The Fruit of the Tree Read online

After that we took my parents back to our home for a couple of days, glad to have the opportunity of showing them the progress we had made. My father, always ill at ease when away from home, put himself in an armchair with a newspaper, hoping to be left in peace.

  My mother, on the other hand, regarded a stay away from home as a treat and was delighted to be shown the improvements in the decor and the new equipment in the kitchen. She went from room to room exclaiming enthusiastically about the changes.

  She made a tour of the garden too and was quick to discover some dahlias I had planted earlier in the year, calling me to see them. The appearance of any new plant was a happy event, and the dahlias brought me great pleasure later in the summer, when their brilliant splashes of colour bedecked the flower beds.

  Everything was so perfect that despite my happiness at being pregnant, I wished that time could stand still—it seemed incredible that in a few short weeks, this lifestyle we had created and become accustomed to would be changed by the new arrival. I felt a sudden resentment towards this unknown newcomer. We were happy as we were at this moment, just the two of us and Robert, whereas the first weeks of the baby’s life would bring tiredness, a disorganisation of routine, numerous pressures and a lack of time for daydreaming. There was a loving relationship between Robert and me, despite our confrontations, and I wondered if the new baby would come between us. In addition, it was difficult for me to imagine dealing with a young baby again, after nearly four years. Irrationally, I now felt we didn’t need this intruder to tie us down once again and mar our relationships with each other.

  But slowly, steadily and irrevocably, we progressed towards the time of its birth.

  About three weeks before the expected date of arrival, Susan and Bruce arrived back in Surrey. It was nearly two years since their last visit, but the old friendship resumed just as if there had been no gap. We girls spent quite a few afternoons in the garden, talking of times past and present problems, whilst Susan’s son and daughter played in the sandpit with Robert, and the latest addition struggled to join them.

  Susan talked with sympathy of a woman who had lost her baby after great difficulties, and said how unfair it seemed that someone like her could produce them so easily.

  ‘If only I could have another baby to give to someone like that,’ she said, in a dramatic statement typical of her personality.

  I smiled at her extravagant generosity.

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to,’ I replied, thinking of my own state and imagining myself, after all this, giving up the baby. Less than three months later, I would recall those words and the feelings of that moment.

  Susan’s visit continued for about a fortnight and I was sure that, by the end of it, the baby would have arrived. Robert, after all, had been a week early, and Susan had been so closely involved with that; I couldn’t help feeling that she was almost bound to be involved with this baby too. But the day came for the family’s departure, and no baby had arrived.

  Determined not to have a repetition of my previous unprepared departure, my suitcase was packed more than a week before the ‘E.D.A.’ In addition, the baby’s carry-cot—a new one, for the old one’s service to the four little boys of the family had finished it completely—was prepared, and placed into it was the baby’s layette, carefully wrapped in a polythene bag. Robert’s suitcase was packed too, for he would be departing to whichever of his aunts or grandparents was not at present on holiday, for July/August is not the best of times for finding a foster family for a son or husband.

  Even whilst congratulating myself for being so well organised on this occasion, I found that, once everything was ready, I expected things to start happening immediately. When nothing happened—not during the week before and not on the correct day either, I began to feel insecure and edgy. I could only buy food for a day or so at a time and the same applied to making plans. As the days dragged on, I began irrationally to feel that the baby would never ever come out. (Very irrationally, as it happened, because my doctor was already making plans to induce the birth in a given number of days.) The feeling of inadequacy experienced at the time of each of my miscarriages recurred, and I felt I was a thoroughly useless example of womanhood, incapable of doing the job she was supposed to.

  No longer was there any hankering to be suspended in time. Full of impatience, I couldn’t wait for the first dull ache that might signal the start of labour, and I dreaded the idea that the birth might have to be started in some unnatural way.

  A mere two days before the date of the proposed inducement, the dull ache arrived, but the next day it was gone. Tense and frustrated, I rang Jill.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, come over and keep me company,’ I pleaded.

