The Clock Chimed Midnight

Book summary

"The Clock Chimed Midnight" tells the story of Elinor Bonnington, who leaves behind a budding romance in Australia for a new life in Scotland, initially filled with resentment. However, fate takes her on a journey of rediscovery as she finds love and builds a family. Set against the scenic backdrops of Scotland and Australia, this family saga explores themes of love, loss, and the enduring bonds of friendship.

Excerpt from The Clock Chimed Midnight

They were halfway across the Indian Ocean when the bleeding started.

Elinor Bonnington awoke in pain and switched on the night-light on the wall above her head. A dark red stain was extending across her cotton nightdress and the sheet below her was blood-stained. She groaned as she got out of her bunk, glad that her cabin mate had disembarked at Fremantle and she now had the cabin to herself.

Hugging her stomach, Elinor dragged herself into the shower compartment. She pulled her nightdress over her head and stood under the shower, allowing the warm water to soothe her throbbing body. She stared in horror at the chunks of bloodied matter that were coming away from her. Once the bleeding had stopped and the pain eased a little, she put on a clean nightdress. Her hands shook as she tried to rub the marks off the sheet. ‘What’s happening to me?’ The words were wrung out of her; the teenager had never felt so alone or so scared in her life before.

Elinor crept back into her bunk and lay on the other side of the mattress away from the damp patch, with her face almost touching the cabin wall. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks that her parents were occupying a separate cabin on the deck below.

It was only after she’d been on the ship for a couple of days that Elinor had begun to suspect she might be pregnant. Her first bout of morning sickness had been on the day the ship docked in Fremantle, its last port of call before leaving the Australian mainland, and the sickness had continued since then.

She’d been terrified at the prospect of being pregnant and dreaded to think how her parents would respond to hearing that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock. Dad would be the more understanding of the two but Elinor had little doubt that Mum would blow a fuse. She loved both her parents dearly but found Mum a very strict disciplinarian. Lying there in the darkness, in her head she heard Mum’s voice saying, ‘I’m only doing it for your own good, darling.’ This was always the reply when she challenged Mum’s rules.

Yet now that she’d been bleeding, she was distraught at the thought that she might have lost the baby, her only link with Michael. If she had indeed miscarried then Mum and Dad would never know that they’d been denied their first grandchild tonight.

With sleep still evading her, Elinor’s thoughts went back to the day in the middle of September when it must have happened. Michael’s parents had flown up to Queensland and Elinor and Michael had his family home to themselves. With Elinor’s November departure looming ever closer, she and Michael had been unable to resist the temptation. They both thought that she couldn’t become pregnant the first time they had sex; how naïve they’d been.

She remembered clearly her first meeting with Michael Lynch. They were both pupils at Symonds High School in Brighton, one of the early coastal towns to spring up in Melbourne. At the time they met, she was in the middle grade and Michael was in the year above her.

‘Hi gorgeous,’ he’d said, winking at her when they drew level in the school corridor.

‘Hello,’ she’d replied, smiling shyly. She decided he must be well over 6’ tall; even at her 5’7” height she had to look up to him. The silence between them lengthened, with Michael still smiling at her, a blush rising up on Elinor’s cheeks. Then, unable to think of anything else to say, she’d turned away from him and hurried along the corridor to catch up with her group of classmates on their way to the gym hall.

One of her classmates later told her that Michael lived in Seaview Road, round the corner from Elinor’s home in Lansdowne Street. After that, she seemed to keep bumping into him on the way to and from school. When Michael left school to begin a plastering apprenticeship, he and Elinor still met as often as they could and they began serious dating shortly after her seventeenth birthday in June.

Sleep eventually overtook Elinor. She drifted off, still trying to decide how to give her parents the slip tomorrow to let her visit the ship’s doctor. It felt like she’d scarcely closed her eyes when John, the cabin steward, knocked on the door and brought in her morning tea tray.

‘Good morning, Elinor.’ Through half opened eyes she saw his smile, his teeth gleaming white against his dark skin. When she’d first boarded the vessel, John told her that he came from Ghana. He’d addressed her as Miss Bonnington until she asked him to call her Elinor.

Elinor yawned, rubbing her eyes. ‘Morning, John,’ she murmured, as he placed the tray on top of the chest of drawers. By the time she was fully awake he was disappearing out of the cabin door.

‘Are you alright, love? You’ve been looking a bit peaky the last few days,’ Susan Bonnington said an hour later, when Elinor joined her parents for breakfast on D Deck.

‘I’m fine Mum. I read in bed quite late last night and I’m tired this morning.’

Susan said no more but Elinor didn’t think she looked convinced.

On entering the dining room, they were hit by a wall of chatter. Susan put her fingers into her ears and pointed over to a window table in the far corner of the room. Elinor took her seat at the table beside her mother and facing her dad.

‘You really don’t look well, Elinor,’ Susan persisted. ‘I hope you’re not coming down with a virus.’

Aware that she was useless at lying, Elinor was glad the waiter chose that moment to come and take their order. ‘I’ll just have tea and toast this morning,’ she said, moving the small vase of flowers on the middle of the table to one side. ‘I’ve eaten so much since I came on board that I’ll be a fat slob when I get to Scotland,’ she said to her parents by way of explanation.

Andrew Bonnington laughed and looked over the top of his specs at his daughter. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll need some beef on you to offset the winter weather that we’re going into.’

After breakfast Elinor made the excuse to her parents that she wanted to attend Keep Fit on the Games Deck. She knew Mum’s arthritic knee would stop her from doing Keep Fit and Dad was unlikely to leave Mum on her own.

Elinor didn’t have to wait long at the surgery to be seen. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost the baby,’ Dr Harrison said, once he’d finished his internal examination. He looked at Elinor as he was speaking, his eyes moist behind the lenses of his glasses. ‘I’m so sorry, you’ve had what we call a spontaneous abortion.’

Elinor lay on the examination couch and stared at the white painted ceiling, tears sparkling in her dark hazel eyes. ‘Will I be able to have more children?’ she asked Dr Harrison, her voice a frightened whisper.

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ he assured her, laying his hand on her shoulder for a moment. ‘I’ll give you some tablets to take over the next few days to help keep you calm. Your periods might take a few weeks to settle down but they should be regular again soon.’ He went to his desk to write up his notes and the nurse helped Elinor down off the couch to allow her to sort out her clothing.

Before returning to her cabin, Elinor called into the Keep Fit class on the Games Deck. It was good the class was almost finished when she got there as she didn’t think exercise would be best for her right now. But, having dropped in for the last few minutes of the class, it would be easier to answer, without blushing, the questions Mum was bound to ask.