They had agreed in advance that when the time came Ralph should take the children down to the coast, to leave them with another minister who was a friend. Kate and Brinsley were both excited by the prospect of swimming in the sea, and Brinsley confessed to hopes that he might also be taken on a crocodile hunt in the mangrove swamps, so both children said goodbye to their mother cheerfully.
Margaret had ordered Ralph to spend the night with his friend, since otherwise the double journey would have occupied fourteen hours. She made no secret of the fact that she would rather have him out of the house when the baby arrived. But when he returned to Hope Valley the next day there had been no change in the situation. One of the two village girls who had been chosen by Margaret to take turns in helping was sitting by Lydia’s bedside, keeping her forehead cool, and a small boy on the verandah was tugging on a rope whenever he remembered it. This operated a makeshift punkah to fan the air into movement during those times of the day when the breeze dropped altogether. But there was not yet any sign of the baby.
Ralph spent ten minutes with Lydia, holding her hand and talking of the children and their journey. Then he took Margaret outside, where they could not be heard.
‘Why is it taking so long?’ he demanded. ‘Even her first labour lasted only eighteen hours, and the others were all so quick that we scarcely had time to send for help.’
‘The baby is not very active; and Lydia herself was tired even before her labour began,’ Margaret said. ‘I prefer not to interfere with a natural birth if it can be helped, but the time has certainly come now when I must do so. I suggest you go away, Ralph. Make your usual visits. I’ll send a messenger as soon as there is anything to say.’
Reluctantly he accepted his sister’s instructions. All the doors and jalousies were open to catch whatever breeze might come, and if he stayed in the house he would not be able to escape from the sound of Lydia’s breathing, half panting and half moan.
No message came, but after an hour he could stay away no longer. He returned to the house to find Margaret just coming out of Lydia’s room with a baby in her arms.
‘A little boy, just this moment born,’ she said. ‘Ralph, will you bring the cradle out of Lydia’s room? She’s very tired. As soon as you have had a word with her, she must be allowed to sleep without disturbance.’
He moved the cradle as she asked, and then sat by his wife’s side for a few moments. But Lydia could hardly keep her eyes open. She was extremely pale and her energy as well as her blood seemed to have drained away completely. She managed a wan smile, but could not speak. Ralph’s heart chilled as he held her limp hand in his own. If she should die, he thought to himself, and his spirit groaned with a fear which he must not express. No new baby would ever be able to console him for the loss of his wife. But it would not, surely it would not come to that. Lydia was exhausted, that was all, and it was natural enough. He told himself to be sensible, but in his imagination he saw her slipping away from him, and his true feelings burst out in an agony of guilt. ‘I’m sorry, my dearest,’ he cried, knowing that she would understand what he meant. ‘Oh Lydia, Lydia, I’m so sorry.’
She was too tired to reassure him, too tired even to squeeze his hand. He realized very soon that his presence was no kindness to her, and went quietly from the room.
He found Margaret looking down at the cradle with an expression that he did not understand. There were times in the past when he had seen her unhappy, but never before had he caught such a look of startled uncertainty on her face, as though she were unsure of some decision she had made, and might even have been on the point of changing it. But his own anxiety left no room for him to consider his sister’s.
‘Margaret, is Lydia in any danger?’
Her quickness to recognize his fear suggested to him that perhaps she shared it, but she moved at once to embrace and reassure him.
‘No, I’m sure she isn’t. She’s not a young woman any longer, of course. You mustn’t expect her to recover as quickly from this birth as from the others. We shall both need to look after her for quite a long time.’
‘Of course.’ He was so anxious to believe her that his relief did not admit of any doubts and now at last he felt able to look for the first time at the child.
All his other children, after their first birth cries, had lain placidly in their cradles, as though feeling even in their first moments the security of the family into which they were born. This one was different. His face was screwed up in an expression of pain or fury, and what little hair he had was so fair as to appear white. He looked like an angry old man, and his father could feel no warmth towards him. Ralph stood in silence, trying to force the correct emotions into his heart. Then, slowly and compassionately, Margaret drew away the blanket which covered the little boy’s body.
At first it seemed to Ralph that the baby was lying in an awkward position. Only when he looked more carefully was he able to see the deformity of the hip and the unnatural angle at which a stunted left leg grew from it. His earlier terror repeated itself. If Lydia should die for this, he thought. He said nothing as Margaret replaced the covering.
‘Does Lydia know?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. She was too tired to ask, and I thought it best not to break the news until she was stronger.’
Ralph nodded his agreement to that, and summoned all his emotional strength to accept what he had seen.
‘It’s God’s will,’ he said. ‘We will call the boy Grant. Because God has granted him the gift of life, and one day we shall learn why. Even his misfortune must have some purpose. And none of us was sent into the world to be happy all the time.’
