‘We must be patient.’ Tom brings his book up to his eyes again, ending the conversation. She would scream at him if she had the energy.
Clair bursts through the door. Her mousy hair falls from under her cap, her skin is white, and her eyes are wide. She dips into a curtsey and waits to be spoken to. Liz could slap her for it.
‘What is it?’ Tom says.
‘It’s Mrs Oliver, sir, she’s having the baby.’
Tom pauses, as if unable to comprehend what the maid has told him, then says, ‘Have you sent for Doctor Jameson?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, do it now, for God’s sake!’
The maid flies from the room. Tom is on his feet, his hand scraping through his wax-less hair.
‘So, it shall be tonight.’ Liz remains in her seat, but her heart is battering beneath her ribs. ‘Your son shall be born tonight.’
‘You must go to her, Liz.’
She cannot believe what he is saying. She stares at him in horror. ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’
‘She has no one else.’
‘Do not make me!’ Her breath comes hard and quick against her bodice. She can feel the butterfly fluttering in her gut, crawling its way up her throat. ‘Tom, please do not make me.’
He kneels before her. He takes her hands, and his touch brings a spark of life to her cold body. He is crying.
‘I am sorry. I am so sorry.’ He kisses her wrists, and she sighs to feel his mouth upon her skin. ‘I am sorry.’
She forces the butterfly down inside her. She has faced worse, she tells herself. Now is not the time for cowardice; one of them must be strong. ‘Very well.’
He hangs his head near her skirts so that he may wipe his eyes. As gently as if he were a sleeping invalid, she moves him out of her way. She stands, steadies herself, and leaves the library.
On the stairway, she hears Mary groaning.
The doorknob is slippery as she twists it. Inside, the room is stale. Smoke swirls out from the fire and chokes the air. Mary writhes under her sheets.
‘Elizabeth,’ Mary says as she pants. ‘They have all left me!’
Mary screams. Liz rushes to her side, takes her hand, not caring for Mary’s vice-like grip. She peels back the covers to reveal the dark patch where Mary’s waters have broken, and smells the acidity of sweaty genitals and unwashed nightgowns. Liz pulls the covers up to Mary’s chest.
‘It is all right, I’m here now, and Doctor Jameson is on his way.’
‘Where is Tom?’
‘Downstairs. He will come if we need him.’
‘I need him now. I need him here.’
Liz could not stand to see Tom in this room, to see him witness the birth of his first child. His joy would be agony. ‘You do not. He cannot come yet. This is no place for a man.’
‘I want him.’ Mary growls as another contraction passes.
‘I said, no!’
‘Mrs Oliver!’ Anne runs into the room with her cloak still about herself. Her hair is wet; long, loose strands dangle beside her pink face, dripping water onto the floor. She scrambles to undo her brooch and cast her cloak aside, but her fingers are shaking, and her eyes are fixed on Mary. Liz unfastens the pin for her. ‘Thank you, miss.’
‘Where have you been?’ Mary says, her teeth clenched, her hand outstretched for Liz’s return.
‘I’ve been home, ma’am. It’s Sunday.’
‘I don’t care what day it is; you should have been here!’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’
‘That is enough squabbling. Anne is here. I am here. The doctor is on his way. You have nothing to fear. You must stay calm, Mary.’
Liz does not feel calm, but she hides her fear in her actions. She gets clean water, cloths, and towels. She wipes Mary’s forehead and offers her hand for Mary to squeeze on each contraction. She makes Mary drink, makes Mary breathe steadily, tells her that everything will be all right.
It is almost an hour and a half before Doctor Jameson arrives with his assistant. He nods at the women around the bed and sets about sorting his instruments.
Liz sweats hard beneath her dress. She wishes that a window could be opened so that she may feel the cold breeze upon her damp neck, but it is pointless asking. She is only grateful that the doctor is here now and can take over.
She falls into one of the seats next to the heavy curtains, as far away from the fire and the bed as she can get, as Doctor Jameson makes his assessments. His assistant strips away the covers, allowing the doctor to look at Mary beneath her skirts. Liz is amazed that they do not flinch from the smell.
