Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  Seven hours later, with Dr Graham and Nurse Alves in attendance, my baby girl was born. She had a shock of hair and huge, melting eyes. We named her Isabel. She had barely taken her first breath before John and the doctor had uncorked the vintage port that John had laid in for the occasion and were wetting her head. I was too exhausted to care what anyone else was doing. I lay in bed with my baby daughter, tightly swaddled in a snow-white blanket, beside me.

  The love that swelled my heart was so great that I could not comprehend it. I kissed the tiny face, cheeks warm but still red and shrivelled from the birth, and together we slept, almost as close as if she were still inside me, until the early hours of the morning.

  John is the picture of the devoted father, I the doting mother. Both of us are utterly transported by delight in our infant. Work no longer holds John hostage; instead, he leaves promptly at 5pm every afternoon to make sure he is home to rock and cradle and dote on his daughter before bedtime. I sing her lullabies and songs, tickle her toes and hands and shower her with kisses from morning until night.

  We have hired a nursery nurse to help me but, whilst I appreciate Marta’s expertise, I don’t really want anyone else caring for my baby. Fortunately, Marta finds plenty to occupy herself, washing nappies and cotton nighties and ironing everything to perfection. The only thing she insists on is that I rest every afternoon for at least two hours. She is adamant that a mother cannot provide milk for her baby if she is tired.

  Sometimes I sit and cradle Isabel in my arms and simply look at her, regarding how steadily she holds my gaze, how her lips purse and relax, mimicking a sucking motion, and how her tiny arms wave spontaneously in the air. I will the world to stop turning for a few moments so that I can hold time suspended and revel in the rapture I feel for my daughter.

  Nothing is too good for the new arrival. John has had a top quality Silver Cross pram imported from England. It’s white with a navy hood and cover, and is padded inside. Its two front wheels are large; the back two even larger and set wider apart so that they overlap with the front ones. It springs up and down as I push it over Porto’s cobbles; the bouncing invariably sends Isabel to sleep - the bouncier the better, in fact - so I assume that she likes it. When she wakes, she opens her huge eyes and looks straight at me, and waves her tiny arms and kicks her tiny legs in joy at seeing me (or so I like to think!). I wish I could do the same to show how much I love her back. I lose count of the times I have to stop for passers-by, known and unknown, to admire Isabel. Nobody can tell me enough how beautiful, how alert, how obviously intelligent, my baby is.

  The Silver Cross isn’t the only four-wheeled mode of transport to herald the arrival of Isabel. John has bought a car! I’m happy for him to have it, even though I have never felt the need for a motorised vehicle. It’s sweet to see how much he loves it, always keeping it polished and gleaming, making sure it is a chariot worthy of his first child. All Portuguese treasure and adore their children, but everyone else we know has them coming out of their ears. The problem, for most, is how not to have too many children. It seems to be only us, John and I, who have waited and hoped and despaired for so long. It’s natural that he wants to spoil Isabel in every way that he can.

  For her part, Isabel seems as happy with the internal combustion engine as with my pushing power. I put her carry cot on the back seat and she follows the clouds with her eyes until she falls fast asleep. John insists that, in the summer, when she is bigger, we will drive to the montado and spend some time with my parents. Perhaps Isabel will be able to take part - watching from her pram - in the gathering and selection of the acorns from which the cork seedlings will be grown. My father is keen to get started on the new plantation he has promised his first grandchild.

  In the meantime, John is full of plans for weekends, what we could do and where we could go - once Marta has deemed Isabel strong enough for journeys, of course. He suggested Aveiro, but I wasn’t keen on that idea. It is far too far, much too hot, the water probably harbours diseases, and there are bound to be mosquitoes.

  So today, we went to the beach at Miramar, just a few miles south of the city, Praia da Luz instead. I sat in the back, next to Isabel in her basket, and watched the tall houses give way to the rolling ocean. We parked right beside the beach and I carried my baby onto the sand, holding her so that she could see the sea and feel the salt wind on her cheeks.