  It was a dismal day, and I put on a plastic mac and boots and went out into the garden and tackled the flower bed. When Jill arrived, I was angrily hacking away at the weeds with my hoe.

  ‘If this doesn’t get things moving,’ I thought, ‘Nothing ever will.’

  13. Little Things

  I awoke in the early hours of the following morning—the contractions were well under way and I congratulated myself on having missed the first couple of hours of labour in sleep.

  I woke Michael, who was surprisingly sceptical, asking, ‘Are you sure this isn’t a false alarm?’, although the baby was already nine days late. We sat down to a cup of tea, and left almost immediately after for the maternity home. Robert slept the sound sleep of the innocent and could be safely left for three quarters of an hour.

  Outside the rain teemed down and the whole scene could well have been portrayed in a second rate film, anxious husband turning to pregnant wife—‘Are the pains bad?’

  Instead, my husband said to me, ‘Press your feet down on the board and stop the rain blowing up through the hole in the car!’

  ‘I’m supposed to be relaxing and breathing with the contractions,’ I admonished.

  Sheets of rain blew across the road.

  ‘Shall I stop the car?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No, drive on, for goodness’ sake,’ I replied, impatiently. However did he imagine I was going to benefit from sitting in a stationary car? Luckily it was only a fifteen-minute journey.

  We were welcomed at the maternity home by a brisk midwife.

  ‘Unpack your things and put them in that locker,’ she directed me, and to Michael, ‘Are you staying?’ and ‘Oh, what a pity!’ at his negative reply.

  ‘Couldn’t you stay for a while?’ I asked Michael, but he couldn’t wait to make his escape and was relieved to have Robert as his excuse.

  It was three-thirty in the morning. How many hours, I wondered, before the baby would be born? Outside, the howls of the wind and rain were ominous.

  An Asian auxiliary nurse arrived to shave me—I remembered the weeks of itching after the thirty second shave I had had at the time of Robert’s birth, and requested that she treat me with gentleness. She chatted to me for about three-quarters of an hour while carrying out her duties and I was only too pleased to have company to help me pass the dragging time.

  Finally, I was left alone and listened to a woman in labour in an adjacent room. Suddenly the exhortations of the midwives were followed by a baby’s cry. I felt a moment of emotion, and fellow feeling with the unknown mother, followed by envy that she had reached the end of those arduous hours of labour. ‘If only I was in that position!’

  But a later on, I found out that there had been complications and the mother had been swiftly transported to the local hospital for treatment under anaesthetic.

  The midwife hurried into my room to collect something.

  ‘What did she have?’ I asked.

  ‘A little girl. Do you want the light turned out?’

  ‘No. I’m not going to sleep,’ I replied, remembering that other awakening in the night, when for the moment I had been aware only of pain, loneliness and darkness.

  I lay on my side and tried to rub my own back, watching the clock with one eye. The pain was becoming un
bearable.

  ‘I think I want to push,’ I said to the midwife and was somewhat taken aback by her reply: ‘It’s not awfully convenient at the moment.’

  Searching through my memory for how to cope under such circumstances, I evolved a routine that included pushing my arm out into space and expelling the breath from my body to a count of, ‘One, two, three, four,’ and I managed to survive until the midwife reappeared, when I burst out, ‘I really can’t hold out much longer.’

  She examined me and commented, ‘You must have a high pain threshold.’

  I couldn’t remember what that meant, but I had a feeling it was praise and not a scolding.

  ‘I’m going to give you an injection,’ she said, ‘and it will all be over in half an hour.’

  I wanted to get things quite straight in my mind.

  ‘You mean I’ll be able to start pushing in half an hour?’

  ‘You’ll have the baby in half an hour!’ she replied.

  I glanced at the clock—just on six. At that moment a trainee midwife walked through the door. I realised she had accompanied the other mother to hospital and was now about to participate in my own delivery. Was that the reason for the delay? I was slightly incredulous.

  The action of the injection was remarkable. Within minutes, I felt pleasantly drunk, and all the aching areas of my body relaxed.

