In the evening, the doctor came to see her. She had gone into labour a few weeks earlier than expected. ‘It should be faster than this. A strong vigorous girl –’
She said, in an angry voice, ‘It’ll come when it’s time.’ Minutes later her body took over, the child took over. Her body pushed for her. Voices encouraged her, and yet she was alone. She had become all body, her misery forgotten as she fought.
A boy. Propelled, slithering bloodily into the summer evening. She lifted her head from the pillows, calling out, ‘Let me – I want …’ He was being swaddled now in a layer of red flannelette. She stretched out her arms to receive the bundle. The flesh was warm, soft through the sheet. His gaze, unfocused, unknowing, met hers.
The nun midwife said, ‘Put him to the nipple now, at once. Then we shall soon have the rest out.’ By that they meant the afterbirth. The mouth she had already looked on with such tenderness, fastened hungrily, knowingly. Love. Happiness. Tears of joy coursed down her face. A nun approached with a sponge, wiping her face, wanting to take the child. ‘No, don’t. A few moments … Leave him with me.’
She was scarcely sleepy afterwards. Lying still, in the middle of the night, the babe beside her now in his crib, she was lifted out of herself. I have a son, and he loves me. Joy suffused her. She was invincible. In this new world, they could not reach her.
Half way through the next day as she held the baby to her, he was sucking – Sister Andrea, the young nun in charge, told her, ‘The Superior from your convent comes to see you today. They have wired, you know, to England.’
Oh, but how could she not have thought? England, Eleanor – my son, who is to be Eleanor’s. He had lodged in her body only that Eleanor might have him when all the work and travail was over and the loving should begin. She began to weep silently, tears washing down her face.
‘Women are often like this,’ Sister Andrea said. ‘When the convent have visited, you must promise to sleep. I think you don’t sleep last night?’
‘It isn’t my child, you see.’
‘How, not your child? You saw, there can’t be a mix-up.’
‘He isn’t mine. He belongs to a person, people, in England –’
‘Yes. Yes.’ The nun reached out, stroking the baby’s head. ‘They told me that.’
Sister Ignazio was coldly congratulatory: ‘God brings good out of evil.’ She told Maria, ‘Father Grierson has been in touch. You know the arrangements.’
The arrangements. Three weeks in hospital then back to Sant’Agostino, when after a few more weeks Eleanor would arrive, staying a fortnight while the baby was weaned, then travelling back via Paris. Maria was to follow a fortnight later, going straight to Ida’s.
She thought: what if I were to run away again? Why shouldn’t I take him to Monteleone, why not? But she knew that she would not.
Father Grierson came to see her. He scarcely looked at the child. ‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘ah yes,’ clicking his fingers. Was it correct, he asked, that Miss Dennison would be visiting Rome first? But when he spoke of Eleanor’s return to England, Maria saw black suddenly before her eyes. Eleanor’s journey back, she thought, with my son – and she felt the familiar, always welcome pricking of her nipples, and then the rush of milk. Soon it soaked through the pads. The child whimpered beside her. Of course he knows. My son knows. As soon as the priest leaves I shall feed him and be happy and not think of the dark shadow that is Eleanor.
Never as happy again as those September days in the hospital. Never as happy again, she thought, gazing at his head nuzzled against her breast. Tiny fingers, starfish-like, clenching and unclenching with pleasure, dark eyes closed. The fragile head with its black down growing so thickly over the soft bones.
Never so happy again as sitting with Sister Andrea, the young nursing nun who had become her friend. They talked about everything but the inevitable parting, the fate of her child. They spoke of Sister Andrea’s home in Emilia, her family, her love of nursing. It appeared she’d been given free time to sit with Maria: perhaps also she had been told to mention the dread subject, for on the last day she told Maria:
‘We shan’t meet again, I expect.’
Maria said sadly, ‘No, I go to England, you know. Although perhaps in the next weeks I could bring him to see you.’
‘Better not,’ Sister Andrea said gently. ‘You see, Maria, God has lent him to you, that’s all. A loan, for a short time. You must think of it like that. However hard, however unjust.’
You don’t understand, Maria thought, not wanting to hear any more. Knowing that the young nun said it only to console – what else in the kindness of her heart could she do? She could not alter the circumstances.
