An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  Victor didn’t regard himself as being anyone’s uncle and didn’t relish being addressed as such. Especially by a bonehead like Charlie. He raised his eyes from his plate, gave Charlie a freezing look and did not ask him to sit down.

  Charlie sat. ‘I received a letter from Alex yesterday. Awful bad news about his fall, isn’t it? Have you heard anything from the specialist yet?’

  Victor laid his fork down on his plate. If Alexander had written to Charlie, then he would have asked Charlie to make contact with Genevre. This he had, in all likelihood, already tried to do. And now he had waylaid him, bewildered by Alexander’s continuing concern for Genevre when he was reported to be engaged elsewhere. Bewildered by Alexander’s silence on the subject of his engagement.

  ‘Alexander will suffer no permanent injuries,’ he said, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin.

  Charlie was so relieved to hear it he almost forgot what it was he was trying to find out. As Victor moved his chair away from the table, he blurted, ‘And the wedding? The gossip at the Union Club was that he was to marry in Ireland. Will the wedding still be going ahead or will there be a delay now?’

  With the Hudsons safely out of the country Victor had been wondering when he should scotch the rumour he had so carefully circulated. Looking across at Charlie, not knowing who else Charlie was in contact with, he decided that now was not the time. For all he knew, Genevre Hudson may also have written to Charlie. The same means as had been taken in the Hudson household with regard to the post would also have to be taken in the Schermerhorn mansion. But one letter could be allowed from Charlie to Genevre. A letter confirming beyond all doubt that Alexander was to marry.

  ‘The wedding, of course, will be delayed a little, but it will still take place,’ he said, rising to his feet.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Charlie asked, feeling an idiot. ‘I mean, perhaps there’s been a mistake. Perhaps there isn’t going to be a wedding. Perhaps there was never going to be a wedding.’

  The merest hint of a smile touched the corners of Victor’s thin-lipped mouth. ‘There is absolutely no mistake. Alexander is to marry Lord Powerscourt’s eldest daughter. Good-day to you, Charles.’

  Charlie remained sitting at the table, more bewildered than ever. Perhaps Alex had assumed that he could have his cake and eat it, that he could contract a suitable marriage for dynastic purposes and still maintain his relationship with Genevre. Well, he’d been wrong. Genevre and her father were eccentrically free and easy, but they were not that free and easy. Alex had severely miscalculated. He summoned a waiter, asked for pen and paper and proceeded to write and tell him so.

  Alexander was never to forget the moment when he read Charlie’s letter. At first he had thought it was some sort of bizarre joke. Then he had thought that Charlie had been drunk when he had written it. Or mentally ill. Then, with rising terror, he had read it again and realized that it wasn’t a joke. That Charlie hadn’t been ill or in an alcoholic haze. That he was quite simply writing down facts, albeit facts that he didn’t understand.

  Once your pa made public the news that you were marrying one of Powerscourt’s daughters the Hudsons left for England immediately. I didn’t hear of it till I spoke to Leonard Jerome. He’d heard it at the Union Club and no-one could understand your pa sanctioning a wedding in Ireland and not having a big society affair in New York. There was only some idiot maid at the house when I went round. No forwarding address had been left. Can’t say I blame them. I know old man Hudson was a bit weird, encouraging you and Genevre to meet when he knew your father disapproved, but he wasn’t so weird he’d tolerate you still seeing Genevre once you’d married elsewhere! Glad to hear the specialist is doing his tricks and that you’ll be home sometime next year.

  Keep writing,

  Charlie.

  He hadn’t been able to breathe. It was as though there was a stone slab on his chest, crushing the life out of him. He knew immediately what it was his father had done, and why. And unbelievably, incredibly, Genevre and her father had accepted it as the truth. He clenched his hands until the knuckles were white, sucking air into his chest with great, shuddering gasps. Genevre believed he had been unfaithful to her. That he had abandoned her. It was unimaginable. Inconceivable. And he couldn’t get in contact with her. There was no forwarding address. Nothing but the information that they had returned to England. Anger roared through him, consuming him as if in fire. He would find her. The minute he could walk again he would search the length and breadth of England for her. He would find her and he would tell her how evilly she had been betrayed. And then, when they were married, he would return to America with her. And he would settle with his father.

