Until she got pregnant. And then she fell apart.
‘Yes, there’s no doubt about it, Lady Hunterton.’ The doctor smiled at her. ‘You’re about eight weeks pregnant. Everything is very satisfactory. How do you feel?’
‘Fine,’ said Caroline. ‘Absolutely fine.’ But her mind was flailing about, sucking her down into a whirlpool of confusion. Pregnant! A baby! Another baby, another body fluttering and turning inside her, growing, invading her thoughts, her mind and her heart, another birth, another person, another object and another source of love. She expected to feel joy and she felt nothing but sadness; expected to forget the first baby and remembered her more and more vividly. This was betrayal, rejection; she felt ugly, cheating, dishonest. William was beside himself with joy and pride; seeing her obvious distress he imagined its source was physical, thought she was feeling sick and tired, and insisted she rest, put her feet up, go to bed early, stop worrying about the house, stop doing everything. Caroline stood it for a couple of weeks, during which time she hardly spoke without the greatest effort, could not sleep, saw the baby’s face before her wherever she went and whatever she did; and then, finally, frantic with misery, she went to the one person she knew she could always talk to: Jack Bamforth.
Jack listened to her carefully, sitting in his little office he had made in the stable yard, tut-tutted a few times, looked at her drawn, thin face and said, ‘Maybe you should get her back.’
‘I can’t, Jack, William won’t have her. I know he won’t. It’s the one thing I can’t ask of him.’
‘Have you actually?’
‘Have I actually what?’
‘Asked him?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Well then.’
‘Jack, you don’t understand. The night she was born, when he came to see me afterwards, and he’d stayed there all the time you know, twenty-four hours nearly, just to be near me, I promised him then. I can’t go back on it now. It would break his heart.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Jack, ‘tough things, hearts. They don’t break that easy, Caroline.’
‘William’s would.’
‘Well, but you’re giving him a baby of his own. That would help surely.’
‘No, I know it wouldn’t. Really it wouldn’t.’
‘Well then, I don’t see what you can do.’
‘No.’
He looked at her carefully again. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘It’s all settled and done with then?’
‘Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. She’s still with her foster parents.’
‘So you’ve got – room for manoeuvre?’
‘Yes. No. Jack, don’t talk like this, please.’
‘I’m trying to help you.’
‘Well you’re not,’ she cried, standing up and walking away from him towards the door. ‘You’re hurting me, that’s all you’re doing. You don’t understand. You couldn’t. Just leave me alone, will you?’
‘All right,’ he said placidly.
‘Mrs Jackson, this is Lady Hunterton.’
‘Lady Hunterton? I’m afraid I don’t know –’
‘Yes you do, Mrs Jackson. I was Caroline Miller.’
‘Oh yes.’ The polite voice iced over. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Lady Hunterton?’
‘Yes. Yes, there is. I want to see the baby.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t do that, Mrs Hunterton.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you agreed that you wouldn’t, when you handed her over. I explained that to you.’
‘Yes, I know you did. But I’ve been talking to a solicitor. And I do know I can change my mind. And get the baby back if I want to.’
‘I don’t think,’ said Mrs Jackson, her voice more icy still, ‘that your solicitor knows quite what he is talking about.’
‘Oh, yes he does, Mrs Jackson. He’s a very good solicitor.’
‘I see. I can’t begin to tell you, Lady Hunterton, what a lot of heartache you will be creating for yourself and your baby. Her foster parents wish to adopt her, things can be finalized shortly.’
‘I haven’t signed any adoption papers.’
‘Lady Hunterton. You would be greatly damaging your baby to interfere at this stage.’
‘Possibly. Well anyway, let me tell you, I have no intention of signing any adoption papers. Not yet. And I may very well want the baby back.’
‘William.’
‘Yes, my darling.’
‘William, you really are happy about this baby, aren’t you?’
‘Caroline darling, you know I am. So happy. It’s more than I could ever have hoped for. I feel so infinitely fortunate.’
‘Good. Because . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, because I feel – well, not quite, quite so perfectly happy.’
‘Oh, my dear, that’s because you’ve been so unwell.’ William’s pale blue eyes were anxious, compassionate. ‘I feel so bad that you have to endure all this sickness. So guilty that I can’t help. But when it passes, I’m sure you’ll be perfectly happy. And I can try and make it up to you.’
‘William, it isn’t just the sickness, I’m afraid.’
‘Then what is it? Is it me? Am I doing something – something to upset you?’
His face was so distraught Caroline had to smile. She reached out her hand and patted his. ‘No, William, it’s nothing to do with you. You’ve been wonderful to me. No, it’s – well the thing is, William, this is all rather reminding me of the other baby. I’m finding it rather painful.’
‘Of course you are.’ His voice was gentle.
Caroline looked at him, startled; she had expected hostility. ‘You understand?’
‘Yes, of course I understand. I would be some kind of monster if didn’t. I’m very sympathetic.’
‘Oh, William,’ said Caroline, going up to him, and putting her arms round him. ‘What a remarkable man you are.’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, William, what I wondered was, whether we could – well, at least talk about it.’
