Life after life

11 February 1910

RAP, RAP, RAP. The knocking on Bridget’s bedroom door wove itself into a dream that she was having. In the dream she was at home in County Kilkenny and the pounding on the door was the ghost of her poor dead father, trying to get back to his family. Rap, rap, rap! She woke with tears in her eyes. Rap, rap, rap. There really was someone at the door.

‘Bridget, Bridget?’ Mrs Todd’s urgent whisper on the other side of the door. Bridget crossed herself, no news in the dark of the night was ever good. Had Mr Todd had an accident in Paris? Or Maurice or Pamela taken ill? She scrambled out of bed and into the freezing cold of the little attic room. She smelt snow in the air. Opening the bedroom door she found Sylvie bent almost double, as ripe as a seed-pod about to burst. ‘The baby’s coming early,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’

‘Me?’ Bridget squeaked. Bridget was only fourteen but she knew a lot about babies, not much of it good. She had watched her own mother die in childbirth but she had never told this to Mrs Todd. Now clearly wasn’t the time to mention it. She helped Sylvie back down the stairs to her own room.

‘There’s no point in trying to get a message to Dr Fellowes,’ Sylvie said. ‘He’ll never get through this snow.’

‘Mary, Mother of God,’ Bridget yelped as Sylvie dropped on all fours, like an animal, and grunted.

‘The baby’s coming now, I’m afraid,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s time.’

Bridget persuaded her back into bed and their long, lonely night’s labour commenced.

‘Oh, ma’am,’ Bridget cried suddenly, ‘she’s all blue, so she is.’

‘A girl?’

‘The cord’s wrapped around her neck. Oh, Jesus Christ and all the saints, she’s been strangled, the poor wee thing, strangled by the cord.’

‘We must do something, Bridget. What can we do?’

‘Oh, Mrs Todd, ma’am, she’s gone. Dead before she had a chance to live.’

‘No, that cannot be,’ Sylvie said. She heaved herself into a sitting position on the battlefield of bloodied sheets, red and white, the baby still attached by its lifeline. While Bridget made mournful noises, Sylvie jerked open the drawer of her bedside table and rummaged furiously through its contents.

‘Oh, Mrs Todd,’ Bridget wailed, ‘lie down, there’s nothing to be done. I wish Mr Todd was here, so I do.’

‘Shush,’ Sylvie said and held aloft her trophy – a pair of surgical scissors that gleamed in the lamplight. ‘One must be prepared,’ she muttered. ‘Hold the baby close to the lamp so I can see. Quickly, Bridget. There’s no time to waste.’

Snip, snip.

Practice makes perfect.