The Life Cloth

The

Life Cloth

A Novel

Rosemary Harle

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The sources, from which the extracts at the beginning of each chapter are taken, are also fiction.

Smashwords Edition, November 2011

The Life Cloth copyright © September 2011 by Rosemary Harle.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Dedication

For all the strong women I have known in my life – you know who you are.

THE LIFE CLOTH

by

Rosemary Harle

Contents

Start#Start

Chapter 1 – BEGINNINGS#chapter1

Chapter 2 - A STORMY PAST AND UNCERTAIN FUTURES#chapter2

Chapter 3 - PRESENT TENSE#chapter3

Chapter 4 – SNAPSHOT#chapter4

Chapter 5 - MAKING A FUTURE#chapter5

Chapter 6 - UNKNOWN INFLUENCE#chapter6

Chapter 7 - MUDDIED WATER#chapter7

Chapter 8 - DIFFERENT CUSTOMS#chapter8

Chapter 9 - REVEALING TRUTHS#chapter9

Chapter 10 - CAUGHT IN A WEB#chapter10

Chapter 11 - ENIGMA#chapter11

Chapter 12 - COMING TO TERMS#chapter12

Chapter 13 - TOWARDS THE FUTURE#chapter13

Chapter 14 - REWORKED ENDS#chapter14

Chapter 15 – EULOGIZING#chapter15

Chapter 16 - SOME CULTURAL MISUNDERSTANDINGS#chapter16

About the author#author

CHAPTER ONE

BEGINNINGS

(THE UNWORKED CLOTH)

The last task for the pubescent girls before the commencement of the womanhood rites is the weaving of their linen cloth (life cloths). These are strictly taboo (women’s secrets) and are worked on during the obligatory isolation period of the women’s menses. Each meaningful episode in a woman’s life is recorded with embroidered and beaded decorations on her cloth. At a woman’s death her life cloth becomes her shroud. Each complicated decoration can be read by the other women in the tribe and the more elaborately decorated cloths denote richer, fuller and longer lives . . . (Source: Anthropological notes from explorations into the interior 1930 - 1932)

How do you tell a story that is full of complex interactions; of beginnings without endings; of distant and unknowable characters with weird and eccentric ways? How do you untangle the riot of muddled threads that might lead from a start to an end? Where do you find the truth of a history shrouded in the mists of your own non-being and how do you discover the stories that were hidden and never told? Histories become unraveled by chance discoveries. By situations discovered to be not as they seemed. By revelations of things kept hidden by stealth.

Ophelia, huddled on an overcrowded ferry, stranded between its embarkation and debarkation points by the very fury of the weather, does not know that she is about to unravel a family secret - though she has begun to suspect that she is about to change her own personal circumstances. She is mildly irritated that she has been trapped in this place. She has no idea of the fragility of pasts and futures. She knows nothing of how histories have been shaped by journeys across water and that this voyage too will influence her fate. She is a healthy, optimistic woman and sees her own life story as an arrow-straight linear path unwaveringly true. From the first faint memories of consciousness – those quick bytes of memory invoking feelings of pure delight caused by the sight of crystal beads flashing in the sun as she lay warm and secure in her cot or the ecstatic sense of achievement that cascaded through her when she had finally pulled herself up to stand triumphantly at the bars of her playpen – to where she is now, solidly placed in the world. In reality, if Ophelia knew it, her story, her destiny if you will, has been a multifaceted, fragmented interweaving of other stories and paths, which could’ve and almost did, send Ophelia’s life in another direction. Each touching of another life has provided a significant point from which events proceeded in only one of a number of possible directions.

Even the name she bears – Ophelia – is a slipping, sliding nomenclature. She cannot depend upon it. Though Ophelia, as yet, is unaware of its unreliability. And in light of future discoveries it is interesting to note that the name, despite its ethereal and delicate cadence, is firmly associated with a spirit of water. Not, however, the nurturing, life-sustaining spirit of water. But its stifling, suffocating, drowning properties.

