Wise Child

by Audrey Reimann

  'It's you!' she said, and relief and spite came into her voice and her eyes. 'Miss Prim! Not so prim, eh?' She pursed her lips and said, 'I heard all about how you ran off with poor little Magnus!'

  'I expect you did,' Isobel said as she put her handbag over the back of a chair and sat down. 'I thought you worked at Chancellor's, Doreen. Have you given your job up?’

  'No. You're lucky to catch me. I can't give up.' Ray says, "How would I carry on without Doreen?'" She laughed out loud. 'Normally I don't have time to come home at dinner time. I take sandwiches and spend the dinner hour working with Ray.'

  'My word,' Isobel said. 'He's putting his back into it.’

  Doreen gave the sly look. Something nasty would come next. It did. Doreen said, 'You could have knocked me down when I heard about you and Magnus Hammond. It was all over Macclesfield. Sylvia Hammond told Ray, and he told me -and I ...'

  Isobel said, 'What did you say about me?'

  The laugh exploded. 'I said, "It's the quiet ones you have to watch. I'm all talk and no action. It's the prim little misses who get up to things". Mind you, poor little Magnus is not exactly Johnny Weismuller, is he?'

  Isobel was glad she could summon up her self control when she needed it. She fought down the impulse to strike Doreen and said in a sweet, confidential voice, 'And what about you, Doreen? I remember you telling me how insatiable you were. Not a very attractive boast, I remember thinking. How's Cyril? Is there any improvement?' She said it without a blush.

  Doreen pursed up her lips, lifted her eyebrows and said, 'Cyril's all right. He's more of a man than yours.' She waited a few moments, weighing up whether or not to say more,. Then she said, 'I'm expecting a baby too.'

  Isobel stood up, picked up her coat and put it on slowly, ready to leave quickly before she faced Doreen again and said, 'Congratulations, Doreen. A baby! Who's the father?'

  'What do you mean?' Anger came blazing into her eyes. 'What are you talking about? Who's the father? Who do you think?'

  If she had to leave Macclesfield in disgrace in three months' time - if she were to be shown up as a trollop - she would relish this moment; this moment when she opened her handbag, unfastened the button-down pocket in the silk lining and brought out the photograph. She handed it to Doreen and watched her face pale as she stared at it. 'The baby could be anybody's, I suppose,' Isobel said. 'Though it's more likely to be Ray Chancellor's. But then, I said to myself, "No! Not Doreen with a little llly-Jitty ..."

  Doreen's lips were white as she tore the photograph in two. 'How dare you! How dare you say that Cyril isn't the father?'

  Isobel kept on smiling. 'Oh, I dare. I dare. And it doesn't matter that you've torn the photograph up. There's another one.'

  'Where?'

  'In my safe deposit box at the District Bank. Ray Chancellor can ask my father-in-law to get it for you if you need proof. I'm sure Sylvia's father would be happy to oblige.'

  Doreen's face was red. She threw the pieces of photograph into the fire and, staring at Isobel as bold as brass said, 'It doesn't prove anything.'

  'That's not the way Ray or Sylvia would see it, though, is it?' Isobel said very softly. And when Doreen didn't answer, 'Unless you stop, I shall tell the Hammonds. And then we'll see how long Ray's engagement lasts. And how much longer you and Ray Chancellor can keep up your sordid little affair.'

  She went to the door, turned back to face her and said, 'Let us make a pact, Doreen. Never utter my name again. And I'll never mention yours.'

  A month before Ray married, Frank's mother died. She had been prescribed a laudanum tincture to help her sleep and it had eased her into a peaceful end. It was all over within a week: Ma's death, the funeral and Frank's decision to move out of Park Lane. He'd make the Swan in Jordangate his temporary home. It was his property. There was a large flat over the public bar and it would do him nicely until he found something else.

  He stood at the window now, watching the men unloading the van, dumping his furniture and belongings on the pavement so that the removers wouldn't obstruct the narrow street for longer than necessary. Already, three carts were lined up waiting for some motor cars to edge past the big van.