‘Fetch me some sherry, would you?’ Liz says to Mrs Jeffries, who waits in the corner of the room, her corset-less bosom heaving underneath her cotton frock. By the time the woman returns and Liz has the glass in her hand, there is excitement about the bed. It will not be long before the baby comes.
She gulps down the sherry.
Do not look, she says to herself.
She closes her eyes, fighting against the vision of rough-handed men and mean-eyed women, their hands shining red, peering down at her, frowning at the place between her legs, where she feels agony like she has never imagined.
Do not look.
She swallows the last drops of sherry. She fixes her eyes on the cut glass, on the way it throws shards of light off its engraved surfaces and blinds her, like the light that had swayed above her all those months ago. The brightness had broken through her delirium for moments at a time, and in those seconds of consciousness, she had heard pitiless words, seen something grey and shrivelled being taken away from her. She had reached out for her baby, only to be slapped down by one of the nurses.
It had been a bad birth.
Mary’s screams merge into one long, head-splitting noise, shattering Liz’s memories and bringing her back to the present. Mary’s eyes are closed, her brows furrowed, and her lips white as she blows through them. Another hard push and Liz hears the slip of a wet body breaking free in a torrent of blood, and a baby cries.
Liz is rigid in her seat. She watches, like a spectator in a theatre, as the assistant lifts the naked, writhing, blood-covered child in the air so that the doctor may examine it.
‘Tom,’ Mary grunts.
Tom enters as the baby is made clean. He looks at Liz before he glances at the baby or his wife.
‘Mr Oliver, you have a healthy son.’ Doctor Jameson steps aside so that Tom may have sight of his child.
‘Tom?’ Mary’s white hand protrudes from the covers, and she holds it out to Tom. He takes it, gingerly, and seems pained to return Mary’s smile. The assistant brings the newborn, still screeching, to its parents and lays it on Mary’s chest.
Liz swallows down the butterfly.
Then Mary’s smile begins to falter, and her gaze draws upwards. ‘Get it away! Get it away from me!’
She twists deeper into the bed, recoiling from her child, her gaze flicking madly between her baby and the empty air above her.
Doctor Jameson pins her arms still and orders Tom to do the same as his assistant takes the child and gives it to Mrs Jeffries, who leaves the room.
With the child gone, Mary begins to regain some control, but still, she looks into the air and cries. Tom strokes her forehead, shushes her, tells her everything is fine.
‘Stay with her,’ Tom says to Anne, who is pale and shaken from the traumatic night. ‘Call for me if anything else happens.’
Quietly, as if it is Mary who is the child, Tom, Liz, Doctor Jameson, and his assistant, leave the room. As they make their way down the stairs, the grandfather clock strikes three.
‘Why was she like that?’ Tom says.
The doctor shakes his head. ‘Sometimes, some women find it hard to ... love their children at first. It will pass.’
‘I hope it does.’ Tom stands firm before the doctor and makes the man meet his gaze.
The doctor nods and accepts his coat from Chipman. His hand trembles as he does so. ‘Everything w
ill be well, Mr Oliver. Give it time.’
Tom’s lips peel back over his teeth, but Liz grazes his hand with her fingers, and he says nothing.
‘Thank you for your help, Doctor.’ Liz ushers Jameson and the assistant to the door. ‘Goodnight.’
Tom and Liz watch them mount their carriage and stand rigid as the horse trots away into the falling snow.
‘She is mad,’ Tom whispers into the airless night. ‘What other proof does the damned man need?
‘You have a son.’
‘Yes.’ He sighs, then, as if a thought has suddenly struck him, he turns to her. ‘How are you?’
She waits until the carriage has disappeared. ‘I am tired.’
‘Would you like –’
‘Goodnight, Tom.’
Chapter 9
January 1870
The crying is ceaseless. It echoes throughout Floreat, breaking through the walls and clawing at everyone’s minds. Liz’s reflection, whenever she looks these days, is ghostly; her eyes have sunk in their sockets, and the skin around them is like a sooty shadow. How she wishes the child would be quiet! How she wishes she had a room further away from the nursery.
