Authors: Joanna Kavenna
Brigid lifted her leg again, dragged it off the spike. And then she held it in mid air for a moment, unable to force it down again.
*
‘Go on, Brigid, put your foot down,’ said the midwife. Brisk and practical. A sadist, thought Brigid. A deep dark
ravenous sadist, trying to torture them all. She put her foot down, surrendered to the agony, and then moved her other foot. Another step gained. Another. She was on the sixth step, in tears now, but they were desperate solitary tears, so she wasn’t sure Patrick or the midwife – behind her, exhorting her all the way – noticed them at all. And even if they did, there was nothing they could do. She had to impale herself over and over again. She was battling onto the eighth step, crying quietly as she moved, when she looked up and saw the moon through the landing window. It was a full moon, so huge it was barely contained within the window frame. She looked up at it and paused. It was so round and large. It was somehow comforting, though she didn’t know why. It looked solid, though it was an immeasurable distance away. Immeasurable to her. For a moment she just looked at this moon, and then she moved again.
*
Down onto the spike she went. Impaled thoroughly. She cried out, and she heard Patrick saying, ‘Does she have to do this?’
She wanted to wail now, though she was trying to be quiet because of Calumn. Still, in some weary smashed-up portion of her brain, there was the image of her son, peacefully sleeping. Then the contraction came and she bent over and gripped the banisters. Nothing could help her now. She had lost the gas and she hardly bothered to turn on the TENS machine. She just bowed to the agony, let it rage through her, and she opened her mouth wide as if to scream, though no sound came.
‘Can’t she go back to the chair?’ Patrick was saying. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘Just a couple more stairs,’ said the midwife. ‘Let her get through this contraction.’
*
She was bent double and clutching onto the stairs and her mouth was hanging open. Her body demanded certain postures. It had an idea of how to minimise the pain, though it was only a faint improvement. She clung to this anyway. She had her mouth open and she was trying to breathe, though all she wanted to do was rail against the midwife and tell her to go. She wanted to blame her.
*
When the pain receded she moved up two more steps, because she didn’t care how much worse things got. ‘Well done, excellent,’ said the midwife. ‘That’s really wonderful, Brigid. Can you do just one more?’
‘Hasn’t she done enough?’ She could hear from this that Patrick had already condemned the midwife. As if to show him it was OK, she lifted her leg again. It was the shrillness of the pain which was so shocking. You could only think, how shrill. How I have never felt pain like this. How I never will, unless I give birth again. How I must not. How I must never do this again.
*
‘Well done,’ the midwife was saying, patting Brigid gently on the back. ‘You did brilliantly. You were very brave. Patrick, can you carry Brigid downstairs?’
*
And Patrick, glad to be able to do something, took Brigid in his arms, and kissed her. ‘Was that horrible?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
He was wiping tears from her cheeks.
‘My poor darling. I’m very proud of you.’
The next hour was confused. There was a sort of acceleration. She lost control altogether. She was back in the rocking chair, and the gas had drawn her under. She felt as if she was dying, with the gas pipe in her mouth. She imagined this must be what it was like to die. This merging of the mind and body, this realisation that the two were inextricably bound together. The mind dwindled as the body faded, she had a sense of that, and she imagined her eyes must be glassy already. And then the gas made everything like a vision, or a nightmare.
*
So she shut her eyes and thought for a moment that she was running through her house, trying to find Calumn or her newborn child. In this imagining, or hallucination, whatever it was, she had already birthed the baby, and yet she couldn’t find it. She kept flinging open doors, and each one would open onto the same scene – a woman squatting in childbirth, semi-naked, screaming out her pain. And each time the woman would stop screaming and look at her. Brigid would stand there for a moment, held by this stare, then the door would slam shut. All these rooms, with women squatting in them, crying and screaming. Some would die, perhaps, and some of their babies would perhaps die with them. That made her shake, and she opened her eyes again, but she couldn’t focus on the faces of the midwife or Patrick; they were too remote from her, contained entirely apart from her, and she breathed in gas and murmured – Patrick bent down, but couldn’t understand her – and she saw the women again.