It is sinking and drowning that most concern Ophelia now. The ferry – a seemingly solid vessel when she embarked hours ago – has assumed an alarming and erratic gait. The voyage has become unending. Passengers have changed from respectable, upright citizens into crying and vomiting wretches. Ophelia has wedged herself into a spot between a solid bulkhead and a window and waits - alone, isolated - until the trauma is over. She has watched as huge, mountainous waves have broken over her small patch of window blocking out everything except the deep, black nothingness of tonnes of water thrown in fury from the depths of the sea. She has listened whilst loudspeakers have barked out safety directions and explained the phenomenon of unexpected weather patterns. She has swallowed her terror as the ship has dipped, wallowing sluggishly under huge weights of water whilst bulkheads and struts have creaked ominously. And she has thought about the nature of loneliness, isolation and fear.

This journey, or voyaging, is to meet her father. She thinks of this final visit as an opportunity for a meeting. Indeed, there has been no meeting of minds, connection, or filial affection, between them for as far back as she can remember. Maybe at his death they can be reconciled. Maybe in death she will be permitted to get close, to kiss his cheek, to give him a hug and receive the semblance of love and comfort she craved as the abandoned eight year old grieving for the loss of her mother so many years ago. In that bad, dark time she had suddenly lost two loving parents not just one. And she was never able to understand why her father had turned away from her and had grown cold and hard when she needed his love and understanding. She has realized long ago that she will never know the reasons why he could not love her and give them both the strength of mutual support to recover from the loss of the one person they both loved dearly. On the seldom-made duty visits of her adulthood she had tried to draw her father out - rationalizing that now as the adult she should not retain childish hate - but he had remained obstinate and distant. She has felt alone for many years. Now at his death she knows she is truly alone.

And it is on this terrible voyage - a voyage full of reality displacement; of wildly canting surfaces; of slippery sliding objects; of ceilings and floors threatening to exchange places - that Ophelia knows without doubt that her marriage is over. She looks back over the years of her marriage and sees that that reality has been a lie. She is aware that her father has given her something. He has given her the realization that she has always been on her own. That she has been in the world with no-one to count on. And now he has given her a retreat. A refuge in which to wait. A safe place where she can recover from the curious sensation that she needn’t be afraid. She will go home to her father who finally, in his death, has released her.

She gazes unseeingly through the window looking placidly towards the future. Outside the wind screams through and around the ship’s superstructure. Foam whips up from the waves’ surfaces and creates ghostly images. And time, which constantly plays tricks with spatial, historical and temporal images, creates through the black and frightening forces of nature which hold Ophelia in their sway, vignettes of past and future destinies – of other lives dictated by one-in-a-hundred year waves and destinies changed by frivolous yearnings.

CHAPTER TWO

A STORMY PAST AND UNCERTAIN FUTURES

(SPINNING A YARN)

To draw out (wool, cotton, silk, or other material) converting it into one continuous elongated thread, either by hand or with machinery, suitable for use in textiles.

(Source: The Woven Dictionary: A Comprehensive Resource for Weavers.)

To tell a long and complicated story.

(Source: The English Speaker’s Dictionary.)

STORY ONE – A STRONG DURABLE YARN

A Fearful Storm - Journeying to New Holland (Ellen’s Story, 1790)

The first the sleeping convict women knew of the storm was when the boat rolled ferociously and many of them were tipped out of their berths. Unceremoniously dumped onto the floor they immediately set up a cacophony of sound. Above the screams and shouts of the frightened women came the loud sounds of hammering as the hatches were battened down. The roar of waves smashing onto the deck above and the violent crashes of water slapping against the sides of the wooden vessel induced terror into the abruptly woken women and hysteria grew as they realized that they were imprisoned in their dark, cramped quarters. The hysteria increased dramatically as they felt the water that had initially poured through the open hatches sloshing across the floor. Caulking between timbers, though unseen in the darkness, started to seep moisture – imperceptibly in some places but immediately noticeable in others. Those still in their berths, feeling streams of water dripping from above grew more panicked. Women who had been thrown from their beds and then tossed from one side of the partition to the other, attempted to stand only to be thrown down again by the sudden and erratic nature of the boat’s movement. And as if to counterpoint the women’s screamings, wailings and lamentations the sound of the ship itself became apparent. Wood creaked and groaned. Loose fittings rattled. Doors banged. At every extreme point of the ship’s motion – like a pendulum swinging ever further and further - each piece of loose equipment took part in a tedious, repetitious journey backwards and forwards from one side of the ship to the other. Crashing, banging, scraping.