  Chapter Seven

  The Mother Superior of the convent William Hudson approached in East Sussex was not unduly taken aback by his request that Genevre be accommodated there until after her illegitimate child was born. The convent was also an orphanage and such arrangements had been made before, with the family in question endowing the convent with an extremely generous sum and with the child being placed as soon as possible after birth in the orphanage, to be cared for by a wet-nurse and the nuns.

  ‘As I am sure you can appreciate, although we are far from being a closed order, visitors are not encouraged,’ the Mother Superior said to William Hudson, hiding her satisfaction at the size of his donation beneath an expressionless countenance.

  ‘I quite understand.’ William Hudson’s normally bluff Yorkshire voice was as expressionless as the Mother Superior’s pale, wimple-framed face. He didn’t want to visit Genevre. He didn’t want to see her stomach growing rounder and larger, heavy with Alexander Karolyis’s bastard. He didn’t want to see her again until the child was born; until he could take her away from the convent; until the time when it would be possible to pretend that the whole, hideous nightmare had never taken place.

  When he did see her, to say goodbye to her, he was unable to meet her eyes. ‘This is the best that can be done,’ he said gruffly, looking over the top of her head at the convent’s large, ice-bound garden.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was quiet, so quiet that he could barely hear her.

  ‘I’ll be going then.’

  He was still looking steadfastly beyond her and, looking up at his dear and wretchedly unhappy face, Genevre felt her heart twist in pain. She and Alexander had done this to him, but they had not done it intentionally. It had happened because Victor Karolyis had not given them his blessing and allowed them to marry when Alexander had first asked. It had happened because Alexander had been sent on a grand tour of Europe; because they were going to be separated for nearly a year; because they had loved each other.

  She reached up and touched his face tenderly with a gloved hand. ‘I love you, Papa,’ she said gently.

  His arms went around her and he held her tight, but he could not reciprocate and say the words he so dearly wanted to say. She had not said that she bitterly regretted what she had done. With her obscenely rounded stomach she was not the daughter she had once been to him and she would never be that daughter again. With eyes overly bright he released her, squeezed her hands tight, and turned on his heel and walked away.

  Genevre remained in the garden. It was the end of January and the cold stung her cheeks. It would be summer when her baby was born. In the summer she would have to tell her father that which he was refusing to believe; that she was not going to leave the convent without her baby; that she and her baby were never going to be separated. She knew that he would then disown her and that she would never see him again and the knowledge made her feel ill with grief.

  She turned, beginning to walk back over the frosted grass towards the convent. If only Alexander still loved her there would be no such heartache. She stopped suddenly, gazing unseeingly at the convent’s red-brick walls and the sombre winter sky beyond. Alexander did love her. She was suddenly so sure of it that she would willingly have staked her life on it. He himself had never told her that he had fallen in love elsewhere; tha
t he was going to marry; that he never wished to see her again; and until he did so she would not believe it. She picked up her skirts and began to run in the direction of the cell-like room that was now her home. She would write to Charlie Schermerhorn. He would surely have heard from Alexander. He would know why Alexander had been unable to write to her. He would know the truth as to Victor Karolyis’s unbelievable statement that Alexander was to marry an Anglo-Irish heiress. And he would be able to tell Alexander about the baby.

  During the weeks of waiting for her letter to arrive at the Schermerhorn mansion and for Charlie’s replying letter to reach her in East Sussex, Genevre occupied herself by helping the nun whose task it was to care for the garden. She had wanted to help care for the children in the orphanage, but the Mother Superior had vetoed her request. She could help in the kitchen, and the laundry and garden, but not the orphanage where it was intended the child she was carrying would one day be deposited.