  I tied her bonnet firmly under her chin, and we walked to the water’s edge where John dangled her bare toes in the foaming tops of the breakers as they rolled into shore, just a few inches deep by that point, and then snatched her away so that she flew through the air, a white-robed angel. Isabel squealed and waved her arms and kicked her legs so much that John declared her a water baby just like her mother. I fussed that it was too cold, that her feet had turned to ice, that the sun was too hot on her face. But then I stopped myself; I mustn’t let motherhood, however long in coming, however striven for, turn me into a worrier.

  Day follows blissful day, and although there are sleepless nights and times when Isabel cries for a reason that I cannot discern, in general things go smoothly. Marta is impressed by my calm, confident manner with my infant; she disapprovingly tells me that many new mothers go completely to pieces.

  I took Isabel to see Dr Graham today for her six-week check. He declared himself delighted with her progress. She is bonny, she is blithe, she is good and she is gay, just as a baby born on the Sabbath should be.

  It was a beautiful day, one of those where the sun glints off every windowpane and the air is full of the scent of the sea. When we got home, I carried Isabel to the tall window that looks out, in the very far distance, over the poor people’s houses that resemble a child’s fallen building blocks tumbling haphazardly down the hill. I took Isabel’s now plump right arm and waved it at those faraway people living faraway lives.

  I do not need to envy them any longer.

  London, 2010

  Sarah tightened her grip on Inês’s hands, conscious that her own palms were now damp with sweat. Bile gurgled in her stomach and rose in her throat. There could only be one conclusion to this story.

  “When she was a few months’ old, we were invited to a ball in Lisbon. It was through work colleagues of John’s, and was to be a very grand affair. We were to be guests in their house – a beautiful villa. It was in Cascais. Or perhaps it was Carcavelos…” Inês’s voice trailed off and Sarah handed her a glass of water to sip and moisten her dry lips.

  “The maid was to look after Isabel while we were out. I wasn’t that keen on leaving her, but John said that it was important for his career.”

  Inês was gazing a long way into the distance when she began to speak again. “On the night of the ball we all got dressed up and there was a great deal of excitement. It was a fabulous evening. Although I hadn’t wanted to go, I remember I enjoyed myself greatly.”

  Despite the fact that she knew disaster was surely coming, Sarah couldn’t help but picture the scene, the beautiful young people gathered together, the women in their long dresses, gloves and pearls, the men smart in suits and bow ties. She could hear their lively chattering voices and the rich, sweet scent of perfume and fresh flowers mingling with the smoke from expensive cigars.

  “When we got back, I went straight to Isabel. I fed her, then put her back to bed. I kissed her and I remember she looked at me with her huge eyes before she fell back to sleep.

  “When I went to get her in the morning, she was dead.”

  Sarah could feel the agony in Inês’s hands, sense the terror, the bewilderment, the horror of that moment.

  “Oh my God, Inês, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. You must have been devastated. You and John. So devastated.”

  Inês’s eyes were narrow with grief, the pain visible and real.

  “There didn’t seem to be any reason why she died. Cot death, the doctor said.”

  “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” murmured Sarah, recalling what she knew of this te
rrifying killer.

  “That’s right. They come up with fancy names and syndrome this, disorder that. But it doesn’t change the facts. Your baby dies and you don’t know how or why. She was just lying there, blue and cold.”

  Inês’ lips were trembling but her voice was steady. “To make it worse, we had been going to have her christening before we went to Lisbon, but delayed it for ten days as she had a cold and was very fractious. So she died before being baptised. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”

  “It’s every parent’s worst fear.” Sarah was struggling to digest the information Inês was giving her, to take it in and process it in any kind of orderly way. To her, the matter of baptism seemed a small concern in the scheme of things, but to Inês she understood it would mean much, much more.

  “So what happened after she died? How did you cope? You weren’t even in your own home…” Sarah could feel the nightmare of the event running away from her.

