Marriage, it turned out, did not entirely banish memories of Samuel. I meant to forget him, I had the best of intentions, but in the long hours of housework and reading he sometimes slipped into my mind, and before I knew it I was picturing him as he bent over a patient or leaned towards the cinema screen. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to say, this happened even when Matthew and I were together, listening to the wireless or playing cribbage; happily, he never seemed to notice.
And then all thoughts of Samuel vanished. I was pregnant. I knew, with utter certainty, after only a few weeks but until Dr. Singer confirmed my condition, I mentioned it to no one. During this period of secrecy, I oscillated between joy and dread. I could not help worrying that history would prevail: the life growing within me would cost my own. Then I would remind myself that
Anne had confessed to similar premonitions, and here she was, fit and well, with Robert.
The companions seemed to guess my state almost as soon as I did myself. Because no house was available in the school grounds, Matthew had rented a cottage on a small farm a mile west of Glenaird, and there was always fetching and carrying to be done. One morning as I stepped out to the clothesline, the woman barred my way. “You have to be careful now,” she said, taking the laundry basket out of my hands. Between them, she and the girl hung the wet sheets on the line.
The day after my appointment with Dr. Singer, I broke the news to Matthew at breakfast. “How could you be?” he said. His hand jerked and the boiled egg I had just set before him flew to the floor. On the one occasion before our wedding when we’d discussed children, Matthew had claimed he was too young for fatherhood. “You’re twenty-eight,” I had said. “The prime of life.” I had not thought he was serious.
Now the viscous mess of egg on the linoleum made my stomach heave, and the reflection of the single bulb above the table off Matthew’s glasses hid his expression. Before I could overcome my queasiness, he glanced at his watch, announced he was late for morning prayers, and hurried from the room. A moment later came the cranking of the car. As the engine fired, I rushed to the door. Too late. All that remained was a plume of exhaust hanging in the chilly air.
I wandered out to the main road. The hills were hidden in mist, and the narrow strip of wet macadam stretched to the horizon with neither car nor tractor in sight. I was standing, staring bleakly in the direction of the school, when the woman tapped my shoulder.
“Come inside,” she said. “It’s freezing.” Her silvery hair was beaded with moisture.
She led the way indoors, and there, to my amazement, a middle-aged man was seated on our sofa. He had the ruddy cheeks of a countryman and the same kind of moustache as David had favoured. I sat down in the armchair, studying him as closely as I dared. He looked familiar, but for the life of me I could not place him. The infirmary had filled my head with faces briefly glimpsed.
“That’s better,” said the woman. “You shouldn’t be loitering in the cold.”
“My father had a theory about the weather,” the man said in a soft Highland accent. “Buchan’s cold spells. It all has to do with certain key days—you know, if December the sixth is warm then the rest of the month will be cold.”
“That sounds like mumbo jumbo,” said the woman.
“No, no, it was quite scientific, but we’re not here to prattle about the climate.” A smile creased his cheeks. “Don’t mind Matthew. He behaved badly this morning, but he’ll come round. Men are odd about these matters. I myself was quite shocked to learn that my dear wife was expecting.”
The woman nodded. “You must take care of yourself. Eat sensibly and don’t worry. When I was carrying my first child, my mother made me eat an apple and an orange every day.”
She dispatched me to put on the kettle, and when I returned the room was empty. Still in a daze, I finished stoking the fires and made soup. Only as I sat down to write to Lily did I realise who the man reminded me of: Barbara’s uncle Jack. His wedding photograph had stood, next to that of her parents, on the sideboard at Ballintyre.
Did Lily still have it? I wondered. And why, after all these years, was a new companion visiting? Then the excitement of telling Lily about the baby dispelled even these speculations.
An hour later I heard the latch lift. Before I could rise, Matthew had me in his arms. “Eva, I’m sorry I was such a beast.” He kissed me, took off his glasses, and kissed me again.
“So you don’t mind?” I whispered.
“On the contrary, I’m delighted. I was just taken aback. I thought being a father was one of those impossible things, the sort the White Queen tells you to practise imagining before breakfast.”
