The baby Gracie, wrapped in the knee rug Lucy had crocheted, was quiet as she turned her tiny face. Then she twisted and turned her body. Paul jumped, surprised to feel such strength in such a spindly newborn, and wondered what the baby was trying to do. Then he realised she was turning to see her mother.
‘Go on, look at your mother,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘for you will surely follow her and stay by her side.’
Gracie focused her brand-new eyes, still filmy, on her mother’s face, reached out her tiny fingers, and smiled. That first smile filled Paul with peace.
It was Gracie who sent her mother on her way. Lucy, having received all she needed in that one tiny smile, lay back on the pillow and left them. The room was filled with icy silence, aside from the muffled weeping of Edie.
And the broken heart of Paul.
After a long while Edie spoke. ‘I don’t want her, send her back to God and exchange her for Mother!’
Paul considered his girl. She sounded like a five-year-old child. He looked at the baby and suddenly he knew what to do to push his and Edie’s grief to somewhere controllable.
‘Come and welcome your sister,’ he commanded, ‘she is so small she may not be with us for long.’
Edie didn’t move.
‘Now, Edith!’
Edie shuffled across the room, her face red, wary and angry with grief. She didn’t want to look at the thing that had just taken her mother’s life. She didn’t want to see what had spread blood and pain through her home. Paul moved the baby so Edie had to look at her, then he placed her in Edie’s rigid unwilling arms. Edie turned away. Her father might put the child in her arms like a parcel, but that didn’t mean she had to acknowledge it. So Edie missed it when the baby girl smiled, and everything turned and shifted in their house once more.
Doctor Appleby stood in the doorway wiping crumbs from his face with his white monogrammed handkerchief. He coughed.
‘I see you need me now — to sign the death certificate.’ Feeling he should offer more, he said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve already rung Reverend Whitlock and he’s on his way.’
Down in Eddy Street, a narrow street with only a few sparse trees and small struggling gardens, Young Arthur thumped on the front door of Number 12.
Beatrix Drake and her fella George hid under the blankets.
‘Shhh,’ she giggled, ‘whoever it is will think no one’s home and bugger off.’
Arthur thumped for as long as the coin Mister Cottingham had given him was worth, then put his hands in his pockets and wandered slowly home.
Theo, waiting at the front door of the Cottingham house, felt the house shift and the world turn and was filled with sorrow.
Six
The Decision
Which comes after hot soup and thick slices of bread and a restless night.
The mines meandered under the houses and streets of the town, twisting this way and that under the hills and paddocks and under the great Town Hall clock itself. Countless icy tunnels of dank suffocating air that swallowed men and boys in the dark mornings considered whether or not to spit them back up in the afternoons.
At four o’clock the Town Hall clock, with its eight bells weighing four and half tons, each tuned to a different note, cried out its song four times.
When they heard the clock, the mines breathed a sigh of relief that the working day was over and great gusts of cold, icy wind rushed out of their mouths. The chilly air rose from the tombs of the mines that held the bones of gold and men and filled the town like a rising mist. Women ran for pullovers for their children, men lit fires with damp kindling and everyone rubbed the goosebumps on their arms. The mines could not be trusted for much — they teased men with promises of wealth and played with their lives according to their mood — but they could always be trusted to send out their cold-hearted draughts at four in the afternoon. They were as regular as the chimes that rang out over the town: the cold arrived, regardless of how pleasant the day had been.
The clock chimed and the air turned nippy and Theo Hooley continued to stand outside the Cottingham front door. If his mum could have seen him she’d have snapped, ‘Your arms are goosepimply, son. You’ll catch your death if you’re not careful!’
But Theo hadn’t noticed the frosty air; his hand was raised, ready to knock on the front door when it opened and Doctor Appleby stepped out.
‘How long have you been standing here, Hooley?’
‘Not long,’ said Theo.
He’d been standing watching the house as its beams groaned and shifted for hours.
‘No use going in there, son, they’ve got other things on their minds just now,’ the doctor said.
‘Edie’s all right, isn’t she?’
‘Edith’s fine, the baby’s fine for the moment, everyone’s fine except the mother.’
‘What mother?’ asked Theo, confused by the doctor’s strange words.
‘Yes, yes, the mother — Missus Cottingham. She just died giving birth to a scrawny, underweight daughter. Let’s just hope she fills out and survives but I don’t hold out much hope. Not at all.’
Theo stared, trying to take this in. Missus Cottingham was gone, dead, and there was a baby. It was hard to believe and he didn’t know why or how yet, but he knew this would change everything for Edith and him. A stone had been thrown into the pond and the ripple had reached the edge where he stood and wet his toes. Dampness crept over his heart. He somehow knew that his chance at happiness had just disappeared. The knowledge hurt and Theo dropped his cane and clutched his chest.
‘Are you all right son?