  “That’s just it, Sarah. I don’t know what happened.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I was beside myself, hysterical. They gave me drugs to calm me down and help me sleep. But I got ill, I had a raging fever and was partly unconscious for quite a few weeks.”

  24

  Porto, 1938

  One of the strangest things that happened afterwards was how cold I felt; chilled to the bone, feverish but freezing. In the moments when I woke, when the drugs that deadened my feelings and hammered me into semi-consciousness wore off, I felt as frigid and stiff as my baby had been when I had lifted her out of the cot and found her lifeless.

  Time had no meaning any more; seconds became long as hours, minutes lasted whole days, hours were inconceivable and immoveable, blocks of iron set in concrete that would never shift. I felt that I was expected to show anger, grief, fear, denial – these emotions were what those who lingered outside my bedroom door were waiting for - John, his brother over from England, my mother and my dear sister Maria. The well-meaning wives of John’s colleagues, who came with cakes and fresh lemonade and tiny notes of commiseration. But all I felt was emptiness. I was a big hole of nothing, all the hope gone, leaking out as from a barrel with a faulty seal.

  My beautiful, raven-black hair fell out, chunk by chunk, leaving my half-bald scalp exposed as if I were suffering from some terrible disease. My skin, once so flawless and perfect, erupted in a spotty rash that refused to clear and my eyes were so puffed up from weeping and lack of sleep that they looked permanently half-closed.

  During this terrible time I realised that sorrow is a taste and smell as much as a feeling. The taste of bile in my mouth whenever I tried to eat, and the smell of John’s cigarette smoke, looping endlessly around him in ever decreasing circles of despair.

  In my dreams, Isabel appeared constantly before me, but reborn in grotesque forms, Frankenstein’s monster wrought real in my febrile mind. The shapes and figures the baby assumed were animal, insect, sea creature, mingled figures of myth and legend jumbled together with hideous, unknown things.

  One day, I heard a terrible screaming. It filled the room and went on and on, and I clutched myself tightly, imagining some other mother just arrived at the crib to find her baby no longer living, passed away, passed on. I wondered how that woman could bear the pain and felt her torment rack through my own body.

  It was only when John appeared by my side, shaking me and imploring me to stop, to stop crying, to be quiet now, that I realised that the howls and wails of anguish were my own.

  The emptiness was followed by rage, a seething, terrifying anger at how this could have happened to me, who waited for this child for so long. To bellow at the sky because of the injustice of it all was all I could do.

  And even now, much later, when I am supposed to have ‘recovered’, got back to normal, resumed life just as it has always been, I still feel the pain in my arms and chest as well as in my heart, and ache with loneliness as every pore of my being, even my once lustrous hair, mourns my lost infant.

  London, 2010

  In Inês’s elegant drawing room, nothing moved except the shadow patterns of light and dark on the floor and the walls. Even the traffic on Highgate Road seemed to have fallen quiet, quelled by the tale of a tragedy that was finally finding a voice after such long years of silence.

  “By the time I had started to recover, it was all over.”

  “What was all over?” Sarah felt as if she were reliving the nightmare with Inês, was dizzied by her revelations.

  “Everything was over. They all behaved as if nothing had happened. My hair didn’t grow back properly for nearly ten years. I had to wear a wig, but nobody ever commented on it.” For a moment Inês seemed angry, her eyes small as slits and her lips tight. Then she let it go, her ancient grief and anguish hissing out of her like a steam jet under pressure.

  “The English doctor in Porto told me to forget all about it, to go home and try again. Have another one, he said. As if another baby could replace Isabel.” There was derision in Inês’s voice now, an almost palpable despising of those who could understand and empathise so little.

  “This is so terrible. Horrendous. But you know it was nothing you did, don’t you?”

  “When you take your tiny baby in your arms, you know you have been given the greatest gift that life can offer.” Inês had drifted away into her own world, barely seeming to notice Sarah next to her any more. “She was so precious, so vulnerable. All we had to do was to keep her safe. And we couldn’t, we didn’t.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault. Babies still die of cot death today, and they still don’t know what causes it. I wrote an article about it once. It was nothing you did.” Sarah repeated the words, knowing they made no difference, wondering whether Inês was even hearing what she was saying.

