Seven Dials (40 page)

‘An elderly primagravida,’ he said and then laughed at her intake of breath. ‘My dear, you know I’m right. For a first baby, it is a bit older than it might be, isn’t it? You’ll be better off here. Safer. So will he-she.’

‘But to see everyone - people will know.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘People will know. They know you and they’ll be interested in you. Dr Forester will see you and be interested in you. So will Mr Croxley. So will we all. We look after everyone at Nellie’s but especially we look after our own. You’re one of ours, aren’t you? And you told me, once, that you weren’t going to do what Dr Forester had suggested and buy a wedding ring and tell lies about yourself, weren’t going to pretend to be married or widowed or any of those other - what was your phrase? - shabby little subterfuges. Was that
promise only for other people? Not for Nellie’s people?’

She stood silent, the phone against her ear, hearing him breathe and trying to think and within her the baby shifted and heaved and her belly hardened against the pressure and she felt the tension in her back, a dull aching, and thought - not long now. Soon, soon - and then, sharply, nodded her head.

And though she hadn’t said a word he took a deep breath that was clearly audible through the phone and said, ‘You will then? Come here?’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘As soon as I start. Will - will you arrange it all? I don’t think I want to try to -’

‘I’ll see to it that they expect you in Maternity,’ he said reassuringly and then, suddenly, ‘I’ll be fifty this year, you know.’

‘What?’

‘My next birthday. It’ll be my fiftieth.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t know quite how to respond and said the first thing that came into her head. ‘So what? I mean, how nice -’

‘That’s all right then,’ he said obscurely and hung up and she stared at the buzzing phone for a moment, puzzled. It was very unlike Max to be so inconsequential.

Whether it was the anxiety that she now felt about having to go to Nellie’s to have her baby, or whether it was because the time had arrived in the natural order of things, she was never to know, but twenty-four hours later, at three in the morning, she knew she could wait alone in her flat no longer.

Methodically she collected the last few items she might need to add to her prepared bag and put on her coat and then phoned the taxi rank at Paddington station. There were always taxis there at any time of night, and when she told the man who answered hoarsely that she had to be taken at once to Nellie’s, he said cheerfully, ‘Right, ducks. On me way -’

And when he arrived fifteen minutes later he took one look at her and immediately began to fuss over her like the most excited of mother hens. His anxiety and his pride in his task amused her so much that when she arrived at Nellie’s she was feeling far less anxious than she had been when she had first phoned there and told the midwife on duty of the progress of her early labour and been told to come in at once. As the taxi driver almost carried her into the main hall, the very prince of
solicitude in every way, she laughed and thanked him and protested as he refused to take his fare and watched him go, her mind far less preoccupied with her state than it might have been.

But she was brought back to the present with a sharp reminder as another contraction began and she sat there on the bench where the night porter had left her while he went to find the midwife on duty who would admit her to the maternity ward, and tried to relax. What was happening to her was normal, a normal, natural physiological process. There was no need to panic, no need to fight it, her doctor’s mind instructed her woman’s mind just as it had been used to; simply relax, it said, let it roll over you, it has a vital function; it is making a pathway open for him-her -

But it was a big and painful contraction, the biggest so far, a deeply creaking sensation and she felt the sweat running down her face as she sat with her back held in an arch and her chin up, breathing deeply through her nose as through the mists of sweat in her eyes she could see the tall bronze figure of the Founder’s statue, and needing something to help her cope, seeking a focus on which to fix her concentration as the contraction tightened and hardened till she thought it would break her in half, she found it in the small plaque at the statue’s foot.

‘Abel Lackland, Founder and Benefactor of this, Queen Eleanor’s Hospital for the Sick and Needy and Old and Young and Especially for the Mothers of Covent Garden and its Environs. Blessed be his Name.’