The midwife examined her, and her fingers were like shards of glass, and Brigid imagined her interior as a
ragged hole, ripped apart by all the pain. The midwife was grave now, something had changed. Six centimetres dilated, she said. Six centimetres was nothing, for all these hours of pain. They had told her the second time was easier, and yet they had lied, or she was the exception. Hours and hours; it must be late, and she was lost and fumbling in the dark. Patrick was beside her. She was holding his hand; his skin was very damp and warm. She was sweating and she had heated his hand. Escalation, that was what was happening. Something she couldn’t control. She no longer tried to breathe deeply. The contractions seemed to be constant, or the intervals were too brief for her to recover from the lancing pain. There was no respite. She felt water at her lips, and she realised she was thirsty. But she couldn’t swallow.
*
‘You must drink,’ said the midwife. ‘You mustn’t get dehydrated.’
A cold flannel on her face. That helped briefly. And she had forgotten to twist the TENS machine. She had forgotten but it didn’t matter any more. She ripped off the pads, scrabbling with her fingers at her back. Her back was burning, she felt as if she had been branded.
‘You want to take it off?’ said Patrick.
She couldn’t reply, she just scrabbled with her fingers, and so he helped her. He ripped off the pads and rubbed the sore skin.
*
Into this nightmare of gas and pain came the voice of the midwife. As if from very far away. She was infinitely far away, in the world of non-pain. Patrick was there too, and Calumn and her mother were in the house but elsewhere
and she could hardly remember them now. This too was death, losing any sense of your family, finding they had faded from your mind. She heard a voice, the measured tone of the midwife, and now she tried to turn her head towards it. It was saying, ‘There are things we can do to help the labour along, but you will have to move again.’
‘I don’t want to move,’ said Brigid.
‘I am afraid you will have to. We will have to change your position. It’s simply not going to happen otherwise.’
‘I can’t move any more,’ said Brigid. Her voice was only a whine. She shook her head. She thought of the hospital, the tower across the river, and how she had wanted to avoid it. ‘It’s too much.’
‘You must keep trying,’ said the midwife.
She had been defeated, that seemed clear. Flayed and torn, and now she was searching for an escape route, or if not escape then something she could endure. ‘I want to go to hospital,’ she said, because she knew it was the only way she could reduce the pain. The pain was the unbearable constant, and her body was piteous and amoral, desperate for a release. ‘I want an epidural,’ she heard herself saying, and she was trying not to cry.
‘Are you sure?’ said the midwife. She sounded disappointed. ‘It’s your choice of course, but equally I can sit down with you and your husband and discuss some other options.’
‘No,’ said Brigid, and though she was weeping now she was quite resolute. ‘I want to go to hospital.’
‘Shall I drive her?’ said Patrick.
‘No, she should go by ambulance,’ said the midwife. ‘At this stage, she can’t go by car.’
Now Brigid stopped rocking herself, she just let wave after wave of pain grip her and toss her around, as if she was driftwood on an endless ocean, while Patrick stroked her hair and kissed her, said kind words she could hardly disentangle. Her face was greased with tears. She could barely lift her head and take a breath before the next contraction came. And she was weak from trying to stay afloat, from trying to ‘manage her pain’. ‘Manage your pain.’ ‘Stay in control of your pain.’ Well, she had failed in all of that.
‘Fine,’ she said, not caring any more, and then she bowed her head as another contraction swept her under.
*
She was under for a long time, and her thoughts were just of blackness.
