Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

He went out. Baxter followed, giving an encouraging nod to Jenny.

  She was still kneeling by the child. She got up now, picked her up, and sat down on the chair by Drouet’s desk. ‘Don’t be frightened, darling,’ she said in a soft murmur. ‘I’m not going to harm you. Tell me your name.’

  The little girl said nothing.

  ‘Do you remember your mama?’

  Still nothing.

  ‘I had a little girl,’ Jenny said. ‘Her name was Heather.’

  She bent sideways to gaze into the child’s face as she said the name, but there was no visible reaction.

  ‘She lived in our house in Galashiels. She had a nurse called Wilmot. She had a doll with brown curls.’

  But there was no answering interest in the little body sitting so stiffly on her lap.

  She curved her arm round her, drew her closer. Almost automatically she began to rock. It was an ancient reflex, mother and child, protector and protected. Jenny sang,

  ‘Bye Baby Bunting,

  Daddy’s gone a-hunting,

  To fetch a little rabbit skin

  To dress poor Baby Bunting in.’

  There was just the faintest softening in the child’s attitude. Almost, almost, her head seemed to droop towards Jenny’s shoulder.

  ‘This is the way the weaver goes,

  A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick,

  The treadle down with his heel and toes,

  A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick.’

  The little girl raised her head, looking up at Jenny from her place near her shoulders.

  Jenny smiled down at her. ‘Do you know the song, Heather? Do you remember it?’

  The child said not a word.

  ‘This is the way the weaver goes,

  A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick,

  The wool on his ears and on his nose,

  A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick.’

  The little girl put up a wavering hand. She almost, not quite, touched a little pink-rimmed ear.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny, ‘yes. That’s what you do, Heather.’ And once again she began the song.

  ‘This is the way the weaver goes,

  A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick.

  The treadle down …’

  The little girl put her hand down towards her foot.

  ‘With his heel and toes …’

  She patted her bare heel and then her toes. Then she raised her hand towards Jenny.

  Jenny patted it with her own in rhythm as she ended, ‘A-rickelty-tick, a-rickelty-tick.’

  She sang the second verse. This time the little girl was ahead of her, her hand moving to her ear and her nose and then waiting to be patted twice in the slow rhythm of the ending.

  ‘That’s it,’ whispered Jenny, ‘that’s it. Oh, darling, I’ve found you.’

  She hugged the little girl. The little body squirmed at the sudden movement. Jenny let her go and looked into her face. Terror was contorting it. In this place, to be taken hold of suddenly didn’t mean love, but hurt.

  ‘No, no, Heather! I wasn’t going to hurt you! No one is ever going to hurt you again!’

  She stood up, carrying her daughter. She went to the door and looked out. Drouet and Baxter were standing in the passage in stilted conversation.

  ‘This little girl is my daughter,’ Jenny said.

  Baxter started, then raised his eyebrows. His lips formed the silent word, ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m quite sure,’ she said in a firm tone. ‘Her eyes are the right colour and the shape of her head and the way her hair grows are the same as Heather. Moreover, she recognises a game we used to play. May I take her home at once?’

  The warden of the place looked surprised. ‘Well, of course, if you’re sure …’ He cared little one way or the other. If he lost four shillings and sixpence a week by the departure of Infant June Smith, the loss would be made good very shortly by the arrival of another stray.

  ‘There are a few formalities to attend to,’ he ventured. ‘And some slight legal costs …’

  ‘Of course,’ Baxter agreed. A guinea or two would soon see the back of this greasy scoundrel.

  When Jenny had signed a document agreeing that she took the child on the understanding of its being her own, and promising to have her husband write a letter of authority, they were free to go. The fees for the legal stamp came to ten shillings. Baxter added some other coins, which Drouet didn’t refuse.

  ‘Can I have a shawl to wrap her in? It’s very cold outside.’

  ‘A shawl,’ he echoed, at a loss.

  ‘A blanket, then.’

