Love Letters From the Grave(50)

‘Where have you been?’ cried Betty as he flung open the car door. ‘Muriel’s been asking for you for an hour!’

‘Why?’ said Charlie, not answering her question. ‘Is everything okay?’

Betty grabbed him by the arm to propel him through the door more quickly. ‘She’s in labor, poor child.’

The baby wasn’t due for another ten days. Charlie ran to the bedroom from where he could hear strenuous screaming and some choice curses that the other children did not need to know.

‘Muriel, I’m here.’ Charlie ran to Muriel’s side of their bed and reached for her hand. She gripped it as if she wanted to crush his bones. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m having the baby too soon!’ she screamed. ‘How do you think I’m doing?’

‘Okay, okay.’ He turned to Betty who was hovering in the doorway with Detty and one of the twins. Where the other one had crawled to, he had no idea. ‘Betty, do you think she needs to go to the hospital? I know most births take place at home once you’ve had as many children as Muriel, but what with the complications with the twins …’

‘Take me to the hospital!’ roared Muriel before Betty even had time to reply. ‘This second!’

‘Right.’ Charlie hauled Muriel into a roughly-seated position and scooped her up into his arms. ‘The car’s right outside.’

‘I’ll take care of the little ones,’ said Betty, herding the children away from the bedroom door. ‘You just look after Muriel and the baby.’

‘I will,’ promised Charlie, his heart pounding when he thought about what he’d just been about to do. How could he ask his wife for a divorce when she was giving birth to his fourth child?

‘Faster, Charlie! I want to get there faster!’

Muriel was practically hysterical now. He laid her out as well as he could across the back seat of the car, remembering, just for a moment, the last time he’d been told to go as fast as he could. He’d been a child, really, though he was only a few years younger than Muriel was now. And here he sat, behind the wheel of a roadster, about to speed away to save the life of his own child.

In that moment, Charlie realized that he would do anything, always, for the lives of his children, and if that meant giving up Molly and staying with Muriel forever, then that was how it would have to be. His chest ached with the prospect of it, but he ignored the sensation as he raced into the town to the hospital, with Muriel shrieking from the back seat so that he feared he might have to stop the car and deliver the baby himself.

Thankfully they made it to the hospital before their fourth child presented himself to the world. Running into the reception area, Charlie looked around for anyone medical, and seized the white coat of a passing doctor.

‘My wife,’ he panted, ‘she’s having a baby. It’s ten days early.’

The doctor, in his late twenties and looking impossibly young to be a qualified medical adviser, spun around immediately, snapping orders at the staff. ‘Where is she, sir?’

‘In the car. Back seat.’

‘You and you,’ barked the doctor to a couple of orderlies with an authority that belied his years, ‘help the lady out of the car, and stretcher her if needs be. Nurse Hatton, prepare the surgeon in case there’s an emergency operation needed. Sir,’ he said to Charlie, ‘don’t be worried. Your wife is in the best hands now. What’s her name?’

Charlie sank onto a chair. ‘Muriel,’ he said, exhausted, despondent and exhilarated at the same time. Not Molly. Maybe he’d never get to say Molly. ‘My wife’s name is Muriel.’

The doctor hesitated for a moment, frowning at Charlie. Then he excused himself and ran outside to help the orderlies bring Muriel inside. He was patting her hand reassuringly as Muriel’s prone body shot past Charlie, her face scarlet from screaming.

‘The baby’s coming soon,’ said Nurse Hatton to Charlie. ‘You can go and wait in the room near the maternity ward, and we’ll let you know when Baby is here.’

‘Thank you,’ said Charlie.

He made his way to the room where the fathers congregated, glad to see that only one other father-to-be was in there, chain-smoking and marching in zig-zags up and down the tiled floor. The man offered Charlie a cigarette.

‘Thank you, but I don’t smoke,’ he responded.

‘First?’ asked the other father.

Charlie shook his head. ‘Fourth.’

‘Four?’ The man laughed. ‘You’ll be used to all this, then. It’s my first. I’m terrified.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Charlie.

‘So they keep telling me,’ the other replied, before resuming his frantic marching.

Charlie leaned against the window, thinking about what he’d said. “It’ll be fine.” He’d been promised that himself, decades ago, before the bank robbery. He’d promised his wife that everything would be fine, and yet she’d had difficulties giving birth to the twins, and now a baby on the way too early, and she wasn’t even aware of what bad news Charlie had just been about to impart.

And Molly. He’d promised her so often that it would be fine, that it would work out, that God must have meant for them to be together to have filled each of them with so much love for the other, and yet he couldn’t swear to her now that everything would work out as they’d hoped. It will be fine. Had there ever been four words that were more ill-used? He couldn’t think of any, just the three special words that he’d repeated to Molly over and over, from the very bottom of his heart.