Authors: Jennifer Donnelly
"Dodgy piston, it was! Just shoving off!" O'Neill yelled, pushing the throttle harder. He was churning the water on purpose.
"Bastard's tryin' to kill us," Frankie growled, bracing against the wake.
Sid knew he wasn't. He was distracting the cops with the noise so
they didn't notice that his boat was drawing more water than she had an
hour ago.
"'Night, officers!" O'Neill called, and then Sid heard his boat pull away. Finally. His men were safe.
"You hang on, guv," Frankie whispered. "They'll be at the Bark and
back before you know it. O'Neill will make that tub fly. Oz'll gut him
if he don't."
Sid nodded. His eyes fluttered closed. He heard footsteps on the dock
and then Larkin, the watch, asking the police what happened, telling
them he'd heard their noise from inside.
"Bloke with a dodgy motor," one of the constables said. "Everything all right?"
"Right as rain," the watch said.
"You sure? No signs of a break-in? Nothing missing?"
"Not a thing. She's locked up tighter than a cat's arsehole," the watch said.
He bade the officers good night and went back inside. The police boat
pulled away and Sid and Frankie were left alone floating in the Thames.
Sid's pain was excruciating, so strong that he knew it would drown
him before the water ever did. He was lightheaded now and cold. Very
cold. It wouldn't be much longer.
"Frankie ...," he whispered.
"Aye, guv?"
"I want you to know..."
"That you've always loved me?"
Sid laughed. He couldn't help it. There were no more worries now. No
more sorrows. Everything seemed funny. He'd always thought it would be
good to go out laughing. "... the dosh... it's in my jacket pocket.
Split it even. Give Gem my share."
"Give it to her yourself. Tomorrow when you see her."
Frankie's voice got farther and farther away until Sid could hear it
no longer. And then there was no pain, no cold, nothing. Just the black
night, the black water, and the black abyss of unconsciousness.
"Condoms?"
"Never."
"Dutch caps?"
"Forget it."
"Sponges, then," India said, stopping dead in the middle of Brick Lane.
"I guess you really do want to get sacked," Ella said. "If Gifford twigs, you will be."
"He doesn't have to find out. We could dispense them quietly."
"Even if we can get the patients to keep shtum, who's going to pay for them?"
India frowned. "I hadn't thought of that."
"And where are you going to get them? The medical suppliers have
them, but they know Gifford and he knows them. If his junior places an
order for a case of rubber johnnies, you can be sure he'll be told."
Ella pulled India out of the way of an oncoming milk wagon. "Come on.
The caff's this way."
"I can't believe he's so medieval," India said. "How can he object to
chloroform? To deny a laboring woman relief in this day and age... it's
nothing short of barbaric. Did you hear what he said as we left?"
"I did. I've heard that particular speech a thousand times. I've
attended him at the most awful births and I've seen him read--even eat a
meal-- while his patients were in agony. I've wanted to run away, right
out of their homes, but I didn't. I knew I was all they had. I could
rub their feet. Let them grip me hands. If I'd have left, they'd have
had no one. Just him. Looking at his watch and frowning and telling the
poor miserable things to bear up. Spouting Genesis at them: �In sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children'--the pompous ass. Telling them to think
of Jesus. Jesus?" She laughed bitterly. "I don't know much about your
Jesus, but I do know he was a man and he never had himself a baby."
"Before I took the job, people told me Gifford was a saint. For using
money from his Harley Street practice to minister to the poor at Varden
Street."
"Oh, please. I do the books for both surgeries. He makes more off his
Whitechapel practice than he does at Harley Street. Cramming in fifty
or sixty patients a day, and spending all of ten minutes with them
...well, you add it up."
"I can't continue to work for him. I can't," India said.
"Don't start that again," Ella warned. "You're needed in Whitechapel."
The two women crossed the street in front of a synagogue. India heard
prayers coming from within and realized they were in the heart of
Jewish Whitechapel, an enclave of streets and courts clustered north and
south of Whitechapel High Street, bounded by Aldgate to the west and
the Jews' Burial Ground to the east.
