a few vicious minutes that she wasn’t as sassy as she’d thought; she certainly hadn’t been as strong as Lenny, though she’d fought like a maniac to try and stop him.
‘Ah …’ Dr Vernon had seen her stricken look and turned back towards his desk. ‘You’ve remembered an incident, have you, and think there might be reason to count the months after all?’
‘Yes …’ she whispered. ‘But I’m praying you’re wrong, Doctor.’
He smiled kindly. ‘I understand. But better to incubate a life than an illness, my dear.’
Rosie thought about that one. The odd weight she’d sensed in her belly was not a nasty growth in the way she’d thought; but it could destroy her life. ‘If you’re right – and I pray to God you’re not – I think I’d sooner be dead than have his baby,’ she whispered.
February 1942
‘Well done, dear … good girl … just one more big push. Come on, you can do it …’
Rosie knew that the midwife was being kind and helpful but she just wanted to bawl at her to go away and leave her alone. She had no energy left to whisper a word let alone shout a torrent of abuse. She didn’t want to push, she didn’t want the horrible creature fighting for life in her hips but she knew the agony wouldn’t stop unless she did something … She raised her forehead from the sweat-soaked pillow, dragging her shoulders off the rubber sheeting to grip Nurse Johnson’s outstretched hands. Rosie clung on to the two sturdy palms as tightly as she might have to a piece of driftwood in a raging sea, and gritting her teeth she bore down.
‘What’re you planning on calling her?’
The whispered question emerged tentatively as though the man anticipated a tongue-lashing. And he got it.
‘Calling her?’ Rosie dredged up a weak laugh from her aching abdomen. ‘How about bastard … that should suit. Now go away and leave me alone.’ Rosie turned her pale face to the wall and groaned, drawing up her knees beneath a thin blood-streaked sheet.
The fellow hesitated, then tiptoed about the bed. He knew the poor cow had been driven mad with pain because he’d heard her shrieking even above the din of the wireless. When things had quietened down overhead he’d guessed the worst was over. Then he’d spied the dragon barging down the hall, uniform crackling. As soon as she had disappeared into the front room with a bucket of stuff to burn he’d crept upstairs while the coast was clear.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Trudy Johnson burst into the back bedroom and glared at the intruder; childbirth was nothing to do with men, in her opinion. They might put the bun in the oven but should stay well out of the way at the business end of things. The midwife had been disposing of soiled wadding in the parlour fire while waiting for her patient to enter the final stage of labour. But she’d heard voices and speeded up the stairs to see what was going on.
‘I’ve every right to be here.’ John Gardiner sounded huffy. ‘She’s me daughter and that there’s me granddaughter.’ He pointed at the swaddled bundle at the foot of the bed. The infant was emitting mewling squeaks while punching feet and fists into her straitjacket. He almost smiled. The poor little mite was unwanted but she was a fighter. John moved to pick up the newborn but the midwife advanced on him threateningly, fists on starched hips. He backed away, muttering, his hands plunged into his pockets.
‘I think your daughter deserves some privacy, Mr Gardiner. I’ll let you know when she’s ready for a visit.’
Chastened, John trudged meekly onto the landing, then peeped around the bedroom door. ‘Put the kettle on, shall I? Bet you’d like a cuppa, now it’s all over, wouldn’t you, dear?’ He addressed the remark to his exhausted daughter but gave Nurse Johnson a wink when she raised an eyebrow at him.
‘I’d be obliged if you’d make yourself scarce till it is over. But you can put the kettle on. I need some more hot water. Leave a full pot outside the door for me, please.’
Trudy looked at her patient as the door closed. The girl was fidgeting on the protective rubber sheet, making it squeak. The afterbirth was about to be expelled. After that it would be time to set about tidying up the new mum; Trudy hoped having a wash and a brush through her hair might give the poor thing a boost.
Rosie Deane didn’t look more than nineteen and was as slender as a reed. She had battled to get the baby through her narrow hips and finally succeeded after a lengthy labour.
‘Here … have a cuddle … she’s fair like you …’ The midwife placed the baby against Rosie’s shoulder, hoping to distract the young woman from dwelling on her sore nether regions.
‘Take her away from me. I don’t want her.’ Rosie’s hands remained clenched beneath the sheets and she turned her face away from her firstborn.
‘’Course you do; just got a bit of the blues, haven’t you, love? Only natural after what you’ve been through. All new mums say never no more, then quickly forget about the rough side of it.’ Trudy knew that to be true, but not from personal experience. She had no children, but she’d delivered hundreds of babies over more than a decade in midwifery. Some of the women on her rounds in Shoreditch seemed to knock out a kid a year, even into their forties. Mrs Riley, Irish and no stranger to her old man’s fists, had borne fifteen children, twelve of them still alive, and eight of them still at home with her.
Trudy was about to say that the pelvis opened up more easily after a good stretching in a first labour in the hope of cheering up this new mum. Then she realised the remark would be insensitive. The girl’s father had told her that Rosie’s husband had been killed fighting overseas only months ago, so Trudy kept her lip buttoned. In time Rosie would probably remarry and go on to have a brood round her ankles. She was plainly an attractive girl, despite now looking limp and bedraggled after her ordeal.
‘You’ve got a wonderful part of your husband here to cherish.’ Trudy glanced at the child her patient was ignoring. She pushed lank fair hair from Rosie’s eyes so she could get a better view of her baby. ‘See, she’s got her eyes open and is looking at you. She knows you’re her mum all right …’
‘I said take her away from me.’ Rosie levered herself up on an elbow, grabbing at the child as though she might hurl her daughter to the newspaper-strewn floorboards. Instead she held the bundle out on rigidly extended arms. ‘Take her … give her away … do what you like with her …’ she sobbed, sinking down and turning her face into the pillow to dry her cheeks on the cotton.
‘Come on, love; don’t get tearful.’ Trudy placed the baby back by the bed’s wooden footboard then gave her hiccuping patient a brisk, soothing rub on the back. ‘Just a few minutes more and we can give you a nice hot wash down. You’re almost done now, you know.’
‘Almost done?’ Rosie echoed bitterly. ‘I wish I was. It’s all just starting for me, Nurse Johnson …’
‘You don’t mean that!’
‘If the girl says that’s