Now as the hurricane becomes more intense the sound of the wind accompanies all other sounds. Even deep within the ship, battened down and cocooned within their own world of fear and discord, the women become aware of the screaming of the wind. Loud and terrible screaming - the shrieks of Banshees, Harpies and Sirens. Female demons. She-devils. The very same magical and terrifying creatures described by ancient storytellers in the deepest depths of night. Frightening enough to strike fear into the blackest of hearts. And to the sailors battling valiantly against the storm, the Banshee screaming is inescapable. Torn from the tortured sky, reverberating through the billowing sails and echoed in the very bowels of the vessel the unearthly sound chills the sailors’ souls.

Amongst the caterwauling Ellen lays dazed in a corner. Tipped so suddenly out of her bed she had no time to save herself. She had been thrown carelessly across the floor and banged violently against the opposite berth. She is caught. Her body trapped between a berth and a wooden sea chest. Struggling to free herself she becomes aware of pain. It colonizes her belly. Where there had been nothing there is now only all suffusing pain. Groaning she moves slowly and, pushing the chest away, manages to crawl back up the sloping floor towards her berth. Around her the wailing continues. Some women have resorted to prayer. Less religious women call out to other more colourful deities. Brave, strident women, shout and bang on the hatches, We are drowning in here, let us out you bastards. Others are crying and sobbing. Some are silent and catatonic. And some are calm and comforting. The babble of sound continues. The roar of the storm grows louder and the ship heaves and wallows. Water crashes over the decks and, as each wave breaks, pours through the gaps between the battened hatches. The women are frightened, cold and wet. Now too, with the uneven motion of the ship, many start to feel sick and ill. The vomiting begins.

Ellen, too, is completely soaked but now she begins to feel a strange quality to the wetness pouring down the inside of her legs. She resolves to get to her berth and to lie still. Around her women are puking. The stench has begun to be unbearable.

Climbing painfully onto the narrow, wooden ledge that serves as bed at night, a refuge place by day, and the storage area for her private possessions, Ellen is at once comforted by the thought that she is in the one place on the ship that is hers alone. Despite the cramped conditions and the women lying or sitting only inches alongside, below and above her, she feels reassuringly safe here. Over the five months of the voyage she has come to know and depend on the women living in close proximity to her and to value their friendship. The tiny space packed with humanity has become home. Now though, as the ship lurches through the seas, the darkness is suffocating and the quarters have become claustrophobic. All around her she can hear the distress of other women. She can smell the pungent smell of vomit mixed with the already brackish smell of the bilges. Lying in terror, gripping the edges of her berth, Ellen tries to swallow the instinctive urge to gag. The pains in her belly have become unbearable. She feels as if red-hot steel bands have been wrapped around her stomach. And she becomes aware of something else. Though her teeth are chattering with cold and fear and her whole body feels frigid, the wet between her legs is warm. The longer she lies, the larger the puddle of warmth is becoming. She surreptitiously pulls at her skirt, bunching it with one hand and using the other to feel between her legs. She is wearing no underwear. She touches the insides of her legs and finds them wet and sticky. She moves her hand higher and rubs her vulva. The wetness is coming from inside her. She brings her hand up to her nose and smells. It smells salty and metallic. She tastes the wetness on her hand. It tastes of iron. She understands suddenly. She is bleeding. The blood is pouring from inside her. In an instant she is panic stricken.

Sal, she screams loudly. Sally, Sally, come here. I need you. Sally where are you? Sally.

Her panic has sent the adrenalin racing through her body and her scream is full throated and powerful. It cuts through the wailings, the murmured Hail Mary’s, the beseeching prayers. Everyone is instantly aware that someone is in real trouble and needs help now.

Quickly women move towards the voice. Ellen, is that you? What’s the matter? What’s happened?

Sally splashes through the gangway feeling her way anxiously along the berths. Ellen, Ellen where are you?

Catching hold of Sally’s hands desperately as she leans over her, Ellen whispers tonelessly, I’m bleeding Sally. Please help me.

