Sweet Songbird

by Sweet Songbird (retail) (epub)

  With the help of Genevieve and of Jem it proved quite surprisingly easy. She was strong and she was healthy. Her rangy build continued to abet her deception – although as the weeks passed and a blazing August drew to a close she began to realize that even she could not retain her boyish shape forever and both she and Genevieve spent a feverish day or so unpicking and stitching, adding a little here, a little there, to encompass her expanding waistline and abdomen. And then, as September wore on, still very hot and muggy, it was not difficult to enact the scenario with which Genevieve had presented her. Her temper really was short, and she really did find herself tiring easily. Charles, worried by the change in her and totally deceived by his wife’s connivances, agreed readily, if with regret, that the summer had been too hard for her and she should take a rest. With a concerned alacrity that shamed her he agreed to waive the last month of her contract. And so, in the last week of September she found herself at last safe out of the public gaze and on a train with Jem heading south to the River Lot and the little village of St Sauvin.

  (ii)

  The months that followed were the most peaceful and the most contented that Kitty had known since her Suffolk childhood. From the moment she first saw it, set within its sylvan valley, glowing now with the first fire-colours of autumn, the broad and tranquil River Lot enchanted her. On the day that they arrived and were driven the fifteen or so kilometres from the station to the village of St Sauvin in a rattling farmcart the dipping sun lit a sky of molten gold and glittered through the trees as they rode, dazzling their eyes. Small stone houses were scattered along the rutted road. At each wayside home dogs barked, chickens ran squawking from the great plodding hooves of the carthorse and dark-eyed children watched gravely as they passed. The lovely, slow-flowing river gleamed intermittently as it meandered between its willowed banks beside them. Paris – and for that matter London – the traffic, the bustling crowds, the ever-present noise and movement belonged, it seemed, not just to another world, but to another life.

  ‘Jem – it’s lovely! Truly lovely!’

  He smiled, pleased. ‘You’re all right?’

  She nodded. She was tired, certainly, after the trying journey, and her back stabbed pain with each lurch of the unsprung cart, but the sunlit countryside, the sight of the calm and beautiful river, fed strength and hope into her wearied bones. Not for the first time in the past few days she felt herself relax into a strangely fatalistic and far from unpleasant mood: the thing was done, the die cast. The baby grew steadily within her and nothing now could change the course of the next few months. So be it. She had struggled for long enough. The time had come to accept – accept the inevitable, enjoy each day as it presented itself. Let tomorrow’s worries wait upon tomorrow. Today’s concern would be wasted upon them anyway.

  ‘There’s the village,’ Jem said.

  The cluster of stone and timber houses, sited at the southern end of an ancient, narrow bridge that spanned the gently flowing river from one thickly wooded bank to the other, apparently dozed in the late afternoon sunshine. As they rolled from rutted mud onto a short stretch of noisy cobblestones curious children stared, a goat lifted an inquisitive head, steadily chewing, and a toothless ancient, ensconced comfortably with a carafe of dark wine at a table beneath a canopy of full-fruiting vines, watched them, deep-lined face impassive. They passed the handful of houses and wound their slow and steady way through the fertile valley bottom – cultivated land on the whole, dotted here and there with stone-built farmhouses. In some fields a late harvest was being gathered, others lay ready for the plough and the seed. At last Jem leaned forward and spoke in his rapid French to the driver. The man – who had spoken not a dozen words in as many kilometres – grunted.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Jem said. ‘There – the roof through the trees. Do you see?’

  Kitty strained her eyes against the low, dazzling sun. Within a great stand of trees by the river, some distance from the lane, she caught a glimpse of terracotta tiles and a golden stone wall. Then the cart had turned ponderously into a long, rutted drive that curved within a tunnel of branches. Sunlight glittered and dappled the cart as it rolled across the first-fallen of the turning leaves. Through an arch of branches ahead she could see a tumble of buildings – sun-coloured stone walls, small windows, moss-grown clay-tiled roofs. As they rode closer she could see that some of them – those closest to the riverbank – were in a bad state of disrepair. But as they turned and creaked into the mill clearing she saw that the sturdy, four-square house had been well repaired and renovated. New shutters guarded the windows, the stonework was clean and cleared of moss.

