‘Where is Thomas?’
‘I have a question for you first,’ he said. A muscle jumped under his cheekbone. ‘Where have you been this afternoon?’
‘Walking,’ I said, looking straight at him. ‘You know I love to walk over the Downs.’
‘I have told you more than once, Lizzie, that now you are my wife this must cease.’ He dropped his voice as he spoke the last words, chill and separate.
‘Where is Thomas?’ I asked again.
‘He is where he should be, with his father.’
Such a wave of anger went through me that I had to clench my fists so as not to spring at him.
‘With Augustus, I suppose you mean,’ I said.
‘Of course.’ He glanced down at the papers in front of him, as if he was waiting for me to go away so that he could get on with his work. But I knew him too well: this was playacting. He was as angry as I was, and his air of bland preoccupation was meant to taunt me.
‘I will fetch him home, then,’ I said. ‘It is time for his feed.’
Slowly, Diner stood up. His fists went down on the desk, supporting his weight. ‘You will not,’ he said, even more quietly.
‘Then tell me what has changed. You agreed to have Thomas with us.’
‘Where were you this afternoon?’
‘I told you. I was walking by the Gorge.’
‘Alone?’
He knew. I could tell it immediately. He had followed me or had me followed, or perhaps some well-wisher had given him the information. I must answer him now or he would crush me.
‘I went alone,’ I said. ‘You may ask Philo, or anyone. But by chance I met an acquaintance.’
‘Who was that?’
‘A friend of Augustus. I met him once, when I went to visit Hannah. He has been staying with them for a while but now he has gone into Somerset.’
‘Gone, has he?’
‘I believe so. We exchanged greetings and he told me that he was on his way to the south of the county.’
‘I believed you were at home, caring for Thomas.’
‘I am almost always at home.’
‘Almost!’ he cried out, and then immediately dropped his voice again. ‘I suppose a man might say that he is almost always honest, or almost always sober. Have you other such friends whom you meet by chance when you happen to go out walking?’
He got up from his desk and came towards me. My flesh shrank but I held my ground and he stopped, at arm’s length. I must be bold, and speak out.
‘If you don’t believe me, say so. If you think I am giving you the slip and meeting another man by design, then accuse me and let me defend myself. I have nothing to be ashamed of and I will not be attacked as if I had.’
His face tightened. I could not read him now, or guess what he might do. But when he spoke, it was calmly.
‘You have changed very much, Lizzie, since the day I married you,’ he said.
We faced each other. He looked worn, and older. I thought of the many times he had lifted me in his arms and held me to his breast. All night we had found a thousand reasons not to separate, as if our bodies were no longer whole unless they were entwined. Only when morning strengthened at the windows and boys whistled in the street had we allowed ourselves to become two again.
‘I have not changed,’ I said, meaning it, although as the words echoed through the bare room they sounded hollow. Diner watched my face for a long time, as if from a long way off. At last he reached out. His hand came towards my face but I did not flinch. He lifted a lock of hair that had come loose on my forehead. He stroked it back, glancing around at his office, the scattered papers and the marks on the wall where the drawings had been.
‘You may as well fetch the child,’ he said. ‘It makes no odds now.’
I ran down the flights of stone steps to the door. This time I could not open it and I wrestled with it, sweating, frantic, until I saw that it was quite simple. While I was upstairs, someone had slipped the bolt across at the top. The man who had seen me had done it, perhaps, to keep out other importunate wives.
I came out into the clatter of the street. There were sober knots of sober men discussing their business, and boys threading in and out of them with messages. They all looked at me a little too long, as if I should not be there. I drew my cloak around me and pulled up the hood as I set off for Augustus’s lodgings. Thomas was quite safe there. Hannah would rouse herself to comfort him, and Augustus would look on awkwardly, full of good intentions. I found myself smiling, and then I wondered if Diner had seen Will Forrest when he went to the lodgings. If he had he would know my lie. But no, if he knew that I had lied to him he would have confronted me with it. More likely Will had hidden himself in the bedroom as soon as he heard the door. Diner could not very well have arrived silently with a crying baby in his arms.
He did not trust me. If I had changed, so had he. I thought of Lucie’s dress: the waterfall of silk that she had never worn. For the first time I did not wish Lucie out of existence. I wished that she were here, now, and that I could question her.
And there indeed was Thomas, fast asleep in a nest of shawl on Hannah’s bed. Hannah had put a coral beside him. There was no sign of Will Forrest and I did not like to ask.
‘He’s been chewing on the coral, just as you used to do,’ she said.
‘Is that the same one I had?’
‘It bears the marks of your teeth, Elizabeth. I put it away in my chest, and now it’s come in handy.’
