Tattycoram by Audrey Thomas Page B

me.
    â€œTell me, Coram, do you understand whom you are working for? Mr. Dickens is a very unusual man, a genius. The whole world will soon be talking of him. He can’t stand uproars; he
must
have peace and quiet. Sometimes I don’t think my sister understands that as well as I do. And now with another baby imminent.”
    She gave a dramatic sigh.
    â€œHe’s a
genius
, Coram, and don’t you ever forget it.
Your
feelings don’t count, your little moods.”
    â€œYes, Miss Georgina.”
    I wanted to ask her if she had enjoyed the fancy-dress party, but I counted to two and twenty and carried on up the stairs.
    Mary was born on the sixth of March, 1838. I hadn’t known about the screaming; I thought my mistress was going to die. Mr. Dickens’s mother, who was staying with us for the confinement, came down to the kitchen, where I was sitting with Cook and Charley and warming soft cloths by the stove. I had carried up can after can of water, hot and cold, with Mrs. Dickens lying in the big bed, all the colour bleached out of her face. Even her lips were white.
    â€œIs Charley all right?” she whispered.
    â€œCharley is fine, ma’am. He’s down in the kitchen with Cook and me, in the warm.”
    â€œBut not too near the stove! He could burn himself on the stove!”
    â€œIt’s all right. We tied him to the table leg with a bit of clothesline. He can move about, but he can’t get near the stove.”
    â€œHattie, thank you . . . bless you . . . you are such a help to me.”
    And then her face twisted with pain and she cried out.
    Her torment went on for hours and hours. We could hear her screams all the way down to the bottom of the house. Mrs. Dickens Senior had sent for the doctor; the baby was stuck.
    â€œIs she going to die?”
    â€œOf course not, you silly goose. We all ’ave to bring forth in sorry, the Bible tells us so.”
    â€œBut you heard her, the baby is stuck!”
    â€œDoctor will turn it.”
    Mr. Dickens, once the pain began, had called for his horse and ridden off to Richmond with his friend Mr. Forster.
    Charley had had his supper by now and had fallen asleep on my lap. I didn’t dare move him, so I carefully brought out my tatting shuttle and thread and began some new edging. I hadmade some lovely nightgowns for the new baby, but now I was working on a collar and cuffs for my mother. Cook had served us both with some cold meat, bread and pickle, and now she helped herself to a tot of port.
    The screams stopped.
    â€œShe’s dead,” I said, “I knew it.”
    â€œNonsense. Wait and see.”
    After a while Mr. Dickens’s mother came smiling into the kitchen with a bundle of bloody sheets. She saw her sleeping grandson and whispered, “It’s a wee girl. Now they have a pigeon pair.” She asked Cook to warm some beef tea.
    â€œIt was a hard one, that?”
    â€œVery hard. She tore. But she’s all smiles now.”
    â€œYes, we soon forgets the pain, that’s Nature’s way. Otherwise nobody’d ever ’ave a second one.” They smiled at one another and nodded.
    Cook said she knew a cousin whose baby was stuck so bad and they pulled so hard that its little leg came off in the midwife’s hands.
    Mrs. Dickens put the bloody sheets to soak in cold water, then asked me to carry Charley upstairs and sit by him until called. I was dripping with sweat and feeling faint. So that was what it was like to bear a child — “The baby was stuck”; “She tore”; “Its little leg came off in the midwife’s ’ands.” Screams and bloody sheets. I would never let that happen to me.
    The front door slammed and Mr. Dickens went pounding up the stairs; he had met the doctor on his way home. I heard his mother come out of the bedroom. “Hush, hush, they are both asleep.”
    Later, Cook and I were invited to see the new baby. My mistress