Joanna Kavenna - The Birth of Love

*

Worst of all, Patrick kept praising her; he said he didn’t know how she managed it all. He was trying to encourage her, though it made her feel alone, too, that her experience was untranslatable, obscure to him. He did not perceive that she was half-mad with fatigue, and yet she rose each day and knew she must play her part, she must be a mother to her son, she must be measured with him, never raise her voice to him, even when her blood was curdling with frustration. Yet often she felt so happy, so overwhelmed with love — everything was incoherent and ragged and she could not explain it to Patrick; she mostly blamed him when things were hard. She wanted him to experience it too — the relentlessness, how it did not end, and you could never rest, how it was beautiful and it smashed you to pieces at the same time — but he usually came home after Calumn was in bed, found her collapsed and monosyllabic on the sofa. She told herself each day, she must remember, he was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, this would soon be over — then everything got clouded, this chemical exhaustion took hold of her, and she slipped again.

*

She felt a low pain in her belly, the sort of grinding cramps she had been experiencing for a day or so. In her complaining body, she was desperate for her pregnancy to end, so she hesitated to question this augury, fearful of misdiagnosing it as labour. She didn’t want to attract any attention from vengeful gods or in any way leave herself open to charges of hubris. She rubbed her belly, felt the baby kick, a palpable swelling which was a foot, a tiny vengeful foot, she thought, because the kick was so hard and probing. A reproach, perhaps. Impatience or apprehension, if a foetus could feel either. The pain was surging within her, and she tried to remember how it had been last time, how it had felt. Then, she had been optimistic; in the final weeks of her pregnancy she had phoned the hospital at the first sign of a contraction. They had rushed off, she and Patrick, like eager neophytes. They arrived and were sent away again. Braxton Hicks, the midwives told them patiently. The body practising for real labour. Nothing to worry about. Do call if you’re concerned about anything. Three times they tried to scale the ramparts and found the hospital fortified against them. The entrance was barred; she was not ready. When she finally gained access to her sterilised room, things moved efficiently, to a timetable. A nice quick birth, the doctor said.

*

Another pain, and Brigid breathed more deeply, her instincts beginning to help her. She was planetary in her girth, an ancient breeding cow. She was whole with child, swollen beyond any size that seemed proportionate or reasonable. She was entirely child, she felt; her body had been colonised. It was not herself, as she had been, she had become someone else; it made her uncertain if she really had a self at all. She was surely half-mad, her brain stewed in hormones, yet now she took Calumn in her arms, tickling him under the chin. He turned to her, smiled toothily, said ‘Mamma,’ and she said, ‘Hello baby. Hello, hello lovely baby baby,’ and he said, ‘Ahdoorschnefatibumaha,’ some proto-talk she couldn’t interpret. She kissed his warm soft skin, breathed in the wafting beautiful smell of him, baby shampoo and milk. She kissed him and held him to her, whispering in his ear, telling him how precious he was and how much she loved him. Though she felt spiky and savage within, she never doubted that she loved her son. Her love was infinite; she sensed there was a deep infinite core of love, and then a lesser love, her surface emotion, where everything got sullied by quotidian demands, and mingled with guilt.

*

‘… The Moon , a novel by Michael Stone … its central subject the … epidemic of childbed fever …,’ she heard the radio say, and that made her shake her head. If Patrick had been here, he would have acted swiftly, banished the voice. Instead the phone was ringing, so she said to Calumn, ‘Come on sweetie, let’s go and see who this is.’ He beamed up at her, made a sound like a siren, his current favourite noise. ‘Nee-nar nee-nar nee-nar,’ said Calumn, as Brigid led him slowly along the corridor, knowing she had twelve rings to get the phone. She caught it on the final ring, heard her mother saying, ‘Hello Brigid,’ as she lifted the handset. Calumn dropped to the floor and began picking at a piece of fluff. Brigid smiled at him. ‘Hi Mum, yes, fluff, Calumn,’ she said. ‘It’s called fluff.’

‘Feeff,’ he said, glancing up at her, seeking her approval.

‘That’s exactly right. How are you, Mum?’

‘Fwuff,’ said Calumn, taking the phone book from a shelf and opening it, glancing down the pages as if in search of something.

‘How are you feeling dear? Any signs?’ her mother was saying. Yes, there was a star above the house last night, Brigid wanted to say, and an old crone shook her stick at me this morning. But she said, ‘No, no signs. I feel as usual.’

‘Oh, it must be awful to be so overdue,’ her mother said. ‘So terribly boring.’

‘It’s not that overdue,’ said Brigid. She had been saying this to everyone for two weeks, ever since her baby had been diagnosed as late. As if there was a deadline, as if they were falling behind. Below her, Calumn was meditatively tearing at the pages of the phone book, while Brigid watched and couldn’t face bending down to salvage it.

‘You can’t have heard about Dorothy, about poor Dorothy’s baby,’ said her mother.

‘Yes, I did hear. I must send her a card.’

‘You know, she thought like you. And she was much younger. At your age Brigid, you have to take care. You sound terribly tired.’

‘I’m not too bad. I could last another week or two, if necessary.’ She didn’t believe that at all. She had plainly established that it was bad, that she could barely suffer another hour of it. Yet there was something within her, some instinct she couldn’t entirely command, which made her disagree nonetheless. She said, ‘I’ll write Dorothy a card today …’

‘You do understand that it’s another person’s life, don’t you? I always think there are points to make and points to waive, Brigid. Battles to fight and battles to cede.’

‘How are you, Mum?’

‘I’m not the subject under debate, Brigid.’

‘Nee. Nar,’ said Calumn. ‘Aidahadabok.’

‘Look, it’s all fine. I’m fine. That’s right, sweetie, it’s a book,’ said Brigid. Now Calumn dropped the phone book, having torn it to his satisfaction, found a ten-pence piece on the floor and stuffed it into his mouth. There began a mighty struggle between mother and baby for possession of the coin, mother with her fingers in the baby’s mouth, baby throwing back his head, trying to clamp his lips shut. Prising open his mouth she seized the object. He began a screaming protest so she gave him a pen to chew. He sat on the floor, instantly mollified, busy with the wonder and strangeness of a pen.

‘There’s absolutely no need to play the martyr. At your age they would induce you like a shot. Nobody in their right mind would deny you an induction.’

Calumn had dropped the pen and was trying to drag the phone away from her, accompanying his endeavours with insistent little yelps and squeals.

‘What on earth is up with Calumn this morning? Is he ill?’

‘No, no, he’s all right,’ Brigid said, trying to smile at Calumn. ‘He just needs his morning snack. And a friend is coming soon. I’d better go.’

‘Oh, OK. Well, I was phoning to say I’m just at the hairdresser’s. So I can drop round after I finish here.’

‘Really Mum, there’s no need to put yourself out.’

‘Oh no, I’ll just drop round with a couple of things.’