‘Lucky the doctor’s here. Look,’ she said, ‘come into the study and have a drink. The doctor’ll do nothing but put you to bed. And there you’ll lie. I’ve seen a girl come off stage and have a baby half an hour later, no worse off than if she’d been lying in a room all by herself with the nurse drinking tea in the kitchen and popping in every hour on the hour to tell her to bear up, it’d be worse before it was better.’
Elizabeth went into the study where Mac, who had a large whisky in his hand, gave her a gin. Elizabeth looked at it dubiously. ‘Drink it,’ he ordered. ‘Then go up and see your mother.’
‘A drop of gin doesn’t do any harm if a baby’s on the way,’ Lily added. Mac was looking uneasy. ‘You won’t have to do anything,’ she told him. ‘You’ve been a big help, but you can’t do anything else, so don’t think anyone’s going to ask you to.’
‘I can’t thank you enough, Mac,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Ouch!’ She felt alarmed.
‘Down in Carolina the darky women have their babies in the cotton fields,’ Mac said. ‘They have to keep working.’
‘Much the same in the East End,’ Lily commented. ‘I wonder what they were trying to get your mum to sign.’
‘Her will, I guess,’ said Mac.
‘She has almost: nothing,’ said Elizabeth. ‘How could Harriet be so brutal?’
When she went upstairs to visit her mother, Bella was awake. The nurse was beside her bed. ‘Mrs Armitage has drunk some lemonade. She was badly dehydrated.’
‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you were so ill.’ She knew she had been so concerned to hide her pregnancy that she had neglected her mother.
‘You came,’ Bella whispered. ‘This is a lovely room. And a grandchild – how wonderful. It can’t be long now.’
‘Not long at all,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘Imagine – when you’re better you can wheel the baby out for me.’
Bella gave a little smile. ‘Not too long, Mrs McCarthy,’ warned the nurse.
‘I must leave you to sleep,’ Elizabeth said. But she could not prevent herself from adding bitterly, ‘Aunt Harriet didn’t help. Why was she so cruel? What was she getting you to sign?’
‘She wanted me to leave Robert the house,’ Bella told her. ‘I wouldn’t do it. It’s yours. I began to feel weak a long time ago. I went to Mrs Macfarlane and she helped me make a will leaving the house to you. She has the will put away.’ Bella was struggling for breath. ‘It was a secret. Harriet and Robert don’t know.’
Elizabeth laughed. Then she became graver. ‘You own the house, then?’
‘As your father’s widow.’
‘Then why…? Why? Oh, never mind – we’ll talk about it when you’re better. You must go to sleep.’ And I, she thought, must get out of the room before that nurse suspects I’m in labour. She kissed her mother and left the room. She went slowly downstairs, holding the banisters, completely bewildered. If Bella had been the owner of the house at Linden Grove all along, why had she never assumed rights of ownership? All those jibes she’d endured, all that hard work and humiliation – and watching her own daughter also bullied and made miserable? Why had she never protested, for her own sake or Elizabeth’s? It was astonishing, Elizabeth thought, to look back at all those years when her mother had seemed to be a poor widow with a child, living on her brother’s charity. While all the time she’d been the owner of the house they lived in and could have asked her brother and his wife to leave at any time.
Bella had been a pretty, indulged daughter, a youthful bride. By the time she was thirty she had lost both parents and her husband. Trained to obedience and to rely on others, perhaps it wasn’t surprising she thought it wrong to assert herself, and right, when trouble came, to put her fate in the hands of others. As another pain struck her, Elizabeth stopped and clung to the banister. With the pain came a surge of resentment for all the suffering and humiliation Bella’s lack of understanding had brought to both of them. And for the guilt which she had experienced for most of her life about her mother’s sad lot.
None of that mattered now. She’d look after her own child better. And she would have a home. For, surely, after the baby was born, Bella would be prepared to ask her brother and his wife to leave so that they could all live there together. And with dear Mrs Macfarlane across the road as she’d always been.
Gasping with pain, Elizabeth reached the bottom of the stairs. She straightened up, clinging to the newel post. ‘Lily! Lily!’ she called. ‘Guess what’s going to happen next!’
Elizabeth’s child, a girl, was born in the early hours of 21 June. Lily took the baby into Bella’s room later in the morning. ‘Here’s Sylvia,’ she announced in the doorway, holding up the child. ‘You’re a grandmother. And I, believe it or not, I’m the baby’s godmother.’
‘Don’t bring such a young baby into the sickroom,’ Bella’s nurse said angrily. ‘It’s wrong and dangerous.’
But Lily Strugnell took Sylvia over to her grandmother for a kiss. ‘The war’s nearly over,’ she whispered to Bella. ‘And here’s Elizabeth’s baby. And now we’ll all go on and build up something better for her – and for all of us.’ And Bella faintly smiled.
By lunchtime on the same day, Mrs Christina Macfarlane was sitting straight-backed on a bus carrying her in the direction of Regent’s Park., On her lap was a large handbag containing a baby’s woollen coat and a little pair of bootees, providently put away for an occasion such as this. ‘It would seem,’ said her own careful, prudent Scottish voice, ‘that this is what might be termed a happy ending.’ Then she looked about her. Had she spoken aloud? She hoped not.
Lily lay in her drawing room smoking a cigar, while Billy, in his shirtsleeves, played the piano. ‘Here, Bill,’ cried Lily. ‘Do you see me as a godmother?’
He shook his head. ‘No Lily. No. You’ll be the least respectable godmother a baby ever had.’ He paused, his hands above the keyboard. ‘Maybe the kindest, though,’ he added, then went on playing again. He broke into ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and soon they were both singing. Lily’s dog lay on the rug in front of the fire, banging his wagging tail on the floor.
Upstairs with the baby, Elizabeth heard the music and smiled.
A Note on the Author
HILARY BAILEY was born in 1936 and was educated at thirteen schools before attending Newnham College, Cambridge. Married with children, she entered the strange, uneasy world of ’60s science fiction, writing some twenty tales of imagination which were published in Britain, the USA, France and Germany. She has edited the magazine New Worlds and has regularly reviewed modern fiction for the Guardian. Her first novel was published in 1975 and she has since written twelve novels and a short biography. She lives in Ladbroke Grove, London.
Discover books by Hilary Bailey published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HilaryBailey
After the Cabaret
All the Days of My Life
As Time Goes By
A Stranger to Herself
Cassandra
Connections
Elizabeth and Lily
Fifty-First State
Hannie Richards
In Search of Love, Money and Revenge
Mrs Rochester
Polly Put the Kettle On
Mrs Mulvaney
The Cry from Street to Street
Miles and Flora
The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1997 by Warner Books
Copyright © 1997 Hilary Bailey
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation elect
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printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
ISBN: 9781448209224
eISBN: 9781448209231
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Elizabeth and Lily Page 45
