Liffey stood bleeding in the yard of Cadbury Farm. Mabs had slammed the door behind her. The piercing pain was worse: her brow was clammy, her clogs were full of blood. She took them off.

  Well, thought Liffey, no good standing here. No good screaming, or crying, or fainting. No use lying down, either. If I do nothing, I will simply bleed to death. If it was only me, I wouldn’t mind. I really wouldn’t. I am not sure, on my own account, that I wish to stay in the world, considering its nature. What about you, baby? She felt the touch of its spirit, almost for the last time, still clear, still light and bright, almost elegant. The baby didn’t have to want to live: it was life. She felt the touch on her hand, and there was little Eddie, standing in front of her, looking up at her, mumbling something incoherent, talking about Debbie. He pulled her forward, down the lane towards the road.

  Liffey started walking.

  ‘Only blood,’ said Liffey aloud. ‘Not even the baby’s blood.

  My blood. Lots more where that came from, Eddie.’

  But she wasn’t so sure. She walked as fast as she could, but she was also aware that that was very slow, because Eddie kept standing in front of her, facing her, waiting for her to catch up. And as soon as she did, he was off again. Pain counted now as sensation. It had to. She had no idea what the time was, or how long she walked, and bled. The sun glazed in the sky behind the Tor; it was surprisingly high. She walked into it. She did not suffer, particularly. She travelled because she had to, as a bird might travel to a warmer climate, or a salmon cross the sea to the river it had to find.

  The curate, though delayed by Audrey, presently arrived at a drinks-before-Sunday-dinner party at the new solicitor’s house, and here he encountered the doctor, who was telling the solicitor’s wife, not without pride, of the extent to which the old herbalism was still practised in the neighbourhood, and the fact that the village even boasted a wise woman, old Mrs Tree, who claimed to have cured one of his terminal cancer patients with stewed root of Condor Vine—and admittedly the patient was still in remission. The curate, casually enough, mentioned buckthorn berries and his conversation with Audrey, at which the doctor groaned, said all Sundays were much the same, left his drink unfinished and his wife without transport, and took off for Cadbury Farm. ‘His partner once had a child die from buckthorn,’ said the doctor’s wife, sadly. She finished her husband’s sherry. The new solicitor was not going to be lavish with the drink.

  The doctor found Liffey just where the lane joined the main road. He took Eddie into the car as well, since he could not leave a small, half-daft child standing by himself on a main road. He drove to the hospital, stopping briefly to talk to a policeman on the way.

  ‘Aren’t you going rather fast?’ Liffey asked.

  ‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you use the phone?’

  He went through a red light as if it wasn’t there at all. ‘It was out of order,’ said Liffey.

  ‘Where’s your husband? Isn’t he home? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?’

  ‘He had to get back to London,’ said Liffey, easily. She rather enjoyed the ride; the piercing pain had dulled and she could now allow the other ones to come and go at will. She was sitting on a pile of curtains the doctor happened to have in the car, on the way to the cleaners for his wife. He had prudently put them under Liffey to save his car upholstery. What funny bright red damp curtains, thought Liffey. I’m sure I have better taste than his wife.

  Three nurses and a doctor and a wheeled stretcher, with two drips already set up, one clear, one red, waited at the top of the hospital steps.

  ‘I say!’ said Liffey.

  ‘She might be drunk, or something,’ said the doctor. ‘She’s euphoric. Tell the anaesthetist,’ and hoped they heard him as they ran down the corridor away from him.

  There had been valerian and coltsfoot in the elderflower wine; Mabs thought now that perhaps she had overdone the coltsfoot, and made everyone quarrelsome, including herself. Well, it was too late now. What was done was done. She wiped up the blood on the doorstep and worked out a story to tell when Liffey’s body, with any luck, was found, and went upstairs to tell Debbie to stop that racket.

  The doctor had forgotten all about Eddie but of course there he was, still sitting in the back of the car, crying. ‘Christ,’ said the doctor. ‘This is supposed to be my day of rest.’