  There was a back way in from the alley so that he and anyone he invited could come in unobserved. Elsie lived next door. There was the pub below; a lively place -a working man's pub with darts and dominoes in the tap room and a piano-player most nights in the lounge. Living here he'd feel like a twenty-year-old again. Or he would if Elsie would only ... Oh, Hell. Why couldn't he forget her? Why couldn't he find a woman he loved as much as Elsie? Why would she only offer friendship? She laughed when he told her that if Willey-Leigh died he, Frank, would marry her.

  ‘I'll be too old, Frank:,' she said. 'And I'll be a grandmother. You will want a bit of young stuff!' But he didn't. He wanted Elsie.

  *…*…*

  Sylvia's wedding day was the last Saturday in November and Isobel's pregnancy was not very noticeable though there were only five weeks to go. Her waist had gone. She had a little bay window in front and a rather large bottom but all the signs were hidden under the dropped-waist sailor dress she'd made from ice blue shantung. She made a loose fitting coat to go with it and bought one of the new tilted hats that had a crown like a mortar board and a huge flat sweep of a brim, shaped like a swallow's wing. It flattened the pointed shape of her face, gave her height and distracted attention from what Magnus affectionately called her "bulge."

  When Magnus and she arrived at the church there was quite a crowd in the churchyard and another at the gate in the market place. Magnus had made it. All the effort and months of hard exercising on those leg muscles had paid off though Magnus himself did not really want to be there, he said. He was going to return to work the following week and today he looked splendid - handsome and tall and strong as he walked down the aisle, using only a walking stick, with Isobel proudly on his other arm. Their seats were right at the front, next to Rowena and her father. Ian had sent a present and apologies.

  Isabel was glad to be surrounded because she'd been afraid that the stifling, fainting feeling would come over her in Ray Chancellor's presence. She could not look him in the face or stand close to him when she was obliged to speak to him at Archerfield. She glanced at the front row where he and his best man sat as if they hadn't a care in the world. The faintness did not come over her and all Isobel felt was revulsion, tempered with fear that the baby who at that moment was turning somersaults inside her, might turn out to be large and red-headed.

  She opened the wedding service programme -thick embossed vellum; the initials H and C intertwined. The doors were pulled back and Bach's beautiful Toccata and Fugue in D minor came tumbling down to the two-flats key of B minor in a superbly played diminuendo for the low slow notes of The Bridal March from Lohengrin. They all stood as Sylvia came down that long aisle on her father's arm, ethereal in a dress of ivory lace with an heirloom veil worn back from her face under a circlet of stephanotis on her baby-blonde hair.

  Isobel glanced at Magnus when they were singing the first hymn, Love Divine, all Loves Excelling. How wonderful it would have been if she and Magnus had been able to marry in their own church in such style. But he looked very pale with his eyes wet and shiny.

  Behind the brave exterior Magnus’s heart was thundering as he told himself, 'I couldn’t do it. I couldn't tell Father that he is the father of Ray. I couldn’t break my sister's heart.' He nudged his darling Isobel and when she turned to smile at him, whispered, 'When it's over, don't let us hang about for photographs.'

  She whispered back, 'Are your legs aching?'

  'A bit.' He said, 'Would you mind awfully if I asked you to drive me home ... ? You can go back. Enjoy the reception. Stay for the dancing.’

  'All right,' Isobel said. 'But I'll stay home: Then she shushed 'him because the service was starting; "Dearly Beloved. We are gathered here ..."

  They left the church before the organist played the Mendelssohn. Isobel helped Magnus out,
by the side gate into Church Street where the car was. He was feeling the strain after an hour on his feet. 'Are you really all right?' she fretted once he was settled.

  'I'm sorry!' His eyes were very bright. It seemed to Isobel that he was going to indulge in the pessimism that so often overcame him. 'I'm no use to anyone. I want to get back to work. I want to be like I was before-and look at me!'

  Isobel was weaving between the market stalls, honking the hom until they were clear. Then she said to Magnus, 'Enough! No self-pity please. You can easily do three days' a week at Hammonds Silk. I'll drive you there. You work sitting down. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You are better than you've been for years. There's no bleeding at all.’

  Two weeks later, the bleeding into the bowel recurred and Magnus went into hospital for another blood transfusion. It had been detected early this time the doctors said. He should be home well before Christmas and the birth of the baby. The doctors were right.