Eleanor arrived. Tired, flustered. There had been upsets in Rome. She had been given the wrong time for a papal audience and so missed it altogether. There had been rumours of malaria. And she was only just recovering from a low fever which had blighted the ten days of her visit.
She wanted at once to see the baby. ‘Where is he? Oh, but he’s beautiful, Maria. How clever you have been, dear.’
At first Maria didn’t want her to touch the child. There was an awkwardness between them much worse than before Eleanor had left for England. It came up when the baptism was discussed. Father Grierson was to do it the next day. Maria didn’t want to think about that, just as she didn’t want to think about his name. She had not dared to name him herself. My son, she had thought only. My son.
‘Our bambino, dear. An English name might be best, don’t you think? Since he’s to be brought up an Englishman.’ She hesitated. ‘Would you, should you mind, Guy? It is, or was rather, my brother’s name. The one who died.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Sure,’ Maria said. ‘That’s all right.’ Guy, she thought. Who is he? How can he be Guy, this black-headed, brown-eyed child who is all mine?
Eleanor took her to more art galleries. Maria did not like to go far: ‘In case he cries for me and I’m not there.’ Gently Eleanor reminded her that she must wean him. She had tried not to think of that. It was enough that they were to be parted. Now it was explained to her that she must squeeze from her breasts enough milk for one and then two feeds a day, and this would be given in a bottle. Freshly boiled milk would be substituted gradually: asses’ milk from the Via delle Bombarde to begin with. Her own milk would dry up.
How terrible, she thought, how terrible. Perhaps Eleanor should engage a wet nurse for the journey and the first few weeks? She hated the galleries, the museums now. Her breasts, heavy with milk, mocked her. She was aware of her sulkiness, her preoccupation, as Eleanor tried oh so patiently to draw her out. If it feels like this now, she thought, how will it be then?
The dreaded day came. A nurse would be travelling with Eleanor and the baby as far as Paris. Eleanor had taken Maria to meet the widow and daughter who would accompany her back to London in two weeks’ time.
‘Perhaps it might be best,’ Eleanor told her now, ‘if you said goodbye to Guy in his crib and then went out for a little walk. Feed him and bath him first and lay him down. And then when you come back, it will all be over.’
It will all be over … She bathed him, alone, the tears obstinately refusing to flow. Only the milk flowed – unwanted.
The last feed, from a bottle. She could not bear this, as she could not bear the pressure of her full breasts. ‘Why shouldn’t we?’ she asked, unbuttoning for the last time. Last night he had refused the bottle, spitting out the rubber teat. What is to be done, she thought, if he refuses his food, starves, wastes away?
He clung to her. She knew that he knew. When he’d finished, she changed him and wrapped him in the blue crochet shawl he would travel in. His hands were hidden now, hands that had plucked at her breast, tiny peeling fingernails. She held him in her arms. He smiled at her, cooing, expecting her smile in return. She could not.
Eleanor’s voice. Eleanor’s face. ‘You must go now, dear.’ Maria scarcely lifted her head. ‘You’ve said goodbye?’
�
��I don’t –’ Maria began. Then ‘Yes,’ she said dully. She walked away from Eleanor, the room, the building, out into the street.
She dragged her feet up the steps of the nearby church. She sat on a stone bench at the side. From time to time she stuffed her knuckles into her mouth so that she didn’t cry out. Some of the time the pain was so bad that she lost all sensation. Leaning forward, she rocked to and fro. Almost opposite her was a Pietà. Mourning mother, body of her dead grown son. She felt it inside her, as she had not been able to feel the joy of the Annunciation. If I should begin to cry out, to scream, I should never stop.
Out in the street again, the milk rushed in. She was already hard with it by the time she reached her cell. Eleanor and the baby were gone.
There were two weeks to fill in at the convent. Her embroidery must have been quite good since they asked her to demonstrate stitches to the new pupils. And all the while the unwanted milk came in, again and again, relentlessly. Her breasts beneath their binder were like wood. She could not sleep at night.
When the time came to leave she said goodbye to as few people as possible. She managed to avoid Sister Ignazio.
