Page 66 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘I really am,’ she says, and picks up the bucket she plans to fill with brown azalea flowers to make way for the new crop, next spring.
OCTOBER 1987
HAWKWEED
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
‘Whatdo youmeanshe’s not going to the hospital?’ Cynthia shrieks into the phone because Pat has just called to tell her that Odette’s in labour, and now he’s saying something nonsensical about Odette not wanting to give birth in the hospital.
‘She’s giving birth at home,’ Pat says calmly, and his passivity makes Cynthia want to throw something.
‘I find it extraordinary that you can be so sanguine about our only child expelling a small creature from her loinsat home! She needs a hospital! She may die!’
‘Cynthia, try not to get too worked up. Women have been –’
‘Don’t youdaretell me that women have been giving birth in fields for millennia and that worked out all right, because a lot of themdied, Patrick. Theydied. I have one child and I do not want her todie.’
‘Odette wants the baby to have a peaceful entry into the world and she thinks that won’t happen in hospital.’
Cynthia exhales loudly. It sounds dismissive of Pat and that’s fine with her because she wants it to sound that way.The idiot.
‘Patrick, let me clear up something for you: the only way birth is peaceful is if the mother has had a general anaesthetic, so she’s not awake to be aware of the brutal reality of what goes on. Odette has been getting this claptrap about a peaceful birthfrom someone – is it you?You, the person with apenis, telling her how to give birth?’
She knows she sounds somewhat hysterical, and Pat will probably say that’s because she wants to be in control of the situation – and he’ll be right, because she does, because her child has gone into labour and any mother would feel tense about that, and now is not the time for lecturing about the merits of home birth. Especially when the lecturer has never given, and can never give, birth himself.
‘No, Cynthia, not me. Listen –’
‘I’m on my way,’ she says and hangs up the phone.
‘Papa!’ she calls out, although she knows her father isn’t here. That doesn’t stop her wanting him to be here. She could do with his steadiness, and she’s also not sure that she won’t crash the car. Not that that will stop her driving to Pat’s house. If Odette thinks she’s going to give birth in that dilapidated beach shack that’s probably still on a septic tank for sewerage, Cynthia is going to talk her out of it.
She drives as fast as the speed limit will allow towards Pat’s home. When she gets there his front door is open and Cynthia can hear the gasps of pain from outside.
After she gave birth to Odette, her mother told her that she wouldn’t remember the pain, and while she doesn’t remember the actual pain itself she remembers the surprise of it and how nothing could have prepared her for it. Perhaps the surprise will propel Odette towards the hospital. Cynthia simply cannot countenance her daughter giving birth in a place where there are no doctors and no nurses and no help of any kind.
The first person Cynthia sees as she walks in is a tall young man with sun-bleached long hair and a T-shirt with holes in it. The baby’s father, presumably, and he can’t even be bothered showing up to the birth in proper clothes. Not a good sign.
‘Darling,’ Cynthia says as she spots Odette sitting on the floor, her legs wide, her face screwed up and her cheeks wet.
‘Hi, Cyn,’ Pat says as he enters the room carrying a glass of water.
‘Patrick.’
Cynthia kneels next to Odette. ‘Darling,’ she says again and takes Odette’s hand.
No matter what difficulties have been between them she knows that Odette will want her here, the way Cynthia wanted her own mother when Odette was born. Not that her mother came. Cynthia was alone at the house she shared with Pat when Odette arrived faster than she had been warned could happen. There was no time to tell anyone what was going on, and she was terrified. She would have given anything to be in a hospital with a nurse to reassure her about what was happening, for a doctor to check her baby, to feel safer than she felt as she pushed Odette out onto the kitchen floor and watched as blood followed her. She didn’t know if that was normal or if something was wrong. Then Odette squawked and Cynthia burst into tears, and a few minutes later Pat came home.
He was calm then too. She’d continued crying as he wrapped towels around Odette, whose umbilicus was still attached to the cord, then picked them both up and carried them to the car, laying them so gently in the back seat before he sped to the local GP’s surgery. Luckily the doctor had delivered several babies and, while Cynthia was still in a fog of fear and hormones, he took them into his treatment room, cut the cord, cleaned them both up and sent them home.
Cynthia doesn’t want that for Odette. She wants clean sheets and antibacterial everything. It doesn’t matter that events turned out well for her and Odette was fine; she doesn’t believe they could be that lucky twice.
Odette sniffles and takes Cynthia’s hand. ‘Hi, Mummy,’ she says, sniffling again. ‘The baby’s coming.’
‘Your father told me. He also said you want to have it here.’
Odette nods but there’s uncertainty in her eyes.
‘Is that what youreallywant?’
