IN THE EARLY DAYS OF YOUNG ROBERT, Susan found she did not hate Lillypot so much as before. She had time for nothing but the baby, and her needs were shaped by his own, so she slept when he slept, roused to feed him when he roused, and took the air only when she took him out into it. Lillypot was as good a nest as any for a new mother and her chick, and indeed even better than most, for meals appeared on trays and baths were filled and laundry vanished, so she was free to give her whole self over to the task of doting on her child.
They had planned for a wet nurse, since they had expected to have two babies to feed, but the midwife said she thought it would do Susan good to feed the child herself. It was exhausting – often it seemed he was barely off the breast before he was crying again with hunger – but Susan was glad of it, he was hers and she his, and no one else had any place in the business. Slowly, she came to know his cries and his needs and his wants. When he was tiny, she learned she could stroke his hand, and he would grasp her own, and if she stroked his foot, his great toes curled under and the others fanned out like a tiny flower. If a door closed or Susan dropped a book, he would close his hands in tight fists as though he would fight. In his sleep he sometimes jerked and twitched, and if Susan appeared too quickly before him when he was awake, he would throw his arms and legs out wide in shock, and then curl in on himself, as though for protection. He was in all ways fascinating, and Susan drank him in.
The midwife stayed for the first weeks, and Susan was glad of her, she often felt weepy and fretful, and unsure of herself, having never had the care of an infant before and having no mother or other woman relative to guide her. At first the midwife dealt with most of the napkins, and the bathing, showing Susan how to hold the child, how to dry him, how to deal with the rashes and swaddle him, how to dose him for colic and soothe his little pains. She gave her orders to Mrs Scott and Elsie, and Susan thought she quite enjoyed it, ruling the roost in a house where there was plenty of help available, and any food or drink or service she might desire to be had at a word.
In fairness to Mrs Scott, she seemed not to mind, she was as besotted by young Robert as anyone and Susan thought she looked for any excuse to attend to them herself, instead of sending Elsie as she might usually have done. Elsie, in her turn, jostled to be first to bring up a tray or fetch the washing pail, keen for a look at the baby or even a rare chance to hold him while Susan used the pot or took her own bath.
The day the midwife left, Susan wept, but the woman patted her cheek and said not to take on so, she would manage very well, she was a fine mother and no child could have a better. That made Susan weep even more, but the midwife smiled and said loudly to remember she was not alone, Mrs Scott was as good a helpmeet as any mother could have, and Elsie too; they loved their mistress as well as she loved young Robert, and as she cared for the baby, they would care for her in turn. Mrs Scott preened like a mother hen at that, and Elsie blushed in pleasure, and Susan smiled through her tears; the midwife was a wily woman and knew how people might be lulled into thinking her words were less instructions than praise for the fine intentions they had had all along.
The night before, the midwife had spoken quietly with Susan, saying it was not her concern to advise her mothers about their affairs, but she thought Susan should know that feeding an infant herself helps a woman space her family out, she was less likely to get with child right away. Too many children in too few years was hard on a woman, she said, and those who got with twins once were prone to do so again, so Susan might well think of giving her body a good rest between times and continuing to feed young Robert as long as she was able. Susan thanked her and squirrelled the information away in her mind.
As it happened, the method proved not foolproof, and before the year was out Susan knew herself to be with child again. She was not as sick as before, but she was sick enough, and her milk dried up so she could no longer feed young Robert. He was eating solid food by then, of course – Elsie had taken great pleasure in spooning pap into his mouth as soon as he would take it – but Susan missed that time together, it had been easy then to forget she was a prisoner here.
They had all promised Susan it would be easier the second time, as surely there would be one babe only, but Susan could not discern much difference, except for the slightly less disabling sickness. Her belly seemed to swell even sooner than before, so by the time she was five months gone she felt as big as she had been at six the year before.
The steps in the dance of their lives were familiar now. The year had turned, and spring had come, and with it came Robert, removed to Lillypot for the warmer months with his great packing cases and boxes. The house seemed to rise up and shake itself, like a bird wakening in its nest, Mrs Scott and Elsie taking rugs and curtains and linens outside to beat on the line, lifting jars down from shelves to clean underneath them, and dusting and polishing everywhere so the furniture and the skirtings and the doorhandles gleamed. Then the house settled itself again in a new position, to accommodate Robert’s work into the rhythm of their days.
