The Corset, page 6
Screwing up all my courage, I forced my legs forwards and went over to her. I knelt on the floorboards and took her perspiring hand in my own. Her grip was like a vice.
I had no words of comfort to reassure her. All I could do was stare dumbly, watching her pant. She didn’t talk to me. All the air she sucked into her lungs was blown straight out again, as if she were trying to puff the pain away. Time stretched to twice its normal length. I tired of holding the candle so I threw it into the grate, where it caught a pile of cinder and simmered.
By the time Pa hurtled back into the room I couldn’t feel my hand. Ma’s fingers had drained the blood from it. But that paled to nothing when he said, ‘She can’t come.’
‘What?’ It was me, not Ma, who cried out.
‘Her girl has the measles. She can’t leave her and she can’t come here, it would be too dangerous for the baby.’
‘But she has to come.’
Pa and I regarded each other for a long time – longer than we ever had before. He looked younger than I remembered; young and terrified.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, crossing the floor and kicking off his shoes. ‘Jemmy, it’s all right. We can do this. We didn’t need anyone for Ruth, did we?’
She must have recognised the tone – it was the same artificial, cheerful one they used on me. But she didn’t respond. She seemed cut off from us now, submerged under waves of pain.
‘I’m going to check you.’ Pa’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. ‘I’m going to see if it’s on its way out.’
He threw the sheets off her legs and pulled up her stained nightgown. I caught a glimpse of angry, purple flesh straining over a misshapen lump.
I tried to jerk away, but she wouldn’t release my hand.
‘It’s the head,’ Pa declared, as if that awful sight pleased him. ‘Baby’s the right way around, at least.’ Then he must have seen how pale I was, how deadly sick. ‘I’m sorry about all this, Ruth. Perhaps it’s not quite the thing for a girl your age but … I’m going to need your help.’
‘Send for the doctor,’ I begged him. ‘If the baby’s early, something might go wrong.’
‘I can’t. I wish I could.’
‘You must! I’ll go first thing in the morning and pawn everything I own, I promise. Just save Ma!’
‘I can’t, Ruth. Old Dr Barber saw me in a tussle with the wine merchant last week. He’ll never give me credit, he knows I’m no good for it.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’
He waved a hand at me. ‘Go, quickly, and boil some water. Then see what you can find for your mother to drink. Heat wine if there’s any left. I might have a drop of whisky.’
‘I can’t go.’
We both looked down at my hand, blue in Ma’s grasp. She wasn’t screaming now. Her lips moved but they didn’t form words, it was all gibberish.
‘I’ll take over,’ Pa said and struggled to wrench me free.
I stumbled out of the room without looking back. My knees wouldn’t stop shaking. Not trusting myself on the stairs, I turned into my own room, fell into a pile beside my bed and threw up in the chamber pot.
I felt a bit steadier, after that. I hurriedly dressed in the gown I’d discarded that evening and drew a shawl over my shoulders.
Nothing was real: not the deserted, black room downstairs, nor the sleeping street. I wasn’t real, walking to the pump with my creaking bucket. I worked the lever. It gurgled and groaned at me as if awaking from a slumber. I carried the bucket back, intensely aware of the sound of my footsteps. Sloshing water, I staggered into the house and heaved my bucket through to the kitchen.
It was no quick task to re-lay the range, light it and bring the water to the boil. I was glad of it. Far better to be occupied than dwell upon my thoughts. I tried not to imagine what was occurring upstairs, and to block out any noise with the crackle of the fire. The cupboards didn’t hold any wine but I found Pa’s whisky. A quarter of the bottle was left. I decided to take it all.
My legs shook even harder on the way upstairs. My shoulders quivered too – not from cold, but from fear of what I’d find.
It was worse than I expected: Ma on all fours in the middle of the floor lowing like an animal at market. Tangled hair covered her face but I caught a disgusting flash of her rear end, matted with blood.
Pa snatched the bottle from my hand. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and took a swig before pressing it to Ma’s lips. She tried to drink, but spluttered. I set the hot water down on the floor.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ Pa cried. ‘Get some linen, change the bed. And find something to wash your mother.’