  It was now February and the worst of winter was over. The nun appointed to care for the garden accepted her help gratefully and in the pale spring sunlight she spent hour after hour pruning newly planted, fan-trained peaches and nectarines and cleaning moss and lichen from the trunks of trees with a wash of tar-oil.

  She enjoyed the physical work. It helped to take her mind from the letter she was sure was on its way to her.

  All through February she waited with buoyant optimism. The baby had begun to move and she spent hours drawing up lists of names for it. Caroline, Christina, David, Robert, Benjamin. None of them seemed right. She would have liked to have added William or Alexander to her list of boy’s names, but, bearing in mind how outraged her father would be if she named the baby after him and how distressed he would be if she named it so openly after Alexander, she decided against it. Then she remembered Alexander telling her how his grandfather had always called him Stasha. Her father would not know that Stasha was a diminutive of Alexander. And it was an attractive name, far more interesting than David or Robert or Benjamin.

  March came and still no letter arrived. And then April.

  If Victor Karolyis had known of her long, abortive wait, he would have been mildly surprised. Within hours of Charlie waylaying him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, one of his minions successfully bribed a Schermerhorn footman to carry out the same service in the Schermerhorn household that Miss Burrage had performed in the Hudson household. Both Genevre’s and Alexander’s letters were to be intercepted, as were letters from Charlie to Genevre and Alexander, with two exceptions. A single letter in Genevre’s handwriting was to be permitted to reach Charlie and a single replying letter from Charlie to Genevre was to be posted unhindered. In this way, Victor felt confident of ensuring that Charlie would endorse what he himself had told William Hudson. Namely that Alexander was to marry the daughter of his Anglo-Irish host.

  The footman approached was not quite as bright as Miss Burrage had been. Finding the stipulation about the two exceptions to the rule confusing, he simply handed on Genevre’s letter to Victor Karolyis. The letter, asking Charlie to inform Alexander of the coming baby, went straight into the fire as unread as all her previous letters had been.

  In despair Genevre wrote again. And again. There was never a reply. The only letters she received were stilted, painful letters from her father.

  As the garden took on life and colour, with sharply yellow daffodils and deep-drowned purple pansies vying for supremacy, she existed in a sea of unrelieved heartache. She knew now, beyond any shadow of doubt, what the future held. She would have to raise and provide for her child herself. Her father would not assist her, nor would anyone else. Her choices were very limited, but she was determined that she would make the best of them. She would take in sewing or give lessons. And one day, come what may, she would confront Alexander with the child who had been conceived in such sweet reckless passion and, on her part, in such utter love.

  When her pains began she was moved from her spartanly furnished room into the convent’s sick-room and into the care of the nun who was to act as midwife.

  Sister Mary Louise was elderly with a reassuringly motherly manner. ‘Come along now and into bed with you,’ she said affably, turning down the sheets of a bed and plumping up the pillows.

  Genevre sat on the edge of the bed in her voluminous, coarse-cotton, convent nightdress and asked curiously, ‘How long do you think it will be before my baby is born, Sister Mary Louise?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no telling, my dear,’ Sister Mary Louise said, lifting Genevre’s legs and easing them on to the bed. ‘First babies take their time, you know. You mustn’t be impatient.’

  A spasm of pain gripped Genevre and she clutched on to the sides of the narrow bed, fighting it until it was over.

  Sister Mary Louise beamed approvingly. ‘That bodes very well, my dear. Strong pains at the beginning usually mean an uncomplicated, quick birth. You will find it easier to grasp hold of the bars on the bedhead, rather than the sides of the bed. Pull on them with all your might when the pains get really bad.’

  Genevre reached up, finding the brass bars within easy reach. As the pain subsided she relaxed with relief, saying curiously, ‘How many babies have been born in this room, Sister Mary Louise?’

  ‘Now that’s not for me to say, dear. Mother Superior doesn’t allow talk of previous confinements.’

