The Editor's Wife (29 page)

There had been an odd moment earlier, when she had helped me to change my sheets for Alex. We had faced each other across the bed, stuffing corners of my duvet into a fresh cover, and flapping the whole thing up and down to distribute the lumps, and we had both started to laugh at the weirdness of finding ourselves sharing this mundane and yet intimate task again after so many years.

And here was another sign of the cyclical nature of things: Gerald, beside me on the floor, snoring gently in his green caterpillar sleeping bag.

I'd been awake for an hour when I heard Alex get up. It was three a.m., the graveyard hour, and my toe and most of the rest of me was aching, racked by the unfamiliar contours of the couch. I couldn't put a light on and read without disturbing Gerald, who had a scant 10mm of foam bedroll between his spine and the flagstones, and
yet was sleeping peacefully. Overhead came the creak of floorboards, then a crash. Light spilled down the stairs and under the door. I could hear urgent whispered voices descending, and then Carol appeared, in my dressing gown, her face shiny with cream, her eyes smoky craters of crushed mascara. She smelled of sour booze, as if she'd been sweating wine.

‘Alex's waters have broken.'

‘Oh shit. What does that mean? She's not going to have the baby right now?'

‘I don't know. I'm not an obstetrician, am I? I think it can take all day sometimes. We just need to ring the hospital and ask what she should do.'

Without even waiting for the number I snatched up the phone. The silence of disconnection filled the room. Carol and I, having forgotten this inconvenient detail in the excitement, exchanged horrified looks.

The commotion had roused Gerald, who sat up, instantly awake and alert, needing no period of coming to.

‘What's going on?' he asked.

‘Alex has gone into labour,' I explained.

‘Oh.' For a second he looked hunted.

‘And the phone's dead,' added Carol.

‘And we can't get a mobile signal up here.'

Deep furrows of anxiety appeared between Gerald's bushy eyebrows.

‘What are we going to do?' Carol asked, folding her arms inside the dressing gown's wide sleeves. They both looked at me expectantly.

‘If only the ford was crossable. One of us could drive her straight to hospital.'

‘Well you couldn't, with your foot. You wouldn't be able to brake.'

‘Neither could you – you're about six times over the limit.'

‘It's a pity you can't drive, Gerald,' Carol sighed.

‘It's a pity you're drunk,' he retorted.

‘This is all academic if we can't get across the ford,' I reminded them. ‘If we could only call an ambulance, it could stop on the other side, and we could take Alex down to meet it and carry her across the stream.'

Gerald was already pulling on trousers, socks, boots.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I can't drive, but I can run. Give me your phone. Where's the nearest place I can get a signal?'

‘The main road, on the brow of the hill. You'll have to take the footpath to Lastingham to avoid the ford, and go the long way round.'

‘There's surely a house you could knock at between here and there?' said Carol.

‘No there isn't. But that's a brilliant idea, Gerald. Brilliant.'

‘Take my phone as well, just in case,' said Carol.

‘What's Alex doing now?'

‘Looking for the number for the hospital.'

I found her sitting on my bed, shivering beside an upturned handbag, riffling through pieces of paper. She was wearing a T-shirt and socks and the blanket from the
spare bed, and looked about fourteen. I tried not to look at the dark patch on the pale blue rug.

‘Sorry about that,' she said, noting my efforts. ‘I'll buy you a new one.'

‘Don't be silly.'

Suddenly she winced and closed her eyes and her fingers tightened on the edge of the bed.

‘Are you all right? Is something happening? Can I do anything?' I blethered, until she flapped her hand at me to shut me up. A minute later she relaxed and opened her eyes and smiled with relief.

‘Was that a . . .?' For some reason I couldn't bring myself to utter the word. It was part of the dark mystery of childbirth, and unsayable.

‘Contraction. I suppose so,' said Alex. ‘It's not like I expected. I thought it would be a clenching feeling. But it's more like being kicked in the fanny.'

‘Don't worry about anything. We're going to get you an ambulance. We can't phone from here, but Gerald's going to run down to the main road to get a signal. I know he doesn't look like an athlete, but he does half marathons and stuff, and he's as fit as a butcher's dog. Everything will be fine.'

