Bridget now carefully placed the sleeping baby in the old wicker laundry basket which Mary had delegated as the child’s crib. The lace-bedecked Moses basket which had been made for her own babies was stored away in the attics, and she had looked askance at Bridget when she had suggested fetching it down.
‘She’s a picture,’ Kitty agreed, joining her daughter and stroking one tiny velvet cheek, ‘aren’t you, my precious? It’s a cryin’ shame, my little flower. A cryin’ shame.’
Bridget didn’t need to ask what her mother meant. The mistress had made it abundantly clear from day one that she was far too busy to see to a newborn baby, neither did she want her niece intruding into their family life. The child would do far better being kept in the kitchen in front of the range where it was always warm, and if she survived the next weeks, which of course one never could tell with such a small baby, either Bridget or her mother would attend to her needs.
‘She’ll survive,’ Bridget had said grimly to Kitty when her mother had related the mistress’s instructions. ‘If I have to feed her every hour, day and night, she’ll survive, poor little mite.’
In fact, the ‘poor little mite’ was doing exceedingly well. She fed lustily on the pap bottles she was given every two or three hours, and slept like an angel between times. And she was, without doubt, as bonny as Bridget declared, her milky smooth skin and delicate features doll-like, and her small arms and legs plump and rounded in spite of the fact she was so tiny.
On the second day after her birth, Jeremiah had come into the kitchen to see his niece. He had stood gazing down into the wicker basket which Patrick had placed on two orange boxes to protect it from draughts, and he hadn’t said a word. The baby had been awake and, unusually for her, had begun crying after a moment or two. When Bridget had come forward to pick her up, Jeremiah had left as silently as he had arrived, leaving Bridget and her parents staring at each other.
Bridget had cradled the tiny bundle to her as she’d whispered, ‘What do you make of that?’
It was Patrick who had put into words what they were all thinking. ‘If he had his way, that bairn’d be six foot under alongside her mam.’
After that the three of them made sure Sophy wasn’t left alone for a moment, and Bridget had asked her father to carry the lumpy flock mattress off her narrow iron bed into the kitchen where she had taken to sleeping at night. In truth it was no hardship. The kitchen was lovely and warm compared to the little icebox of a room that was hers, situated next to her parents’ – equally cold – larger room, and she slept well, secure in the knowledge she would hear Sophy when she awoke for a feed.
‘She’s already fillin’ out a bit,’ Kitty said, as the two women stood, arms linked, gazing down at the sleeping baby. ‘All thanks to you, lass. No mother could take more care of their little one than you’re doin’ with her.’
‘I love her,’ Bridget said simply. She had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she was destined to be an old maid. After one brief affair of the heart when she was eighteen years old, seven years ago now, which had ended badly, she hadn’t had another beau. Working all hours as she did, she rarely made use of her half-day off on a Sunday afternoon, which made the chance of meeting someone non-existent. But now the void in her life was filled with Sophy. The tiny baby – she couldn’t weigh more than five pounds – had had her heart from the moment she’d set eyes on her, still covered in blood and slime from her mother’s womb.
‘Aye, well, it’s a good job someone does.’ Kitty patted her daughter’s arm before turning away. ‘I’m off to bed, lass. Your da’s already snorin’ fit to wake the dead, bless him.’