‘It seems to me that some from the beginning have less chance of happiness than others.’ Margaret was still looking at the baby as she spoke, but now she raised her eyes to her brother. ‘You’re fortunate in your faith, Ralph. Those of us who don’t entirely share it have no such certainty that everything is for the best. We feel ourselves to be faced with choices. And we can’t always be sure that we have made the right decision. If your son had not lived, would that also have been God’s will?’
‘Of course. Everything.’ Understanding suddenly what she meant, he stared at her with a horror undiminished by any of the doubts which he himself had felt a few moments earlier. ‘The soul of a new-born child is perfect, however imperfect the body may be. You could not have killed a living creature, Margaret.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘There was a moment in which I thought the baby might never draw his first breath, and I wasted that moment in asking myself whether I should take any steps to help him. But, for all his deformity, his constitution is strong. He struggled with his own body and pulled himself into life. And then, as you say, I could not have killed him. Because it is my instinct and my profession to preserve life, because I would never have been able to face you and Lydia either with a lie or with the truth, and because I should never have been able to live with my own conscience. At the moment when you came in I was asking myself whether, when he grows to be a man, he will ever be able to forgive me. I’m grateful that you are able to bring me reassurance. The choice was never my own. The will of God had already determined what should happen.’
As a preacher Ralph knew that he ought to argue with his sister and banish the bitterness from her voice. But as a father and a husband he was too anxious and unhappy. Ignoring the cries of the baby in the cradle, he opened his arms to embrace Margaret, and they clung together for consolation.
7
When a great fear proves to be groundless, lesser worries expand to take its place. Lydia did not die, and Ralph ought to have been happy. But even after Margaret assured him that the moment of danger had passed, he fretted at the slowness of his wife’s recovery, wondering whether she would ever regain her normal energy and resentful of the demands of the new baby who sapped whatever strength she had with his constant demands to be put to the breast and disturbance of her sleep with his cries. There was little he could do about it, f
or Lydia refused to surrender her responsibilities to any of those members of the community who would willingly have helped her. Ralph could feel grateful only that Margaret agreed to stay longer than had at first been arranged, continuing to care for the health of the village while Lydia devoted herself to Grant.
But as the weeks passed, he realized that his sister was beginning to feel her absence from Robert. Ashamed that he had extended his demands on her time by so long, he sent to Kingston to discover the dates on which William’s banana boats would be leaving the harbour.
The answer had not yet arrived in Hope Valley when Margaret, joining Ralph in a stroll through the orange groves of Pastor’s Vineyard, suggested quietly to him that Lydia ought not to risk another pregnancy.
‘Do you think we intended this one!’ he exclaimed. He was silent for a moment. But his feeling of guilt was so strong that he could not resist the opportunity to abase himself.
‘After the deaths of the younger children, of course we were both very unhappy. It affected us in different ways. I wanted to be reassured by love. But Lydia’s reaction to the tragedy was different. She was upset by the wastefulness of bringing children into the world if they were to be stolen from her, and was determined to have no more. And it was worse than that – as though she hardly dared to allow herself to love anyone for a little while, lest he too should be suddenly snatched away from her. She withdrew from me in a way – although not, I think, because she loved me any less.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Margaret.
‘It was a worrying time. I longed to comfort her, but she couldn’t accept comfort. For eighteen months, or even longer, the situation between us was a difficult one. And then, about a year ago, the school was opened in Hope Valley. The first teacher who came was a woman. A very beautiful woman – well, you’ve seen her. She’s still here. Chelsea Mattison.’
Margaret nodded. In a community where many of the women grew fat when their youth was over, she must have noticed the teacher’s slim grace as well as her intelligent eyes.
‘I’d known her when she was a girl. In fact, she was the one –’ Ralph paused. Many years had passed since Chelsea, then only sixteen, had offered herself to him at a time when illness had left him too weak to resist. He had discussed his problems with Margaret at the time, but could not remember how far he had gone into details. He decided not to be specific now. Chelsea had been discreet about the consequence of that night, moving away from the valley for the birth of her baby and returning only when the boy was old enough to live with his grandfather. Even Duke himself did not know who his father was. ‘She was a clever girl. I provided the means for her to be educated. That made it difficult for me to refuse her the position when she wished to return. She was grateful, and like so many of the women here, she had few inhibitions about the way in which she could demonstrate her gratitude. The temptation put in my way was very great.’
‘You resisted, though?’
‘Yes,’ said Ralph. ‘But at a price. I needed Lydia’s support. She gave me everything I asked for, but I asked too much. Or gave too much. Because of course I hoped that she too could be helped to forget her loss.’ Ralph remembered that time in silence for a moment. Sometimes during these past weeks he had wondered whether it would have done less harm if he had followed the instincts which had so much shamed him at the time, and had looked for comfort in Chelsea’s bed instead of his wife’s. But of course his conscience would not have allowed him to take that path. ‘Lydia’s age and the state of her health deceived us both into thinking that the danger of another pregnancy was past.’
‘What about her health now?’ asked Margaret. ‘And the children! Are you satisfied that it’s safe to stay here?’
