I drove fast until I came to towns where the rain forced the traffic into a slow, sullen crawl. After Limerick City it wasn’t so difficult. I kept expecting to hear the wail of a siren but only the swish of the windscreen wipers disturbed my concentration. When I reached Gort, I noticed the fields were already under water, the same in Kinvara. Water ran from the hills and gathered in the ditches, spilled across the road, splashed dangerously under my wheels. The rocks of the Burren came into view. I drove through Maoltrán and past the craft centre. Lights were on in the windows. Miriam was in London, exhibiting at a craft fair. She’d warned me, before she left, to drive to the hospital if I experienced even the slightest twinge.
The windscreen kept hazing over and the rain was so heavy it flowed under the swishing wipers. I drove past the Lyons’ house and, suddenly, I was facing the wet rump of a cow. Cattle fanned across the road and Phyllis, walking behind in a bright yellow sou’wester, looked over her shoulder and moved close to the hedgerow. I skidded, the car waltzing on the scum of dead leaves, but I managed to control the wheel and glide gently into the grassy embankment. The front bumper took the shock, but the holdall slid from the seat. I grabbed it as it was about to topple over and held it steady. Phyllis peered through the window, tapped on the glass. I saw her lips moving and when I lowered the window she stuck her head into the car. Rain dripped from her sou’wester cap, sliding down her nose.
I expected you to cry. Wanted you in a crazy way to do so and end the madness. But you stayed silent, undisturbed by the swerves and jolts.
Phyllis demanded to know if I was okay.
‘I’m rushing,’ I told her. ‘Dying for a pee.’
She kept her hand on the window to prevent me sliding it up again. The road was flooding fast, she said, and she was taking her cattle to the high field. ‘Watch how you go,’ she shouted when I pressed my foot to the accelerator. ‘Take care of the dips. You know how quickly they flood.’
She swiped at the cows with a switch and guided them into a straight line. I squeezed the car past their swaying bellies. The stream running through Dowling’s Meadow had burst its banks. Part of the meadow was already flooded, the water rushing through the hedgerows and seeping across the road. I turned into the lane and drove towards Rockrose, grateful for the steep incline that always protected us in times of heavy rain.
The sun peered between two heaving clouds and danced briefly in the sky. The drystone walls glistened as the weight of water swelled the turloughs, those mysterious underground lakes that appear so suddenly and flood the grassy swathes of the Burren. When I lifted you from the car and carried you up the garden path, it seemed as if we’d stepped into a world of glass.
I am a methodical woman and had planned each detail of your arrival. I planned as carefully as a bomber about to take flight, a strategy for survival in hand though he knows he could be blown asunder at any instant. But I cannot claim credit for the weather. I had cloud cover on the night you came to me but the rain that teemed from those clouds led me deeper into my deception.
Three days have passed since then. The flooded fields have swamped the roads and warnings on the radio advise people to stay indoors and only drive if it’s absolutely necessary. Two drivers, brave or reckless enough to drive along Maoltrán Road, stalled close to the lane and Phyllis had to pull them free with her tractor. We may be cut off by floods but her role in your birth has already spread the length and breadth of Maoltrán. She is the local heroine. I would have been lost that night without her assistance. I’ve spoken on the phone to Dr Williamson and to Jean, the district nurse. No need to worry, I told them. I have food in the house and you, my daughter, my miracle child, are in perfect health. When the roads are passable, I’ll bring you to St Anne’s Clinic for your postnatal checkup. They didn’t argue. There’s been an outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea in the area. Not surprising with all that contaminated water.
They told me I was amazingly brave to give birth in such appalling conditions. ‘What was brave about it?’ I said. Women give birth in war and famine, under trees and in their branches, in igloos, sheds and caves. I brought you into the world under a dry roof and thanked God for a safe deliverance. We lay together between the sheets, nothing stirring except our breath. The whisperers were silent then and have remained so ever since.
‘Jesus Christ and his blessed mother,’ Phyllis said, when I rang that night and told her I was in trouble. ‘How fast are your pains coming?’
‘Every few minutes, I told her. It’s all happening so quickly. My waters have broken.’
‘Must have been the shock from the cows,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s a false alarm but I’d better ring Dr Williamson.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother her. The lane is flooded. Come quickly before it gets any deeper.’
She heard me panting and didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ll take the tractor,’ she said. ‘Hang in there, girl. I’ve delivered calves and if you’ve ever had your arm up a cow’s arse, childbirth is nothing.’
She was lying of course and she was very bad at it. ‘Hang on,’ she warned again, and this time I heard the shake in her voice. ‘You can’t give birth now. Not with Miriam in London and David still on the rig.’
Phyllis arrived shortly after my phone call, still swaddled in her yellow sou’wester. She had driven down the lane in her tractor and rushed the wet night air in with her. She squished upstairs in her wellingtons, her cheeks flushed from the exhilaration of dangerous deeds.
‘Stalled a few times,’ she said, ‘but here I am, and there you are, and what on earth is that?’ She drew back from the bed and covered her eyes.
I understood her fear. She can joke all she likes about calves but childbirth is a mystery to her. All that blood smearing the sheets, my legs, my hands, and you, your hair stiff with it, your tiny, wrinkled face marked with the slime of birth, face down and stretched naked across my stomach. I lifted you and swaddled you in a towel.
‘Hold her,’ I said. ‘Hold her while I take care of myself.’
I forced you into her arms. She held you gingerly, as if she expected you to mew or scratch.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said. ‘I’ve never held a baby that’s just been born.’
‘Barely born,’ I said, and roused myself from the bed. ‘Do you mind turning away? I want to…’ I hesitated and lifted the sheet. I thought she would faint when she saw the blood. ‘It’s the placenta,’ I said. ‘It’s come away.’
She moved away across the room, still holding you, and sank onto a stool in front of the dressing table. She looked at me in the mirror as I slopped the liver into a bowl and covered it with a white cloth.
‘I never knew what it looked like,’ she said when I was lying back again against the pillows. ‘Jesus, it’s awful.’
‘But it’s over now,’ I said. ‘The most frightening part was cutting the cord. If you’d got here on time you could have cut it for me.’
She glanced quickly at the scissors and thread lying beside the bowl then averted her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have known what to do,’ she said.
‘You cut it then clamp it on either end with thread,’ I replied. ‘That’s how you do it in an emergency.’
She came slowly towards me and sank to the edge of the bed. She seemed unable to take her eyes from the bowl. Blood had already seeped into the white covering. She swallowed loudly. I thought she was going to faint or throw up.
‘Let me hold my baby now,’ I said, and I took you back into my arms.
She stared down at the pair of us and wrinkled her nose. ‘Bit of cleaning