The difficult hours vanished like ice on the griddle. That evening over supper we discussed names. He favoured the heroic: Frederick, Tristram, Georgiana. I was more inclined to the biblical: Mary, Sarah, Ruth.
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” I asked.
Matthew wrinkled his forehead. “Both—either—I don’t care.”
“Nor do I.” But I was sure I carried a daughter. For the first and only time I could read the future.
A few weeks later, walking along the main road to visit Anne, I saw a boy approaching. Head lowered, he was dawdling along, swishing idly at the long grass on the verge with a stick, the picture of dejection. I must have walked like that, I thought, as day after day I wandered home from school with only the girl for company. Then, at the same instant, Scott and I recognised each other. He dropped the stick and ran towards me.
“Matron!”
We shook hands. In the months since I’d seen him he had grown
several inches, and everything about him was too long and thin. I started walking again and he fell in beside me. “This is the wrong direction for you,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I haven’t seen you for ages.”
“We live out at a farm now. You know I got married.”
“The new matron is awful. She doesn’t allow any visitors.”
Other people had made similar remarks about my successor, a London woman who’d rejected all my overtures of friendship; I tried not to show my pleasure at Scott’s comment. Instead I asked interested questions about his schoolwork. When we reached Anne’s house, he gazed at me beseechingly until I invited him to tea next day.
Inside, Robert was asleep and Anne was at the kitchen table, peeling brussels sprouts. I made tea and told her about meeting Scott. “All the time he was ill, I thought if I could nurse him back to health, he would live happily ever after. And there he was, the picture of misery.”
Anne plucked at a sprout. “It’s awful being a child. I remember wanting things so badly and feeling so powerless.”
“What did you want?”
“Piano lessons. More attention from my father. To be taller than Oliver.” She cut a cross in the bottom of a sprout. “What about you?”
I gazed around Anne’s cosy kitchen, the kettle still steaming on the stove, the gingham curtains hanging in the windows. “To be like everyone else,” I said. It seemed a safe approximation. “Yet here we are having babies.”
“It’ll be different for them, though, won’t it? They can have piano lessons if they like.”
I did not dare to answer. Anne peeled another couple of sprouts. “Of course, our parents said that too. Sometimes I watch Robert
sleeping. One minute he’s perfectly peaceful, and the next it’s as if a storm has struck.”
“Perhaps he has bad dreams,” I offered.
“But how does he know about anything bad? Paul and I dote on him, yet already we can’t protect him. There’s something in the air”—she spread her hands—“a dark wind that blows him dark thoughts.”
I sympathised with Anne’s anxieties but they were the anxieties of plenty; how happy I would be when I could worry about my plump, healthy baby having bad dreams. For now, all my wishes, all the good luck I had garnered from magpies and black cats, ladders and four-leaf clovers, was bent on that single moment of double desire: to bring my daughter safely into the world and to remain here to show it to her.
The next day when I told Scott about the baby, he smiled and said he had always wanted a brother or sister. “My friend Fox has two younger sisters. I helped one of them learn to read. And in Nigeria my father’s assistant had a baby, but I wasn’t allowed to play with him. They said he was an abiku.”
“Abiku?”
“May I have some more toast? A baby who’s taken over by a spirit.” He began to spread the jam. “People recognise them when they leave their cribs before they can walk. Abiku don’t live long, because the spirits only want to visit the world for a while. Then they get tired and want to go home. Are you coming to the carol service? I have a solo, an awfully small one.”
“Goodness,” I murmured, remembering the Jewish folk tale Samuel had told me. Then I saw Scott’s puzzled face and quickly assured him I would be at the service. What were his plans for Christmas? He was still talking about going to stay with Fox, their hopes for snow, when Matthew arrived home.
“Come again,” I said, as Scott put on his bicycle clips.
“But not tomorrow,” added Matthew. “We’ll be in Perth.”
We stood in the doorway, waving, as he rode unsteadily away. “I didn’t know we were going to Perth,” I said.
“Well, I had to say something to stop him coming every day.”
