Band of Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

lay where they had been left. Mother or Mair would have had them cleared away by now and the floor would have been swept clean.
    Unwilling to go upstairs, Catherine ate the half-rasher of cold bacon Father had left on his plate and immediately felt sick. She thought about Mair, who could be brisk and short-tempered but who was kind to her when she felt sick.
    “Come home soon, Mair,” she prayed. “Help us.” She prayed that Ceris, the midwife, the small bossy woman she normally disliked, would be in when Father called. “It’s not fair,” she thought, for her prayers had made her feel weak and tearful, “I shouldn’t have to do this on my own.”
    Filling a cup of water, she went upstairs. The sky through the landing window looked blue and empty. The door to Mother’s room was closed. She hesitated outside then put her cup of water down and pushed hard, for the door was inclined to stick.
    “Mother,” she said. “Mama?”
    Inside the bedroom, the curtains were closed and the room, normally fragrant with mother’s lavenders and rosewater, smelled bad. She opened the curtains, and turned to the bed where Mother lay, quite still and very pale, her eyes fixed and open.
    “Mother . . . oh please!”
    As she flew toward the bed, she stumbled over something soft: Mother’s dress—her favorite dove-gray silk—stood up on its own, supported by its hoop petticoats as if it led a separate life, its violet trim now saturated with blood. She lifted the dress and threw it into the corner of the room. Mother cleared her throat.
    Catherine wanted to cry. She knelt beside the bed and took her mother’s hand, covering it in kisses.
    “It’s all right, darling,” she whispered with more confidence than she felt. “Dada will be back soon. You can tell me what you want.”
    Her mother tried to speak, but a spasm of pain flung the peach satin of her quilt from her. Catherine put it back, trying not to look.
    “Mama,” she yelped, “what am I to do?” For the first time in her life she hated herself: her dithering gestures, her cry of weakness and self-pity.
    The pain seemed to come in waves that took Mother to terrible peaks of suffering, then to recede into a false calm that left her tousled and apologetic on the pillow and saying “what a to do,” and trying to tell her that having
her
had been one of the best days of her life. During a quiet phase, she told Catherine that babies arrived on a cord from down here. She waved vaguely toward the middle of the quilt. If her baby came, Catherine was to take the big sewing scissors, not the little ones, from the green sewing bag with the pink geraniums in the chest near the window, and be very brave and cut the cord. It wouldn’t hurt Mama, it would help her.
    Catherine turned away almost sick at the thought. “Please God, please Ceris, come,” and, turning back, smiled as if Mother’s request was the most natural one in the world. A shrill song started up inside her head: “The big scissors not the little ones, I see. I see.” She got down on her knees and put her head next to her mother’s. Her forehead was waxy now and white and she was breathing through her mouth. She put her hand gently on her mother’s face. She wanted more than anything in the world to save her from pain and ugliness. Mama, groaning and panting, began grimacing and pushing her away.
    Mother started to scream. “Help me, Catherine, help me.” Her mouth was square and purple, her face unrecognizable. “Help me!”
    This cry would stay with Catherine forever. She dashed toward the windows and then back toward the bed, shouting, “Tell me what to do!”
    Mother was grabbing violently at the quilt again. When she drew it back, Catherine saw her legs were bloody and that the thing lay at the end of a quivering cord. It was hideously ugly, its skin red and flopping, its skull soft and dented like a bad plum.
    Catherine took the big scissors from the sewing bag and, shuddering with revulsion,