  She stared at the house in unfeigned delight. ‘Jem! It’s beautiful!’

  Jem surveyed the buildings, smiling a little. ‘You couldn’t be seeing it at a better time. The colours are wonderful, aren’t they? There’s a spring there – beyond the house – where the bamboo is growing, d’you see? It feeds the pool that once fed the old mill race. Wait till you see the pool – it’s as blue as the sky, and never cold.’ He vaulted lightly from the cart and then turned to hand her down more carefully. ‘Welcome to La Source.’

  The river glittered beyond the picturesquely derelict mill buildings. A single bird called, piercingly sweet on the autumn-scented air. The sun had dipped suddenly lower, gleaming red upon the tree-obscured horizon. She stood quite still, savouring the moment, absorbing the peace and the beauty.

  ‘You like it?’ Jem asked, softly.

  ‘I love it,’ she said.

  * * *

  She never changed her opinion; on the contrary, in the ensuing months she came to love the place in the truest sense of the word. At first she walked every day, exploring the countryside and the river’s banks, delighting in the gentle autumn weather, the shades of red and gold that flamed about the splendid trees. Physically – to her surprise after those first, difficult months – she had never felt better. As her body thickened and her pace necessarily slowed so it seemed to her that her mind and her soul quietened. She had time at last – time to watch a bird as it flittered through the branches of a tree, time to listen to its song, time to sit in the great stand of feather-leafed bamboo, planted by some imaginative unknown hand years before, beside the opaque, miraculously blue, spring-fed pool that gave the mill its name, and watch through the trees the cool, steady flow of the waters of the Lot as they moved tranquilly on to the distant sea. She woke with delight to the first morning of rain and walked still, cloak and hood drawn close about her, savouring the freshness of the air, the living, fragrant scent of it. As the nights closed in and began to chill they would light a fire each evening in the great rustic sitting room, each curled into a favourite chair, reading, or talking, or simply enjoying a companionable silence as she sewed for the coming child and he drew out the inevitable sketch pad and pencil.

  She did not question their rapport, as she did not question anything else. In that place, at that time, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that they should live so, in friendship and in peace. It was as if, together with the other troubles of the outside world, the exhausting conflict, the extremes of feeling that so often characterized the more common relationship between man and woman had been for this short space of time suspended. They lived in harmony, each looking to the other’s comfort and happiness and demanding nothing. Perhaps, Kitty reflected a little wryly one day as she sat upon the riverbank beside a stand of gracefully weeping willows, they had both needed this rest from the rigours of passion more than they had themselves realized. She half-smiled at the thought. It was a delightfully mild, damp, sweet-smelling late autumn day. The narrow, gold-green leaves of the willows fluttered to the dark waters and drifted lazily downstream. Within her the child stirred and she laid her hand soothingly upon the mound of her belly in the age-old gesture of pregnancy. She hummed quietly to herself, and then found herself singing softly aloud, to the river, to the trees, to the stirring life within her—

  ‘All round my ha
t I will wear the green willow – All round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day—’

  Pictures flickered in her mind. Faces long dead, or long forgotten, faces that no longer held over her the power of pain, but whose memories were transmuted now to a sweetly sad nostalgia.

  ‘Oh, young men are false and they are so deceitful, Young men are false and they seldom prove true—’

  On the opposite bank she saw movement and a flash of colour beneath the trailing branches of the trees. She did not move, nor did she stop her singing.

  ‘For rambling and ranging, their minds always changing, They’re always a-looking for some girl that’s true—’

  The branches moved again. She lifted a hand and waved, smiling. There was a sudden, smothered squeal of giggling and two little girls in muddy homespun, their plaited hair tangled with leaves and twigs, scampered from their concealment and disappeared into the woodland, laughing and calling, casting impish glances over their shoulders at the strange foreigner who sat by their river and sang.

