‘Hear that, Grace?’
Violet sounded calm enough, though her whole body seemed to her to be thrumming with emotion. Triumph strengthened her arms, holding the baby wrapped snugly into her own winter shawl. ‘Look, Grace, primroses. There, bluebells. See?’
Within she felt a shocked alarm, almost a panic, as if she had not, after all, carefully arranged and applied, produced documents, shown references, signed her name, but simply marched into the Home and committed a terrible crime: she had kidnapped a child, this one, so heavy in her arms. She had stolen a baby! What was she doing? And yet she was exulting, wild with triumph.
It was hard work feeling all this at once, especially as at the same time she had to keep repeating the various rational explanations and reassurances some part of her seemed constantly to forget, fluttering back again and again to the notion of crime.
How could it be His will to take another’s child? Not stolen, thought Violet grimly, once again. Not stolen, given away.
Given away, like a kitten! No, given away properly, with all due form, thought Violet, and in accordance with the law.
Given, taken. Lost, found. Someone lost this child, and I have found her.
Stolen her!
‘See the bluebells?’
And all the time the child made no sound at all, no struggle, just went on looking in silence, one little hand grasping the lapel of Violet’s jacket. That was a blessing, for Violet. She had noticed it happen, just as they reached the top of the hill, and she stopped for a moment before beginning the long winding descent towards the village and the sea. As she stood there panting, the small brown hand worked its way free of the shawl and reached out, and took hold.
‘That’s right, my lovely, you hang on tight!’ Violet had said, but the child made no response to her encouraging smile, though she rested her head against Violet’s neck, as if she were contented enough.
In this way they reached the edge of the village. The wind picked up as Violet made her way down the steep main street. There were few people about at this hour of the day, but she knew word had got out; word always did. She was barely halfway down before one or two women suddenly found reason to nip out on to the cobbles and accost her.
‘Why, Mrs Dimond, ain’t it? Afternoon!’ But for once, this time, looking exactly like Bea Givens was only a side-show.
‘That the little dark maid? Can I see her, like?’
‘Ain’t that a marvel!’
‘She that colour all over?’
‘Will it get darker, she gets older?’
‘Where she come from, then?’
Violet stayed where she was, not hurrying away, answering questions pleasantly enough, letting them stare a little, while the baby, unsmiling, turned her face away.
A voice inside Violet seemed to be giving her advice. Hold your head up, said this inner voice. Be bold. Do nothing hole-and-corner. Let them stare; and they will stop staring all the sooner.
All the same she was shaking a little when finally she climbed up the trio of slanting stone steps to the cottage backing right against the harbour wall.
‘Here we are!’ She unlocked the door, closed it behind them, and carried the child inside, across the room to the small far window. She sat down on the little painted window seat and looked out, drawing a long sigh of relief. A few small skiffs still bobbed in the harbour. Once she had sat thus with her own baby Ruth on her lap, just so, all those years ago, when Bert Givens had been alive, when her own husband had been alive, and her son in little breeches, a lifetime ago that felt like yesterday.
‘I see the sea, and the sea sees me!’ chanted Ruth, in Violet’s memory.
‘Look at the boats, Grace!’ It seemed to Violet that the baby made no response at all, just dully saw whatever was in front of her, without a single spark of understanding.
Left behind because she was lacking, Bea had said. Not the other way about.
A knock at the door startled her. But when Violet, sliding the child on to her hip, went to open it, there was no one there. Had someone knocked and run? What sort of silly game was that? Neighbours’ll have a deal to say, Matron had said. There was other little girls be less trouble.
Then Violet looked down, and saw that whoever had knocked seemed to have left something on the doorstep, a bundle. She poked it with one foot, then slowly stooped and picked it up, worn blue cloth knotted together with something soft padded inside. She took it and closed the door again, noticing as she did so the little basket bed Bea had borrowed from a neighbour, set nicely made-up ready in a corner. Would the child consent to lie in it?
