Gideon is looking at her anxiously. “Is everything all right?”
She pats herself to make sure. The baby is safely in residence, but no longer squeezed under her breastbone. She knows what this must mean; yet she feels lighter—buoyant even, as if a weight has been lifted off her. Eating has been a duty lately, each bite forced down only to be sent up again half-digested, but she has space now for her share of the feast.
“Oh, I’m quite comfortable,” she says, smiling at him.
Leander marches in, bearing aloft one of her mixing bowls brimming with white, foaming liquid, singing, “The eggnog in hand bring I, perfumed with spice and brand-ee-iiii . . .” He lowers it to the table without spilling a drop, and flings out an arm as if he’d just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Sophy claps her hands like a child. She would like to hold herself aloof from all this, to declare her preference for the austere observances of the Hedge house, the crèche on the mantel and the Nativity story read aloud by the fire. She ought at least to bemoan the prodigal waste of candle wax. But the magical atmosphere absolves her—absolves all of them. They have been serious for too long.
Leander dips the ladle in and gives her the first cup. “Perfectly wholesome,” he assures her. “Eggs and milk, with the merest whisper of spirits.”
Sophy sniffs cautiously: nutmeg and cinnamon. She intends only a few sips, but once she tastes it, she must have more. It is a concoction uniquely devised for her present state. She would happily subsist on this nectar for the rest of the pregnancy, though she can taste the brandy: a subtle serpent, its insinuations lathered in cream.
The bowl is nearly empty when Leander remembers that a proper meal is waiting. This is a matter of general hilarity for the eggnog is rich and no one is hungry. They laugh harder when they see that he has stuck quills in the capon, exalting it to a dainty dish to set before a king. Medieval manners prevail; they tear off pieces of the bird without bothering to carve it, and spoon up turnip and potato direct from the serving dishes. Tonight they are free from their earnest everyday selves. Different with each other, too. For the first time since Leander and Gideon set up the household, they are treating her as a true companion, not Little Wife, nor Holy Mother, nor stubborn child. It is a great relief, after too many long, solitary winter days, to put off her reserve and laugh with them in this easy way. She feels, for the moment, glad to be part of this odd little community. Also, a fugitive fondness for the schoolmaster. Whatever else he might be, he makes a clever fool. They can dispense with the peacocks, he’s all the amusement they need.
“A tune!” Leander says. Sophy has forgotten the tin whistle; he hasn’t played since they moved here. He lifts the hem of the tablecloth, and she watches wide-eyed, waiting for him to whip it into the air and magick the leavings of dinner away. Instead, he opens the door and calls for Lem, who is still here, crouched in some corner of the dark house with his bread and meat. He never eats with them, though Leander has invited him. For all his crudeness he is a creature of propriety, as shy of their company as they are of his, an arrangement that, truth to tell, suits everyone. The men clear the table quickly, and, with Lem hefting the chairs, carry it back to the dining room. The boy doesn’t return. She imagines him in the kitchen running his fingers around the eggnog bowl, sucking them one by one.
Emptied of temporary furnishings, the glasshouse seems capacious beyond its true dimensions, a long glinting blackness stitched with light from end to end. Leander declares he feels like a minstrel in a great hall.
“A ballroom,” Sophy insists. In the novels she used to hide from Papa, there was always a ballroom.
“Well, then, we will dance.” He hooks her rocking chair with one hand and drops it with a thud in its old place by the bedroom hearth.
Leander puts the tin whistle to his lips, and after a few sputters, launches into a melody that Sophy has never heard. It isn’t one of the familiar carols. The notes are meandering and plaintive, rather as she imagines Gypsy music to be. A thin stream only—a whistle is no violin—yet they pull at her. She begins to sway, swishing her skirt from side to side, and her feet follow. She can’t kick and spin as she once did, but her bulk is her pride, to be carried with dignity: the good ship Sophia in full sail. It is fitting that Gideon should bow before her, and call her Milady, and steer her up and down the floor, and turn her with a touch, Leander piping away until he joins them, the three of them linking hands and weaving in and out and under, dancing to the music in their heads as, one by one, the candles gutter out.
