Every baby was born the same way, the mother as if mortally wounded yet recovering. A better system’s not yet been invented, the midwife said, in effect doing nothing. Clara made tea. She toasted bread and boiled eggs to see them through the night. They ate, as if to sustain Emma by it.
At ten minutes past eight, when Clara was dozing in the rocking chair, the midwife shook her and said it was a boy. Did she want to come and look at the eight-pound wonder? I bloody do not, she thought, opening the curtains. The snowing had stopped but lay thick along the street. Children were going to school. A postman struggled through drifts with his heavy bag. How could the world go on at such a time? She walked upstairs, knowing that like the wave the world was permanent – as the song said – and she began to laugh but remembered to stop when opening the door.
The wolf had gone, and left a blanket of snow behind. Emma was asleep, equally whitened by the night, the baby by her side. ‘She’ll call him Thomas,’ the midwife said. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘It’s got to be called something,’ Clara answered.
Rachel laid a finger on Emma’s forehead. ‘I thought her time would never end.’ Clara waited for her to say more, but she leaned across the bed and put the palm of her hand under Emma’s nightdress, holding it on her left breast till she thought to take the golden Star of David from her own neck and lay it on the table as a present for the baby. ‘Please God they’ll both be well.’
‘We shall have to make sure it’s the end of her troubles,’ Clara said.
‘Nothing ever ends,’ Rachel told her, before leaving for London a fortnight later. ‘Our lives only go on so that Death can get its reckoning.’
Clara laughed, and so did Emma, who put her arms around her mother and said after a kiss: ‘Where did you hear such sombre old twaddle?’
Rachel pushed her away, but Clara noted that it was a playful action. There was an air of affection before their parting.
‘It certainly isn’t twaddle. Eternal truths need stressing again and again. They always have – especially to one’s children. And you’re still children, don’t forget, till I die, whatever you may think.’
‘Eternal truths!’ Emma exclaimed. ‘Really, they only enslave us, mother.’
‘They do if you want them to,’ Rachel said. ‘But they needn’t at all. Eternal truths keep people like us civilized. We’d be badly off without them. And they’re more than necessary for the rest of the world.’
Emma smiled, and helped her on with her coat. ‘I hope not.’
‘Hope!’ Rachel said. ‘You won’t get very far on that – though I should hope, I suppose, that you’ll both find good husbands before very long.’
But Clara had made up her mind never to marry, and never to have children. Any such process would certainly stop with her. A magazine article said that all women should have children, even if only one, for what woman, the wise man asked, wanted to be ‘the end of the line’? It was bad for the woman, bad for society, and bad for the country. Clara threw the magazine across the parlour. If she were destined to be lonely at the end of the line, so be it, she snorted. And what damned line did the fool mean? A clothes line? Let the idiot have children himself, if he could. And if she didn’t, there were millions around her who most certainly would, so as far as the country went there was nothing to fear. Let the people breed. It would give them something to do in their otherwise empty lives. Nature had organized things very well, except that the country had too many inhabitants for comfort, judging by the queues for buses, trains and picture-houses which hadn’t been there before the war. But as for her – no children, she told herself, ever.
12
When the train arrived at Liverpool Street station they said that Rachel had been robbed, and then died from a heart attack, but a farmer found her purse by the railway line and gave it to the police. Nothing was missing. Her lost Star of David, Clara explained to her father when he asked, had been given to the new baby.
Percy wrote in his letter that his dear wife must have passed away in an effort to get out of the speeding train, and dropped the purse during the heart-failure which stopped her from doing so. She had not wanted to die while in the moving carriage, and perhaps she would still be here if she hadn’t done such a lot of travelling in the last few months. He wondered if Emma knew that self-centred actions invariably had such repercussions? The strain on her mother had been more than either she or Clara had imagined. He had told her not to go so often to Cambridge, and they had quarrelled about it on more than one occasion. But she had been too devoted to listen, and in such a matter he had not persisted. She was one of the good people of the world, without whose kind we might all become barbarians again.
Across the letter Clara had written in broad red pencil: ‘SNAKE! HYPOCRITE!’ – and called him as much to his face after the funeral. ‘Your sort are the barbarians,’ she wrote in the small space left after he had signed his name.
13
‘I had a letter from father,’ she said.
‘You are lucky,’ Emma replied.
‘Aren’t you interested?’
‘Burn it – for all I care.’
Clara always mentioned Emma and the baby when she wrote to her father, if only to prove to herself that she was not the sort of person who would become a barbarian if people like her mother ceased to exist. She tried to count herself charitable in her thoughts and at least some of her actions, while aware that she rarely succeeded in doing anything good. Her father’s favourite saying was that the road to hell was paved with good intentions, and she decided that what for many people might be a very effective footpath she had made into a Ministry of Transport ‘A’ Road by concocting in her own mind plans for helpful actions which through inanition she neglected to carry out. Her only kindnesses, she supposed, were those which came to her suddenly and were accomplished with no inner discussion. To mull over doing good beforehand was a way of giving herself the credit for it, though she would never allow herself to receive any when she did help someone.
