Girl From the South (v5)

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘A hundred and twenty bucks, man. All in.’

  Henry shook his head.

  ‘Can’t do it—’

  ‘Sure you can.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Gillon said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s this total-guy thing. Don’t get sucked into it.’

  ‘I rather like it,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve never had it. Maybe I should give it a try.’

  ‘No,’ Gillon said. She looked at her brother. ‘He can be such a total asshole.’

  It was the money that decided it. It was the money that made Henry regretfully turn his back on the charms of the giant icebox and TV screen, and opt instead for Smith Street. He surveyed it now. He thought of where he might prop up sheets of soft board to pin prints up, of how it would feel to wake every morning not just to the odd but alluring prospect of shrimp and grits, but also to the extraordinary liberty of being obliged to absolutely nobody.

  There was a knock at the door. The innkeeper stood there holding a plate of cookies. Henry looked at the cookies.

  ‘Mr Atkins,’ the innkeeper said, ‘I have brought you an amenity.’

  Martha’s last patient of the day sat in the winged armchair beside Martha’s desk which was reserved exclusively for patients, and stared down at her hands. She wore no wedding ring but was married – she had told Martha this several times – to a man who aspired to be a writer.

  ‘He says writers are always exiles, whether geographically or spiritually. He says Southern writers are the most extreme and eloquent examples of the species. He quotes Tennessee Williams at me. He says Williams always wrote about outsiders; about the disturbed, the oversensitive. But then he says’ – she raised her hands and let them fall again in a little hopeless gesture – ‘he says that I will never understand because I have tried to defy the South. He says I won’t accept that in our defeat was our glory.’

  Martha wrote quietly on a yellow legal pad.

  ‘Tell me about your defiance.’

  The patient looked up. She had pale skin and long pale hair worn well below her shoulders. She was, too, a successful attorney in a commercial practice in North Charleston and made eighty thousand dollars a year.

  ‘I was born in Georgia,’ she said. ‘On a farm in southwest Georgia. I knew – oh, I knew as a kid, as a little kid, that I just distrusted all these traditions, the traditions of Southern womanhood we all grew up with, the domestic power, the social conformity—’

  She stopped. Martha went on quietly writing.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I can only have these things on my own terms, you see. Even if it means alienation. It’s just that I find it so hard to accept stuff from him.’

  ‘Him?’ Martha said. She looked up, grave and kind. ‘Your husband.’

  ‘I chose a man I knew couldn’t support me. I chose him.’

  ‘There’s a huge force draws us into convention,’ Martha said. ‘Because it is safe.’

  The woman bowed her head again.

  ‘I don’t even feel a sense of place. My husband thinks it’s a betrayal of the South not to feel a sense of place, a sense of history.’

  ‘Sometimes, we can only feel a sense of place,’ Martha said, ‘from the outside. You have lived in South Carolina and Georgia all your life?’

  ‘All my goddamn life,’ the woman said between her teeth. ‘The furthest I’ve ever been away is school at Sweet Briar, Virginia. I’ve been taking antidepressants since my thirtieth birthday and looks like to me I’ll be taking them to celebrate my fortieth too.’

  A red light began to flash on the telephone system on Martha’s desk.

  She said, ‘I’m so sorry, but this means an emergency.’

  The woman in the armchair looked up at the ceiling and locked her hands together once more in her lap.

  ‘Ellen,’ Martha said to her assistant.

  There was a pause. Martha laid her pen down on her yellow pad.

  Then she said, in exactly the calm voice she had used all day, ‘Will you call Merrill back and say that I will be at the hospital in forty minutes?’

  She put the receiver down.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The woman shrugged. She removed her gaze from the ceiling and transferred it to her lap.

  ‘My daughter is having a baby. Her first baby. The contractions are now every three minutes and she is on her way to hospital. She wants me to be there. I am so sorry.’

  ‘A baby.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well,’ the woman said with a bleak smile, ‘for the baby’s sake, do we hope it will be a boy?’

