‘Mammie,’ I whisper, but she does not stir her head towards me. It has come so fast.
‘Let her rest,’ says Hannah.
An hour passes, and another. The doctor comes, lifts her wrist to take her pulse, touches the blotches on her skin, says she must take more laudanum. Augustus appears at the bedroom door and steps to my mother’s side.
‘Julia,’ he says peremptorily, ‘Julia!’ just as if she has slept too late in the morning. She rouses, looks up at him in dark confusion and then falls back into a stupor.
Later I wash her temples with orange-flower water. She feels it: she opens her eyes. She knows Hannah, and she knows me. I see her eyes following me as I squeeze out the cloth. Hannah is there again with the laudanum. She sinks into sleep once more but she is restless, as if she has dreams that alarm her, and she pushes feebly at the bedclothes.
‘I’m here, Mammie,’ I say. ‘It’s me, Lizzie. Don’t be frightened.’ As the words come out of my mouth I remember how she has so often said them to me in the dark of the night, when I woke in fear.
‘Elizabeth,’ says Hannah sharply, ‘look at her hands.’
I do not know what to look for. The blotches on her skin are the same. Her fingers pluck at the edge of the sheet. Her mouth is open again, her nose prominent. The softness of her cheeks has fallen away. Her breath snores and catches.
‘The way she’s pulling at the sheet, it means she’s going,’ says Hannah. ‘Shall I bring Augustus?’
‘No,’ I say.
I sit with her until she dies, and then Hannah and I wash away the blood and filth from her body with clean water. I sponge her with lavender water so that she will smell sweet. The midwife has come back and she knows how to bind my mother’s jaw, stop up all the orifices of her body and then lay her out on the bed with her arms folded across her breasts. But she cannot stop the milk that still leaks from them.
We call Augustus then. He stumbles, gives a great cry and throws himself down on his knees beside the bed, sobbing. I watch him from far away with cold amazement, thinking: So you did love her.
I did not cry and my hands did not tremble as I helped to wash her and lay her out. The midwife pressed down Mammie’s eyelids firmly, with her thumbs. You must never touch people’s eyes: Mammie told me that when I was little. It seems so long since she spoke that I cannot remember what her last words were.
11
‘No, Augustus, Thomas is not thriving.’
Caroline Farquhar kept her stare on me. ‘Really, Elizabeth,’ she said, ‘I think Mr Gleeson has a father’s feeling, and knows better than you how his son does.’
She might say what she liked on the subject: I would not answer her. She might call him Mr Gleeson, but she did not fool me. I knew that in her heart he was her own Augustus.
Caroline Farquhar had arrived post-haste after my mother’s death, to apply the balm of consolation to the wounded soul of a great man. She wanted to closet herself with Augustus and decide every detail of what should be done with my mother’s papers. I was too young and Hannah too old.
‘And besides,’ she had said, ‘I am so very great an admirer of your mother’s genius! There is no one – always excepting of course Mr Gleeson – who more perfectly understands it. You mourn her in the flesh, my dear Elizabeth, but we mourn her in the spirit.’
The feathers in her hat had swept over me as she passed by. She barely noticed Thomas. Any baby must be an encumbrance, and one who reminded Augustus of his dead wife could not be tolerated. The sooner the baby was out of the house and placed with a decent woman in some village not too close by, the better.
‘Julia’s legacy must be safeguarded,’ she had declared. ‘Not one precious word must be lost to the generations yet to come.’ Like Augustus, she had a way of looking as if her phrases pleased her, and ought to be recorded.
Augustus could not see Caroline for what she was. He did not perceive her as a woman: she was a useful appendage, like an umbrella. He did not see that she had grasped him by the handle and intended to have him. I wished he would open his eyes. Once Caroline Farquhar possessed Augustus, her interest in my mother’s work would blow away like smoke.