*
‘Darling.’ That was Patrick’s voice. Somewhere else. She heard it above her, or maybe she was above it and he was trying to call her back. ‘The midwife has called for an ambulance. It will be here very soon.’ There was a why in her mind, but she couldn’t express it. She didn’t understand. She could hardly even think of the baby, she was just thinking of her body and how she was drowning in pain and how pointless this pain was – she had forgotten it had a reason. It was her natural state – she had always been in pain, would always be – she was in a new world, in which pain was continuous and unceasing and there would only ever be pain. Patrick said to her, ‘Darling it will be OK,’ and she thought he meant the pain, and that he was lying anyway, the pain wouldn’t end.
‘They say we will be picked up very soon,’ said Patrick.
Patrick watched his wife, he saw her neck drenched in sweat and her body hunched, and the terrible fear in her eyes when a contraction came. Mostly he wanted to be sick. He was in a vile state of panic; he understood how powerless he was, to help her or their unborn child. Even the midwife seemed worried. On the phone to the hospital, she sounded urgent, not professional at all. ‘Come as soon as you can, she is no longer coping with the pain,’ she said, but softly so Brigid wouldn’t hear. Brigid had her eyes shut and he couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. Everything had failed, all their optimistic plans, and he felt a grave sense of pity for her, that she had been trying so hard and yet it had stalled anyway. The midwife was gathering things together. Her gas pipe. Her birthing ball and her aromatherapy oils. Redundant, all of them. It was unfair to blame her, this benevolent practical woman, with her short brown hair and her open face. It wasn’t her fault, he tried to think. They were unlucky, that was all. But he was too panicked to be clear at all.
*
‘You’ve done everything right,’ the midwife said to him. ‘Brigid is just very tired. I suspect baby is in an awkward position. So labour has been particularly slow and difficult.’
‘What would happen if there wasn’t a hospital, if no hospital existed?’ said Patrick back to her, when Brigid was distracted, clenching her teeth and writhing through another contraction.
‘Well, that’s hardly relevant,’ said the midwife, and for a moment she looked irritated.
‘But just can you speculate? Just out of interest?’
‘No, I don’t think I can,’ said the midwife, and Patrick
had to desist. He couldn’t interrogate her. He was angry with himself too, because he had failed Brigid.
*
‘I just want to see her before she goes,’ Brigid’s mother was saying, and Brigid looked up to see her mother in the doorway.
‘Where’s Calumn?’ she said to her, she thought she said something like that, though her words were slurred.
‘He’s fast asleep. He’s been such a good little boy.’
‘OK. Is he OK?’
‘He’s fine, dear. We’ll be fine until you get back. I hope it all goes well for you,’ and her mother came over and kissed the sweaty brow of her daughter, and stroked her gently on the cheek.
Brigid waited until her mother left the room and then she began to cry again. She couldn’t restrain herself at all, she sobbed and Patrick put his arms around her.
*
As they took her into the ambulance, Brigid, prostrate and no longer able to care about her state, perfectly supine, looked up and saw directly above her, hanging above her, like an improbable stage prop, the moon. This full moon, so vast and white; she was mesmerised as she lay there. As they adjusted elements around her, clipped one thing and unclasped another, smoothed blankets over her, as Patrick held her hand and stroked her hair, Brigid stared up at the moon.
The moon hung above Michael Stone as he stood in the garden of a Hampstead house. It was a handsome garden, abundant in flowers and gnarled old trees, candles sputtering on the terrace. ‘This is Lucy-Rose Simpson, editor of the
Weekly Review
, and her partner, James McIntyre, whose poetry you have doubtless read,’ Sally had said, as they arrived. ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ he said, and they laughed generously, as if he had been witty. Lucy-Rose was saying to him now, ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, gesturing with his glass at nothing. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure,’ she said. Her voice – husky and compas-sionate – was familiar; he had heard her often on the radio. She reviewed books of the hour; she was decisive, but seldom rude. In the flickering light, Michael noted her round eyes, her cropped hair, stained bronze, and into the round-eyed compassion of Lucy-Rose, he said, ‘An amazing moon.’
