A night call

'Birth', from A.J. Cronin's novel 'The Citadel', is set in the Welsh mining town of Blaenelly. Andrew Manson is a young, newly qualified doctor. Near midnight, Joe Morgan, a driller in the mines, comes to fetch him: his wife Susan is about to have a baby.

Joe and Susan have waited nearly twenty years for this child, their first. Joe is too nervous to come inside; he stays out in the street, pacing up and down, but he trusts the doctor completely.

Inside the small, poorly furnished house, Susan's mother, a tall woman of nearly seventy, and a stout elderly midwife wait with the patient, watching Andrew's face as he moves about the room. He sees that the baby will take hours to come, and promises the old woman that he will not leave.

While he waits by the kitchen fire, Andrew broods. He thinks about the unhappy marriages he knows of, and about Christine, the girl he loves. His doubting mind tells him marriage often brings misery; his full heart longs for her. He is caught between the two.

Susan's mother tells him quietly that Susan does not want any anaesthetic (medicine to dull the pain) if it could harm the baby. Andrew reassures her kindly.