Past Perfect

by Danielle Steel

  They had a wonderful week in Aspen, and skied together a lot of the time. Andy was full of stories about school in Scotland, and he picked up lots of girls on the slopes and went out at night. And he and Caroline talked about colleges a lot. She had applied to ten of them, and wanted to stay in the west if she could. Stanford was her first choice, and then UCLA. She wasn’t ready to go as far afield as her brother, although he loved Edinburgh.

  —

  Their faces were tanned with goggle marks from skiing and they were happy and rested when they got back to San Francisco at noon on New Year’s Eve.

  When they came downstairs that night, Sybil was wearing her new silver evening gown, and Blake said she looked spectacular. Gwyneth was in black lace with jet beads all over it and looked like a John Singer Sargent painting with her upswept hair and a long string of diamonds around her neck and at her ears. Augusta had worn black velvet and was very dignified. And Blake had surprised Sybil and bought a set of tails. He had decided he could use them for dinner at the house, and wore them for the first time that night.

  “Finally!” Augusta said with approval when she saw him. “It took you long enough,” she teased him, and then she told him how handsome he was, and Sybil agreed. Augusta liked Blake. He was always respectful and attentive to her.

  They played charades after dinner, and then adjourned to the ballroom to dance. They used the music system the Gregorys had installed, and Blake swept Sybil away for the first dance, as the children watched and giggled. Bettina felt like a whale in a black velvet gown she could barely get into. She had outgrown everything she owned, but she looked pretty and young, and very maternal, with her enormous round belly under the dress. Gwyneth and Bert danced, and then stepped out onto the terrace in the moonlight, and they were both thinking of their son. They walked back into the ballroom to join the others, and as they did, Josiah came through the ballroom doorway in his uniform, waving at everyone. He was back! Everyone gave a cheer to greet him. It was cause for celebration, and Blake and Sybil smiled at each other, happy for their friends.

  “There is something so perfect about their world,” Blake said as he danced with her again. “It all comes full circle in the end. You don’t have to wait to find out what happens and how it all turns out. We already know. Maybe the secret is that we can’t influence their world, in the past, but they can still influence ours, by what we learn from them. Maybe that’s right and the way it should be.”

  They all kissed each other at midnight, and embraced Josiah, who looked more handsome than ever in his uniform. Everyone was thrilled to have him home. It had taken him four months to get back to them. Sybil wondered if Bettina’s husband would join them too. But this wasn’t his home, and he knew he hadn’t been welcome here. There was no mention of ghosts in Bettina’s book, and almost no mention of Tony, although he was her daughter’s father. But since her second husband had adopted her, Tony had faded rapidly from her life. And she wasn’t alone for very long, before Louis de Lambertin appeared.

  Josiah danced with all of them, his sister Bettina too, in spite of her enormous shape, but she only danced to celebrate his return for a few minutes before she sat down. And then he danced with Lucy, and Caroline, who looked lovely in a midnight blue satin dress and high heels, with her blond hair piled on top of her head.

  “They’ll have to marry her off soon,” Augusta said to Gwyneth, watching her. “She’s growing up fast.” She had just turned seventeen, and Augusta thought the time was right, and said as much to Gwyneth, who laughed. She knew that Sybil wouldn’t have agreed. Their ideas about when girls should marry were very different from what Gwyneth and her mother were used to.

  Everyone was exhausted when they left the ballroom at three A.M. A new year had begun. Bert had toasted 1918 at midnight, and he hoped it would be an exceptional year for all of them. It had been the perfect way to see in the new year, and Josiah was home again. What more could they ask?

  Chapter 10

  They all looked a little rough around the edges on New Year’s Day. A great deal of champagne had been poured the night before, especially since Josiah was home. They had all felt very festive. And they were quiet at dinner that night, still recovering. Everyone wanted to talk to Josiah, and tell him what they were doing. They were careful not to ask him any questions about the war. But Sybil noticed that he seemed more mature than when he left. His portrait was complete by then, hanging in the front hall, and was a perfect likeness.