What do you mean, Ellen? Where are you bleeding?

From . . ., Ellen pauses briefly. from . . . from my privates, Sal.

From your privates? Sally is relieved. Is the baby coming then?

No, it can’t be. It’s too soon I think. Ellen gasps, as the pain reaches a new level of intensity. She leans over the wooden edge of her berth and vomits into the water sloshing over the floor.

Sally supports her as she recovers and shouts for someone to find Kathleen.

Kathleen is an Irish woman. She is older than Sally and Ellen. She finds herself on this transport ship after being convicted of grand larceny in the Old Bailey. She moved from Ireland to England many years ago to better herself and had done very well indeed until she was caught with stolen goods in her possession and was indicted for theft. As well as being nimble fingered she is experienced in life and is a good and reliable midwife. Several of the babies already born on this long voyage, have been delivered by Kathleen.

Sally is worried about Ellen. She is breathing heavily. As well as suffering from the strong pain in her stomach she is unable to stop vomiting. The ship is still caught within the terrible storm and Ellen seems too weak to protect herself. At every sudden movement she is thrown violently against the partitions of her berth. Sally breathes a sigh of relief when she recognizes Kathleen’s stocky form dimly illuminated by a smoky glow.

So, my girlies, what’s the to do here then? calls Kathleen as she moves quickly towards Ellen and Sally. Kathleen has a small flickering light with her. The light comes from a piece of rag, pushed through a cork floating in a metal cup of fat. Where’d ya get that from Kathleen? asks Sally amazed. Ways and means my girl, ways and means, replies Kathleen. Now out the way my lovely and let the dog see the rabbit.

Talking gently to Ellen, Kathleen hands the primitive light to Sally to hold steady as she examines the frightened girl. She lifts Ellen’s skirts and peers between her legs. She presses firmly onto her stomach and parts the folds of Ellen’s pudendum. She carefully inserts her fingers and then withdrawing her hand examines the wetness there. Well, she talks briskly, ’tis nothing to worry about. ‘Tis not blood Ellen. Tis the fluids that the babby swims in until he’s grown. They leak when the babby is ready. Now don’t you take on so, my lovely. ‘Tis your time Ellen, nothing more."

Taking the light from Sally and moving with practiced authority Kathleen directs the women around her. Sally be a good girl now and get into that bed with her. She’s weak and cannot hold herself up, you’ll need to support her. Mary remove the boards between the berths it will give us more room.

Scrambling quickly and folding her body into as small a position as possible Sally does as she is told.

Kathleen issues other orders. Is there any fresh water? Is there any dry cloths? The collective group stirs and one or two women move off in different directions. The others stay. They feel worried and concerned about Ellen. The immediacy of the situation overrides all the petty bickering that normally takes place amongst the closely confined women. All of them know the dangers of childbirth. They know that there isn’t anything any one of them can do to hurry the process but their presence may give Ellen the strength she needs for the long ordeal. And they are ready not only to lend their emotional strength but also their physical. Many of the women have acted as birth assistants in other small, dark unsanitary surroundings. They have held a labouring woman as she strained to push out the baby. They have rocked with the mother as she attempts to surmount the birth pains. All of them know that it could be them who is in this perilous condition. Even in the best of times childbirth is risky but here in this dark, wet space with no dry clothes, no fire to heat water or to make warming broths then the chances of a successful confinement are low. Every woman knows too, of the desperate measures taken to avoid pregnancy. They whisper to each other the remedies handed down from one generation to another. Douches of cold seawater - or, better still, vinegar, when it can be obtained. Sponges inserted into the vagina. Foreign bodies, beads or marbles pushed high up into the uterus. And, of course, when they are available, bitter tasting concoctions of noxious herbs. These things often work but often they don’t. And the women are living in such close proximity now that they are aware of when the hit and miss contraception has failed. Every month the women bleed together. Every month the ‘tween decks reek with the fetid, musty smell of warm blood. Women clothed in heavy, long skirts – skirts which so easily become soaked with blood – smell of a rich, earthy animal scent. And the rags which they use to staunch the bloody flow smell too and become stiff and hard from the scrubbings in cold salt water. It is easy to see, living one up against the other, who is not bleeding, who does not need to clean her cloths and who has succumbed to the fate of all fertile women, who, while courting the favour of a strong, protective male, does what it is necessary to do in order to survive.

