Liz could think of nothing to say to that.
‘I’ve thought of trying a prayer to St Jude,’ Helen went on conversationally, ‘but I don’t think he can help me. There’s a limit even to his powers.’ With agonizing slowness, she raised her eyes to Adam, standing behind Liz’s chair.
‘Hello, Adam. I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Hello, Helen.’ His voice sounded very deep in the quiet of the room. ‘How are we feeling?’
That raised another smile. ‘The doctor’s question. I think we both know the answer to that one, don’t we?’ A look passed between the two of them. ‘I’d like to see someone. Do you think there’s any chance?’
‘You want a priest of your own faith?’
Helen nodded.
‘I’ll get you one,’ he said decisively. His hand squeezed Liz’s shoulder briefly before he swept out of the room. Turning her head to follow his departure, Liz looked back to the bed to find Helen’s candid gaze once more fixed on her. She took her friend’s hand gently in her own and Helen’s lids flickered closed.
‘I’m not hurting your hand, am I?’
Helen replied without opening her eyes.
‘No, it feels nice.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Liz, doing her best to adopt the brisk and no-nonsense voice. ‘I don’t know how the hell he’ll do it in all this, but he’ll get you a priest. Adam never lets anybody down.’
She had thought - hoped perhaps - that Helen was drifting off to sleep, but her eyes flickered open again.
‘You know his worth, then?’
‘I know his worth.’
Helen seemed to be about to say something else, but then her eyes clouded and lost their focus. She managed a few more words.
‘You’ll not leave me, Liz?’
‘You don’t get rid of me that easily, Helen MacMillan,’ Liz assured her.
A smile touched the bruised mouth. ‘Even if it was only the registry office,’ Helen murmured, ‘I’m still a respectable married woman.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Liz. ‘My sister-in-law. My very dear sister-in-law.’
She could barely make out the reply, but she smiled when she did.
‘Don’t go all soppy on me, MacMillan.’
‘Perish the thought,’ said Liz.
Adam was back within ten minutes. The hospital’s Roman Catholic chaplain had been on the premises. He showed the clergyman in, then gently ushered Liz up from her chair.
‘We’ll sit over here in the corner,’ he said. ‘Then Father Fitzgerald can do what he has to.’
‘Shouldn’t we leave the room?’
The priest looked kind. ‘Not necessary, my child. Mr Buchanan advises me that there probably isn’t time for me to hear her confession.’
Liz glanced at the still figure lying in the bed. Helen’s eyes were closed, but she could have sworn she’d muttered three little words.
Just as well.
What the priest did next had no meaning for Liz, but she could see that Helen welcomed it When it was over, she once more took up her position by the bedside. It wouldn’t be long now. She’d seen that look too many times, so she was surprised when Helen’s voice rang out.
‘I want to see the baby.’
The look of tenderness on Helen’s face when the small white bundle was placed in her arms was almost too much to bear. She held her daughter for a few short minutes. Then the nurse came forward, murmuring something about all the babies being down in the basement tonight for safety during the raid. Would she maybe take the wee one now?
Helen pressed her lips to the baby’s forehead and allowed the midwife to lift her gently out of her arms. Her eyes followed them as they left the room. She murmured something, but her strength was fading fast. Adam leaned over, straining to catch the words. He looked up in surprise.
‘You want the baby baptized a Protestant?’
Helen nodded, and her eyes swung round to Liz.
‘Going to be brought up by damned Proddies, isn’t she? It’ll be for the best. No offence, Father.’ Her words trailed off into a mumble.
Liz scowled. ‘You’ll be looking after her yourself, Helen. What rubbish you do talk.’
Helen’s eyes shifted to Adam. ‘For an intelligent woman, she can be awful stupid sometimes, can’t she?’
‘A complete numpty,’ he agreed.
‘Look after her for me, Liz. You and your mother.’ Helen smiled faintly. ‘Don’t let your father make her hate Catholics.’
‘What rubbish you talk,’ Liz said again. ‘You’ll be looking after her yourself.’
‘Don’t tell lies, Elizabeth MacMillan. Haven’t I already told you that you’re no good at it?’
Those were almost the last words she spoke. Only at the end, when Liz could no longer deny what was happening, did she ask, ‘The baby, Helen. What shall we call her?’
‘Hope,’ said the dying girl. ‘Hope Elizabeth MacMillan.’ Her voice was as clear as a bell. ‘Give me your hand, my dearest friend... Don’t cry, Liz... Don’t cry. I’m going to see Eddie.’ For the last time in this world, the old mischievous smile lit up her features. ‘He’ll not be an atheist now...’
Then, her hand in Liz’s, the smile still on her face, she slipped away.
Thirty-six
It was strange to be away from the bustling routine of the hospital: odd to find herself governed once more by the quieter rhythms of a home, even if a rather more luxurious one than the house in which she had grown up. Liz and baby Hope were staying with Amelia Buchanan in Milngavie.
She took Hope to Clydebank every weekend, but despite her mother’s pleading she refused point blank to take her home to live at Queen Victoria Row. Sadie insisted that things had changed. Liz remained to be convinced.
