‘Another year.’
‘A year!’ Konrad’s face was screwed up.
‘Maybe two, three, four, five. This is something that you can’t put your finger on. There are many such as he, but mostly among the poorer class. If it is rickets good feeding might help, the proper feeding; there are a number of new opinions on dietary, with regard to calcium and the minerals found in fish livers.’
‘Should he be fed on fish then?’ The question was rapped out.
‘It won’t hurt him; can’t do anything but good. Give him plenty of eggs and vegetables, but little bread and no porridge.’
‘Little bread and no porridge!’
‘That’s what I said.’
Konrad sighed deeply, walked the length of the room and back again, then asked, ‘If it was rickets could he be straightened by surgery?’
‘What do you mean, an iron corset?’ Now the doctor’s voice was scornful.
‘Well, whatever they do.’
‘I have seen children in iron corsets. It’s a barbaric custom, a hundred years out of date. Imagine yourself strapped down on iron with leather straps and let up only once a week to change your clothes. I think you’d prefer to remain crooked, eh?’
Konrad turned slowly and looked at the child. He lay mouthing sounds, unintelligible yet meaningful in that they expressed his displeasure at being left unattended, with no comforting fabric about him, and no patting hands. When he let out a sharp high wail Konrad shouted, ‘Nurse!’ and the door opened immediately and Kirsten came in. She stood looking for a moment from one to the other of the two men; then without waiting for an order she went to the table, gathered the white fleecy shawl around the thrashing arms, lifted the child to her and walked hurriedly out of the room and into the adjoining one.
This room was large and well furnished; it showed individuality and comfort for here, too, was a roaring fire in the grate, and besides a bed, a couch, and easy chair, there was a writing table, and a bookcase.
Going to the cot that stood by the side of her bed Kirsten placed the child in it, then picking up a pap bag, one of half a dozen lying side by side on a tray, she placed it in the child’s mouth, and he grabbed the end of it and lay sucking contentedly. Then, her hands falling gently onto his legs, she began to stroke them, following their bowed shape with firm gentle movements of her fingers.
When the child’s head fell to the side and the pap bag slid from his mouth she sponged his face, then, sighing deeply, she went to the couch that stood at right angles to the fire and sat down.
Kirsten had changed greatly in the year she had been in this house. She was now sixteen but she looked all of eighteen. The excellent food she had eaten had brought on her development fast; her bust had gone down very little since she had stopped feeding the child, and the flatness of her body had disappeared; her hips were rounded, her legs long and shapely; but it was her face that showed the greatest change. Her cheeks were full, her skin cream clear, her lips red, and her hair glossy from regular washing and brushing and her eye, though it still flickered, rarely drooped into the corner. The last time it had done so was three months ago when Miss Cartwright had said that the child was finished with the breast; and not only had Miss Cartwright said this but the mistress had said it too.
The mistress had called her into the boudoir and with her back turned, her eyes directed to where her hands were picking up and replacing bottles of perfume on her dressing table, had murmured briefly, ‘You can conclude your services as from tomorrow, MacGregor, the child is old enough to eat now. Miss Cartwright will recompense you with four weeks’ wages in advance. That is all.’
The dismissal had come so suddenly that she just stood and gaped at the back of the elegantly dressed head, until Miss Cartwright’s voice startled her, saying, ‘You heard what the mistress said.’ Then her tongue was loosened and she gabbled, ‘But I can’t, not yet. You see…well, it’s his legs, they’re not right.’
The mistress turned slowly around on her satin-padded seat and looked first at Miss Cartwright and then at her as she asked quietly, ‘What do you mean, his legs aren’t right?’
She licked her lips and blinked her eyes and felt the pupil dropping into the corner as she gabbled again, ‘I…I think he’s got the…the rickets, ma’am.’
‘The what!’ There was both fear and disgust in the mistress’s voice and she turned sharply to Miss Cartwright, saying, ‘See to this at once! Why…why didn’t you know?’
Kirsten looked at Miss Cartwright and for the first time saw her cold composure slip away and her face take on a horrified expression as she said, ‘I…I never guessed; his body is strong.’
‘How…how can it be? Haven’t you looked at his legs?’
Kirsten gazed at the two women, the tall grim one, and the small, delicate dainty one. Nobody had looked at his legs except herself; in fact her mistress never looked at the child, even when it was dressed. Sometimes the master would come in and pick him up and carry him into the bedroom, or into the boudoir, but always on a cushion; but the only time the mistress had looked voluntarily on the child, to Kirsten’s knowledge, was the night when she and her cousin had come into the nursery.
‘Go and make sure.’ The mistress’s voice had a command in it that Kirsten had not heard before, and when Miss Cartwright obeyed it instantly she felt surprise. But at the door, as if coming to herself, Miss Cartwright turned and said, ‘You! Come along, you!’ then added as she passed her, ‘This’ll make no difference, you’ll go tomorrow.’
In the nursery, at Miss Cartwright’s command, she stripped the child, and there it lay, normal and fine down to its thighs, but below the stomach the legs were thin, bowed, and apparently lifeless. Miss Cartwright glared across the cradle as she said, ‘This is you, it’s neglect. You haven’t been feeding him enough; rickets are caused through lack of food.’
