Page 19 of Coming Home to Inishbeg Cove

Chapter 12

Sarah

One Sunday afternoon, Mrs Manning, Greg and I were sitting around the table in the cottage. Greg had made dinner and we had invited Mrs Manning to join us. We had eaten our fill of tender beef and crispy potatoes roasted in goose fat. As Mrs Manning filled us in on her week, I made to get up to clear the plates before we tucked into the rhubarb crumble I had made for dessert.

‘Sit down – don’t move,’ Greg ordered, standing up instantly.

‘Honestly, Greg,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I’m only clearing a few plates!’

Mrs Manning raised her brows, looking at me, then at Greg, and finally back to me. ‘Have you two got something you want to tell me?’

I turned to Greg and he nodded. We had passed the magical three-month mark – the stage where the books say that the risk of miscarriage is markedly reduced but I was still terrified to tell people. Once one person knew, the whole village would know within hours, and I was still anxious that things might not go smoothly.

‘I’m pregnant, Mrs Manning,’ I admitted.

‘Oh, Sarah, that is wonderful, wonderful news!’ she cried. She tried to get up from her chair to hug me.

‘Don’t get up!’ I ordered. Instead I went over to the older lady and hugged her tightly.

‘I guess that explains the tummy,’ she said, nodding at my abdomen. ‘I thought you were letting yourself go. I was thinking that married life was suiting you a bit too well!’

I placed my hands on my rapidly expanding abdomen and laughed. ‘You wouldn’t want to be sensitive around here!’ I said, pretending to be offended.

‘There’s more…’ Greg went on, his face aglow.

‘What is it?’ Mrs Manning looked as us expectantly.

‘We’re having twins!’ Greg beamed, looking like the cat who had got the cream.

‘My word, what good news that is – you are to be doubly blessed! This is the best news I’ve heard since 1976, when I found out that the woman my ex-husband left me for had left him!’

We all laughed.

‘They’re identical,’ Greg continued. ‘So we’re either having two little boys or two little girls.’

‘Oh, whatever they are, they’ll be double trouble, I’ve no doubt. This is fantastic! I’ll get everyone at mass to pray for you, even though I don’t believe in all that stuff. Don’t tell Father Byrne, but I just go along for the cup of tea afterwards,’ she said with a theatrical wave of her hand.

‘Well, we’ll take all the prayers we can get,’ I said, laughing at her.

∞∞∞

As I had expected, our news spread like wildfire throughout the village and Mrs Manning wasn’t the only one to be overjoyed by our announcement. Maureen – Greg’s maternal aunt – hugged us with tears in her eyes, when we called over to Cove View to tell her the news. Since Greg had moved to the village, he and Maureen had grown close. She would reminisce fondly about her sister Della, and I knew Greg loved discovering more about his birth mother, who he had never known.

When I went to work the morning after our announcement, I had a queue of people lining up to congratulate me. It seemed as though the whole village was overjoyed by our news. Everyone was excited to see new blood being brought into the village. It was a sad fact that few babies were born in Inishbeg Cove these days, and so, the villagers were taking good care of me. They would rush to assist me if they saw me trying to lift a heavy parcel. Ruairí had taken to dropping me in a decaf coffee and a scone in the mornings. Even Ida the herbalist had come in with a strange seaweed concoction that she said would help with morning sickness, after I had dashed off to be sick one day when she had been in the queue, but it smelled abhorrent and I hadn’t been able to stomach it so far.

I was still really struggling with the sickness. I thought it would have abated now that I was in my second trimester, but Mrs Manning had told me that she had been sick the whole way through her pregnancies. I hoped I wasn’t going to be the same. I knew the fact that I was carrying twins meant everything was going to be heightened.

A few days later I was in the post office sorting through letters when I felt that familiar heat break out all over my body and my mouth began to water. Beads of sweat prickled along the back of my neck and I knew I was going to be sick. Again. The post office door opened and Maureen came in.

‘I’m going to be sick—’ I blurted out before running out to the toilet, leaving her standing looking after me.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked when I returned a few minutes later. Although my stomach felt more settled now, after heaving up its contents into the toilet, things could change quickly. The waves of nausea never let up.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I just have to ride it out.’

‘Well, they say that morning sickness is a good sign.’

‘That’s what Greg keeps saying.’

‘I just wanted to drop these off for you. I’ve been knitting again – I can’t seem to stop myself.’ She laughed nervously.

Since we had announced our news, Maureen had been on a knitathon. She had already knitted mittens, socks and bonnets for both babies, and I knew she was working on blankets and teddy bears too.

Maureen and her husband Jim had met later in life, after the opportunity to have children of their own had passed them by, and she looked upon Greg as the son she’d never had. As soon as we had told her I was pregnant, she had slotted into an almost grandmotherly role, a role that Greg and I were only too happy to give her, because we knew we would need all the help we could get once the babies arrived. Our babies represented a chance for her to be involved in not just one, but two, infants’ lives, and I could tell she was relishing the opportunity. She was already a huge support to us, and I knew she would be a great help when our babies arrived.

She handed me a paper bag. I opened it and lifted out two identical buttermilk-coloured cardigans, made from the softest wool.

‘These are so beautiful.’ I held them up to admire. ‘Thank you, Maureen.’

It seemed that the whole of Inishbeg Cove was just as excited as Greg and I were about our twins. It was lovely to know that we had so many people in our corner wishing us well, but with that came a strange sense of pressure. I just hoped nothing would go wrong. I didn’t want to let everyone down.