‘We are, my dear, surely. We can talk about it whenever you like. You’re not, after all, on your own.’
‘No, William, I don’t mean just talk about how I’m feeling. I mean talk about maybe, just possibly, my – well, my seeing the baby again. Just to find out how she is. And –’
‘No, Caroline.’ His voice was bleak, strangely cold, final.
‘But, William, I only wanted to –’
‘No, Caroline. I’m sorry, but it’s the one thing you just cannot ask of me. I love you very much, and I have always totally put out of my mind anything that has happened to you before we met. But you cannot, and you must not ask me even to consider having that baby here. I simply couldn’t stand it.’
‘Why not? Why not, if you love me? William, I think about her all the time. I dream about her, and it’s been worse since I’ve been pregnant. It’s terrible, it’s like a sickness. I’m finding it almost impossible to stand it. Please help me, William, please.’
‘Caroline, as I just said I will help you all I can. But I cannot and will not have that child here. You did agree.’
‘It’s my house,’ said Caroline, her pain making her cruel. ‘I can do what I like in it.’
‘Yes, you can of course,’ he said very quietly, ‘but I should not be able to stay.’
He walked out of the room.
Passing his study door a short while later Caroline, with a rush of horror at her own cruelty, heard him weeping.
‘William, I’m sorry,’ said Caroline, for the hundredth time that night, as she lay in his arms, ‘so terribly sorry. I love you so much and you’ve been so good to me, I
should never have said that. Please forgive me.’
‘I forgive you,’ he said, gently polite, ‘but I meant what I said. Let us have that quite clear between us. I cannot let you even begin to hope that you can have the other baby here. Not if I am here. I’m sorry.’
‘I understand,’ said Caroline. ‘I do understand. Hold me, William, please, and let me show you how much I love you.’
‘Lady Hunterton, of course you are within your rights to take the baby back. But I would not advise it. She is – what – ten months old. She has settled. She is extremely happy. Why upset her, and her parents?’
‘They’re not her parents.’
‘They have worked hard at being her parents.’
‘You’re a solicitor, could we confine ourselves to legal matters please, not moral ones?’
‘Yes, Lady Hunterton.’
‘Now then, I am not proposing I actually take the baby back. Not yet. But I do not want to sign the papers. I want more time to think.’
‘Yes, Lady Hunterton. Well of course, you are certainly under no legal obligation to sign the papers.’
‘Good.’
‘Jack, I told you it wouldn’t do any good,’ said Caroline, one golden autumn day, when she had forced herself to face for what seemed like the hundredth, the thousandth time, the need to let her daughter, Brendan’s daughter, go. ‘I suggested it and it nearly broke his heart. I’ve delayed signing the adoption papers, but honestly I don’t know why. It’s just upsetting everyone. Me most of all. I think I should just pull myself together and get on with it, and enjoy this baby. Don’t you?’
‘Caroline, you came to me for advice and I gave it to you. You don’t have to take it. It might not have been very good, but I can’t change what I think.’
‘No, I know. I’m sorry. But I think maybe I should agree. It’s the only way out, I think. Everyone’s right, I should think of the baby.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, of course I should, there’s no maybe about it. Yes, I’ll sign the adoption papers. I’ll go in next week and do it. Get it settled. Don’t you think I should, don’t you think that would be best?’
‘Maybe.’
She went back into the house and called the Adoption Society.
‘Mrs Jackson, it’s Lady Hunterton. Look, I’ve been thinking. Best to get this settled. I’ll come in next week, Tuesday – I have to see my gynaecologist – and sign the papers then.’
‘Very well, Lady Hunterton. I’m sure you’ve made a very wise decision.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, Lady Hunterton is not at home.’ John Morgan, who worked as butler, valet and gardener at the Moat House, spoke with a combination of firmness and regret to the wild-eyed and patently distraught young man on the doorstep. ‘She has gone into Ipswich to see her doctor.’
‘Her doctor? Is she ill?’
‘No, sir, she is perfectly well.’
‘Then why does she have to see a doctor? And how long has she been called Lady Hunterton?’
‘Since her marriage, sir.’
‘When was her marriage, for crying out loud?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, I really don’t think I have to endure this cross-examination. You are very welcome to come back later, if you are really a friend of Lady Hunterton’s. When Sir William is here.’
‘Look, my friend, I need to find Lady Hunterton and I need to find her fast. Where is this doctor that she doesn’t need to see?’
‘I really do have to ask you to leave, sir.’ John Morgan was beginning to feel almost panicky. He was young, had been employed by the Huntertons when he was demobbed, and had found it difficult to adjust to taking the initiative after years of being Gunner Morgan and doing exactly what he was told. He saw Jack Bamforth approaching the house with great relief. ‘Oh, Mr Bamforth, I’m rather glad you’re here. Could you please try and persuade this gentleman to leave? He is very anxious to contact Lady Hunterton.’
‘Really?’ Jack looked the tall figure up and down, taking in the gaunt features, the black hair, the desperation in the dark blue eyes. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s FitzPatrick. Brendan FitzPatrick. And I want to see Caroline and my baby.’
‘About time too,’ said Jack. ‘Where have you been for the past almost two years?’
