Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

But beneath her shock there was still her love for her mother; and her guilt. She was responsible for this, for her mother’s agonisingly hard labour; that was what her aunt had told her. She, by arguing and quarrelling with her mother and going against her wishes, had somehow brought on the arrival of the baby before its due date.

Unable to think logically, Ellie was filled with fear and remorse. She took a step towards the bed, barely aware of her aunt grabbing her arm to pull her back as her mother went rigid, beads of sweat glistening waxenly on her forehead as she began to moan.

‘Get that girl out of here. She has no business being here,’ Uncle Gibson demanded curtly, no longer the familiar, slightly pedantic figure Ellie knew, but a grim-faced stranger, whose presence cast a dark shadow over the bed.

As her aunt pushed her towards the door, Ellie suddenly tensed and turned round to look imploringly towards her mother, mentally begging her for forgiveness.

‘I’m so sorry, Mama,’ she whispered, adopting the baby form of address she had long ago grown out of. ‘I promise I will never ever disobey you again…never.’

As Ellie looked at her it seemed to her that her mother had changed; that her skin had somehow gone grey, her eyes become sunken. Instinctively Ellie wanted to go to her, but then suddenly Lydia’s whole body convulsed and she started to scream.

Ellie only realised that she was screaming as well when her aunt slapped her face briskly the moment she had her outside the bedroom door.

‘It is your mother who is in travail, you stupid girl,’ she told Ellie bitingly, ‘not you.’

Ellie couldn’t make any response. She was shivering, her teeth chattering. She desperately wanted to beg her aunt to reassure her that having a child was not always like this – that her mother’s agonising pain would never be her own. How could her aunt not be as shocked and appalled as she was herself? How could her uncle not do something to alleviate her mother’s agony? How could her father have allowed this to happen?

How could she have so cruelly and heedlessly disobeyed her mother?

All through the warm May evening it went on, until Ellie did not know which was the worst to bear – her mother’s screams or the oppressive silences between them when she kept her own body as still as she could in the emptiness of the parlour, listening, waiting…doing her self-imposed penance for her sin of disobeying her mother.

Her father had gone out, unable to endure the sound of his wife’s agonising distress; her aunt was still upstairs, assisting her husband and the midwife.

Ellie tensed as suddenly a thin, high scream split the thick silence, followed by the sharp mewling cry of a newborn child.

Picking up her skirts, she ran up the stairs, but before she could enter the room her aunt came out, firmly closing the door behind her and barring Ellie’s way as she gripped hold of her.

‘I want to see my mother,’ Ellie begged frantically.

Refusing to let go of her, her aunt dug her fingers painfully into Ellie’s arm.

‘No. You cannot. Your mother has given birth to a son. You have a new brother,’ her aunt told her tonelessly. ‘She is resting now and must not be disturbed.’

‘Resting!’ Ellie sagged against the banister in relief, closing her eyes as hot tears of release burned onto her skin, too innocent to recognise just what the grim, flat defeatedness in her aunt’s voice really meant. Her mother was alive!

Below, the front door opened and her father came hurrying up the stairs, bringing with him the smell of strong ale.

Amelia recoiled in distaste and shot him a bitterly contemptuous look.

‘Lyddy?’ he demanded thickly.

‘You have another son,’ Amelia told him curtly.

‘Mam is resting, Father,’ Ellie told him softly. ‘They are both all right.’

As she brushed away her tears, Ellie missed the looks her father and her aunt exchanged, her father’s questioning and anxious, her aunt’s grim and negative. When she looked up Ellie saw the dark tinge of colour burning her father’s face as he turned away from her aunt, and puzzled over it. Surely now that her mother had been safely delivered and both she and the new baby were alive, there was no need for her aunt to continue to be so angry.

Ellie ached to ask if she might see her mother but her uncle and the midwife were still in the bedroom with her, and Ellie gave the closed door a helpless stare before accompanying her aunt downstairs.

‘It will be better if Connie and John stay at Winckley Square until…for now,’ Ellie’s aunt said as she paused in front of the hall mirror to pin on her hat.

Aunt Amelia looked as though she had been crying, Ellie suddenly recognised, as she inclined her cheek for Ellie to kiss before opening the front door.

It was a soft late spring night, with the sky full of stars. A lovers’ night. Shame and guilt filled Ellie. She longed to be able to see her mother and to beg her forgiveness; to promise her once more that she would never disobey her again! She felt sick and shaky, overwhelmed with love for her mother, and overwhelmed too by her own intense remorse. Her guilt would be branded into her for ever, Ellie told herself.

Robert Pride looked down into the sunken face of his wife. Tears filled his eyes and his shoulders began to shake. Carefully he reached for her hand, hardly daring to touch it. She looked so fragile. So frail!

‘Robert?’

He tensed at the thin, whispery sound of her voice. She had opened her eyes, and even they looked different somehow: opaque, almost devoid of their normal rich colour.

‘Lyddy, don’t try to talk. You have to rest.’ His voice broke as he tried to control his emotion. Curling her cold hand into his own he lifted it to his lips, kissing her icy fingers, as though he was trying to breathe warmth – and life – into them.

‘She cannot survive, Robert,’ Alfred had told him after the midwife had finished her business and left them on their own.

‘But she is alive,’ Robert had protested, ‘and the birth is over.’

‘The child has been born, but Lydia is…’ Alfred had coughed, plainly uncomfortable discussing something so intimate. ‘But there was…she…she is bleeding badly, Robert, and we cannot stem it. I had feared that this would be the outcome of her pregnancy.’

‘Bleeding? But surely you can do something to stop it.’ It was inconceivable to Robert that, having survived the appalling agony of the birth of their child, Lydia should not be safe.

‘We have done all that we can,’ Alfred had told him heavily. ‘The midwife and I have raised the foot of the bed and done everything we can do to stanch the flow, but I’m afraid…’

As he spoke, Robert’s stomach had lurched. He had been vaguely aware of the midwife removing a pile of soiled bed linen, but he had not understood just what it meant.

‘I did warn you that this could happen,’ Alfred had reminded him sternly. ‘There was a similar problem with her previous birth, but then the child was not full term, and small. I must go now. There is nothing more I can do here. You must keep her quiet and still. The less she moves…’ He had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid that it is only a matter of time, Robert. I shall return in the morning, but if…if you need me in the meantime…’ Awkwardly, he had patted Robert’s shoulder, sighing as he added, ‘I am afraid that Amelia is taking this very badly. Lyddy was…is her favourite sister and she feels…’

Numbly, Robert had let him go.

‘Robert, I want to see Ellie. Where is she?’ As she spoke Lydia was struggling to sit up.

Panic-stricken, Robert urged her to lie down. Beneath the covers she was swaddled in old sheets, wrapped around her to soak up the life draining from her.