  Ashley’s hospital room was full of flowers. Huge bouquets and arrangements stood all along the window ledge and the night cabinet and the shelf above the air-conditioner. There was a smell of lilies and pollen. Merrill had taken all the cards from the flowers and clipped them into an album he had bought especially designed to chart his baby’s first year. The cards came from their friends, from their parents’ friends, from business colleagues, from the Junior League, from good customers of the store where Ashley worked part-time. Merrill said maybe there were over thirty. He’d had announcement cards printed himself in order that Mr and Mrs J. Merrill Shelton Junior could proclaim the birth of their daughter, Robyn Sarah, to anyone who might be interested. He pointed out that Ashley could include a note of thank you for the flowers along with the announcement cards. In fact, there was an excellent site on the Internet for designing exactly the kind of note needed for such an occasion and he would get forty or fifty printed up for her.

  Ashley had her eyes closed.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  Merrill was in a state of high excitement. Robyn was the first girl born into the Shelton family for four generations. His mother, a pillar of the Ivy League Garden Club in Wilmington, North Carolina, had borne Merrill’s father four sons. His father had been one of six sons and his grandfather one of seven. Ashley was the Shelton seniors’ prettiest daughter-in law and had now added the first granddaughter to a clutch of five grandsons. Everyone was very pleased although of course concerned that there had had to be an emergency Caesarean section. Ashley was exhausted.

  Gillon sat beside Ashley’s bed with one hand on her sister’s knee and one hand on the perspex crib where her niece lay.

  ‘I felt wonderful for two days,’ Ashley said, not opening her eyes. ‘And now I feel terrible.’

  ‘Too many visitors,’ Merrill said with relish, surveying the flowers.

  ‘Too many hormones,’ Gillon said.

  Ashley nodded.

  She whispered. ‘I don’t like feeding her.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Merrill said.

  Ashley said tiredly, ‘Nothing to trouble you with, honey.’

  He bent over the bed.

  ‘I am so proud of you!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean it, Ash. My beautiful wife gives me a beautiful daughter. Boy, do I mean it.’

  ‘Yes—’

  He stooped to kiss Ashley’s forehead, his tie falling across her face.

  ‘My wonderful wife.’

  Ashley turned her face just a little.

  ‘Got to go, hon. Got to go back to counting those beans.’ He glanced at Gillon. ‘You staying, Gill?’

  ‘Sure. For a little while.’

  ‘Take care of them for me,’ Merrill said. He put a hand briefly on Gillon’s shoulder. ‘Take care of my girls.’

  He went out of the room at speed, leaving a swirl of unsettled air in his wake.

  ‘I want to cry,’ Ashley said.

  Gillon moved her hand up to hold Ashley’s.

  ‘Cry then. Everybody does. Three-day blues. And major surgery.’

  Ashley put her arm up across her eyes. ‘I’m just-overwhelmed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s so much, somehow. I don’t know if I’m feeling what I ought to be feeling.’

  ‘Does that matter one button?’

  Ashley took her arm away a
nd looked at her sister damply.

  ‘It’s mattered to me up to now.’

  Gillon glanced at the baby.

  ‘Now is different.’

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘She’s so beautiful,’ Gillon said. ‘She’s a beautiful, beautiful baby. I cried when Mama told me she was here.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I can cry just thinking about her. I can cry just thinking about you.’

  Ashley pressed Gillon’s hand.

  ‘Gill—’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Have you seen Henry?’

  Gillon said, ‘I saw him at Grandmama’s. We had dinner. He’d even found a tie to wear. Grandmama had him all trussed up and ready to eat in no time.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Does he know what?’

  ‘Does he know I’ve had the baby?’

  ‘Maybe Cooper told him. Cooper’s told most everyone. You’d think it was Cooper’s baby.’

  Ashley moved her free hand across the bedcovers, plucking at the cotton.

  ‘Will you tell him?’

  Gillon looked at her.

  ‘Sure. If that’s what you want.’

