Inheritance

by Jenny Eclair

  Bren drove a large pin into a clean towelling nappy and told him that as soon as he left she would take the baby to the police station.

  He looked instantly uncomfortable. ‘Seems a bit harsh. I mean, she hasn’t done anything wrong, she seems quite happy where she is.’

  That was when the penny dropped and Bren realised that he expected her to keep the child down on the farm. But how could she? The baby wasn’t hers to keep. ‘The situation can’t continue,’ she snapped. ‘This baby needs a name and someone to love her.’

  ‘Annabel,’ said Benedict decisively. ‘Her name is Annabel.’ He had no idea where the name had come from, he’d never even slept with an Annabel; maybe that what one of the reasons why he chose it.

  ‘Lots of people want to adopt babies,’ Bren told him as she put the baby back in the basket alongside an empty savoury pie plate. ‘If you don’t want her, then someone else will.’

  Benedict looked horrified. ‘But what if Serena turns up?’ he asked. ‘I’ve put some feelers out in London, made some calls, but no one’s seen her so far. Mind you, not knowing her surname doesn’t help. As far as I was concerned, she was Sexy Serena from Southend. Can’t you hang on to Annabel for a bit longer, give me a couple of months to see if I can find her? I can pay you – bed, board and nappies.’ And he peeled a wad of notes from a silver money clip in his back pocket.

  Bren agreed to six weeks at twenty pounds a week. Sally’s baby was due soon after that, and the extra money would buy her new grandchild everything he or she needed. After the deal was struck, she quickly made Benedict some custard to go with his apple crumble and walked Baby Annabel back to the farmhouse.

  ‘But, Mum,’ moaned Sally, who had dropped by to complain about the state of her ankles. ‘What if I wanted to call my baby Annabel? Only now I can’t, because that baby got it first.’ And then she burst into noisy tears and only calmed down when Bren told her about the money. ‘My baby will have the best of everything,’ Sally crowed.

  Meanwhile, back at Kittiwake, Benedict fretted about what he was going to do with the baby – not that she was his responsibility. Anyone could see the creature looked nothing like him, and as for the mother . . . Suddenly Benedict wasn’t so sure he wanted Serena to have the child back, not when she clearly didn’t want it. What if she dropped it or trod on it? It would be like handing a car over to a drunk driver. The woman simply wasn’t responsible enough.

  For a moment he stopped and thought about his own mother, Peggy, whom he hadn’t seen since she ran away to America and whom he had come to regard as emotionally deep-frozen. It was as if, the moment Ivor died, her heart had instantly iced over.

  Although he supposed he loved her, as he got older Benedict liked her less and less. And as he contemplated the Serena situation he realised that here was further proof not all mothers were worthy of their children.

  And then it struck him – how deeply unfair it was that Serena had given birth to a baby she didn’t want, when his poor old sister Natasha, who desperately wanted a baby, kept losing them.

  What was the word? A miscarriage. It was that all right: a miscarriage of justice. Serena didn’t deserve the baby, but Natasha did and it was as simple as that.

  Benedict went upstairs and started packing. He would talk to Natasha’s husband Hugo. If he played his cards right, there might be a way of wriggling out of what may or may not be his responsibility, without losing sight of the baby completely. Keep it in the family and all that.

  Benedict began whistling tunelessly. The first thing he was going to do when he got back to London was visit Peter Jones. Annabel needed a pram, one of those modern ones with a box thing you could detach from the wheels and put in the back of the car – a carry cot, that was the article. She couldn’t be carried around in a wicker shopping basket for much longer. Oh, and a teddy, all babies needed a teddy.

  14

  Third Time Unlucky

  Barnes, London, January 1963

  Natasha sat down on the sofa, reached for a magazine and put her feet up on the Moroccan leather pouffe that Hugo hated so much.

  She had been instructed to rest in the afternoons, which seemed ridiculous considering she was only twenty-five. Sitting with her feet up reading Good Housekeeping bought for her on subscription by Hugo’s mother made her feel like a fifty-something matron. Like Hugo’s mother, in fact.

