Down by the greenwood side-o
And the woman had two babies, Lauren was sure. There, the sound of two together, both cooing and grunting, as if they were singing along with the strange lullaby.
She said pretty babes if you was mine aye-o
She said pretty babes if you was mine
I’d dress you up in silken fine
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the greenwood side-o
Lauren felt an urge to visit the toilet, a sudden pressure on her bladder strong enough for her to answer it with a movement a bit too fast for her body. She swung her legs out of bed. Her knees buckled as she stood, but she held herself up with both hands on the bed rails. She perched there, testing herself. She could walk; she was just a bit unsteady. There was no sunburst of blood on the sheet. The muscles in her pelvic floor, cut and torn and sewn up, held her in place for now and she took her hands from the bed, allowing her feet to take their burden back. She checked the babies, still breathing, feather breaths on her cheek. Blood rushed from her head to serve her limbs and she waited for the feeling to pass, the floor to cease shifting under her like the deck of a sea vessel.
The clock read 4.17. The windows, black mirrors.
She took a penknife long and sharp aye-o
She took a penknife long and sharp,
And pierced the two pretty babes to the heart
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the greenwood side-o
Maybe Lauren would ask her to stop. The singing might wake Mrs Gooch. Plus, it was a horrible song, the words were creepy and the tune was weird, sort of sad and angry. She’d been pleased, initially, when she’d realised there was another woman on the ward with twins but she wasn’t sure she could be friends with someone who had no consideration for others.
The curtain had been pulled all the way around the cubicle, boxing it in. There was a gap of a few centimetres at one corner and Lauren widened it, peering through. The lamp was angled at her face, she was caught in the glare. She held a hand up to shield her eyes.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. The woman did not respond, kept humming the strange old tune. She tried again, a bit louder. ‘Excuse me?’
There was no hospital bed. The woman was sitting in the chair, the same as the one of pale green vinyl next to her own bed, next to all the beds on the ward. The scene was too small for the cubicle – without the bed there seemed too much floor space. The distance between Lauren and the woman was as wide as a river. The woman was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and a large basket between her bare feet, feet dirty enough to stand out black against the floor. Rags from the woman’s dress were long fingers trailing against those feet, against the floor, forming a fringe over the basket. The glare from the angled lamp meant that Lauren couldn’t see the babies in the basket but she could hear them, ragged phlegmy breaths and two – definitely two – high-pitched voices murmuring. She took a step inside the cubicle, moving to get a better look, more from curiosity than anything else because she could see at once that this woman shouldn’t be there. She must be homeless. She wore several layers of clothing, as if she were cold even though it was oven-hot in the hospital. But when Lauren stepped closer she began to shiver. She was at once aware of the thinness of her hospital gown, cold air surrounding her, whispering around her exposed legs and entering the gown from below so that she wrapped her arms across herself to stop it. There must have been an air-conditioning outlet right there above them. It was a damp cold and there was a muddy, fishy smell which must have been coming from the homeless woman. Lauren sensed that she had been noticed, she knew it, but the woman hadn’t moved at all, not a millimetre. She was singing again.
She throwed the babes a long ways off aye-o
She throwed the babes a long ways off
The more she throwed them the blood dripped off
Lay me down me dilly dilly downwards
Down by the green-
‘Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but can you stop singing, please? You’re going to wake everyone up.’
The woman stopped singing with a sharp intake of breath. She raised her eyes from the basket. Lauren heard a high whining sound, another layer of hum but getting louder. It came from nowhere but inside her own ears. Run, it told her, leave, go, now. But her feet were rooted. Heavy as lead.
It took a long time for the woman’s eyes to meet hers and when the moment finally came Lauren had to blink away cold sweat to see her. She was young, perhaps eight or ten years younger than Lauren, but her eyes seemed ancient. She had hair that had formed itself into clumps, the kind of hair, a bit like Lauren’s, that would do that if you didn’t constantly brush it. The woman’s face was grimy, and when she opened her mouth to speak the illusion of a rather dirty youth who could even be beautiful if given a good scrubbing was destroyed. She seemed to have no teeth and a tongue that darted darkly between full but painfully cracked lips. There was something about the way the woman eyeballed her. What did she want?
‘You’ve twin babies,’ said the woman.
‘Yes.’ The word had tripped out, travelling in a cough. Lauren wanted it back.
‘Ye-es,’ the woman drew the word out lengthily, ‘twin babies. Just like mine, only yours are charmed.’
Lauren couldn’t think what to say. She knew she was staring, open-mouthed at the woman but she couldn’t not.
‘Mine are charmed too,’ said the woman, ‘but it’s not the same. Mine have a dark charm. A curse. You are the lucky ones, you and yours. We had nothing, and even then we were stolen from.’
She must have had a terrible time, this woman. And those poor little mites in the basket, what kind of life would they have? There were people who could help her, charities dealing in this kind of thing. She must be able to access something, at least get some new clothes. The long dirty hair hanging in dog’s tails each side of her face was doubtless crawling with infestation. It wasn’t healthy.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Lauren, ‘shall I see if I can get someone to help you?’
The woman stood up and took a few steps around the basket, towards Lauren. The muddy smell became stronger and the air, colder. It seemed to come out of this woman, the cold. There was an odour of rotting vegetation stirred up with the mud and the fish. Lauren wanted to look into the basket but the woman was standing in the way. Closer now, she lowered her voice, breathy, hissing.
‘There’s no one can help me. Not now. There was a time but that time passed, and now there’s more than time in between me and helping.’
The woman moved slightly and Lauren could see that the basket was full of rags, a nest of thick grey swaddling and she couldn’t see a face, not even a hand or a foot. She hoped the woman’s babies could breathe in there.
‘Maybe social