The widowed Mrs Foster-King and her daughter were kindness itself. ‘We heard you hadn’t been well, my dear.’ Over dinner in the restaurant car she told them about life in America. They wanted an account of the sinking of the Lusy. She gave it as if speaking of another person. That is not, she thought, the worst thing that has happened to me.
The weather grew chill as they crossed France. When she emerged sick and shaky from the boat train at Victoria, an icy sleet was falling. Ida, with Lettice, was there to meet her.
The lilac was in bloom in the square below the Gloucester Road flat. Now it was truly spring. After supper, they sat with the window open on to the small balcony where primulas flowered in the boxes. Down in the street, a motor roared to a halt, a door slammed, then slammed again.
‘What a noise,’ Lettice said. ‘Some people, really.’
Ida peered behind the lace curtain. ‘It’s Pip Carstairs. Good heavens. And that’s Sybil with him –’
‘Whoever or whatever is Pip?’ Lettice asked.
‘Oh, people from home. They’re very big in Middlesbrough, the Carstairs.’
Maria went to the door.
‘Can we come in?’ Pip said. He was no longer the Scarlet Pimpernel but a big man soberly dressed in dinner jacket and black tie. Sybil, beside him, was wrapped in a white marabou cloak. Pearl globes hung from her ears.
‘It’s my idea,’ she said, ‘I was just dying to see you.’
When she had climbed the stairs, ‘Ida Grainger,’ she cried. ‘Look, it’s me, Sybil. I’m in London!’
‘And so are a few million others,’ Pip said. ‘Some even live here, like Ida and Maria, and –?’ Lettice, introduced, stood back a little, wary, seeming to appraise them both.
‘Working women,’ Pip said. ‘It’ll be suffrage next.’
‘Oh, I get so jealous,’ Sybil said. ‘To live in London.’
‘Sit down, do,’ Ida said.
Lettice said: ‘I’ll put on the kettle for tea. Or boil up some coffee.’
Not tea, Pip said. Coffee, perhaps? They were on their way from a drinks party to a dinner in Princes Gate. ‘Sybil wouldn’t hear of our not looking in. She’s in Town for a few days … I’ve an exeat from college – I can make up nights after term ends. Tomorrow I shall show her Oxford.’
Sybil had taken off the marabou to reveal a green silk chiffon dress, embroidered on front and sleeves with chain-stitched flowers. They sipped politely Lettice’s remarkably awful coffee. (Neither Maria nor Ida could stop her re-using yesterday’s grounds. ‘Water’s poured on to tea leaves twice,’ she told them cuttingly, ‘why not coffee?’) Ida had found some ginger biscuits. Sybil ate three, one after the other, greedily.
Her brother said: ‘Leave a bit of your schoolgirl appetite. There’ll be six courses at least.’
‘I’m always hungry,’ Sybil said happily. ‘You know me. I could eat a horse.’ She sat beside Maria on the sagging brown leather sofa. It was difficult to recognize the schoolgirl of eighteen months ago. ‘I’m staying with my aunt and uncle. In St John’s Wood. They’re dreadfully nice. You must meet them, Maria. I used just to write to them at Christmas, I didn’t realize they were such fun. I’m having a wonderful time –’
‘Even if she’s only sixteen and a bit,’ Pip said. ‘Next year you can do everything properly.’
‘Oh please, I can’t wait,’ Sybil said.
Maria saw Pip watching her as Sybil spoke. If she had cared about her appearance she would have minded being caught this evening, unkempt hair falling loose, her body lumpy in the sober beige jersey suit chosen for the office.
Sybil quizzed her about life as a working girl. ‘Typing and doing Pitman’s – it must be fearfully difficult.’
Pip asked her, ‘Is a stenoggie’s lot an ‘appy one?’
Maria smiled.
‘How extraordinary,’ Lettice said when, after many promises from Sybil to keep in touch, they’d left. ‘An industrial family, isn’t it?’ She was a Brigadier’s daughter, and often made comments which were meant perhaps to rile Ida.
‘Yes,’ Ida said, collecting up the cups, ‘as of course is ours.’
The room, the flat seemed suddenly empty. To Maria, sad at their going, they seemed to have brought with them not only reminders of home, but also a glitter and an excitement. Perhaps London had more to offer than stenography with Messrs Frognal and Harrison? And life with Ida and Lettice.