She plucked a folded card from the heap. ‘That's the number of the maternity unit. And could you ask him to ring my mum as well,' she added, scribbling a number on the back. ‘Then she'll be able to get hold of Craig in America.'

‘Of course.' Poor woman, I thought. Wrenched from
sleep by a stranger's voice. I couldn't imagine Gerald being the most soothing messenger.

Downstairs Carol was giving him a tutorial in basic mobile-phone usage. ‘It's already switched on. When you've got a decent signal a row of arrows appears up here. The more arrows the stronger the signal. Then you just punch in the number and press this little button here. My one's slightly different.'

‘Get them to send an ambulance as far as the ford,' I told him, when Carol was satisfied that he had mastered the technology. ‘Will you be OK to give directions?'

He took the phones from her between finger and thumb, and stowed them in the inner pocket of his waterproof. ‘I've got an OS map. I'll tell them the grid reference,' he said.

I handed him the phone numbers. ‘That's Alex's mum,' I explained.

Gerald took the card with extreme reluctance. I could almost hear his brain whirring in panic. ‘I'll see if there's time . . .' he muttered. ‘I don't know if I really . . .'

‘Gerald,
please
just ring her and tell her what's happening. In a reassuring sort of way. She can get a message to Alex's husband in America.' I hadn't intended to menace him with that allusion to an international call, but he yielded before the threat of it.

‘Well done, Gerald, you're a hero,' said Carol, as he strapped an elasticated miner's lamp to his forehead, let himself out and took off across the farmyard at a run. We stood together at the window, watching the single point of
his headlamp bobbing and winking until it was swallowed up in the blackness. I felt a trace of envy and resentment that my ridiculous injury should have prevented me from taking an active part in this drama, and condemned me to a passive, female role: waiting. Although I had every confidence in Gerald's stamina – he would run all the way to York if necessary – his tendency to be flummoxed by even the simplest exchange over the telephone represented a serious flaw in the plan. I had grave doubts that he would be able to hold his own against an automated answering service, but I kept these worries to myself, as Alex came downstairs, dressed in her outdoor clothes, and sat in the chair nearest the window, handbag on knees, awaiting rescue.

‘Craig didn't want to go to Minneapolis,' she burst out suddenly. ‘He said it was too close to my due date, but I said no, three weeks is ages, and first babies are always late. You go.' Her chest heaved. ‘And now he's going to miss the birth and it's all my fault.'

‘He might not miss it,' said Carol. ‘You might have one of those twenty-four-hour labours.'

Alex laughed weakly. ‘Thanks.'

‘On the other hand, it might be really fast and painless,' Carol recanted, ignoring my mouth-zipping gestures.

An hour crept past, measured out by the scratchy ticking of the clock. Carol and I got dressed, and I relit the fire, for something to do, and Carol made mugs of tea which sat on the table untasted. All the while Alex would be looking from the window to her watch and back again,
giving little sighs of impatience and anxiety, jumping up to greet phantom ambulances and then subsiding again. Every so often she would berate herself for having left home without her medical notes, and forced her husband to go to America, and taken the turning to Hartslip instead of staying on the main road, and all manner of other failings. Then she would go silent and tense and suck in her breath, with her eyes shut and a pinched expression on her face, and Carol and I would exchange helpless grimaces.

‘What can we do to make you more comfortable?' Carol pleaded, as we watched her shift in her seat, stand up, wince, sit down, wince again, lean forward, sit back.

Alex shook her head. ‘I don't know. They get you doing all these breathing exercises, but they don't work. The pain just takes your breath away.' After more adjustments she found a new position, leaning forward on the back of the couch, her head resting on her arms.

‘I could rub your back for you,' Carol offered. ‘I don't suppose you've got any massage oil, Chris?'

‘No,' I replied. ‘Only vegetable oil. Or lard.'

She raised her eyebrows to heaven. ‘I've got some body lotion in my bag. That might do. What do you think, Alex?'

