Billy will be starting at the school himself in six months. May will be on hand if you need her.’
Meg nodded. Their neighbour had always been very helpful. ‘I know, Mom.’
‘You will do this for me then, sure you will?’ Maeve said, clutching at her eldest daughter’s hand.
‘Mom, you know I would surely take care of the children and the house – and Daddy too – as well as I am able to,’ Meg said in as firm a voice as she could muster. ‘But I hate to hear you talking this way. You’re going to be fine.’
‘No, my dear girl,’ Maeve said. ‘I haven’t much time. My family in Ireland might say you are too young to deal with all the children and they’ll offer to take one or two off your hands but, I beg you, don’t let them go. My father will have them working their fingers to the bone, as he did me and my siblings.’ She stared intently at Meg, reliving her sad memories of home. ‘If he didn’t feel we’d worked hard enough, then we didn’t eat. We were beaten with his belt for the slightest thing. I escaped my life of abuse, thank God, and now I would hate my parents to get their hands on my children.’
Meg’s mouth opened in surprise. Her mother had never spoken about her growing up in Ireland before. She remembered her father warning her not to plague Maeve with questions about her homeland; she hadn’t had a good time of it there. Meg doubted he knew much more than that. He himself had never raised a hand to any of his children – not even Terry – and there was always food on their table. To her knowledge her mother’s family had never written her one line since she left home, and she had never written to them so, Heaven forbid, should anything happen to her mother she doubted they would be involved in any way. So she said confidently, ‘They will never take any of the children, never fear, Mom.’
Maeve sank back on the pillow with a sigh and said, ‘Or the authorities might say they’d be better off in a home.’
‘How could they be?’ Meg asked in genuine puzzlement. ‘Daddy’s in work and a good provider, and I’ve virtually left school and am able and willing to see to them. Terry and Jenny will help, so you needn’t worry about that either. But you are fretting for nothing. You’ll be as right as rain when the baby is born and you have recovered from the birth and all.’
But her mother went steadily downhill after that. When, in trying to make her more comfortable, Meg discovered the blood pumping from her, she stopped only long enough to pack her with a towel before setting off for the doctor, leaving their neighbour May Sanders sitting with her mother.
The doctor ordered Maeve straight to hospital. Charlie’s brother, Uncle Robert, had been alerted to what was happening, and he and his wife, Rosie, took the younger children home to care for them. Meanwhile Meg would go with her father to the General Hospital.
‘Someone’s got to go with the poor sod,’ Robert said to Rosie. ‘I’ve never seen our Charlie in such a state,’ ‘The others seem totally traumatised by it all, too,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s the suddenness of it, I suppose.’
‘That’s why I thought the nippers would be better with us,’ Uncle Robert said. ‘I mean, neighbours are all well and good, and I know May Sanders to be one of the best, but families should step in at times like these.’
Meg was glad that Uncle Robert and Aunt Rosie had the care of children. It was one less thing for her to worry about. She felt the burden of her father’s distress lodge on her shoulders and was glad that he hadn’t seen just how sick her mother looked. By the time the ambulance came she’d been semi-delirious, her face contorted from the agonising contractions. All he knew was that Maeve had started in labour and had been taken to the General Hospital.
They sat alone on hard chairs in a dismal corridor, white paint flaking off the walls, for what seemed like hours. Eventually Charlie’s head sank into his hands.
‘If she dies it will be my fault,’ he wept. ‘I should never have allowed her to get pregnant again. The doctor warned us both it would be dangerous.’
‘Oh, Dad, stop this,’ Meg said, ‘Whoever’s fault it is, I’d say Mom’s in the best place.’
Charlie got to his feet. ‘Well, I’m away to find out how she is,’ he said. ‘I can’t sit here any longer and know nothing.’
Just at that moment, a harassed-looking young doctor in his white coat, a stethoscope hanging around his neck, came through the double doors at the end of the corridor. As he approached, the look on his face turned the blood in Meg’s veins to ice.
‘Mr Hallett?’ the doctor asked Charlie.
‘Yes, I’m Mr Hallett.’
Meg suddenly didn’t want the doctor to say any more, as if not knowing the news would make it not true. But the doctor went on quietly, ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Hallett. Your wife died on the operating table just a few moments ago.’
The terrible words hung in the air. Meg and Charlie stared at the doctor as if they couldn’t quite believe what they had just heard. Despite her mother’s apprehensions about the birth, Meg had comforted herself with the thought that women had babies all the time; once they’d got her to hospital, everything would be all right.
Charlie sank back onto the chair, unsure his legs could hold him up. He just couldn’t take it in. Maeve dead, and through his own selfish fault. He was aware of Meg breaking her heart on the bench beside him, tears coursing rapidly down her cheeks, and he put his arms around her.
The doctor said sincerely, ‘I’m sorry to give you such bad news.’ And then, to give them some vestige of hope: ‘We may be able to save the child, though she is very small.’
Charlie and Meg jolted upright. Neither of them had considered that the baby would have survived.
‘Child? You mean the child is alive?’ Charlie asked, astonished.
The doctor nodded solemnly. ‘When I left the theatre she was alive, yes.’
‘Better if it doesn’t survive,’ Charlie snapped abruptly. ‘Because I don’t want it.’
Meg pulled herself from her father’s embrace and turned to stare at him, utterly shocked. ‘Not want this baby? Dad, what are you saying?’
‘How could we raise such a wee child without its mother?’
‘It has been done before,’ the doctor said, as Meg burst out, ‘I don’t know how you can even think such a thing. This poor wee baby is an important part of our family.’
‘And who will look after it?’
‘I will,’ Meg declared. ‘I promised Mom I would look after them all if anything happened to her. Are you suggesting abandoning the youngest one, the one Mom died giving birth to?’
Charlie already felt ashamed of his initial reaction, and yet he saw the burden the baby would be for his daughter. ‘Meg, you have your life before you,’ he protested.
‘Yes, I have my life before me and I won’t consider it a wasted one rearing my brothers and sisters,’ Meg replied, her eyes sparking angrily. ‘I promised Mom I would do it and I will, and that includes this little one just born, if she should survive.’ And then she turned to the doctor and said, ‘Please, do what you can to help her.’
‘I’d
