staying with the Stapeleys at Cross Court, do you know it? We brought Ottie with us because Nanny was ill and couldn’t have her this weekend. We were down at dinner and when I went to check her, she was very hot. She’s got some kind of rash on her tummy. I can’t seem to wake her properly.’

Damson snapped into action. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why Noonie hadn’t been in touch before the emergency. Their relationship didn’t include that kind of thing. Besides, it could be meningitis but there was no way of telling until she got there. Calling an ambulance to make its way through the winding roads up to the Court would be slower than if she took her beat-up Freelander along the familiar lanes.

She grabbed her medical bag, thanking God she hadn’t had a drink that night, and ran for the car, still talking into her mobile.

‘OK, take all her clothes off and sponge her gently with a warm flannel until I get there. It’s about fifteen minutes. Call 999 now for an ambulance, but I’ll get to you before it does.’

She clicked off the phone, jumped into the car, opened the window and popped her magnetic Kojak light on the roof. She flipped on the siren, set the satnav and pulled out of the gate.

As the Stapeleys’ family doctor, she’d been to Christmas parties at the Court every year, but the reassurance of the satnav was always useful. Headlights on full beam, she put her foot down and just drove, swinging the sturdy car around the twists in the road with skill undiminished by fear. Ottilie was what, three? four? She hadn’t dared ask Noonie to do the glass test.

The great artichoke-topped gate posts swung into view on her right. Someone was there with a powerful torch. Damson opened her window and recognised Basil Stapeley with his teenage son, looking worried.

‘Thank you so much for coming so quickly, Damson. I’ll wait here for the ambulance, Benjie will take you straight into the house. Go round into the stable yard, it’s quicker to get to the nursery up the back stairs.’

Benjie jumped into the passenger seat, and then they were there. Damson grabbed her bag and followed him through the back door, down the stone-flagged passage and up the back stairs two floors, to the day and night nurseries. Noonie came to the door, dressed in a red cocktail frock with bare feet and looking terrified.

‘Damson, thank God. She’s in here.’

‘Hello Noonie. I’m sure she’s fine, but the ambulance can take her into hospital if necessary.’

Ottilie lay on her back, naked, rolling her head with its blonde curls, and Damson could see three or four of the purplish pinpricks she was dreading on the soft rounded tummy. She took out her stethoscope and electronic thermometer.

‘Ottie, darling, here’s Aunt Damson to look after you.’

‘Get me a glass, please.’

Noonie didn’t argue for a change, just brought her stepsister the tooth glass from the basin in the corner of the big old-fashioned night nursery. Damson pressed it very gently on to the spots. If it was a meningitis rash they would not fade and, as she had suspected, they remained visible through the glass. She went to the basin and washed her hands with the yellow coal tar soap that was there.

‘She’s not allergic to penicillin, is she?’

Noonie shook her head.

Damson took a pre-filled syringe from her bag, tapped it down and with a practised hand moved the child to one side, injecting her in one dimpled buttock. The girl didn’t seem to notice.

‘What did you give her?’ Noonie asked in a small, frightened voice. She was crying. Damson stopped for a moment to put an arm around her stepsister and kiss her wet cheek.

‘Benzylpenicillin as a precaution.’ Damson quickly wrapped the child in the cotton waffle blanket that was on the bed to carry her down the stairs.

‘I gave her some Calpol, but she sicked it up,’ said Noonie.

‘Try not to worry.’ Damson knew how useless it was to say that to a terrified mother. ‘I’ll come in the ambulance with you both, and get it sorted at the hospital. Bring my bag, will you?’

Noonie snatched up the bag and came down the front stairs with Damson to find the paramedics in the hall. Ottie was taken straight out to the ambulance, its blue light revolving in the darkness of the gravel sweep.

The two women climbed into the back and sat watching the paramedic working over the unconscious child. Strapped in they could do nothing for Ottie, so Damson took Noonie’s hand in hers and held it.

In the very worst of the achingly lonely nights, Damson had told herself that Noonie and Clarrie didn’t love their children as she would if they were hers. They both had full-time nannies to allow them to continue the complex international social lives afforded by their husbands’ City bonuses. When she saw Noonie’s face that night, she was desperately ashamed of herself.

At the hospital Ottie went straight into intensive care, was intubated and put on fluids and an antibiotic drip. A lumbar puncture was taken. Damson was glad she was there to remove Noonie from the room – even amid the fear for Ottie, Damson was happy to be wanted by her stepsister, able to comfort her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault. They both agreed it was lucky Ottie happened to be with her mother that weekend and not with the nanny, Noonie thanking God that Damson was close by too. The night was dreadful but as dawn came the little girl woke up and said, ‘Mummy’. After that, with the resilience of small children, she recovered very fast and without any permanent damage.

Noonie didn’t forget what she thought of as Damson’s role in this miracle, and made more of an effort, even inviting her to stay in their Oxfordshire country house once or twice. It wasn’t an enormous success. She couldn’t join in the women’s talk of schools, nannies, kitchens, property prices and skiing, with a sprinkling of the Bahamas, Burberry and other subjects she considered complete bollocks. The men annoyed her by saying in surprised tones, ‘Goodness, that’s a difficult job!’ when they heard she was a GP. She knew they would never have dreamt of saying such a thing to a male doctor.

So Damson asked, if she was going to be invited, could it be when there were no other guests? That was not very often but she did like being with Clarrie and Noonie’s children, just as she liked looking after the babies and children on her list. A post-natal visit was always a treat for Damson.

There was a stone wall in her mind behind which lurked the idea of a relationship with a man. When she went to stay with her grandparents for her annual week in August, she knew they avoided the subject. She would listen to them bickering fondly and grieve sometimes that she would never grow old with someone beloved. Instead they talked about medicine, patients and memories, or sat in companionable silence, just as they had when she was a child.

She never met anyone in Derbyshire who remotely fitted the bill, and lacked the confidence and determination to put herself in the way of meeting men elsewhere. Nor was she sure what she would do if she was expected to have sex with someone. It seemed so inconceivable to her that any man would want her now. But her subconscious nursery door was wide open and phantom babies streamed into her dreams. When she lay in bed at night waiting for sleep to come she would indulge herself in ‘what if’ fantasies.

She had begun to want another baby of her own with a longing that penetrated her limbs and made her cry. She had considered getting herself pregnant somehow, but her body baulked at the idea of having sex with anyone. Artificial insemination and IVF seemed invasive. She hated having cervical smears, and it would be like that, only repeatedly and worse. Plus, those injections of hormones to prepare her body she was convinced would send her round the bend. She’d seen too many women in her consulting room broken by the pressure of repeated fruitless cycles and the hormones they were forced to endure.