“I don’t know how to do this. I can’t do it!” I could hear myself shouting in panic, and with a searing red-hot pain the head was delivered.
“Wait,” you said. “Breathe, she’s turning, she’s coming.” And with one final heave, the baby was out. You scooped her up, put her over your knee, and smacked her tiny blue bottom until she cried and pinkened. She was your colouring—dark hair, her skin brown next to mine. At some point while I was under or resting you’d fetched clean towels from the airing cupboard and a bowl of hot water. You wrapped her so only her face was showing. “We’ve got a girl,” you said, kissing me, putting the baby in my arms, and wiping damp hair from my face. Our daughter was as plump and creased as a shar-pei. Her eyes were glassy and looked straight through us. “The first,” you said. And I laughed; I felt hysterical.
The midwife arrived an hour later, bumping a wheeled tank of gas and air up the veranda steps. The placenta had been delivered, the cord cut, and you were holding Nanette in your arms.
“My goodness, what a bed,” the midwife said, and then, “Looks like I wasn’t needed after all.” She sat on the edge of the mattress and took hold of my wrist. She was tall and thin, with the blue belt of her uniform pinching her waist.
“Waspish,” you said later.
A round white hat was stuck on the back of her head behind a severe middle parting. “I’ll need to carry out a quick examination,” she said, lifting up the sheet covering my legs. “Mr. Coleman, I’d be obliged if you’d leave the room.”
I could see you were about to argue. “A cup of tea, Gil,” I said. “Please?”
“And leave the baby with us,” she said.
The midwife tutted as she examined me. “I always prefer it if my ladies are shaved before delivery,” she said. “It makes everything so much neater. Did you lose a lot of blood?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have plenty of pilchards and Guinness, just to be sure. Well, you’ll do. Legs together, please. Let’s have a look-see at baby now. You don’t have to breastfeed, you know.” She took Nanette from me, unwrapping her. “Lots of women are bottle-feeding these days. Formula’s got everything in it, and more.” She inspected the umbilical cord and seemed satisfied. Nan was weighed on portable scales, wrapped up again, and handed back.
I felt nothing. I waited for the rush of love I knew was supposed to come, and I wondered what my mother had thought when she looked at me for the first time. A few days later, when I was still forgetting there was a baby in the next room and would only remember when the front of my dress became wet, I telephoned my aunt. She was delighted to hear she had a great-niece, said she would visit as soon as she was able, and, when I asked, she told me that my mother had loved me from the moment she saw me. I believed then—but didn’t say—that there had to be something wrong with me. My aunt never made it over from Norway; she died a week later.
I woke a little while ago to see Flora sitting beside me in her nightie. The sun was up and there was dribble on my cheek where I’d laid my head on the table to close my eyes for a few moments; it seems my little sleep had become a couple of hours.
“What are you doing?” Flora asked.
“I’m writing,” I said.
“But you’re not a writer. Daddy’s the writer.”
I paused, thinking about all the things I could tell her. “Yes,” I said. “Daddy’s the writer. I just write letters.”
“In your sleep?”
“I was writing before I fell asleep.”
“Who do you write letters to?”
“Daddy.”
“What do you put in them?”
“All sorts of things.”
“Do you write about me?”
“I haven’t got to the bit where you were born.”
“Does Daddy write back to you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he hasn’t read my letters yet.”
“Why?”
“They’ll be waiting for him when he gets home.”
Flora huffed, as if the idea of writing anything was ridiculous and exhausting.
“Why don’t you just talk to him?” she said.
Why don’t I just talk to you? Because you aren’t here, because even if you were, you wouldn’t listen.
Yours,
Ingrid
[Placed in Egon Schiele, by Alessandra Comini, 1976.]
Chapter 23
When Flora returned from the beach, Nan was on her knees wiping the kitchen floor, wringing a sopping cloth into a bucket. The chairs had been lifted to stand amongst the books on the table, and Richard was washing something under the tap.
“What happened?” Flora said, standing in the doorway.
Nan looked up, pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. “The washing machine leaked. Some kind of blockage.”
“Found the culprit,” Richard said. He placed the little soldier on the counter beside Nan’s head.
“How on earth did that get in the wash?” Nan stretched her neck to look at it.