As the months had worn on, with Susan growing and growing, she had again begun to think that she was carrying twins. She knew her dates very certainly, as Robert had gone more than eight weeks without visiting them in the winter, and although Mrs Scott said nothing, Susan thought she had noticed, too, for she said there was little she could do to let out Susan’s gowns again, they were worn through with all the stitching and ripping out. Even Robert noticed the state of her wardrobe – on his second night at home he said Susan was looking very dowdy, what was Mrs Scott thinking of, not offering to order new gowns as her Mistress required? Mrs Scott looked quite put-out at that, but she pursed her lips and said of course, the Master was quite right; she would send John to fetch samples of fabric and designs and when the Mistress had chosen what she wanted, Mrs Scott would see to it that it was ordered.
Susan had thought little of clothes since her marriage, and she was surprised by the delight she felt when Mrs Scott presented her with the sample books with their snippets of fabric and trim and the thick sheaf of fashion plates the draper could replicate. In the end she chose two dresses for now, made in the same high-waisted pattern with a fall-front bodice, with a button-up section under so no corset was required. She chose a peacock-blue taffeta and a tawny cotton with a floral sprig, deciding the bodice of the fancier one should have diagonal embroidery and the plainer one not, and both should have removable long sleeves so that she might wear them long if the day was cold. She ordered six shifts for wearing under, and she wanted three frocks for after, too, but Mrs Scott fretted over measurements for the latter, and so in the end they agreed that those should wait. Instead she ordered new nightgowns, and a shawl, a comb for her hair, and three new lace caps.
Three weeks later the drapers’ boy came, and Mrs Scott helped Susan unpack the boxes and hang the dresses so the folds dropped out. Susan dressed for dinner in the taffeta frock, with one of the new lace caps and Robert’s mother’s locket, and Robert said she looked very well. She stole a glance at herself in the mirror in the parlour as she passed and almost started to see that she did indeed look as handsome as she had ever done – it had become a fear of hers, for months now, that a much older woman would look out of the glass at her if she stopped there, and she had taken to avoiding it in dread.
In the end Mrs Scott must have said something to Robert about Susan’s suspicion of twins, for over the next days he asked her some questions about the sensations in her body. He spent a while with his books, and then he asked if he might measure her. He had her lie back and used a string to measure the height of her belly, and then he said it was indeed larger than the books said it should be, and so he pressed and prodded and said he thought perhaps it might be twins again. No matter, he said, in any case he had arranged for an accoucheur and the man was to come to them next month, and stay as long as he was needed.
Susan wasn’t sure if this reassured her or frightened her, after the last time, but she had little time to worry about it as, just then, young Robert seemed to become possessed of a demon. For months he had slept through the night, but now he set up great howls and wails at all hours, and the whole household was tired and crabby from lack of sleep. Robert put up with three nights of it before he removed back to the city, leaving Susan and the servants to muddle through as best they could. Susan was glad to see the back of him, the whole business was miserable enough without Robert glaring at her as though she was somehow to blame.
Young Robert was in the grip of this demon for three long weeks, and then it seemed it departed as quickly as it had come. The whole household slept through a night, and then another, and young Robert smiled and laughed again from dawn to dusk. They had a few days of this bliss before Robert returned, bringing with him the accoucheur, a Frenchman, and a young, red-headed man the accoucheur introduced as his assistant. They were not lodged at Lillypot, to Mrs Scott’s relief, for there was no space for them there. Instead they slept in the coachman’s rooms in a house nearby, although they both spent large parts of each day with Robert in his study being shown – Susan assumed – his museum plans.
The assistant was a curious young man, deeply shy, and with very little English, and a deep blush spread from his neck over his face to his ears any time Susan so much as looked his way. Mrs Scott was very distracted keeping all these men fed – they took their meals at Lillypot before going home in the evening – and Susan heartily wished the business over and all of them gone.