As we made Welsh rabbit, Matthew told me that Mr. Thornton had promised us a school house by the end of June. “I wish it could be next week. I worry about you here alone.”
I looked up from the cheese grater, touched by the sudden intimation of his concern. I had often thought that, between the time he drove away in the morning and returned at night, Matthew forgot me utterly.
Scott got his wish for snow with a vengeance. The winter of ’46—’47 was the worst in fifty years. By January our windows were lined with ice and even the pigs at the farm were subdued. The journey to the school could only be made on foot. Twice our electricity failed, and once the pipes froze. One day when Matthew was teaching and I had climbed into bed to keep warm, the woman appeared. “For heaven’s sake,” she exclaimed. “You don’t have the brains you were born with. What about Anne’s spare room?”
The next morning, in icy sunshine, Matthew tied our suitcases to
a sledge and we set off along the main road. No tractors or ploughs had passed and we had only his steps from other journeys to guide us. On the far side of the valley the hills shone so brightly my eyes ached. Matthew compared us to Scott and Oates and, when I protested, substituted Amundsen.
We stayed with Anne and Paul for nearly a month, an oddly happy period. Anne and I cooked and played with Robert. Matthew and Paul stoked the fires and fetched groceries. In the evenings the four of us settled to canasta and gin rummy. My only real concern was Lily; for a fortnight there was no mail. Then a letter arrived. They had abandoned their top-floor flat for that of the widower downstairs, who had a boy to help with the heavy work. “Violet has grown positively lax,” she wrote, “and we have a hand of whist after supper.” She and I were both sorry, I think, when the thaw took us back to our respective homes.
Soon after midsummer the new house became available. I was eight months pregnant, a ship in full sail, and although both Anne and Lily had offered to help with the move, neither was available. Robert had measles, and the day before Lily was due to arrive, she sent a letter. “Violet has hurt her wrist and insists it’s broken. The doctor thinks she might have a sprain.”
Since her reaction to my engagement, I had felt myself estranged from Lily. Now the sharpness of my disappointment made me realise that my coldness was as superficial as a layer of dust; beneath it lay all my love for her, unchanged. “Isn’t there something we can do?” I asked Matthew.
“We could send a telegram saying you’ve broken a leg.”
In spite of myself, I smiled. “We’d better keep our excuses for after the baby. Then we can all three claim broken legs.”
On the day of the move, Matthew forbade me to lift so much as a book. “It’s your job to supervise. Point your hand and say, ‘Take the wardrobe in there, my men.’”
For our wedding, his parents had given us several pieces of Victorian furniture: a wardrobe, a sideboard, a rolltop desk, a table, a wing-back chair. Now these were fetched from storage and installed in the new house, along with the furnishings from the cottage.
“Where do you think the desk should go?” Matthew said. We were standing in the living room. Through the open door we could hear the men swearing as they manoeuvred it down the corridor.
“How about that corner?” I suggested.
“Wouldn’t it be better under the window? There’s more light.”
“Fine.”
“You’re sure?” He patted my shoulder. “We won’t be able to move this furniture once a week.” At the cottage in the steading, I had rearranged our small number of possessions so often it had become a joke.
As soon as the men were through the door, I excused myself and went to the baby’s room. This side of the house faced the main road, though the road itself was hidden by a copse of firs. Gazing out of the window, I saw, in the topmost branches, a group of black birds, cawing and swaying.
“What are those?” I asked when Matthew came in.
“Rooks. You can tell because they’re in a crowd. Rooks live in a rookery, whereas crows are solitary. What about the chest of drawers?”
That night in our new bedroom I could not sleep. I lay on my
back, my belly pressing down, missing the noises of the animals at the farm. On the far side of the room I saw the dark outline of the new wardrobe. Suddenly there was a soft thud and, after a brief interval, another. I crept out of bed and along the corridor. The sounds came from the living room. As my hand reached the doorknob, I heard something clatter to the floor.
There were no curtains at the windows, and the room was silvery with moonlight. I entered in time to see the wing-back chair rise unsteadily. The desk twitched and a lamp floated above the wireless. For five minutes gentle pandemonium reigned. Then the spirits returned each piece of furniture to its exact and proper place. I went back to bed and slept soundly.
