James gave Harry a brief look.
‘Trot-trot, trot-trot!’ he said, pulling on the horse’s mane.
‘He doesn’t care for me at all,’ said Harry, rather bewildered.
‘Why should he?’ said Margot. ‘He’s barely met you. He’ll like you when he knows you better.’
‘If you say so.’ Now the bewilderment was coming out as contrariness. ‘Is he happy?’ he said abruptly.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Margot. She put her hand on his arm. ‘He’s a very happy child.’
He shook her off.
‘Dash it, Margot,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty rum situation to get one’s head around. A son! I have a son! I can’t...’ He shook his head. ‘Well. This is going to take some getting used to, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ said Margot sadly. ‘It doesn’t get any easier as it goes along. If anything, it rather gets more complicated.’
‘I just can’t make sense of it,’ he said. ‘I’m damned if I know what to do. If I’m supposed to be angry – or – or I don’t know. I was going to ask you to marry me...’
‘But now you don’t want that.’
‘I didn’t say that!’ he protested. ‘Damn it, Margot. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I just... I need some time, that’s all. Time to work out how the blazes I’m supposed to feel about this.’ And, then, seeing her face: ‘I’m sorry,’ he said helplessly. ‘I’m being a brute, I know.’
‘A little bit.’
‘And I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you.’
At even this small kindness, her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand.
‘It was the worst thing I ever did,’ she said. ‘Or the best. I don’t know. Maybe it’s both. Is that possible?’
‘Blowed if I know,’ said Harry.
She gave a little laugh. James looked up from his horse in surprise.
They sat in silence for a long moment. Then:
‘Why don’t we start again?’ he said. ‘We made rather a mess of it last night, didn’t we? Tell me everything you want to say. I’ll listen properly this time, I promise.’
‘From the beginning?’
‘From the beginning.’
So she did.
On the Necessity of Happiness
Did you ever stop minding?’ Margot had asked her mother, once, a long time ago. ‘About Charlotte, I mean?’
Her mother had shaken her head.
‘You never stop minding,’ she said. ‘You just learn to live with the space where they used to be.’
To live with the space where they used to be.
Was that even possible?
But it had to be possible. Because one day, in ten years’ time, or fifteen, or twenty, or thirty, James would find his birth certificate. One day he would read it, and on it would be her name.
What would he think when that day came? Would he be horrified? Betrayed? Disappointed? Or – was it possible – might he be pleased?
She couldn’t be his mother. He had one of those already. All she could do now was be the best sister and friend he could wish for, the best person she could possibly be. She must put aside her grief and devote her energy to being busy and happy, to loving Harry and any children they might have – surely they would have children? – to making a home so warm and welcoming that James would beg to spend his summers there.
She couldn’t be his mother. So she must build the best life for herself that she possibly could and keep a space waiting for him in it. So that when he found out who she really was, he would not be ashamed, but proud.
Towers
She went back up to the nursery. Doris was sitting on the chair by the fireplace, darning James’s nightshirt. She looked up as Margot came in and her face brightened.
‘Oh, miss! You couldn’t sit with James for another minute, could you? Edith’s been most particular about me bringing his tea things down, and it’s that hard to find a minute. I don’t like to leave him, not since that time he fell off the windowseat, and madam was that upset – I wouldn’t be a minute, miss.’
‘Of course,’ said Margot. ‘I don’t mind a bit. Take as long as you like.’
‘Thanks ever so,’ said Doris, and she put down her sewing.
James was building a tower, she saw, remembering the many similar towers built by Ruth and Ernest with the same box of bricks. You built them up and then you knocked them down, that was the game. Except James didn’t like to knock his towers down. He simply built them, and admired them, and expected them to stand for ever in the most inconvenient places, like right in front of the ash-box.
This tower, Margot could see, was already looking precarious. James picked up a new brick and balanced it carefully on the top of the stack. It was a sloped brick, like half a roof. She watched with interest, wondering if the tower was finished, but apparently not. He took another brick and made as though to place it on the top. Seeing disaster looming, Margot said, ‘No, don’t do that. It won’t balance on a slope – see? Why don’t you lie that sloped brick on its side – like this, look?’
She half-expected either protest or interest, but he just said, ‘Yes!’ and went back to hunting in the box.
‘James,’ she said suddenly, and he looked up. ‘I do love you very much.’ It seemed an absurd thing to say, a gross simplification of all that she felt for this sturdy fair person in gingham rompers and red-button shoes. She remembered as a child kneeling on the windowseat in this very nursery reciting the list of people she loved to Nana – Mummy and Daddy and Nana and Stephen and Baby (that was Jocelyn) and Eliza (the maid) and Snuffles (the rabbit) and Agatha (the lady who ran the Sunday School) and Jane (her best friend at the time). Did love mean anything to James?
He nodded. ‘Love you, Margot,’ he said and put his arms around her, burying his face in her stomach. She held him as long as she dared, then released him before he grew afraid.
I’ll have others, she told herself, willing herself not to cry, wondering how anyone could ever have thought that a comfort. No matter what other babies she had, none of them would be this one, this vivid, clever child bending his head over his bricks, going through his solemn, contented little life without her.
Soon Doris would be coming up the stairs to relieve her. Soon she would have to leave him and go down.
Enough, she told herself. Enough, enough. She picked up a brick, and bent back to the tower.
Afterwards
And afterwards?
There is a house on a green hill, and a field full of wildflowers and cow parsley and long grass ready for the haymaking. There is an oak-tree blowing in the wind, the branches making dappled shadows on the sward. There are the haymakers, coming down from the village with scythes over their shoulders, and the haycart full of women and children with pots of ale and bottles of water, and sandwiches in greaseproof paper parcels.
There are mice in the long grass, and frogs in the pools, and birds in the treetops all singing love-songs to the morning.
There is a mother, who holds her baby a little too tightly.
There is a little boy with fair hair running down the hill, knocking at the thistleheads with a hazel switch.
There is happiness, of a sort.
Hold onto it.
Who knows when it will come again?
Acknowledgements
Thanks must start with my editor, Charlie Sheppard, whose idea this book was. It has, as ever, been an absolute joy to work with you. Thanks also to everyone at Andersen Press, particularly Paul Black and Chloe Sackur. I am grateful every day to be published by you.
Adoption really was illegal in Britain until the 1926 Adoption Act. Although many mother and baby homes, orphanages and workhouses existed, a mother always remained the legal guardian of her child. Sadly, mothers were not usually told this, and many believed they had relinquished all rights to ever see their child again.
As usual, I
read too many books to count while researching this novel. However, special mention must go to Noel Streatfeild’s A Vicarage Family, Rosamond Lehmann’s Invitation to the Waltz, and Elizabeth Cambridge’s Hostages to Fortune. Fans of these books will certainly recognise many borrowings in this work. Also to Merry Bloch Jones’ Birthmothers for an exploration of the trauma of giving up a child for adoption.
This book was written while raising a young family – thanks go, as ever, to Tom Nicholls for continued support, child-wrangling and for all the times you said ‘yes’. Thanks to my babysitters, to writer friends on and offline, and to everyone who continues to buy, read and champion my books. You make this whole crazy business worth it.
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