Of a sudden she forgot her fear of this woman and cried in her own defence, ‘I have fed him, so! He would cry otherwise, you know he would. He gets his fill.’ And at this daring Miss Cartwright reared up as if in horror and cried, ‘Don’t you dare talk back to me, girl! If I say you’ve neglected him you’ve neglected him. Anyway, this need not be rickets. When he begins to walk they’ll straighten with exercise; all babies’ legs are bowed until they begin to walk. But if these are more bowed than usual, it’s your fault, girl. I’ve told you time and again you weren’t binding him up tight enough. What is more, you have left him lying near the window more than once with the sun on him. Don’t deny it.’
She did not deny it, but what she did say, and in a pleading voice, was, ‘Please, please, Miss Cartwright, let me stay on, just for a little bit longer to see if they straighten. You see…you see I know about bairns…babies with legs like this. There was a lot of them back at…Well, I managed them. I know how to…’
Her voice was cut off by Miss Cartwright actually shouting, ‘I’ve told you, woman! I told you in the beginning, didn’t I? And don’t forget this.’ She lifted the chain that supported the crucifix round her neck, then looked around the room, as if she might be overheard, before hissing, ‘You swore on it, girl! You swore on it. Remember?’
‘I know.’ Kirsten gulped in her throat, and her head wagged as she pleaded, ‘I know, I’m not tryin’ to get out of it, but…but he’ll need me. I mean…you see, I know, I feel…’
‘No and again No! The mistress says you go tomorrow and you go tomorrow. I would send you packing now if I had my way.’
Kirsten stood shaking her head, her eyes burning with unshed tears, while she mumbled, ‘How…how will you feed him? What will you give him? He’s always had the milk.’
‘He’ll have cornflour pap bags and a proper diet that a baby will thrive on. I told them’—she did not say him—‘I told them that you shouldn’t have strong food, and you’ve been having fruit, haven’t you? Any fool knows that fruit will kill a child with the gripes, or maim it as it has done this one.’
She was unable to disprove an
y of Miss Cartwright’s words, but nevertheless she was surprised to hear them, for they sounded silly and uninformed coming from this knowledgeable person.
It was at this point that the child put up its hand and, catching at her finger and dragging it to its mouth, began to suck. It was like a kiss of goodbye and awakened in Kirsten both a deep feeling of possessiveness and also her first act of defiance. Standing with her back against the table, her hands splayed out, she stared at the woman, the frightening woman, she even glared at her as she said slowly, ‘I’ll not go, I’ll not! I’ll see the master…’
She had a momentary impression that Miss Cartwright leaped over the cradle, for the next second she was fighting for her life, tearing at the hands about her throat. Her back was bent over the table, but the pain in her spine was obliterated by the terrible pain in her neck; she was choking, she was dying. Her efforts to free herself from the grip on her throat became weaker, then everything turned black. But it could only have been for a second, for, the pressure lifting from her windpipe, she saw the master and Miss Cartwright reeling backwards across the room almost falling onto the crib, before they came up against the wall.
When slowly she raised her breaking back upright she saw Miss Cartwright with her hand covering her eyes and the master holding her by the shoulders and, his voice low and terrible, he was demanding, ‘Why? Why?’
When Miss Cartwright neither moved nor answered, he took his hands from her and turned towards Kirsten, and coming close to her he peered into her face where the eye was so far in the corner it could not drop farther, and he put out his hand and touched her neck gently, saying, ‘Are you all right?’
She swallowed but could not answer, and then he asked her the same question. ‘Why? Why has this come about?’
If she could have spoken she would not have done so, for whatever the explanation for the attack was to be it must not come from her.
She bowed her head while the master turned towards the wall again, from which Miss Cartwright had moved a step. She was standing now, her hands clasped tightly at her waist, the fingers clawing at each set of knuckles, and she said thickly, ‘I have news for you. The…the child has rickets. She has let the child get rickets…’
In that moment Kirsten had become filled with fear of the man as she watched his face take on a terrible look; and then he, too, seemed to become demented. Yet he had not turned his wrath against herself, instead he had stormed into his wife’s room and poured abuse on her, blaming her for not giving her son her own milk; and he had iterated what Miss Cartwright herself had said, rickets was caused by lack of nourishment. The nurse’s milk was good, he had said, but it wasn’t the child’s own mother’s milk. Then he had stormed back into the nursery and told her she must massage the child’s legs morning and night and that he himself would see that she did it.
So, from that night there was no more talk from Miss Cartwright, or from the mistress, of her leaving; but from that night Miss Cartwright had become like a devil, a great silent, ever-watchful devil, and a devil to be greatly feared.
From that night too, almost daily except when he made a journey to London, the master visited his son. Moreover, during the following weeks the child was attended by four more doctors, two of whom said firmly that the boy had rickets and pooh-poohed the idea that rickets was exclusively a disease of the poor. Babies of some poor people got more nourishment than those of the rich, who were pap fed after early weaning. The other two doctors were of different opinions; one said it was a form of spinal paralysis that would increase with the child’s age; the other said it was liver trouble, hence the enlarged stomach.