  He sped and jerked Eddie all the way back to the village, and then bumped and banged him all the way down the lane, and parked amongst the yowling dogs because there was nowhere else, just as Mabs came out of the front door with Debbie’s unconscious, or dead, body in her arms. The doctor got out of the car and ran, kicking at the dogs. He’d forgotten about the buckthorn berries.

  ‘The phone’s out of order,’ offered Mabs by way of explanation. ‘Eddie broke it, and Tucker’s gone off God knows where, and I came back in from the cows and found blood all over the step and Debbie fell out of bed and must have banged her head because I went up and found her like this.’

  ‘The blood is Mrs Lee-Fox’s,’ said the doctor, laying Debbie flat, running his hands over her stomach. She groaned. Good. ‘Fine neighbour you make: never in when you’re wanted. She’s in hospital now.’

  ‘My, that was quick,’ said Mabs. ‘She was right as rain at lunch. Had a bit of a row with her husband, though.

  Well, she imagines things.’

  ‘Why was the child in bed?’

  ‘She’s dirty. Wets the bed. She’s got to learn. Is it bad?’

  ‘Ruptured appendix,’ said the doctor. ‘Stands to reason. Help me get her in the car, quick.’

  ‘I’ll come to the hospital too,’ said Mabs. ‘Might as well. Will Mrs Lee-Fox be all right?’

  ‘I’d worry about the child, if I were you,’ said the doctor, but he’d known mothers like this many a time, the object of their concern shifted to something more tolerable than danger to their own child. At least he hoped it was that. ‘Mrs Lee-Fox is in good hands.’

  ‘It’s a punishment on me,’ said Mabs, and began to cry, though what was the punishment she did not make clear. Eddie had stopped crying. He stayed in the car while the doctor drove back to the hospital. This time they did not pass a policeman and when they reached the hospital the doctor had to stamp and roar to get attention, by which time he feared all hope for Debbie was probably lost.

  ‘Two emergencies in one afternoon,’ grumbled the theatre sister. ‘You can tell it’s Sunday.’

  Birth

  Bells rang, red lights glowed, people ran.

  Liffey had been in the operating theatre for twenty minutes.

  She had gone in fully conscious, been given one injection to reduce the secretions from her throat and mouth, another one which part-paralysed her and prevented her struggling, and an anaesthetic which was of necessity light, in case the baby was anaesthetised too. Liffey sensed the passage of time, and of terrible, painful, momentous events. Of struggle, and endeavour, and of the twists and turns of fate, and of life taking form out of rock.

  ‘Was there breakthrough?’ enquired the anaesthetist later. ‘Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to judge, not too much, not too little and there wasn’t much time.’

  The foetal heart had showed no signs of distress. The baby’s supply of oxygen remained adequate, in spite of the knot in the umbilical cord, in spite of the haemorrhage behind the placenta, in spite of the frequency of the uterine contractions—each one obstructing the blood and oxygen supply to the placenta for, at their height, one minute in every three: in spite, in fact, of anything, everything Mabs could do. The umbilical knot remained loose; the area of haemorrhage was limited; the placenta remained able to provide enough oxygen in two minutes to carry the baby through the next. The heart remained at a steady 140 beats, falling to 120 at the height of a contraction. ‘Lots of time for baby,’ said someone, surprised. ‘What a lucky baby. Not much for mother, though.’

  The uterus had to be emptied before it could fully contract. Until it was fully contracted, it would continue to bleed. Difficult to drip as much into Liffey as she dripped out. The surgeon made an inverse incision from side to side across the abdomen, just above Liffey’s pubic mound. He then separated the muscles of the lower abdominal wall and opened the abdominal cavity. The bladder was then dissected free from the lower part of the anterior of the uterus. A transverse incision was then made in the lower uterine segment, exposing the membranes within. The baby’s head slipped out of the surgeon’s hand: membranes closed.