Ma howled.
He patted her back, looking tentatively round to her parted legs. His face puckered. ‘Ruth, how long were you gone?’
‘I don’t know. An hour?’
‘More than that, I think. And the baby is no further along.’
I wept as I changed the bed. No one observed me. I thought I’d feel better after a cry but my head ached. Perhaps that was when I started to realise how futile tears really are.
Dawn inched up the horizon. It didn’t bring light, only turned the sky from black to grey. Everything in the room had a washed-out, sickly look.
Ma had stopped her frightful cow impression. That was no comfort. Instead she grew listless and dreamy. We had no trouble putting her back in the freshly made bed; she flopped on to it like a rag doll, her face chalky against the pillow. I put a hand to her forehead – it was burning.
Pa was beside himself. ‘She’s getting weak. Much more of this and she won’t even have the strength to push the baby out.’
I opened the window for air. Black-suited clerks dashed by our house, heading off to their employment. The river folk went the other way.
Pa leapt up. ‘It’s no good. I have to cut her.’
‘Cut her!’
‘Look, look.’ He gestured. Reluctantly, I peeked again at that scrap of head and Ma’s stretched, tortured flesh. ‘She can’t open wide enough. The only way to get the baby out is to cut her.’
I clenched my thighs together. ‘You can’t!’
‘I must.’
‘She’ll bleed to death.’
He put both his damp hands on my shoulders. ‘Ruth,’ he said, more serious than I’d ever heard him. ‘Ruth, you need to be very brave. After I cut her and pull the baby out, you will have to stitch her up.’
Only his grasp on my shoulders held me upright. ‘Stitch her skin? Down there!’
‘Yes. It’s the only way.’
‘I can’t. Pa, please, I can’t—’
‘You have to. If we don’t act now, both Ma and the baby will die.’
I hated him. I hated Ma; the gory wreck she’d become.
Pa went to his studio for a penknife and I returned to my bedroom. My needle holder looked abhorrent now, a cloth book perforated with lines of torture. I selected my thickest, sharpest tool and picked up a reel of cotton, saliva filling my mouth, urging me to throw up at the very thought of what I must do.
Could I do it? My eyes were so heavy, my hands shook from lack of sleep. I’d never felt less able to complete a task in my life. And this was worse than the Metyard work. A mistake didn’t mean a fine, it meant – I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
Pa and I returned to Ma and stood either side of the bed. We looked like people about to commit a terrible crime. The light in the room wasn’t strong, but still it glinted on the edge of the knife.
‘We must make them clean,’ Pa said. ‘Heat it in the fire then plunge it into the whisky.’
I watched him and copied his actions. My needle flashed, molten for a moment, before it sizzled and steamed in Pa’s whisky. It smelt sharp, heady.
‘Right.’ He pushed his shirtsleeves farther up his arms. They were trembling. ‘Let me show you what I’m going to do.’
Together, we bent over Ma. She lay supine, uncomprehending as he lifted her nightgown and rolled it up as far as her breasts. Against her vivid flesh, the half-moon of the baby’s scalp glowed.
‘Here.’ His quivering finger drew lines above and below the protrusion. ‘The top first, then the bottom. I’ll reach in and pull the baby out. The moment I move away, you must start to stitch. There will be a quantity of blood. The afterbirth may come out while you’re working. Don’t worry about that.’
I had no conception what an afterbirth was, but I didn’t want to ask.
‘What if you nick the baby’s head?’
He paled, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. ‘I won’t.’
I glanced at the folds of skin, the fat veins throbbing between them. Suppose he caught one? What would we do?
My needle retained heat from the fire. I pinched it between my fingers until they hummed.
‘Ready?’
I didn’t see Pa’s expression as he braced himself. Every nerve was concentrated in the tip of his knife, hovering over the baby’s squashed head. For a moment it seemed absurd that we’d even thought of such a thing. He wasn’t really going to cut that taut skin. But then his wrist flicked and it was all too real.
