remembered that there had been a time when she had been free and had not known how free she was.
Walking on the beach by the Old Schoolhouse on the last day of the old century. She hadn’t realized that she was happy at the time. What she had felt was anticipation: as if the machinery of time was inexorably grinding towards a great transition, taking them all with it. It was an ominous sensation, and yet also a liberating one. It was not a day like any other, a day of mundane deeds, repetition and limitations; it was a day on which it was possible to believe in the imminence of unknown and unknowable change.
Richard stirred and, finally, she felt the ghost of an urge to push.
She rang the bell. Richard was at her side, willing but terrified. Another examination. She couldn’t feel it.
‘You can start to try to push if you like,’ the latest midwife said. And she tried, but it was like trying to read the very smallest row of letters during an eye test. She could hazard a guess, but she couldn’t read the signs.
A doctor examined her; blonde, female, doubtful. ‘How long has she been pushing? Twenty minutes? Well, nothing very much is happening at all. You’ve got forty minutes left,’ she told Natalie.
Her time was nearly up. And so Natalie, with the encouragement of the latest midwife, and slightly morehesitant encouragement from Richard, began to push in earnest.
When Richard shifted down the foot end it crossed her mind to tell him that he shouldn’t, that it was a mistake, but then the next contraction was clearer and she shoved back against it as hard as she could and yes, she was making progress finally, she’d show the lot of them. The doctor quickly snipped her open and she felt a tugging as the ventouse was applied to the baby’s head, but no, no good, someone noticed the syntocinon was running out and started running round like a mad thing looking for another bag, oh shit, and the next contraction was slower and less sharp and the one after that weaker still. She really absolutely genuinely was running out of time, and then there was another spasm and she shoved and the doctor pulled with the forceps and she could feel the baby being lifted up and out of her. Richard stepped nervously forward to cut the cord, as per the birth plan, and then, also as per the birth plan, the baby was dumped on her chest and covered by a sheet, and she looked into her daughter’s cloudy blue eyes.
‘Welcome to the world, Matilda Rose,’ Natalie said, and burst into tears.
6
Theatre
THE HEART OF the courtroom was an empty space. It was a modern facility, square, windowless, airless, the colour of dull metal. Tina was sitting overhead in the press gallery, watching the proceedings as if in the stalls at a particularly uncomfortable piece of contemporary theatre. Below her, the witnesses and lawyers were seated around the four sides of the chamber, facing each other.
To the left were the parents of Alice March, whose death at just nine months of age was the subject of the inquest. On the right were the medical professionals who had tried and failed to save Alice’s life. And directly beneath Tina, opposite the coroner on the far side of the court, was Kelly-Ann Rose, the eighteen-year-old nursery nurse who had made the mistake of giving Alice food that she shouldn’t have eaten, after which Alice had suffered an allergic reaction, turned blue and stopped breathing.
The proximity of the grieving mother and the girl whose mistake might or might not have contributed to the baby’s death filled the courtroom with an electrical charge that had nowhere to go until the verdict was announced and the inquest was over. The atmosphere was intensely claustrophobic, exhausting, deadening. Kelly-Ann looked grey and stiff, and the bags under her eyes were the colour of weak tea. Mrs March was the dry, worn white of old stone, as still and composed as a carving of a good wife on top of a medieval tomb. One was the picture of
Walking on the beach by the Old Schoolhouse on the last day of the old century. She hadn’t realized that she was happy at the time. What she had felt was anticipation: as if the machinery of time was inexorably grinding towards a great transition, taking them all with it. It was an ominous sensation, and yet also a liberating one. It was not a day like any other, a day of mundane deeds, repetition and limitations; it was a day on which it was possible to believe in the imminence of unknown and unknowable change.
Richard stirred and, finally, she felt the ghost of an urge to push.
She rang the bell. Richard was at her side, willing but terrified. Another examination. She couldn’t feel it.
‘You can start to try to push if you like,’ the latest midwife said. And she tried, but it was like trying to read the very smallest row of letters during an eye test. She could hazard a guess, but she couldn’t read the signs.
A doctor examined her; blonde, female, doubtful. ‘How long has she been pushing? Twenty minutes? Well, nothing very much is happening at all. You’ve got forty minutes left,’ she told Natalie.
Her time was nearly up. And so Natalie, with the encouragement of the latest midwife, and slightly morehesitant encouragement from Richard, began to push in earnest.
When Richard shifted down the foot end it crossed her mind to tell him that he shouldn’t, that it was a mistake, but then the next contraction was clearer and she shoved back against it as hard as she could and yes, she was making progress finally, she’d show the lot of them. The doctor quickly snipped her open and she felt a tugging as the ventouse was applied to the baby’s head, but no, no good, someone noticed the syntocinon was running out and started running round like a mad thing looking for another bag, oh shit, and the next contraction was slower and less sharp and the one after that weaker still. She really absolutely genuinely was running out of time, and then there was another spasm and she shoved and the doctor pulled with the forceps and she could feel the baby being lifted up and out of her. Richard stepped nervously forward to cut the cord, as per the birth plan, and then, also as per the birth plan, the baby was dumped on her chest and covered by a sheet, and she looked into her daughter’s cloudy blue eyes.
‘Welcome to the world, Matilda Rose,’ Natalie said, and burst into tears.
6
Theatre
THE HEART OF the courtroom was an empty space. It was a modern facility, square, windowless, airless, the colour of dull metal. Tina was sitting overhead in the press gallery, watching the proceedings as if in the stalls at a particularly uncomfortable piece of contemporary theatre. Below her, the witnesses and lawyers were seated around the four sides of the chamber, facing each other.
To the left were the parents of Alice March, whose death at just nine months of age was the subject of the inquest. On the right were the medical professionals who had tried and failed to save Alice’s life. And directly beneath Tina, opposite the coroner on the far side of the court, was Kelly-Ann Rose, the eighteen-year-old nursery nurse who had made the mistake of giving Alice food that she shouldn’t have eaten, after which Alice had suffered an allergic reaction, turned blue and stopped breathing.
The proximity of the grieving mother and the girl whose mistake might or might not have contributed to the baby’s death filled the courtroom with an electrical charge that had nowhere to go until the verdict was announced and the inquest was over. The atmosphere was intensely claustrophobic, exhausting, deadening. Kelly-Ann looked grey and stiff, and the bags under her eyes were the colour of weak tea. Mrs March was the dry, worn white of old stone, as still and composed as a carving of a good wife on top of a medieval tomb. One was the picture of
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