  Mabs seated herself, coincidentally, in the waiting room of the theatre block, and took up a magazine and flicked through it.

  Poor woman, thought the voluntary worker who organised the tea bar there.

  The baby, conscious of distress, moved violently, tumbled and turned and pulled the umbilical knot tighter and the surgeon re-exposed the membranes and found the baby’s buttocks, and Liffey, conscious of struggle within, tried to cry out and could not.

  The surgeon found the head: used forceps. He sweated. ‘Little beggar,’ he said. ‘You seem to like it in there. If only you knew how unsafe it was.’

  The surgeon lifted out the baby.

  ‘A boy,’ someone said. Someone always names the sex. Everyone wants to know. It defines the event. Liffey heard.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said the anaesthetist later. ‘Still, we do our best.’

  ‘At least,’ said Liffey, ‘I am left with a sense of occasion, not just in one minute and out the next.’

  The baby was held upside down. The baby did nothing. Then the baby breathed, spluttered, coughed and cried, and tried to turn itself the right way up, slithering in restraining hands. His colour was pinkish blue, changing rapidly to pink, first the lips, then the skin around the mouth, then the face. He was covered, beneath the slippery vernix, with fine hair. His muscles were tense.

  ‘Doesn’t seem premature. Got her dates wrong, I expect.’

  The umbilical cord was clamped in two places, and divided between the clamps.

  ‘A knot, too. See that? Only eight lives left.’

  ‘About five, I’d say. How far did she walk?’

  ‘A mile, someone said.’

  ‘Christ!’

  More anaesthesia. The placenta was removed. Ergometrine, to contract the uterus.

  ‘How much has she lost?’

  ‘Two, three pints since she’s been in. Can’t say, before.’

  The bleeding stopped. A morsel of puffball, undigested—for during labour the digestive processes stop—rose up in Liffey’s gullet, propelled by retching muscles as the anaesthetic deepened, and such was its light yet bulky texture, might well have been inhaled had the nurse stopped bothering to exert pressure on Liffey’s neck. But she was young and frightened and doing as she was told. So much so that Liffey’s neck retained the bruises for some weeks. But she lived.

  Mabs, sitting outside in the waiting room, was conscious of defeat, and sighed and was brought a cup of tea by the voluntary worker.

  Repair

  The incision in Liffey’s now firmly contracted uterus was repaired with catgut. The bruised bladder was stitched back over the lower uterine segment. Liffey’s fallopian tubes and ovaries were inspected. They looked young, healthy, and capable of function in the future. The anterior abdominal wall was sutured. The incision in the skin was then closed with individual stitches.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to do that again,’ said the surgeon. ‘Next?’

  The baby lay in an incubator in the special care unit. His temperature was ninety-eight degrees. His heartbeat, 120 at the moment of delivery, had fallen to 115, and would slow gradually over the next three days to between eighty and a hundred, where it would stay for the rest of his life. He breathed at forty-five breaths a minute, with an occasional deep, sighing breath. The breathing came mostly from the abdomen—the chest itself moved very little. He grunted a little but that would soon stop. He was immune, for the time being, to measles, mumps, and chicken pox, thanks to antibodies present in Liffey’s system which had crossed the placenta.

  With his first breath he had inhaled some 50cc of air, opening up the respiratory passages in his lungs, forcing blood through the pulmonary arteries, establishing an adult type of circulation. He weighed six pounds and six ounces, he was nineteen-and-a-half inches long. Grasp, sucking, swallowing, rooting and walking reflexes were present. That is, his palm would clench when pressure was applied to it, any pressure on his palate would start him sucking, a handclap would make him throw out his legs and arms, he would swallow what was in his mouth, he would root for food, following touch on his jaw: when he was held under the arms and his feet touched a firm surface, he would seem to walk.

  His nails reached the end of his fingers; his eyes were blue, but already, unusually, changing to brown. He could not see, in adult terms, but could differentiate light from dark. His tear ducts worked so well he could not cry. He sneezed from time to time. He could hear. He had already passed a quantity of meconium, the sticky dark green substance present in his intestine at birth. Liver and spleen were slightly enlarged at birth, which was normal. His testicles had descended, and his urinary passage was normal.

