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Jo did just that, then lifted her tray and led the way upstairs.
CHAPTER TWO (#u6f30add9-87ed-556c-8d21-07280cbae406)
CHARLES LOOKED AROUND the room, realising that when rain wasn’t lashing the windows, Dottie would have an expansive view of the sea from her bed. Here, too, there were the early signs of Christmas decorations—a small, stained-glass decal on one window, a box of tinsel in a corner. Had someone—Jo?—started on the task before the weather turned?
But what really interested him in the room was a chest of drawers to one side of the bed, and the ranks of framed photos taking pride of place across the top of it.
Was there one of his mother?
He could hardly walk over and have a look.
Jo had pulled two chairs closer to the bed from what would be a sitting alcove by the window, and put small side tables beside each of them.
She waved him to one of them, but as she bent to set down her tray, he thought he saw her wince.
Strangers don’t ask questions, he told himself, but the doctor in him had to say, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Practice twinges, that’s all,’ she said, but the pink had gone from her cheeks and she looked a little drawn.
‘I’m also a doctor,’ he said to her quietly, ‘so if your baby decides to come early, and you can’t get into the village, I have delivered them before.’
‘This baby is not coming early,’ was the reply, no less forceful for being whispered. ‘This is to be a Christmas baby, timed to the minute!’
He considered that a bit ambitious. Would she consider having it induced on Christmas morning if it wasn’t showing signs of arrival?
‘What are you two whispering about?’ Dottie demanded to know.
Charles smiled at her.
‘I was just saying it’s a coincidence, Jo being a doctor, because that’s my profession.’
‘Ha!’ said Dottie with malicious glee. ‘I knew that vagabond was lying!’
Charles shook his head—unable to make any connection.
Jo must have been equally confused, for it was she who asked the question.
‘And just why, Dottie, does Charles being a doctor make his father a liar?’
‘Because his father always said he was a prince, and if that was true then his son would be a princeling, or whatever a prince’s sons are called, and this fellow says he’s a doctor.’
She paused, smiling in malicious glee, then went on, ‘Although he could be a liar, too, and the doctor thing just humbug!’
‘Oh, Dottie,’ Jo said, barely able to speak for laughter, ‘you do come up with the most startling logic. If his dad’s a prince then he’s probably one, too, but he could hardly hang around waiting for his father to die so he can have a job. If the liver place is as small as he says it is, there probably aren’t enough duties to keep his father busy, let alone Charles as well. He would have needed a job.’
Charles had watched Dottie while Jo was speaking—better by far than watching Jo with the laughter lingering in her eyes. The old lady didn’t seem at all perturbed, eating her way through her plate of cheese toast and sipping at her cocoa.
But her eyes were on him the whole time.
Trying to make out if he was the imposter she thought him?
Or trying to see some resemblance to his mother? A family likeness of some kind...
He hoped it was the latter, but after thirty-six years would she be able to tell?
The photos up here would definitely be off limits unless Dottie agreed he could look at them. There’d been no obvious photos of his mother in the parts of the house he’d seen so far. And, like Jo, he didn’t want to pry into drawers.
But he had come all this way to learn something of the mother he’d never known, so although her behaviour so far had been hardly welcoming, he had to overcome Dottie’s suspicion and distrust somehow.
‘Why did she call you Charles? Or did your father do that?’
The questions were so unexpected Charles swallowed some cocoa the wrong way and had to cough before he could answer.
‘No, my mother named me—well, she and my father chose the names before I was born. Apparently, they both liked Charles as a name, then Edouard after my father’s father and Albert after hers.’
He looked directly at Dottie.
‘Your husband was called Albert, wasn’t he?’
He thought the scowl she gave him might be all the answer he’d get, but then she said, ‘Bertie—we called him Bertie!’ in such a gruff tone Charles guessed at the emotion she was holding in check.
And why wouldn’t there be emotion? How would he have felt if she’d suddenly turned up at home?
Overwhelmed, to say the least.
He set aside the rest of his toast and moved his chair a little closer to the bed.
‘I know this must be a terrible shock for you, but I did write a couple of times and never received a reply so it seemed the only thing to do was to come. I’ll go away again as soon as your flood goes down, if that’s what you want.’
The scowl turned to a full-blown glare.
‘I do not open letters with foreign stamps,’ she said. ‘You do not know what germs they might be carrying. It’s how they spread anthrax, you know.’
Though slightly startled by the pronouncement, most of Charles’s attention had turned to Jo, who had her eyes shut and her hand to her belly.
That, he knew, was a contraction!
Had his inattention drawn Dottie’s eyes to Jo so that she said, ‘If that was a contraction, look at your watch and start timing them.’
After which she lifted the table off her legs, set it aside on the bed, and clambered out, remarkably spry for someone who looked about a hundred.
‘And don’t worry,’ she added, crossing the room to Jo. ‘I’ve delivered most of the people still alive in the village, grandparents, parents and even some of the older children. I’ll take care of you.’
The look of horror on Jo’s face told Charles what she thought of that idea, but she rallied.
‘That’s very kind, Dottie, but I’m a doctor, I should be able to manage. I mean, don’t women in some developing countries give birth in the fields where they are working, then wrap the baby in a sling on their back and keep working? If they can do that, I should be able to manage.’
She closed her eyes, pausing as another contraction tightened her belly.
‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘I absolutely cannot have the baby now. It’s not Christmas Day, and Chris and Alice can’t get through, and you know they want to be here.’
‘You’ve got no choice, my girl,’ Dottie told her. ‘And too bad if they can’t be here. I never did approve of them using you like this.’