  Kitty watched them go, smiling. Their skin was sun-browned and their dark eyes bright with a childish mischief. She felt her own child stir again, impatiently. A daughter, she thought, with a sudden, irresistible rise of longing – it would be wonderful to have a daughter. She pulled herself up sharply. Don’t think of it. Not now. Not yet. She clambered awkwardly to her feet and strolled back towards the mill, her wide-brimmed hat dangling from her fingers, her voice echoing still through the quiet woods,

  ‘My love it grows older, but never will grow colder, I wish ’twould fade away like the morning dew—’

  * * *

  Halfway through November the inevitable happened and a spell of wild, windy and wet weather set in, signalling the true approach of winter. The last of the bright leaves were stripped from the branches by the gale, the river muttered sullenly as it swirled, muddily high, against its banks. Kitty heard its murmur as it rushed against the great broken wheel of the mill, and moved her chair a little closer to the dancing flames of the enormous fire that burned upon the deep hearth. The wind blew gusts of rain against the windows and tossed the treetops wildly against the storm-dark sky, yet here, within the solid stone walls, the sound was muted and the damp and cold kept at bay. Jem had walked into the village – with his command of the language it was he who shopped, picked up the occasional letter from Genevieve, visited the tiny bar and took a glass of the local wine with the men in the village. Kitty had had no contact with the village at all – even the arrangements for the attendance of the midwife at her lying-in had had to be made through Jem. The thought, as despite herself it did more and more often lately, caused a small frisson of anxiety that she tried to ignore, but could not. Remembering Martha Isherwood’s anguish and near-death, the birth itself was something she did not care to contemplate at too great length – but as the days and the weeks passed and her burden swelled and grew it became more and more difficult not to dwell on the ordeal ahead. With Jem’s cheerful presence in the house it was easier, but alone sometimes she found herself brooding, a little fearfully, upon the inevitable and unknown trial the future – the near future now – must hold. She stood now and wandered restlessly to the tiny window that overlooked the drive, rubbing away the condensation, peering through the bare, waving branches to the lane. And there Jem came, whistling, apparently oblivious of the rain and wind, his wet hair plastered across his face, in his arms a parcel of provisions. She smiled at the sight, her fears fading, and hurried to the scullery to set the kettle upon the stove.

  It never got really cold in that clement southern valley. Even December, with mists and drizzle, did not bring the bite of a northern winter. As Christmas approached, Kitty decked the house with evergreen and sent Jem off to the village for the provisions for the seasonal feast. In the long hours spent by the fireside she sewed him a new shirt, hiding it when Jem appeared, enjoying the small, childish excitement of secrecy. On Christmas Eve she tidied and baked with a surge of energy that neither of them were experienced enough to recognize.

  In the dark early hours of Christmas morning her pains started.

  She lay alone, fighting fear and pain and waiting for Jem to bring the midwife. The great, griping pain seized her again, and she clenched against it, bringing blood to her knuckles with her teeth, refusing to cry out into the desolate silence of the deserted house.

  In God’s name, where were they? Why didn’t they come? She seemed to have been lying so, alone and waiting, for hours—

  The pain receded a little. In the relief of the aftermath she almost slept, only to be awakened again by a fresh fierce clutch of agony, fiery pincers that gripped her back and her belly, and then at its unbearable peak receded, leaving her panting with effort and drenched in sweat. She dozed again, a half-sleep peopled with the demons of a child’s nightmare. Then – at last! – voices, and light. Jem’s worried face bending over her, a woman’s voice, brusque and confident. Firm hands shook her. She moaned and tried to turn away. The pain came again, taking her unawares, drawing from her a shriek that blanched Jem’s face. She reached for and clutched the hands that held her. The woman’s voice crooned, soothing her. But when the pain receded the briskness was back.

  ‘She wants to know how often the pains are coming,’ Jem said.

  Kitty shook her head on the pillow, her hair plastered in strands across her face. ‘I don’t know. Often.’

  ‘She says you should walk a little, if you can. She says it will help­—’ Jem’s face was taut with fear, his voice strange.