Augustus realised none of it, any more that the sheep understands the slaughter until its throat is bare to the knife. He thought that Caroline had come to support all of us out of the goodness of her heart. She was staying with the Frobishers in Little George Street, but she was at Augustus’s lodgings all day long. He believed Caroline was a true radical, because she told him so. She had escaped from the prison of her position. He did not see that she made sure the way was left open behind her, and that she could return to her privileges any time she chose. She would never burn the bridge behind her, as my parents had done.
Caroline Farquhar possessed a great deal of money but very little beauty, and so Augustus could not imagine that she might set her cap at him. Like many ugly men, he prized beauty and believed that he merited its possession. He had his own vanities, innocent as they were. Now, because I told him that Thomas was not thriving, his feathers were ruffled.
‘I am sure Thomas does well with Mrs Platt,’ he said. ‘She had references from the Milward family, who spoke of her as a most excellent and conscientious wet-nurse.’
‘And who most conveniently left Bristol for Exeter, so that we were unable to speak to them about this excellence and conscience of hers,’ I said. ‘When did you last see Thomas, Augustus?’
‘You know very well that I have been in Bruton and Frome these past two weeks, visiting the silk mills.’
He was huffy now. He did not want his work slighted: those endless journeys of his; the gathering of information that he would prose into his pamphlets. Caroline never slighted him. I could hardly believe she was sincere, but he believed it. Caroline, with her maid, had accompanied him on his tour of the mills. I wondered what the silk-throwers of Bruton had made of them. Augustus was accustomed to walking thirty miles, but Caroline’s feet barely touched the ground. She and her maid would put up at the best inn, and she would open her blue, blank eyes at the sight of hardships she was sure that she would never share.
I thought of the skin around Mammie’s eyes, creased and tender. I thought of her only a very little at a time. Instead, I thought of Thomas.
‘Really, Elizabeth, you take rather too much upon yourself,’ said Caroline. ‘Mr Gleeson has done everything to ensure the child’s welfare.’ She turned to Augustus, as if the conversation was closed. ‘We must continue with the draft of your article,’ she said to him in a low, private tone.
To do justice to Augustus, I think he scarcely noticed whether Caroline was with him or not. He worked on, buzzing like a fly at a window through which he would never be able to escape. He did not seem to notice his own misery, and could do nothing to ease it. He still looked up when the door opened, as if he expected to see my mother come in, untying the strings of her bonnet. I saw her too, in a flash that hurt my eyes. I saw her fingers find the knot in the strings and loosen it, deftly, rapidly, as she did everything. She was not dragging with pregnancy now: she was herself again.
‘Lizzie,’ she said, ‘Lizzie, tell me, how has Thomas been?’
She had been out and now she was back. I had taken care of the baby for her. The light went and she disappeared.
‘I went down as far as Evercreech, to the Albion Silk Mill,’ went on Augustus.
‘And I have been here,’ I said. ‘I visited Thomas this morning. Mrs Platt did not expect me and he was lying in his dirt. He was crying with hunger, but she was out visiting a neighbour. She had left a girl of eight to watch him. The child told me that she often earns her halfpenny that way.’
I did not tell him how many times I had walked out to the village, with the excuse of a fine cream cheese for Mrs Platt, a rattle for Thomas, a cotton quilt for his cradle.
‘I hope you did not quarrel with Mrs Platt, Lizzie.’
‘Of course not. I would never quarrel with a woman who has sole charge
of Thomas. She has only to say that he suffered a fit and died of it, and there will be no gainsaying her. I was extremely civil and agreed with her that a child of that age must cry to exercise its lungs. When she said she needed a further allowance for porter to strengthen her milk, I said I would discuss it with you and visit her again tomorrow with your answer.’
‘I am paying her very good wages already!’ exclaimed Augustus.
‘Of course you are. There can be no question of paying more. Thomas must be fetched away immediately, before harm comes to him.’
‘But what would we do with him here?’
‘You would not need to do anything, Augustus. You must go on with your article. I can look after him. He is almost three months old now,’ I said, exaggerating Thomas’s nine weeks of age. ‘He can be fed from a pap boat. I have spoken to Mr Orchard and he says Thomas will do very well on pap. He is a good apothecary and will oversee everything.’