She checked her, found her dry enough, and laid her down at last. It was the first time she had let the child go, since taking her in her arms in the Home that afternoon, since kidnapping her. Violet tucked the flannel sheet well in, suddenly aware of how much her arms ached. The baby at once shut her eyes, and appeared to sleep.
There was something unnerving about this instant compliance. Ruth at a similar age would have protested, or just climbed out again, laughing.
Violet stood up, her insides all fluttering with panic once more. She had been so sure that there was nothing really wrong, that sickness and abandonment, poor mite, were enough to account for the baby’s limp inertia. But suppose after all she was wrong? She thought of the child’s hand reaching out to hold her lapel. Wasn’t that a sign in itself?
Was it enough, though? Had she not held on to the tape of her own nightdress with just the same empty concentration?
She busied herself, putting a match to the fire, setting out her things upstairs in the bedroom, checking the larder, finding a new loaf in the bread crock, butter and milk and a basket of eggs on the stone slab in the lean-to, flour, potatoes, a jar of rice. Neighbours: they would call. Those not brass-necked enough to approach her straight away in the street would all of them arrive on the front step sooner or later, partly for the traditional amusement of seeing Bea Givens’ face on someone else, but mainly for the new far-more thrilling sight of the negro child.
Coming back into the main room she saw the bundle, and knelt to open it. There was a little pile inside, of clothes. One by one Violet held them up to the light: a little knitted jacket, worked in complex local stitching, in thick creamy double-knit, two pairs of black knitted stockings, well-darned but with plenty of wear left in them, two small flannel vests that tied together with little tapes of binding, three soft well-boiled squares of flannel napkins, and a further square of the tough cambric that would hold a sodden napkin well in place overnight. A hoard of well-used but well-made well-kept items, left privately, for no payment, not even thanks.
Violet sent thanks anyway, in the right direction; it was well to remember, she told herself, He who had directed her steps this far. If some neighbours had a deal to say, He was perhaps reminding her, there would be others leaving kindly gifts.
A coddled egg, now. Bread and butter. Tea for herself. She checked the fire, and set the kettle in place. A week here; a holiday, perhaps, but full of dutiful purpose. She would take the child every day to the sea, to the new tide, and they would breathe in the strengthening air. She would feed the baby three proper meals a day, she would do the sewing, all Bea’s mending sure enough, but also the summer blouse of her own she meant to turn into a Sunday-best dress for the baby. If neighbours had a deal to say, Violet thought, as she slipped her apron on, they would say it all the more quietly, all the more uncertainly, if the child was neatly dressed, and properly cared for.
There was a sudden creaking movement from the basket bed on the floor. The child was awake, and turning herself about. It was a laborious process, as if sickness had returned her to infancy. Pulling on the basket’s stiff handles, she managed at last to sit up, and looked dully about her. Then she saw Violet. For a moment they gazed at one another, Violet unconsciously smiling, instinctively still, the child’s face registering the merest flicker, as of doubt.
‘You awake now, lovely?’ Violet breathed at las
t.
At the sound of her voice the child’s lips parted, her eyes widened, and there at last, suddenly, was the first glorious transfiguring smile, her face as if lit from within. She let go of the handles, and urgently held out both her arms.
‘Hello, my Grace,’ said Violet, and bent at once to enfold her.
She began to stand at the end of their second day in the cottage, hauling herself upright by pulling on anything handy, the edge of the armchair by the fire, the coal scuttle, the tablecloth, though luckily Violet had just that moment cleared the china. She slept a great deal, in the basket bed by day, in Violet’s arms at night, the bed crackling with carefully laid newspapers and the trusty special-bag mackintosh. Every night, sometimes more than once, she woke screaming. Often it was a minute or two before Violet could fully awaken her. But apart from that she barely made a sound. She ate little, quickly losing interest after the first few bites.
But by day she began to seem less languid. Every morning after their breakfast porridge they went down to the beach and sat upon the rocks there, taking the air and watching the boats.
‘Morning, Mrs Dimond. How’s the little maid doing then, she thriving? Hello there, Missy!’ Villagers sometimes joined them; most often, thought Violet, those with nothing better to do.
