by Deryn Lake
As it happened, her hopes had been fulfilled. Sarah, well into labour, had been hurriedly put to bed and the eminent obstetrician, William Hunter, his fee secretly paid for by Lord William Gordon, had arrived to bring the baby into the world. The age of the untrained old midwife, going to maternity cases carrying the stool which was a symbol of her trade, was now, mercifully, coming to an end. For these days ladies of quality were either attended by William Hunter or one of his many students, “men midwives” as they were known.
With Hunter’s help, Sarah gave birth at dawn on 19th December, just as Sir Charles was returning from an all-night session at his club. Hearing the thin cries of the newborn coming from the room above, he had shrugged an elegant shoulder and turned to Lady Holland.
“So it’s done then?”
“Yes.” She had put her hand on his arm. “It is good of you, Sir Charles, to do what you are doing. I, for one, will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.”
He had looked at Caroline sombrely, and she had seen how hollow were Bunbury’s cheeks. “I still love her in my way, that’s the damnable part of it.”
“Oh, how sad that the marriage should have come to this.”
“It is a living torment,” said Charles, and Caroline wept openly that her sister should have caused so much pain to this creature who, for all the rumours about him, had behaved as a man of honour.
“Will you go up and see her?” she asked through her tears.
“I think not. I need to prepare myself, for to do so will be something of an ordeal.”
Realising that he did not even know the sex of the child, Caroline said, “Sarah has a daughter, a little scrap of a thing. Oh, Sir Charles, please do go, say you will. She has not had the easiest of deliveries.”
He stood there wavering and Caroline, seizing the chance, took his arm and led him up the stairs to the bedroom on the first floor where the mother and child were housed, then hovered in the doorway. He could not look at his wife, this fact distressing Lady Holland enormously, but bent over the cradle with all his smiles reserved for the innocent child. She knew then, as Sir Charles put down a gentle finger to stroke its swansdown hair, that he would love the little girl come what may.
“What are you to call her?” he said, his back still averted.
“I thought perhaps Louisa, that is, if you approve.”
Bunbury turned to look at Sarah for the first time and the contempt in his face withered her heart. “It really has nothing to do with me,” he answered coldly. And Caroline, overhearing all, sighed and wondered how long this couple, so out of love and so tormented in their separate ways, could go on existing together in such circumstances.
“Come Sir,” she said tactfully. “Let us leave them to their rest. May I order you some breakfast? I personally am famished.”
He nodded wearily. “I’ll join you. Good day to you, Madam,” this last thrown over his shoulder. And with that the nominal father of the newborn child swept from the room.
*
Having read the journal from cover to cover, Sidonie knew that sometime in the future she was destined to glimpse a pregnant Sarah in blinding snow. Yet what had distressed her when she had read the entry was the fact that, on this particular occasion, she, Sidonie was unwittingly to act as bird of ill omen, that the sight of her would alarm Sarah so greatly that she would fall and go into labour, that the journey of sad little Louisa Bunbury into the world would be brought on by the eerie sight of herself. Knowing all this, yet determined that somehow or other she must try not to terrify the girl, Sidonie in fact was quite unprepared for what happened when the incident finally took place.
It had been a hot day when Alexei arrived and it was even hotter the next. As it was Sunday, they stayed in bed for a while, then got up to go into the garden.
“Today, I practise for one hour only I think,” said the Russian, yawning lazily. “And I give your neighbour a thrill. I ask her to listen. That is if it’s OK with you.”
“Has anyone ever told you,” answered Sidonie, shaking her head but smiling at the same time, “that you are the most unmitigated show-off ever known to God or man?”
“Yes, you, always, all the time. That is why I am in love with you.”
“You shouldn’t say that sort of thing. One day somebody will believe you.”
“But I do love you.”
“What,” said Sidonie, only half joking, “would you do if I asked you to marry me or live with me or something on those lines?”
“I would say not yet. I am but a boy —”
Sidonie snorted audibly.
“— and have my way to make in the world. If you can wait ten years, Tovarish, then I accept.”
She chucked a cushion at him. “Listen, mate, I’ll be over the hill and down the other side by then. For what it’s worth I’d like to have a family before I seize up entirely.”
“I, too, but I am not ready for this yet.” In that disconcerting way he had of suddenly being enormously wise, Alexei added, “The Canada man is your age, isn’t he?”
“A year or so older.”
“Then he is the one. It will break my heart but I think you should settle for him.”
“You are an absolute bastard, premier cru,” she shouted in response, and threw everything that was to hand.
Yet though she was laughing, inside Sidonie felt torn to shreds that what she had really known all along, that Alexei was not only too young for her but had too big a career ahead, was obviously true. And in his Slavonic intuitive way he sensed something of this, for the violinist suddenly became very gentle with her.
“I take you to dinner tonight, somewhere really special,” he said. “You name it; the Ritz, the Savoy Grill.”
“For an ex-Communist you’ve got some mighty capitalist ideas.”
“That is why I am ex,” Alexei replied, and there was no answer to that.