‘Hannah might care for him, I suppose,’ said Augustus slowly.
‘No. Hannah is too old. She cannot be expected to care for Thomas now.’
‘My dear Elizabeth, you can scarcely make your husband a present of a three-months’ child,’ broke in Caroline. She could not help herself, although it would have been better policy to hide her dislike of me.
‘That is a point,’ said Augustus. ‘That is a point, indeed. What do you say to it, Lizzie?’
‘I have already spoken to Diner,’ I said. It was a lie, but it would soon become the truth.
‘Have the child here!’ said Diner. He stood up, and strode around the table without looking at me. As he turned, he struck the table’s surface with the flat of his hand. My throat tightened. My voice did not want to emerge, but I thought of Thomas in the cradle at Mrs Platt’s. When I’d unwrapped him there were crusts of filth on his scrawny thighs. I could not be silent.
‘Only for a little while,’ I said, ‘until his health is restored, and then Augustus will have a nurse for him. If he stays with that Platt woman, he will die.’
‘Lizzie, you must know that many infants have the strength to come into the world but not to remain in it.’
‘Thomas is all I have left of my mother.’
Diner walked around the table again, head down. He went more slowly now and his hands were loose at his sides. After a while he lifted his head, looked at me and said, ‘You have a soft heart, Lizzie. Too soft, perhaps.’
‘I am not as soft as you believe,’ I said. ‘I was firm when you asked me to marry you. My mother did not want it. Augustus did not want it. None of my friends knew or understood you then.’
‘They would have liked to see you married to Richard Sacks, perhaps,’ said Diner, and amusement glinted in his eye.
‘Good God, I would not touch such a man.’
‘But you touched me.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were my girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘And are you mine now, Lizzie, above all others?’
I pushed away Mammie’s shadow. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know that I am. And Thomas is part of me. When I see him suffer I must fight for him.’
‘Fight?’
‘Yes. I will not let him die because of that woman’s greed and idleness.’
He stared at me, measuring me. ‘Would you fight for me, Lizzie?’
‘Your enemy will be my enemy.’
He smiled. ‘Now I see that I was right to twist our names together into the ceiling. You are part of me. I suppose we must have the child. But mind, Lizzie, not for long. Once he is thriving, he must return to his father.’
I smiled too. He reached out and tipped up my chin to gaze more closely into my eyes.
‘Stay like that,’ he said.
And so now Thomas was in the house. He was asleep in his cradle in the attic beside Philo, so that she could rock him when he woke. He was her charge, and he must not disturb Diner. He was a good baby and usually he slept on until it was light. I had the double task of making sure that Thomas was well fed and cared for, and making it appear to Diner that there was no baby in the house.
I would never have thought that something as small as Thomas could make so much work. We seemed to be forever feeding him, cleaning him, hushing him when he cried, and all the while food must be bought and cooked, the house cleaned, the washing done. Each night I fell into bed, exhausted, but when Diner reached for me I turned to him as if gladly. He must not feel a change, even though I longed for sleep above anything. Afterwards I slept in a fury of dreaming. The dreams left their taint behind. I woke with my heart beating fast and my nightgown stuck to my body. It was always dark. I was always afraid that something had happened in the night, and Thomas was dead. Diner lay still at my side. His nights had grown quieter, while mine were full of tumult.
I had succeeded. I’d brought Thomas into the house, where he would be safe. Sometimes, at night, I would steal upstairs and into Philo’s room. The boards did not creak as I tiptoed across the floor, put my hand into the cradle and felt the heat of Thomas.
‘Where’s the baby, Lizzie?’ I heard Mammie say.
‘He’s here with me,’ I answered. ‘Don’t be frightened, Mammie. Go back to sleep now.’
‘Thank you, my bird,’ she said. ‘My lovely girl.’
I waited and waited, until I felt her presence leave us. Slowly it withdrew, like the tide slipping down the banks. I waited until there was nothing. Warmth rose from Thomas. He stirred and snuffled in his sleep and I rocked the cradle gently until he settled again. Philo snored. The smell of the baby was sour and sweet, milk and urine and the smell like bread where sweat would gather on the plumes of his hair and damp them down.