  ‘I only want to know about the babies, not the mothers,’ Genevre said, although even as she spoke she knew it wasn’t true. She did want to know about them. She wanted to know how other girls of good family had found themselves in the same, devastating situation. She wanted to know if any of them had taken their babies with them when they had left the convent, she wanted to know how they had managed afterwards if they had done so. She said instead, ‘How many confinements have you attended, Sister Mary Louise? Have the babies all been healthy?’

  Sister Mary Louise’s pleasant old face creased into a smile. ‘Bless you, my dear. Of course they have all been healthy. Sister Immaculata wouldn’t have permitted them to be anything else.’

  Genevre’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Who is Sister Immaculata? I don’t remember meeting her.’

  Sister Mary Louise continued to bustle about the room. ‘That’s because she’s been dead nearly a year now, God rest her soul. The last baby she delivered was the son of…’ She broke off suddenly, aware that she had been on the verge of revealing the identity of the young, aristocratic mother. ‘The last baby she delivered was a little boy,’ she finished, her healthy red cheeks even redder than normal.

  Genevre gasped as another wave of pain seized hold of her. Reaching upwards she clutched the brass bars of the bedhead as Sister Mary Louise had instructed. When the pain receded she took in a deep steadying breath and said, ‘Did Sister Immaculata attend all the confinements?’

  Sister Mary Louise stooped creakily, setting a large pottery bowl on the floor at the foot of the bed. ‘Each and every one of them.’ She pressed a rheumatic hand into the centre of her back. ‘It was under Sister Immaculata’s direction that Saint Ursula’s first began to care for mothers whose babies were to enter the orphanage.’

  A puzzled frown creased Genevre’s forehead. ‘And you helped Sister Immaculata whenever there was a confinement?’

  ‘Not at the beginning.’ Sister Mary Louise pulled a small nursing-chair to the side of the bed and sat down, happy to gossip about a permissible subject now the room was ready for the birth. ‘Mother Superior thought it indelicate for anyone other than Sister Immaculata to be in the room, but Sister Immaculata said that I would be a great help and so I was.’

  Genevre believed her. She was a kindly soul whose presence would have been a comfort to anyone having a baby in unhappy circumstances. Another pain came and it was several minutes before she was able to ask the question that was troubling her. ‘How many confinements have you attended since Sister Immaculata’s death, Sister Mary Louise?’

  ‘Now let me see, there was the little Spanish girl at the end of
last summer. What a fuss that miss made! Crying out something terrible and not doing anything that I asked her to do. And then in October there was a lady a little older. She only came here two weeks before her baby was born and a carriage came for her almost immediately afterwards.’ Sister Mary Louise leaned towards her confidentially and lowered her voice. ‘It’s my belief she was a married lady, but the babe was placed in the orphanage all the same.’

  A few hours earlier Genevre would have been intrigued by such an unexpectedly frank disclosure, but now all she could think of was Sister Mary Louise’s alarming lack of experience and the disquieting fierceness and frequency of her pains.

  All through the afternoon and evening the pains continued. As the evening turned to night Sister Mary Louise settled herself as comfortably as she could in the nursing-chair.

  ‘Try to sleep, dear,’ she said to Genevre. ‘If you sleep you will be so much stronger for tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’ Genevre was appalled. Each pain had grown in savagery and intensity and she was exhausted, her face sweat-sheened, her knuckles aching from their almost permanent hold on the bedhead bars.

  In the beginning, believing that frequent and strong pains meant that the birth was going to be quick, she had not minded too much. But that had been hours ago and there was still no sign of her labour progressing. She tried to take her mind off the pain by thinking back to times past; times when she had been happy. She remembered the house-warming ball at Leonard Jerome’s; meeting Alexander again; dancing with him as the orchestra played a seductive waltz.

  Pain came again and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle her cries. She had known that having a baby was not going to be easy, but why had no-one told her how truly terrible it was going to be?

  Sister Mary Louise began to snore. The night-light flickered gently in its saucer. Pain came again, and again, and again, but still it did not change in character. Still she did not feel the urge to bear down. Still the baby showed no sign of ever being born.