Grand Affair

‘She should have gone to hospital,’ he told the midwife, half accusingly, and then seeing the expression in the poor woman’s eyes he immediately regretted what he had said.

‘Yes, she should have gone to hospital,’ Mrs Proctor agreed, ‘but I was called too late for that, Dr Bailey. The baby was halfway out when I arrived, see? I wouldn’t be here only for one of the neighbours passing her door and thinking they heard her cry out and that, and so she sent for me. Poor child, she was five fingers already when I arrived. I don’t like losing a mother, not even with a breech birth, Dr Bailey. It’s years since I lost a mother, really it is. Can’t think when it happened the last time.’

Mrs Proctor’s voice, normally quiet, was raised in anxiety as she finished cleaning the baby and quickly wrapped it in some cheap striped towelling from her bag, for the room in which they stood was perishingly cold, so that as they were speaking they both looked as if they were smoking, so quickly did their breath turn to mist in the freezing air.

Dr Bailey sighed inwardly. Of course it was not the midwife’s fault that the girl had died. Called out at the last minute, the woman had evidently done all she could. He looked down at the dead girl. She must have been a pretty young thing, long dark brown hair, slender build, too slender probably, too young certainly.

‘It’s this wretched darn winter, everything at sixes and sevens since the snow, can’t get an ambulance, can’t get nothing,’ Mrs Proctor went on, giving the tip of her finger to the baby to suck and at the same time rocking it gently to and fro to keep both of them warm. ‘I’ve cleared up as best I can, Dr Bailey, but truly there was nothing more I could do for her. All I could do was try and save the baby. I’d no change even for the telephone in the hall, nothing. That’s how quick it all happened. It’s not easy in this neighbourhood, being a midwife, I tell you. Sometimes they call you out and there’s nothing happening. Two in the morning, four in the morning, you wouldn’t believe it. They don’t mean to, of course, but there it is, there’s nothing to be done now, the poor girl’s dead as a nail and no more to be said.’

Looking round the room, which was indeed surprisingly spotless now, Dr Bailey had never been so glad that he was only the locum, that he was not going to practise in London. Tomorrow, whatever happened, he would be moving on from the dark brown neighbourhood of Notting Hill to the light and beautiful Scilly Isles, and not a day too soon.

He gazed round the chilling starkness of the room in which they stood, dreaming of the warmth he imagined lay ahead, of sunshine and spring flowers already blooming, although it was still only January. He couldn’t help contrasting those imagined scenes of light and beauty with the room in which he stood, its walls decorated with cuttings from cheap magazines and old calendars which its occupier – perhaps in some desperate effort to cheer the place – had pasted onto pieces of cardboard to make believe they were paintings.

And the fact that she had cut out so many pictures of green fields, of old-fashioned cottages with roses and wistaria climbing artlessly over their exteriors, of blue and white jugs filled with pale pink roses, made them seem unbearably poignant, set about this cheerless room with its curtains of old black-out material and its poor threadbare carpeting and its bare light bulb hanging from the yellowing electric wire in the bathroom.

‘Trouble is, a young girl like her – may she rest in peace, but they often think they can manage these things on their own.’ Mrs Proctor shook her head. ‘Frightened to tell anyone, too ashamed and that.’

Young Dr Bailey sighed again, this time aloud, as he looked at his watch and proceeded to write out the death certificate. Then he closed his bag and went to the window in the vain hope that somehow by now the snow would have stopped falling, which it had not. Still, at least it had covered the dreary muddle of buildings, giving it not only a new disguise but a quite alien beauty. And the street lighting too seemed softened, less stark, penetrating the cheerless room so that what with the quiet outside and the quiet inside, the sounds of the baby sucking at the midwife’s finger and the sight of the dead girl on the bed – because of the snow, it all appeared less real, thank heavens, more as if they were all just figures in a painting.

‘I’m afraid I really must go. I have two more calls to make before the night is out. I wonder . . .’ He hesitated, not wishing to impose, yet genuinely anxious to reach his next emergency call. ‘I wonder, could you possibly take the baby to the hospital for me? I have to go in quite the opposite direction.’