‘Back to work,’ Lettice said now, briskly. ‘I was able to get the second of the Marshall books out, Ida, they’d been kept back on loan.’ She turned to Maria, ‘Now you’re settled, why don’t you take up some serious study? Improve yourself. So that you don’t have to stay always in an office.’
Who cares? Maria thought. She yawned and said that she was ready for bed.
For a few days after she wondered if Sybil would perhaps write or call. She thought: I should like her for a friend. But when a letter arrived ten days later it was from Pip, not Sybil.
… My chatterbox sister, little monkey, has got permission to come up for college Commem. This year promises to be terrifically good fun and we wondered if you could be persuaded to join us? It would be very jolly if you could. I remember you as a good dancer – Marie Antoinette to my Pimpernel!! Sybil will be chaperoned by our aunt and uncle but this could include you, should the fair Ida be worried (she looked as if she might be, or rather her formidable friend did!) I hope I haven’t left it too late … PS. Sybil says you absolutely must!
When she first read the letter, she thought: I don’t want to. What business had she dancing? But then sometime in the morning, she thought: Why not? It would be an escape from London; Sybil was sweet and lively and Pip pleasant. Nostrils full of the dusty inky smell of the office: Yes, I shall go, she thought.
Ida was thrilled for her. ‘All right for some,’ Lettice said, ‘I’d consider it rather a shocking dissipation.’ Ida produced money which she said was from Uncle Eric, so that Maria could have a frock made. She chose pink silk with silver and pink beading and gathered side panels. A sudden rush of interest surprised her, as if there rose above her heavy, dead heart, something light, frothy, unexpected.
Taking leave from Frognal and Harrison’s was going to be a problem. She wasn’t getting on very well there. Because Uncle Eric had spent money on her training, she tried, but she wasn’t really suited. Betty and Gladys were not deliberately unfriendly – it wasn’t the Lusy again – but they had been together so long, looking conspiratorially across the oak desks, making faces behind Miss Hailey’s back, that without meaning to, they excluded. They were always kind. ‘Poor thing,’ they would say when she came in with a cold. ‘Poor thing,’ when she couldn’t read back her dictation. Betty gave her own valuable time to help, although she had no shorthand.
‘I suppose it could read “something something of varyi
ng thicknesses”. But then it could be “unvarying” couldn’t it?’ The letter, once transcribed, had to be translated into Italian. After the first days there, she discovered that no one in the firm knew more than a few words of Italian, so she stopped bothering too much about the shorthand phrases and words she couldn’t read back. It’s probably this or that, she would tell herself before going on to the easy part: turning her version into Italian. Her figures were always correct. ‘Yes,’ Mr Frognal would say, running his eyes over the letter, ‘yes, 187 was the quantity specified.’ Neither he nor Mr Harrison ever admitted they didn’t know Italian.
But before the letters were signed, Miss Hailey had to see them. Usually she found fault: the eraser had been rubbed too hard, or two keys had jammed making an ugly black mark.
She’d always known that sooner or later, they would catch up with her. It was Miss Hailey who brought her the message that Mr Frognal wished to see her at once. Her satisfied smile showed that she knew what it was about.
Mr Frognal told Maria, ‘You must leave. As soon as possible. You are useless to us.’
‘In what way haven’t I given satisfaction?’
He took up a paper. ‘Look at this reply, in English, please note, from Siena. They’re angry about our querying …’ He turned some pages. ‘It appears they sent what we asked for on at least two occasions. It was you at fault. Either you don’t know your Pitman or don’t know Italian. Why not ask if you weren’t certain?’
‘I was certain,’ Maria said doggedly.
There was money involved, he told her. She sensed he was angry with himself that something should have gone wrong so far down, at the humble end of the chain. ‘You can stay the week out. Then take your skills elsewhere.’
The Commem Ball at Oxford was not long away. She had already lied to Ida, telling her time off was settled. She thought: Why not leave now? But she would have to get another post. In the Morning Post she saw that Swan and Edgar’s, in Piccadilly Circus, required an assistant in their haberdashery department.
The Golden Lion Page 16