She wrote to her father frequently now that he was alone, and in one letter added a postcript too quickly to be considered, saying wouldn’t it be best if the three of them came to live at home? ‘The lease will be finished on this hole of a house in a couple of months, and it’s difficult to know where we will go when it is.’
The letter was in the post before she wondered whether her suggestion had been wise. She could hardly go to the pillar box and get it back and had, after all, only done it for the best. ‘For the best she had done it,’ her mother used to say, when Clara dropped her dinner plate in the nursery, or pulled a plant in the garden, and Emma would take up the call so that Rachel told her to stop or she too would be sent to her room.
Clara waited, till she forgot either to wait or hope, and as the days went by Emma fed her baby with care and assiduity. Time had no meaning now that she was so occupied. ‘It’s only for a while, though,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’ll want to do something soon.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Work. Act. Get out of this.’
Did she think she could find any sort of job with an illegitimate child clinging to her waist?
‘I want to travel.’ She put her book down. ‘There’s no place in the world I don’t want to go. But I wish I’d been born a man.’
Clara laughed. ‘They have their troubles too, or so I understand.’
‘Oh yes, but I’d still be me, and things would be easier. I’d be able to do much more. I wouldn’t feel so weighed down with unnecessary complications.’
‘Things will turn out all right.’ Clara lit a cigarette. ‘Except, of course, that you have Thomas to care for now.’
‘Give me one. You know I like to smoke after lunch. I’ll get someone to look after him whenever I go away.’
‘A person you can trust, I hope.’ Clara could not see herself nursing a baby, not even her sister’s. The idea seemed ludicrous. ‘Mother would have taken him, I expect, but I ca
n’t imagine father setting to.’
Emma lifted her book again. ‘I shall find someone.’
On fine days the maid pushed the high perambulator down the street, often when Clara thought the weather too damp and bitter for him to be out. He would get a chill, or something worse. But Emma said he had to get used to the elements, otherwise he would be vulnerable to all sorts of things when he grew up.
Their father said in a letter that the emptiness of the house became more appalling every day. He passed the time in a trance, looking forward to the night, but when sleep did come he woke up because the house was on fire, only to find that it was not. The nightmare came back, and he was afraid that he would be burned to death on a night when he did not dream at all. He wanted to hear real voices instead of imaginary ones, no matter what they said about him. The servants had left, and he didn’t know why. Perhaps Clara would arrange things. Emma and the baby could have the large sunny room overlooking the garden.
The letter was not a concession, she knew, but a demand that Clara could not ignore. She reflected on how the world must be full of old, selfish and no longer innocent children. Most had never been innocent, though they had all been helpless. Her father still was. He took care to remind her that he did not have much longer to live. He lied out of self-pity. She thought about his life of recurring and debilitating mental agony that was inexplicable until John had been killed in action, and Rachel had died. He and Rachel had been such sweethearts; right till the end, she thought scathingly; and he would never know how lucky he had been that one of the Chosen had chosen him.
The only hope of getting another house, Clara said, was to take a cottage. It was impossible to find anything in Cambridge. But Emma couldn’t bear to be cut off somewhere in the countryside. ‘I’m dying of loneliness as it is. In any case, can you imagine me in some honeysuckle bijou rural slum without even room to swing a baby? Lighting oil lamps and getting water from a well? I’d become prim, and eccentric, and as coarse as an old witch. I don’t feel like growing old just yet.’
‘The Jenkinsons will be back from New Zealand in three weeks,’ Clara reminded her. ‘We have to move.’
‘It’ll be fun having nowhere to go. Do you think we’ll be put out on the street like vagrants? What an adventure if we have to go to the workhouse!’
‘Oh do be serious.’
‘All right. If it upsets you, I’ll do as you say.’
‘Father asked us to go back.’
‘You mean he wants you to be his housekeeper?’
‘He’d like us to go home.’
Emma was silent.
‘Don’t pout like that. I suppose he does think we’ll make his life tolerable, but it might suit us. After all, Highgate’s a good place to live, and you’ll be quite close to town. Maybe we’ll get to a show, or go to dinner now and again. Even I fancy a bit of distraction.’
The baby cried, and Emma ran up the stairs calling: ‘Anything you like. I’ll do whatever you say.’
14
Emma watched her pack. ‘You’re like the Rock of Gibraltar.’
Clara hadn’t thought of it like that, saw herself as stupidly undertaking tasks beyond her strength, and never able to change her mind or complain once she had started, but always more or less muddling through. It was not a matter of assuming her mother’s place so much as of facing situations Rachel wouldn’t have considered. There seemed nothing but herself standing between order and disaster, yet the chaos inside could dissolve her strength at any moment. She knew she must hold on and not let it happen, and felt frightened at each new responsibility.
The carriers came for their trunks, cases and perambulator. In half an hour a motor cab would take them to the station, and Mr and Mrs Jenkinson would not know that the house had been occupied in their absence. Clara would lock all doors and give the keys to the estate agents on their way to the railway. The maid had been sent off with her box and an extra ten shillings, and there was nothing to do but sit and wait. ‘We won’t notice the bad weather in London,’ Clara said.