Ralph shook his head helplessly. ‘How can we know what is safe?’ he asked. ‘This is our home. We’ve made our lives here, and there’s nothing waiting for us anywhere else. Lydia, like yourself, needs to feel that her time is usefully employed, and her work here is of inestimable value. As for the danger of fever –’ It was difficult for Ralph to speak without emotion about the killing disease which had struck so cruelly into his family. But he forced himself to tell her the facts as scientifically as he could.
‘You in England probably learned before us of Major Ross’s discovery that malaria is carried by mosquitoes,’ he said. ‘It came to Lydia’s attention through a medical journal only about three years ago. I had suffered several times from malaria, and she determined that there should be no more attacks in Hope Valley.’ He was able to smile as he remembered the efficiency and energy with which she had conducted her campaign. ‘She set all the children to work, making them report every place in which mosquitoes could breed. Some places we covered and some we drained. She showed the children pictures and specimens of the mosquito and its larvae, so that they could recognize their enemy, and as she set about the work of eradicating it from the valley she discovered that there were two distinct varieties breeding here. We cleared both of them out together, of course, and encouraged other villages nearer to the big swamps to do the same. Since that time we have had no case in our community of either malaria or yellow fever, and Lydia has become convinced that if one type of mosquito spread the malaria, the other may well in the past have been responsible for the epidemics of fever. She is still vigilant, but we have lost our old fears of another attack. In other respects, the climate is a healthy one.’
‘I find it very hot,’ said Margaret.
‘But we now find England too cold.’ He looked up as Lydia, walking slowly, came along the path to join them. ‘I’ve been telling Margaret of your campaign against stagnant water.’
‘So you’ve persuaded her, I hope, to visit us again in a more leisurely way – to enjoy a holiday instead of allowing herself to be overworked. Will you promise to come back, Margaret? Now that Robert has gone away to school, and with Alexa so independent, you will have much greater freedom. It’s because of Alexa that I came out to find you. A letter has just arrived from her.’
‘You’ll want to read it now,’ said Ralph. He could see the eagerness in his sister’s eyes, but his true reason for suggesting that they should all sit down for a few moments was to allow his wife to rest. He chatted with Lydia as Margaret tore the letter open and began to read it.
Everywhere in the orange grove there was noise. Birds shrieked and chattered, cicadas and tree frogs shrilled out their incessant high-pitched notes, water tumbled along the irrigation channels and, from a neighbouring field in which yams were growing, a group of workers sang as they hoed. But around the three Europeans there was a sudden electric silence, charged by the intensity of Margaret’s reaction to what she was reading.
‘There’s no bad news, I hope?’ Ralph asked.
Margaret put the letter into her pocket. When she looked up to answer, her eyes were both anxious and angry.
‘There’s news to disturb me,’ she said. ‘If you feel well enough now, Lydia, I would like to go home. I have written often enough to Alexa in these past years, hoping that she would return to England. Now it appears that she plans to do so, and I must be there when she arrives.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Lydia. ‘But I would have expected you to look forward to that only with happiness.’
‘Although she doesn’t go into detail, I suspect that she is looking forward to more than merely a season at Covent Garden. It seems that she has met Matthew in Paris. And he also is proposing to return to London.’
‘I remember that they were great friends as children in the schoolroom,’ commented Ralph. So much of his life had been spent abroad that he could not pretend to know either of the young people well. He had the feeling now that he was being in some way obtuse, for it was certainly not apparent to him why it should so clearly be costing his sister an effort to control her feelings.
‘If I read between the lines, I have to wonder whether they are planning to be more than friends. Alexa has been able to explain to me now what neither she nor I were
ever properly able to understand before – why William, who disliked her, should have taken active steps to start her on a career. He realized, it seems, as I did not, that during her stay at Bristol ten years ago Alexa and Matthew fell in love with each other. Everything he did was designed to make sure that they should not meet again. Alexa writes in great resentment about his behaviour to her. But I have other grounds for anger. William never told me what the situation was.’
‘Would that have made so much difference?’
‘I haven’t been open with Alexa,’ Margaret said. ‘She doesn’t know who her father was. I intended to tell her the truth on her twenty-first birthday.’
‘I see. And you didn’t do so?’
‘She was abroad by then, and to make a bald announcement by letter –’ Margaret checked her excuses and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do so. I’m very much to blame. But if William had given me even the slightest hint –’
It had taken even Ralph several minutes to understand what it was that was causing Margaret so much anguish. Lydia, whose weakness made her less quick-witted than usual and who was in any case less familiar with the history of the Lorimer family, made no pretence of being anything but puzzled.
‘Why do you feel guilty about it? What is the problem?’ she asked.
‘If Matthew and Alexa have met again, isn’t it all too likely that they may have fallen in love again? And as far as they themselves know, there need be no impediment to their happiness. What I shall have to tell Alexa now, and what I ought to have told her long ago, is that she is Matthew’s aunt. They will never be able to marry.’
The Lorimer Legacy Page 15