When they had been there a week, Mrs Scott appeared with a dose for Susan after dinner and said Doctor Knox was keen she get some rest, there were great circles under her eyes and she was pale. The dose would help, she said. Susan said she didn’t want it, but Mrs Scott insisted. She seemed in a strange humour, not cross exactly but not happy either. In order to keep the peace, Susan took the dose. It seemed strong, and she felt her eyes and legs heavy as she climbed the stairs to her room. She struggled to unfasten her dress and when she lifted the pillow to find her nightdress, it wasn’t there, and in its place was a strange gown she’d never seen before. She was too tired to do anything about it, so she pulled the odd linen thing on and collapsed into bed.
If she dreamed, she had no memory of it, but in the middle of the night Susan half-roused to find herself lying on her side, so she saw Mrs Scott perched on a chair by the side of the bed. The housekeeper’s usual look of determined good nature was nowhere to be seen, and instead her mouth was grim and a spot of red burned bright on each cheek, as if she was angered somehow. Susan opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but just then she felt herself lifted by the haunches and her gown raised, and she heard low voices and felt odd sensations as she was moved this way and that. She began to lift her head, but Mrs Scott saw her move and said something she couldn’t make out, and then the spout of an invalid cup was between her lips with more of the sticky dose, and the darkness took her again.
In the morning, Susan woke to a pounding head and a dry mouth and an odd sense of unease. She was in her normal nightgown, and there was no sign of the other, so she wondered if she had dreamed it all. She was nearly sure, though, that Mrs Scott had been in her room in the night, she didn’t think she had dreamed that. She got up, slowly, feeling her body strange and alien, and crossed to the dresser to pick up the bell and ring for the housekeeper. Before she reached it, though, she heard a hissed exchange outside the door – Mrs Scott and Robert, and by the sound of her voice, Mrs Scott was very unhappy.
‘I’ll have nothing to with such a thing again,’ she was saying.
Robert said something Susan didn’t quite catch, but there was something about children dying, and Robert preventing it if he could . . . Did Mrs Scott not remember the footling that was lost?
Mrs Scott’s answer was too low for Susan to hear, and then her footsteps descended the stair. After a moment, Robert’s followed. Susan stood with her back to the door and tried to make sense of it, but then she found she did not want to after all, she wanted just to get through these weeks and deliver her babies and then Robert would leave her to her life here. She was determined, though, that she would not swallow any more of Mrs Scott’s doses, she would hold them in her mouth until she could spit them out in the pot or the coalscuttle or a planter.
That afternoon, Mrs Scott sent Elsie to sit with Susan and sew. Elsie brought a tray with shortbread and some sort of infusion the accoucheur had instructed Susan to drink. It was bitter, but Elsie added honey, and that made it better. At night time she came with more of the same, and again in the morning, and twice through the next day. She said Mrs Scott had asked the accoucheur what it was, and he said it was made of the leaves of raspberries, and something else awful-sounding but Mrs Scott couldn’t remember what it was in order to tell Elsie after, she didn’t recognise the name. She said the accoucheur wanted to bring Susan’s time on, before the babes grew too big.
The tea alone didn’t achieve much, and that night Robert came to Susan in the parlour and said that the accoucheur meant to try something else, something new that could help Susan. He said it might hurt, but she should be brave, it would be for the best in the end. Susan must have looked at him in horror, because he asked crossly if she did not trust him, and Susan was fairly caught then, because of course the answer was no, but what woman could say that to her husband? Instead she asked if there was not to be a midwife; she had asked Mrs Scott the same question time and again but she said she did not know.
No, Robert said, Mrs Scott would support Susan when her time came, and the accoucheur would manage the business from beginning to end. He told Susan to go up and put on her nightgown and lie down, and to send word by Mrs Scott when she was ready for the accoucheur. Mrs Scott took her up, seemingly keen to avoid her eye, and Susan wondered how content she really was to act midwife as well as housekeeper and jailer, the poor woman must wonder what she had done when she had taken the job at Lillypot.
Mrs Scott helped her strip and put on her nightgown and then she lay on her side on the bed and waited while Mrs Scott went to fetch the men. She stared at the candle-flame, feeling her heart flutter in her chest with anxiety. Then they came in, and the accoucheur instructed Mrs Scott to hold up a sheet while he worked so Susan would not be discomfited.
Susan could not imagine how she might be more discomfited at this point.