They decided on somewhere less formal, a restaurant in Knightsbridge that Sidonie liked, and it would have been an enjoyable and relaxed evening if it hadn’t been for the fact that Nigel, in one of his moon phases Sidonie presumed, decided to phone. Alexei picked up the receiver before she could get at it and with her heart in her mouth in case it was Finnan, Sidonie listened to the conversation.
“’ello. Miss Sidonie Brooks? Yes, she is here. Me? I am a friend of hers.” There was a pause. “I said friend, not boyfriend. Anyway, what is it to you? Don’t shout. I believe you are Fatty Beltram MP, the one with the big white knickers. If so, leave Miss Brooks alone or I thump you.”
“Here, give it to me,” Sidonie said, with a note of desperation. “Nigel? For God’s sake! If you continue to ring here I shall have the number changed. Now, once and for all, leave me alone.”
“What is the matter with that jerk?” asked Alexei as she crashed the receiver down and pulled the jack out of the wall.
“I think he’s developed a drink problem. Every time I see or speak to him he’s absolutely legless.”
“Dalo calls it squiffy.”
“She would.”
“Perhaps we should introduce them,” Alexei said solemnly. His voice changed. “Is there nothing you can do to get rid of him? You can’t let him go on pestering you like this.”
“I could take out an injunction I suppose.”
“You must do it, Sidonie. I do not like the thought of you alone here with that lunatic wandering around.”
“I promise I will if it happens again. Now don’t let’s talk about him any more or it will ruin the evening.”
But despite the fact they laughed a lot, Nigel’s phone call cast its shadow and Sidonie was glad to head for home once more, suddenly ill at ease and inexplicably tired.
It was one of those long evenings of summer, just newly dark by the time they got back to Phillimore Gardens. On an impulse, Sidonie decided to go to the flat via Holland Walk and the door that led into her garden, and, leading Alexei by the arm, turned into the walkway leading off Kensington High Street. In the
distance she could see the lights of the theatre and youth hostel and the great slumbering shape of the ruined house. And then, indefinably, there came a change. The air grew cooler, swiftly and sharply, and a cold wind suddenly blew down the length of Holland Walk.
“Brr,” said Alexei, shivering, “it feels like Moscow.”
But his voice was fading, growing distant, and there was a falling sensation upon Sidonie as if she were going under an anaesthetic. Then she stepped into a white tunnel and saw at the far end a snow-drenched park and a girl, swollen and misshapen but for all that recognisable as Bunbury’s wife, standing amongst the swirling flakes and staring blindly in Sidonie’s direction.
“Sarah,” she called, not wanting the poor pregnant thing to be afraid.
Over the centuries came the reply, “Who’s there?”
“Sarah, Sarah,” she shouted again, but Sidonie had done more harm than good, as it was inevitable she must. There was a cry like that of an animal in agony, and the girl, one arm flying involuntarily aloft, fell down onto the bitter white ground. The walls of the tunnel closed in and Sidonie was in darkness, the only recognisable thing the essence of Alexei, the unique smell of him which told her he was somewhere nearby.
“Oh, God,” she said, and flung herself towards him.
She saw in the sudden light of the street lamps that his face was white. “What was that, for Christ’s sake?” he said. “Did you see something?”
“I had an hallucination. There was snow, blinding snow, and the shape of a woman.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing, except for a terrible scream.”
He began to run, pulling her along with him. “Let’s get inside. I think this place is haunted. God, it frightened me. When I saw the Grand Duchess it was gentle, lovely almost. But this was horrible.”
“She was going into labour, that’s why she cried out like that.”
He turned to look at her, giving Sidonie a most curious glance. “How do you know?”
“Because I recognised who it was. I know her story, everything about her. I’m sorry, Alexei. Just for a moment you glimpsed someone who lived two hundred years ago, though to her it was the present day.”
“Are you talking about time warps, the quantum theory?”
“Yes,” said Sidonie, praying that this great and wonderful friend would not make fun of her, “I sincerely believe that I am.”
*
What was destroying Lady Sarah, eating away at her like a canker, was Sir Charles Bunbury’s aching misery. She had been proof against his fury, his scorn, his enmity, but to watch him day by day, so unhappy that he could no longer eat properly, was more than she could stand. She had felt cheapened and degraded by her adventures as a drab, as something only just removed from a common harlot, but now she felt despicable. She was slowly killing a man who, when all was said, had done her absolutely no harm whatsoever.
To make matters worse was her knowledge that William hovered in the background, only kept from coming to her with enormous difficulty. He had threatened by letter to attend Louisa’s christening at Holland House where Lord Holland himself had stood godfather, and only by begging him not to agonise her, had Sarah persuaded him to remain at home.
“But she is my child,” he had written back.
Her grief had overflowed into her journal.
How I detest Myself for all the arrant Misery I, and I alone, have Caused to Innocents. Lord William Agonises to see his Child, while Sir Charles doats upon Louisa as if She were his Flesh and Blood, rather than his Contemptible Wife’s love Bratt.