When a single flame remains, drowning in its pool of wax, they come apart. In the dark they are ghostly to one another, she and Gideon making one shade, Leander looming before them. Leander leans in close and kisses her full on the lips; then he kisses Gideon. It is a seal, a solemn imprinting.
GIDEON IS TOO FATIGUED to worry about the wisdom of their late night. He manages to pull his boots off and loosen his trousers before collapsing on the cold bed. He fans his arms back and forth over the linen to stir some warmth, moaning, “Hurry, Sophy, I need you.”
It is left to her to build the fire, though they won’t get much benefit from it. Shivering, leaning toward the feeble heat, she peels off her stockings. As she lifts her dress over her head, a wave of nausea hits her. She barely has time to get to the basin. The eggnog comes up, and the capon, and the remnants of their festive Yule, the laughing, the dancing, the kiss. A long, nasty business. When it’s over, she crawls into bed, cradling her belly, and draws the covers over both of them, inching Gideon’s arm to his own side. He slept through it all, sprawled where he dropped.
Sophy closes her eyes and composes herself as best she can. Sleeping on her back is unnatural for her; these last weeks she’s reposed most nights between fitful dozing and waking. Gideon’s snores erupt raggedly, jarring her anew each time, and even with a wall between, she can hear the panes in the glasshouse rattle with each gust of wind. Minutes pass, or hours. She feels a need to use the chamberpot. Tries to ignore the urge—what can be left in her?—but it is pressing.
Unwieldy as she is, it is a feat akin to levitation to stay clear of the icy rim. Sophy squats as best she can, straining but issuing only a trickle of water. After a few minutes she struggles to her feet, realizing too late that she wasn’t finished after all, she’s drizzling down the inside of her leg. Her fingers come away clear, and only then does her heart begin to race, her weary mind warning her of the risk of blood. No use looking for a cloth now, might as well use her shift.
As she dabs at herself, the cramp grips, clenching her from back to thighs, doubling her over. She gasps, too shocked to cry out. Tells herself it must be her bowels, it’s too soon for the other. When it passes, she is afraid to lie down; she paces back and forth, hands on her back. Then she remembers the mock pains the women spoke about. Their voices rush in on her, a comforting chorus. Not due for a week . . . came regular every five minutes . . . had me thinking I’d push my firstborn out all alone and not a soul near to help.
Yes, she has had a false pain, and in a few minutes there’ll be another, and she will wake Gideon then and tell him he must get Mama in the morning. Calm and prepared.
The fire is only embers, but she gives it a poke and lowers herself into the rocking chair. Soon she’ll be nursing the baby in this very chair—a soothing thought. If they won’t let her sing, is humming permitted? Will the rhythm of rocking be enough of a lullaby? Five minutes must have passed by now. She wishes for the dependable click of the hall clock; here Gideon’s pocket watch is their only timepiece. Thoughts of home bring a powerful yearning for Mama. Sophy wants her with a pure infant’s need—would wail for her open-mouthed if she could. Mama said she would be here to bear it with her. How angry she’d be if she knew her hoyden daughter had danced . . . Just like you to jog the little one loose before its time . . . but all the while she’d bustle about, doing what needed to be done . . .
Pain yanks her spine straight, the cramp sharper now and more insi
stent, a poker through her innards. This time she screams.
“What? What is it?” Gideon starts up from his nest of covers and gropes for the lamp. She notes through her pangs that he looks comically like other men, his face bristling with two day’s growth of whiskers and hair standing up all over his head.
“Oh, no,” he says. “Please God, not now, not tonight. We’re not ready.”
GIDEON WILL FIND that great swatches of the night are lost to memory. He is accustomed to residing in the interludes between events, those hushed, dimly lit receiving rooms where he can gather his thoughts. This night is all activity, from the moment he wakes to Sophy’s cry to the relentlessly approaching consummation.
He rushes into the parlor, shouting for help. Leander comes running, wide awake and hoisting up his trousers. “She is early,” he says, “but not so early that we should be alarmed.” He claps Gideon on the back, as if the two of them are about to embark on a long-anticipated adventure.