She lifts her covers from her, not caring about the cold that hits her through the thin material of her nightgown, makes for the window, and draws back the curtains. Beyond the glass, the moon is high and clear, and the heathland is spotted black and silver for as far as her eye can see.
She leans against the cold stone wall and stares, unseeing, until her feet begin to prickle and goose pimples stand rigid over her body. She wonders if Mary wakes like she does. She wonders if Mary’s breasts ache and ooze with milk turning sour as her baby calls for her. She wonders if Mary would care if the baby died.
The child screams louder. It is as if he is tearing the flesh from his throat in his efforts to reach his mother.
What is Mrs Jeffries doing? But it is no use blaming Jeffries; the child cries no matter how many times he is fed, no matter how many times he is held close to her warm chest, no matter how many times he is swaddled in clean gowns.
Liz hits her head against the wall, hoping to drown him out. As she lifts her heavy eyelids, something moves on the heathland.
The witch.
The child falls silent.
Liz screws her eyes shut. Her mind is playing tricks on her. It is not who she thinks it is. It cannot be. The witch has not been seen for over three months now. No, it is only the moonlight, the lack of sleep, and the piercing agony in her stomach that are making her delusional.
She looks again. The witch is gone.
Little Thomas’s cries can still be heard, for the nursery is above them, but Mary and Elizabeth sew as if all is calm in the drawing room. It is how Mary likes to spend the afternoons nowadays; she finds the repetitive action soothing, a welcome distraction.
‘Mrs Jeffries is fitting in well.’ Elizabeth loses the end of her thread, finds it again, licks the tip of it, and slides it through the eye of the needle. ‘But I think Little Thomas does not like the taste of her milk.’
‘Please stop talking about him.’ Mary jabs the needle through her material and pulls back too hard; her cloth tears.
‘I think Tom is doing well. Don’t you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He is doing well as a father.’
There is a spike of jealousy in the base of her stomach. Since the birth, Mary has not seen her husband at all except at meal times. Even then, he barely looks at her, and when he does, she can sense his disgust.
‘He spends much of his time with the child.’
‘Please, Elizabeth! No more.’
Mary does not want to think of the child, for whenever she does, her mother returns, and she has been enjoying her time in the presence of the living. But it is too late.
Mary’s neck suddenly grows chilled. She is sure that if she were to crane it, she would see the white face, the dark eyes, the purple lips of her mother, just inches away from her.
‘Go away,’ she begs.
‘Mary?’ Elizabeth leans forward in her seat. ‘What is it?’
Mary clenches her jaw. She does not want to admit to it, but she cannot keep it a secret anymore. ‘My mother is here.’
Elizabeth looks about herself. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She is behind me.’
Elizabeth stares past Mary’s shoulder. Is that fear in her pretty green eyes?
‘How often do you see her?’
Mary fixes her gaze on her material. She sews, concentrating on the motion of pushing and pulling the needle. She will not admit that Mother visits her daily.
‘Mary?’
Mary’s thread is running out. She has perhaps five more stitches before she must tie off.
‘How often?
The thread is gone; Mary ties it and searches for more.
‘Where is the blue reel?’
‘That was the last of it. I told you when you started.’
With a shriek that bounces around the pictured walls, Mary throws her sewing at the window. It falls to the ground slowly, gracefully, like a bird shot from the sky. For a moment, the whole house is still. Mother vanishes.
Then Little Thomas’s cries begin again.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Mary whispers. She rummages for her silk handkerchief in the pocket of her dress and cries into it. ‘When will he stop?’
‘He needs his mother.’
The hatred in Elizabeth’s voice makes Mary glance up, but Elizabeth begins to sew again. Every so often her gaze flicks up to beyond Mary’s chair, anxiously.
‘I can’t Elizabeth. Don’t you see? I just ... I can’t bring myself to look at him.’
