Brummagem Days - a novel by Angela Watton

The woman on the bed writhed, her belly distended, the skin tightly stretched, a sheen of sweat giving the flesh a livid slick. Her back arched as she bore down in a futile attempt to bring the infant into the world of the living before it became too late for both of them.

Doctor Mayberry leaned over the crumpled bed and placed his hand over the woman’s swollen stomach, gently palpating and probing, feeling which way the child was lying.

Stella Subacci stood on the other side of the bed, looking down with consternation at her friend’s travail, the cloth with which she had ineffectively been dabbing at Kathyleen’s pallid face, held between clasped hands pressed hard against her chest in an attitude of prayer.

Dr Mayberry opened his leather ‘doctor’s’ bag exposing the neatly labelled bottles in their separate compartments, the thermometer in its brass shell, the collection of silver measuring spoons marked in pennyweights, scruples and grains, powders and unguents in squat black jars, their silver tops worn smooth by twisting fingers, screwed tightly in place – and the row of shining, wickedly sharp scalpels wrapped in velvet in their smooth mahogany case, which the doctor now opened, the light from the spluttering lamp held tremulously by a shocked Blanche at the foot of the bed glittering on the fine steel blades.

Raising his eyes Doctor Mayberry said in a low voice, “Mrs Subacci – Stella – I shall need clean towels, hot water, plenty of clean newspapers and sheets.”

Then, turning to Blanche, said briskly, “Put that lamp down, girl before you drop it. Go downstairs and get me a bowl of water, a bar of soap and something to dry my hands on.

“Look lively, girl, the sooner this baby is born the better.”

Aside to Stella he added in a whisper, “If it’s not already too late.”

Blanche, startled into movement by the doctor’s sharp tone, nervously placed the lamp, the only source of illumination other than that of candles in the upstairs rooms, on the chest of drawers beneath the darkened window, steadying the lamp’s tall glass chimney as she did so.

With a last terrified look at her mother, now momentarily, mercifully, silent and still, she turned and fled down the stairs, catching her heel on the last but one tread and pitching forward into the room below.

Three pairs of eyes were fixed upon her: her father’s, piercingly blue and challenging beneath bushy grey eyebrows; the stranger’s, shadowed and full of concern; and Sorrel’s vivid emerald green, blank with fear.

Blanche shot an appealing look at her father hardly seeming to notice or question the presence of the priest and grabbed Sorrel roughly by the arm dragging her unceremoniously into the kitchen where Vivienne stood with her back against the sink, her face stiff with fright.

The girls had never before been in a situation like this, their mother so ill – maybe dying – and they were desperately afraid.

It was Vivienne who took charge. Practical and hardheaded, she never gave in to panic and, being told of the situation and of what Doctor Mayberry wanted, poked the fire into a blaze, filled both the large black kettles and the smaller tea kettle, putting two on the gas stove in the corner and one on the kitchen range to boil.

Blanche, galvanised into action by Vivienne’s calm command, took a large tin bowl from under the sink and a cake of washing soap from its dish on the draining board.

Sorrel frantically began to collect and stack newspapers, scattering them across the table in her haste and sending pages fluttering to the floor.

Towels hanging from the wooden drying rack suspended above the sink were plucked down, folded and piled on top of the bowl. By this time the kitchen was cloudy with steam from the boiling kettles.

Father Galsius, seeing the three girls rushing urgently about, skirts flying, cannoning into each other in the confined space, pushed his way into the kitchen and had bowl, towels and newspapers thrust without ceremony into his arms.

“This way,” ordered Blanche as she and Vivienne, their faces flushed with heat and urgency, each took hold of a heavy steaming hot kettle and started upstairs.

Father Galsius followed them, determined to be at the bedside of the woman who may have need of him at the last if God willed it.

Sorrel went to her father, who sat slumped in his chair with his head in his hands, and, kneeling at his feet, laid her tawny head in his lap. He absently stroked the damp hair, the fingers on his right hand, stiff and unyielding – another ‘souvenir’ from the trenches, – digging into the soft curls.

In the bedroom Doctor Mayberry set to work, ordering Stella to place newspapers around the bed, on the floor beneath the iron bedstead, and on the cleared surfaces of the chest-of-drawers and the bedside cupboard.

“What shall I do with this?” said Stella distastefully, holding out the overfull and blood-filled chamberpot she had unearthed from beneath the bed.

“Get it out of here!” snapped the doctor, and he turned to Blanche standing in the doorway still holding one of the big iron kettles. “Put that over there,” he ordered, waving a hand peremptorily in the direction of the kettle and then at the chest-of drawers. “Give Mrs Subacci the rest and you and Vivienne get out – and take that with you!” He pointed at the pot grasped in Stella’s shaking hands.

Dismissing both girls with the slopping chamberpot balanced between them, he ordered Stella to strip the soiled sheets from the bed, removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

He poured hot water into the bowl on the table at his side and selecting a glinting edged instrument, plunged it into the water. He then began grimly to wash his hands, lathering the carbolic soap up into a frothy foam.

He took his time.

Postponing the moment.

What he was about to do under these circumstances would most likely kill Kathyleen Cross and her baby – but he had no choice: if he did nothing, they would both die without doubt.

Putting his trepidation aside with an effort of will, he unfolded a threadbare but clean towel, and laying it on the bed by the side of the labouring woman, he placed one hand on her straining belly and said, in a deceptively controlled, low voice, “Hold her, Stella.”

Taking a deep breath, he removed the scalpel from the bowl, flicking off drops of scalding water, and with firm resolve made a swift, sure incision.

Kathyleen screamed, a cry of unendurable agony that keened and wavered in a torturous shriek.

Downstairs, her husband clenched his fists impotently, while Sorrel, still on her knees, clapped her hands over her ears and screamed in chorus.

Blanche, who had made her way across the yard through the drifting snow to the washhouse to empty the chamberpot, stopped in her tracks, arrested by the terrible cry, the contents of the pot spilling out, staining the white snow black.

Vivienne, in the kitchen, clung onto the back of a chair, the hard wood digging painfully into her hands, her knuckles threatening to burst through the skin with the intensity of her grip.

[Continued ...]