She looked up and said, ‘Of course, you like moons.’ She laughed towards him. ‘It’s very full isn’t it? You can almost imagine you’re standing on the shore of the Sea of Tranquillity.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so glad we’re all out in the garden,’ said Lucy-Rose. ‘It rained so hard earlier, I thought we’d be shut up inside.
So much nicer, in the summer, to stand in the garden, even when everything is wet to the touch.’
*
Then there was another person beside them. A poet, saying how much he admired the book –‘the book’ – that was how they flattered him – and Michael said, ‘Thank you very much. I appreciate your support.’
They had introduced him earlier, this man, Dougie Ascherson, that was his name. Winner of the Hodgkinson-Healey prize, they added, and Michael murmured his congratulations. The
Weekly Review
was all poets, Sally had said. ‘Bad breath and horrible clothes,’ she laughed. But they weren’t like that at all. Everyone was smooth-skinned and charming, far from seedy.
‘I’m just glad it’s seen the light of day,’ said Lucy-Rose.‘That we can raise a glass to your published work.’
*
Michael had been drunk after lunch, and in his drunkenness he had become aware that the hours were passing slowly, that his mood had tottered and then descended still further. Sally had arranged this launch party, a robust celebration, and so the evening was shaded in, everything was planned. During the intervening hours, he had tried to stay busy. He read through the reviews, received their barbs. Now he had their phrases in his head, despite Sally’s exhortations. All afternoon he watched the clock slide onwards, as he drank one Irish coffee after another, until his throat was dry. The working day dwindled towards its close. It was an anti-climax. He had been expectant for months, because this was the day he would be judged. He had imagined it would be swift and decisive. But still everything hung in the balance. It would be weeks before
the reviews all came in, Sally told him. She added, ‘Anyway, it really shouldn’t matter to you. The important thing, for you, was to get your work published. And you did.’
*
He couldn’t believe her. Instead he drank coffee and thought of his errors, the things he should have revised while he had the chance. That narrator, why did I let him run on so much? Why did I allow him to be so muddled, so vague in his assertions? He had sacrificed so much and even then he had written a bad book, and if he had the chance again he would destroy it. He never had much of a sense of loyalty to his books. He finished them with pride, thought them perfect for a day, a week perhaps. Then he lost faith, by degrees. And yet this book – he had hoped this book was his best, and Sally had said so too. He had called it
The Moon
, thinking this was a clever title at the time, but now he wanted to tear his book to pieces, because of what they had said.
*
At 3.00 p.m. the phone rang, and Sally said, ‘I forgot to remind you about the radio programme tomorrow. At 9.00 a.m. sharp. You might want to get everything ready before you come tonight. It’ll be live.’ That made Michael feel quite sick; he swallowed carefully.
‘I’m not sure … I don’t think I really should …’
‘Michael, I know. You are very reserved. But this is the only radio interview the publicity people could arrange for you. Katherine Miller is the presenter, and she’s terribly good. She’ll just ask you a few gentle questions about your book. It would help enormously with gaining an audience.’
‘But …’ he said.
‘Now, let’s think about this evening. You should come up to Hampstead for around 7.00 p.m. The launch is a bit of fun. No need to worry about it.’
‘Perhaps I should just stay here, prepare myself for the radio …’
She dismissed his words, before he could finish.
‘Nonsense. There’s something very irritating about writers who don’t go to their own launches. Come out, just for an hour. It’ll cheer you up.’
*
So Sally and good sense had prevailed, and Michael put the reviews on his desk, covered them with a piece of paper, and then he showered and found another shirt. He opened a bottle of wine because he was afraid of sobering up. Standing in his boxer shorts so as not to further crease his suit he gazed out of the window at the current far below and the current seemed more furious and driven than before. He was dependent on the judgement of strangers, on their opinions about him. He would be consigned to something or other, and then they would all forget him. The flood was passing, even as he watched it from his window.
