‘Sorry about the delay,’ Dominic apologised. ‘How are you feeling?’
Christy could almost feel for herself the spasm of pain that contorted the woman’s body as she bent over.
It was several seconds before she could speak.
‘I don’t think it will be very much longer. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here.’ She saw Christy for the first time as she stepped out from behind Dominic and smiled wanly at her.
‘I brought Christy to keep an eye on the children.’ As Dominic spoke he was looking at his watch—timing the contractions, no doubt, Christy thought nervously. She had never had an awful lot to do with babies, and had certainly never been there on the spot, so to speak, when one was born.
‘I’ve got everything ready upstairs, doctor.’
‘All right, Mrs Thomson, I’ll be with you in a minute. Can you cope down here?’ Dominic asked Christy briskly, smiling reassuringly at the three small faces turned up to his with varying degrees of apprehension.
‘Mummy’s having our baby,’ the largest member of the trio lisped.
‘Yes…yes, I think so. Shouldn’t I be boiling water or something?’ Christy suggested distractedly.
Dominic laughed. ‘No…’
It seemed a long, long time since she had heard him laughing naturally, and she could feel her own heart lifting slightly in response as she remembered earlier, more innocent days when she had been content with nothing more than his friendship.
Keeping the children occupied wasn’t too hard a task. They were all obviously well-behaved, and the fact that she was a stranger further inhibited them, so that it wasn’t until Christy had the brainwave of suggesting that they play Snakes and Ladders when she saw the game on the dresser that they started to relax a little.
Every now and again she glanced upwards, inwardly praying for the safety of Mrs Thomson and her baby.
When she cried out, the twins’ faces puckered, and one of the little boys cuddled on to Christy’s lap. Too young to really understand what was happening, they could still feel their mother’s pain and react to it.
‘Mummy cry…’
Christy watched despairingly as the small chin wobbled, but Lyn, the eldest of the three, came to her rescue, saying stalwartly, ‘It’s all right, Christopher…it’s only like when Betsy had her puppies…’
That was one way of looking at it, Christy thought wryly, and of course as farm children they would be used to the actuality of birth.
Time seemed to drag as Christy waited in apprehensive silence. How long did it take for a baby to be born? She might as well have asked herself how long was a piece of string, she acknowledged ruefully. The problem was that she felt so woefully inadequate. She got up and checked on the Aga, going out for more fuel.
When she came back the twins asked for drinks, and with Lyn’s help she found their orange juice. She had just got them settled when above them their mother cried out, the sound splintering the silence of the kitchen.
Christy held her breath, gathering the twins closer, and even the more stoical Lyn leaned tensely against her.
From the top of the stairs she heard Dominic calling her, and numbly she got up and hurried across the room.
‘Can you come up here for a moment, Christy?’
He sounded calm enough, if a bit terse.
Gently reassuring the children and checking that the door was locked and there was nothing of any danger to them within their reach, she hurried upstairs.
Lorna Thomson’s dark hair was clinging stickily to her face, and Christy felt a spasm of fear clutch at her stomach as she heard the other woman’s moans.
‘What is it?’ she asked Dominic nervously, licking dry lips. ‘Dominic, I…’
‘It’s all right. All I want you to do is to let Lorna hold on to you. Can you do that?’
The woman on the bed writhed and cried out, and Christy forgot her fear.
‘Soak a cloth in cold water, so that you can sponge her face,’ Dominic instructed her.
As she sat at the side of the bed following Dominic’s instructions and feeling the sharp bite of Lorna’s fingernails into her skin, even Christy in her ignorance could see that the birth was imminent.
A huge wave of love and awe washed over her as she listened to Dominic exhorting and cajoling Lorna. She looked at him, watching the total concentration on his face, before she turned back to soothe Lorna’s damp face.
‘Just one more push, Lorna. You can do it. And another…’
Awed beyond belief, totally unable to look away, Christy witnessed the almost magical moment of birth. That the baby was scarlet and daubed with mucus and blood could not in any way detract from the wonder of what she had experienced, and if anyone had asked her what the baby looked like she knew she would have said, and meant it, ‘Beautiful.’
Almost from a distance, she heard Dominic saying tiredly, ‘Congratulations, Lorna, you have another daughter.’
From the side of the bed, Christy watched in wonderment as Dominic placed the tiny red-faced creature flat on her mother’s stomach. There were tears in Lorna Thomson’s eyes as she reached out to touch her new daughter’s damp, dark head.
‘Christy, why don’t you go down and make us all a cup of tea?’ Dominic suggested quietly, drawing her to one side, and pushing her gently in the direction of the door. For a moment she stood and watched him, knowing that she was completely forgotten as he went to attend to his patient.
Downstairs the children stared at her, round-eyed, and it was Lyn who asked, ‘Has our new baby come yet?’
‘Yes, she has,’ Christy told them. ‘Your mummy needs to have a sleep now, but as soon as she’s rested, I expect you’ll be able to go up and see her.’
‘You’re crying,’ one of the twins accused, and as she touched trembling fingers to her damp face, Christy realised that she was. She felt privileged and elated in a way she couldn’t explain to have witnessed the birth. It was something she would remember all her life.
Unwittingly she touched her own flat stomach and felt again that wave of desolation and failure that had encompassed her when she knew she wasn’t going to have Dominic’s child.
They stayed at the farmhouse until Lorna Thomson’s husband returned home. The blizzard had stopped, and the wind was dying down. Jack Thomson thanked them with tears in his eyes for what they had done, and Christy felt guilty that he should have thanked her when she had done so very little. The children had seen their mother and new sister now, and already Lyn was telling the twins importantly that babies weren’t to be poked with inquisitive little fingers.
It was dark by the time they left, the snow freezing already. Christy shuddered, dreading the hazardous return journey.
It took them almost an hour, crawling over the hard-packed frozen snow, and when eventually the turning to the lane came in sight, she tensed as she looked in vain for a spiral of smoke from the sitting-room fire’s chimney.
Sensing her tension, Dominic looked across at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think the sitting-room fire’s gone out.’
His frown deepened. ‘If it has the house will be like an icebox; these stone houses always are.’
‘We do have central heating, you know,’ Christy pointed out as he stopped the Land Rover in front of the house. She was sliding out of her seat as she spoke, but somehow he seemed to have anticipated her, and he was there to take the back door key from her frozen fingers and unlock the door for her.
As she followed him inside, Christy’s heart sank. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that the heating had gone off. The air was icy enough to make her shiver.
She saw that Dominic was squatting down in front of the boiler, and realised that he was looking for the pilot light.
‘You’d better come back with me,’ he told her brusquely as he stood up. ‘If I leave you here you’ll freeze.’
If he’d put into words how little he wanted her company, he couldn’t have made it plainer, an
d before she could stop herself Christy heard herself saying nastily, ‘Won’t Amanda have something to say about that?’
His eyes went cold. She’d forgotten how disapproving and quelling he could be when he looked down his nose like that.