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the nurse, emerging redder in the face than ever from her efforts. ‘Come here, girl, your hands are smaller, ain’t they. Get here, that’s the ticket.’
    Horrified at this request, Clara hung back.
    ‘Come on!’ bawled the woman, and Clara moved. The nurse directed her between Kathleen’s legs. Clara, shuddering, tried not to look but there was a flash of blood, and of faeces on the wet newspapers they had spread out to spare the already worn and dirty mattress when her mother’s waters had broken an age ago.
    Oh Jesus, help me
, thought Clara.
    ‘Do it, Clara. Please do it,’ panted Kathleen, her eyes desperate as they rested on her daughter.
    ‘Put your hand in, see if you can get a hold on the baby,’ said the nurse.
    Horrified, Clara did as she was told. If it helped her mother, she would do anything. Nauseated, repulsed by the stench and the awful degradation her mother was enduring, Clara closed her eyes and put her hand where the nurse directed it.
    Ah, Jesus!
She put her hand into the place, feeling wet slippery heat. Suddenly there was another contraction and her mother gave a long trembling moan – she was too weak to scream. Clara felt her hand being crushed as if in a vice.
    ‘God!’ she shouted in pain.
    ‘Can you feel anything? Can you feel the leg?’ asked the nurse.
    Clara shook her head. She was too horrified, too terrified, to speak; all she wanted to do was run.
    ‘Feel around,’ said the nurse. ‘Hurry.’
    Gagging, half-crying, Clara moved her hand. It touched something. Her fingers groped. It was a leg, she thought.
    ‘A leg,’ sobbed Clara. ‘I can feel a leg, I think.’
    ‘Put both hands in and get the other one too,’ said the nurse.
    Ah God, this was torment, this was awful. Straining away from the smells and revolted by the glutinous feel of her mother’s inner workings, Clara did as she was told. She slipped in her other hand and groped around. Kathleen screamed in pain as she did so, and Clara trembled, certain she was going to throw up at any moment.
    ‘You feel it?’ asked the nurse.
    Clara nodded, biting down hard on her lip.
    ‘Take hold of both legs. Do it quickly now,’ said the nurse.
    Cringing, revolted, Clara did.
    ‘Now – Kathleen – with the next contraction you have to push, push as hard as you can.’
    Kathleen gritted her teeth. ‘Oh God, it’s coming . . . ’ she said, her face screwing up in agony.
    ‘Push!’ shouted the nurse. ‘Girl, pull gently, do it now!’
    One of the legs slipped free of Clara’s grasp. ‘Oh! I’ve lost it . . . ’ She scrabbled around in there.
This was hell, this was a nightmare.
‘No! Here it is!’
    ‘Pull now!’
    Kathleen pushed and screamed out loud.
    ‘Push, Kathleen, push!’
    And Clara felt something give horribly then. There was a squelching sound and something seemed to come free. She pulled for all she was worth, and there at last came the blood-and-mucus-spattered little body, slippery-shiny and ghastly as an alien, then the arms and finally the head. The whole thing came sliding out onto the newspapers, and Kathleen fell back onto the sweat-stained pillows.
    ‘Oh thank God,’ she moaned.
    ‘It’s a girl!’ said the nurse, snatching up a towel and rubbing the baby over. ‘A girl, look.’
    But then the nurse’s face grew still.
    She rubbed harder. Her movements frantic.
    Then she stopped rubbing.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ gasped out Clara.
    The nurse looked at her and shook her head.
    The baby had been too long trapped inside the womb.
    It was dead.

8
    ‘The punters been paying one shilling for a bottle of beer – and it’s watered down, trust me, I’ve tasted it – that’s a knock-down price, but they also have to buy a liqueur, that’s two and sixpence, and I’ve tasted that too.’ Gordon clutched his writing pad and shook his shiny bald dome of a head. He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘It’s watered-down fruit juice.’
    Marcus nodded. They were standing in the silent,