Ma screamed.
Blood pulsed out and splashed on the knife. Crimson, brighter than I imagined. Another flick, another scream. I was glad Ma cried so loud – it covered the sickening sound of her tearing flesh.
Pa threw the bloody knife across the room and placed a hand either side of the baby’s head. It was slippery with gore. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. A series of images flashed before my eyes: blood trickling over Pa’s wedding ring; skin yielding; shapes slithering and rushing. Before I knew it, Pa was dashing past me with a grisly bundle in his arms shouting, ‘Now, Ruth! Now!’
How I managed to move forward and touch her I’ll never know. Her stench, hot blood lubricating my hands.
Don’t look, I told myself. Do not see.
There was so much fluid. My fingers struggled to grip Ma’s slick skin and pinch it together. I took a breath. Pierced flesh with my needle.
It was thick and unyielding, ten times worse than cording. The thread felt horribly weighted as I dragged it through her.
Do not see.
Rather than tidying her, my stitches puckered the torn skin, made it angry.
When something else hot and damp began to emerge, I knew it must be the afterbirth Pa spoke of.
I didn’t see. I willed myself blind, brought down the shutters. My hands moved mechanically, as they’d done over the silk gloves. Blind, blind. Behind me Pa moved frantically, rubbing at something.
The needle was strong, the needle got through. It powered through skin, through that horrifying friction.
A harsh cry jerked me from my work. Objects bounded back into focus: my hands, red and shining; Ma criss-crossed with stitches, her skin fierce and raw but joined together. I’d done the impossible.
Pa stood opposite, tears running down his face. ‘She’s alive! She wasn’t breathing but I managed to—’
The baby squalled again and cut him off.
She. A girl. I craned my neck for a better look.
My sister was a scrunched, red hunk like meat. Mucus coated her cheeks. She blinked her glazed eyes at me and opened her mouth in a wail.
I didn’t hate her now. I didn’t hate her a bit.
9
Ruth
It wasn’t the banshee wail of my nightmares. Instead, a whimpering snuffle awoke me and sent me tottering, bleary-eyed, across the room towards the crib.
Although Ma had said I wouldn’t need to do anything for the baby, she was indisposed from loss of blood. She slept deeply through the long, sagging nights. Lucky her! I had the crib in my room and was up every four hours or so, trying to fill a wet, dribbling mouth with spoons full of pap. And even when I wasn’t mushing brown bread with water to feed her, my ears detected the baby’s every sound, her every breath. When rest came, it was as thin as a reed and easily snapped.
In the grey light of dawn, I bent over the crib and blinked down at the little girl Pa had named Naomi. She’d emerged from the womb completely bald. Her head looked wrong, cold. I placed my palm over her scalp and she snuggled against it. She didn’t want food, only company.
It gave me an odd sensation in my chest to see her lying there. Her face was my face. Her features were smaller, of course, but she had the same nose, the same blunt chin. Pity came in a deluge and I lifted her from the crib to clamp against my chest. Hadn’t I always wanted someone to understand me and love me for what I truly was? Maybe Naomi was that person. My ally, at long last.
‘You need a cap,’ I told her. ‘Come on.’
Even at that hour, Pa was in his studio. I heard glass chink and knew that, somehow, he’d got hold of more whisky. It helped him to paint, he said, but I knew why he really drank. It was the same reason I woke, night after night, covered in sweat.
Ma’s stitches were obvious, yet there were other wounds inflicted that evening – wounds no eye could see. Mine cut deep.
Be blind. Those were the words I repeated while I stitched Ma up, and at the time I thought they’d worked. But part of me had seen, part of me retained every detail.
I clutched the baby tighter and descended the stairs.
‘No lace or white-work, I’m afraid,’ I whispered to her. ‘Just a simple cap.’
Even that felt beyond my ability.
I settled Naomi on her back, in the seat of the comfortable chair, and took Ma’s usual place by the window. All the material looked dishwater grey. I dug through it, trying to find the lawn-cotton shapes I’d cut for a cap days before. I’d left them unsewn, expecting the baby to come later. I’d thought, as people always do, that I had time.