‘Oh, that’s no trouble, Dr Bailey,’ Mrs Proctor agreed, only too eager to help out because she was so contused with the guilt of losing the mother. ‘I can put the poor mite in my bicycle basket, all wrapped up, and push her there. It’s not that far.’

But so sudden and thick had been the continuing snowfall that they were forced to return to the miserable little room, the midwife still carrying the box in which she had placed the baby.

‘It’s against the rules,’ Dr Bailey said suddenly, as, having lit the gas fire with the aid of a few shillings and found further towelling for the baby, they warmed their own hands and feet in front of the two bars. ‘Against the rules entirely, but I really think we do need a little eau de vie if we are to survive this long, cold night.’

Mrs Proctor did not know what the doctor meant by eau de vie until he produced a half-bottle of whisky from his very new black leather bag. He found a couple of plastic mugs in a cupboard and poured them both a generous tot.

‘Someone here must have a bottle of milk we could give the baby. It really should have something soon,’ he said, after they had both drunk a little too readily from the toothmugs. ‘I know I heard a baby crying just now. On the ground floor.’

‘That’ll be Mrs Mac. She’s got three boys of her own, and helps people out now and then with their children. So many night workers around here, what with one thing and another,’ she added discreetly.

‘This one’s called Mrs O’Flaherty, but everyone calls her Mrs Mac after MacDonagh’s the shop on the corner, you know? She goes in there every day as they close, for the staling bread, and the tins that have a dent in them, anything to feed those kids. Not just her kids, everyone’s kids. She’s done more for the neighbourhood than the blessed government ever will through all these days of rationing, I always say. Not that she wants to stay here. No, she’s an eye on moving to the country, like this girl seems to have had, wouldn’t you say?’ Mrs Proctor looked round the room at the magazine pictures. ‘Everyone with children wants to take them to the country. I was brought up in the country myself,’ she added, almost to herself, because she could see the doctor’s attention wandering.

‘Why not leave the baby with this good lady for a few hours, then? With this Mrs Mac? It’ll be much better off in the warm, rather than going through the snow in the cold.’

‘Well, it would be better. ‘Specially since I heard the hospital’s had an outbreak, so it really wouldn’t be the place for the poor little mite at the moment, I don’t suppose.’

Mrs Proctor re-bundled the baby more tightly. She knew a good idea when she heard one. It had been an awful night, what with the terrible cold and losing the mother. She could push her bicycle home presently. Useless for her to take the baby to her place since she had neither milk nor bottles. She had not been able to find any in the room when she looked round, either. All sorts of sewing stuffs and needles and pins, but nothing for a baby. It really was as if the poor child had decided to ignore the pregnancy, pretend it wasn’t happening, for there was nothing here to say she had been expecting it, not even a size one baby vest.

Outside in the stone-cold corridor, with its Victorian tiled floor and fine plasterwork that told of former warm and colourful days when the house was a family home, they knocked on Mrs Mac’s unlocked front door. It swung to and fro a little in the draught as they waited politely for an answer and listened to the sounds from within, a tap running, a baby crying fitfully, a child calling out for a glass of water.

Out of the darkness of the small hall a large handsome red-haired woman appeared in a flowered apron of a too-thin material that was obviously doubling as a dress, underneath which she had tightly buttoned a much-mended wool cardigan for warmth. It was to this affable person with her warm presence and her reassuringly kind grey eyes that Mrs Proctor quickly explained the problem. Mrs Mac appeared to listen but Dr Bailey noticed that all the while Mrs Proctor was talking the woman had eyes only for the baby wrapped in the towelling and propped in its box.

This time it was Dr Bailey who explained their plight as plainly as he could, worrying that he was really asking too much from the obviously overburdened mother standing in front of him, for even as he was speaking he could hear sounds of children still awake and wanting her, despite the hour. But Mrs Mac did not appear in the least interested in his apologies for disturbing her, and before he had finished she had her hands stretched out for this so-recent arrival.