On the fourth day one of Bea’s less respectable acquaintances, a woman known locally as Old Bet, arrived at the cottage, as most of the village had by then, for a good look and a gossip. Old Bet smelt strongly of unwashed clothes and something even more acrid, which Violet suspected to be drink. Her hair hung in grizzled grey hanks about her face, some of her front teeth were missing, and several ancient blackheads lay deeply buried on the gnarled bridge of her nose. But she brought gifts.
‘These do fer the cheel?’
From beneath her arm Old Bet drew something wrapped in newspaper, which turned out to be a pair of worn but still serviceable small brown leather boots.
‘They’m from my old Missus over to the Hall,’ said Old Bet. ‘She give ’em to my daughter.’
‘From Wooton Hall?’ Violet was startled. Wooton Hall, where Old Bet’s daughter worked as a kitchen maid, was on the other side of Silkhampton. But there are trains every day, Violet remembered. Word would get out, and nowadays word could travel very fast.
‘Quality,’ said Old Bet, fingering the leather. Violet picked one up. It was true, the boot was softer than it looked, and beautifully stitched, and laced with darker brown ribbon.
‘Look, Gracie. Shall we see if they fit?’
Grace, who had been sitting as usual very still on Violet’s lap, now made a strange movement, a rocking forward. Why, thought Violet with a little stroke of excitement, was the child taking notice?
She picked up the boot and opened it, pulling the ribbon laces apart, and held it for Grace to slide in her little stockinged foot. It seemed, by chance, almost a perfect fit; perhaps a little large, thought Violet, pressing the rounded toe to feel the baby’s own toes beneath. She slid the other one on, drew the laces together, and tied two large bows.
‘Stand up, then!’
She slid Grace down the valley of her skirt to the floor. ‘There! How do they feel? Do they hurt anywhere?’
The child made no answer, but stood gazing raptly down at the boots. They looked outsized, thought Violet, on her poor skinny little legs.
‘What d’you reckon then, Gracie? Give ’em a try, eh?’
Gracie walked. She kept her eyes on the boots, carefully placing them, one by one, over to the window and then, turning, all the way right across the room towards the door.
Violet could not quite contain herself. ‘But she ain’t walked at all before!’ Old Bet clapped her hands, pleased as Punch. At the door Gracie turned, and gave her adopted mother a huge smile of triumph.
‘Why, Gracie Dimond!’ Violet patted her lap, and Grace for a moment hesitated, as if gathering herself together, then half-ran stumblingly back again, throwing herself into Violet’s arms with a sound that could almost have been a laugh.
‘The difference those boots made to that child!’ Violet told Bea afterwards. They brought all sorts of firsts: first walk, first run, first walk to the beach just holding Violet’s hand, first walking on the harbour wall.
First hint of playfulness: while Violet was getting tea ready that afternoon, Grace held on to the table leg, stamping each boot in turn, and Violet had a sudden vivid memory of her son as a very little boy in St George’s Silkhampton one weekday morning years ago, when it was all hers to sweep clean; he had climbed up into the gallery and raced about there, hammering his feet on the wooden floor.
She had scolded him. ‘Hey, you stop that right now! Where d’you think you are?’
Ah, and Bea had been there too, on one of her rare visits, and had of course not hesitated to stick her oar in.
‘Oh, leave off – there ain’t no one here, unless you count the Lord, and He’s got a soft spot for littluns.’
‘What would you know about the Lord?’ Violet had answered angrily; forgetting herself, forgetting where she was. Bea always knowing best!
Bea had shrugged. ‘If he rackets about now, be easier for him come Sunday.’
‘And what would you know about children?’
Well, thought Violet now, remembering this with a qualm, I wasn’t to know, was I? No child of mine was going to riot in God’s own house; why hadn’t she told me straight off she’d just miscarried again?
All the same some vague impulse of contrition now made her lift Grace up, and set her on the painted wooden window seat, and give her an encouraging nod.
‘Go on, then!’
The child stamped; the hollow seat sounded a satisfying thud. Now there could be no mistake about her chuckle of delight. She drummed both feet as hard as she could.