Jo lifted her hand.
‘Please, Dottie, no more of that. And I’ll be glad of your help, but perhaps...’
She turned to Charles.
‘You’d have a mobile, wouldn’t you? If I do go properly into labour, we could start with video chat on my mobile and if it runs out of charge, could we use yours?’
‘You want your labour going out on video chat?’ Charles asked, totally bewildered by the speed at which things had moved from his meeting with his grandmother to possibly having to deliver a total stranger’s baby in the midst of the gale that thrashed the windows and shook the house. ‘With who, and why?’
‘Only to Chris and Alice,’ Jo said. ‘You see, it’s their baby.’
She spoke as if that explained everything, though from Charles’s point of view it only made things more confusing.
Their baby?
‘You’re a surrogate?’
But even as he asked the question he watched the colour drain from Jo’s face, and knew it was another contraction, a bad one. Childbirth hurt. So why would she go through it for someone else?
And how would she feel when it came time to hand over the baby she’d carried—nurtured—for nine months?
Now Dottie was issuing orders so he couldn’t pursue the matter.
‘Take the supper things down to the kitchen,’ she was saying to him. ‘Then when you get back I’ll tell you where to find clean linen. There are some sheets that are washed so thin they’re soft, and plenty of old towels. We’d better use this room, because the others all leak. The little chaise longue should be ideal because the back of it only comes halfway. And gloves, I suppose. There might be gloves in the kitchen!’
‘Washing-up gloves?’ Jo said faintly. ‘You’re going to deliver Lulu with washing-up gloves?’
‘You just relax,’ Dottie ordered. ‘We’ll do whatever is necessary.’
Charles carried the half-eaten meal down to the kitchen, wondering whether he should get out of this madness before he caught whatever brought it on!
Was the road really flooded?
And that thought horrified him!
Surely he wasn’t thinking of leaving these women on their own—one to deliver her baby, the other as dotty as her name.
Of course he couldn’t, flooded road or not.
So he carried his burden to the kitchen, noticed the bucket was full on the way and came back to empty it, checking there was no new stranger standing at the door before he threw the water.
Back upstairs for more orders! That part at least was a novelty. At home, and at the hospital, he was more likely to be giving them...
* * *
Jo closed her eyes and wondered if she willed it hard enough she could stop the contractions.
Forget about it!
But what about Chris and Alice? her mind protested.
Charge your mobile.
She stood up, ignored Dottie’s shriek that she needed to wait for the next contraction to time it, and went to her bedroom, where, by some miracle, her mobile was already on the charger and, even more wonderful, fully charged.
The linen cupboard was her next destination. He might be willing, this Charles who’d appeared from nowhere, but she doubted he’d fathom the system in Dottie’s linen cupboard.
But Dottie had been right, there were sheets washed to a softness that could be used to clean and wrap a newborn, and plenty of old towels—Dottie rarely parted with anything—on which the baby could be delivered. And she could cut up some of the old sheets to use as nappies—they’d be softer than the towels...
She pulled out an armful of each, then, because it felt good to be standing, she walked along the hall, avoiding buckets on the way, then back again.
Walking was good, until the next contraction came—far too close to the previous one—and she leant against the wall, the linen pillowed in her arms.
‘Was that a contraction?’ Dottie asked, peering out the bedroom door to see where her patient had gone.
Jo nodded, so bemused to discover she was thinking of herself as Dottie’s patient she couldn’t manage words.
The pain passed and she carried the linen through to Dottie’s room, then turned back. What she really needed was a shower—and just in case this baby really was coming, she’d have a shower, put on a clean nightdress and—
And what?
No! The baby couldn’t come. She wasn’t ready! Chris and Alice weren’t ready! And worst of all, there was this stupid low off the coast with wind gusts too strong for a helicopter to make it out here if anything went wrong—not with her so much, but with the baby...
She considered crying, so great was the frustration, but she wasn’t the crying type—tall, well-built women couldn’t get away with tears the way petite women could. Besides which, she’d never seen the point. What good did it do? And it made her eyes red! She’d have a shower. That way, if she did happen to cry—well, in the shower, who could tell...?
She stood under the streaming hot water for so long it began to turn cold. She knew the ancient hot-water system would take hours to heat it again and felt guilty about using it all, though Charles and Dottie had already showered.
The next contraction was strong enough for her to grab the washbasin to hold herself steady until it passed.
This couldn’t be happening!
It was bad enough that she’d spent the last weeks of this pregnancy wondering how she could stop herself shrieking or swearing in front of Chris and Alice, but in front of Dottie and the stranger?
Dear Heaven! What was she to do? Didn’t soldiers in bygone times bite on bullets while surgeons extracted other bullets from their wounds.
How did they not break their teeth? she wondered as she walked back to her room.
Not that Dottie would have a bullet to bite on—at least Jo hoped not, although with Dottie you couldn’t be sure of anything.
Another wave of pain washed over her. This was ridiculous, she thought as she gripped the end of the bed for support. Baby was two weeks early when the obstetrician had assured her it would be late, and she was out on the bluff with the worst weather in a hundred years raging all around her, and a total stranger and an eighty-five-year-old midwife for support!
Not that she doubted Dottie’s ability to do anything she set her mind to—sheer stubbornness would see to that!
As the pain ebbed, Jo pulled out a clean nightshirt, packed because it was slightly more decent than the long T-shirts she usually wore to bed, and she’d thought she might have to get up to Dottie in the night. She put cream on her face and sat on the bed, her hands on the low swell of her belly.