*
He was drunk and calmer than before, when the phone rang. He assumed it would be Sally, or perhaps the publicity woman who had said she would call. Yet it was James again.
‘Ah, you’re still at home,’ he said, in his clipped and chilly way.
‘No, no, back at home,’ said Michael. ‘I was out earlier at a …’ but that sounded defensive, so he stopped.
‘I won’t keep you,’ said James. ‘I wanted to speak to you
because I have just been to see our mother. I told her that you were launching your book. One speaks even though she doesn’t really understand. Normally she says very little, or what she says is incoherent. Yet today’– his brother’s voice was softening a little, registering surprise, or something else – ‘well, she nodded a little as I spoke. A reflex, perhaps. When it was time for me to go, she scrabbled with her hands, she wanted to write something. I couldn’t find a pen, so she said I must wish you luck. Then something else, which was garbled. About a story you once wrote for her. He is always writing little things for me, she said – because of course she is confused, she is half in the past, more sometimes, and she asked where you were …’
The taxi was outside, and Michael had to go.
So she clawed his day apart. His small moment, torn to shreds. It was melodrama, possibly, but he was trembling as the taxi conveyed him through the streets, as the driver turned the wheel and spoke loudly on his phone. When they pulled up outside the house he lingered by the door of the cab, unable to shut it. The driver looked at his watch, trying to hurry him away. Yet Michael was thinking, if he got back in, told the driver to take him to King’s Cross, he could be there in a few minutes. He could press his lips against her dusty hand, beg her forgiveness. He could say he was sorry, even if he wasn’t sure he really meant it.
But he paid the driver, and slammed the car door.
At the house he knew it had been a terrible mistake to come. He was welcomed by Lucy-Rose, Sally hovering in the background, trying to orchestrate his entrance, conducting him through the kindly nodding hordes and into the garden. His coat was removed, and someone brought
him a glass of wine. He admired the walls covered in elegant prints, the shelves full of interesting books. He thanked everyone; he was indiscriminate.
*
Standing in the garden he saw them assembled. He wasn’t sure who had rallied them, but here they were, vivid in the dusk. Lucy-Rose was saying, ‘A few people couldn’t come, but they said they had heard good things about your book.’
Michael nodded and then, to change the subject, said, ‘Is that an aspidistra?’ and pointed at the flowerbed.
‘Yes,’ said Lucy-Rose. ‘We have a man who does the garden. He cultivates the most extraordinary flowers.’
‘It’s very fine.’
‘Michael, I have to leave in a second, but I wanted to say a brief hello before I went.’ There was a publisher at his shoulder. Martha Williams. She had once rejected a book of his, but now she was here.
‘I do hope things go well for you,’ she said, briskly. When she rejected his book she had written to Sally: ‘Dear Sally, further to our conversation on the phone I wanted to repeat how sorry we are that we could not accept Michael Stone’s novel. We are happy to take commercial risks if we really believe in the quality of the work but somehow we didn’t believe enough. I wish you and Mr Stone all the best in finding a suitable publisher.’ She had dashed that off in a second or two, to soften the blow, or to avoid offending Sally who had been at Cambridge with her. He had read it once and thrown it away. Still he remembered every word. Now she was speaking, in her brisk and terrifying way, her hands moving, her form shapeless within a billowing coat; but he couldn’t follow
her words. He nodded as she said something about how she hadn’t had a chance to read his book but she looked forward to doing so, how she had heard something and something else, and he nodded and said, ‘Yes, it has all been … very … surprising.’
*
She shook his hand suddenly, before he had time to wipe it, said, ‘I wish you the best.’ Then she swept away, silk flowing from her ample shoulders. She had a coat the colour of the moon, he thought.
