Ellie Pride. Annie GrovesЧитать онлайн книгу.
defied her?’
‘No!’ Ellie protested. What her aunt was saying couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be. She started to tremble, cold now where just a few minutes earlier she had been sweetly warm with the intoxicating memory of the illicit pleasure she and Gideon had just shared, delighting in the precious secret world of their love.
‘Yes!’ Amelia insisted sharply. ‘You are a wicked, wicked girl, Ellie Pride, and if your poor mother and this baby die, then it will be on your conscience.’
‘Amelia, that’s enough,’ Ellie’s father said sternly. ‘I know how upset you are, but if anyone’s to blame for this…’
Her mother die? What on earth was her aunt saying? Frantically Ellie looked towards the stairs.
‘Ellie, no!’ Robert Pride blocked her path. Grasping her arms, he told her in a gentler voice, ‘No, you cannot go up there right now. The midwife is with your mother, and…and your Uncle Alfred.’
‘So it is true,’ Ellie whispered, her eyes huge with distress and despair. ‘The baby is coming.’
‘Yes.’
Glancing past her Robert could see through the still-open door that Gideon had quick-wittedly drawn the two younger children out of earshot and was entertaining them with one of his tricks.
Releasing Ellie, Robert strode out to them, closing the door behind him.
‘Gideon, lad, I wonder if you would be kind enough to take our Connie and John over to Winckley Square? They are to stay there until…for the time being.’
‘What? Why have we got to go there?’ John demanded indignantly.
‘Is Mother really having the baby?’ Connie asked excitedly.
‘Aye, lass, she is,’ Robert confirmed. ‘Now be good children and go with Gideon. Your aunt has sent instructions home that beds are to be prepared for you.’
‘Well, I hope Mother doesn’t take too long to have this baby,’ John grumbled. ‘I don’t like it at Winckley Square. You have to be quiet all the time and not touch things.’
Awkwardly Robert patted his shoulder, but his concentration wasn’t really on his two younger children.
As Gideon ushered them away, Robert glanced up at the closed bedroom window above, his face tight with anxiety and despair.
In the hallway, Ellie was pleading tearfully with her aunt to be allowed to see her mother.
‘Certainly not, miss. It would not be at all proper, and besides –’
Amelia broke off as they both heard the long tortured cry of primeval pain that came from the room above them. Then Ellie pulled free of her aunt and raced up the stairs, pushing open her parents’ bedroom door.
A strong smell of carbolic filled her nostrils, making her catch her breath. The room was hot and lacking in fresh air.
Her mother was lying in bed, her hands gripping the bars of the brass bedstead, her teeth clenched over the twisted piece of cloth in her mouth, her head twisting from side to side as she tried to escape the pain tearing at her.
Ellie froze in shock. Surely this was not her fastidious, elegant mother, this woman who bared her teeth in a feral grimace before uttering a low panting animal grunt of mingled pain and endeavour?
Sweat caked her mother’s hair, which clung stickily to her face. As another wave of pain struck, she began to pant, her fingers gripping the arm of the midwife.
Was this what giving birth was? This primitive agony that filled the air with sights, sounds, scents from which Ellie recoiled, shocked by their visceral rawness.
But beneath her shock there was still her love for her mother; and her guilt. She was responsible for this, for her mother’s agonisingly hard labour; that was what her aunt had told her. She, by arguing and quarrelling with her mother and going against her wishes, had somehow brought on the arrival of the baby before its due date.
Unable to think logically, Ellie was filled with fear and remorse. She took a step towards the bed, barely aware of her aunt grabbing her arm to pull her back as her mother went rigid, beads of sweat glistening waxenly on her forehead as she began to moan.
‘Get that girl out of here. She has no business being here,’ Uncle Gibson demanded curtly, no longer the familiar, slightly pedantic figure Ellie knew, but a grim-faced stranger, whose presence cast a dark shadow over the bed.
As her aunt pushed her towards the door, Ellie suddenly tensed and turned round to look imploringly towards her mother, mentally begging her for forgiveness.
‘I’m so sorry, Mama,’ she whispered, adopting the baby form of address she had long ago grown out of. ‘I promise I will never ever disobey you again…never.’
As Ellie looked at her it seemed to her that her mother had changed; that her skin had somehow gone grey, her eyes become sunken. Instinctively Ellie wanted to go to her, but then suddenly Lydia’s whole body convulsed and she started to scream.
Ellie only realised that she was screaming as well when her aunt slapped her face briskly the moment she had her outside the bedroom door.
‘It is your mother who is in travail, you stupid girl,’ she told Ellie bitingly, ‘not you.’
Ellie couldn’t make any response. She was shivering, her teeth chattering. She desperately wanted to beg her aunt to reassure her that having a child was not always like this – that her mother’s agonising pain would never be her own. How could her aunt not be as shocked and appalled as she was herself? How could her uncle not do something to alleviate her mother’s agony? How could her father have allowed this to happen?
How could she have so cruelly and heedlessly disobeyed her mother?
All through the warm May evening it went on, until Ellie did not know which was the worst to bear – her mother’s screams or the oppressive silences between them when she kept her own body as still as she could in the emptiness of the parlour, listening, waiting…doing her self-imposed penance for her sin of disobeying her mother.
Her father had gone out, unable to endure the sound of his wife’s agonising distress; her aunt was still upstairs, assisting her husband and the midwife.
Ellie tensed as suddenly a thin, high scream split the thick silence, followed by the sharp mewling cry of a newborn child.
Picking up her skirts, she ran up the stairs, but before she could enter the room her aunt came out, firmly closing the door behind her and barring Ellie’s way as she gripped hold of her.
‘I want to see my mother,’ Ellie begged frantically.
Refusing to let go of her, her aunt dug her fingers painfully into Ellie’s arm.
‘No. You cannot. Your mother has given birth to a son. You have a new brother,’ her aunt told her tonelessly. ‘She is resting now and must not be disturbed.’
‘Resting!’ Ellie sagged against the banister in relief, closing her eyes as hot tears of release burned onto her skin, too innocent to recognise just what the grim, flat defeatedness in her aunt’s voice really meant. Her mother was alive!
Below, the front door opened and her father came hurrying up the stairs, bringing with him the smell of strong ale.
Amelia recoiled in distaste and shot him a bitterly contemptuous look.
‘Lyddy?’ he demanded thickly.
‘You have another son,’ Amelia told him curtly.
‘Mam is resting, Father,’ Ellie told him softly. ‘They are both all right.’
As she brushed away her tears, Ellie missed the looks her father and her aunt exchanged, her father’s questioning and anxious, her aunt’s grim and negative. When she looked up Ellie saw the dark tinge of colour burning her father’s