Emma sat by the last of the embers with the swaddled baby on her knees. ‘The first thing we must do is get a nursemaid, so that we can go out together.’
‘It’ll be spring on Hampstead Heath,’ Clara said.
‘We’ll have supper at Romano’s! London’s going to be marvellous. I hope our old gramophone still goes. We’ll go to the Alhambra and the Empire. We’ll actually see people in Hyde Park! I want to come back to life. I feel I’ve been cut off for years.’
‘You poor thing,’ Clara mocked. ‘I do hope you won’t be disappointed in the great metropolis.’
‘I won’t,’ Emma said vehemently. ‘Believe me.’
‘Well, there’ll be more to do than just go around enjoying yourself.’
When Emma reached to press her hand the baby almost fell from her knee. She caught him in time, but cried out: ‘Don’t bother me with your sanctimonious advice. I’ve told you before that I don’t like it. I can look after myself.’
Clara sat straight. Perhaps there would be an end to it soon. There had to be. She wanted to go away, be by herself at a quiet resort in Switzerland where the scenery would rest her soul. She would stay at a hotel on the Rigi for a couple of months and refresh herself, and perhaps meet some other woman of the right sort to talk to in the lounge, or go on long walks together.
‘I keep losing my temper,’ Emma said, ‘but I don’t mean to. I’m sorry.’
Clara smiled. What nonsense to consider taking a holiday while her family needed her. ‘I suppose I’d lose mine if I were in your place. Thank God we’re going home. We’ll be better off there.’
In the train, thin vomit slopped down Thomas’s shawl, and Emma’s eyes enlarged with panic. ‘What shall we do?’
An elderly white-haired man reading his newspaper moved along the seat for fear he would be showered.
‘We must get him to a doctor,’ Emma cried.
‘I wouldn’t pull that communication cord if I were you,’ the man said. ‘It’s a very serious offence.’
Emma turned, forgetting about Thomas. ‘It’s my bloody baby, and he might be dying, and if he is I’ll pull whatever I bloody well like. That’s what the bloody communication cord is for.’ She passed Thomas to Clara, who lifted him high against her shoulder and patted him gently till the vomiting and screaming stopped.
‘Well, that’s my advice,’ the man said. ‘It’s not necessary now, is it?’
Emma sat down. ‘It might have been. I’d stop the world if I thought it was necessary, and since it’s my baby, I’m the one to know, not you.’
Thomas slept, and Clara gave him back. ‘I often get the horrors,’ Emma said, ‘thinking that something dreadful will happen to him. He sucks me dry, yet seems so frail at the same time.’
‘He’s strong and healthy,’ Clara asserted. ‘Look at him. He gets bigger every day, the way he feeds from you, and goes out in all weathers.’
‘I know, but I can’t help the thoughts I have. I dream he’s dead, and when I hear him screaming in the morning because he’s hungry, instead of being annoyed at not having slept properly, I feel so glad that I cry as I feed him.’
Clara could only think that maybe Emma was lucky at being able to give such full expression to her emotional ups and downs. Yet she suffered for no real reason, and her dread was a contagion that spread many times compounded, though it was different for Clara who had nothing in her own mind and body by which to give it reality. Emma’s misery was based on the fulness of herself, but in Clara it only engendered emptiness or dread.
Percy stood inside the iron gate, looking along the road for their taxi. When it stopped, and Clara was halfway across the pavement, he was still gazing in the other direction. He had short grey hair smartly brushed, and seemed younger than when Clara had seen him at the funeral. She called. He turned slowly and smiled. His hand shook as it came out to her. ‘I had business in town, but I put everything off so as to be here and greet you bo
th.’
She drew her hand away to help Emma. The cab driver steadied her out, and laughed as he got ready to catch Thomas in case he fell. ‘My wife dropped the young ‘un,’ he said, ‘so you could say she dropped it twice, in a manner of speaking.’
Percy sent him away with five shillings so as to stop his foul laughter. He tried to smile while looking at the baby. ‘Who’s he like?’
‘Mother,’ Emma said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘No doubt about it.’
‘I see what you mean. And yet I’m not so sure.’
‘He’s from her side,’ Emma insisted.
‘It’s a bit too early to tell, at any rate so vehemently.’ He walked before them to the porch, and rang the bell with great irritation. An elderly woman opened the door. ‘Help in the ladies, and their child,’ he said. ‘Get Audrey to take the cases.’
The cab driver had left their things on the pavement.
15
‘I’m going to like it here,’ said Emma. ‘It isn’t raining, the house is big, and father will soon get used to us.’
Clara lay on the bed. ‘It’s good to be back on my old mattress. Where’s Thomas?’
‘Audrey’s got him. She says she knows about babies because there were nine in her family. She can feed him, as well, when I get him on to bottled milk. I don’t want to be tethered for ever like some animal.’
At the first dining-room meal Emma said she was going to call in a decorator and have her room painted white. While it was being done she would have to occupy her mother’s room. Percy said he thought she should do no such thing. He wouldn’t allow it, in fact. Emma looked at him a full minute without speaking, her caramel eyes glowing as if she would strike him should he say anything further. As soon as he finished dessert he got up and went to his study. They heard his door slam.