It was early, not six a.m. yet, but the streets were already bustling
with people. Tailors carried heavy piles of piece goods on their
shoulders. Cabinet-makers lugged canvas bags containing planes and
chisels. Bakers' boys balanced baskets of black bread on their
shoulders. Inside the doorway of a narrow slaughteryard, a shochet
sharpened his knife.
Wagons with Hebraic writing on their sides stopped to deliver produce
or coal. Notices pasted on billboards announced a speech by Prince
Kropotkin, the celebrated Russian anarchist, a meeting of Polish
socialists, and the services of a matchmaker.
And the languages. India had never heard so many different tongues on
one London street. A woman called out to Ella from her stoop. Ella
an-swered her.
"Was that Russian?" India asked.
"Yes, my family's from St. Petersburg." Another woman waved. Ella
greeted her in a different-sounding tongue. "That was Polish," she said.
"I speak a bit of it. You'll also hear Romanian, Dutch, German, and
Litvak here. Some Bessarabian. Ukrainian, too. Everyone comes from
somewhere else. Most of the children speak English. Some of the parents.
None of the grandparents."
"My goodness! How does anyone understand anyone else?"
"Yiddish."
India was puzzled. "In which countries is Yiddish spoken?"
"All of them."
"How can that be? How can everyone understand it? Where does it come from?"
Ella laughed. "Yiddish? It comes from the heart," she said. She
stopped in front of a humble brick building. "Here we are at the caff.
Let's eat. I'm famished."
India noted the gleaming windows, the freshly painted sign.
moskowitz's restaurant , it read. wholesome kosher food . The tiny
establishment was packed. Workmen and factory girls sat elbow to elbow.
Housewives lined up three deep at the counter, buying beigels for their
family's breakfast. Bearded elders sat around a samovar, sipping cups of
strong, sweet tea, gnarled hands curled around walking sticks. Here and
there new im-migrants sat nibbling rolls, wideeyed and uncertain, the
women as bright as parrots in their flowered shawls.
Ella found two seats at a table, then went off in search of her
mother. India sat down, tucking her doctor's bag underneath her. A pot
of tea arrived. She poured herself a cup, drank it black, then closed
her eyes. She felt she could sleep sitting up.
Neither she nor Ella had slept all night. The birth they'd been
called to, in Dolan's Rents, a row of rundown houses on Dorset Street,
one of Whitechapel's worst, had been a difficult one. The woman--a Mrs.
Stokes--had been in labor for over twenty hours with little progress,
and both mother and infant were in distress by the time they'd arrived.
They'd found Mrs. Stokes whimpering between contractions and screaming
during them. India had quickly taken off her jacket, tied an apron over
her clothing, and rolled up her sleeves while Ella unpacked her
instruments.
Mrs. Stokes's husband was nowhere to be found. Her three young
children were cowering in the corner. "Have you any hot water?" India
asked them. The eldest nodded and pointed to a kettle on the hob. "Pour
it into a basin, please, and get me some soap," she instructed. When her
hands were scrubbed, she began the examination.
"I sent for a doctor," Mrs. Stokes rasped. "No midwife. Midwife almost killed me last time."
"I am a doctor, Mrs. Stokes," India said. She began the examination,
coaxing the woman to bring her feet together and drop her knees.
Speaking to her in low, soothing tones, she placed one hand on her
stomach, and pushed the other inside her, feeling for her cervix and the
baby. "An inch and a half. Occiput posterior," she told Ella. She
listened for the baby's heartbeat, then said, "Random fluctuations.
Possible cord compression. Contracted pelvis."
Ella nodded, understanding the verbal shorthand. Mrs. Stokes was
nowhere near fully dilated. The baby was trying to come out face up. The
back of its skull was pressing against its mother's spine, making an
already painful process worse. Its heartbeat was abnormal, possibly
because its um-bilical cord was constricted. In addition, Mrs. Stokes's
pelvis was deformed. India had expected it. Poor women usually suffered
from rickets, a disease of malnutrition. Rickets caused malformed bones,
which in turn led to horribly obstructed labors.
By the time India finished her exam, Ella had readied a forceps,
clamps, scissors, gauze, needles, a spool of suturing silk, carbolic,
and chloral. She then reached into India's bag for one last
instrument--a cephalotribe.