  ‘Oh, well, madam, every blanket in the place is needed.’ He wanted her to offer payment for it.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Baxter, and went out to the coach. He came back with a carriage rug. The little girl was wrapped in it and carried out. As they went they could see little thinly-clad figures in a field across the road, walking and stooping, walking and stooping, gathering up potatoes. The rest of the children were no doubt bestowed elsewhere in the grounds, at work on tasks suitable to their age.

  With a look of absolute wonder Jenny’s daughter surveyed the inside of the carriage as they drove off. It was ordinary enough, but she seemed fascinated by the shine of the woodwork, the polish of the leather, the glow of the padded satin headrest.

  When they reached Eaton Square Baird was hovering in the hall. At sight of the little girl she cried, ‘Michty me! Is that our Heather?’

  Jenny disregarded the question. ‘Run a bath, put out one of my chemises to dress her in. Send out Dorothy to buy nightgowns, frocks, underwear, slippers ‒ tell her to ask the draper for two complete sets to fit a little girl of two and a half. And caps ‒ for God’s sake buy some pretty caps for her poor little head.’

  Upstairs in Jenny’s room were some of the toys from Heather’s nursery at home. Jenny set her daughter down on the carpeted floor, put the doll with the brown curls into her hands, and set one or two others nearby. The child sat bewildered, not daring to touch anything.

  Between them Jenny and Baird bathed her. Baird swore horrible Scottish oaths at the shaved head. Gently they rubbed away the grime that had built up due to the shortage of water at the infant asylum. They dried her in soft towels. They put the fine lawn chemise over her head, directed her arms through the armholes, and tied it about her with a satin ribbon.

  Then, set down in front of the fire with the faint glow of soap on her skin, she looked a little more like a normal child. Jenny had had thick chicken soup brought up, and stewed apples with curds and whey. The child ate hungrily at first, but soon let her spoon drop from her hand into the bowl.

  Her eyelids began to droop. Jenny picked her up and put her on her bed. She brought the china doll again, and a toy made from sheepskin to look like a little Eskimo.

  After a long, dreamy pause, a hand stretched out. The Eskimo was touched tentatively, as if the little girl expected it to be snatched away.

  ‘Mo-mo,’ she murmured.

  It was the first sound she had made since Jenny saw her. And it was the right one, for that had been Heather’s name for the toy.

  A little later she was asleep on Jenny’s bed, the quilt tucked around her and the Eskimo clutched to her cheek.

  Jenny sat beside the bed, her arm stretched out over the sleeping child.

  ‘Heather,’ she kept saying to herself in tremulous thanksgiving. ‘Heather, Heather …’

  Chapter Twelve

  Ronald Armstrong travelled full of joyous anticipation in response to the message: ‘Heather found.’ He almost threw himself through the doorway before Graham had the door open.

  Jenny came running downstairs to greet him. ‘Where is she? Let me see her! How did you find her?’

  He began by following Jenny up to their bedroom, but had soon passed her while she was pausing on the stairs, trying to warn him, to prepare him.

  He rushed into the bedroom. The child was sitting on the hearth rug before the bedroom fire, a little to one side and p
rotected by the mesh of the fireguard. Her gaze was fixed on the dancing flames. The flickering light outlined her strange little body ‒ the stick-like arms and legs, the baby’s cap close against her head so that it was like a skull.

  For a moment he thought his eyesight was playing him false. He started forward. She looked round, and shrank back at the figure of a tall man in dark clothes, so like Mr Drouet in essence.

  Ronald almost recoiled in horror.

  Had his wife accepted this ‒ this ‒ as their beautiful, golden baby girl? Where were the tawny curls? Where was the ready smile?

  He turned to protest to Jenny. She was at his elbow saying quietly, ‘Don’t startle her, Ronald. She’s very easily frightened.’

  ‘But she’s not ‒’

  ‘Not harmed, no. She’s been half-starved and kept in terror, but the doctor says she’ll be all right.’

  ‘But her hair ‒?’

  She explained about the infant asylum, about the dreadful regime there. She tried, in a half-whisper, to tell him all the facts he needed. But he wasn’t convinced. He knew his poor, grief-stricken wife had made a terrible mistake.

