Tucker's Inn

by Tucker's Inn (retail) (epub)

  ‘Help you? What do you mean, Lisette?’

  ‘There must be an old woman in the village who knows about these things. Someone who could rid me of it, and no one ever know.’

  He was appalled. ‘Faith, you can’t mean it! You cannot seriously wish to rid yourself of our child!’

  She spun round to face him once more. ‘I am perfectly serious! I can’t go through with it! It will spoil everything!’

  For the first time in his life, Louis felt a surge of anger towards her.

  ‘You don’t know what you are saying!’ he ground out.

  ‘And you don’t know what it will mean!’

  ‘I know very well. You would have an innocent baby – our baby – torn from your womb – murdered – at God knows what risk to yourself, just because you don’t want to be fat for a few months? I can’t believe you can even think of such a thing, let alone suggest it!’

  The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. For once, he was unmoved by them.

  ‘Truly, Lisette, I am shocked.’

  ‘But Louis…’

  ‘No!’ He raised his hand, clenched it to a fist, and slapped it against his thigh. ‘I won’t hear another word. This is a terrible thing you are suggesting. Don’t even think of trying to do away with the child. If you do, I swear I will never forgive you.’

  Her shoulders bowed, her chin dropped to her chest, her hands clasped one another for comfort in the folds of her skirt. She looked, he thought, more forlorn than he had ever seen her.

  ‘You are a Catholic, Lisette,’ he said more gently. ‘You must know human life is sacred.’

  ‘And this is a sin.’ She spoke so softly, her voice muffled in the flounce of her gown, that he could scarcely make out her words.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘How can a child born of our love be a sin? Oh, perhaps we were wrong not to wait until we had the blessing of the Church before we demonstrated our love for one another, but it happens all the time, and no priest would condemn us for it, I’m sure, now that we have regularized our union before God. Go to confession, if you must, and I am confident the priest will tell you the same.’

  Still she made no move and he drew her into his arms.

  ‘The babe was not conceived before our marriage in any case, was it, or you would have known before now. So please, stop torturing yourself like this! Think of the happiness a little one will bring! A boy for me to teach to hawk and shoot, or a girl as demure yet full of mischief as you – and perhaps with curls like yours too! I swear, Lisette, when you hold our baby in your arms you will forget every one of these foolish doubts and thank God for such a blessing, for there is not a woman alive who could fail to love the child she must nourish and protect and give life to.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Lisette muttered mulishly. ‘I suppose I shall have it if I must. But I tell you, Louis, I don’t want it. Now or ever.’

  * * *

  For all that he had warned her against it, Louis was very afraid Lisette might do something to try and rid herself of the unwelcome new life that was growing within her. But if she did, her efforts met with no success. Soon her breasts were fuller, and her belly more rounded, and it was clear for all to see that she was with child.

  There were no more outbursts over her condition, but there was no joy either. Lisette seemed to have resigned herself to the fact that she was to be a mother, whether she liked it or not, but she could not bring herself to see it as a happy event, and the continuation of her black mood worried Louis and spoiled his own pleasure in the prospect of becoming a father.

  ‘Does this happen sometimes?’ he asked his own mother one day when Lisette’s mood seemed blacker than ever. ‘Can a woman really have no feelings for the child she is carrying?’

  ‘Well of course!’ Jeanne reassured him. ‘It’s common, I’m sure, amongst girls who fear they have been ruined, though I’ve not often seen it, I must admit, in a happily married woman. But Lisette is very young. She does not feel ready to leave her carefree youth behind, I expect. And she has been very unwell, has she not? It’s not a pleasant thing to feel nauseous all the time. Very lowering for the spirits.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Louis agreed.

  Certainly Lisette seemed very unwell. She was pale as a ghost, her face seeming to grow thinner as her body swelled. But the malaise seemed to be worsening as the weeks went by rather than passing, as it usually did after a while.

  ‘Don’t worry, my son,’ Jeanne said. ‘I am sure when she holds her baby in her arms she will feel more love than she ever knew herself capable of.’

