“It’s gonna be a bit late, I think,” she announced to the curious assembly. “About the twenty-first or twenty-second, I’d say. Which means she’s gonna be a stubborn little cuss, but a genuine beauty.”
The women of the chorus agreed.
“On my birthday?” Lily said, looking at Lucille “Could be, dearie, but I wouldn’t pray too hard for it, ‘cause the longer you stay penned up here the paler and weaker you get. I don’t believe in all this lying-in stuff.”
Lily didn’t pray but she hoped, all the same. The fifteenth passed with no signs of the contractions she’d been alerted to. Dr. Hackney arrived for his weekly check, feigned puzzlement, let his fingers linger affectionately on Lily’s pumpkin bulge, and muttered to Mrs. Edgeworth at the door: “No question: I’ll be back before the night’s over.”
In the early hours of the morning of June 21, the first spasm struck. Lily was startled by its severity, and not a little frightened. She had been well-prepared for the sequence of calamities to follow: Lucille was the middle child of a family of thirteen and reported graphically upon the numerous, horrific births she claimed to have witnessed. Mrs. Crampton had described to her in clinical terms the necessity of these discomforts and added the assurance that “when you see the babe you’ll have already forgotten the pain.” Cold comfort that was here in a stranger’s house in a foreign town with her belly squeezing her stomach into her throat and her bowels into her spine. She gritted her teeth and let the aftershocks knit their way through her flesh; she would not cry out. When the third contraction gripped and held, Lily reached over to pull the bell-cord.
In the blackness of her pain, Lily was aware that she was surrounded by women. Their faces, their detached, consoling hands floated intermittently above her: Mrs. Edgeworth trying to mask her anguish, Mrs. Crampton too busy to register feeling, Maureen impassively efficient, Lucille agog with fright and devotion. Just after sunrise her body, now totally outside her control, gave one last convulsive heave and banished the little beast forever to the far outports of air, space, time and consanguinity. The pain was now bearable; she released her grip on Lucille’s hand and could feel instead the midwife’s fingers stretching, pulling, yielding.
There was a smack like the crack of a stick, followed by a stuttering wawl that rose to a series of well-defined shrieks before settling into the regular breathing and occasional gurglings of a healthy newborn. “It’s a girl,” said Mrs. Crampton between commands.
“How wonderful!” said Mrs. Edgeworth, almost hiding her disappointment.
Moments later, the baby – wiped clean, its umbilical cord neatly knotted – was laid beside Lily on the linen sheet. On the canopy overhead she noted the cherubs and the lambs and the crenellated walls in the distance. Then she gazed across at the child curling in the arch of her shoulder and breast. The eyes peering back were her own.
You’ve given me great pain, she thought, as its miniature mouth nudged towards the expectant nipple, but you needed the pain to separate yourself from me, to put something between us, to be yourself. Now I can hold you, love you, and give you your name. And she did, saying the syllables in a low murmur over and over as sleep closed in. Soon after, she did not feel her daughter being gently extracted from a mother’s grip.
When Lily woke it was afternoon, of what day she didn’t know. She was fevered and ached all over. She reached for the baby. It wasn’t there. In the hazy light allowed by the curtain, she could make the form of Maureen seated in the armchair across the room. Her blouse was open with one puffed breast shining and stiff-nippled and the other hidden behind the head of the suckling child. The noise of its feeding filled the room.
“Now don’t you worry, dear-heart,” Mrs. Edgeworth soothed a few minutes later, her brow creased with worry. “Everything’s going to be fine. Dr. Hackney says you’ve got a slight infection. I must say he wasn’t too happy arriving late and finding Mrs. Crampton on her way out, but he’s been a dear anyway. He’s left this medicine for you and –”
At last she noticed Lily’s nod towards the baby and its nurse. “Oh, that. Dr. Hackney says with your fever and all, you wouldn’t have enough milk, so Maureen, who God be thanked has more than enough for her own and yours, is helping out, aren’t you, dear?”
Maureen responded by changing breasts and sighing with satisfaction.
“Believe me, love, it’s all for the best.”
“What day is it?”
“You’ve been in and out of a doze for three days now. But you arelooking real good today. Shall I get you something to eat?”
“Could I hold the babe, afterwards?”
Lily wasfeeling better. She ate some soup, then her daughter was laid beside her, and when the women left for a moment, she eased a nipple into the nuzzling lips. She felt their pull upon her, amazed by the strength and depth of the need there, the compulsion of bonding it brought. Together they drifted to their separate sleep.
When she woke the next morning, feeling ravenous and fully alert, the room was empty. Moments later the door opened and Mrs. Edgeworth entered, trailed by a strange man who strode to her bedside and sat down on Lucille’s chair as if it had been set out there especially for him.
“This is Mr. Clayton Thackeray, .,” she said to Lily with a tremor in her voice. “He’s come all the way from Toronto, from the government, to see you, ifyou’re feeling up to it.”
“I’m feelin’ all right,” Lily said, staring at the intruder from the city. He was formally attired in spats and morning coat and stiff collar; his face was obsessively whiskered with a pair of hooded eyes like two chips of anthracite. No amount of girdling could control the overbite of his belly.
“I’m glad to hear it, child,” said the member of the Legislature, as if to the Opposition benches. “We have important business to discuss, vitalbusiness.”
Mrs. Edgeworth closed the door to mute as best as possible the booming rhetoric of his delivery, then stood leaning against it and watching.
“I would like you to listen carefully to what I have to say. While you may find parts of it distasteful, I want you to remember that my communication to you comes from the highest authority in the land, that the decisions which have been taken have been thoroughly and humanely considered, and that the best interests of all concerned will be served by ready obedience.” Lily studied him, conceding nothing, offering nothing. She recognized the official timbre of the voice and braced herself. When he turned slightly to Mrs. Edgeworth for support, she was staring at the carpet.
“Well, then,” he began again, “I’ve been asked by the Honourable Mr. Murchison to convey to you the following information. We have it from the highest authority,”“that the father of the child, a man of pre-eminence as you know, wishes to it raised in the most congenial and appropriate circumstances. With the welfare of the child uppermost in mind, certain investigations, shall we say, were carried out in Port Sarnia. Alas, the results were not favourable. I’m sure I do not need to tell you that the financial and particularly the, ah, moralcircumstances of the Ramsbottom household leave much to be desired.”
Lily looked questioning.
“What the gentleman means, dear-heart, is that your Uncle and Aunt don’t go to church regularly,” said Mrs. Edgeworth.
“What the gentleman means, child, is that the motherof the babe’s father insists