‘Just you stop your worrying now, doctor, and Mrs Proctor too, for haven’t you come to just the right door? I have everything here for a dozen babies and more, if you were to only know it. And ask anyone around, babies is my speciality, newborn babies in particular, I love them more than my own life.’

Dr Bailey smiled at Mrs Proctor for the first time that evening, momentarily delighted. This was the best bit of news they had heard the whole miserable night. They both knew that the unfortunate baby, born into such dreadful circumstances, might now have some sort of chance during its first few hours on earth.

‘Well, if you’re quite sure you’re sure, just until morning. Until Mrs Proctor can make arrangements, and so on,’ Dr Bailey said, backing off a little way down the corridor, suddenly aware that he must smell of whisky. ‘I mean, if you’re quite sure?’

‘When it comes to babies, I’m not quite sure, doctor, I’m completely sure. Even our old doctor always said, “Mrs O’Flaherty, you know more about babies than I’ll ever even begin to know.”’ Mrs Mac tossed back her thick plait of long red hair, and took the baby in the box from Mrs Proctor. ‘Now off yous go. Put the baby in hospital, what are you thinking of, both of you?’ she asked them, smiling. ‘Hospital’s the most dangerous place you can put a baby, everyone knows that, nothing but bugs and diseases. Don’t you give it another thought, it’ll be quite safe here with us at Number Four, and that’s all there is to it. Pick it up any time you want,’ she added, already turning away as if she was afraid they might change their minds and decide that her flat was an unsuitable place to leave the baby.

‘Pick her up. Her. She’s a girl. It’s a girl,’ Mrs Proctor told her, turning back quickly, suddenly realizing that kind though she knew Mrs Mac to be she might now refuse to take the baby in, seeing that so many women had no interest in girl babies, nor any liking for them either, only really wanting sons, which was strange when you thought about it, what with so many killed in two world wars.

‘Get on with you, doctor,’ said Mrs Mac, and she gave a rich laugh at the very idea of apologizing for the shoe box. ‘Didn’t you know that anything to do with shoes is lucky, for does it not mean that the Little People brought her to us?’

The next day the snow was so thick that it seemed London was entirely deserted except for children walking to school, or a pony and cart passing with a call for ‘old iron, any old iron’. And so it continued for some days, days during which the new baby was fed and looked after by Mrs Mac, becoming the centre of the family’s attention if only because of her sex, and as the snowdrifts piled up outside no-one came to remove the dead body of the mother from the room above, let alone to check up on the baby.

In the end it was nearly a week before Mrs Proctor herself was able to reappear at Number Four Porchester Crescent, and when she did eventually manage to visit the once gracious old house where she and the young locum had left the baby that cold dark night she was appalled to find that the poor dead girl was still lying upstairs.

‘Never mind the funeral rites, Mrs Mac,’ Mrs Proctor sighed, clicking her tongue. She stopped and turned. ‘Have you any idea of her name? I can find nothing in her room except these few pasted-up pictures. Did she not have any friends around here? Mrs Burgess—’

Mrs Mac said a little too quickly, ‘Mrs Burgess used her for sewing and that but there would not be a hope of her knowing who she was, believe me, Mrs Proctor, not a hope. Ask anyone round here. Young girls coming to London, they call themselves all sorts of names to avoid being found by their parents, or – well, all sorts and shapes of reasons. You can’t blame them. Why don’t you step in for some tea now? Wait till you see the weight our little angel’s put on for us,’ she went on, all too anxious to change the subject. ‘What a wonderful thing you did the other night, Mrs Proctor, for this is surely just a little angel sent to visit us all, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She’s a very pretty baby all right,’ Mrs Proctor agreed, as Mrs Mac made the tea and she stared into the straw basket with protective feelings mingling with reverence for a new life. After a pause she said, ‘I’ll be truthful with you, I don’t like to think of her being handed over to the Council, I don’t like it at all, Mrs Mac. She’d be much better off with you, here, wouldn’t she?’ She looked around the poorly furnished but scrupulously clean kitchen in which they were sitting. ‘Much better off. They never do well, babies that are put in municipal care, I don’t think. Particularly during a harsh winter like this. There’s always some bug, and we’re all still locked out of the hospital, you know, whole wards closed down because of the outbreak.’

