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The minute they turned into Friargate and Ellie saw her brother and sister standing huddled together outside the closed shop door, she knew that something was wrong. Anxiously she started to walk faster.
‘Ellie, you’ve been ages…’ Connie’s face started to crumple, and she suddenly looked much more like a young girl than the young woman she was always claiming herself to be.
‘What is it? What?’ Ellie began, and then stopped as the door opened and her aunt stood there eyeing her coldly.
‘So you have finally returned, have you, you wretched creature?’ Aunt Gibson hissed bitterly. ‘Do you know what your disobedience has done to your mother?’
Horrified, Ellie looked past her aunt towards her father.
‘That’s enough, Amelia,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not fair to blame Ellie. She –’
‘Not fair?’ Amelia gave Ellie an angry look. ‘Is it fair, Robert Pride, that my poor sister should go into labour ahead of her time because her daughter defied her?’
‘No!’ Ellie protested. What her aunt was saying couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be. She started to tremble, cold now where just a few minutes earlier she had been sweetly warm with the intoxicating memory of the illicit pleasure she and Gideon had just shared, delighting in the precious secret world of their love.
‘Yes!’ Amelia insisted sharply. ‘You are a wicked, wicked girl, Ellie Pride, and if your poor mother and this baby die, then it will be on your conscience.’
‘Amelia, that’s enough,’ Ellie’s father said sternly. ‘I know how upset you are, but if anyone’s to blame for this…’
Her mother die? What on earth was her aunt saying? Frantically Ellie looked towards the stairs.
‘Ellie, no!’ Robert Pride blocked her path. Grasping her arms, he told her in a gentler voice, ‘No, you cannot go up there right now. The midwife is with your mother, and…and your Uncle Alfred.’
‘So it is true,’ Ellie whispered, her eyes huge with distress and despair. ‘The baby is coming.’
‘Yes.’
Glancing past her Robert could see through the still-open door that Gideon had quick-wittedly drawn the two younger children out of earshot and was entertaining them with one of his tricks.
Releasing Ellie, Robert strode out to them, closing the door behind him.
‘Gideon, lad, I wonder if you would be kind enough to take our Connie and John over to Winckley Square? They are to stay there until…for the time being.’
‘What? Why have we got to go there?’ John demanded indignantly.
‘Is Mother really having the baby?’ Connie asked excitedly.
‘Aye, lass, she is,’ Robert confirmed. ‘Now be good children and go with Gideon. Your aunt has sent instructions home that beds are to be prepared for you.’
‘Well, I hope Mother doesn’t take too long to have this baby,’ John grumbled. ‘I don’t like it at Winckley Square. You have to be quiet all the time and not touch things.’
Awkwardly Robert patted his shoulder, but his concentration wasn’t really on his two younger children.
As Gideon ushered them away, Robert glanced up at the closed bedroom window above, his face tight with anxiety and despair.
In the hallway, Ellie was pleading tearfully with her aunt to be allowed to see her mother.
‘Certainly not, miss. It would not be at all proper, and besides –’
Amelia broke off as they both heard the long tortured cry of primeval pain that came from the room above them. Then Ellie pulled free of her aunt and raced up the stairs, pushing open her parents’ bedroom door.
A strong smell of carbolic filled her nostrils, making her catch her breath. The room was hot and lacking in fresh air.
Her mother was lying in bed, her hands gripping the bars of the brass bedstead, her teeth clenched over the twisted piece of cloth in her mouth, her head twisting from side to side as she tried to escape the pain tearing at her.
Ellie froze in shock. Surely this was not her fastidious, elegant mother, this woman who bared her teeth in a feral grimace before uttering a low panting animal grunt of mingled pain and endeavour?
Sweat caked her mother’s hair, which clung stickily to her face. As another wave of pain struck, she began to pant, her fingers gripping the arm of the midwife.
Was this what giving birth was? This primitive agony that filled the air with sights, sounds, scents from which Ellie recoiled, shocked by their visceral rawness.
But beneath her shock there was still her love for her mother; and her guilt. She was responsible for this, for her mother’s agonisingly hard labour; that was what her aunt had told her. She, by arguing and quarrelling with her mother and going against her wishes, had somehow brought on the arrival of the baby before its due date.
Unable to think logically, Ellie was filled with fear and remorse. She took a step towards the bed, barely aware of her aunt grabbing her arm to pull her back as her mother went rigid, beads of sweat glistening waxenly on her forehead as she began to moan.
‘Get that girl out of here. She has no business being here,’ Uncle Gibson demanded curtly, no longer the familiar, slightly pedantic figure Ellie knew, but a grim-faced stranger, whose presence cast a dark shadow over the bed.
As her aunt pushed her towards the door, Ellie suddenly tensed and turned round to look imploringly towards her mother, mentally begging her for forgiveness.
‘I’m so sorry, Mama,’ she whispered, adopting the baby form of address she had long ago grown out of. ‘I promise I will never ever disobey you again…never.’