The effect of all this on the mistress was to throw her into tantrums bordering on hysteria, and when this happened the master shouted at her and on one occasion shook her. She had witnessed it taking place through the partly open door and listened to him bellowing at the top of his voice, ‘You are a mother, woman! You are the mother of the child. If he turns out to be a gibbering idiot you are still his mother.’ It was then the mistress’s crying had turned to high laughter, and the master had stormed out, leaving his wife to Miss Cartwright.
It was sometime later that she heard the mistress and Miss Cartwright arguing. They spoke so low as to be almost inaudible, but even so she could still make out that the mistress was blaming Miss Cartwright for the whole situation; and Miss Cartwright defended herself, saying bitterly, ‘If you had presented him with that dead thing where do you think you’d be today? Not in this house, I can tell you, at least not as its mistress, for wife or no wife he would have brought in a strumpet. And another, and another, until they had given him what he wanted, a son. And you could have screamed and screeched your head off, but it would have made no difference…He was desperate for offspring. I did what I did for you.’
Then the mistress’s voice had made her hang her head, for she said, ‘But that creature, that loose-eyed creature, she holds us in the hollow of her hand.’ And when Miss Cartwright replied, ‘Leave her to me. I’ve found out she’s visiting that scum on the hill. When the time is ripe I shall give him this news and it will be he himself who will send her packing, for those Flynns are like a thorn in his flesh,’ she had lifted her head and stared at the door.
Following a silence the mistress’s voice had come again, saying, ‘He said you…you tried to kill her. Is it true?’
There came no answer to this, only silence, but the silence answered the question, and on it she had slunk from the room …
Then the whole house was aghast when the master ordered that the nursery be moved to a suite of rooms in the east wing. What were things coming to? demanded the staff amongst themselves. The master of the house supervising the arrangements of the nursery; and not only of the nursery but also of a special room for that road piece! Even those who were for Kirsten recalled to mind from where she had come.
The largest of three connecting rooms Konrad ordered to be turned into a day nursery, with the room going off to the right as a night nursery. The adjoining room, he said, was to be furnished as a bed-sitting room, with an additional crib in it so that should the baby become fractious the nurse could have him beside her.
Besides the rooms having access to each other, they all led direct to a main corridor, on the opposite side of which was a room called the studio where the master chipped away at wood and pieces of stone.
The discovery of the studio had come as a surprise to her. She had been in the house all those months and hadn’t known that the master worked. Then she had felt further surprise when she knew the nature of the work, for she considered it odd that a man with all the master’s wealth and position should want to work with his hands like a labourer.
From the day she took her place in the new nursery the animosity of the indoor staff, with the exception of Mrs Poulter and Rose, was made evident to her. But of all of them it was the cook who showed her spleen the most.
What the cook objected to, Kirsten understood, was that she had to send her meals up, separate on a tray and in cover dishes as if she were gentry, but Rose had patted her arm as she imparted this piece of news, saying, ‘What can any of them do about it? If the master’s for you, you’re laughin’. Even Miss Cartwright’s hands are tied.’
Kirsten couldn’t see Miss Cartwright’s hands ever being tied; but she wished they could be literally for she was afraid of them. As for laughing, she never laughed in this house; and there were times, too, more frequently of late, when she wished she were miles away from the place. Well, not miles away, just across the river and up the hill.
Since the child had been weaned she had a regular half-day a week off, and like a pigeon going home she flew straight across the river and up to the Abode where they welcomed her as if she belonged to them. From Dan to Dorry, every one of them welcomed her, but most of all Colum welcomed her. It was he who waited for her by the stepping stones on a Sunday afternoon and set her back on the same spot always before darkness descended, which at times made her v
isit very short.
Now the days were lengthening. Spring would soon be here, and then summer, when it remained light till almost ten o’clock. But before that there was Sunday, and Sunday was only two full days off. She hoped the river wouldn’t rise to prevent her crossing, for it had been raining hard all the week.
She was sitting now looking into the fire, wondering what she would have done if she hadn’t met Colum and been taken into the Flynns’ warm embrace; her life then would indeed have been lonely, for she was aware that she lived in this great house in isolation. Even those who were for her spoke to her, as it were, surreptitiously; only the master spoke to her openly and without hauteur or reserve, which attitudes of manner were after all, his right.
The master was a good, kind man. She liked the master, oh she did, she did. As she gazed into the fire she seemed to see his face staring back at her, his broad strong face, the face that was like his body oozing power. Yet it was strange, and the strangeness of her thought brought a self-derisive smile to her lips; she did not think of the master as powerful, for in a way she was sorry for him. There was pity in her for him, and not only because he was being duped—she herself was not without guilt in this matter—no, the feeling she had was a strange one, because it was the same kind of feeling she bestowed on the child, she wanted to protect him, love him. This thought brought her head jerking sideways and made her mutter, even aloud, ‘Eeh! The things you think.’
The Slow Awakening Page 15