  Everything was well with the baby. Very well.

  In the operating theatre next door Debbie hovered between life and death, and finally came down on the living side. The nurse who went to tell the mother so, found her eventually in a phone booth, where she was having a long, wrangling conversation with her sister Carol, as to whose fault it was.

  Mabs seemed annoyed at having to bring the call to an end, rather than gratified with the message brought. ‘What a fuss,’ she said, ‘about nothing.’

  Mabs did not enquire too closely into the nature of

  Debbie’s illness, its cause, or its prognosis.

  ‘I expect you’ll want to stay with your little girl, till she’s out of the anaesthetic,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Well, I can’t get back till Tucker comes with the car,’ said Mabs. ‘How’s Mrs Lee-Fox doing?’

  Liffey had been wheeled past her on the trolley, ashen white, head lolling.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said the nurse. ‘We only lose one mother a year and we’ve already lost her!’ It was their little joke.

  Murder

  Mabs heard Liffey’s baby cry. A pain struck through to Mabs’ heart, not just at this final, overwhelming evidence of her impotence to prevent this birth, but at the injustice it presented. Tucker’s baby emerging from the wrong body, so that she, Mabs, was left ignored in a waiting room while the gentle, powerful concern of authority, and the dramatic indications of its existence—masks and lights and drugs and ministering hands—focused down on the wrong person. Mabs sat beside Debbie’s bed and waited for her to wake up, and scarcely saw her.

  Liffey woke up to ask how the baby was and was told it was fine, which she didn’t believe, and sank back into sedated sleep. When she woke next she cried with pain, exhaustion and lack of a baby to put in her arms.

  ‘Baby’s perfectly all right,’ said the nurse. ‘Don’t fuss. All Caesar babies go into special care for a couple of days, that’s all.’

  The staff treated Liffey with automatic kindness; moving her up in the bed when she slipped down, changing pillows, sponging her face. The desire to empty her bruised bladder was enormous; the ability to do so lacking: the pain and humiliation of being lifted to use a bedpan overwhelming. She had more drugs.

  She remembered the baby.

  ‘Don’t let Mabs get the baby,’ she said. Of course this was hospital and Mabs was at the farm, but Liffey kept saying the same thing. ‘Bring the baby here. Please bring the baby here,’ and they promised her they would, to keep her quiet, knowing her sense of time was confused.

  The Almoner’s Department tried to trace her husband but he could not be found at his office, and had a new secretary who was not helpful. They did rather better with the Personnel Department, who proferred the information that Mr Lee-Fox might well be having a minor breakdown: that this sometimes happened to executives under stress at the time of a major life event; of which having a first baby was certainly one. They were concerned but not anxious, and thanked the hospital for their help.

  Liffey lapsed back into slumber and pain and woke to find Mabs in the room. Liffey tried to sit up but could not. She had no strength in her abdomen, thighs, arms or shoulders.

  ‘Well, well.’ said Mabs. ‘Feeling better, are we? Congratulations!’

  Liffey said nothing.

  ‘I never had to have a Caesar,’ said Mabs. ‘Perhaps you have narrow hips? You should have taken some of my rosemary tea. I always drink it when I’m pregnant and never have any trouble. Is Richard pleased?’

  Liffey said nothing.

  ‘I do think a girl’s easier for a man to accept,’ said Mabs, ‘but there’s not much we can do about that. Do you mind me just chatting on? Don’t talk if it tires you. I know what it’s like by now. The doctor told me you lost a lot of blood, too. Why didn’t you come down to me instead of setting off like that, all by yourself. Mind you, the phone was out of order. Eddie broke it, the naughty boy; I didn’t half wallop him. Debbie was taken ill with appendix, and of course the one time I really needed the phone, it wasn’t working.’