The Winter Children (34 page)

All she can do is watch and wait.

Darkness has descended even earlier than usual and outside the windows of the school the snow is falling ever more thickly, quickly blanketing the lawns and hedges, the fountains and stone
balustrades. The world outside is a mass of eddying flakes, and inside, the mood is excited but also muted. They will be snowed in, and that could last days and days.

Supper passes and Alice barely eats, but that is not so unusual. She often goes through periods of hardly touching food. Julia feels she should urge her on for the sake of the baby, but that
seems an odd thing to do, and besides, how could she, when they’re surrounded by the other girls, not to mention the staff?

When they say goodnight, and curl up in their beds in the dorm, separated only by flimsy low walls, Alice seems even paler and has begun to look genuinely ill.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to Matron?’ Julia asks, worried, as she looks over the low partition into Alice’s section. ‘You don’t look at all well. How
are the cramps?’

‘I’m fine,’ Alice says, but her eyes are tired and her cheeks look hollow. Nevertheless she smiles. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’ll see. I’ll be all
right in the morning.’

Julia curls up in her bed and waits for the cool sheets to grow warm so that she can sleep, listening for any sound from Alice, but there’s none. Before long, she can’t listen
anymore as she drifts off into half-consciousness, thinking of the snow and the warmth of Egypt.

She wakes suddenly, and knows at once that something is wrong. Jumping out of bed, shivering in the chill air outside the blankets, she runs lightly to the partition and looks over it. Alice is gone. Her bed is empty.

Oh no! Where is she?
Panic races through her as she stares wildly about the dark dormitory, as though hoping to see Alice in the shadows.
I have to find her.

As quietly as possible, she opens her drawer and pulls out her weekend clothes: trousers, a blouse and a thick jumper. Then a pair of socks and her coat and hat. It’s so cold in the
school, she’ll need all of that to keep warm. Then she picks up her boots, gets her torch from its hiding place in her bedside table and tiptoes out of her cubby hole and into the main
dormitory. There is not a sound. She is sure that Alice is not here.

Her instinct takes her the way they have always gone when sneaking out of school: down to the end of the hall and out through the little arched door onto the stone staircase.
‘Alice?’ she whispers and it seems to hiss down the stairs. There is no reply. She bends to put on her boots, her cold fingers stumbling over the laces, and then starts slowly down,
switching on her torch so that she can pick out each step as it curves away from her. Where can Alice be? Where has she gone, and why?

Julia knows that there is only one place that Alice would be heading.

But why? Why would she go there?

She catches herself up with a rush of unexpected sadness.

Where else can she go? Who else can she tell?

But would it really be so bad to go to Matron, or Miss Allen or any of the other women here in the school? They’re not monsters. When they saw Alice in trouble, in desperation, surely they would help her. But Alice lives by her own rules and
her own idea of what the world should be. Whatever she sees in her future, Julia can guess that it is not being the naughty schoolgirl who surrenders herself in pregnant disgrace to the
tongue-clicking disapproval of the spinsters in authority. She will want something grander and more dramatic than that.

Julia is on the ground floor now, and she tiptoes along, following the wavering beam of her torch, looking for signs of her friend, hoping that she has got onto her trail before she has gone too
far. But there is no trace of her all the way past the changing rooms and out through the canvas sheeting into the pool room. Julia crosses it quickly, noticing that the wooden door at the end is
already pushed ajar, and draws in a sharp breath as she looks at the world beyond. The snow has stopped and the sky is clear, shining with a huge silver moon that sets the snow glittering with
millions of tiny twinkles. Across the fresh virgin snow that has fallen over the dirty building site, hiding its mud and filth and mess, there is a set of deep footprints leading towards the
boundary between the school and the field where the caravans are.

Julia can’t help gasping in horror. So she was right, the baby is coming. Why has Alice decided to set off like this? What can she hope to achieve? She hurries on, scrunching through the
fresh snowfall, her breath coming in puffs of icy smoke, feeling afraid of what she will find at the end of this fantastical journey. She hardly needs her torch now, as the moonlight reflects on the snow’s surface and lights up the way as if showing her the route to Alice.

