Note: This begins around the end of 6x02.
Chapter II
They waved goodbye to Patsy, and as the car drove off and rounded the corner, disappearing from sight, Shelagh turned to her husband.
"I think I'll go home early, Patrick," she said, "if you can manage without me at the surgery." He looked concerned.
"Of course I can manage! Are you all right?"
She smiled indulgently. "I'm perfectly all right, just a bit queasy. And I'd like to spend some time with Angela this afternoon if I can. I always worry that she and Timothy don't see enough of us as it is."
Patrick nodded in agreement. "I would drive you, but I walked to the clinic after my rounds. The car is still parked at home."
"Oh, I could use a walk, Patrick. It'll do me good." He ran a hand over her shoulder blades.
"If you're sure."
She laughed. "I'm certain! It's just an hour or so early, anyway. I'll make Timothy help with dinner."
He squeezed her hand. "Leave all the dishes for him to do afterwards."
She nodded with mock seriousness. "Oh, of course."
They leaned together for a kiss, and then Shelagh set off for home. Patrick watched her walk away. The sun lit up her hair for an instant and as she turned left at the end of the street, it shone auburn. He let his hands rest in his pockets as he walked back to the surgery, not far off.
"All right, Doctor Turner?" A young boy called, waving. Patrick waved back and narrowly avoided tripping over a badly-aimed football.
"David?" There were so many children in Poplar, but Patrick thought he recognized this one. "How's your arm?"
David raised his left arm. The splint was still intact, but the bandages had gathered dirt no doubt from playing outside after school. "It don't hurt no more, doc. You said I'd be gettin' this off next week."
Patrick smiled. "Yes, next week. But be careful!" He kicked the stray ball back towards the group of children and continued on his way. It was a beautiful afternoon.
Children were coming home from school now, and many of them greeted her by name as she walked up the street. Shelagh smiled back at them, marveling at how the world was growing up around her. When she was a child, she had believed that adults never aged. Of course, they had birthdays, there was often just a simple cake. A small gift and perhaps a hand-drawn card from a child. But the only birthdays she had celebrated had been for other children. The adults never looked any older to her. Clara Grefe, who owned the sweet shop Shelagh had gone to once or twice a month as a girl, Clara and her dark brown hair. Mr. Regis, the farmer who lived next to them, Mr. Regis and his tobacco-stained fingers and sunken cheeks. Her father had been the only one to age, really. And it was only by leaving home that she had noticed.
1942
Shelagh walked to the end of their small road, to the edge of the fence with its crude gate, the road didn't have a name. The ground was damp. The air smelled like hay and sheep. She thought about not turning around, not looking back, thinking it might be for the best. Wind licked at her cheek and, for a moment, she closed her eyes, waiting for it.
Shelagh! the voice would call, and her heart would fill her ears at the sound of her own name, of that voice.
She opened her eyes and turned back to look at the house. Nothing had changed. Her absence didn't alter the sight in any way. The corners of her eyes stung and her mouth felt full of copper coins.
Then she saw him. Her father's face through the window, staring back at her. Perhaps he had waited for this particular moment, when he thought she would be too far away to see him clearly, or too far away to think of walking back. But she saw him. And there was no joy behind those eyes, only pain. For the first time she noticed the lines in his face, how they seemed to form the expression not of age but of grief. And then, for an instant, he smiled. The lines shifted to form it. He nodded at her, but made no move to go to the door, to open it, to call her back.
Goodbye, she'd said, but her words were lost in the cold air. She didn't repeat them.
When Shelagh opened the door and walked inside Mrs. Penny was just setting her bag down and unbuttoning Angela's jacket. "Ah, Mrs. Turner! You're home early! We was just coming back from the shops." The older woman pulled a jar of currant jam from her bag. "This one accidentally broke the other jar when we were cleaning up tea earlier today," she looked at Angela, but there was no anger behind her words.
Shelagh gasped. "Oh, Mrs. Penny, I'm sorry! If you'll just leave the receipt I'll be sure to have the money back for you tomorrow."
"Mama! Up!" Angela said, walking over and pulling on the hem of her mother's coat. Suddenly Shelagh felt ill and searched her pockets for a handkerchief. Brushing Angela aside, she headed for the bathroom.
