“Of course, dear. With the caveat that I may not want to answer it.” Mrs. Andrews smiled gently to show she was teasing, and continued to put the yarn in its place.
“Will you tell me about your childbirth experiences?” Casey asked the question in one big rush, afraid to bring the subject up but too concerned to ignore it. Tom had told her that traditionally, no one must be told about a pregnancy for at least three months and then, only those closest to the couple. They had just recently let his parents know, although Casey had told Sam right away, since the rules didn’t apply to him. But now that her mother-in-law knew, Casey was desperate for answers about childbirth in this era.
“I don’t know how most women handle it. Do they use a doctor or a midwife? Do they have the baby at home or a hospital?” She paused to take a breath and then waited as Mrs. Andrews put the yarn down and stared with tight lips at Casey, her expression shocked and unhappy. Casey cringed inwardly. Was this a taboo subject?
After a moment, Mrs. Andrews’ expression softened and she shook her head. “You poor child. You really have missed out on so much by not having sisters, or your mother around. Normally, it would be she who would tell you about this. But Casey, you don’t need to worry about it yet. You have several months before your child comes.”
Casey bit her lip, staring at the yarn on her hands, then shook her head. “But I will worry about it. I need to be prepared. The more I know, the easier I’ll feel.”
An eyebrow went up and contributed to the doubtful look on Mrs. Andrews’ face. “Not all knowledge is helpful. However, I do understand what you mean.” She picked up the yarn again. “Now I had all my children at home, of course, but my youngest is twenty-one years old. Since that time, I believe more doctors have begun to handle deliveries.” She looked uncomfortable, but continued. “I don’t know that I approve of that, but one mustn’t block progress, I suppose. Still, I would never recommend that an upper-class woman use a hospital. Jessie and Nina had their babies at home, although they were attended by a doctor, as that is considered much safer than a midwife.”
She tilted her head and considered her youngest daughter-in-law. “As to my own experiences, I will only tell you, Casey, that childbirth is absolutely the hardest thing you will ever do. It is painful, as the good book tells us, and also humiliating. You just need to remember that this is the lot of women, and most get through it just fine. At the end, you have a precious little baby in your arms. That is worth all of it.”
Casey swallowed, eyes still on the yarn. Then, taking a deep breath, she looked up at Mrs. Andrews and gave her a small smile. “Thank you. I really am looking forward to that part!”
Chapter 27
January—April 1908
“I’d like to see some colorful perennials along this border,” said a soft, whispery voice. Casey, engrossed in the garden design Mrs. Herceforth had presented to the Horticultural Society, looked up to see who had spoken. Lady Talbot was a tiny woman with a candy-sweet disposition. Casey could take her only in small doses, but she knew the woman meant well.
Lady Talbot was moving her finger along the border in question, which Mrs. Herceforth had so far left blank. Casey agreed that color would be nice, but her brows crinkled in puzzlement when the finger stopped moving before reaching the end of the design area. She put her own finger on the spot.
“Don’t you want to continue it?”
Lady Talbot shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid, dear, that this part of the design will have to be discarded.” Seeing that Casey did not understand, although Mrs. Herceforth was nodding in agreement, Lady Talbot offered an explanation. “It’s been declared a Catholic area, dear. Quite recently, you see. We can’t plant there.”
Casey rolled her eyes, unable to hide her annoyance. “Why not? Why is it we have no gardens planned for those areas?”
“Now Mrs. Andrews, you know the reason.” The speaker was Mike Sloan, who to Casey’s extreme displeasure, had joined the society, solely for his own political purposes. Or, she thought with bitter rancor, to torture me. He wasn’t interested in joining before.
“Remind me, Mr. Sloan.” She found it so hard to be polite to him.
He was always willing to repeat his beliefs. “We keep to our own areas. If they want gardens, they can make their own.”
She tightened her lips in an effort to not yell at him. She counted to three, then spoke. “That’s all you do, you know. Prevent us from building gardens. Why did you even join the society? You don’t care about gardens.”
“Aye, that’s true,” he admitted without shame. “Before, I had no problem just reminding the society, once in a while, to do the right thing for the loyal Protestants of Belfast. But since you joined,” he gave her a little bow, as if to a worthy adversary, “I felt it was necessary to step up my efforts. I know how subtle ye can be.”
A few of the others shifted uncomfortably and Mrs. Herceforth broke in. “For now, I suggest we plan the gardens we know we can finish. That will be a difficult enough job.” She patted Casey’s hand. “The rest will come in its own time.”
The others all agreed and quickly brought the discussion back to the plan. Casey watched and didn’t offer any other suggestions.
The Horticultural Society had a large wall map of the Belfast area hanging in the office. Push pins marked areas of planned and actual gardens as Casey stood gazing at the map in early February. A red line demarcated the Catholic areas, which were bereft of pins. She could see places where natural progressions for the landscaping were cut off because they would have gone into those zones. This is ridiculous, she told herself, and I’m going to do something about it.
So a few days later, she and Penny made their way to a bookseller who had maps. She purchased her own map of Belfast and brought it back to Dunallon, setting it up in a corner of the library. When she had time to spare, she worked on her plans, extrapolating from the plans put forth by the Society. Tom and Sam knew she was doing it. Both agreed that in the case of nature and landscaping, it was best to look at Belfast as a whole, rather than a series of disjointed neighborhoods. Tom cautioned her often to keep in mind that she could not just ignore the politics and she promised him she wouldn’t.
For a while, she had other things to worry about, especially her desperate wish that her mother could be with her at this time. Her mother, the former hippie, liberal and practical about all things related to sex. Her mother, the obstetrician, who had talked all the time about how to handle a pregnancy and prepare for childbirth. Casey could hear her lecture, as she railed about patients who thought the only thing they had to do to have a baby was screw somebody. “It’s a marathon. If you were going to run a marathon in nine months, you would start preparing. You would eat right, you would exercise, you would train, and you would find out all you needed to know about your body and what happens to it when running. You wouldn’t just ignore it until you were dropped off at the starting line.”
Theresa Wilson specialized in helping women deliver babies without drugs, in comfortable environments. She volunteered with shelters for the homeless and domestic violence victims. She took cases pro bono and passed out birth control and condoms like they were candy. Casey’s upbringing could not have been further from the uptight and oppressive Edwardian society in which she found herself. A society on the edge—still believing that pregnancy should not be mentioned in mixed company, but willing to let male medical doctors take control of deliveries. Casey had no doubt that the current practices of those doctors would horrify her mother.