Evelyn sat down next to Adela and took her hand. Instinctively, Clara did the same and took her other.
‘Look at me,’ Evelyn said calmly to Adela. ‘Breathe, breathe... that’s it.’
Gradually, Adela came back to herself.
‘Next time a contraction comes, you squeeze the hell out of our hands with your fingers,’ Evelyn ordered. ‘You hear me?’
Adela nodded.
‘Good girl. Draw blood if you must. We can take it can’t we, Clar?’
Clara nodded and smiled encouragingly.
‘You’re the strongest of us all, Adela. Look at what you’re already survived. You can do this.’
Adela locked eyes with Joyce. ‘Will you make sure the baby is safe, Joyce?’ she whispered.
‘Of course. I promise . . . but you . . .’
Joyce didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence, for another contraction took hold and Adela gripped Evelyn and Clara’s fingers and bellowed with surprising ferocity.
From that moment, things moved at speed.
Beth came back with hot water and soap. Harry scrubbed his hands and coaxed Adela to move onto all fours.
‘It’ll make the birth easier. Trust me, when I helped in the birth during that air raid, this is what the midwife had the mother do.’
‘Surely we should wait for the midwife before we start talking about birthing positions?’ Joyce flustered, but her words weredrowned out by a low, feral, keening sound that shattered the peace of the quiet countryside.
Thirty-eight minutes after they’d arrived in Devon, Adela gave birth in the travelling library.
The baby girl was delivered by Harry, who even cut the cord. Her baby was small but healthy, according to the midwife, who arrived just a few minutes later and took over, and Harry’s calm in delivering the child rated commendable.
Joyce was utterly floored by the birth. She had never imagined it could be so visceral or so brutal. But as soon as the baby was with them, all of Adela’s hysteria and pain had vanished. How could she be roaring one minute and the next be so calm? She sat propped up, holding the tiny baby, which was swaddled in a blanket. The fear in the little library had been replaced with a sort of silent wonder.
The midwife went outside to call for an ambulance so mother and baby could be transported to hospital and checked over.
‘You were the first person to touch her, Harry,’ Adela breathed. ‘Will you hold her?’ she asked, not waiting for the answer and handing the baby to him.
Harry was spellbound. All the tightness in his face evaporated. Joyce had seen him shifting great chunks of masonry with brute force on bomb sites, but here, now, he was pure putty.
‘She’s beautiful,’ he breathed. A tear slipped down his cheeks as he stood stock-still, a tiny scrap cradled in his arms.
‘Look at her,’ he wept, shaking his head. ‘Just look at her.’
They all gazed at the baby, fascinated. She was so small. Like a porcelain doll. If it weren’t for those tiny fists, curling and uncurling, Joyce’s mind might have tricked her into believing she wasn’t real.
‘It’s like a miracle,’ he said, unable to tear his face away from the baby’s. ‘Look at those fingernails. And her eyelashes!’
He kissed the soft downy fuzz of her head, seeming to breathe in the newness of her.
‘Sweet dreams form a shade, O’er my lovely infant’s head,’ he murmured. ‘Sweet dreams of pleasant streams, By happy, silent, moony beams.’
He tore his face from the baby to look at them, eyes glowing. ‘William Blake.’
Harry was so enraptured he hadn’t noticed Adela’s face. But Joyce had.
The hysterical young woman had vanished. In its place was the self-possessed and determined Adela that Joyce knew only too well.
