‘Stop your play-acting,’ she said, through the grille in the door.
‘I don’t want you to call the doctor, I need to go to a hospital!’ I was so excited at the thought of leaving, that I hardly noticed the pain.
‘Hospital? Sure, didn’t the cat have a fine litter the other week and managed it all on her own.’
That was her final word on the matter, and all I could hear were her footsteps fading away.
‘They’re not going to leave me here, are they?’ I asked Mary, who now sat at the end of my bed, patting my back.
‘Not to worry,’ she said.
Another contraction came and I groaned my way through it, twisting the ends of the blanket tight around my wrists. The night carried on that way and I must have slept in between contractions. Mary stayed with me all the while. Any time I asked a question, she would tell me again not to worry, in a way that made me very worried indeed. As though all hope was futile. At six o’clock, Nurse Patricia came to get us up and when she saw the state I was in, called for the doctor.
‘Please,’ I begged her, all pride forgotten. I was in agonising pain and hadn’t had so much as a glass of water. ‘Please get me to a hospital.’
‘You don’t need to go to hospital to give birth. Maybe that’s how things are done in England, but not here. Childbirth is the most natural thing in the world,’ she said, pulling my nightdress up and shoving her cold hand between my legs.
‘Get your hands off of me!’ I spat at her and she responded by slapping me across the face.
I’m not sure what would have happened if Dr Hughes hadn’t arrived at that very moment. He took charge immediately and sent her to fetch towels and a basin of boiled water. Two hours of contractions which felt like I was being ripped apart and I no longer knew or cared whose hands were on me. They were shouting at me to push and I pushed. Someone kindly placed a cold flannel on my burning face. I screamed for my mother, even though I knew she wouldn’t come. I begged Armand to come and rescue me. And then another push; different this time, the pressure released. Voices whispered and I saw a nurse carrying away a bundle.
‘Where’s my baby? Where are you taking her?’ I couldn’t be sure if anyone had heard me, my voice was weak and my throat raw. ‘My baby? Please give me my baby!’
A man’s voice and words that made no sense. The cord was wrapped around her neck. She suffocated. Born blue. I don’t remember very much after that. I suspect I started to go mad.
Chapter Forty-One
MARTHA
‘So, what aspect of Austen’s theme has changed with this book, her last published before her death?’
The tutor was sitting on the edge of his desk, one leg swinging free as he held a copy of Persuasion in his hand. There was a young American woman who always sat at the front of the class and apparently knew everything about every book ever written. I figured she probably fancied our tutor, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘I mean, it’s still all about marriage and social standing,’ she said. ‘Anne judges people by their character, rather than their rank but in the end she still succumbs to Lady Russell’s snobbery and turns down Wentworth’s marriage proposal.’
‘Great summary,’ Logan said, slouching at the back of the room. ‘Saves me reading it.’
I smiled at him. He was my kind of people. Although why he was taking a night course in literature and not reading the book was a bit odd.
‘Okay, okay, maybe Austen isn’t for everyone. But in a way, the reason her books are still so popular today is because the themes still matter to us. Love. Family loyalty. Pride. Societal pressure to conform. You may all think you’re walking around exercising your free will in every situation, but you’re not. You’re constantly influenced by what your heart wants, what your head wants and how you want the world to see you.’
He was right. In all of these years, nothing had really changed.
‘I think the main theme,’ said Beverly, a retired dental nurse who always sat beside me, ‘is about getting a second chance at love.’
I was trying not to read people any more, it didn’t seem fair, but sometimes I did it without thinking. Her first love had been killed in a car crash and she’d never met anyone since. I hoped for her sake that Jane Austen was right.
‘Exactly, Beverly. Anne is “persuaded” to give up her chance of love because Wentworth has no prospects, but instead of moving on with her life, she bitterly regrets her decision. Yet, in the end, she realises that the years apart have made her more appreciative of love when it comes back to her.’
As we packed up for the evening, the tutor asked if I had given any more thought to the degree course.
‘Based on your written assignments I think you’d be a perfect candidate,’ he said, ‘although I would like a little more interaction in class. I think it would benefit you.’
I still found it so hard to speak up in front of people. I had only just overcome my issues with reading. After the night I found the tattoo completed on my back, it was as though a spell had been broken. Books no longer troubled me in the same way and the stories they held within had become invitations rather than warning signs. It was like I’d been given the key to a locked door.
‘Here’s some material for you, entry requirements and such.’ I took them and packed them into my bag, feeling like I was living a completely different life, the life of someone who could do anything they wanted. Maybe there were second chances after all.
I never tired of walking through the grounds of Trinity and I felt more than a little pride in myself after every class I attended.
‘Now you have to promise me that you won’t become one of those Trinners people who always manage to get the fact they’ve gone to Trinity into a conversation,’ Logan said, buttoning up his coat. He worked as a chef but his real desire was to write comics.
‘Oh, I’m already working it into conversations,’ I said, thinking to myself how I would do that if I had anyone other than my classmates and Madame Bowden to talk to.
‘I’m thinking of doing the MA myself,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘No need to sound so surprised!’
I could see in him then a boy who grew up reading comics and wanted to write his own. But a teenage romance had led to a teenage pregnancy and a job as a kitchen porter to pay the rent. He was now a chef in one of the top Dublin hotels, but his heart was still in storytelling.
‘Austen not your cup of tea?’ I said.
‘I’m more into graphic novels.’
‘I didn’t even know there were graphic novels.’
He looked at me with the wide eyes of someone who has been mortally wounded, but with just enough breath left to tell you why you were wrong to fire the shot.
‘Oh my God, you’ve never heard of Maus? Art Spiegelman?’
I shook my head.
‘Come on, Martha, you’re killing me here! What about Glass Town? You’re a Bront? fan, right?’
I was laughing and making a mental note to see if these books were in the library when, just as we rounded the corner, I spotted a familiar figure walking across the square. He was chatting happily on the phone and hadn’t seen me, but something made him look my way. Henry.