Alex made a muffled murmur of refusal, without raising her head. Across her bent back Carol and I traded agonised signals. Where's Gerald got to? What's taking them so long? What are we going to do? went the silent conversation.

Then, at last, the sweep of headlights, far away in the darkness but approaching. ‘That must be the ambulance,' said Carol.

‘I'll go down to the ford to intercept them in case Gerald hasn't explained. Then we'll come back and get you, Alex,' I promised, picking up Gerald's walking stick and my coat and torch. She didn't reply.

Carol followed me into the conservatory. ‘You're not going to leave me alone with her?' she whispered. ‘What if the baby decides to come now? I can't do this.' She was shivering with cold and fear.

I held her shoulders firmly. ‘Look, Carol, I know you don't like doing things you don't like, but just this once,
please
.'

‘Can't I go and you stay? You can't run anyway, with that foot.'

‘No. You've got to stay. Alex won't want me. She'll want a woman.'

‘But I can't help her. What do I know about childbirth?'

‘Just be reassuring. Keep telling her help is on its way. I'll make it up to you, I promise.' I was edging out of the door as I said this.

‘Carol. Don't leave me,' came a plaintive voice from the sitting room. Carol turned obediently, made suddenly brave by this admission of need, and I left the two of them together.

Rain was falling again, with renewed energy it seemed to me, after the brief lull. I could hear it swirling and
chuckling in the gutter beside the house. My car was parked on the hardstanding in front of the barn. I considered my foot – now wet through where the toes poked out of the amputated boot. Walking would be painful but slow, whereas driving would be painful but quick. I let the car bump down the track in second gear, keeping the arch of my foot on the accelerator to protect my toe. In the mirror Hartslip blazed with light: the glow would be visible for miles across the moor, and a beacon for Gerald who was still out there, somewhere. Below, on the other side of the ford, I could see the shadowy outline of a car, all detail obscured by the glare of its headlamps, but even so, quite evidently not an ambulance. My stomach lurched with disappointment.

A stout middle-aged woman climbed out of the driver's seat as I drew up opposite, and hailed me across the water.

‘I'm looking for Hartslip Cottage.'

‘It's up there,' I said. ‘We were expecting an ambulance.'

‘I'm the community midwife,' she called back. I thought I'd never heard such beautiful words. I wanted to kneel down in the mud and worship her. ‘Is there any way across this?' she went on, but before she had even finished speaking I was wading through the water towards her. The icy shock of it pouring into my boots, hitting against my legs, nearly knocked me over, but I kept my footing using Gerald's stick for support and within seconds I was beside her. ‘Get on my back,' I said, crouching lower. ‘I'll carry you over.'

She looked nonplussed for a second. We were both wondering how I'd ever straighten up. She was no waif. ‘Go on.'

‘What about all my stuff? I've got two bags and a gas canister in the boot.'

‘I'll go back for them.'

‘I can wade across myself,' she said. ‘I don't mind.'

‘You don't want to be cold and wet,' I insisted, backing into her, so she had no choice but to wrap her arms around my neck and clamp her knees around my waist. ‘You've got work to do.'

ALEX'S BABY WAS
born at 5.15 that morning, upstairs on my bed, while Gerald and I waited below, slack-jawed with tiredness but unable to sleep, listening anxiously to the creaks and murmurs from above, but gratefully redundant before the midwife's godlike authority.

Within minutes of arrival she had assumed control and subdued the panic that had been building since Gerald's departure. Perhaps it was no more than the unhurried manner in which she unpacked her bags and set about transforming my bedroom into a delivery suite, or the cheerful way she spoke to Alex, assuring her all would be well. Whatever it was, she managed to convey the impression that this was just another routine home birth of no great complexity, well within the range of her professional expertise. I had never in my life been so willing to defer to anyone.

‘Stop fawning,' Carol said to me when we were momentarily alone. ‘She's only doing her job.'

‘I know, I know,' I said. ‘But if she wasn't here,
we'd
be doing it.'

Carol shook her head. ‘What a night. You certainly know how to keep your guests entertained.'