  Magnus came out of hospital, walking with sticks and none the worse for the set-back. Isobel helped him into the car to take him home and told him, 'Everything's going to be all right. The doctor said if they can catch it early, like this, then you've got a long, happy life-ahead of you.'

  She held him close. 'I want you to be strong and well. I want my child to have a good, kind Dad who loves us both.'

  'You've got it,' he said.

  It was pouring with rain at the time but they drove up to the rain-lashed hills singing "The Umbrella Man" and shouting "Little Sir Echo" at the tops of their voices, defying nature to do her worst.

  Christmas came and went -and no baby. Nanna moved in with them at Bollinbrook Road, to stay for a month to care for Magnus and help with the infant. A room was booked at the Cottage Hospital and everyone, except evidently the baby, was ready for the birth.

  Isobel's ankles swelled if she'd been on her feet all day and her back ached if she lay in bed in the same position for very long but she had no predictive signs. She didn't feel that the birth was imminent but now, Nanna was in charge.

  When New Year's day came and went Nanna demanded, 'What did the doctor say to you? When do you see him?'

  'I'd be aware of it, if anything was wrong, Nanna,' she said. 'There's no need to see a doctor until ...'

  'You've never been, have you?' Nanna gave her a knowing look, 'I'm calling doctor,' she said. 'Dial number for me.'

  There was nothing for it. Isobel dialled and asked for the doctor to come and examine her. Dr Russell came immediately. Isobel went upstairs and undressed and Nanna stood at the other side of the bed, watching him. He was thorough. He pressed his hands above and low the bulge; he frowned and pressed them round the sides of the bulge; be squeezed the poor baby until the bulge came up in a mountain between his palms. He examined her swelling breasts. Then he searched in his bag for a rubber glove to put on his right hand before he did something more intimate.

  When he had finished and he and Nanna had covered her up, he went quiet for a few moments before ftnally he said, 'Well my dear. You certainly are pregnant. But this is no nine month pregnancy. Seven months, I'd say. All is well. Cancel the hospital bed and reserve one for the end of February or the beginning of March.'

  When they left the room tears of gratitude came rolling down Isobel's face. She was expecting Magnus's baby. Her child was going to have its own father.

  It was mid February; nine months and one week exactly since Magnus and she had eloped and Isobel was coming out of a fast, nail polish scented dream of stars and bright lights.

  A nurse's face was swiinming into her line of vision. 'It's a boy!'

  They had given her a whiff of chloroform at the end of twelve hours of pain. She had only been out for a few minutes but it felt like years. She glanced at the sheet. Cottage Hospital. Then she saw the nurse's face.

  'It's a boy! You have a beautiful baby boy!' The nurse had a nice face. She said, 'Ten pounds. No wonder he took so long to come.'

  'Where?' Her voice was wavering. She tried to sit up.

  'Lie down! You've got stitches in. Baby is in the nursery, being bathed and wrapped. Go to sleep!' She was patting the pillows, talking firmly and pushing Isobel gently down with strong hands.

  Isobel knocked her hands away and sat up. 'I won't go to sleep. Bring my baby.'

  The nurse spoke indulgently, pacifying. 'Mother! We let our mothers sleep for twelve hours before we bring the babies.'

  'Bring him this minute!' Isobel shouted at the top of voice. 'I want him now!' she said and saw with glee that the nurse went fast, almost ran from the bedside. When she'd gone Isobel plumped the pillows behind her back and edged up the bed, painfully aware of the stitching. It was seven thirty in the morning. She determined to put from her mind, as the thoughts came rushing back, all remembrance of the whole messy business. She heard footsteps - the nurse, with Magnus dotting and clumping along behind her. Then they were here and putting into Isobel's arms the most beautiful creature in the world. Her son had bright, light blond hair that was thick and wavy. Through the shawl she could feel the strong little body that was of her but no longer hers. She gazed and gazed. She couldn't take her eyes off him. She was feasting on the sweet smell, the solid feel, the sight and the sound of him, for he was pursing his lips and trying to suck her arm, making little mewing sounds that were wrapping her round with love.

  Magnus was seated and he leaned over the bed, one arm across her shoulder. 'Hello, son!' he said. He put his face next to hers and Isobel felt his tears running warm and wet down her cheeks, mingling with her own.