  But she was expecting again, and woe betide her if anything went wrong this time. ‘Third time lucky,’ she muttered under her breath.

  Her husband adored her when she was pregnant, and it wasn’t as if getting pregnant was remotely difficult – it was staying pregnant that was the problem.

  ‘Some women experience what we call spotting,’ the doctor said when it first happened, ‘but quite often it goes away on its own accord.’

  Only it didn’t. The bleeding didn’t stop, it got worse, and no one could explain why. She spent a night in hospital having what they called a D and C, although no one told her what that actually meant.

  ‘Sometimes it’s hereditary,’ her GP explained when she went back for a check-up some weeks later. But that didn’t make sense, her mother had three children in quick succession and no doubt could have had more if she hadn’t chosen to sleep apart from her husband.

  Hugo took her to see a man in Harley Street for a second opinion. ‘Sometimes there’s something wrong with the baby,’ Mr Jeffries the specialist informed them.

  ‘Then it’s a jolly good job you lost it,’ Hugo announced. ‘We don’t want any little retards in the nursery, darling. Mother Nature knows best.’

  ‘And sometimes it’s down to bad luck,’ Jeffries had shrugged sympathetically three months later when it happened for a second time, and then he’d checked his watch, stood up and shaken Hugo’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry old chap.’

  There was a photograph of Mr Jeffries on his desk with his wife and three sons. Natasha had to fight the temptation to pick it up and throw it at the wall.

  Later that night, after a silent supper, a whisky-fuelled Hugo reached into his side of the wardrobe and took out a bamboo stick; some sort of African fly whisk, she remembered thinking, before he raised it above his head and . . . Even though it hurt, the beating felt like a relief. This was her punishment, she had deserved it and now it was over.

  In the morning when Hugo apologised and went to work, she pressed the little grey bruises and the ache of them was somehow comforting. ‘It’s your fault, you silly bitch. It must be,’ she told herself in the mirror before carefully choosing something with long sleeves from her wardrobe.

  He had slapped her once or twice since, but not with the stick, merely with his open hand, for doing silly things: speaking out of turn, contradicting him, giving him horrible liver for his tea.

  But it’d been ages since anything like that had happened. Ever since Mr Jeffries confirmed this pregnancy, Hugo had treated her like a Christmas bauble, a shiny precious thing that must be treated with utter gentleness. He made sure her baths weren’t too hot and that she ate plenty of protein. ‘Chicken, fish, eggs,’ he intoned as he undid her nightdress and cupped her swelling breasts. ‘Good girl,’ he muttered, as he thumbed her nipples and kissed her on the lips.

  He wouldn’t make love to her. They had been advised not to, to be on the safe side, but because a man had needs, he liked her to take him in her mouth. As his wife, it was the least she could do for him. So he made her do it on the kitchen floor, after breakfast and before she did the dishes.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ he coaxed, pushing her down by her shoulders. The lino was hard under her knees, ideally she would have liked some sort of padded mat. Afterwards, while Hugo went whistling off to the office, Natasha had to make a dash for the bathroom. Fellating one’s husband certainly didn’t help with the morning sickness.

  Even with her feet up, Natasha felt hot and uncomfortable. Her stomach tightened and she regretted finishing off some leftover mackerel pâté at lunchtime. Why had she done that? It had sme
lt like cat food, had it gone off? Natasha stroked her belly as if to soothe it.

  Soon she wouldn’t be able to do the buttons up on her skirt. There was a guide to pregnancy fashion in Good Housekeeping; it advised that large Peter Pan collars distracted from an ungainly bump and the most important thing was to keep one’s wardrobe simple and fresh.

  The tummy ache was getting worse, but as long as she took it easy she’d be fine. Mrs Phelan would be here at three to run the Hoover round the house, and in the meantime she could get up and change the water in the vase of hot-house chrysanthemums Hugo brought home the other day; if she added a spoonful of sugar they might last another couple of days.