Kathleen busies herself with the process of monitoring the labour. She counts steadily between each spasm of pain that contorts Ellen’s body. Her large motherly body is a reassuring presence and her calm manner and words have stilled Ellen’s anxiety. Ellen still vomits but the retching has become less desperate. The other women are also feeling better, their attention has been drawn by the drama unfolding amongst them and the ship’s motion, too, has become less frenzied and more consistent. The storm is blowing itself out. It will be gone as suddenly as it came.

Though Kathleen exudes calm and confidence she is alarmed at Ellen’s condition. The baby is not due yet. Judging by Ellen’s size, Kathleen calculates that she is only six months gone. Whether she is right or wrong in this calculation makes no difference to Kathleen’s pessimism over this birth. If the pregnancy is six months then the baby will not live and if it is longer then the baby has not been growing properly. In both cases the baby will be too small to survive. She lays her hands on Ellen’s tight belly and attempts to feel the child within. Feeling carefully Kathleen’s spirits sink. The baby is lying preternaturally. In Kathleen’s experience most births follow a natural progression and if all is normal the woman needs only reassurance and support to deliver her baby safely. This baby though is lying in the wrong position – she will have to bring it into the proper direction in order for it to be born.

She speaks quietly and quickly to Sally. Sally, I need you to be strong. I have to move some obstructions for this babby to be born. Hold Ellen close and tight.

Then to Ellen, Ellen I am going to touch you inside. It is to help the babby get born. Now be brave my girl.

Judging the contractions Kathleen places one hand on Ellen’s stomach and the other inside the uterus. Deftly she locates tiny ankles, legs and moving her hand recognizes by feel the shape of the baby’s bottom and the curved delicate backbone. Gently pressing against the solid buttocks Kathleen maintains an upward pressure with two fingertips. Nothing happens for a heart-stoppingly long moment but faintly Kathleen begins to discern a movement. In agonizingly slow time the small form rotates - buttocks rising and head lowering - until the baby is presenting in the natural manner. Kathleen sighs deeply and withdrawing her hand, wipes the sweat off her brow with the back of her arm. Now, if nothing else obstructs its journey, the baby can be delivered.

Groaning loudly Ellen starts to panic. The pain, quite unbearable while Kathleen attempted to manipulate the baby, has become even more insistent. It has moved. It is deep down in her pelvis now, grinding hard against her bottom. She feels the need to strain. She leans back against Sally’s strong support and grips hands with willing women on either side of her.

Now, now Ellen be calm. You are doing well. These pains are the forcing pains - these are the ones which will push your babby out. Now lean hard against Sally and push as hard as you can. Work hard now girlie and t’will soon be over.

Quickly, in a series of long hard pushes the baby is delivered. The child is a perfectly formed baby girl. Delicate features make up the pretty face. The eyes are closed and thick lashes brush the upper cheek. But the rosebud mouth is puckered into an eternal pout. The child is dead. Stillborn. Though perfect, she is tiny. Too tiny to have survived the rigours of her difficult birth. Kathleen is for a moment saddened. Then she gathers herself and thinks of Ellen. She still has need of Kathleen’s skill at this moment. Wrapping the child in a proffered cloth Kathleen hands the baby to one of the waiting women. She concentrates on the next task. The placenta needs to be delivered safely and intact. Kathleen wants none of the dangerous flooding that can ensue when the loin is not fully withdrawn from the womb. She needs to firmly constrict the belly with the applied pressure of one hand whilst gently and carefully loosening the afterbirth from within the womb with the other.

From somewhere dry cloth has been found. Kathleen meticulously wraps Ellen’s belly and thighs loosely in this – air entering the birth canal after delivery is a well-known cause of inflammation and pain. She then straps her breasts. She wishes that they had hot water. The application of hot cloths to the vulva after childbirth makes sure that it is securely closed and secure. And hot tight cloths wound around Ellen’s breasts will stop the milk that she does not now require. Kathleen does everything she can to make Ellen comfortable within the limits of her knowledge and the facilities available to her.