‘Blessed be his name, blessed be his name,’ she murmured, concentrating on it, staring fixedly at the plaque, and then slowly the wave of the contraction began to ease and slide away and she let her back slump, and lifted one shaky hand to wipe her face. Blessed be his name, I’m through that one, she thought and peered at her watch. She’d better note how often now; that had been fifteen minutes since the last, wasn’t it? Yes, fifteen minutes - and then the midwife arrived with the porter and in a wave of carbolic scented kindness took her on her way to the maternity department on the third floor, rattling up in the noisy old lift in the sleeping hospital, and chattering cheerfully of banalities all the way.

But Charlie kept the phrase that had helped her through that
big contraction in her mind and when the next one came, as she sat on the edge of the bed to which the midwife had taken her she used it again, closing her eyes to recreate behind her lids the image of the big blank-eyed statue. ‘Blessed be his name, blessed be his name -’ she murmured rhythmically and it helped amazingly, making the pain seem so right and natural that it ceased to be a pain and became a powerful and exciting sensation instead.

For the rest of the night, as the pains came more often, first at ten-minute intervals and then at five and at three-minute intervals, she used the same technique. The midwives fussed over her, and so did Mr Croxley when he arrived and she smiled vaguely at them and nodded and did as they told her, but thought all the time of the silent figure down in the main hall, so secure and stolid, so comforting in its stillness, and murmured that absurd phrase in its absurd rhythm inside her head.

At nine o’clock, as the day got under its busy way at Nellie’s, with the first of the people arriving for their outpatient clinic appointments and the consultants’ big cars decanting them at the front steps, as nurses and physiotherapists and cleaners and radiographers and engineers and cooks and porters and the ever-demanding patients slid into the business of their day, Charlie’s baby at last emerged with one last vast push from her weary body, her chin tucked so hard into her chest and her face so distorted with the effort that she looked like a tortoise, and immediately bawled very loudly indeed at the indignation of being swung up in the air by the feet. Charlie gasped and laughed and cried and said, ‘Blessed be his name -’ - which the Irish midwife took as a prayer and greatly approved of - and stared at the streaked and bloody object with the furious face that screamed at her and at his new-found world with a sort of amazement. Had she made that? Had she really made
that
?

‘Ah, ’tis a fine boy - will you look at his great bits and pieces then?’ the midwife said. ‘A bonny, bonny boy, and all complete in every respect. Well done to you, Dr Lucas, well done indeed -’ And she wrapped him in a sheet and gave him to Charlie who stared at him in even greater amazement as they bustled themselves at her other end, no longer aware of anything but him.

She’d done it. She, Charlotte Hankin Lucas, had done it, and virtually on her own - and she held the baby to her face, not caring that he was thick with the yellowish wax in which his skin had been covered in her womb, not caring for the blood that matted his hair, and crooned odd little noises at him which meant everything and nothing and which he understood perfectly. For at last he stopped bawling and closed his newly opened eyes and slept.

‘I’d forgotten they come this small,’ Max said, leaning over the crib and staring at him. ‘And so neat - what will you call him, Charlie?’

‘Mmm?’ She turned her head back to look at him, for she had been staring dreamily out of the window at the new leaves that were appearing on the plane tree just outside. ‘I hadn’t thought about names. Isn’t that ridiculous? But I have now.’

She smiled and stretched. ‘It seems so right, somehow. I’m calling him after Nellie’s.’

Max lifted his head and looked at her, and said carefully, ‘After Nellie’s? Don’t you think a chap might find life a little difficult with such a name?’

‘Ass,’ she said and chuckled. ‘I’m calling him after the man who
founded
Nellie’s. Abel Lackland. He’s entitled to be called Lackland, after all.’ She looked out of the window again for a moment, and then back at Max and grinned, a slightly sideways little grimace that had some pain in it, but an insouciant one all the same. ‘Abel Lackland Lucas. Sounds good?’

‘Very good,’ Max said and looked at the baby again. ‘And you never know. One of these days he might be even more of a Lackland.’ But he didn’t look at her as he said it.