Bruar's Rest

Megan’s feet, small hands arranging the toys in a little circle, giving each a name and asking Megan to play with her.
    Her mother seemed to delight in the child, in fact both parents did. However their visitor intervened. ‘Nuala, my little sweetie, why don’t you sit here beside me and we will tell her how you came into the world?’
    The child needed no prompting, and jumped up into the soft armchair to gaze into Mother Foy’s grey eyes.
    Silence settled around the family as outside the start of a gentle wind could be heard. Rain began to spatter against the windows. Bridget drew shut the curtains, then joined her husband, who sat on the floor beside a roaring log fire, waiting for their friend to share, once more, the story of Nuala’s birth.
    ‘It was around this time me and me old man Frankie, God bless his rest, took ourselves to settle out the winter months down at the gorse field. We had just arrived and were tying Beth to a tree, in fact to the same tree we had her tied to up to this very day. Well, Stephen here comes galloping like the devil was on his tail. Oh, what a state this poor young man was in, hair all windswept and needing a wash and shave if I remember rightly. Me old man helped him in to the wagon. ‘What ails you?’ he asks him like.
    “My wife is fretting and I’m certain she is dying. Oh God, gypsy, do you know anyone who can help her, please!’ He was near on breathless, poor soul, he was. I heard all the commotion and asked what was wrong with his wife. “She has gone pale with labour. Been two days pushing and screaming, but now she has gone silent. I think the baby is dead, and if we don’t find help, then I’ll lose her too.”
    I could see by his fearful-looking brow that there wasn’t a minute to lose. Onto his horse we went, and did not draw a breath until we got up here to the house. When I did see Bridget with that awful greyish colour, I tell you for true I had me doubts if the girl was alive or dead. Frightening it was. But when I stared down at her lifeless frame, her eyes opened and she whispered, “Save my little lamb.”
    Now I tells Stephen to take a good grip of ’imself and follow my instructions to a tee. “Get me a glass of cold water, and when I lift your wife’s head, I want you to drip it down her spine.” I could see the look on his face and knew he was not trusting me. “Do it!” I shouts in ’is ear. Then, when he was fetching water, I spoke little words to the swollen belly. “Please don’t think this child dead,” I reassured Bridget. “All these past nine months, tell me what words did you whisper to your unborn?” I put my ear close, for the mother-to-be had hardly the strength to speak, let alone deliver her child. She whispered one word: “angel”. I put my mouth to the womb and said over and over, “Mummy’s little angel.” Stephen came back, water dripping from a shaking hand. I lifted Bridget’s head and he did as I told him—poured the cold water gently down her spine. At its touch she flinched. This was to keep her awake, she wasn’t far from unconsciousness, and if that happened, both mother and child would have died. The cold water forced her eyes to open and she screamed: “my angel is moving—I can feel the tiniest movement.” I warned that she should lie very still, because I knew through delivering many awkward births that this little madam was exhausted, she needed to be encouraged. In other words, she was going nowhere otherwise. It took Bridget and me some time, but eventually tiny Nuala here came into the world. Bridget couldn’t rise from her bed for a week.’
    ‘And I was a very happy and contented father who did all the caring for our little angel,’ beamed Stephen, relishing the importance of fatherhood.
    ‘I was the best baby in the world, wasn’t I, Mummy?’ added Nuala, whose big blue eyes stared wide with wonder at the story of her birth.
    Mother Foy cuddled the child snuggling into her side in the silk brocade-covered armchair, and whispered, ‘And I became your Godmother.’
    Megan listened with pride. Here were people with enough money to buy the best medicine. Yet when no doctor of experience was available, nature brought a woman into their midst to safely deliver a desperately wanted child. She held no honour or distinction, just the knowledge of how precious life was. She lived in a simple barrel-shaped home, and transported all she owned from place to place. The night they so needed