Chapter 36 – 31st December 1920
Cora had watched her daughter slip toward sleep. Had watched the furrowed brow, now a near constant feature of Sybil's face, be ironed out and disappear. She had always thought it amazing how sleep brought back a child's face in anyone and sat there, on a chair next to her daughter's marital bed, it was as if she in the days of nursing her youngest child out of a childhood illness. Her lips puckered ever so slightly, just as they always had done. One hand was pressed against her chin, just as Sybil had slept as a baby, thumb resting against her cheek. How they had battled, when Sybil was a little girl, to stop her sucking her thumb, her fingers. Only that thumb gave her away as having not quite conquered it, that thumb in the comfort of her bed.
Lillie was bundled in her grandmother's arms; Cora could feel her breath on the skin at her collarbone, the baby's head resting against her chest, cheeks brushing the trim of her nightgown collar. They were both wrapped in Cora's bed jacket and a blanket, in the wooden rocker Tom had bought Sybil when the pregnancy started to show, Sybil had imagined she would sit and nurse the baby in that chair – long nights gazing down at the little being they had made together. She'd not been able to even sit in it since their return to Dublin; it seemed a betrayal of that memory. Cora had slept in that chair every night of the last week, needing to watch over her daughter, to see that she was getting some rest. Sybil's insistent nursing of her husband brought about fitful periods of sleep and nightmares that dragged her into consciousness, sobbing hysterically. If the hospital would let her be there at night she would be, but they turned her away every evening at 6pm. She'd told Cora that she feared the most what would happen overnight, while she was away, warm in her bed. That every evening when she put on her coat and kissed Tom's bandaged brow, she feared she would never see him taking breath again.
He was still very ill, still required a level of morphine that prevented him from being fully lucid. His ribs were beginning to knit together; the swelling in his face beginning to reduce; his bruises were now yellowish green, no longer red and purple. They had established the bleeding from his left ear was due to a burst eardrum, as far as they could tell his head injuries were nothing more than superficial. He was healing from what they could see, but his silence and stillness haunted Sybil.
The bells at the church began to chime; Cora was comforted by the familiar rhythm of it, the constant quarter hourly chiming of the clock that somehow enabled you to keep track of the progression of the day without really being aware of it. The melody repeated itself four times then the hours began to sound. She pressed her lips to the downy hair on top of her granddaughter's head, quietly counting. Twelve. It was midnight.
"Happy New Year my darling girl," the baby shifted slightly against her, a hand coming out of her blankets and pressing against Cora's skin. She leaned forward, taking Sybil's hand in her own, "And to you, my sweetheart, my sweet baby. Happy New Year."
Cora prayed that this year would give her youngest child some time to breathe, some respite from the relentlessness of the last year. That it would bring her husband's health, a chance to rest, to enjoy one another again. To watch their daughter grow; she knew that in a years time they would all feel that they had blinked and missed it – Lillie's babyhood, the change in babies being so quick and somehow simultaneously gradual, happening right under your nose and garnering little attention, until one day it hits you, square in the face and takes your breath away. That the little creature that was once so tiny and new to life, has transformed into a little personality, that chatters and toddles about and gets into everything. Cora leaned back in her chair, settling against her cushion and cocoon of blankets and allowed the memories of her own girls, their singing and dancing, the tantrums and bickering, their laughing and the squeals as the ran through the grounds in the summer, to lead her toward sleep.
Something of a short, 'nothing really happens' chapter, but it's been such a horrendously long time since I updated this (I just checked, 3 and a half months! It's worse than I thought!) I needed to refamiliarise myself with writing everyone, with what was going on, give myself an anchor in a timeline. So this was something of a self-indulgence, but I thought I would share Cora's new year with you anyway. If you read this, you deserve a medal for sticking with me as such an absentee! Thank you so much for reading. Love, LP. x