May gave Helen a slip of paper with the phone number on it. Helen squeezed May’s hand and took off for the phone box, leaving May sitting at the table. The contraction tapered off and May put her hand on her bump, surprised at how hard and solid it felt, and how fast things seemed to be going. All the books had talked about gentle contractions at the beginning, time to get in tune with your body, easing your way into labour and things like that. This was more like a sudden onset thunderstorm. May didn’t feel ready.
She was crying when Helen returned.
‘I’m not sure I’m ready for this right now,’ May said. ‘Sorry, sorry, did you get through to Alain?’
Helen gave May a tissue and patted her hand.
‘I did, and there’s nothing to apologise for, nothing to worry about, my friend. We can talk about everything later,’ Helen said. ‘You make notes and tell me how it goes. You’ve got a job to do now, and you’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll be thinking of you.’
I’m not like you, May was thinking, even as her body screeched into gear, flexing muscles she hadn’t known she had, I’m not on my own, I’m so lucky. Alain isn’t like Frank, he’s just having a difficult time. My situation isn’t as bad, I’m not like you. I’m not a battered wife or anything, I’ve read articles about them and my Alain is an angel.
‘It’s all fine,’ she said, hoping that Helen would understand. ‘Alain will be here any minute, I know he will. He’s an amazing man, so funny, so clever. He’s a sensitive man. He knits. Oh,’ May put her head on the table, trying to remember the breathing she had learned from her book, ‘oh, this bloody hurts.’
‘Maybe it would help if you stop worrying about Alain. Just concentrate, woman, you can do it.’
When May tried to put the events that followed in order later, she wasn’t sure what went where. There was an ambulance, and a stretcher, and a solicitous manager offering free teas for a month, and Helen giggling at that.
‘You’re quite safe,’ May remembered Helen saying, ‘she’s not going to be battering down the doors begging for a cuppa for a while, I think she’s going to be busy, don’t you?’
The manager blushed. ‘A year,’ he said, ‘a year, I meant a year, have free teas for a year, and have a lovely day.’
Even May managed to laugh at that as the ambulance men wheeled her out of the restaurant and into the lift. She was sure that she could walk but they wouldn’t let her. Nowhere in the books had it said that things would go this quickly. May wished that she could meet the authors of the books and punch them.
May didn’t see Helen go. One minute she was there, the next she had gone, taking her comfortable, calming presence with her. May felt very alone.
It seemed ages before Alain came. May lay in the hard hospital bed and watched the clock on the wall move from afternoon to evening. The pain became a part of her, an extra limb, and she became so used to it that she forgot from time to time why it was happening.
When Alain arrived, May was surprised to find that she felt fairly indifferent, too busy with her body to be thrilled. He bent to kiss her and she registered a smell of the outside, of life beyond the walls of this small room. A combination of fried food, unwashed skin and traffic fumes, and she wondered if he always smelled like that.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘darling, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. There was traffic, and this old woman had dropped her shopping and I had to help her pick it up, there was no one else around, I’m sorry.’
May felt as though the pain had washed her clean, cleared her mind. She wondered which part, if any, of what Alain had just said was true.
‘Does it hurt much?’ Alain said, holding her hand and rubbing it.
Stupid question of the century, May thought.
‘Not now you’re here,’ she said. She wondered if he would be able to tell that she didn’t mean it.
‘My brave darling,’ he said. May thought that he sounded just as insincere as she did, as though they were both reciting lines from different scripts. She pulled her hand back and decided to be more honest. Maybe then they’d feel more like a team.
‘You should try it,’ she said. ‘Lie down on the floor and get someone to drive across your stomach with a steam roller, like they use to lay roads. Make sure they keep doing it, every few minutes. Should be a doddle.’
Alain smiled and rubbed her hand some more. May forced herself to smile. Stop the bloody hand rubbing, she thought, and resolved to tell Helen later how annoying she had found it. It would make her laugh. She could see from the way that Alain looked at her that he was expecting her to spare him by being quiet and stoic, and she knew that she had to try. It was important to get this right, she could remember that even though she was no longer sure why. She hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. At the antenatal class they had told her to practise breathing while she twisted the flesh on her thigh and May was good at that, she could twist until her thigh was bruised, but this was way, way worse than a bruised thigh.
May had chosen to give birth in a small cottage hospital. She had wanted an experience that was as natural as possible, minimum intervention like in the books, and she tried to remember that, concentrate on it, make it happen even though she was frightened.
‘Keep going, honey,’ Alain said, ‘you’re doing so well.’
Am I? May thought. Am I really? Do I have any choice?
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ May said, ‘I really am. Just us and our baby.’
She winced as another pain tore through her. Maybe it would hurt less if she could stop thinking so much, go with the flow.
‘You’re so brave, my darling,’ said Alain.
He loves me, May thought, he loves me and I’m having a baby. It’s OK, everything is OK. I can do this, come on, baby.
He held her hand again and bent towards her.
He sang the song they had listened to as they first made love, and May felt stronger for hearing it. So what if they had some little problems, she thought, he was here with her when it mattered. Another pain began, harsher this time, and May clung to Alain.
‘No one said it would be like this,’ she said. ‘Why is it hurting so much? Do you think there’s something wrong?’
‘Here,’ said Alain, ‘let me put this cold cloth on your head. I’ll tell you a story, if you like, about the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood. They all have babies too, you know, how do you think Piglet got born?’
May tried to relax, to go with the pains and listen to Alain’s voice, so calm and familiar. She couldn’t concentrate on the content of what he was saying, and he obviously knew that, because once or twice she realised that he was repeating himself. It didn’t matter, what was important was his tone, so soothing. He stopped whenever the pain got too bad, and pressed the cold flannel to her head. If she had been truthful, she didn’t much like that, the feeling of wetness seemed a little too much to cope with, but May didn’t say. She was grateful that he was there, by her side at this special time.
‘Anything you’re worried about, just tell me,’ he said, ‘we can be completely open with each other now. This is the time of our lives, May.’
The time of your life, maybe, May thought. You’d feel differently if you were being squeezed to death from the inside out by an alien creature. Another rogue thought to tell Helen. She waited until the next big pain