‘Please let me get the doctor. Your wound may need new dressing.’ Although not of a delicate disposition, still I worried I might faint. But she paid me no mind. With care she unravelled this cloth. I turned my eye so it might just peek. But there was no cut, no blood, no gash. Like bread dough rising in a tin, as she unwound, her stomach steadily swelled in front of me.

‘Mrs Bligh, are you with child?’

Once the bandage was fully discarded it was plain as a drink of water. Her bulbous belly puffed, relieved that it was now freed from its bind. She lay back on the bed commanding me with a pointing finger to fetch the cushions and pillows to prop her up. As she did, another contraction was upon her. And this belly bucked and rolled as the child inside fought for release. ‘Oh, God, I think it’s coming!’

How had she kept such an ample secret wrapped so tightly to her?

‘Please let me get the doctor, Mrs Bligh. You must go to the hospital.’

‘No, there’s no time. I’ve been having these pains since yesterday. They’re worse now. I know it’s coming.’ Once again the pain was scorching her face crimson. It was not in my experience, giving birth. I had watched chickens, of course, laying their eggs, but none of them had ever required my assistance. I held on to her hand patting it gently, my mind fretting on what else should be done while willing my eye to keep back its fearful tears.

Her pain subsiding, she spoke through a panting breath, ‘Don’t worry, I know what to do.’ She struggled with a little giggle, ‘It’ll be like Gone With the Wind. You know the scene . . .’ before a contraction blurred the words into screeching. I knew the scene very well and I did not care for the comparison. What doubt was there that she was the prosperous white woman? So, come, did she think me that fool slave girl? Dancing in panic at the foot of her bed? Cha! I am an educated woman. I knew that this birth would happen. ‘Cross your legs and see to your knitting, Mrs Bligh,’ I could tell her, but that baby would soon drop from her. All I would have to do is catch. Gone With the Wind! I closed my mouth from its gaping determined to show this impertinent woman what it means to be raised in Jamaica in reach of the foremost hands of a Miss Jewel. I took off my coat and hat. And one after the other put a roll on my sleeve. ‘Come, Hortense,’ I said, ‘better go boil some water.’

Her husband was yelling the words, ‘Queenie, open this door – what’s going on? I demand to know,’ and the accompanying banging became so regular its beats no longer startled me but became the rhythm I worked by. Placing the kettle on the stove, collecting towels and sheets from a drawer, soaking a cooling cloth and carrying through a bowl of fresh water were all performed to this man’s bluster.

‘It’s just a women’s matter, Mr Bligh. Soon come. No worry,’ I told him through the wood every time I passed the opening. No man is required at a birth but any fool could see why Mr Bligh would be considered an intruder. This ignorant man was not even wise to what was ailing his wife. And even the stupidest pupil at Half Way Tree Parish School – yes, even the wretched Percival Brown, using his fingers to count – would be able to tell that Mrs Bligh’s come-lately husband was not the father of the soon-come child.

Mrs Bligh called for me with a yell so urgent the booming, bottomless tones seemed to come from the devil himself. In comparison, Mr Bligh’s protestation squeaked puny as a mouse.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

I was ready to tell her that while all that was required of her was to lie back and expel the child I had been asked to perform as maid, midwife and doctor all in the body of one woman. But she raised her hand, calling me to her timidly – all she needed was I. I placed the damp towel on her head. She held it there – her mouth open in a soundless howl. The room was malodorous, stale and airless. But the useless window would not budge.

‘Leave it. Just tell me what’s happening. Is it coming? I can feel it coming.’ She pointed an insistent finger to the region of her being she wished me to concentrate upon. Up until this time I had contrived to avoid gazing on Mrs Bligh’s private parts. Unschooled in the process of birth, I was none the less aware that eventually it would be this area where my attention was most needed. I prised her fingers from once more crushing my consoling hand and I offered her the grip of the bedpost instead. I thought the metal of the bed would buckle as she yelled her loudest. It was with politeness and – it would be wrong to say otherwise – reluctance, that I asked her, ‘Please could you open your legs a little wider, Mrs Bligh?’

‘Call me blinking Queenie, for Christ’s sake,’ she shouted, just before she started to cry.

‘Okay,’ I told her, ‘I will call you Queenie, Mrs Bligh. There is no need for tears.’

‘I’m crying ’cause it bloody hurts!’ she screamed.

I was learning that Englishwomen can behave in a peculiar fashion. And this one was conspiring to be the oddest one I had ever met. Suddenly she was smiling again, ‘Oh, what’s happening, Hortense? Tell me,’ and seeming to all the world like she was pleased to be having this baby.

So I looked. What a thing was this! A wondrous sight perhaps – for there was the round head complete with curly dark hair matted in blood pushing out from within her. A new life for this world. But it was quite the ugliest sight I had ever beheld. Only a few days before this pretty white woman was going about her business – collecting her shopping, hanging washing on a line, passing the time of day with neighbours – now, prostrated by nature, she was simply the vessel for the Lord to do His work. This woman’s private parts had lost all notion of being of the human kind. Surely they could not stretch wide enough to let the creature pass. Cha, all this straining, squeezing and screaming. I would not presume to tell the Lord His business but, come, the laying of an egg by a hen was, without doubt, the more civilised method of creation. Every tissue in my body was tingling with repulsion. But for the sake of this woman’s well-being, not even an actor on a stage could have held a gaze of rapt wonder more steadily.

‘The baby is on its way,’ I told her. ‘The head is there.’

‘It’s crowning,’ she said. ‘Can you see it?’ The noise she then created brought to mind the relieving of constipation. I was wearing my good white wedding dress. What consternation befell me as I realised I would have no chance to cover myself. For this baby, like an erupting pustule, was squeezing further and further out. Soon its eyes were blinking into the dim light. I tenderly held my fingers to its warm, slippery head.

‘You must push, Mrs Bligh,’ I said.

And with one venomous yell of ‘Queenie, call me bloody Queenie,’ the head of the baby popped full out.

‘I have the head,’ I told her. For there it was, cradled in my hand, in this obscene resting place. Crumpled as discarded paper. Dark hair, nose with two nostrils and lips that waved in a perfect bow. Suddenly that fresh mouth sprang open to deliver forth a mighty shrill scream.

I lifted my head to tell her, ‘One more push, Mrs Bligh.’

This baby’s head then began to twist round – turning without aid from me. No further injunction was necessary before, in one slippery rush, I found myself holding the whole baby.

‘It’s here,’ I said. ‘I have it. I have it here.’ But she had fallen back upon her pillows. ‘It is born, Mrs Bligh – it is here.’

I lifted the baby carefully so she might see. She held out her arms. The slimy purple pink of a robust earthworm, with skin smeared in blood and wrinkled as the day it would die, and yet still Mrs Bligh’s eyes alighted on this grumpy-faced child and saw it as someone she could love. This was truly the miracle to behold. Leaning forward she enclosed this baby in two grateful hands. ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God.’ And luckily my dress had remained clean.