After the trauma of the childbirth, Ellen is wan and faint. Sally has climbed from the bed and the women have covered Ellen with blankets. The storm seems to have receded now and the hatches have been opened. Sally climbs up to the upper decks to try and find some grog and hot water to make Ellen a warming drink. The baby, wrapped snugly in a dry cloth has been lain at the foot of Ellen’s bed. When Ellen is stronger they will tell her about its fate.

Hours later Ellen is sitting up. Though still white and drawn she is alert and aware. Her baby lies next to her. Ellen has bravely borne the news of the infant’s death. She wants to give this baby a fitting burial. She doesn’t want to abandon the child to an ignominious end - to quietly and secretly jettison her, like an unwanted parcel, overboard. She knows that in the greater whole of this large ship her new-born baby is a minute and insignificant part but she wants to mark her coming and her passing with some dignity. She will wait for a day or so, until she feels stronger and then will unashamedly take her baby onto deck and give her the funeral she desires. A funeral fit for a poor, unknown and innocent soul.

While she waits to grow stronger, Ellen sits in her bed, under an open hatch that gives her enough daylight to sew. Hour after hour she sits with her dead baby beside her, and embroiders.

Ellen is used to spending time sewing. Back in London she worked as a shirt maker. She had to spend long tedious hours every day making tiny, perfect stitches in order to complete enough shirts to make a living. And in winter there were not enough daylight hours in which to work so that she could make that living. Sewing white on white in dull murky light as the day draws early to a close is a difficult and eye straining process. Like other girls in her position Ellen had had to resort to plying the streets to make a little more money on which to survive.

But finding other ways to make money has its dangers. And pregnancy is the least of them.

Living a life in which the food you eat and the rent you pay cost more money than you can earn by legitimate and honest work is a perilous business. Ellen has been a wage earner since the age of six. Luckily she was living in Spitalfields – the silk weaving area of London – and on her mother’s death a neighbour took charge of her and taught her to wind silk, a job well suited to a child. She never knew a father. As she got older she learnt other skills and eventually became a journeyman weaver, renting her loom from the master weaver. In good times this would have been a handsome way to make a living but unfortunately for Ellen, the good times passed. Competition from France, the increase in the number of weavers moving into London and the introduction of cotton cloth all contributed to falling wages. Soon Ellen was unable to afford to hire her loom. Her only option was to join the cotton trade and sew workman’s shirts – she got so little for each shirt that in the best of times she could only earn nine or ten shillings a week At the worst of times she made little more than half that. And so like so many other desperate women she used the only other asset she had to keep starvation at bay.

Modern medical theory opines that starving, emaciated women are not fertile. Look at any television documentary of third world famines and wonder at that. Ellen, too would wonder at that, because she was fertile. As she was unlucky in childhood and unlucky with her profession, she was unlucky again. She got pregnant. By whom she did not know. And her luck did not change. Not for her a blooming pregnancy. Not for her the glowing health and feeling of optimism. From the moment that she first suspected that she might be plugged she was sick. Totally and horribly sick. Her life became a continuous cycle of vomiting. She was unable to eat, unable to drink, unable to think and unable to work. Lying in her small rented room, trying to swallow minute droplets of water, Ellen was ill. Daily she grew weaker, weekly she grew thinner and as time went on she grew poorer. Finally, prised from her room by the anxiety that she would be evicted if she could not pay her rent, Ellen tottered to a street corner late on a dark winter’s night to try and earn a guinea that would keep her going. She was glad of the dark. She did not think that she would attract anyone who could see her clearly. She wrapped her cloak around her and sank gratefully against the wall of a building. She did not have the strength to hold herself up. Though it was late the alehouses were open and one or two small potboys were scurrying through the streets taking jugs of ale to private houses. The small theatres were emptying and Ellen drew back into the shadows not wanting to approach anyone while there were groups of men about. Finally, as the street quietened down again, she noticed a lurching form stumbling along the edge of the road. He was clearly drunk but well dressed and affluent looking. As he came alongside her, Ellen emerged from the shadows and murmured Good evening. The man stopped and looked at her in surprise, And who are you, my lovely? he slurred.

Ellen looked at the man and thanked her good fortune that he was so drunk. She could do the business and be gone in a