The caravans are silent and dark as usual, each with its own heavy counterpane of snow under which it seems to snuggle.
Like bugs in a rug
, she thinks, and presses on towards the one at
the back that belongs to Roy and Donnie.

As she rounds the corner of the van, she sees her: Alice, huddled in the snow, half crouching, half lying, her face twisted and her teeth bared. She is wrapped in a fur coat, one that Julia
remembers her bringing back from home after Christmas, laughing about how she took it from her mother’s wardrobe without asking, and the fur is sprinkled with clumps of snow as though she has
been rolling in it, like a winter bear taking a bath.

‘Alice!’ She dashes forward as fast as she can through the snow, drops her torch and kneels down beside her friend, touching her gently on the arm as if half afraid to cause her more
pain.

Alice is grunting and panting, her skin whiter than ever, her hair wet with sweat, her lips pale. She opens her eyes and sees Julia, a look of relief passing over her face, but cannot speak
while the strange stifled moan is in her throat. Julia holds her, wishing desperately that she can remove the pain somehow, but she has no idea what to do. Fright races through her. This is
serious. This is birth. What can she do?

Some of the tension leaves Alice and she relaxes a little into Julia’s arms. ‘You found me,’ she whispers with a smile.

‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ Her fear makes her sound petulant, but she knows Alice understands. ‘Why did you come out here?’

‘I wanted to . . . I wanted to have the baby on my own. So that . . . So that I can give it to Roy.’

‘Roy?’ Julia is astonished. ‘But what makes you think he wants it?’

‘It’s my . . . gift. My . . . consolation.’ Her eyes close and her face twists into a rictus again. A great groan comes up from within her, and she clenches her fist with the
pressure of keeping it inside. Her mouth is tightly shut. Only a high, quiet sound comes out on the night air. Julia guesses that Alice is doing all she can not to wake the occupants of the
caravans.

‘You can’t stay here,’ she says, as soon as she sees that the pain has passed. ‘It’s freezing. You can’t have a baby out here in the snow. Come on.’

‘I can’t move,’ Alice says, her tone almost cheerful. ‘I can’t walk any further.’

‘All right. Then you’ll have to wait here for just a moment.’

Panic flares in Alice’s eyes. ‘Don’t leave me!’ She grips Julia’s hand with a tight,
cold grip. ‘I thought I could do this alone. But I can’t.’

‘I won’t leave you – not for more than a minute. But we have to get some help.’ Julia scrambles up in the snow and heads for Donnie’s caravan. Instead of knocking
at the door, she goes round to the back to the window. There’s no time for tentativeness now – she raps as hard as she dares. A few seconds later, the curtain is pushed aside and she
sees Donnie’s face, bleary with sleep, looking out at her.

She mouths one word. ‘Help.’

He rubs his eyes, squinting at her, and then seems to grasp that this is an emergency. He mouths back, ‘Two minutes,’ and disappears from view. Julia goes back to the door and waits,
her arms wrapped around herself, hopping on the spot against the cold. She can only think of Alice, worried for her in the snow alone, and she hears the low muffled wail of another rush of
pain.

How long now? How close is she?

The door opens and Donnie stands there, dressed but without a coat. ‘Hell’s fire,’ he says, shuddering. ‘It’s freezing out here. What are you doing here?’

‘It’s Alice. She’s over there. She’s having the baby.’ Julia points to the strange huddled shape in the snow that’s rocking gently. ‘We have to get
her inside.’

‘What?’ A look of horror crosses Donnie’s face. ‘The baby’s coming? She can’t have it here!’

‘She can’t have it in the snow,’ Julia says firmly. ‘We’re coming in. You have to help me, she can’t walk.’

Donnie gapes at her, and then sees that she is not to be denied. The seriousness of the situation will not allow it. ‘Holy Mary,’ he says, looking suddenly like a young boy. ‘All right. Come on then.’

They go over to Alice, and find her in a strange state, almost as though she is asleep, although the whiteness of her face makes her look more like a corpse. Julia is panicked until she groans
as Donnie struggles to get an arm underneath to lift her.

‘You take her other side,’ he directs, panting a little. ‘We can both do it if we lift together.’