Mrs Scott held the sheet, and the accoucheur asked her to lie on her back. He pressed here and there on her belly for a time, and then he said she would feel an intrusion, and she did, something cold and foreign parting her privy places. The accoucheur spoke to Robert in a low voice, and then to his assistant, telling him to raise a lamp. A moment later, he spoke to Susan, telling her all was well, her time was almost upon her and it would help for him to separate the bag of waters from the neck of her womb. He said she might feel some discomfort as he worked. She relaxed in relief as he pulled the foreign thing out, but then she felt her muscles clench anew as he pushed something else inside her instead, it seemed rougher and hurt her more. His fingers, she realised, oiled somehow. It was awful and then it was worse, Robert and the assistant watching as the accoucheur kept forcing his way inside until she felt as though he had breached some seal inside her, and he rummaged and pulled and it hurt, for half a minute or more it seemed, so that she heard her own voice raised in pain. Then he withdrew his hand and said to Robert the goal was achieved. Robert said to Susan that she had done well, and the accoucheur said she might have a show with some blood – did she know what that was? – and soon, he hoped, the birth pains would begin.
They left her alone after that, and Susan tried to calm her breathing and her tears. Mrs Scott tucked her in and asked if she could bring her anything, but Susan couldn’t imagine looking anyone in the eye after that, and so she said she was fine, she merely wanted to sleep. It was true, she did want to sleep, but she found she could not; she had to get up to use the pot, finding the signs the accoucheur had described, and then towards morning, she began to feel great cramps across her belly, much stronger than the early pains she had felt before. She bore these alone as long as she could, but at last she knew she must summon help, and she rang the bell. Mrs Scott appeared, with curling papers fluttering around her face, and she led Susan to her own room which was made ready for a lying-in; Mrs Scott, it transpired, had been sleeping in the attic with Elsie for the last two weeks. The accoucheur came then, and he deaved Susan with his attentions, making her lie when she would rather walk, and prodding at her between pangs in a manner that made the next come quicker, so she had no respite from the pain at all. Almost immediately he got her flat on her back and stretched a sheet across her so she could not see, although she knew that Robert and the assistant were there, and she hated it.
Around midday, the accoucheur began issuing instructions to Mrs Scott, who got behind Susan to support her while she delivered the first of her twins. The baby cried immediately, and Robert showed her to Susan – a little girl. After a few moments, the pains began again, and the accoucheur said that all seemed to be well, and a few minutes later, the second twin was born. Again, Susan heard the baby’s cry right away, and tears came into her eyes with relief. This one was a boy, they were not identical twins, not like the first pair, and all was well.
The accoucheur saw to Susan’s hurts, and then he instructed Mrs Scott on how to wash her, bind her belly and pad her privy parts. Once that was done, Mrs Scott helped her back to her own bed, and Elsie came with the babies and Susan put them to the breast. Mrs Scott had a great list from the accoucheur of how she should manage the feeding of them, but Susan laughed at the sight of her trying to read from it; by now Mrs Scott was more frazzled than anyone could ever have imagined.
‘Tell Robert to send for Mrs Wilkinson who was here before,’ she said, ‘or another good midwife. He cannot expect you to nurse me, on top of your other tasks. Tell him I will not support it.’
Mrs Scott looked immensely relieved, and scurried off with her message to Robert. It seemed he had agreed, for Susan slept a while, and when she woke, Elsie told her John had gone to fetch the midwife.
It was a curious time, the first weeks of the twins, more tiring than Susan could ever have imagined. It seemed there was never a moment’s peace – if one was asleep the other was awake – and if both slept for even a moment together, young Robert wanted his mama and she had to rouse herself and attend to him. She stayed upstairs for three whole weeks together, and she barely noticed the time passing.
When at last she came down, Susan discovered Robert’s things gone, and in their place a great package in the dining room.
‘What on earth can it be?’ she asked Mrs Scott.
‘A present from Doctor Knox,’ Mrs Scott said. ‘To congratulate you on the birth of the twins. It’s a dolls’ house, Ma’am. The Doctor thought you would enjoy it.’
Susan didn’t know what to say. It seemed a bad joke, a house within a house, in case she ever forgot that she was imprisoned here well and truly, no longer even a matter of locks and keys but of babies, nurslings, trapping her here forever.
She turned on her heel and went back to her children.