She recalls the last time she saw her son, after the trauma of giving birth. She had smiled at the curl of his hand, and his grumpiness at being plucked from somewhere warm and safe. Tom had held her gently, and the three of them had formed a perfect triangle together. She weeps for the memory.
If it weren’t for her mother. If it weren’t for the way she had slipped into the room and stood menacingly in the corner, her wet lips open, uttering words of warning that this child brings death.
Mary had looked at Little Thomas and had seen his eyes open; they had been black like her dead mother’s. His cries had turned into her mother’s voice, and his curled hand had stretched up to Mary, reaching for her throat.
‘It is not the child’s fault,’ Elizabeth says.
‘She has brought him. She has brought him to avenge herself.’
‘Do not talk such nonsense.’
‘He will be the death of me.’ Mary senses the creeping hands of her mother return and take hold of the back of her chair. ‘Please go away.’
‘Fine. I shall leave you.’ Elizabeth rises.
‘No! I didn’t mean you.’ Mary grabs her sister’s hand as she makes for the door. ‘Don’t leave me with her.’
Elizabeth retracts her hand as if it is a corpse who has hold of it. Her glance shifts around the room – does she see Mother too? But no, that queer look in Elizabeth’s eye is only for Mary.
‘I should just like to sit for a while.’ Mary forces a smile. She must learn to control herself. She should not have mentioned Mother at all. ‘Please, stay. We were having a pleasant afternoon, weren’t we?’
Somewhat reluctantly, Elizabeth concedes, and the two of them study the view as the child cries on.
Anne has had a restless night; her dreams are never peaceful anymore. The cries from the baby do not help. She is sure Mrs Jeffries is no good as a wet-nurse. How can one child be so unhappy? When Anne offered to help, she received a swift and curt rejection. She had explained her years of experience, helping with her siblings, of taking them from her weary mother, of how she was better than anyone at getting a child to sleep, but Mrs Jeffries didn’t care. Anne was a lady’s maid, not a nurse.
She finds her clothes in the dark and puts them on in a trance. She creeps along the attic landing, avoiding the creaks for
she has learned where they lie – Mary had often scolded her in her first few months for making so much noise – and begins her descent to the kitchen.
The wailing is louder as she reaches the second floor. She has never been able to resist the cry of a child. Indeed, her mother had chided her for fawning over her siblings if they so much as grimaced. She hesitates by the hidden servant’s doorway.
No one seems to care for the poor babe, apart from Mr Oliver, who she sometimes hears in the nursery shaking a rattle and cooing silly words at his son. Mrs Oliver keeps as far away as she can. Even Miss Oliver has not been near the child, although Anne has heard her asking Mrs Jeffries about him and has caught her lingering outside the nursery on more than one occasion, her fingers inches from the door handle.
Anne can take it no more. She opens the door and steps out onto the dark landing. The maids have not yet lit the lamps; they will be downstairs, one dusting the drawing room, the other blacking the range. All is quiet, but for the baby. She will just take a peek, just to reassure herself that the child is wrapped warmly in Mrs Jeffries’ embrace and that there is nothing she can do.
She tiptoes towards the nursery, turns the handle as quietly as she can. The room has one single candle burning far away from the cradle, and it does little to illuminate the space, but there is no doubt that Mrs Jeffries is not there. Anne curses the heartless woman and promises that Mr Oliver will hear of this, but for now, she must see to the babe.
He is wriggling in his cradle like a little worm, bound tight in his muslin cloth. Anne frees his arms, and they spring upwards, his tiny hands grappling at the air, reaching for her. She shouldn’t, but she cannot help herself. She lifts him up and cuddles him close. He has that smell she loves, and she smiles as she places her cheek upon his soft, downy head and remembers how she used to do this with Eddie and Paul.
She rocks on her feet, swaying him backwards and forwards, telling him there is no need to cry, telling him what a wonderful father he has, telling him what a handsome little boy he will be. And finally, he stops crying. How she wishes Mrs Jeffries would find her with the child now, silent and content in her arms, and she could gloat and say I told you so.
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