  He had pictured himself catching Heather up into his arms, covering her with kisses, listening to her cooing with happiness. He found he couldn’t bring himself to touch this little stranger.

  Jenny led him out. He felt it only fair to let her tell him the facts as she believed them. She related the tale of the nursery game that Heather had recognised. He thought, Of course, when she said heel and toe, the child knew what she meant. And when she told how Heather had known Mo-mo, he thought that the sound was one a sleepy little girl might easily make.

  Yet he found he couldn’t say outright, ‘You’re wrong ‒ this isn’t Heather.’ Jenny was so certain, so uplifted by the happiness of having her baby again. And Ronald discovered that the rest of the world accepted this little changeling as Heather Armstrong. Mr Baxter accepted her, the doctor too, and friends who were beginning to send messages of congratulation, and newspapermen who called for details to publish in their pages.

  He should have spoken at once, the moment he saw the child. He debated with himself what to do, and thought it would be best to wait a week or so, when everything had settled down to something like normal.

  The doctor had advised against moving Heather for the present. She was under-nourished, dehydrated, and suffering from exhaustion, both physical and mental. ‘A month or so here in the place she’s got used to,’ he advised, ‘and then we’ll see. I do feel that the country will be better for her ‒ fresh air, good food, a quiet life.’

  As the week passed Ronald found he couldn’t tell Jenny he didn’t accept the baby. It sounded too cruel, Herod-like in its harshness. And as the next week went by and the next, he began to see that Jenny was right and he was wrong.

  The stick-like limbs became more rounded. Fawn curls began to peep from under the baby cap. The child sometimes smiled ‒ not directly at him nor, in fact, at any man. But sometimes as he watched her he saw her lips curve over some silent game with her doll, or some encounter with the kitchen cat.

  The child really was Heather. But it would have been more true to say she was Heather’s shade, a kind of tracing of Heather on grey paper ‒ fainter, less defined, and utterly quiet.

  ‘Isn’t she able to speak?’ he asked Jenny one day, when he had spent more than ten minutes trying to coax a word out of her.

  ‘She can speak. She just doesn’t want to.’

  ‘But why not? Why shouldn’t she want to speak to her own mother and father?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ronald.’ His wife shook her head, wondering if she would ever be able to make Ronald understand what Heather had been through. No one who had not seen the infant asylum could fathom the depths of fear in which Heather had lived there. And what had gone before? There was no way of knowing.

  Ronald felt shut out. The only people with whom Heather seemed to have anything like a normal relationship were her mother and, to a lesser extent, her mother’s maid, Baird. Baird had taken over the role of nursemaid for the present. As she herself said, ‘It’s easier to look after one quiet wee lassie than a grown lady, and the bairn seems easy wi’ me.’

  A complex harness of emotions held Ronald in check. He didn’t know how to handle his little daughter, nor did she seem to want to be handled by him. Moreover, he felt a terrible, gnawing guilt at having failed to recognise her. He had almost denied his own child! It was too awful to think of. It made him uncertain in any overtures he made to her.

  Beyond that, he felt unwanted. Jenny’s entire attention was taken up with the baby. He kept telling himself it was only natural ‒ the child had been snatched away from her, missing for nearly a year, found again under circumstances of deep distress. Naturally Jenny thought and worried about Heather to the exclusion of everyone else.

  The best thing was to go home to Galashiels and get back to work, instead of hanging about in London being useless. Ronald put this to Jenny, perhaps half-hoping she’d say, ‘No, no, don’t leave me ‒ I need you to help me with Heather.’

  She only said, ‘I suppose you’d better go, dear. It will soon be time to get out the spring pattern book.’

  ‘When do you expect to come home?’ he asked, wanting to hear her say, As soon as ever I can.

  ‘We’ll leave that to the doctor. I don’t want to risk moving Heather if Dr Mainbridge is against it.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed.

  Of course. The child must come first. He hated himself for feeling even the faintest twinge of irritation on that score.