"Excuse me a moment, Mrs. Penny!" She shut the door behind her and barely made it to the toilet before vomiting up bile. One hand clutched at her abdomen, where a dull ache had begun earlier from continually bringing up food. The more she ate the better she felt, but the eating was often followed by horrible periods of nausea or full-on trips to the bathroom where she brought up her breakfast or lunch. She heaved again once, twice, and then it was over. She flushed the toilet. Standing up from the tiled floor, Shelagh leaned heavily on the edge of the sink to wash her hands and rinse her mouth, then dried the corners of her eyes. A deep breath later she walked out of the bathroom, hearing Mrs. Penny speaking with Angela in the sitting room.
"Are you well, Mrs. Turner?" she asked, concern in her eyes.
Shelagh nodded. "Oh, just a little upset stomach is all. You're free to go home early tonight, Mrs. Penny, if you'd like." She smiled at Angela, who walked over to her again. "I can manage Angela."
The older woman looked at her with a knowing look. "All right, then. You look awfully pale, though, love. Settle down and have a biscuit, it'll pass." Before Shelagh could react, Mrs. Penny waved to Angela. "I'll see you tomorrow morning, Miss Angela!"
Shelagh watched her gather her things together. "Have you got the receipt, Mrs. Penny? For the jam?"
"On the counter under the jar, just out of Angela's reach, Mrs. Turner."
They said their goodbyes, and then Shelagh turned her attention to her daughter, who was tugging on her skirt now. "Yes, Angela, come here, darling." She leaned down to pick her up, then moved the little girl to her hip, kissing her round cheek. Angela clapped and kissed her mother. "Oh, you're really getting heavy then, aren't you?" Shelagh asked, bouncing Angela a bit. The girl laughed.
"I'm big!" Angela exclaimed, clapping again.
Shelagh laughed a full laugh. "Come with me, I've got to get out of this uniform before I explode, then we'll see what trouble we can get into before Timothy comes home!"
In the bedroom, Shelagh put Angela down to walk around while she changed from her nurse's uniform to a simple dress. She peeped back into the bathroom for a moment, studying her own face. Trying to find where age would show.
"Mummy? Up!" Angela said, following her into the bathroom. Shelagh picked her up again, a slight stitch in her abdomen made her slow her movements. Then she shrugged, kissed Angela again, and set off for the sitting room. "Should we draw a nice picture to put in your room?"
"A nice picture," Angela repeated with a hint of her mother's accent. She was learning to string words together into full sentences, and when she spent time alone with Shelagh her little voice seemed to become confused, sometimes gushing out sentences with ease like Timothy, others in a strange mixture of accents with no apparent word order. For the past few months it seemed as if Angela had yet to acquire any grammatical structures other than the command form. Her favourite commands included: "more", "up", "down", "cuddle", and "stop". And although she was far from abandoning her short but comprehensible commands, she had recently discovered the magic of the word "why". It wasn't clear to them if she understood the word, or just used it as a follow up to every sentence Shelagh, Patrick, or Timothy spoke. "It looks like a nice day," uttered by Timothy in passing that morning had immediately been followed by a calm, "Why?" from Angela, sitting innocently at the breakfast table with Shelagh.
He had turned his head back from the window to look at his little sister. "Well, the sun's out."
Angela took a spoonful of food, swallowed, then stared at him again. "Why?"
"Because it's the morning!" Shelagh had said brightly. "That's when the sun comes out!" With the next spoonful of food offered, Angela had held out her small hand and shook it.
"No more."
It was Friday evening, and Timothy was thinking about language. Today they had been given ten new Latin roots to memorize over the weekend. But he was thinking.
He'd read somewhere that the first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about the language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we said now that couldn't be said in an endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that had since been lost completely.
He knew that deaf people used their hands and faces to communicate, but he had met only two deaf people in his life. One, an old man, had lost his hearing with age. He knew what it was to hear the glorious cry of a train arriving at the station, how voices changed inside rooms with high ceilings, the sound of his own name, a violin. The other person that he knew had been only a child, younger than him but not by much. He had lost his hearing as a baby following an infection. The boy communicated with his sister using their hands, but the boy had been sent away somewhere. Somewhere where it would be "easier" for him. He would never hear his own name, never know music.