  Ashley turned her head to look at the perspex crib. A strand of dark hair had glued itself to her damp cheek.

  ‘I’d like him to come and see the baby.’

  ‘Would you?’ Gillon said.

  Ashley brushed the strand of hair back behind her ear.

  ‘He’s kind,’ she said. ‘He’d be kind with me, about the baby.’

  ‘OK—’

  ‘Give me a few days,’ Ashley said. She began to pull herself upright in the bed. ‘I’d like a few days first. To stop crying.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anybody so new,’ Henry said. His voice was awed. He was stooped over the crib, his face only a foot above Robyn’s tiny, intently sleeping one.

  Ashley watched him. She had tied her hair off her face with a blue ribbon and had put on a piqué robe with blue trim. She was sitting in an easy chair by the side of the bed, propped up with pillows.

  ‘I’ve nothing to compare her with,’ Henry said. ‘But she looks lovely to me. Lovely.’

  ‘She didn’t get knocked around,’ Ashley said. ‘She didn’t have to battle down that birth canal.’

  Henry straightened.

  ‘Do you have a Kleenex?’

  Ashley pointed.

  ‘Over there.’

  Henry tore out a handful of tissues and blew his nose ferociously.

  ‘Didn’t know seeing a new baby would make me feel like this—’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Ashley said. ‘I like that. Gillon cried too. Maybe Mama did. Everyone else has been just so thrilled—’ She paused.

  ‘That they’ve worn you out?’

  ‘I don’t want to be ungracious,’ Ashley said.

  Henry bent back over the crib.

  ‘I doubt you could be that if you tried.’

  ‘Thank you for the roses.’

  ‘As if,’ he said, ‘you needed one more flower.’

  ‘I like your roses.’

  He put his hands on the two sides of Robyn’s crib and turned to look at Ashley.

  ‘Gillon said you had a bad time.’

  ‘I was scared. It was all so sudden. She got the cord around her neck—’

  ‘Poor girl.’

  ‘Don’t make me want to cry again—’

  ‘Men don’t know, do they?’ Henry said. ‘They don’t really know. Even maybe the doctors.’ He straightened up. ‘I’m very honoured to be asked to see your baby.’

  ‘I thought you’d like to.’

  ‘You were right.’

  ‘And,’ Ashley said, ‘I may not be managing this very well.’

  Henry came and sat on the side of the bed close to her chair.

  ‘By whose reckoning?’

  Ashley gestured. ‘My own. Everybody’s.’

  ‘Not mine,’ Henry said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I would say,’ Henry said, ‘looking at that gorgeous baby, that you’ve done absolutely everything that’s required of you for a very long time to come.’

  He stood up.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Ashley said.

  ‘Gillon said I wasn’t to stay more than ten minutes.’

  Ashley looked down at her lap.

  Henry said, ‘I’d love to come and see you when you’re home.’

  ‘I’d love that too.’

  ‘Is Merrill over the moon?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ashley said. ‘Merrill’s got his princess.’

  ‘Her Majesty Miss Baby,’ Henry said. He bent briefly over the crib again. ‘Bye, little Robyn,’ he said softly, and went out.

  In the churchyard behind St Michael’s Church, a black man in buff overalls was cleaning up between the tombstones. Henry had encountered him before, sweeping down the aisles of the church, and had asked him about the history of the church’s famous bells, and the man had pointed to his mouth to indicate his inability to speak and had pulled a card from his overall pocket and handed it to Henry. On it was printed the words: ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.’

  Henry had felt in his pocket and found a small handful of quarters which the man accepted gravely. He didn’t look up at Henry now from his kneeling position among the tombstones but went on methodically raking and sweeping.

  Henry leaned on the iron railing and gazed into the small enclosure. It was full of headstones, mostly little headstones, white, lettered in square black letters.

  ‘Auckland,’ he read, ‘8 years, 8 months. Died 2nd February 1844. Otis junior, 7 weeks. Died 6th February 1832. Denzel, 8 weeks. Ada, 1 year. Lenox, 15 years, 4 months. Died 14th July 1844.’ And then close by, in the same lettering, ‘Sarah, infant of Theo and Rosa Stoney.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Henry said out loud.