  Bettina said very little, and she excused herself at the end of dinner and said she didn’t feel well. Gwyneth went upstairs to check on her, and nodded at Sybil before she left the dining room, and whispered to her that it had started. They had just called the midwife. She was coming right over, and was bringing the nurse with her.

  “You don’t think she should go to the hospital, or have a doctor come here?” Sybil asked, worried.

  “Why?” Gwyneth smiled at her. “She’s not ill, and there have been no complications.”

  “Will they give her anything for the pain?” Sybil asked, dreading the experience for her without it.

  “Some laudanum drops, if she needs them, but she probably won’t. I never did,” Gwyneth said bravely. But the baby wasn’t as small as it had been a few weeks earlier. It had grown exponentially, and her belly looked twice the size it had a month before. It was no longer such a small baby.

  Gwyneth glanced at Sybil with a warm look in her eyes. “Do you want to come?”

  “Would Bettina want that?” Sybil hesitated. She didn’t want to intrude—she wasn’t a relative, after all.

  “She’d be grateful to have you with us,” Gwyneth said sensibly. “You’ve had babies too. It will help her get through it.” Sybil nodded then, and told Blake what she was doing. And then the group disbanded and Blake left with their children. Sybil followed Gwyneth up the grand staircase to the floor above theirs, and found herself in an enormous bedroom she didn’t remember seeing before, and then she realized it had been Bettina’s bedroom in the past, and still was.

  Phillips let the midwife in half an hour later, and escorted her to Bettina’s room. Bettina was in bed, in a freshly pressed nightgown, when the midwife came in, the nurse was folding sheets and towels, and getting things ready for the birth.

  Bettina was glad to see Sybil with her mother, and smiled at her. There were beads of sweat on her brow, and a moment later she was panting and couldn’t talk. Everyone in the room was calm. Gwyneth sat down on a chair, and a little while later the midwife and the nurse checked the baby’s progress. Bettina gritted her teeth in stoic silence, as Sybil winced for her. She could see how much pain she was in, and couldn’t imagine how she would get through it without the benefit of modern medications, but no one in the room looked concerned. The midwife listened to the baby’s heartbeat regularly with a stethoscope she kept around her neck, and a little while later, they pulled back the covers, slipped sheets under her that they had brought with them, and covered her with another sheet after they took off her nightgown. They were getting ready, and Bettina looked dogged as she beckoned to her mother and Sybil. They each stood on a side of the bed and held her hands, and her mother smoothed back her hair and wiped her brow with a cloth dipped in lavender water.

  “Mama, this is awful,” she said in a raw voice and clenched her jaw so she wouldn’t scream. Sybil had never seen anything so brave in her life, and couldn’t bear the thought that it could have all been so different, but this was what they expected and how they did it at the time. All of Gwyneth’s babies had been born at home, in the bedroom Sybil and Blake now slept in. She had no idea where Bert and Gwyneth’s room was now, or if they had one. She had never asked.

  “It won’t be long,” the midwife said after she looked between Bettina’s legs, then pulled them back and she and the nurse each held one and told her to push.

  “I can’t,” Bettina said. “It hurts too much.” And then she couldn’t keep the baby from coming and she had to push
it out, as all four women encouraged her while Sybil and her mother held her hands. She worked hard for half an hour, and finally the baby tore through her, and nothing could stop it or slow it down. With one long shattering cry, the baby she hadn’t wanted and that had made her so ill lay on the bed between her legs and gave a soft wail, and looked up at all of them, as Sybil felt tears roll down her cheeks. She had never seen a woman as courageous as Bettina.

