Chapter 14
Antonia was shocked when she got a note from Lara saying that she had left her father. She didn’t say why, but Antonia knew it had to be something serious for Lara to do something so extreme. She was a kind, loyal, loving woman, and had genuinely loved him in the beginning. Antonia knew that. She mentioned it to Hamish, and his only comment was that it seemed like she’d be better off. He had no love lost for Antonia’s father, whom he’d never met, but he had heard enough stories of her childhood to convince him that Brandon was a selfish son of a bitch.
Antonia called Lara but didn’t reach her, and a few weeks later, she got another letter saying that she’d found an apartment she loved in the East Sixties, she had just moved in. She sounded happy. Antonia wondered how her father was doing, and assumed probably not so well. She didn’t write to him or call him, but she wrote to Lara and told her she was happy for her if it was what she wanted. She still had no idea what had gone wrong. They had been married for eight years, and Lara had been good to her. She was sure they would stay close.
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Antonia’s pregnancy went easily. She was young and healthy. She got lots of exercise, ate well, and did a lot of writing, while Hamish spent months looking for a new project.
They went to Paris several times for romantic weekends, and Venice in May as their last trip before the baby. Hamish helped her get the nursery ready. They gave up a guest room they never used, and Antonia decided she didn’t want a baby nurse. She wanted to take care of the baby herself, which surprised Hamish. All of his friends had baby nurses from the fancy nanny schools around England, particularly Norland, which was the Harvard of nanny schools, but Antonia told him she wanted to enjoy this special time with him and the baby. And since she wasn’t starting a movie, she wanted to take advantage of it. The film that she had starred in about the Victorian wife was due to come out in September. And the one that she had played a supporting role in was due out at the end of May.
She went to the premiere with Hamish, and was hugely pregnant, but she looked beautiful in a filmy evening gown that floated around her. The press went crazy when they saw her, and wanted photos of her pregnant. She smiled up at Hamish, and he gently shepherded her out of the crowd and into the dark theater. By June, it was breaking box office records, and critics gave rave reviews of her performance. But the baby was the focus of her attention now.
* * *
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They were sitting in bed watching a movie when the first labor pains hit her. He had talked her out of giving birth at home, which he thought was dangerous, but she wanted it to be as natural as possible. She’d agreed to go to a hospital and have a midwife deliver her, which was common in England. She’d met her several weeks before, and had been followed by a doctor before that. Everything was ready, and labor started two days before her due date. She was a textbook case for young motherhood, but Hamish was nervous anyway. It was his first child at forty-six, nearly forty-seven. Antonia was almost twenty-four, which seemed like an ideal age to have a baby. She was healthy and young, and had gone to exercise classes until a few days before.
They called the midwife, and at midnight when the pains were five minutes apart, the midwife told them to come to the hospital. Antonia was smiling when they got there. They examined her, which was uncomfortable, and a nurse suggested a warm shower to help her relax. It helped as the contractions got more intense. Things seemed to be moving along quickly, which the midwife said was unusual for a first baby.
An hour later, Antonia was panting and blowing the way they told her to, in serious pain, and had a death grip on Hamish’s arm.
“Don’t you want drugs?” he whispered to her. She shook her head, trying not to push because the midwife told her not to. She wasn’t fully dilated yet, at four a.m. Half an hour later, the pain was so intense that Antonia was screaming. Hamish was in tears watching her. He had never seen any human in such agony and he couldn’t bear it for her. It was a full hour of the midwife telling her not to push as the pains ripped through her. The midwife said she was doing wonderfully, which seemed unlikely to Hamish, and then finally they told Antonia to push, which was even more of an ordeal with each contraction than trying not to. He wanted to take her in his arms and run home with her, but there was no escaping what was happening. And at one point, after several fruitless pushes, the midwife reached in and turned the baby slightly, while Antonia screamed in agony and then everything started moving quickly.
She knelt on the bed while Hamish held her, and then lay down again, in tears, while he stroked her face and kissed her between pains. The midwife stepped up the pace then, and said the baby was starting to show signs of distress, and they wanted to get it out quickly. Two nurses held her legs, the screaming continued, and on the last huge, horrendous push, there was a wail in the room mingled with Antonia’s, and suddenly it was the only sound in the room, as Hamish saw a baby boy lying between her legs and Antonia was crying and smiling, and as he looked up with tears pouring down his cheeks, he saw that the sun had come up and had streaked the sky with brilliant orange and pastel colors.