‘We must keep it warm,’ I told her. A throbbing cord of bright silver blue still tied mother to child. I brought a towel to clean and wrap it, but this wretched cord hindered all our movements.

‘We have to cut it,’ Mrs Bligh said. ‘Get the scissors – they’re on the dressing-table.’

I had thought my work done but here was she once more commanding me to fetch. I washed the implement in the bowl of boiled water. Drying it carefully I handed the scissors to her.

‘No, you’ll have to do it, Hortense.’

As soon as my mouth protested, ‘Me?’ reluctantly I realised it was only I who could perform this distasteful task.

I placed the cord within the open blades. Was I averting my eye or closing them? I do not remember for all at once Mrs Bligh was shouting. ‘No, wait.’ String, Mrs Bligh informed me, I needed to make two ties in the cord – one near the baby, one near her – and cut in between. She was insistent on this fancywork, observing me tying the knots as strict as a teacher at school. ‘Good. Now you can cut it,’ she finally granted. The scissors cut through the gristle with an ease that startled me. At last, she took the baby into her arms, embracing it against her chest. Then like a fussy shopkeeper with his wares she began to inspect. Two arms she lifted to delicately count every finger. Ten toes she looked for. A gentle wind she blew at each nostril. She wiped an eye. Then, rummaging careful in the middle of its two legs, she said, ‘It’s a boy. He’s a lovely, perfect boy.’

I had no time for this reverie for the room was cold, the mother gone fool-fool and the baby naked. Every blanket had slipped to the floor in all the confusion. Bending to retrieve them at the foot of the bed, I found myself awkward by the feet of Mrs Bligh. When, all at once, Mrs Bligh’s private part let forth a burp then spat out on to the lap of my best white wedding dress a bloody-soaked lump of her insides. Looking like a piece of best liver it burst on to me as if I was some bullseye in a game. My anguished cry had Mrs Bligh straining to look between her knees at the commotion.

‘Oh, good. That’s the afterbirth. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly natural,’ she told me.

Soaking pink with the bloody splattered tissue, my poor dress wept. I picked up this slippery excretion and dumped it in the bowl of boiled water (with no doubt in my mind that this Englishwoman would probably wash her vegetables in this same bowl tomorrow). Mrs Bligh tutted at the sight of my spoiled dress, then said, ‘Come and look at him, Hortense.’ She was crying again. ‘He’s a lovely little boy.’

And I said to myself, Hortense, come, this is a gift from the Lord – life. What price is a little disgust on your best dress? I decided to pay it no mind.

She had wiped all the blood and yellow muck from the baby’s face and wrapped him tight in the messy towel. She pulled the cloth down, away from his chin, so I might get a good view. I looked at the baby. Then my eye went straight to Mrs Bligh, who was cooing with words incomprehensible to the fully grown. I looked back to the baby to make sure what my eye had seen was true. Once more to Mrs Bligh, I perused her face for signs that what I could see she saw also. But her only response was a loving smile as she tenderly wiped at the dark hair on his head. Was it possible this woman had not noticed?

‘Your baby is black,’ I said to her. For, no longer that slimy purple pink, his skin had darkened to be browner than my own. ‘Mrs Bligh, you know your baby is a black child.’ Dreamily she tell me to call her Queenie. ‘Mrs Bligh, can you hear me? You have a coloured child.’ The skin of this baby appeared so dark resting against the pale ghostly white of its mother that, for a moment, I wondered if this blonde woman had swapped her baby for another while I was otherwise engaged. How else would this happen? ‘Mrs Bligh, can you see your baby is not white?’ But she paid me no mind, beginning her counting again – ten fingers, ten toes, she tells me. Yes – and every one of them black!

This woman had ceased to make sense, when just then I heard the voice of Gilbert Joseph at the door. ‘Hortense, what ’appening in there?’ Was it the Almighty intervening to point a finger? As these words were spoken, Mr Bligh blustered on, letting Gilbert know that he should remove himself from the door, in what, after all, was his house. Outside together and still scuffling. I looked to Mrs Bligh with her baby, serene as a Madonna on the messy bed. And it felt like a vicious cruelty to have to ask her, ‘Shall I let them in now?’

Fifty-four

Gilbert

Now, come – let me think where to start. I must begin with Hortense. Bloody as a murderer, she walked out of the door of Mrs Bligh’s basement flat. The whole front of her good white dress was red. Her hands, delicately holding her coat and hat, were, however, covered in the congealing scarlet stains of a hapless butcher.

‘You can see your wife now, Mr Bligh,’ was all the explanation that was forthcoming from her lips.

As she moved past me to ascend the stairs to return to our room, her nose lifted so far in the air it was a wonder her neck did not break. Now this was the story that my mind conjured. Queenie had in some way insulted my fiercely proud wife. Her hat a little old-fashioned? Her English not so good? Who knows? But a slight none the less for which Hortense took grave offence. In retaliation Hortense had – with a knife, perhaps, or a hatchet – killed her. Not until I was standing behind Mr Bligh, trying not to make too much noise to vex him with my presence, looking on a bed that contained Queenie and a newborn very brown-skinned baby, did things enlighten sufficient for my senseless brain to finally realise that, oh, boy, no, this was bigger trouble than that!

Never had I heard such a noisy quiet. We three – no, we four – caught in a scene that defied sensible comment. Queenie fondled her pickney that was plainly still wet behind the ears. The blameless baby wiggled, unaware of the accursed situation it had squeezed itself out into. Her husband, staring on them straight-backed as if on parade, wiped a hand back and forth across his head in the exact spot where his cuckold’s horn would rise. While I frowned. For I knew Queenie had put on a bit of weight but what an astonishment to find it was the type you could dress in a bonnet. Some word was needed to break this frozen clinch. So it was I who said, ‘Shall we still get a doctor?’ The fool husband then turned his gaze to me. So bewildered was his countenance, it was almost comical. But this situation’s funny side was obviously not what was troubling him at that moment. His eye locked on mine. And in that steady stare lurked true pain. My tongue had just begun with urgency to click to the roof of my mouth to utter the words, ‘No, man, this is nothing to do with me,’ when he lunged at me.

Two hands grabbed scruffy fistfuls of my jacket. I was being lifted from the ground. My feet tripped trying to get some foothold as he rushed me from the bedroom out into the parlour. I lost a shoe. Cha, I was shrieking like a girl. Not fright but surprise. First time I noticed this man was taller than me. Skinny? This man swelled before me, pumped up fierce with rage. No force I had could quell him. He slapped my back hard against a wall. Every muscle and tooth in his face was put to the service of showing his fury. One inch from me his breath blasted from him, speechless. Fearsome as the wrath of Samson, I was puny before it. I raised my hand only to shield my face as he shook me like a dog with a doll. I tell him fast, ‘It nothing to do with me, man. It not my baby.’ He started cuss language I never realise white men knew. ‘Not me, man. Not me.’ He swung me round, this puny man. But I got a little footing on the ground, enough for me to push him. But, like rolling a solid rock, he stood firm before me, while his fist came up to mash my nose. Blood spurted so wild from it, him looked as shocked as me. ‘What you do, man?’ I yelled. The only pain I felt was the craving to get this man far from me. Fearful of getting bloody, he took a fateful step back. I hit him in the head. Stumbling, flailing, he tripped on a chair and was spilt on to the floor. ‘Good,’ I shouted at him. ‘You hurt, man? Good.’