  It was a girl. The midwife picked the baby up and cleaned her, cut the cord, and handed her to the nurse. She did some repair work on Bettina, and gave her some drops to make her sleep, and then they cleaned her up and put her daughter in her arms. Bettina was already a little groggy but no longer in pain. The infant stared at her mother. The room was quiet and peaceful. It was so different from what Sybil remembered from when her own children were born. There had been frenzied activity, people and noise, and incredible joy. The baby made small snuffling sounds, and Bettina had been silent for most of it. She leaned down and kissed the top of the baby’s head as she held her. And then the midwife put her to Bettina’s breast, and covered them both with a light blanket. They made it all seem so simple and natural. Gwyneth was smiling down at her first grandchild, and kissed her daughter and told her what a good job she’d done. A few minutes later, Bettina drifted off to sleep from the drops. And as she watched her, Sybil was sorry that Bettina’s husband wasn’t there, and that there hadn’t been great love or joy in the room. She deserved so much more. But there was a sense of peace, as the baby drifted off to sleep too.

  “What are you going to call her?” the midwife asked Bettina when her eyes fluttered open again.

  “Lili. Lili Butterfield,” she said clearly, and drifted off again. She had decided not to give the baby her father’s name, since his family didn’t want either of them, and Bettina realized now how little she had known him. She preferred to give her child her own name, and Gwyneth nodded her approval. Sybil realized how alone Bettina had been at that moment, when the baby was born, even with four women in the room to help her. The baby’s father should have been somewhere in the house, pacing and waiting for news. But Bettina looked content as she fell into a deep sleep. A little while later, Gwyneth disappeared to her own room to tell Bert, and Sybil went downstairs to the room where Bettina had been born, and found Blake was sound asleep. Sybil got into her nightgown and slipped into bed beside him, and was surprised to see the sun coming up. The night had gone quickly, as they watched Lili come into the world, the baby still felt like a miracle to Sybil, even without a father to love her. Life would somehow provide what she needed. Lili’s journey had begun.

  Chapter 11

  There was champagne at the dinner table the night after Lili was born. They had each been to see her that afternoon, except Angus, who said he preferred to wait to meet her until she was old enough to drink champagne with him. After a careful inspection of every inch of her, including her fingers and toes, Augusta pronounced her “very pretty” and added “surprisingly,” given who her father was. She said she was relieved to see that she didn’t look Italian. The baby was very fair like her mother. Gwyneth could see that the baby was going to be a towhead like both of her own daughters. And Gwyneth liked to say that Sybil looked related to them, and Caroline was just as fair. Bert finally relented when he saw his oldest daughter holding his first grandchild. Bettina suddenly seemed older and more mature as she held her daughter. She kept staring down at the tiny, perfectly formed features, as though wondering who she was and wanting to get to know her. She was responsible for another person now, and it had subtly changed her, even overnight. She thought about what it would have been like if Tony were alive, if he would have been happy, or disappointed it wasn’t a boy. Bettina was happy the baby was a girl, it would be easier for her.

  When Sybil came to visit her, Bettina wanted to get up and walk around the room. She felt stiff in the bed after the rigors of the night before, but the nurse wouldn’t let her get up, much to Sybil’s surprise. They all insisted that mother and infant stay in bed and keep warm. There was a roaring fire in the grate, and Bettina looked restless. She was healthy and young, and felt better than she had for all nine months of her pregnancy, which had been miserable. The one thing she knew was that she never wanted to go through it again. Even the agony of childbirth had been worth it to get the baby out of her, and be free of her at last. It had been a time of unhappiness and deep grief for her, with her family’s stern disapproval and Tony’s death.

  The next day, Bettina wrote a letter to Tony’s family, telling them that the baby had been born, and that it was a girl, and asking if they would like to see her. It was a respect she felt she owed the man she had married, however briefly the marriage had lasted and how slightly they knew each other. She had been carried along on the wave of girlish emotions and romantic illusions, and she saw now that there was no reality to them. She had married a man she barely knew, and borne a child after one night with him. He felt like a stranger to her now, in spite of Lili, although she was sad that he had died. She wondered if they would have loved each other, after they knew each other, had he lived, or if their families would have prevailed and pulled them apart. Fate had done it for them, and now she had his child.

