The room spun around and all the blood rushed from her head. Allison’s hand trembled as she tried to grasp the edge of the coarse oak table nearby. But that was not going to help.
She was going to be sick.
I’ve got to get out of here, she thought.
Allison turned toward the door, threw a hasty glance back into the room, then stumbled out of the cottage into the biting rain. They were all still busy. They would never even notice that she was gone.
She tumbled forward down the incline, unconscious of the rain beating on her body, not feeling the fierce wind on her face, twice nearly twisting her ankle on the rocky ground. On she ran. The direction hardly mattered. Only that she put as much distance between herself and that hateful place as possible.
The baby had died, only moments before.
There had been nothing her mother could do. There had been nothing anyone could have done. Even if Dr. Connally had been there, the outcome would doubtless have been unchanged. The labor had suddenly come two months premature after what had been a very difficult pregnancy. Perhaps had there been a hospital nearby, there might have been a chance. But how could an infant struggling for its life hope to survive under such primitive conditions? Aberdeen was sixty miles away. Her mother might be the best midwife in the area, but some things were impossible even for Joanna MacNeil. And perhaps as Allison stumbled alone into the night, she managed to dull the sting of her own sense of failure with the realization that no one else had been able to save the child, either.
Who wouldn’t get sick in that hovel? she thought, with the stupid peat smoke clogging the air so they couldn’t breathe, and the disagreeably intimate proximity with all the noisome neighbor women who turned out to lend a hand to the blessed event. Some blessedness! Now they were all in there crying and praying and trying to comfort the pathetic Peters woman.
But Allison knew what had really sent her reeling from the cottage was the pitiful sight of the dead baby. She had never actually seen death before. The infant had scarcely been larger than the two hands of her mother that had frantically tried to pump the life back into it. And now, a quarter mile from the Peters’ cottage, wind in her hair and rain streaming down her tear-stained face, Allison could not blot the sight of that tiny, limp, bluish body from her memory.
Oh, why had her mother forced her to witness such an awful thing!
Allison stopped for a moment and forced her eyes tightly shut. But it did not help. The death-child still loomed larger than life before the eyes of her mind.
She should have known better than to bring me, thought Allison, forgetting how many times in the last month she had pleaded with her mother to treat her like a grown woman rather than a child. All those other women . . . they’ve seen it before. It’s part of their life. But not mine. That’s what people like them have to face as their lot in life. But not me! Why does my mother insist on being one of them? It’s not our place! We’re meant to be above—
Her self-centered and confused thoughts were suddenly cut short as her foot snagged on a protruding scraggly heather bush. She stumbled and fell, hands and knees landing in the muddy dirt. It was not until that moment that she became aware of how cold she was. Or that she’d left her coat behind. Slowly she picked herself off the ground. Her party dress was not only soaked, now it was splattered with mud. It would serve her mother right, she thought! Now she would have to buy her a new dress, and it was no fault but her own. And after what she had been through this evening, Allison considered herself well-deserving of the fifty-pound dress in the magazine.
The icy cold was penetrating. But the thought of returning to the cottage for her coat never entered her mind.
Allison stood and looked about her, realizing for the first time that she had no idea in which direction she was headed. Yet above the din of the wind she could hear the faint sounds of the sea. The Peters’ place was located three miles east of town, about half a mile inland on the large bluff that spread out toward Strathy Summit. Glancing about her, she realized she must have gone north from the cottage, down the slope, toward the sea. Fortunately she had gathered her wits just in time. Inching ahead, she made her way forward until before long she came to the rocky ledge atop the cliffs overlooking the sea some ninety feet below.
It was well she did not suffer the same reaction to heights as she had to blood and death. Below and to her left, Ramsey Head—now shrouded in fog and rain and nearly too black to distinguish clearly—loomed so close she could have tossed a rock onto its southern slope. She shuddered, as many would to find themselves so near the Head on such a wild night as this. Children were warned away from the place. Local folk had tale after tale of strange and mysterious sounds and disreputable doings associated with the promontory. An evil man—a murderer, they said—jumped from the top of the Head, plunging to his death in the treacherous shoal below. His body had never been recovered, undoubtedly carried far out to sea by the strong tides of the North Sea. But even after seventy years, no one cared to linger long in a place where—so the old-timers like to point out—a body might surface at any moment.
Allison did not shudder on this night, however, because of the eerie tales of past evils. Or even at this moment from the cold which had now pierced to her very bones. Rather the quiver which went involuntarily through her spine as she stood looking down on the faint white-tipped waves resounding against the rocks below was from the sight of several dozen dim lights bobbing up and down in the water offshore.
This must have been where the schooner went down, on the most hazardous stretch of coastline for miles. Growing accustomed to the darkness, she could now begin to make out lights of the rescue party on the shore as well. Now and then a muffled shout from below could be heard. But they’d have little success tonight, it seemed, with the rain and fog and high seas impairing their every effort. Turning her eyes again toward the lights from the daring fishing vessels bobbing up and down like corks in the angry waves, she thought, They must be crazy! They’ll end up in the same fix as the schooner!
So intent was she upon the playing out of events on the water and on the shore below her that she did not hear the approach behind her until the snap of a twig revealed that she was not alone.
She started and let out a little cry.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, dear.”
Composing herself quickly, almost reluctantly Allison turned. Though she was relieved, at that moment she wished the voice had belonged to almost anyone else.
“I brought your coat,” Joanna continued. “You must be freezing.”
“Yes . . . thank you,” replied Allison, taking the coat and slipping it over her soaked dress.
“Dear,” Joanna began, reaching out to her daughter not only with her hand but also with the yearning tone of her voice.
“Look!” Allison broke in with a light voice, pointing toward the sea with the arm her mother would have touched, “the schooner must have gone down off the Head.”
“Allison,” continued her mother, not to be deterred despite her daughter’s apparent reluctance to hear her words, “forgive me for making you come tonight.”
“You needed help,” replied Allison coolly.
“If I had known what was going to happen . . .”
“Mother, I’m a big girl.”
“You left so suddenly. I thought—”
“It looked as if you had enough help,” said the daughter quickly, “ . . . and I was curious about the wreck.”
Joanna simply nodded, making no mention of the hurriedly forgotten coat. “Would you like to talk about what happened?”
“I don’t see what there is to talk about, Mother. A baby died. There’s not much we can do about that. It happens all the time. But really, the conditions these people live in are deplorable.” She turned abruptly and began a brisk walk back to their car, which was waiting at the cottage.
Joanna sighed, and followed.
Nothing more was said about the experiences of the evening, except a passing comment on Allison’s part about her desperate need for a new party dress.