  It was a textbook birth. In between the contractions there was no pain and I prattled away animatedly and uninhibitedly to the two women. Then, ‘Here comes another one,’ and I was ready to push.

  When the senior midwife warned, ‘Stop pushing and pant,’ I knew I was nearly there. With an effort I restrained the powerful forces expelling the baby from my body. As I tried to pant, my breath came out in gasping sobs and carried on rhythmically, even as the midwife held my baby in her hands.

  ‘Oh, that was perfect!’ they exclaimed to each other. ‘How different to the last birth.’

  ‘Go on, cry,’ said the younger one, still holding the baby and I heard myself sobbing still, and stopped, only then to realise that she was talking to the baby, not me at all. And for a split second, I thought, But what if the baby doesn’t cry?

  But all was well; ‘You’ve got a beautiful little girl; very tiny, but lovely,’ they told me delightedly. ‘And hardly a mark on you—just one small bruise.’

  ‘Don’t I have to have any stitches?’ I asked, remembering the quarter of an hour of undignified embroidering sustained after my last labour.

  ‘Good gracious, no!’ they replied.

  I was disappointed that Michael was not there to witness my triumph, for I felt I’d done a really good job, and my feeling of pride and triumph was no doubt just as silly as the feelings of inadequacy of the previous week. The pride was swiftly tempered by concern, however, when I was told the weight of my small daughter—only just over five and a half pounds—practically premature weight. Guiltily, I thought of the cigarettes I had smoked—five, or was it nearer ten a day?—throughout my pregnancy. Could it have had this effect? My remorse was reinforced when the little one was placed in my arms. The bones of her arms were as thin as pencils and the skin hung from them. She was only one and a half pounds less than Robert at birth and I could not have imagined the difference that it would make.

  To my great disappointment I was told that, as she was particularly small, she would spend her time in the nursery, away from the germs brought into the wards, and despite the cards flooding in, telling me what a clever girl I was, I was quite depressed during the next few days.

  Although I felt fitter than after Robert’s birth and, as a result of my nursery visits, was up and about much more quickly, I missed having the baby in my room. Later, when I was told to feed her three-hourly, my routine did not fit in with the other girls at all, and I used to wander off to the telephone while they were feeding their babies.

  There were minor irritations too—one I’m sure shared by many new parents—the naming of the child. Not long after the birth, a young nurse had approached me to ask what the baby’s name was to be. Michael and I had not made any final decisions in our pre-natal discussions, so I replied cautiously, ‘It might be Frances, but I haven’t quite made up my mind.’

  I was therefore rather peeved to find that name written on to the card attached to her cot almost immediately afterwards.

  Nevertheless, I soon rang my mother to report on the probable name. I also felt that I should forewarn her of the baby’s appearance.

  ‘She’s very plain, I’m afraid,’ I told her, but my mother did not seem unduly concerned.

  The name, however, was a subject of concern! In the next telephone conversation, my mother acted as spokesman.

  ‘The family don’t like “Frances”,’ she informed me, and though I was irritated by the family’s intervention in what should have been a personal decision, I couldn’t help but be influenced by this information, particularly when the lack of enthusiasm was reinforced by Michael’s family.

  In the bed facing me sat Elizabeth, the young woman who, following her complicated delivery on the night of my own production, had now been returned to the maternity home. She had, without difficulty (and very appropriately), named her daughter Dawn. The mother alongside me had an older daughter named Frances, which inhibited my discussion of the problem, so I spent much time silently poring over my A to Z of names.

  My mother arrived to visit and I had to restrain her from telling me again (loudly) how much she didn’t like ‘Frances’.

  ‘We think you should call her Elizabeth,’ she informed me, and I had to explain in whispers, to avoid offending my neighbour that I really didn’t like the name ‘Elizabeth’ all that much (it was too traditional, too ‘Establishment’) and in addition, it seemed rather excessively patriotic to name the baby after the Queen.

  My mother, however, explained that my paternal grandmother had been Elizabeth, which reminded me that my other grandmother, who had died when I was a teenager, was named Miriam and that her name ought to be included too. I agreed to review the situation and soon a nurse brought in the young lady under discussion.

  ‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ said my mother, always a connoisseur of new babies. ‘How could you say she was plain?’

  I had to admit she had improved a bit since she had put on a little weight. My mother even discovered dimples in her cheeks, which I had not noticed. Robert had one dimple—two was something of a bonus.

  I conducted another search through the bible of names and made my decision speedily, after a brief conversation with Michael. I caught the Registrar on her weekly visit, thus avoiding any further family referenda on the subject, and my petite daughter was registered as Amanda—a pretty name with the meaning ‘loveable’ as I pointed out to everyone—Meriel—Meri after Miriam and El for Elizabeth. Then I discovered that Michael’s grandfather was called Mendel which resembled Amanda, so it seemed we had effectively paid our respects to everyone that was required.

  I wrote to Sonia, at present on holiday, so that she would have the news as soon as she re-entered her house. To tease her, I deliberately held back the sex of the baby until the second page of the letter, for Sonia, like everyone else in the family, had hoped for a girl to join the four boy cousins.

  But if I thought I could now relax and enjoy my little daughter, I was mistaken, for the latter half of my stay in the maternity home was fraught with battles with Sister, who had just returned from her holiday.

  I had become aware of Sister’s imminent return when the cleaners, who had been remarkably restrained in the previous few days, came into the ward, caused dust to fly underneath my congratulatory cards and vacuumed and polished with uncustomary zeal and speed. In Sister’s absence, everyone had apparently been having a bit of a holiday—even the expectant mothers had stopped producing, so that the mothers present had been reduced to a mere half dozen or so in number.

  ‘You mark my words,’ commented one of the midwives, ‘as soon as she comes in through that door,
they’ll all start following her in!’

  I greeted Sister politely enough, but something of a cold war soon commenced and it all started when Jill came to visit me.

  Michael warned me in advance, ‘She’s coming prompt at three o’clock, so don’t keep her waiting.’ He knew that, because of Amanda’s three-hourly feeds, I wasn’t always ready to receive visitors when the visiting hour began. Nevertheless, I rushed through the feed and, after Jill had come and gone, crept into the nursery to find, not altogether unexpectedly, that Amanda was howling with hunger.

  The little ward was deserted—the three girls in my room and their visitors had disappeared into the garden. I couldn’t bear to think of Amanda lying there, crying hungrily until the next feed, and I took her from the cot and went back to my room and fed her again. However, just as I finished, I heard voices and within seconds was confronted by Sister. I was always in awe of her—as I had been all my life with people in positions of authority—and I couldn’t behave or speak naturally to her. Instead, I behaved like a schoolgirl caught in the act of doing something naughty (and I felt very much like that), and retorted rather defiantly to her cross tone.

  After that she watched me with dedicated vigilance, and I often received messages to return the baby to the nursery if I took a long time over a feed. I couldn’t look at it from her point of view, that a small baby wants a minimum of handling and a maximum of rest. I felt only that I was being harassed. Once I took the baby back to the nursery and reinstated her in her cot and rewrapped her in her bedclothes so fast that Sister called me back a few minutes later and showed me how to make up the bedding tidily.

  The feeling of being the ‘black sheep of the fourth form’ persisted—in fact the ward atmosphere was very much like that of a girls’ school and, despite the frustrations, frequently filled with the noise of hysterical female giggles at our own in-jokes about the staff, the food and even about my own particular position in ‘the dog house’.

  I dared not let Sister find out that I was intending to go to Brighton with the family (even though I felt quite sure that it was in all our best interests to get away for a few days.) My parents and aunts shared a hut on the promenade. We could sit and enjoy the fine weather, make a drink or snack lunch in the hut and Robert would be able to enjoy the fresh air and the sea. I was due to leave the maternity home on Saturday, a convenient day for Michael to drive us all there, so I was naturally surprised and dismayed when a senior midwife approached me a couple of days beforehand, particularly as Amanda had been gaining weight steadily.