‘Dead like her mother,’ Mrs Mac went on. ‘What a waste of our little flower’s life,’ she continued, hammering home the point. Mrs Proctor didn’t seem to notice this but only stared thoughtfully into Mrs Mac’s handsome face with its white skin and freckles which were so prolific it would be hard to find a space between them.

‘If she goes to the Council she’ll be up for adoption and maybe sent into the wrong hands. Some of these adoption families, I don’t know. Not suitable at all. They adopt and then they send them back after a few months. It’s pathetic, the things I’ve seen, you can imagine. No, perhaps you can’t imagine, Mrs Mac, being so kind, but believe me, it is pathetic.’ Mrs Proctor stared down once again at the little face lying peacefully asleep in the basket. ‘Well, I couldn’t tell you.’

‘She would be better off here so, with us,’ Mrs Mac agreed, and taking the baby from her crib she placed her in Mrs Proctor’s arms. ‘There now, put your finger into her hand and feel the strength of her.’

Mrs Proctor put her index finger into the baby’s palm, and then she looked up at Mrs Mac and shook her head disbelievingly at the power that seemed to be coming from the tiny hand. No council could ever give her the love and care that Mrs Mac could give her, and that was the truth. There was only one course to take now, and she was convinced of it, the one that would be best for the baby.

‘Supposing – just supposing that the poor baby had died with the mother? I mean no-one hereabouts knows she was born alive, except us and the doctor – and if we told the hospital and the undertaker she must have died and the girl disposed of her, no-one will know better, will they, Mrs Mac?’ she said, dropping her voice despite the fact that they were quite alone. ‘And what with all the bad weather there’s enough going on for them not to even bother to ask. There’s the death certificate saying the mother died of a haemorrhage, of course, but nothing else to say exactly what happened, and what with the mother being such an unfortunate creature—’

‘Well now, I don’t suppose they would know there was a live baby,’ Mrs Mac interrupted quickly, her voice too at its lowest level as she looked up from her tea, all innocence. ‘No-one would know but us, and that young locum. But he’s gone off. He was hardly here more than a minute that night, as I remember it. Not likely to return either. You know locums, Mrs Proctor, they can’t wait to shake the dust from their feet. Too much like work, London, you know?’

‘There is only the death certificate signed by the doctor,’ Mrs Proctor repeated, more to reassure herself than Mrs Mac. ‘That’s all there is. Dr Bailey thought I would come back for the baby, but he was gone the next day so there was no-one to make sure.’

‘Nor would they care if they did know about the baby, Mrs Proctor, saving your presence, you being a medical person – not with the shortage of staff, and one thing and another. Sure the baby could have been thrown dead into a dustbin by the mother before she crawled up onto that bed upstairs and died, for all the rest of the world knows or cares, when you come to think about it, wouldn’t you say? Or I could have given birth to the baby myself, could I not now, for all they know? And as for my boys, they believe what I tell them, if they know what’s good for them, particularly since their father left for America and I’m doing all the raising of them.’

The two women stared at each other for a few seconds, each knowing what they meant without having to say anything. Mrs Proctor felt a satisfying surge of relief at the idea that the baby might not have to be handed over to the authorities.

This way at least the baby would be adopted into the kind of home the poor dead girl would have liked, and kept in the place where she herself, after all, had lived. Like this the child would be raised with other children, and by a kind and loving mother. It could not be better, really. Much better probably than if the mother had lived, friendless and alone, struggling against the odds to keep her child.

‘Sure my boys settled that long ago, Mrs Proctor.’ Mrs Mac looked up, smiling. ‘They’ve called her Ottilie – for wasn’t it the name of the shoes on the side of the box you brought her in?’