His manner changes when he goes to Sophy. He kneels before her and folds her hands in his. “Now you mustn’t be frightened,” he tells her. “Every soul that walks in the world has entered by this route. Think of that!” He glances at her bare feet, and, without hesitating, takes them in his hands and rubs them vigorously. “Blue with cold,” he says to Gideon. “Fetch some woolen stockings, would you?” Sophy accepts his attentions without protest; even, Gideon observes, with a kind of mute gratitude. He has longed for this; yet, for the first time since the three of them began to live together, he feels a needle of jealousy—of whom or what he isn’t sure. A new etiquette prevails tonight, and for this, too, he isn’t ready.
Lem is roused with difficulty from the mat near the kitchen hearth. The plan is for him to fetch Dr. Craddock while Leander collects Mrs. Hedge and Micah. Sophy is seized with another cramp, and all pretense of calm goes.
“For God’s sake, what if it happens while you’re gone?” Gideon says, near to weeping. “How will I know what to do?”
In the end, Lem is dispatched into the night swaddled in Leander’s scarves, with only a lantern to guide him. He is to walk first to the Hedges, and with family in tow, take the horse and wagon to the doctor’s, all returning together. “It’s a better plan,” Leander declares, seeing him off. “Simpler. The sun will be up in an hour or two—though you know this land so well you could find your way blindfold, couldn’t you, Lem?” The boy blinks and screws up his forehead, as if pondering the nature of the compliment.
By the time dawn arrives, bringing a blush to the blanched landscape, Sophy’s pains are coming every six minutes. No one tells you it is a kind of possession, Gideon thinks. Sophy is no longer Sophy. Her face is blotched with tears and sweat, however often they sponge her. Her hair hangs. She is too hot, then chilled to the bone; hungry, but can’t swallow more than a spoonful of broth. The respites aren’t long enough to relieve her. No sooner does one siege end than she lives in dread of the next, her mouth contorted and her eyes pleading for help he can’t give. She cries out for Fanny and begs her to hurry. She goes from bed to rocking chair and back to bed, as if she could escape her misery, and weeps when it grips her again.
Leander takes him aside. “Walk with her. I don’t hold with all this lying about, it does no one any good. While you walk, talk to her. Remind her of some tender moment in your courtship. Tell her she is young and healthy, and won’t remember a thing when she holds the baby in her arms.”
“How can you be so sure?” Gideon says with some bitterness. Leander’s confidence is beginning to grate on him. “It’s not as if you’ve had experience.”
“On the contrary, dear boy,” Leander says. “I had a wife once, in another life, another age. I know enough not to panic when there’s no cause.”
But he turns to the window, where he has stationed himself this last half hour, watching the snow turn from gray to pink, and drums his knuckles on the sill.
GIDEON WRAPS HIS ARM about Sophy, and steers her slowly around the bedroom. She will not help him, she makes herself a dead weight, and he feels, in spite of himself, a trace of resentment. Do all women carry on so? It is not easy, under the circumstances, to make conversation. The blankness of his mind recalls the night of the Reverend’s accident—the last time he was asked to talk a person through pain. If a stream of Hebrew were to gush from him now, it wouldn’t be the least efficacious. But he does have a useful thought, though only one.
“Come, let’s get away from this room,” he tells her. “Let’s go to the glasshouse and watch the day come in. The day our child will be born.”
They walk into the pale, watery light of early morning. Baptismal, it seems to Gideon: the stains of last night’s festivities tenderly washed away, all things made new. But Sophy is looking at the candlesticks clotted with wax, the greenery sagging from its string or fallen to the floor during their exertions.
“This place will never be the same to me,” she says, very low.
“Why do you say that?”
As if he didn’t know what last night’s revels portended. Her paintings stacked in a corner, her easel propped against the wall. Soon her sanctuary will be a laboratory, he and Leander observing the infant and noting each advance of its consciousness, while she—what role had he assigned her? In his visions of their communal life she has been on the periphery, caring for the child’s physical needs and running the house, perhaps painting in her spare time. A well-trained servant, essential but invisible. He must find a way to draw her in, as Leander told him long ago. To honor her as she deserves. She is his wife, after all—his beloved Sophy. And the fact is, servants can be treacherous: prone to gossip, disloyal. Smiling to your face while plotting mutiny in their hearts.