  So he went home to Waterside Mill and the empty house of Gatesmuir, to bury himself in the work. Jenny wrote regularly, full of news about Heather. ‘We took her out for her first walk in the park today.’ Or, ‘When weighed yesterday Heather was one-and-a-half stones, which Doctor says is very satisfactory considering the check she received.’ Or, ‘Today we discarded the baby’s cap since the weather was warm and there was no fear of her taking a chill without it.’

  March came, then April and May. In June the days were long, the sun shone, and Dr Mainbridge decreed that Heather was fit to make the journey to the Borders.

  At Gatesmuir everyone was thrown into a flurry of activity. The mistress had been gone so long! Nothing must seem amiss when she walked in again. Everything was polished, everything smelt of beeswax or blacklead. The gardener furnished sweet-scabious and veronica without grudging them, so that there were flowers in every room.

  Ronald went to the station to welcome them home. There was a small, discreet crowd of townsfolk also, wanting to show goodwill and interest without being intrusive. The stationmaster hurried to help down the travellers, Ronald moved forward trembling with anxiety, and the Armstrongs were united in their home town once more.

  Heather was walking now at her mother’s side. It was to be noticed that she never let go her grasp on Jenny’s hand unless Jenny needed to use it, and even then the little girl held fast to a fold of her skirt.

  The onlookers noted with satisfaction that she was dressed in a pretty frock of blue muslin over white silk, and a bonnet to match. Her hair was now long enough to show in a fringe of curls on her brow. She was small for her age, pale, and with an air of timidity.

  At the end of this month she would have her third birthday. Out of the two others in her short life, one had been spent with strangers, only one in safety with her parents.

  Next day, friends and neighbours began to call, in hopes of being introduced to this celebrity, this child who had been stolen away and now returned as if after a year in Elfland.

  But little was seen of her, and still less was heard. She began to have the reputation of being deaf-and-dumb, although when people stopped to think about it they knew this wasn’t so ‒ call her name and she would look up, so her hearing was excellent. It was her power of speech that seemed lacking.

  There were those who claimed to have heard her talk. But when cross-questioned, they woul
d hesitate. ‘I canna let on that she said much. I heard her say “yes please” when the Mistress asked her if she would like lemonade. But it was scarce above a whisper.’

  Kind neighbours invited the little girl to come for tea and games with their own offspring. It was never a success. The other children would rush about in their usual rowdy fashion. Heather would sit by, clutching a shapeless doll, watching them as if marvelling but taking no part.

  ‘She’s backward, poor lamb. No wonder, is it, after what happened?’

  The murmur, when it reached Ronald’s ear, vexed and hurt him. No child of his ought ever to be described as ‘backward’. And as to her ability to speak ‒ he could have given evidence of it, for sleep at Gatesmuir was broken most nights by an outcry from Heather, struggling with nightmares. She would call out in terror ‒ broken words of distress, of fear, of appeal. Mostly, her cry was for Mama.

  Jenny and her maid took turns sitting by her at night. But even when Jenny was not on duty, she would be only lightly asleep, ready to leap up if the baby needed her, and often summoned when Heather refused to settle down again until she had seen Mama.

  Marital life was almost impossible under these conditions. On the rare occasions when Ronald had Jenny to himself all night, their lovemaking had lost its certainty and joy. He felt almost as if Jenny gave herself in duty-bound. Gone were the moments of shared ecstasy, the long embraces afterwards when they lay in each other’s arms murmuring in shared contentment.

  The problems of their own life almost excluded awareness of the outside world. But that world was changing dramatically. The American Civil War had ended, followed later by the assassination of Lincoln ‒ an act which would have horrified Jenny if she had really given it consideration. In December of that year, an amendment to the constitution of the United States at last abolished slavery.

  At the end of the following January, a letter arrived from Jenny’s brother Ned. She went pale when she recognised the handwriting on the envelope. Her little exclamation of surprise caused Ronald to look at her across the breakfast table.

  ‘What is it?’

  She held up the envelope. ‘From Ned.’