*
Here were more people he didn’t know. They were different from the lunchtime people, different in their particulars, though they were just as bold and loquacious, just as able to hammer out glinting phrases. To him they seemed perfect, some of them in shirts and slacks, and some wearing suits, recently arrived from their offices. The women well into attractive middle age, elegantly dressed, smelling of perfume. They mingled, the perfumed women with their flowing skirts, and the men in their slacks, and they smiled and kissed each other on the cheeks.
‘More wine?’ said someone, and he held out his glass.
*
‘Michael Stone,’ said someone else. ‘I just wanted to say how much I admire your book. I was trying to review it, but alas they had already sent it out.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Michael. ‘But thank you.’
‘I’m Paul Ardache. I’ve written a few novels.’ And the man held out his hand. Perhaps he was forty, perhaps older. He had thick black hair, but his face was creased and folded. Like a much-used handkerchief. He was lean and he looked as if he smoked. And he was producing a cigarette packet
now, offering it to Michael.
‘No thank you.’
‘How disciplined of you,’ said Paul Ardache.
There was a pause while the flame was kindled. Paul Ardache breathed in deeply, exhaled. ‘Ah God, I always chain-smoke my way through the launch of a book. But I lack self-control. Anyway,’ he began again, ‘I liked the way you wrote about this solitary man. Furious that he had been forgotten. Railing against everyone.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And I was moved by the story of those poor women, their sacrifice.’
‘You’re most kind.’
‘Then there were these strange moments, when I felt something else was coming through. Were you conscious of it, I wonder? I am fascinated by the elements we cannot control, the narratorial elements which somehow inveigle their way onto the page, seem inevitable to us but then strike others as peculiar and intriguing. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I am not sure.’
‘Well, for example, that ghost-woman Semmelweis saw. Is that documented, did he really see her?’
‘No, I must confess it isn’t a fact. I imagined he might …’
‘And what was her name again?’
‘Birgit Vogel.’
‘Of course, that’s it, Vogel the bird. A bird of peace, or a bird of prey, one wonders?’
‘I just wanted a German name. And not Busch or Fischer.’
‘Yes, well, that is interesting isn’t it? Still, of all the other names you could have chosen, you chose Vogel. The pecking
beak. Like something from a Freudian nightmare, do you not think?’
‘I … I don’t know …’ He was stumbling, he wasn’t sure he liked what the man was saying to him. But Ardache was courteous and insistent.
‘You mean you do not know, or you are not sure this has any relevance to your work?’ he said.
‘I think … perhaps … such questions … these things … should remain unanswered … If we are not to delude ourselves …’
‘Of course, these matters are ultimately beyond our power to comprehend. The mind falters, and so on. I just wondered what you really thought. One thing I felt about your book was that you were a veiled presence. You were holding your cards close to your chest. What does the author actually feel about all of this, I kept thinking. The narrator is a study in irresolution, of course. He mustn’t become an ideological tyrant himself, that would defeat the purpose of your book. Sometimes he gets carried away, but he always tries to check himself. “Professor Wilson, I’m rambling on,” he says, and what he really means is, “I must squash my inner ideologue,” does he not? But what about the author, I thought. I felt you wanted to conceal yourself. You were modest, or like Joyce’s conception of the artist, you were indifferent to your creations. Paring your fingernails.’
‘No … it wasn’t that … I wasn’t aloof … At least, I didn’t intend to be …’ said Michael.
‘Perhaps you were forcing your emotions down,’ said Paul Ardache. ‘As if you thought that, unrestrained, they might carry you off.’ And now he inhaled again. He was not aware of the significance of his words. How he was
making Michael want to cry and shake. Ardache was simply trying to find something to say, to show he had read the book, engaged with it. Yet suddenly it was very clear to Michael that his book was tactless, quite appalling – he had not thought carefully enough, had been in such a hurry to finish it – but he had inadvertently revealed the fury that drove him on. Ardache was saying, ‘Anyway, perhaps you are just a Blakean at heart. A Blakean trapped in modernity. The birthing of life – the human form divine. The terrible divinity of nature.’