  With all his heart Louis hoped she was right, but he was not so sure. Jeanne had not been party to Lisette’s despair on the day she had told him she was with child; Jeanne had not witnessed her weeping in her sleep. Louis was very much afraid that Lisette’s opposition to becoming a mother was rooted in something far deeper.

  With some four weeks to go until her due date, Lisette went into labour. Louis was filled with alarm when he found her in her drawing room groaning and doubled over with pain.

  ‘But it’s not time yet!’ he protested weakly.

  As the spasm passed Lisette straightened, though her hands still clutched her stomach where the pain had seemed ready to tear her apart. ‘Time or not, it’s coming, Louis!’

  ‘But… it shouldn’t be! Go to bed, Lisette, lie down, and maybe all will be well.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool!’ she spat at him. ‘And don’t think you can make it go away just standing there and looking, either! You had better go for the midwife, and fast…’

  She broke off, gasping, as another pain knifed through her, and Louis experienced a gush of panic.

  ‘All right, all right… I’ll ride for the midwife. I’ll get my mother too…’

  With one last frightened look at the small agonized face he loved so much, he ran from the room, fearful the baby was about to make its appearance into the world before his very eyes.

  He need not have been in such haste. When he returned with the midwife – who was none too pleased to have been dragged so unexpectedly and so unceremoniously from preparing her family’s dinner – she took one look at Lisette and announced that it would be hours yet, and she could have eaten, as well as finished cooking, her bit of beef before she was needed.

  ‘You cannot leave her now!’ Louis protested, appalled.

  ‘I suppose I might as well stay now, as I’m here,’ Mistress Cope replied sourly. ‘But there’ll be extra on my bill for a spoiled dinner.’

  ‘Money is the least of my worries,’ Louis snapped. ‘Just take care of my wife, if you please!’

  Mistress Cope was proved correct in her assessment. It was almost twenty-four hours later, and she had partaken of two good meals and even dozed a little in the chair beside Lisette’s bed, before she emerged with the news.

  ‘You’ve a fine strapping daughter.’

  Louis, who had been pacing the floor, agonized by the screams and cries that had echoed through the house for hours, gripped her by the arm.

  ‘Lisette is well?’

  ‘Well enough to make enough noise to waken the dead,’ Mistress Cope said scathingly. ‘I’ve never known a Devon girl to make such a fuss.’

  ‘And the baby?’ He was still anxious, considering that his child had been born a month before her time.

  ‘Strapping, like I said. She doesn’t look like a poorly eight-month babe to me.’ Mistress Cope was rolling down her sleeves to cover her brawny forearms. ‘You’d better go in and see your wife and daughter.’

  Lisette was lying back, exhausted, against the pillows, the baby in a tiny crib which Mistress Cope had placed at the side of the bed.

  ‘Chérie!’ Louis crossed the floor in a few hasty strides, wanting only to take Lisette in his arms, but afraid to touch her in case he hurt her. ‘Oh chérie, are you…? Was it…?’

  ‘It was terrible,’ Lisette murmured weakly. ‘Oh Louis, I don’t want to have to go t
hrough that ever again!’

  ‘It’s over now,’ he soothed. ‘And we have a little daughter.’

  For the first time he looked into the crib, at the small, angry red face and the downy head dented all around the temples as if a tourniquet had been applied to the soft baby skin. Wonder filled him, that this child could be his – his and Lisette’s, the living proof of their love.

  ‘She’s perfect,’ he said softly.

  Lisette was silent.

  ‘Don’t you want to hold her?’ he asked.

  She shook her head, still silent.

  ‘Come,’ he murmured. ‘She looks to be in need of her mother.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what that grizzly old midwife said!’ Lisette snapped. ‘I don’t want to hold her. Leave me alone, can’t you? I’m tired and sore and I want to rest.’

  Louis’ heart sank, his relief and joy overshadowed as if a black cloud had crept across the sun.

  ‘Rest then,’ he said gently.

  She closed her eyes. A single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. He wiped it away tenderly.

  ‘You are exhausted, chérie. You’ll feel differently tomorrow.’

  She said nothing, but in her silence he sensed the stubbornness which he now knew was an intrinsic part of her make-up. He bent and kissed her forehead, still damp with perspiration and the cool water with which the midwife had sponged her.

