Ellie Pride by Annie Groves

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 doora 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