As Ellie looked at her it seemed to her that her mother had changed; that her skin had somehow gone grey, her eyes become sunken. Instinctively Ellie wanted to go to her, but then suddenly Lydia’s whole body convulsed and she started to scream.
Ellie only realised that she was screaming as well when her aunt slapped her face briskly the moment she had her outside the bedroom door.
‘It is your mother who is in travail, you stupid girl,’ she told Ellie bitingly, ‘not you.’
Ellie couldn’t make any response. She was shivering, her teeth chattering. She desperately wanted to beg her aunt to reassure her that having a child was not always like this – that her mother’s agonising pain would never be her own. How could her aunt not be as shocked and appalled as she was herself? How could her uncle not do something to alleviate her mother’s agony? How could her father have allowed this to happen?
How could she have so cruelly and heedlessly disobeyed her mother?
All through the warm May evening it went on, until Ellie did not know which was the worst to bear – her mother’s screams or the oppressive silences between them when she kept her own body as still as she could in the emptiness of the parlour, listening, waiting…doing her self-imposed penance for her sin of disobeying her mother.
Her father had gone out, unable to endure the sound of his wife’s agonising distress; her aunt was still upstairs, assisting her husband and the midwife.
Ellie tensed as suddenly a thin, high scream split the thick silence, followed by the sharp mewling cry of a newborn child.
Picking up her skirts, she ran up the stairs, but before she could enter the room her aunt came out, firmly closing the door behind her and barring Ellie’s way as she gripped hold of her.
‘I want to see my mother,’ Ellie begged frantically.
Refusing to let go of her, her aunt dug her fingers painfully into Ellie’s arm.
‘No. You cannot. Your mother has given birth to a son. You have a new brother,’ her aunt told her tonelessly. ‘She is resting now and must not be disturbed.’
‘Resting!’ Ellie sagged against the banister in relief, closing her eyes as hot tears of release burned onto her skin, too innocent to recognise just what the grim, flat defeatedness in her aunt’s voice really meant. Her mother was alive!
Below, the front door opened and her father came hurrying up the stairs, bringing with him the smell of strong ale.
Amelia recoiled in distaste and shot him a bitterly contemptuous look.
‘Lyddy?’ he demanded thickly.
‘You have another son,’ Amelia told him curtly.
‘Mam is resting, Father,’ Ellie told him softly. ‘They are both all right.’
As she brushed away her tears, Ellie missed the looks her father and her aunt exchanged, her father’s questioning and anxious, her aunt’s grim and negative. When she looked up Ellie saw the dark tinge of colour burning her father’s face as he turned away from her aunt, and puzzled over it. Surely now that her mother had been safely delivered and both she and the new baby were alive, there was no need for her aunt to continue to be so angry.
Ellie ached to ask if she might see her mother but her uncle and the midwife were still in the bedroom with her, and Ellie gave the closed door a helpless stare before accompanying her aunt downstairs.
‘It will be better if Connie and John stay at Winckley Square until…for now,’ Ellie’s aunt said as she paused in front of the hall mirror to pin on her hat.
Aunt Amelia looked as though she had been crying, Ellie suddenly recognised, as she inclined her cheek for Ellie to kiss before opening the front door.
It was a soft late spring night, with the sky full of stars. A lovers’ night. Shame and guilt filled Ellie. She longed to be able to see her mother and to beg her forgiveness; to promise her once more that she would never disobey her again! She felt sick and shaky, overwhelmed with love for her mother, and overwhelmed too by her own intense remorse. Her guilt would be branded into her for ever, Ellie told herself.
Robert Pride looked down into the sunken face of his wife. Tears filled his eyes and his shoulders began to shake. Carefully he reached for her hand, hardly daring to touch it. She looked so fragile. So frail!
‘Robert?’
He tensed at the thin, whispery sound of her voice. She had opened her eyes, and even they looked different somehow: opaque, almost devoid of their normal rich colour.
‘Lyddy, don’t try to talk. You have to rest.’ His voice broke as he tried to control his emotion. Curling her cold hand into his own he lifted it to his lips, kissing her icy fingers, as though he was trying to breathe warmth – and life – into them.
‘She cannot survive, Robert,’ Alfred had told him after the midwife had finished her business and left them on their own.
‘But she is alive,’ Robert had protested, ‘and the birth is over.’
‘The child has been born, but Lydia is…’ Alfred had coughed, plainly uncomfortable discussing something so intimate. ‘But there was…she…she is bleeding badly, Robert, and we cannot stem it. I had feared that this would be the outcome of her pregnancy.’
‘Bleeding? But surely you can do something to stop it.’ It was inconceivable to Robert that, having survived the appalling agony of the birth of their child, Lydia should not be safe.
‘We have done all that we can,’ Alfred had told him heavily. ‘The midwife and I have raised the foot of the bed and done everything we can do to stanch the flow, but I’m afraid…’
As he spoke, Robert’s stomach had lurched. He had been vaguely aware of the midwife removing a pile of soiled bed linen, but he had not understood just what it meant.
