Inside the cabin, Isabel is up on the bed on her hands and knees, lowing like a dying animal. She looks at me through a tangle of hair and her face is white and her eyes rimmed red. I can hardly recognise her; she is as ugly as a tortured beast. My mother lifts her gown at the back and her linen is bloody. I have a glimpse and I look away.
‘You have to put your hands in, and turn the baby,’ my mother says. ‘My hands are too big. I can’t do it.’
I look at her with utter horror. ‘What?’
‘We have no midwife, we have to turn the baby ourselves,’ my mother says impatiently. ‘She’s so small that my hands are too big. You’ll have to do it.’
I look at my slender hands, my long fingers. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say.
‘I’ll tell you.’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘You have to.’
‘Mother, I am a maid, a girl – I shouldn’t even be here . . .’
A scream from Isabel as she drops her head to the bed interrupts me. ‘Annie, for the love of God, help me. Get it out! Get it out of me!’
My mother takes my arm and drags me to the foot of the bed. Margaret lifts Isabel’s linen; her hindquarters are horribly bloody. ‘Put your hand in there,’ my mother says. ‘Push in. What can you feel?’
Isabel cries out in pain as I put my hand to her yielding flesh and slide it in. Disgust – disgust is all I feel through the hot flesh, and horror. Then something vile: like a leg.
Isabel’s body contracts on my hand like a vice, crushing my fingers. I cry out: ‘Don’t do that! You’re hurting me!’
She gasps like a dying cow. ‘I can’t help it. Annie, get it out.’
The slithery leg kicks at my touch. ‘I have it. I think it’s a leg, or an arm.’
‘Can you find the other?’
I shake my head.
‘Then pull it anyway,’ my mother says.
I look at her aghast.
‘We have to get it out. Pull gently.’
I start to pull. Isabel screams. I bite my lip, this is disgusting, horrifying work and Isabel disgusts and horrifies me that she should be here like this, like a fat mare, labouring like a whore, forcing me to do this. I find I am grimacing, my head turned aside as if I don’t want to see, standing as far as I can from the bed, from her, from my sister, this monster, touching her without pity, holding tight onto this limb as I am ordered, despite my loathing.
‘Can you get your other hand in?’
I look at my mother as if she is mad. This is not possible.
‘See if you can get your other hand in, and get hold of the baby.’
I had forgotten there was a baby, I am so shocked by the horror of the stench and the sensation of the slippery little limb in my hand. Gently I try to press my other hand in. Something yields horribly, and I can feel, with the tips of my fingers, something that might be an arm, a shoulder.
‘An arm?’ I say. I grit my teeth so I don’t retch.
‘Push it away, feel down, get the other leg.’ My mother is wringing her hands, desperate to get the work done, patting Isabel’s back as if she were a sick dog.
‘I’ve got the other leg,’ I say.
‘When I tell you – you have to pull both legs,’ she commands. She steps sideways and takes Isabel’s head in her hands. She speaks to her: ‘When you feel your pain is coming you have to push,’ she says. ‘Push hard.’
‘I can’t,’ Isabel sobs. ‘I can’t, Mother. I can’t.’
‘You have to. You must. Tell me as the pain comes.’
There is a pause and then Isabel’s groans gather strength and she screams: ‘Now, it is now.’
‘Push!’ my mother says. The ladies get hold of her clenched fists and heave on her arms, as if we are tearing her apart. Margaret slips the wooden spoon in her mouth and Isabel howls and bites down on it. ‘You pull the baby,’ my mother shouts at me. ‘Now. Steady. Pull.’
I pull as I am ordered, and horribly I feel something click and give under my hands. ‘No! It’s broken, broken!’
‘Pull it. Pull it anyway!’
I pull, there is a rush and a gout of blood, a stink of liquid and two little legs are dangling from Isabel and she screams and pants.
‘Once more,’ Mother says. She sounds oddly triumphant, but I am filled with terror. ‘Nearly there now, once again, Isabel. As the pain comes.’
Isabel groans and heaves herself up.
‘Pull, Anne!’ Mother commands and I hold the thin little slippery legs and pull again, and there is a moment when nothing moves at all and then one shoulder comes and then another and then Isabel shrieks as the head comes and I clearly see her flesh tear, as if she were a crimson and blue brocade, red blood and blue veins tear as the head comes out and then the slithery cord, and I drop the baby on the bedding and turn my head away and am sick on the floor.
The ship heaves, we all stagger with the movement, and then Mother comes hand over hand down the bed, and gently takes up the child and wraps him in the linen. I am shuddering, rubbing my bloody hands and arms on some rags, rubbing the vomit from my mouth but waiting for the words that will tell us a miracle has happened. I am waiting for the first miraculous little cry.
There is silence.