Sophy gasps and clutches her back, and Gideon banishes those thoughts, ashamed of his own perfidy. First get the child born, and he will make it up to her. He is about to dredge up a memory of their early days in the study when he glimpses in the distance a bulky figure trudging toward them, stamping a neat seam of footprints across the snow. In the intensity of his relief, Gideon doesn’t think to question why Lem is still on foot, why he is alone.
He has carried the message all the way from the village, determined to deliver it intact, but his face is too stiff, his lips won’t form the words. Leander leads him to the kitchen fireplace and puts a steaming bowl of broth in his hands, unwinding his exotic wrappings while he drinks; the boy had balked at wearing “lady clothes,” even from his master, but had shed his pride along the way. With each swallow Lem makes a mewing sound in his throat, equal parts pleasure and pain. He upends the bowl over his face to catch the last drops.
“Doctor says Missus Reverend is poorly and he will come in the hour meantime ask Missus Teague failing that a neighbor.” He pauses for breath. “I went to Missus Teague’s, but she were at another birthing.”
Sophy begins to whimper softly. Gideon can tell from the slackness of her body that she is at the end of her strength, and he has none to give her. People call on God at such times, but he has spent too many months constructing his own house and never once deferred to the Builder. It would be like crying out to a stranger. He looks to Leander, more out of habit than hope. His friend looks back, dull-eyed. Lem’s news has drained the vitality out of him: his flesh hangs from his long bones.
Lem gapes at them. He is still clutching the bowl, which no one has had the presence of mind to refill. He seems dimly mystified by his reception. Gideon can almost see the thought winding its slow, impeded way through his head like a funeral procession in a snowstorm. Did I get the message wrong?
Leander has perhaps read the same thought. He pats the boy’s shoulder. “You did well, Lem—everything that was asked of you. You’re a good, faithful fellow. Now, you stay by the fire until you’re warm, and go to the larder and find yourself something to eat. We must all keep our strength up.”
This small show of comfort restores Leander to himself. He puts an arm around Gideon and Sophy. “We’re able and intell
igent, are we not? We’ll see it through together. These medical men have convinced us they’re indispensable, but the fact is, women have been giving birth for centuries without doctors. I’m told the Polynesians are so relaxed they have no pain. Out pops the little one, and it’s back to pounding taro root for dinner . . .”
Sophy rebukes him with a groan that ends in a howl. It takes both of them to get her back to the bedroom; again Gideon wonders at her resistance, but now he thinks, She is contending, but not with us. He smooths the bedclothes and plumps her pillows; it seems easier for her to recline than lie flat. When she is settled, he stretches out beside her on top of the covers, resting his back against the oak headboard. He doesn’t dare get too comfortable; in spite of his agitation, he is swimming in fatigue. Somewhere in the background Leander is feeding the fire, muttering to himself about soap and string. A moment of oblivion, all his faculties shutting down. Sophy pulls at his hand.
“He won’t wait,” she says, her voice high and thin, as if she’s given up arguing. “He is coming now.”
THE TIME IT TAKES will forever be a blur. It seems to Gideon that they are in the bed for hours, Sophy straining, alternately wringing his hand and pulling at the sheet that Leander tied to the bedpost. Even in extremity, he is struck by the strangeness of the process, the primitivism of it. If everyone in the world enters by one route, then his own mother—his cool, contained, brittle mother—must have writhed like this, reduced to her animal self. The Bible calls it a punishment, but what if Eve had resisted the fruit? Would the child have slid out effortlessly from the gate of life, singing hymns?
Leander is talking to Sophy, telling her softly what he is about to do. “Now I am just going to reach under your gown and see if I can feel the head. No need to be ashamed, we are all cut in the same pattern, and Gideon is right here. I’ll be as gentle as I can, and you will let me know if I’m hurting you.”
The Language of Paradise: A Novel Page 29