‘Gracie Dimond, what a shocking noise!’
And later still came the first normal tears, at bedtime, when Violet took the boots off, and Grace set up a healthy wailing like any other little child.
‘You can’t wear ’em to bed, Gracie!’
Finally Violet had to wrap the boots in a bit of clean flannel, and set them beside Grace in the basket bed, so that she could go to sleep still embracing them. When she carried the baby upstairs later on, when she went to bed herself, Violet was careful to take the boots as well, so that she would feel and see them straight away when she woke in the night.
But that was also the first night Grace had slept all through. In the morning she sat up almost as cheerful and bright-eyed as any other little girl, Violet told herself, and later, the boots back on her feet, ate all her porridge; and instead of languidly letting Violet hold the cup to her lips, she took it up herself, and drank all her milk without spilling a drop.
‘Ain’t you a clever girl!’
That was the morning they both walked nearly all the way up to the top of the hill, taking it slowly, stopping in the vantage points as if they were the rich folk come to do their painting, calling in at one or two shops and the houses of those of Bea’s neighbours Violet was completely sure about.
In all these places Grace was stared at, of course. But they would stare at any stranger, Violet reminded herself. They had stared just so at Bea all those years ago, when she had first come as a bride, they had snubbed and ignored her for being foreign, for coming from the town. Though being Bea she had soon enough given them better reasons, thought Violet. And they had boggled all over again when she had first turned up herself, for a visit, by chance wearing a straw hat with a rosebud tucked into the ribbon, exactly the same as Bea’s own.
On the way back down again though there was some proper unkindness. Or proper stupidity, more like, thought Violet. Two or three half-grown boys followed them down the street.
‘You got a monkey there.’
‘You got a coon!’
‘Monkey in a bonnet, ha! Monkey in a bonnet!’
It had been a few minutes before Violet had understood what they were saying, and why. The
face she had turned on them had been more puzzled than angry.
‘What you talking about, monkeys? Ain’t you seen a little girl before? Something wrong with your eyes, is there?’
‘That’s a black girl,’ said the biggest one stoutly, though he took a step back.
‘I’d noticed,’ said Violet. ‘This here’s Grace; she’s my own. And less of a monkey than you are, Billy Danfield. Judging by your ears.’
Afterwards Violet had been a little ashamed of this. It had been so much the sort of thing Bea would have said. Still it seemed to have worked. Though they knew who she was, she thought, as she unbuttoned Gracie’s knitted jacket back at the cottage; and where she was staying. Neighbours’ll have a deal to say. Stones to throw too, perhaps.
‘They’ll get used to you. Won’t they, my lovely? Soon enough. And they’ll have me to deal with first.’
That evening she gave Gracie a soft-boiled egg shelled into a cup, which she ate in its entirety, dipping into it with her bread and butter. By then she could sit up properly on the other chair drawn up to the table, Bea’s sewing box taking her just high enough to reach her plate.
She must learn her manners, thought Violet anxiously, watching her, for the same reason that she must look taken-care-of. There should be no room for those who want to call her names. Not when there are those ready to call her names anyway.
‘When we go home,’ said Violet, ‘we’ll see if you can walk all the way to the railway station, shall we? Going on a train soon, Gracie! You’ll like that.’
Grace put the empty cup down. Her small face was smeared with egg and butter. She looked steadily at Violet, seeming to consider her words. Then she nodded, her delicate eyebrows raised.
‘Train; chuffa chuffa!’ said Grace, and she smiled.
4
Violet was used to a certain amount of public attention. While she had never enjoyed the frank looks and cat-calls a certain sort of young man had given her in the old days, and hurried along avoiding all eyes (unlike her sister Beatrice, who had gone in for looking right back, and even answering, sometimes), for years now Violet had been pleasantly accustomed to respectful greetings. Wives made sure to acknowledge her in the street, and she was used to a certain cap-doffing and forelock-touching deference from their husbands, often labouring men otherwise very rough in their manners.
The Midwife's Daughter Page 5