  Natasha loved fresh flowers. In summer, the garden in Claverley Avenue was bursting with roses. Her mother loved fresh flowers too. Maybe it was time she wrote to Peggy again?

  It was Hugo who had originally suggested she write to her mother. When they first got engaged she told him all about her parents’ divorce and her mother’s second marriage to the Alessandro fellow. He said that ‘it was good to keep some line of communication going’ and even if her mother hadn’t made it to the wedding, there was no reason why she should be permanently excluded from their lives.

  ‘He’s a crafty fox, is your old man,’ Benedict had snorted. ‘He only wants you to keep in touch because he thinks this new husband of hers is loaded. Doesn’t miss a trick, old Hugo. Send the evil witch my love,’ he winked.

  She was beginning to feel positively awful, but rather than think about it, she sat at Hugo’s writing desk in the dining room, filled a fountain pen with ink and wrote a letter to her mother.

  Hello mother, Happy 1963, Natasha here and guess what?

  I have splendid news, Hugo and I are expecting a baby.

  She hadn’t told her mother about any of her previous pregnancies, but she felt more confident about this one, and the act of writing down the words made her feel better. The tummy ache earlier must have been a touch of indigestion.

  Obviously it’s very early days, about three months and I’m not showing yet, but I thought you would like to know, he or she will be your first grandchild.

  The weather here has been pretty dreadful, the papers say its been the coldest winter on record and I’m praying that spring will come soon and I will see my first crocus. I wonder what sort of flowers you have in your garden? For some reason, I imagine cactuses like in a film.

  Hugo is well and very busy and Benedict is back in the country after his skiing trip . . .

  She kept the details deliberately vague. She didn’t want to admit that Benedict was up to his usual tricks and had been spending time at Monty’s Cove. Natasha paused for a second, her fingers curled tightly around the pen. How her brother could bear to open the place up again, she couldn’t imagine. To her, Kittiwake would forever echo to the sound of her mother screaming, the panicked shouts and running footsteps of the butler, the hushed murmurs of the undertaker’s men as they carried the small body out in a bag.

  She had not returned in thirteen years and she couldn’t for the life of her think how Benedict could bear to sleep there.

  There was a throb low in her gut now, reminding her of being thirteen and starting her periods while she was away at boarding school. She hadn’t known what it was: her mother had left without explaining anything – Natasha had been so frightened and ashamed of the bloodstained sheets and soiled underpants.

  Over a decade later Natasha admits that it could have been worse; had it happened at home she’d have died of embarrassment. At least at school Matron came to the rescue with a brown-paper parcel. Inside the package was a cardboard box containing all the paraphernalia of womanhood: the thick towels with loops at either end, the elastic belt and fiddly safety pins. A packet of Anadin lay beside the parcel. Maybe that’s what she could do with now – a couple of Anadin and a nap on the bed? She could finish the letter later. Natasha put the pen down and stood up.

  *

  Mrs Phelan called Hugo at work. She’d found Mrs Berrington when she took the Hoover upstairs. She was in the bathroom and there was a lot of blood. ‘I phoned an ambulance first, Mr Berrington, and once I knew she was in safe hands I phoned you. They’ve taken her to Hammersmith Hospital.’

  Natasha spent three nights in hospital before Hugo brought her home. For a week he couldn’t have been kinder, insisting she stay in bed and paying Mrs Phelan extra to come in every day and keep an eye on her while he went to the office.

  However, precisely ten days after she lost the third baby, he marched her down to the dining room where the half-written letter to her mother still lay on his desk, with the lid of the fountain pen she’d been using abandoned beside the letter, but the pen itself had fallen onto the carpet and leaked a pool of navy ink into the pale gold wool.

  He held her by her hair and called her a careless bitch and then took her back upstairs to teach her a lesson. Afterwards he made her write out ‘I shall never be so selfish and stupid again’ a hundred times on the same Basildon Bond paper she’d been using to write to her mother. When she’d finished, he went out and didn’t come home till three o’clock the next morning, sliding into bed next to her stinking of gin and something else, something sour, and then he’d wept into her hair. They were both sorry and surely that was enough.

