Nick stared into the room. For a moment none of them spoke, then, after catching sight of Jo sitting on the sofa, Nick stepped inside the room and closed the door.
“Jo! Thank God I’m in time!”
Carl Bennet stood up, taking his glasses off in agitation. “You can’t come in here. Please, leave at once! Who are you?” He stepped toward Nick.
Nick was looking at Jo. “Jo asked me to come,” he said. He glanced at Bennet for the first time. “My name is Franklyn. I’m a friend of hers.”
“I thought I told you, Dr. Franklyn, that Jo has asked you not to involve yourself in this matter!” Bennet stood looking up at Nick, his face stern.
“Dr. Franklyn is my brother,” Nick replied shortly. “Jo, for God’s sake, explain.”
“Jo does not know you’re here.” Anxiously Carl Bennet put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “She is in a deep trance. Now, please, I must ask you to leave-”
“Jo? Dear God, what have you done to her? You bastard!” Nick knelt at Jo’s side and took her hand gently in his.
“Shall I call the caretaker?” Sarah said in an undertone. She had her hand on a bell by the door. Bennet shook his head. He sighed. “Please, Mr. Franklyn. You must leave. I am sure you realize it would be dangerous for you to interfere at this stage.”
“Dangerous?” Nick was staring at Jo’s face. Her eyes were looking at him quite normally, but she did not see him. The scene she was watching was in another time, another place. “She swore this wasn’t dangerous. And she asked me to come with her,” Nick went on, controlling his temper with an effort. “I only got her message an hour ago. Please let me stay. She would want me to.”
Her eyes had changed focus now. They no longer looked at him. They seemed to stray through him, unfocusing, the pupils dilating rapidly as though she were staring directly at the window. Slowly Nick released her hand. He backed away a few paces and sat down on the edge of a chair. “I am staying,” he repeated. “I am not letting her out of my sight!”
Jo suddenly threw herself back against the sofa with a moan of agony. Her fingers convulsed and she clawed four parallel grooves in the soft hide of the upholstery.
“Holy Mother of God!” She screamed. “Where is Jeanne? Why doesn’t she come?”
There was a moment’s total silence in the room as the three looked at her, electrified. Nick had gone white.
“Make it stop.” Jo moaned. “Please, someone make it stop.” She arched her back again, catching up one of the velvet cushions and hugging it to her in despair.
“For God’s sake, Carl, what’s happened?” Sarah was rooted to the spot. “Bring her out of it. Wake her quickly!”
Bennet sat down beside her. “My dear, can you hear me? I want you to listen to me-” He broke off with a cry of pain as Jo grabbed his hand and clung to it. Her face was wet with perspiration and tears.
“For pity’s sake, wake her,” Nick cried. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s having a baby.” Sarah’s voice cut in as Jo let out another moan. “Women do it all the time.”
“Pregnant women, perhaps,” Nick snapped. His skin was crawling. “Wake her up, man, quickly. Do you want to kill her?” He clenched his fists as Jo screamed again.
“Jo? Jo? Can you hear me?” Bennet battled to catch her hands and hold them still. “The birth is over, Jo. There is no more pain. You are going to sleep, Jo. Sleep and rest. And when you are rested, you will wake gently. Can you hear me, Joanna? Now, close your eyes and rest…”
“It’s taking too long!” Elen looked at Margaret, frightened. Gently she sponged Matilda’s face with a cloth wrung out in rosewater. “For sweet Jesus’ sake, isn’t there anything we can do to help?”
They both looked pleadingly at the midwife, who was once more feeling Matilda’s stomach beneath the bloodstained linen. The girl was practically unconscious now, propped against a dozen pillows, the deep straw litter of the childbed covered with sheets to make it soft and smooth. Between each pain black exhaustion took hold of her, drawing her down into blessed oblivion before another spasm of rending agony began inexorably to build, tearing her back to screaming wakefulness. Only the warmth of the blood in which she lay soothed her.
“There now. He’s nearly here, the boyo.” The birthing woman was rumbling beneath the sheet. “Another push or two, my lovely, and it’ll all be over. There’s brave, it is.” She smiled imperturbably as Matilda arched her back in another agonized contortion and a further spurt of blood soaked into the bedding. The rosary they had put in her fingers broke and the beads rolled across the floor. Horrified, Margaret crossed herself and it was left to Elen to twist a towel into a rope and give it to Matilda to grip as, with a final desperate convulsion, the girl’s body rid itself of its burden.
For a moment there was total silence. Then at last there was a feeble wail from the bloodstained scrap of life that lay between her legs. Matilda did not hear it. She was spinning away into exhausted sleep, her body still hunched against another pain.
“Is he all right?” Margaret peered fearfully at the baby as the woman produced her knife and severed the cord. None of them had even doubted Matilda’s prediction that it would be a boy. The baby, wildly waving its little arms in the air, let out another scream. It was unblemished.
“There, my lady, see. He’s beautiful.” Gently Elen laid the child in Matilda’s arms. “Look at him. He’s smiling.”
Fighting her exhaustion, Matilda pushed away the birthing woman, who had been trying roughly to massage her stomach. She dragged herself up onto her elbow, trying to gather her courage. The moment she had dreaded was here. Somehow she clawed her way back to wakefulness and with outward calm she received the baby and gazed down into the small puckered face. For a moment she could not breathe, then suddenly she felt a strange surge of love and protective joy for her firstborn. She forgot her fears. He was beautiful. She buried her face in the little shawl that had been wrapped around him and hugged him, holding him away from her again only to look long and lovingly at the deep blue-black eyes and tiny fringed lids, the button nose and pursed mouth, and the thatch of dark, bloodstained hair. But as she looked the child’s face grew hazy and blackened. She watched paralyzed as the tiny features became contorted with agony and she heard the child begin to scream again and again. They were not the screams of a child, but those of a grown man, ringing in her ears. In her arms she held a warm woven shawl no longer. She was clutching rags, and through the rags she could feel the bones of a living skeleton. After thrusting the body away from her with revulsion, she feverishly threw herself from the bed and collapsed weakly on her knees, retching, at the feet of the terrified women who had been tending her.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God, save him and save me,” she breathed, clutching at the coverlet convulsively. Slowly the world around her began to swim. She saw the great bed rocking before her then a deep roaring filled her ears, cutting out all the other sounds, and slowly, helplessly, she slipped to the floor.
“Jo!” Nick reached her first. “Jo! It’s all right. Jo, please, Jo…” He gathered her limp form into his arms, cradling her head against his chest.
“Leave her, please.” Bennet knelt beside them. “Let me see her. Jo!” He snapped his fingers in her face. “Listen to me, Joanna. You are going to wake up now. Do you hear me. Now!”
There was a moment of total silence. Outside the sound of a police siren wailing in the Marylebone Road brought the twentieth century back into the room.
Jo stirred. She opened her eyes and lay looking up at Nick. The strain and anguish were slowly clearing from her face as she eased herself upright.
“Jo? Are you all right?” Nick’s voice was gentle. He still had his arm around her shoulders.
She frowned, staring around the room, looking first at Bennet and then at Sarah who was standing, whitefaced, by the desk. Then her gaze came back to Nick. She smiled weakly.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said shakily.
“Jo, love-” Nick pulled her close, his face in her hair. “None of it happened. Nobody died-”