And it was all perfectly true. Charles loved the baby as if it were his own, showering the little scrappy creature with gifts, spending time in the nursery with her whenever he was home. Sarah had once come upon him rocking the cradle, singing a lullaby, and the sight of it had been like the lash of a whip. She felt less than the dust for, even now, she could not stop thinking of William Gordon and how much she still adored him.
After the birth she had lain on her couch for some weeks, receiving family and what few friends she had left. Then, with the coming of the new year, her strength had returned and Sarah, unable to face Charles’s wretchedness a moment longer, had packed up and gone to Suffolk with Louisa, leaving him behind in Privy Garden. But of course her husband was only part of the reason for her going. At Barton, away from the eyes of the world, she was free to see William without hindrance. The love affair that had never really ended was rekindled with more ardour than ever before, and, meeting secretly, Sarah and William began to make plans for the future.
“Just walk out,” he said. “Do it simply. We’ll go to the Duke of Dorset’s country seat, Knole, near Sevenoaks. He’s my boon companion and will shelter us for as long as we like.”
“But I can’t leave in that way.”
“Why not?”
Stated in those terms it was hard to find an answer and, besides, with the birth two months behind her, the old magic between them had started again. They were sleeping together in William’s lodgings for they could not bear to be apart.
“You can’t turn your back on a love like ours,” he had pleaded, his pale romantic face even whiter. “My God, Sarah, I shall soon go mad. We are destined to spend the rest of our lives together yet still you remain with your husband.”
Her body ached for his. Her soul seemed shared with William’s, but it was her conviction that only by removing herself could she put Sir Charles out of his living agony, that finally made up Sarah’s mind for her. So it was that on 19th February, 1769, she told the servants she was going for a walk, a walk from which she never returned.
It was the last time she was ever to see her matrimonial home. Lord William Gordon was waiting at the crossroads in a closed carriage. With not even a change of clothes, her baby left behind with its nurse, Sarah stepped inside and into the arms of her lover, and the long drive to Kent, to a new life as an adulterous but happy woman, living in carnal sin, began.
*
If she had thought it could be that simple, Sarah Bunbury was to be swiftly disillusioned. Within two days of the elopement, her sister, Lady Louisa Conolly, had rushed to Knole, her equipage going up the drive as if the Devil himself were coachman. Sarah was informed that she must return to Holland House immediately for little Louisa was sick and crying for her mother.
It had been the one approach she had feared, for Sarah loved her child, had been intending to send for her when the dust was settled. But now, not certain whether this was merely a ploy or whether her sister was telling the truth, the baby’s mother felt she could not take the risk. With Lord William gloomily standing outside, watching until Sarah’s conveyance vanished from view, she had returned to Holland House, where a grim-faced Sir Charles had taken little Louisa to be cared for.
The family were foregathered in the Library, all of them, grouped together, as solemn as Sarah had ever seen them. Lord and Lady Holland were there and backing them up were Thomas Conolly, come especially from Ireland, Ste and his wife Lady Mary and Charles James Fox, trying desperately hard to look serious. The only people missing were the Duke of Richmond and the Lovely, but their absence was immediately explained.
“The Duke has took to his bed with nerves. You have undone us all by your crass behaviour,” said Caroline by way of opening gambit.
“How is my baby?” Sarah answered to this, “For her health is of more importance to me than that of anyone else, be he even my brother.”
“If that is so then why did you desert her?” answered Thomas Conolly angrily, more upset by his wife’s distress than he was by the actual event itself.
“That was only a temporary measure. I fully intended to send for her.”
“So say you now, but is that the truth of it I wonder.”
“Do you doubt my word?” Sarah asked haughtily.
“Yes,” said Thomas, and turned a furious back, staring out of the window and stroking his chin.
“What’s done is done,�
� said Lord Holland, speaking for the first time. “What is more to the point is talk of the future. Sarah, what are your intentions?”
“To live with William Gordon, and for the child, our child, to be with us.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” boomed Caroline. “Sir Charles has been more than good to you. Whatever his faults he has behaved impeccably throughout this whole sorry affair.”
The remark drew a general rumble of agreement, even Charles James murmuring, “It’s true, Sarah.”
“I know it’s true,” she answered. “He has been, indeed is, the most indulgent husband alive. But it’s for his sake that I must go. To stay with him would be to ruin the rest of his life, let alone my own.”
“But what about the rest of Louisa’s life?” asked Lady Mary Fox, curiously and not unkind. “Surely she would be happier brought up within the safety of Marriage than by two people living sinfully.”
Sarah drew herself up with dignity. “I believe, Lady Mary, that a child reared by its natural parents, two people who love each other and their offspring, would be far better off than a child raised within a marriage wherein the partners hate one another. For, you can believe me, though I do not hate Sir Charles nor he me that emotion would soon come about, forced, as we would be, to act out a false situation day in, day out.”
There was silence, then Lord Holland said heavily, “I would not be too sure, Lady Sarah, that that hatred has not already begun. Your husband entrusted me with this letter which he asked me to give you should you refuse to return to his home. But before I do so I will ask for the last time what you intend to do.”