‘In a German military hospital.’
‘I see.’ Jack’s voice was its soft, level self; only those who knew him best would have recognized something approaching panic beneath it. ‘Do you have a car? Because if it’s your baby you want to see, we probably have to get into it and move rather quickly.’
‘You’re talking like an Irishman,’ said Brendan, ‘but I forgive you. My car’s over here.’
‘Let’s go.’
No, said the gynaecologist’s head girl of a receptionist, Lady Hunterton had left. She was going on somewhere else, but she really couldn’t say where.
‘Well, can you find out, for Christ’s sake?’ asked Brendan.
The receptionist looked at him as if he was in kindergarten, and said no she really couldn’t, it was none of her business to ascertain where Mr Berkeley’s patients were and certainly not to pass the information on.
‘I just have to find her,’ said Brendan. ‘Quickly. It’s life and death.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I really don’t think I can tell you anything.’ She turned away into her pile of letters.
Jack leant forward on the desk. ‘We need your help,’ he said.
‘I’ve told you both I can’t . . .’ said the receptionist, turning irritably towards him; she found herself gazing into a pair of exquisitely sad grey eyes, felt a soft gentle lurch somewhere in the location of where she supposed her heart to be, and said, ‘Well, perhaps if you told me a little more . . .’
‘We can’t tell you very much,’ said Jack, ‘but this gentleman is a very old friend of Lady Hunterton and he has news for her of the utmost importance. News that he has to give to her quickly. Before he goes away again. He has to leave the country tonight. I know Lady Hunterton very well, I work for her, I know she would want to hear this news. Please could you just ask Mr Berkeley if he knows where Lady Hunterton might be? It could make all the difference to all of us.’
The receptionist picked up the phone; her eyes never left Jack’s face.
‘So you see,’ said Caroline, biting resolutely into her rather tough bread roll, ‘I am going to let her go. I feel sort of much better now I’ve decided. Terrible but better. It’s the awful indecision that’s been worst. And I can’t bear to see William looking so hurt. He loves me so much and I owe him such a lot. I’m sure once I’ve done it, once I know she’s gone for ever, I shall settle down; it will be like coming to terms with a death or something. So I just don’t want to wait any longer. In fact I – oh, my God. My God.’
Caroline Hunterton’s friend Jessica Capel, with whom she was having lunch, watched in fascinated horror as Caroline’s face turned a ghastly grey and thence to greenish white, before she slumped off her chair and fell slowly to the rather worn carpet of Miller’s restaurant. Looking over her shoulder to see what on earth might have caused this dramatic chain of events, she saw Jack Bamforth, Caroline’s groom, walking towards the table, in the company of an extremely tall and thin young man with wild, dark blue eyes, dressed in a rather shabby jersey and the unmistakable pale khaki trousers of the United States Air Force.
Caroline sat holding Brendan’s hands in both hers, her eyes fixed helplessly and hopelessly on his face. ‘It’s terrible,’ she kept saying, ‘it’s so terrible. First I lost you and then I lost the baby and now I’m going to have to lose you both all over again. It’s terrible.’
Brendan lifted their bundle of hands, turned it and kissed one of Caroline’s; he smiled gently into her eyes. ‘You don’t have to lose me,’ he said, ‘you don’t ever
have to lose me again. I shall take you back with me, to New York, you and the baby, and we’ll all live happy ever after.’
‘Which baby?’
‘Well, our baby of course.’
‘And – this baby?’ She gestured at her burgeoning stomach.
‘Oh, well, she can come too,’ he said easily. ‘Plenty of room. And then we can have another if you like, to kind of tidy things up. She looks like a big girl, that one in there. I’m sure she’ll be very nice.’ He removed his hand and stroked the stomach tenderly; a great wave of heat ran through Caroline, warming and confusing her.
‘Oh Brendan,’ she said, ‘I love you so terribly much. This is so dreadful.’
‘I don’t see why. It seems perfectly fine to me. I think we can work things out all right. Better than all right. I love you too,’ he added, placing his other hand on the bulge also, and moving them together very slightly, gently, and with infinite tenderness.
Caroline closed her eyes; the room swam. ‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Why not? Don’t you like it?’
‘Of course I like it. I love it. I love you. I want you. So just don’t do it. All right?’
‘All right.’ His face was puzzled, but perfectly good-natured. ‘Let me get you another drink.’
‘No. No, really. I shouldn’t.’
‘Well an orange juice then?’
‘No, really. I have to get home.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You are home. Your home is with me. Wherever I am.’
‘No, Brendan, I’m afraid it isn’t.’
They were sitting in the bar of the Grand Hotel; Jack had gone back to the Moat House in Caroline’s car (which he had garaged at his own cottage) with a carefully constructed story about Caroline spending the evening with Jessica (which Caroline was to confirm, telephoning apparently from Jessica’s house) and Jessica, overcome with the romance of the situation, eager to get involved and to claim some vicarious excitement from it herself, had agreed to cooperate should William phone. ‘But he won’t,’ said Caroline sadly, ‘he’ll be too afraid and too much of a gentleman.’
AN Outrageous Affair Page 8