‘Here we are. This won’t take long.’
Naomi turned her head to the side and watched me with her wide, dark gaze. The whites of her eyes shone through the dawn light.
I settled down and began to sew. In and out, in and out. White thread. White lawn. Up and down, the needle dipping. White against white.
Red.
I blinked. A trick of the poor light. There was nothing red on the fabric.
Naomi whimpered.
I shook myself and tried again.
In and out. I managed another three stitches before my hand began to quake. Blood, so much blood.
The motion of sewing awoke something terrible. It came back to me in vivid flashes I couldn’t control: Ma, screaming; flesh, squelching.
In and out. All I could think of was blood. Yet my hands moved with a language they knew instinctively.
Naomi started to cry.
I’d lied to my sister. It took me a great deal of time to make her plain cap. My mind was a loose seam, threatening to unravel. For long moments I was forced to put the work down and stare, fixedly, at the stitches until they resumed their proper shape.
At blessed intervals, the wash of red that filled my vision receded. I thought of Pa’s gun; imagined pressing the cool metal to my temple, what a relief it would feel.
It was during one of these reveries that I heard movement on the stairs. My nerves jolted into life; I turned and saw Ma, stumbling round the newel post. She was a wreck. Sunken cheeks and lips like flaking pastry.
‘Why are you up and about?’ I whispered. ‘You should be resting.’
‘Ruth, I need your help.’ Her voice was so low, it might have emerged from the crypt.
‘What is it, Ma? Are you ill?’
‘No, I’m behind on the Metyard work. Hopelessly behind.’ She shivered in her nightgown.
‘How can you think of work?’ I slid a look at Naomi, checking that our voices hadn’t disturbed her. She slept on, clutching the blanket I’d made against her downy cheek and crushing its corner between her lips. ‘Look at you, Ma. You’re barely fit to stand.’
Her body must’ve heard the truth in my words, for it sagged against the banisters. All the same, she shook her head. ‘I’ll be fit for even less if we can’t afford bread and coal. I must work.’
Making a final knot, I snipped off my thread and held up Naomi’s cap. The shape of my fingers showed through the thin material.
‘Will you help me, Ruth? Please? I hate to ask, I know it will be a hard stint. But I’ll never make the orders on time, not even working through the night.’
In the days before Naomi’s birth, I’d yearned to tackle the Metyard work. Now, the prospect sounded as daunting as riding a horse. All those hours, all those horrific flashes of red, just to make this flimsy cap in my hands. How would I cope with helping Ma?
Instead of answering, I crept over to Naomi’s side and raised her soft skull. Her eyelids flickered as I smoothed the cap on.
‘There. Much better.’
The moment I tied the ribbon beneath her chin, Naomi’s eyes burst open. They met mine, wide with shock.
It took me in a wave: slaughterhouse red, rust and salt; the perfume of blood. The images were back, the smell was back. I choked on acid in my throat.
‘Ruth? Are you going to help?’
‘In a moment, in a moment!’ I snapped.
Barely able to see through the visions, I pulled Naomi to my chest. Her feeble heart beat back against mine. Somehow it seemed if I could just hold on to her warmth, just listen to her whistling breath, I might make it through.
‘What are you doing? Ruth? Come back!’
I dashed up the stairs, holding Naomi tight, and went into our room.
Gradually, the nightmare passed and my sight returned. I found myself sat on the edge of the bed with Naomi sprawled on my lap. She was still staring at me, wide-eyed.
What a fate for that poor child! An ill-favoured face, a house of want, a father distracted. She didn’t even have a proper mother; only a sort of half-nurse cobbled together from Ma and me. I extracted the blanket from her grip. How plain it looked. Drab, workaday, not good enough for her. I needed to fix that.
Tucking Naomi into the crib, I covered her with my old shawl instead.
Ma was waiting for me downstairs. Could I really work at her side? Being near her might bring the flashes of panic hurtling back. How would I endure it? Where would I find the strength? I could think of only one place.
