Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [118]
Gingerly, she edged her way towards the door. As she reached it another pain hit her and this time it was so bad she cried out. As it abated she could feel a sticky wetness between her legs, which she thought might be blood. In fright she opened the door and looked out on to the street.
There was no one in sight, and although the closest house was only a few yards across the street, Beth was afraid to cross it because she might fall again in the snow. Any other time she’d come out of the door there were always people about, even in the snow, for most of the residents around here lived in such cramped conditions they needed to get out.
‘Someone come along, please,’ she pleaded aloud as yet another pain stabbed through her. To her horror the snow between her two feet was stained red with blood, and she immediately felt nauseous with fear.
She must have stood there for ten minutes, frozen to the bone, in pain and with the pool of blood at her feet growing larger by the minute, when she finally saw a man coming along the road, pulling a sledge behind him.
‘Help me, please,’ she called out as loudly as she could.
By the time he reached her she was clinging to the doorpost for support.
‘Are you in trouble?’ he asked.
She was aware he was young, no more than twenty, and Irish, with bright blue eyes. ‘Yes, I think I’m losing my baby,’ she blurted out, her fear cancelling out the embarrassment of saying such a thing to a stranger. ‘Could you go to my home and get my husband or my brother?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But let me help you inside first. You’ll catch your death of cold out here.’
He seemed to know his way around for once inside he went through the door to the dormitories and returned with a pillow and a blanket. He made her lie down on the floor and covered her up, and even took her hand as she cried out with another pain.
She rasped out where he had to go, and he promised he would run all the way.
The pain grew much worse as soon as he’d gone and it didn’t abate as it had before, but kept coming like waves, each one stronger and stronger until she couldn’t think beyond it or even see or hear anything else.
Dimly, through the red fog which surrounded her, she thought she heard Jack calling her name but she couldn’t answer him. She felt as if she was slipping into a dark tunnel from which there was no escape.
‘Mrs Cadogan! Can you hear me?’
Beth thought she was walking though a dark forest towards the man’s voice. When she tried to walk faster her legs wouldn’t let her.
‘Open your eyes now, Mrs Cadogan, it’s all over now.’
His voice so close made her realize it was a dream, and that she was in bed. She opened her eyes and saw a man with gold-rimmed spectacles looking down at her.
‘You are in hospital,’ he explained. ‘You’ve given your poor husband a terrible fright; he was afraid he was going to lose you.’
‘I lost the baby?’
The doctor nodded. ‘I’m very sorry, my dear, but you are young and healthy and you will soon be yourself again.’
‘Can I see my husband?’ she whispered.
‘For just a few minutes, then you must rest. I’ll send him in to you.’
She thought it must be late at night as there was only one dim light burning in the large room, and the people in the other beds appeared to be asleep. She was puzzled as to why she could remember nothing after the young Irishman came to her aid. What had they given her to make the pain go and for her to sleep for so long? Had she had an operation?
At the sound of footsteps she turned her head to see Jack coming towards her.
‘Where’s Theo?’ she whispered when he reached her bed.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered back. ‘It was me who came to you at the bunkhouse — Sam had already gone to work. I said I was your husband because it would look better. Did Theo know you were having a baby?’
Beth shook her head weakly. ‘I was going to tell him tonight.’
‘But they said you were over four months gone! I had to pretend I knew. Why didn’t you tell any of us? We wouldn’t have let you work at that place if we’d known.