  She felt no bond to the baby yet, and had confessed it to her mother, who said she would in time. She said that the pain of childbirth often made for a slow start, but Bettina’s memory of it wasn’t that it had been terrible. It had been worse than she’d expected, but she already felt better, and what shocked her was that she and Lili were bound to each other for life. It was an awesome responsibility, for a stranger’s child. She wondered who Lili would be when she grew up, who she would look like, what sort of person she would become. Augusta had said that she looked like a Butterfield, and Bertrand agreed.

  Bettina had Phillips drop her letter off at the Salvatores’ restaurant. She had written it to his father, Enrico, as the head of the family, essentially asking if they wished to see the child, since she was their son’s daughter. His response came by mail several days later and was harsh. His granddaughter’s arrival didn’t change his feelings toward her, Bettina, or the Butterfields, and he said he wanted nothing to do with any of them. He was still furious over Bert calling Tony and his family unsuitable, and the elder Salvatore would never forgive them for it. And even the baby didn’t alter his decision.

  He told Bettina in his response that his son hadn’t been good enough for them when he was alive, and now she and her daughter weren’t good enough for them. He told her there would be no money, which she hadn’t asked for, and not to contact them again. He said that he had four grandsons and no interest in a granddaughter. Bert’s rejection had cut deep and now Tony’s father was retaliating in kind with angry words. It made Bettina glad that she had decided not to give the baby their name. She owed them nothing more. He had rejected her and Lili in every possible way, beyond any doubt. It gave Lili a lonely start in life, with no link to her father, but in the end it was easier that way. Bettina could leave any sense of obligation to them and the past behind. The letter was ugly, but also a relief. She had written to them out of a sense of duty, wanting to do the right thing. The Salvatores had been expunged from her life now, and her daughter’s. Bert was relieved too when she showed him the letter, which only confirmed to him how vulgar they were.

  “It’s better this way,” Bettina said to Sybil when she told her about the letter from Tony’s father. “I don’t want to see them again either. I only wrote to him to be fair to Tony. I thought he would want me to do that. Lili doesn’t need them. She has us. And they’re not nice people.” He had been almost as clear about it when she went to see them and told them she was pregnant. They had made it obvious that they didn’t care. And Enrico had spoken for Tony’s mother too. She had never reached out to Bettina after Tony’s death, almost as though they blamed her for stealing him from them, instead of destiny.

  Sybil was sorry for her. It was a sad thing to bear a
child without a father, and the future wouldn’t be easy. Lili would always wonder about her father’s family and why they didn’t want to see her. Bettina would have to come up with some excuse or explanation. At dinner, Sybil told Blake that the Salvatores had rejected Bettina and their grandchild, and he thought it was simpler too.

  “I was afraid they might be a problem, or want money,” Blake told her honestly.

  “They were afraid of the same thing,” she said with a sigh.

  “She never should have done it,” Bert said, looking stern again, thinking about it, when he mentioned it to Blake.

  “She’s not even twenty-two, Bert, she’s young, and we’re all foolish at her age,” Blake said gently.

  “Her foolishness has produced a child,” Bert said soberly, “a responsibility and a burden she will have to shoulder forever, for the rest of that child’s life, and hopefully hers.” Having lost two children himself, he did not wish that on her, no matter who the child’s father was, or how unsuitable. “I suppose we’ll have to invent some respectable story about who Lili’s father was. It’s easier to do after a war. A lot of girls married too quickly, and proper young men too. At least Lili wasn’t born out of wedlock.” That would have been an unpardonable stigma the child and Bettina would have carried forever. He was grateful they didn’t have that to contend with, and could put it behind them now. Lili was a Butterfield, and that was that.

  “How is she?” Blake asked about Bettina. He hadn’t seen her at dinner yet, since the birth, and it had been a week.

  “She seems fine. She’ll rest for the next month, and then she’ll be back among us,” her father said.

  Blake was sure that lower-class working women got back on their feet more quickly. But not women in their world.