  The man looked up.

  ‘Does this mean,’ Henry said, ‘that these poor people lost six children in the space of twelve years?’

  The man regarded Henry impassively.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ someone said behind him. Henry swung round. Gillon was standing there, in her buff drill jacket. She had dark glasses on and a bag slung over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got babies on the brain,’ Henry said. He gestured at the tombstones. ‘All these dead babies, I can’t bear it. Seven weeks, eight weeks, tiny. It’s terrible.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gillon said. She moved to stand beside him.

  ‘What will have happened?’

  ‘Yellow fever, maybe. Typhoid. They used to dig wells in the town plantations too close to the privies.’

  ‘It’s haunting.’

  ‘I know. All those pregnancies coming to nothing.’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘In this climate. Not knowing how to keep a baby alive.’

  Henry looked at the stone belonging to the infant Sarah.

  ‘Would the wet nurses have been white or black?’

  ‘Oh, black,’ Gillon said. She adjusted her bag. ‘Black and white shared babies and privies. So you went to see Ashley.’

  Henry glanced at her. She was staring at the tombstones from behind her dark glasses.

  ‘It was amazing. I’d never seen so small a baby.’

  ‘Yes, she’s sort of – well, awe-inspiring. So new and so composed.’

  ‘Ashley had a bad time.’

  ‘Yes. I gathered.’

  ‘She really wanted you to go. To go see the baby.’

  ‘Do I deduce,’ Henry said, ‘from your tone of voice, that you don’t think I should have gone?’

  Gillon looked resolutely ahead.

  ‘I’m just wondering some what you think you’re doing with my family?’

  ‘Doing?’ Henry said.

  ‘Dinner with Grandmama, all this buddy stuff with my father and brother, hospital visits to my sister—’

  ‘They asked me,’ Henry said. ‘I am not pushing myself forward. I have been invited.’

  ‘C
harlestonians are very hospitable.’

  ‘All right then. So they are being hospitable. What’s your problem?’

  Gillon took her glasses off.

  ‘I didn’t invite you here to come take my family over.’

  Henry paused. He regarded her profile.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Gillon said, ‘I wonder if, except through a camera lens, you ever even look in the first place.’

  ‘Where are we heading?’ Henry said.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘If you tell me first why you want to pick a fight.’

  She turned to look at him for the first time.

  ‘Because of Tilly.’

  ‘Tilly? What on earth has Tilly got to do with my seeing Ashley’s baby?’

  Gillon said, ‘You came here to work. You didn’t come here to fall in love with a whole other bunch of stuff.’

  ‘Aren’t you exaggerating?’

  ‘Trust me,’ Gillon said. ‘Tilly wouldn’t say that I was.’

  ‘Look,’ Henry said, his voice rising a little. ‘Excuse me for knowing something about my own life, if you’d be so good. You don’t own Tilly. You don’t even know Tilly very well. It isn’t, Miss Superior Stokes, your business to remind me of any obligations I may have. It isn’t your business to tell me how to conduct myself. You’ve made it perfectly plain, since I got here, that you wish you had never invited me. I know it was an impulse. I understand about your regrets. But I’m not your responsibility now. I’m nothing to do with you now. If your family wishes to involve me here and there, I shall accept because they are a great bunch of people and because, never having had much family life, I am really enjoying having a taste of it. But you, Gillon, need have nothing more to do with me. You can pretend I’m simply not here.’

  The black man rose silently to his feet and stepped over the infant Sarah to stand a foot away from Henry. He laid his finger to his lips in an admonishing gesture.

  ‘Sorry,’ Henry said.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Gillon said.

  ‘Why? Why can’t you? I’m living independently, I’m making contacts, I’m making friends. I’m just another foreign visitor in love with Charleston. I’m no more to you than some man you met in London who took up a suggestion you made. That’s all, Gillon, all.’