Hope was delighted.
Hope knew the big move to London was the right thing to have done for her work. The pay was far better, almost three times what she could earn in Bristol. More importantly though, she had been promised the chance of promotion, which was virtually impossible in the smaller city in the relatively monopolized world of commercial cleaning. She would only ever have been a zero-hours contract cleaner there. Offices, universities, schools: wherever the contract sent her, she went. She didn’t aspire to a desk job, no, she wanted to work hands on, but she desperately wanted to run her own team and that’s what she could do in London. The main reason Hope wanted to head up her own team was because that was the only way she could ensure the job was done right. It bothered her to be shoddy. Especially when it came to cleanliness. This job was the most natural and satisfying one she’d ever done, however lowly others might regard it to be. She cared not a jot. She wanted to be captain of her small and clean ship. She wanted to steer it, and London was the best port for that opportunity.
And now Hope was grateful to know that she was giving birth in a clean hospital. In a room where her own team made extra visits to make her laugh and prove to her that they were continuing to do their job well in her absence. They put googly eyes on their mops and drew funny faces on their industrial rubber gloves. In two years, these folk were the closest she had come to friends. A disparate group of people, from almost every nation on earth, come to London, like her, to make a decent living. Some spoke very little English, but Hope always found a way to communicate. Sometimes she drew diagrams to help everyone understand her instructions. It was the silly faces from these diagrams that resurfaced on the rubber gloves of her playful workmates when they popped in on her.
Time for visitors was past, however.
The young, newly qualified midwife Fatu was keen to engage Hope’s partner Quiet Isaac in conversation about his home in Sierra Leone. Fatu’s own mother was from Freetown and she had visited there for the first time the previous year and wanted to share all her holiday ‘Yes! I’ve been there too!’ whoops of recognition with him.
Hope was pleased that Quiet Isaac could relate so easily and happily to this stranger. He rarely had the opportunity to regale anyone with stories or news of his home. Of ‘Sa Lone’. Most people only showed a passing interest in this young student’s heritage, nothing more than that. He relished the chance to drop into his native Krio to share greetings: ‘Cu-shah’; and when he asked her how she was – ‘How de body?’ – he squealed and snapped his fingers with delight when she answered, ‘De body fine.’ He hadn’t heard that familiar reply for too long. It was a warm blanket around his homesick heart, and it was Fatu’s way of representing her mother.
Hope was grateful she could be momentarily distracted from the pains that increasingly racked her body. But another wave built; Fatu held her hands. ‘Slowly. Steady. Breathe.’
Down the corridor, things are more urgent. Baby Florence is demanding she be born. Pronto.
Julius was impatient. The sooner she arrived, the sooner his ‘picture-perfect family’ would be complete. Julius sees everything through his own lens, including how his life should look. His heart wasn’t really in this, and he was unaware of that particular tragedy.
Florence as a name had been hotly contested between Julius and Anna. It was one of many arguments during the past nine months. Julius didn’t entirely approve of the fustiness of it, but was prepared to concede that it was nicely traditional – enough, probably, to help secure a place for her in a decent school in their over-subscribed West London catchment area. He was a lapsed Catholic who found his faith again very quickly when he discovered that the best free schools in his area were denominational. He also had the priest on speed dial to baptize her as soon as possible since he learnt that the selection process favours those who are baptized first, and of course, all the Catholic EU incomers were quick out of the traps on that. The authentic continental Catholics don’t hang about. They don’t give the devil a single slice of opportunity to claim the souls of their innocent babies; they know how sneaky and sly he is, and they act quick. If Julius had his way, the baptism would occur on arrival, along with the first blessed breath. In yet another rare moment of assertiveness, Anna had put her foot down. NO. The baby would be baptized in the usual way, in the same flouncy dress worn by her parents and grandparents and great-grandparents going way back. There would be hats and tears and keepsake thin candles to keep Satan at bay. And there would be presents, thank you. A cushion with ‘Florence landed here on 1 Jan 2000’ embroidered on it, possibly. And some silver napkin rings with any luck, that can tarnish, neglected, in a drawer for years. Or a posh teething ring not meant for actual teething. Meant for a box under a bed which won’t be looked in again, until her room is being turned into a spare guest room when she hopefully departs for a decent university. Those kinds of presents. After all, Anna had given up smoking and alcohol for nine months; surely it wasn’t THAT selfish to expect a party for all her efforts. Florence would be baptized in due course, Julius reassured himself, when the celebration could be properly curated for maximum effect