  An appointment was made to revisit the specialist, who examined Natasha intimately and once again pronounced her physically capable of carrying a child.

  While she was busy putting her clothes back on behind the screen, the specialist muttered something to Hugo about her fragile mental state, her thinness and the fact that maybe she didn’t want a child. He suggested that Natasha was somehow inducing her own terminations in a subconscious rejection of motherhood. Then he prescribed some antidepressants, instructed Hugo to administer them to his wife, and advised them to be patient – after all, there had been all that business with her brother. Childhood trauma could have quite an impact in adult life, he divulged. Time, patience and a few of those little white pills should make all the difference, he promised.

  It was several weeks before Natasha sat down to write another letter to her mother.

  Dear Peggy, I think I’m old enough to call you Peggy now? Mother sounds rather formal and I was never comfortable with Mom, perhaps if we’d been born and raised in America it would have sounded less peculiar? Who knows, perhaps you’d prefer Margaret? Anyway, I thought I’d keep you up to date with our news.

  I miscarried your grandchild-to-be, he or she disappeared down the lavatory like half a tin of red paint. Sorry about that, it was my unsuccessful third attempt at motherhood and I think for the time being I shall give it a rest. Hugo was terribly disappointed and terribly cross, so much so he gave me quite a beating, it’s something he likes to do. Some men like playing golf, Hugo likes hitting me, but not on my face, you’ll be pleased to hear. If he hit me on the face, I’d look like one of those poor women you see going into pubs with two black eyes, common types married to chaps who ‘give ’er indoors what for’. Hugo isn’t like that, he’s not a brute, he’s a gentleman who feels I need to be punished if I’ve done something foolish or careless, like lose a baby.

  Because that’s how it feels when you lose a child, like you did something silly and it could have been avoided, if only you’d taken more care, if only, if only, if only.

  In other news, there are snowdrops in the garden.

  Natasha put the lid back carefully on the ink pen – she had learnt that lesson – and then she ripped the letter up into tiny pieces, before panicking. What on earth was she going to do now? She gathered up the fragments into her left hand like a fistful of confetti. She couldn’t put them in the wastepaper basket, a crimson-fringed velvet monstrosity of a wedding gift from one of the Norfolk cousins, and she couldn’t eat them. For a moment she wobbled on the brink of tears, but fortunately the pills that Hugo watched her take every morning, normally with a nice boiled egg, were a marvellous antidote to weepiness. Instead she walked
to the kitchen, where she rooted in the bin under the sink for the empty tin of tomato soup that she’d had for her lunch. Natasha had a different tin of soup every day, Mrs Phelan made sure of it, they were all stacked up in her cupboard: tomato, mushroom, chicken and cream of celery, delicious with a splash of Lea and Perrins.

  Humming gently to herself, she carefully deposited all the pieces of paper into the tin, hid it inside a grocery bag and then, without changing out of her house slippers, she ran to the corner of the road and disposed of the bag in a neighbour’s bin.

  When she got back indoors she sat on the hall carpet and couldn’t stop laughing. She laughed and laughed until nothing was funny any more, and then she hauled herself upstairs and lay quite still under the bedcovers, almost as if she were dead.

  15

  Back at the Mews House

  London, March 1963

  Benedict was finally back in London. It always shocked him on returning to Belgravia that he no longer lived in a five-storey white stuccoed Georgian townhouse in Chester Square. How had he ended up living down a back street?

  ‘A mews house,’ the estate agent had insisted. ‘Trust me, they’ll be all the rage. Bijou living is where it’s at, Benedict.’ Benedict had gone to school with Clive Latham and had been happy to accept a lift in Clive’s brand-new Bristol to an address in Cadogan Mews.

  ‘Nice wheels,’ Benedict had muttered enviously, sinking back into the luxurious cream leather upholstery.

  ‘A happy twenty-first from the old man,’ Clive had told Benedict, narrowly running a red light. ‘It was a surprise. For a horrible moment, I thought it was going to be cufflinks, but when I opened the box, I found the car keys. Big relief.’