Life After Life
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Life After Life By Kate Atkinson Snow, for God's sake, girl stopped running around like a headless chicken and fetch some hot water and towels. Do you know nothing where you raised in a field? This is sorry, sir. Bridget dipped and apologetic curtsy, as if Dr Fellows were minor royalty. A girl? Dr. Fellows, may I see her? Yes, Mrs Todd, a Bonny bouncing baby girl. Sylvie thought Dr Fellows might be over egging the pudding with his alliteration. He was not one for bonhomie. At the best of times. The health of his patients, particularly their exits and entrances, seemed designed to annoy him. She would have died from the cord around her neck. I arrived at Fox Corner in the nick of time literally. Dr. Fellows held up his surgical scissors for Sylvie's admiration. They were small and neat, and their sharp points curved upwards at the end. Snip, snip, he said. Sylvie made a mental note. A small, vague one. Kevin her exhaustion and the circumstances of it to buy just such a pair of scissors in case of similar emergency. Unlikely it was true, or a knife a good sharp knife to be carried on one's person at all times, like the rubber girl in the Snow Queen. You were lucky I got here in time, doctor fellow said before the snow closed the roads. I called for Mrs Haddock, the midwife, but I believe she is stuck somewhere outside Chalfont. ST Peter, Mrs Haddock, Sylvie said, and frowned. Pritchard laughed out loud and then quickly mumbled, Sorry, sorry, sir Sylvie supposed that she and Bridget were both on the edge of hysteria. Hardly surprising bridge. It's only a scullery maid, a child herself. I am very grateful to her. It all happened so quickly. Sylvie thought how much she wanted to be alone, how she was never alone. You must stay until morning, I suppose, doctor, she said reluctantly. Well, yes, I suppose I must, Dr Fellows said equally reluctantly, Sylvie side and suggested that he helped himself to a glass of brandy in the kitchen and perhaps some ham and pickles. Bridget will see to you she wanted rid of him. He had delivered all 33 of her Children, and she did not like him one bit. Only a husband should see what he saw pouring and poking with his instruments in her most delicate and secretive places. But would she rather have a midwife called Mrs Haddock deliver her child? Doctors for women should all be women themselves. Little chance of that. Dr. Fellows lingered, humming and hawing, overseeing the washing and wrapping of the new arrival by a hot faced Bridget. Bridget was the eldest of seven, so she knew how to swaddle an infant. She was 14 years old, 10 years younger than Sylvie. When Sylvie was 14, she was still in short skirts, in love with her pony. Tiffen had no idea where babies came from. He even on her wedding night, she remained baffled. Her mother, Lottie, had hinted, but had fallen shy of anatomical exactitude. Conjugal relations between man and wife seemed mysteriously to involve larks soaring at daybreak. Lottie was a reserved woman, some might have said narcoleptic. Her husband. Sylvie's father, Llewellyn Beresford, was a famous society artist, but not at all bohemian. No nudity or lush behaviour in his household he had painted Queen Alexandra when she was still a princess, said she was very pleasant. They lived in a good house in Mayfair, while Tiffen was stabled in amuse near Hyde Park in darker moments, Sylvie was want to cheer herself up by imagining that she was back there in the sunny past, sitting neatly in her side, saddle on Tiffany's broad, little back trotting along rotten row on a clean spring morning, the blossom bright on the trees. How about some hot tea in a nice bit of buttered toast? Mrs Todd Bridges said. That would be lovely. Bridget, the baby bandaged like a Pharaonic mummy, was finally passed to Sylvie softly. She stroked the peachy cheek and said, Hello, little one! And Dr Fellows turned away so as not to be a witness to such syrupy demonstrations of affection. He would have all Children brought up in a new Sparta if it were up to him.