Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

‘I know the way, Ellie. You do not need to accompany me,’ she informed her niece firmly, as she swept towards the stairs, obliging Ellie to stand to one side.

Ellie waited until she had heard her mother’s bedroom door open and then close again before returning to the back parlour to oversee Connie’s piano practice.

‘Lyddy, my dear, I came as soon as I had your message. What has happened? Is it the baby?’ Amelia demanded anxiously as she hurried to embrace her sister.

Lydia shook her head. ‘No.’ Her pregnancy still had some three or so weeks to run, and the enforced rest Amelia’s husband had insisted she must take was making the time hang heavily. She would much rather have been active, the chatelaine of her home as she had always been, rather than being obliged to leave so many of her duties in the hands of her elder daughter.

Not that Ellie was not fully capable of running a home. No, Lydia had seen to it that both her daughters knew how to maintain and order a household.

‘Then what is amiss?’ Amelia asked her.

In contrast to the obvious swollenness of her belly, Lydia’s face looked alarmingly thin, her eyes sunken in its paleness, her flesh stretched almost painfully over her elegant bones, but it was the look of fear in her eyes that affected her sister the most.

Lydia was ten years Amelia’s junior, the baby of their family, the prettiest of all of them, the spoiled precious youngest child, who had been adored and fêted all her life until she had so foolishly and disastrously married Robert Pride. And now look at her!

‘It’s Ellie, Amelia,’ Lydia told her sister tiredly. ‘I am so concerned about her.’

‘Concerned? In what way?’

‘She has become involved with this Gideon Walker – I have told you about him. Oh, she says nothing to me, but I know what has happened. She thinks herself in love with him. I can see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice every time his name is mentioned. I have tried to talk to Robert about it, but he will not listen. He does not understand – how can he? Melia, Ellie must not do as I have done. She is worthy of so much more. But what is to be done? Robert is allowing Gideon the run of the house as though…as though he were already a member of our family. John worships him, and I am not well enough to keep a check on what is happening.’

‘Ellie must be sent away before any more harm can be done,’ Amelia announced grimly. ‘The best place for her to go would be to our sister in Hoylake. Lavinia and Mr Parkes live a very social life there. Mr Parkes has several wealthy shipowners as clients, and I dare say that after attending a few parties where she may meet some proper young gentlemen, Ellie will soon forget any foolishness over this…this Gideon.’

‘Oh, Amelia, do you think so?’ Lydia’s expression brightened. ‘But Hoylake! I don’t know…I need Ellie here and –’

‘You need do nothing for the present,’ Amelia assured her comfortingly. ‘I shall write to our sister, and just as soon as you have been confined and safely delivered, Ellie may be sent to stay with Lavinia in Hoylake until the danger of her fancying herself in love with Master Gideon is completely over.’

‘When?’ Lydia cried bitterly. ‘Oh, Amelia, I am so –’

Hastily Amelia interrupted her. ‘Alfred says that you may expect to be confined before the end of the month.’

‘Yes. He has said as much to me.’

Lydia’s lips trembled. She had not been able to bring herself to ask her brother-in-law if he still believed her life to be at risk. She had been too afraid of what he might say, and so instead she had allowed herself to believe Robert when he insisted optimistically that she had nothing to worry about. But sometimes in the dead of night, she woke sweating and trembling, her heart racing and her mouth dry, overwhelmed by fear.

Making plans for Ellie’s future, and the ways in which she could thwart Gideon Walker’s intentions of ruining her daughter’s life, gave her a means of escaping those fears.

‘Cecily is to put off her wedding until next year so that you will be able to attend. She is determined to be a June bride,’ Amelia informed her sister.

What she could not tell Lyddy was that she herself had had to suggest discreetly that her daughter plan her wedding more than twelve months hence, just in case they should be overtaken by events. She certainly had no wish to wear mourning at her own daughter’s wedding.

And neither had she any wish to lose her youngest sister, but Alfred had refused to offer her much hope.

‘The damage caused by the birth of her last child is such that I do not believe she can survive this birth. I pray that I may be wrong,’ he had said to his wife when she had questioned him.

‘You must not tax your strength, Lyddy,’ Amelia told her now. ‘Whatever happens, you can trust us, your sisters, to do whatever is necessary for your children. We have already discussed this.’

‘Yes, I know that, Melia, and I am grateful to you all…’ Tears welled in Lydia’s eyes.

Quickly Amelia bent and kissed her cheek. ‘I must go. But remember, Robert is to send for Alfred the moment you need him.’

Wanly, Lydia agreed.

The forthcoming birth of Lydia’s child was also the subject of discussion in Alfred’s handsome consulting room in the Winckley Square house.

‘But if the risk to Mrs Pride is so great,’ Paul Charteris was saying earnestly, ‘then surely there can be nothing to lose and everything to gain by adopting such a procedure.’

‘Have you discussed this with your father?’ Alfred challenged his son-in-law-to-be.

Paul sighed. ‘I have, but he believes there are too many risks involved.’

‘Exactly,’ Alfred pounced. ‘To perform a Caesarean operation to remove the child might seem to be a solution, but in my view it is one that carries far too much risk, not just to mother and child, but also to the reputation of the surgeon who carries it out, to make it a responsible or viable option.’

‘But if it is the only means of saving the mother and her child, surely it is better to take that risk than to stand by and –’

‘Paul, Paul, your ardour does you credit,’ Alfred told him sombrely, coming round his desk to place a consoling arm about the younger man’s shoulders, ‘but I fear you are permitting your emotions to overrule your judgement, and that is something no physician should allow to happen.’

Bewildered, Paul watched him. His own father had been as loath to acknowledge the potential benefit of performing a Caesarean delivery as his prospective father-in-law was.

Caesarean deliveries were performed, of course, when the mother’s life was agreed to be of less value than that of the child she was carrying, or where a choice had to be made between mother and child, but to perform one where both mother and child were expected to survive was a dangerous medical procedure. And yet the operation had been done – and successfully. It was Paul’s dream that one day such operations would be a matter of course, and that he would be performing them; that he would be at the forefront of his profession, not content, as his father was, to rest on his reputation and accept a knighthood, but to push back the medical barriers as far as they could possibly go; to conquer the perils of infection, surgical trauma and blood loss.

Reluctant to abandon his dream he burst out, ‘Perhaps if Mrs Pride were to be consulted…If she were told, offered the choice…’

Alfred looked outraged. ‘How can you suggest such a thing? No! Poor woman, she already has enough to bear. She should be left at peace now, to compose herself for what lies ahead. That is our most solemn duty and responsibility to her.’

‘But surely, sir, our first and foremost duty is to try to save her life and that of her child,’ Paul insisted doggedly.