  Beyond him, through the mists of pain, Kitty saw a small, shapelessly plump woman with the lined face of a peasant and sharp dark eyes. The woman rattled totally incomprehensible French at her and held out her hand. Kitty took it and struggled to sit up. There was a shocking, hot gush of liquid between her legs, a momentary easing of pain.

  The woman spoke again, sharply, pushed her back onto the bed.

  Jem disentangled his hand from hers. ‘I have to get hot water—’ he said, and the helpless anxiety of his expression brought the wan shadow of a smile to her face. ‘Hurry,’ she whispered. ‘All the things I’ve prepared – they’re in the scullery. In the warm cupboard, by the stove—’

  ‘I’ll get them.’

  The pain assaulted her again, and with it this time came an overwhelming need to push, to expel the agony, to be finished with it. The midwife caught her hand and spoke urgently, shaking her head fiercely. Somehow the meaning of the words communicated itself to Kitty. She forced herself to relax, to ride the pain, not to struggle, her breath shallow gasps in her throat. The agony ebbed. She was vaguely aware of Jem back again, of the woman’s hands upon her, of Jem’s anxious eyes. She reached a hand to him. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She knew later what it cost him, and never forgot it. But for the moment the urgency of pain and of the immense and exhausting effort of birth took her and she only knew that a familiar hand held hers as she struggled, shrieking, to deliver herself of her burden.

  And then it was over. Incredibly, and with the greatest sense of relief that she had ever experienced, she felt the child slide suddenly into the world and the tearing pain was gone. She lay panting, utterly exhausted, drenched in sweat. The midwife’s busy hands worked about her. There came another small pain, an echo only of the earlier agony. And then, reedily and strange to the ear, a small, wailing cry, swiftly hushed. Kitty blinked open sweat-slick eyes. Jem knelt before her, his face a transformation of wonder.

  ‘Kitty – see – your son. Born on Christmas Day. A lovely little boy—’

  ‘A boy—’ She lifted a weak hand to the bundle that Jem held, parted the swaddling with a finger. Jet-black hair plastered to the tiny wet skull, eyes as dark as night, unsighted in the wrinkled, newborn face. Luke. She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting a wave of exhausted disappointment, the weakness of tears. Not a daughter, then.

  The midwife took the baby from Jem and shooed him from the room. K
itty lay still as death, eyes closed, as the woman cleaned her and made her comfortable. Then, slowly, she felt the weakness in her limbs ebbing. She was aware of the dull ache in abused muscles and bones, but despite it, and despite that initial, bitter disappointment the first faint stirrings of a triumphant happiness surprised her. She had done it. She – no one else – had come through that ordeal and had given birth to a new life. Luke’s son. She sat up. The woman, smiling and talking, plumped up the pillow at her back. The baby lay in a wooden drawer laid on the floor beside the bed. Kitty leaned to look down at him. The woman restrained her, bent herself to pick up the child and laid him in Kitty’s arms. Kitty stared down at him. Her son. The midwife leaned forward and tugged at the ribbons that held Kitty’s gown together at the neck. Kitty frowned for a moment, uncomprehending. The baby mewed a little, soft red mouth opening and closing like a little, hungry bird’s. The midwife cupped her own ample breast in her hand, graphically, and pointed to the child. Slowly Kitty unlaced her nightgown. Her breasts, usually so small, were swollen and blue-veined, the nipples taut and dark. A little clumsily she drew the child to her. He turned his head and the tiny, greedy mouth fastened upon the nipple. There came a momentary, dagger-sharp pain and then an intense pleasure. The dark, downy head was heavy upon her arm. She leaned back against the pillows tiredly, letting contentment rise within her like the winter-swollen waters of the river beyond the window.

  She had, she supposed, always known.

  This was her son.

  She would not give him up.

  * * *

  ‘What are you going to call him?’ Jem asked, later, when the midwife had left, well compensated for her spoiled Christmas, and he sat by the bed watching the child asleep beside Kitty. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘I thought – Michael. After my father.’ She hesitated, lifted a defiant head. ‘Michael Daniels. It sounds well, doesn’t it?’