  “I didn’t know for years afterwards how badly John had taken it. He only knew British reserve; his upper lip was always stiff. But one day I overheard a conversation between his brother – your grandfather – Rupert and Rupert’s wife Diana, your grandmother. I had to piece together the whole story from what they were saying – but I understood the gist.”

  Inês took a deep breath before continuing. “I think John tried to take his own life. The story seemed to be that he was found in the sea, rescued by a man on the beach who was walking his dog. The man saved his life, swam out to get him, resuscitated him…” Inês gave a half snort of resignation and disbelief. “That was when I found out that John did not know how to swim. He had never told me because he was embarrassed about it, ashamed he lacked such a basic skill.”

  Sarah thought of the journal, the entry about Inês’s ill-fated night bathe that had foreshadowed hers and Scott’s. Inês had wondered why John had not come into the water after her. What a way to find out.

  Inês’s stiff fingers fumbled awkwardly in her pocket for a handkerchief, which once found she used to dab delicately at her eyes although she was not crying. “He always seemed invincible. In control of everything. Strong, charismatic, courageous. People thought him a hero. But he was just an ordinary man, no different from anyone else. It’s funny how appearances can be deceptive. And how things can change so much over the years.”

  Sarah’s cheeks were hot and livid; she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem trite and insignificant, could hardly keep track of everything that Inês was revealing to her, what it meant and where it was leading. Instead, she held Inês’s hand again and willed her the strength to carry on.

  “A year or so after Isabel died, the war started and John joined up. He was away for a long time and when he came back it was as if it had never happened. And he…he was no longer concerned about us having a child. Not by then, not any more.”

  Inês faltered. “He no longer needed it.”

  Sarah’s face creased up in puzzlement. What did ‘no longer needing it’ mean? Perhaps the horror of war had robbed him of the wish to bring a new life into such a terrible world? Sarah opened her mou
th to ask the question of Inês, but stopped as Inês’s hands tightened around hers.

  “After I lost Isabel, I knew that I could never be truly happy again. But I could be useful. And that’s how I’ve tried to be.”

  Sarah’s head was spinning, struggling to absorb all the revelations, wishing she could absorb all of Inês’s sorrow.

  “You were useful. You are useful,” she hastened to reassure her, hardly knowing what she was saying. “You’ve always been useful to me.” Sarah’s tone implored Inês to understand how profoundly she felt what she said. “And Inês… I’m so sorry. So very sorry that I never knew before what had happened, and couldn’t help you.”

  “It was so long ago.” Inês looked shrunken and colourless. “But there might not be much time left. That’s why I’m telling you now.” Her lips were trembling and she paused to let them still before continuing. “Please read some more.”

  London, 1948

  Years later, I still sometimes jerk awake at night, believing that Isabel is crying. I jump out of bed and only when my feet hit the cold floorboards of an unheated Georgian house in post-war London, do I remember that my baby is dead. Other times, I dream that I have left Isabel somewhere, that she is alive, merely elsewhere at that moment. Sometimes it is a benign dream; Isabel is in a good place, staying with friends or relations, happy, smiling, laughing. She can be any age, from the age she really would have been had she lived, or still a baby, a toddler, reliant on her carers for everything.

  Sometimes the dream is malevolent and evil. Isabel is being hurt or neglected; I have knowingly left her with people who will harm her. Or she has been stolen, snatched from her cot or pram, and I am searching for her, hearing her cries but unable to pinpoint where they come from. Those dreams are the most terrible of all and I wake, crying, sobbing, my pillow wet, my hands shaking, my whole being crying out ‘No. Stop it! Leave my baby alone.’

  Scared of sleeping again and bringing the nightmares back, I get up, turn on the lights, make tea and maybe put a record on the gramophone so that I am less alone.