  ‘I love you, Lisette.’ The words came easily to him now. ‘I love you and I always will, no matter what. Never forget that.’

  She opened her eyes, looking up at him, reached out and took his hand, her fingers curling around his with the same fierce grip that a drowning man might use to clutch at a piece of driftwood. The expression on her face bewildered him, so many emotions seemed to be mingling there, flickering across her lovely delicate features. But the look in her eyes might almost have been one of utter despair.

  ‘I am so sorry, Louis,’ she whispered.

  ‘For what?’ he asked gently.

  ‘For being what I am.’

  ‘Lisette, you are talking nonsense,’ he chided. ‘Sleep now. We’ll talk when you are rested.’

  ‘Will you stay with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  The baby began to wail, a thin soft mewling; Lisette seemed oblivious to it. Mistress Cope came bustling in, and he spoke to her over his shoulder.

  ‘Can you take the baby out so as not to disturb Madame? She needs to rest.’

  The woman sniffed disapprovingly but she did as Louis asked.

  Dusk was falling, muzzing the room with soft greyness. Lisette slept, and still Louis sat there, holding her hand in his and praying that tomorrow, when she was refreshed, Lisette would see things differently. And fearing, with an awful sense of foreboding, that she would not.

  * * *

  Louis was right to be afraid. The morning, grey, overcast, and thick with a mist off the river, did nothing to bring with it a change in Lisette’s attitude. She did not want her baby. She did not want to hold it. She certainly did not want to feed it. The baby cried pitifully, and Lisette turned her face to the pillow and covered her ears.

  ‘Make it stop! I can’t stand that awful wailing! Make it stop, or I swear I’ll go mad!’

  ‘She’s hungry, poor little mite!’ Rose, the maid who had been engaged for nursery duties, protested. ‘Put her to the breast, Madame, and she’ll be satisfied and fall asleep.’

  ‘I won’t! I don’t care if she starves! I won’t do it!’

  Jeanne was sent for; she spoke to Lisette for a long while in French, first cajoling, then becoming angry, but all her entreaties fell on deaf ears. Lisette was becoming so distressed, in fact, that her face flushed unhealthily whilst her body tremored, and Jeanne began to fear she would succumb to the fever that could follow childbirth and even claim the life of a new mother.

  ‘We’ll have to find a wet nurse then,’ she said at last, conceding defeat. ‘Is that what you want?’

  And: ‘Do what you like. I don’t care!’ Lisette cried.

  When she emerged from the bedchamber, Jeanne rounded on Louis.

  ‘Didn’t you have any inkling of the way she felt?’ she demanded. ‘I know it’s not a nice thing to discuss, but if I had been warned she had this aversion to feeding the child herself I could at least have made arrangements. As it is, we shall have to send into town, with everyone knowing our business, and hope some woman can be found who is willing and able to do what Lisette should be doing herself. I don’t know what we’ll do if no one is forthcoming. We can try cow’s milk, I suppose, or flour and water, but babies don’t thrive on it – in fact, many die. I’ve told her that, and it seems she doesn’t care.’

  ‘Shall I speak to her?’ Louis suggested, and Jeanne shook her head.

  ‘Better not. She’s in no fit state. If the fever takes hold she could die, and then where would we be? No, the best thing you can do is saddle a horse, ride into town, and seek out a wet nurse. But it doesn’t bode well, Louis. I don’t like the attitude Lisette is taking one bit. It’s not natural for a mother to be so indifferent to her own newborn child.’

  ‘She’s weak and ill. She’ll come around when she’s stronger, I’m sure,’ Louis said, making excuses for Lisette though he did not believe them himself.

  ‘When the milk comes in and she’s throbbing and uncomfortable, you mean,’ Jeanne said grimly. ‘Well, I suppose we must hope for the best. But I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’

  Beside himself with anxiety both for Lisette and his baby, Louis rode into Dartmouth, where, fortunately, he was able to secure the services of a wet nurse. She was not what Louis would have chosen in a woman to suckle his child, a big, rawboned woman with a large family of her own, and who smelled disgustingly of fish, but at least she had plenty of milk, and when the little one had fed greedily, she fell asleep and the terrible insistent mewling ceased.