‘I did warn you that this could happen,’ Alfred had reminded him sternly. ‘There was a similar problem with her previous birth, but then the child was not full term, and small. I must go now. There is nothing more I can do here. You must keep her quiet and still. The less she moves…’ He had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid that it is only a matter of time, Robert. I shall return in the morning, but if…if you need me in the meantime…’ Awkwardly, he had patted Robert’s shoulder, sighing as he added, ‘I am afraid that Amelia is taking this very badly. Lyddy was…is her favourite sister and she feels…’
Numbly, Robert had let him go.
‘Robert, I want to see Ellie. Where is she?’ As she spoke Lydia was struggling to sit up.
Panic-stricken, Robert urged her to lie down. Beneath the covers she was swaddled in old sheets, wrapped around her to soak up the life draining from her.
‘Ellie…’ Lydia demanded weakly.
‘I shall bring her to you,’ Robert promised her. ‘Only lie still, my beloved. Please.’
‘Mother wants to see me?’
It hurt Robert unbearably to see the relief and happiness brightening Ellie’s pale face.
‘Oh, then she is getting better!’ Eagerly she followed him upstairs, pushing open the bedroom door and hurrying to her mother’s side.
The strong smell of carbolic still hung on the air but now it was overwhelmed by another smell, one that Robert recognised, but that he prayed both his wife and his daughter could not. How many times in the slaughterhouse had he breathed in that scent of hot blood? His throat closed and surreptitiously he wiped his hand over his eyes.
Briefly, Ellie glanced at the baby as she sat down beside her mother.
Robert followed the direction of her glance. The child at least was healthy in spite of its early arrival – a six-pound boy with a strong pair of lungs.
As he looked towards Lydia, Robert thought he could already detect signs of death in her still features. Ellie, though, thank goodness, was oblivious to her mother’s real condition as she bent her head to kiss her tenderly.
‘Oh, Mama, Mama, I am so sorry that I made you angry,’ she whispered. ‘Please, please, say that you forgive me!’
Quietly, Robert left the bedroom.
‘Ellie…please listen to me…’
Tiredly, Lydia closed her eyes and fought to summon what was left of her strength. There was none of the familiar ache she had experienced after her previous live births, none of the deep but satisfying exhaustion that told of hard labour well done; none of the cleansing sense of freedom and euphoria; of maternal joy, only a deep numbing coldness that seemed to seep up her body in a slow tide that could not be escaped. She didn’t need to see the tears of her husband, or the anguish of her sister, to know what was happening to her. She had known it from the moment she had felt that dreadful tearing pain, which had seemed to wrench not only the child from her, but her very womb as well. Time was running out for her, and she doubted that she would see another dawn, which made it all the more imperative that she spoke with Ellie.
‘I am listening, Mama,’ Ellie told her emotionally.
‘Ellie, I want you to promise me never to see Gideon Walker again. I ask you for this promise not because I want you to suffer but because I want to protect you. My mother pleaded with me not to marry your father, but I would not listen. I believed that I knew better than she, and now look what has become of me. Your father is a good man and I would not have anyone say any other, but…but none of your aunts, my sisters, would ever find themselves in the situation that I am in. Men like your father and Gideon Walker, they…’ Weakly, she closed her eyes. How could she explain to Ellie the terrible price that women had to pay to appease the hungry sexuality of such men?
‘Your aunts, my sisters, know my wishes, Ellie…and my hopes for you and your sister. I want you to promise me that you will obey them in all things, and that you will remember that they are carrying out my wishes. I cannot bear to think that you may meet a fate like mine, Ellie…Promise me, Ellie…’
Ellie started to cry, too overwrought to question logically what was happening, knowing only that right now her love for her mother took priority over everything and everyone else in her life.
‘Mama, please,’ she choked. ‘I will promise you whatever you want, if only you will forgive me…’
‘You will put Gideon Walker completely out of your life and your thoughts, and you will be guided by your aunts in all things, do you promise?’
‘I promise, Mama,’ Ellie sobbed.
‘Good. I want you to remember always that you have made me this promise, Ellie. To remember it and to honour it, because…’
Her mother’s voice had become so faint that Ellie could barely hear it, and then suddenly she stopped speaking, her head falling to one side on the pillow.
As she clung to her mother’s icy cold hand, Ellie could hear her breath rattling in her throat.
‘Oh, Mam, Mam, please, please get well,’ she begged heartbrokenly, reverting to the comforting softness of the town’s dialect as she clung to her hand.
Lydia’s eyes were closing. ‘Always remember and honour your promise to me, Ellie.’
The words were so low, little more than a sigh, that Ellie had to bend her head closer to her to hear them.
She saw her mother’s chest expand once as she breathed in – sharply – and then went still, her eyes suddenly opening, focusing not on Ellie but into the distance.