  The nurse had gone. Isobel handed the baby to Magnus. 'Hold him, darling, while I undo my front,' she said.

  Magnus said, 'The nurse says she's going to teach you how to do it. Later today. Are you allowed to ...?'

  'Teach me? Stuff and nonsense,' she answered as she exposed one swollen breast and took her baby from Magnus. 'We'll do it by ourselves. Won't we, baby?'

  The little mouth latched on to her. Strong little jaws clamped and sucked vigorously and lsobel heard him gulping down that first thick, sweet yellow milk.

  She looked at Magnus. Tears were coursing down his cheeks. Her own tears had gone. She was being transformed, through joy and love, into the fiercely protective creature that was a new mother. 'Isn't he beautiful, Magnus? Which name are we going to give him? Have you decided?'

  'He looks like me. He looks just like me ...' Magnus was crying.

  'He's the image of you, darling. There's no question. It's your son.'

  'Robert!' said Magnus who had taken out a handkerchief and was blowing his nose. 'Bobby while he's little.'

  Magnus had only been gone a couple of hours when there was a commotion in the entrance hall, just beyond the door. Then she heard Mrs Hammond's voice, loud and dictatorial. 'I insist! I can't allow you to stand between me and my grandson.'

  The nurse would lose the battle if she tried to get Mrs Hammond to come back tomorrow. She was being far too polite-saying, 'I think: it might be better if ...'

  Isobel heard her mother-in-law sweep past the nurse. 'Do you know who I am? Out of my way!' and she came sailing into the room, her face a picture of satisfaction.

  'I've brought you some calf's foot jelly,' was her greeting as she swept past Isobel to sit on the chair next to the crib. 'It's quite wrong to give nursing mothers fruit or chocolate.

  'Oh,' was all lsobel could think to say while she waited to see what her mother-in-law would do next.

  Mrs Hammond had not taken her eyes off the crib since she'd seated herself. She gave lsobel a quick, unwilling smile. 'Mr Hammond ...er.,. Magnus's father ...' She coughed; started again. 'I have been ordered to make peace with you.'

  'Oh.'

  She was gazing at her grandson as she spoke. 'I said to John, "Good gracious! There's no ill-will between us. Isobel will understand what drives a mother to protect her son now that she has one of her own!'"

  She stood up and without a by-your-leave she scooped the sleeping baby out o
f his crib and sat down again, with him cradled in her arms.

  Isobel watched closely as she peeled back the shawl. And a smile such as she had never seen on that remote, classical face came like lightning across it. Her eyes were filled, lit with pride. 'He's the living image of Magnus,' she said. 'I'll bring some photographs when I come tomorrow, to prove it.'

  She got to her feet, holding the baby fast to her chest, and came to stand over Isobel. 'No problems with the cord?' she said. 'No bleeding?'

  lsobel found her voice. 'He isn't haemophiliac, Mrs Hammond, if that's what's worrying you.'

  'Mrs Hammond? You'd better start calling me Mama. At once.'

  *…*…*

  For eighteen months Isobel had revelled in her new life; in bringing up her baby, looking after Magnus, being part of her new family, content that her angel child had the foundation rock of his life laid for him. Bobby had what she had never known...his own true father.

  Bobby, the beautiful golden-haired boy, was the apple of Magnus's and the grandparents' eyes. Magnus's parents spoke highly of Isobel too, saying that she was 'the brains of the family' and 'the best thing that ever happened to Magnus' and 'the mother of our pride and joy' for Bobby was theirs. He was their Hammond grandson and nothing was too good for him.

  Isobel had expected friction between Mam and the Hammonds, but to her amazement, there was none. Mam adored Bobby, and on her half-day the three of them, Isobel, Mam and the baby went into town. Mam insisting on pushing the pram so she could enjoy the attention of acquaintances and customers and bask in their exclamations of, 'My word. He's a bonny baby. And you, Mrs Leigh. look much too young to be a grandmother.’

  There was nothing to indicate the coming tragedy unless one took account of Nanna's old superstition that sudden deaths never came singly. In July 1939 Sylvia's twin boys were born. They were haemophiliac babies and lived only two days, bleeding to death at the umbilicus. John and Grandma Hammond had not got over the shock. Sylvia never would - and tragedy was coming for all of them.