  The days went by and as the danger of fever passed Lisette grew stronger. But still she showed no sign of changing her hard-hearted attitude towards her child.

  ‘We have to name her,’ Louis said, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding Lisette’s hand. ‘We can’t call her “the babe” for ever.’

  Lisette shrugged and looked away, uninterested. ‘Call her what you like.’

  ‘A French name I think, don’t you?’ he wheedled, desperate to elicit some response. ‘After all, you are French, and so is Mama, and I have a French name myself. There must be something you like. Thérèse, perhaps? Or Jeanne, after my mother?’

  For just a moment, something stirred in those hard green eyes.

  ‘Antoinette,’ she said.

  ‘Antoinette? You like that name?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  A frisson of hope flickered within him.

  ‘Antoinette.’ He looked at the baby, sleeping rosy and replete in the crib beside the bed. ‘Yes, I think that suits her very well.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lisette said. ‘I think it does.’

  It was the only contribution she was prepared to make.

  III

  Louis passed through stages in his feelings concerning Lisette’s continuing lack of interest in Antoinette in much the same way as a grief-stricken man passes through the stages of mourning. Desolation gave way to anger and was eventually succeeded by resignation overlaid with an ever-present feeling of sadness.

  The child was well cared for; she had a nurse who adored her and a grandmother who gave her the loving her own mother withheld – Jeanne’s maternal instincts had all been reawakened by the helplessness and innocence of the newest addition to the household. It was Jeanne who reported Antoinette’s first smile to Louis, and her first tooth; it was Jeanne who was there in the nursery when the little girl took her first unsteady step from the arms of her nurse and fell triumphantly into Jeanne’s own waiting arms. When she was sick, with a croupy cough or suffering from one of the earaches that plagued her, Jeanne sat up, taking turns with Rose, the nurs
emaid, cradling her gently on her lap so as to ensure the tarred rope which was placed around her neck to help her breathing did not chafe her tender skin, holding the hot flannels against her throbbing ear to ease the pain. When she was well, she played with her in the garden or the nursery, allowing her to do all manner of things she would never have allowed Louis or Gavin to do when they were small. And when high spirits gave way to tantrums and finally tears, she would take Antoinette in her arms, rocking her and murmuring words of comfort.

  Louis himself spent as much time as business allowed with Antoinette, taking her riding, propped in front of him on the saddle, just as soon as her little legs were long enough to afford her some sort of balance. Jeanne disapproved of this, saying it was no way to raise a little girl to be a lady, but Louis was determined she should grow up easy with the horses he loved, and he enjoyed Antoinette’s unfailing excitement when he proposed a ride, and her breathless laughter when they cantered or galloped.

  Even Gavin took pleasure in Antoinette as she grew from a sturdy toddler into a long-limbed child with the sparkle of mischief in eyes which were every bit as green as her mother’s. He played with her and spoiled her and often slyly slipped her the sweetmeats that were supposed to be strictly rationed, since both Rose and Jeanne were of the opinion that too many were not good for her.

  No, Antoinette did not lack love and attention. What she did lack was a mother’s special care, for Lisette remained totally indifferent towards her. It was, Louis thought, almost as if the child did not exist. Lisette arranged her life to suit herself, quite content to leave Antoinette’s care to others, and when their paths crossed she behaved as if Antoinette was someone else’s child, not hers at all. She was no longer openly antagonistic towards her, but neither did she show the slightest interest. The continuing indifference still had the power to hurt Louis, but as time went by he accepted the sad truth that Lisette had no inclination towards being a mother.

  But still he loved her, and with the same intensity as when he had first set eyes upon her. Though she could infuriate him and bring him to the edge of despair, yet still she held him in her spell. Those teasing eyes could still make his heartbeat quicken, her touch turn anger to desire. Her mercurial changes of mood left him confused, her black depressions and flashes of temper could turn, almost in a moment, to brittle gaiety, and her passion, when roused, was as unfettered as it had ever been. On occasion he wished he had never met, let alone married, her, yet he could not envision life without her. He loved her, and that, he sometimes thought, was the cross he had to bear.