Timothy wondered if at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you felt distant, your hands sometimes hung awkwardly at the ends of your arms because they remembered a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. It wasn't that the language of gestures was completely forgotten. The habit of moving our hands while we speak must be left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: they were all artifacts of ancient gestures.
Although it was not yet cold, the sky had darkened and he was later getting home than usual. The light was on in the sitting room, the car parked in front, and it was after seven-thirty, so it was likely that his mother would be worrying about him, and that his father had finished his rounds. After school Timothy had studied in the library, then played chess at John's. He tended to dawdle when he got to thinking.
"Dr. Turner, could you take a look at Mrs. Cooke?" Nurse Crane asked, popping her head into his office at the surgery. "We might have to admit her to the Maternity Home, Doctor," she said as he stood and adjusted his jacket. "Delivery is any day now and baby seems to be laying in the breech position."
He followed her down the hall. "And Mrs. Frayser is delivering now, so that would leave one empty bed if we needed one. Let's see if you're right, Nurse Crane."
Phyllis looked at him for a moment, an eyebrow raised.
He stopped before entering the room, catching her silent annoyance. "I'm sure you're right, Nurse Crane. Let's confirm."
"As you were," she said, and they went inside.
"I know I'm late," Timothy began as he walked in the door. He hurried in taking off his jacket. "I played chess with John again." He heard Angela crying and went into the sitting room.
"Angela?" he said, and went to pick her up from her cot, where she was standing and holding her arms out to be held. "Hey, what's wrong?" Her cheeks were ruddy with tears and, although she calmed in his arms, she continued to whimper. "Hello?" he called, wandering around the sitting room and kitchen.
"Mrs. Penny?" His mother's apron was missing from its hook on the kitchen wall. "Mum?" he called instead, walking down the hallway, shushing Angela and rocking her slightly on his hip. The bathroom door was ajar, and light was shining out from inside. "Mum? Are you in there?" He asked. When he received no answer, he pushed lightly on the door. It opened, then caught on something. He walked inside and looked down.
"Mum?!" He put Angela down ungracefully and she fell, beginning to cry again. Timothy dropped to his knees, brushing the hair out of his mother's eyes. "Mum?!" he was shouting now, and he turned her body slightly, shaking her even though he knew he probably shouldn't. Her eyes opened and she gasped a little, as if awakening from a bad dream.
"What happened?" he cried, clutching her shoulders. He quickly scanned her over as he'd seen his father do almost unconsciously over each patient. She wore a dark blue dress with her yellow apron tied over it. He saw the blood blossoming across it at the same time that she said, "Call."
With Angela still crying in confusion, Timothy put Shelagh down and ran for the phone. He dialed his father's Surgery. The line rang and rang, and he heard a moan from down the hallway. He hung up, then dialed Nonnatus House. The line rang and rang.
"Timothy?"
He slammed the phone down again and ran back to the bathroom, crouching beside his mother. She had turned and sat up, but her left hand clutched at her abdomen. "It's all right, I'm-" Timothy shook his head and stood up.
"You're not all right. No one's answering at the Surgery or at Nonnatus."
Shelagh grimaced. Her face was so pale.
Later Timothy would struggle to recall most of what happened that night. He would think of a broken vase, swept up with all but the tiniest pieces missing, memories like shards of glass. He squeezed Shelagh's shoulder and ran back to the front hall, digging deep into the pockets of his father's coat. When he had the key he rushed back to his mother and sister. Angela's face was tearstained. She toddled away from her mother, bereft, and held her arms up to Timothy.
"Up!"
Author's Note: Thanks for the feedback on the first chapter! I'm still struggling to work up to the parts I wrote first, so these first few chapters seem patchy to me, but it'll get more cohesive later. This fic is dark but I promise will have a happy ending. Let me know what you think of this.
While writing this I listened to: "Always Summer" by Adrian Johnston, "The Escape" by Max Richter, and "Arrival of the Birds" from The Cinematic Orchestra.