India looked at it and shook her head. It was a forceps-like
instrument, and was used only when there was no hope for the baby and no
other way to save the mother. Its wide, powerful blades were designed
to collapse an infant's skull so that the dead child could be pulled
from its mother's body. India had one in her kit--there was no
choice--but she despised the sight of it. Butchers used them. Butchers,
drunks, and incompetents.
"Put it back," she said. "I haven't used one yet. I won't tonight."
"Are you sure? Dr. Gifford always wants one prepared."
"Dr. Gifford's not here. I am."
Although Gifford had not allowed them to take any chloroform with
them, India had had a little in her own kit. It wasn't much, but it
might beat back the pain enough to allow the mother to stop screaming
and start breathing, and allow her contractions to pick up, her cervix
to stretch and efface, and her ligaments and stunted bones to shift,
just slightly, just enough to give India the space she needed to ease
the baby out.
Ella dampened a cloth with the chloral sparingly, as if it were
liquid gold, and held it over Mrs. Stokes's nose and mouth. The
suffering woman clutched at her wrist, weeping with relief, and India
silently cursed Gifford.
When the drug had taken effect and Mrs. Stokes was calmer, India and
Ella sat her up on the edge of her bed. India had heard good,
experienced midwives tell how sitting upright, leaning against a wall,
or walking around the room often helped bring a baby faster. India had
sought these women out during her student years. They'd taught her about
the benefits of massage, the efficacy of herbs, and how important it
was not to hush a laboring woman, but to let her howl, for it would open
her up.
For hours, all throughout the long night, India and Ella worked in
con-cert. They walked with Mrs. Stokes when she could manage it, and let
her lie down and weep when she could not. They rubbed her temples,
arms, and legs; applied hot compresses; fed her teas of pennyroyal and
ginger; gave her castor oil; and sparingly doled out the chloral.
The hours dragged on. Mrs. Stokes dozed briefly. India and Ella grew
tired themselves, and hungry, and Ella remembered she had their
left-over dinner with her. She unwrapped it, and India was glad of some
sustenance--until she heard a whimper and looked across the room, where
the children had been dozing, and saw the youngest staring at the food
hungrily. She and Ella looked at each other, and then Ella took the
leftovers to them.
"Is my mummy going to die?" the youngest asked when she'd finished.
"I'd be afraid if she did. My dad hits us. My mummy tries to stop him.
He says we're ugly little bastards and not his. Am I, miss? An ugly
little bastard?"
India was speechless for a few seconds, then she said, "No, my
sweet-heart. You are beautiful. Very beautiful. And do you know what?"
"What?"
"There's a wonderful story about a little creature whom everyone
called ugly. They called him names and he was very sad, but then
something won-derful happened to him. It was my favorite story when I
was your age. Shall I tell it to you?"
"Yes, please!"
India pulled the little girl onto her lap and told her the story of
the ugly duckling. And when she got to the part where the duckling
learned that he was a swan, and beautiful, the little girl's eyes were
shining.
India loved that story, for she had been that duckling. At five, when
she had run across the lawn to show her father a robin's nest she'd
found, and he called it a dirty thing and slapped it out of her hands.
At ten, when she got her first pair of spectacles and Maud called them
ghastly. At sixteen, when her mother told her she would never be pretty,
so she would have to be charming. There were so few times, so few
places, she had ever felt a swan. In the nursery with Hodgie, her nanny,
who told her stories by the fire. With Hugh, who'd held her in the dark
and told her she was beautiful. And in London. At medical school.
The little girl kissed India's cheek and thanked her. Sleepily, she
said, "I wonder what that feels like." India carried her over to the
pile of old coats, sacking, and rags that served as the children's bed
and laid her down.
"What what feels like?"
"Being a swan."
India didn't know how to answer. She tried to frame a reply, but
before she could get any words out, the little girl had fallen asleep.
She gazed down at her, her heart aching, wanting to tell her and not
knowing how.
"India, she's ready to push," Ella said.
Mrs. Stokes was back on the bed now, panting and straining.
"Good," India said. She left the children, and bunched up an old
blan-ket, a tattered sheet, and her own duster--there were no
pillows--and placed them behind their mother's back.