At breakfast I told Matthew I must finish unpacking; the baby might come at any moment. But I was too distracted to work steadily. I would open a box of china and, after unwrapping a plate or two, wander over to a suitcase. As I hung up a blouse, it would occur to me that it was time for a cup of tea. A fortnight later, when Anne was out of quarantine, she found me still surrounded by boxes; only the baby’s room was ready. At the sight of the chaos, she handed me Robert. “Let’s start in the kitchen,” she said. “Show me where you want things.”
By the end of the afternoon, most of the boxes were empty and Anne had promised to return the next day. Alone, I decided to go and pick raspberries. The girl had recommended a place at the back of the Grange where the canes grew wild. Earlier I had heard the ratcheting of the mower, and now, as I walked across the lawn behind
the big house, the soft green smell rose around me, mingling with the gnats.
Fanning away the insects, I caught sight of my belly, strange yet familiar in its largeness. Beneath my palm the baby moved. Such a specific feeling, both part of me and apart. A foot or elbow jutted out, and it came to me that, just as my baby pressed against me, so had I once pressed against Barbara. She too had felt the drumming of my heels against the thin skin of her belly, swimming towards daybreak. I used to think she had never known me. On the contrary, she had known me intimately.
That night when we sat down to supper, Matthew raised his glass. “A toast,” he said, “to our new home, Rookery Nook. May health and happiness dwell at our hearth.”
“To Rookery Nook.” I sipped cautiously from my own glass; these days even the smallest amount of beer made me dizzy.
As we ate, Matthew told me how he had come home from school to see the rooks dive-bombing the treetops. “They were trying to chase away an owl. There must be some chicks left in the nests.”
“And did the owl leave?” I asked and, before he could answer, began to yawn helplessly. Suddenly, sitting at the table even a minute longer was impossible. Although the sun was still shining and would be for several hours, I headed for bed. Between the cool sheets sleep claimed me instantly.
I woke in darkness, bewildered. For a brief moment I thought I was at Ballintyre, the branches of the apple tree scratching at my window, Lily and David sleeping nearby. Then I came back to myself
in this bed, with my husband, and I knew what had roused me. I went to the toilet and then woke Matthew.
He sat up, wide-eyed and anxious in his striped pyjamas. “Should we go to the hospital?” he asked.
“Not yet. I need to move around.”
Together in our nightclothes we walked up and down the main road. The longest day of the year was only a few weeks past; already the sky was lightening. From the trees came the sounds of birds beginning to stir, and in the fields I could distinguish the gleam of newly shorn sheep.
Arm in arm we strolled back and forth. No one else was awake and it was as if the world that emerged from darkness appeared solely for our benefit. As a boy Matthew had memorised a poem a week. At my request, he rolled out the cadences of “Tintern Abbey.”
“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”
Soon the sun rose over the hills, and the tall grass along the roadside was bright with dew. More and more frequently I stopped to catch my breath and count. Shouldn’t we go? Matthew would ask, and I would beg another poem. At six we went inside to dress and collect the suitcase that had stood at the foot of the bed since we moved. I wouldn’t let Matthew drive faster than twenty mph for
fear I might cry out and startle him. We were at the infirmary by seven. A brisk staff nurse dispatched him to the waiting room. “We’ll call you when there’s news, sir.”
Now all the names I had learned from textbooks were amplified into new meaning. And all the words I had offered in consolation to patients in pain evaporated. From somewhere nearby I heard a series of piercing screams, and in the interval before the next contraction, I experienced pity for this other sufferer. Then, as the nurse said, “Hush, hush,” I realised it was I who had screamed. Another spasm rushed through me and I screamed again. The magical summer night, the beauty of the morning, vanished. I had never known anything but pain.
At last the baby began to move, to move in response to my movements. The pain changed. I had never felt so alive. Around me I saw the brightly lit figures of the nurses and the doctor, urging me on. And I went on.
Everything converged into that time and place as you came into the world.