Somehow they manage to hoist Alice up, supporting her with their arms beneath hers. Her head lolls a little and she is a near dead weight, so they half carry, half drag her across the snow to
the caravan, and then up the steps and through the open door. Once inside, Donnie lowers Alice gently to the floor and looks over her at Julia.

‘You’re going to have to do it,’ he says. ‘You’re a woman. You know about these things.’

‘I don’t know anything!’ cries Julia in a panic.

‘You know more than I do.’

‘What about Roy? Where is he? His wife has had children, he’ll know what to do.’

Donnie looks grim. ‘First off, he’s lying in his bed through that door and he’s flat-out drunk. He’s had near on a bottle of whiskey tonight; he wouldn’t wake if it
was the Second Coming itself. And second, if he was awake, he’d be useless. No man sees the birth of his children, it’s not right. We need a woman, and you’re it.’

Alice starts to moan again. The force of her pain silences them both: they can only witness it, watching the animal nature of it, and the startling way her body won’t be deviated or
stopped. It has a job to do, and nothing will prevent it now that it has begun.

Donnie and Julia look at each other. ‘You’d better get her things off,’ he says. ‘The baby is coming.’

It’s the beauty of it that strikes her the most. She’s always imagined that childbirth must be ugly, but it isn’t at all. In the light of the lantern, Alice’s belly is
velvety smooth, huge and ripe. She lies on the old blanket that Donnie puts down for her, and, clutching at Julia’s hand, she allows herself to surrender to the mysterious forces possessing
her. She never screams, but moans and wails with her mouth closed as pain grips her in ever closer pulses, and yet, she somehow relaxes too, as though she knows that she can deliver the baby, now
she is sheltered and cared for. Donnie walks around the tiny space of the caravan, most of it taken up with the two girls, occasionally looking but mostly trying not to, as though he wants to
preserve Alice’s modesty, even though she is lying naked on the floor, her belly rising and clenching with the force of the contractions.

Julia doesn’t know how long they are there. It could be one hour or four. Time seems to concertina, shrunk by the patterns of Alice’s labour, the wracks of pain that come and go,
closer and closer together, until she is squeezing her eyes shut, her mouth wide, her hands painfully tight on Julia’s, pushing down and down.

Julia looks at the junction of Alice’s thighs, where everything is red and stretched and unrecognisable as any part of anatomy she has ever seen. It is so alien that it doesn’t
strike her as obscene or disgusting; it simply is what it is, and in the middle of the work it can and must do. Then she sees it. The curve of a skull coming down through the dark red orifice and
out into the world. It halts its progress as Alice gathers her strength for the next onslaught and then, as she pushes, the little head presses further out.

‘It’s almost here! Oh, well done, Alice, well done! Another push, another push!’ Julia has washed her hands and now she reaches down, ready to take hold of the child when it
emerges. Donnie hovers nearby, tension all over his face, expectation in his eyes.

Alice allows a cry to escape as she pushes down again, and suddenly it happens more quickly than Julia can anticipate. With a sudden slither and a gush of water and blood, the body slides out
of Alice’s and into Julia’s waiting hands. It is tiny and perfect, a thick purplish cord connected to its small round belly and then wrapped around its neck, where its face is perfectly
still and blue.

Olivia is quietly furious.

‘What was going on in there?’ she says, spooning food into Bea’s mouth. She has no patience with her daughter’s attempts to feed herself today, but Bea doesn’t like
being deprived of the fun and is whining and resisting.

‘Nothing,’ says Dan. He is feeding a more compliant Stan, who likes being fed and is opening his mouth for the spoonfuls of rice and stew.

‘She had her hand on your leg!’

‘She put it there for a moment. It doesn’t mean anything. You know what she’s like, touchy-feely and all the rest of it. Besides, if you’d give me a chance to explain,
I’d tell you that I’ve actually asked her to go.’

‘You have?’

Dan nods. His expression is cross and sulky. ‘Yes.’

‘And what did she say?’ Olivia asks, diverted from the source of her anger and fear. The sight of Francesca and Dan on the sofa together has shaken her. It has given her the unpleasant notion that something is going on between them of which she knows nothing.

‘She was about to tell me when you came in. But I think she’s going to give it some thought.’ He shoots her a wry look. ‘You never know, we might get our lives back
sooner than you think.’