Certainly some astounding things had happened. For a start, Peter MacMillan was staying with his son and daughter-in-law until he was rehoused or his own building in Radnor Street was rebuilt. As far as Liz could see, the two men existed in a state of armed neutrality, William barely acknowledging his father’s presence in the house. The fact that he was tolerating it at all was quite amazing.
He did so because his wife had insisted on it: another breathtaking development. Something had happened to her parents’ relationship since the Blitz. To Liz’s surprise, her father had been much more shaken up by the bombing than her mother had. Literally. His nerves were shattered by the experience, and it had been weeks before he’d been able to hold a cup and saucer without them rattling from the tremor in his hands.
In contrast, her mother seemed to have found a new strength. She delighted in the brief visits of her granddaughter, cheerfully fighting with her father-in-law over who should have the privilege of holding the baby. William MacMillan, on the other hand, barely glanced in Hope’s direction.
Liz found that hard to forgive and, in private, she reminded her mother what her father had said about not having a Catholic bastard in his house.
‘He could be persuaded,’ said Sadie, further astonishing her daughter - although it wasn’t enough to persuade Liz to come home.
Her situation in Milngavie was far from ideal, but it had been the only thing she could think of at the time. Having practically no money, especially after she stopped work at the Infirmary, Liz had asked Adam’s mother if she could perhaps do some chores around the house in return for her and the baby’s keep.
Amelia Buchanan, whose war work had introduced her to some colourful turns of phrase, told her to go and boil her head. She would be delighted to have the two of them and she didn’t expect anything in return. Mrs Hunter wouldn’t tolerate any interference in the running of the house anyway. Liz and the baby were welcome to stay for as long as they wanted.
She fitted up a bedroom at the back of the house as what she called Liz’s boudoir. It had French windows looking out on to the garden, now given over mainly to the growing of vegetables, although the elderly gardener who came in twice a week had left a small square of grass for use as a drying green. Liz and Hope sat out there on a blanket when the weather got warmer. The room itself had a cot for Hope, a comfortable bed for Liz and an upholstered rocking chair.
Liz spent much of her time there, especially in the evenings. After she had given the baby her bath, she would rock gently backwards and forwards, enjoying the warm and solid feel of the healthy little body lying on her chest.
Her life had shrunk - sometimes she thought it had come right down to the feel of Hope’s downy head under her lips as she kissed her goodnight before laying her gently in her cot. At times she wept into her soft dark hair, but she tried not to. As Helen’s daughter, Hope deserved better than that. Liz thought often of her friend’s sense of humour and indomitable spirit.
Liz told the baby all about Helen and Eddie and chatted to her constantly as they went through their day. The housekeeper shook her head and muttered that no good ever came of talking to babies. It only made them go funny. Liz smiled at Amelia Buchanan over Mrs Hunter’s head, and went on her way rejoicing.
Or not quite. She knew their sojourn in Milngavie could only be a stopgap arrangement. She couldn’t expect Mrs Buchanan to keep them forever. And then there was her nursing training, due to start in the autumn. Liz was in a real quandary about that.
Her mother desperately wanted to look after Hope. If she did, that would allow Liz to start back at the Infirmary as a student nurse, fulfilling her lifelong ambition. Then she would remember how she’d been brought up experiencing nothing but coldness from her father. She wasn’t prepared to subject Hope to that.
But if things really had changed at Queen Victoria Row... that might be different. Liz knew very well there was a decision to be made. She kept putting it off.
She had discovered that looking after a baby could be a tiring business. Not that she grudged one moment of it, especially when Hope looked at her one day and smiled. Adam said it was wind. Both Liz and his mother told him to go and boil his head. They knew a smile when they saw one.
Liz visited Dominic Gallagher at Killearn Hospital twice a week, taking the bus out from Milngavie. He had cried in front of her once. Now, with the resilience of youth, he played happily with his niece and talked of when he would be old enough to join up. Killearn was a military hospital. He was surrounded by wounded heroes, all of whom relished the opportunity of telling their tallest stories to the admiring lad.
Liz privately prayed that the war would finish before Dom was old enough to march off. That seemed unlikely. And she had to admit that if he joined the forces it would solve the problem of where he was going to stay when he eventually came out of hospital.
Under pressure as ever at the Infirmary, Adam did his best to get home to Milngavie two or three times a week, but they were usually flying visits. Perhaps because of that, he didn’t pick his words as carefully as he might have done one Sunday in July.
Coming through the French windows from the garden, he found Liz sitting in the old rocking chair which had been his father’s, gently crooning Hope into her afternoon nap. Hearing his step, she looked up and put a warning finger to her lips.
‘As pretty as a picture,’ he said softly. ‘Both of you, I mean. Shall I put her in her cot?’
‘Gently,’ said Liz as he lifted Hope out of her arms without waiting for an answer. He laid the baby down, tucked the covers around her and turned, a slightly pained expression on his face.
‘I have handled a baby before, Liz.’ His next words were rather unwise. ‘You’re a bit proprietorial about her, don’t you think?’
Liz drew her breath in. It was rare for Adam to criticize. Feeling fragile, she answered him back more sharply than she might have. ‘I’m all she’s got. She’s all I’ve got.’