Diner did not want me to bear a child. He withdrew from me and voided his spunk on the sheets. I tucked Thomas’s shawl around his feet and left him with Philo.
The days passed. Thomas needed careful feeding, I said to Diner, after his neglect by Mrs Platt. Philo was a sensible girl and able to do everything under my supervision. It would not be so long before the baby was well enough to go home to his father. I kept this thought in Diner’s mind because I know how finely the balance hung. He tolerated Thomas now, but he might soon resent him.
‘You will be worn out, Lizzie,’ he accused me one night when he came home to find me fallen asleep at the kitchen table.
‘I would not choose to have Thomas here, if he were well,’ I said quickly. ‘But sit down now. You have not had a glass of wine.’
I poured it and gave it to him, with the nip of sugar he always held in his mouth while he drank.
Every morning, as soon as Diner had left the house, I took Thomas from Philo. I mixed goat’s milk with arrowroot and a little sugar, as Mr Orchard had directed, and I fed Thomas from the pap boat with a spoon. He ate eagerly, snuffling for more, heating himself until a dew of sweat stood on the bridge of his nose. Day by day, the wrinkles on his legs filled out with flesh. He was smooth-skinned now. He cried lustily for his food, and I could not push the pap into his mouth fast enough to satisfy him. His flailing fists knocked the spoon out of my hand. I held him close while he nuzzled and butted at me, as if he expected to find milk from my breast. My breasts ached and I thought: This is how I would feel, if he were my own.
Once I locked the bedroom door, unbuttoned the bodice of my dress and then untied the ribbons of my camisole. I unwrapped Thomas’s shawl and held him against my naked breast. He was sleepy after his pap but he turned into me and began to nuzzle me with his lips. I cupped his head with my hand. For a moment I did not know who I was. I looked at my hand and thought it was lined and stained with ink.
I was careful not to inflame Diner’s suspicions by signs of tenderness for the baby. Instead, I cleared away the feeding things, rattles and cradle as evening came on, and gave Thomas back to Philo as soon as I heard the door. I did not speak of the baby to Diner unless he asked. You would rarely have guessed, from our conversation, that Thomas was in the house.
I had no tears fo
r Mammie. She still came to me in flashes, as if she were working so hard on one of her pamphlets that she barely had time to eat or speak. I was quite used to that. Sometimes I thought I heard her in the next room, writing. The quill flowed across the paper with a steady, frictional, familiar sound, and then there was a pause while she dipped the nib into her inkwell. She would be silent, thinking, and then the quill would begin its journey again over the white paper. If I listened I could never hear it, but if I paid no attention, the sound might come to me.
I held Thomas in my arms, and fed him, and kissed the hollow at the nape of his neck before I laid him back in his cradle. I washed and aired the pap boat. The goat we had hired for his milk was tethered on the Downs and the milk brought to us fresh each morning. Augustus gave me a few shillings, sheepishly, and I paid for the rest out of what I still had from my grandfather’s money. Diner never asked about it. Philo would run out with the blue jug to be filled with milk. She brought it in, warm and frothing, covered the jug with muslin and placed it in the larder.
November gave way to December. The weather was cold, with such drenching rains that some days I never left the house. Diner’s boots were heavy with mud and his cape soaked. When I heard him come in I would run to him and lift the sodden cloth from his shoulders. I would make him sit on the oak chair in the hall and take off his boots for him. I would never have thought of doing such things before Thomas came. Diner sat there, wet and weary all through. He looked as if he would have liked never to stir again, but the next day he would be up again long before it was light, and go out again into the raw morning.
We ate in the kitchen. He only wanted plain food, and besides money was short. He was happy with a bowl of broth, a chunk of bread, cheese or ham. But there must be sugar. Always he needed a piece of sugar curled from the loaf, to hold in his mouth while he drank his wine. He drank more wine than he used to. When he was warm and softened he would reach out, touch my hair and smile. One night he said: ‘This is as I thought it would be.’