I was touched to think of Hannah’s keeping my teething coral all these years, when she could never have thought it would really come in handy. She looked more alive that I’d seen her since Mammie’s death, and she could not keep the reason to herself.
‘I am going into Somerset for a month or so, Elizabeth.’
‘Somerset!’
‘A friend of mine has taken a cottage there and he wants me to keep house for a while, until he is settled. Augustus says he can very well spare me.’
‘You need not keep secrets from me, Hannah. You mean Mr Forrest, I suppose.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and smiled with such satisfaction that I felt an absurd pang of jealousy. I did not know whether I was jealous of Hannah, or of Will Forrest, but I did not want them to go away together without me.
‘He is very lucky to have you, Hannah,’ I said, ‘but you must make sure to come back again. We shall miss you too much.’
Thomas was stirring, champing and sucking at the air, and would scream with hunger as soon as he woke. I must get him home.
‘Where is Augustus?’ I asked, picking up the baby and folding his shawl around him tightly. Thomas always liked to be held secure.
‘He is in his room, working, but he wanted to speak to you, Elizabeth. I think I might venture to disturb him.’
‘Not now. I must get back. I will speak to him another time.’
‘There was something very particular that he wanted to say to you. You have time enough, surely.’ She cast an expert glance at Thomas. ‘The child is settling again. He will sleep for another half-hour or so.’
‘I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow.’ I bent to kiss her cheek. As always, the softness of her skin surprised me. ‘Thank you, Hannah.’
‘I hope you know what you are doing, Elizabeth. There is no necessity for Thomas to go back with you. Augustus is quite willing to engage another nurse and I believe that Caroline Farquhar has offered to pay for one.’
‘She would be willing to pay for anything, as long as it kept Thomas far away in some cottage out of sight.’
Hannah stood up. ‘You have always done as you wanted, Elizabeth.’
I was stung. ‘I am looking after my mother’s child. My own half-brother. I don’t see that there is anything so very wilful in that.’
‘On the face of it, no,’ said Hannah, with all her old dryness. She was coming back to herself. She was going to have her own world again, taking care of Will Forrest and his writing as she had taken care of Mammie’s for so long.
‘Very soon. Augustus is arranging it all.’
‘What about your rheumatism?’
‘I am well enough.’
It was true that she moved more freely today than I had seen her move since Mammie’s death. My eyes blurred. Surely I could not want to cry, because Hannah was going into Somerset for a month – it was more than absurd, when I had Thomas safe in my arms.
But I did not get away without seeing Augustus. His door opened as I came out of the kitchen, and there he was, blocking my way. He looked rumpled and astonished to find that the daily world was still here: it was his working look.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘Come in here, Lizzie, I need to talk to you.’
I followed him. There was no fire but the door to the kitchen was open and the room was not too cold. Augustus closed the door.
‘I see that you have Thomas,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ I was not going to have any argument on the point. ‘He is coming home with me now.’
‘Are you sure that is wise, Lizzie?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Your husband was here, as you know. I spoke to him. I formed a strong impression that he did not want to have Thomas in his house. And, you know, I cannot have my child living where he is not welcome.’
My child. It was the truth, but it stung.
‘Diner has agreed to it,’ I said. ‘What happened today means nothing. Diner and I had argued earlier and he was angry. He regrets it already, Augustus. Indeed, it was he who told me to come here. Thomas is well cared for with me.’
‘You do not need to defend yourself, Lizzie. Thomas will do very well with a nurse now.’
‘But, Augustus, you saw yourself how malnourished Thomas was when he came back from the wet-nurse. No matter how often I visited Mrs Platt, no matter that she was well paid for her trouble, it made no difference to her carelessness. She left him hungry, to cry in the care of a child while she went visiting. She let him lie in his dirt until his skin was raw. She had no more conscience over Thomas than a farmer has over a litter of piglets. Less, probably, since at least the farmer hopes to sell a fat pig at a good price.’
‘Yes. Yes, you are right, of course. Mrs Platt was not well chosen. But there are other nurses.’
‘If Thomas has to chop and change he will never thrive. Mammie, I know, would want him to be with me.’
Augustus peered at me. ‘You think so?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think she would not have wanted you to be burdened with a child that is not your own.’
‘Thomas is no burden,’ I said, looking down at the baby who slept now, peacefully, as if to prove the truth of my words. He had put on weight and I loved his warm, packed solidity. He felt as if he meant to stay with us. My arms tightened around him. I wanted to press my lips to his forehead, to breathe in the smell of him, but instead I looked up at Augustus.
‘Diner was angry because Thomas cried and I was not at home,’ I said. I spoke softly, and the effort of doing so made me realise how sharp I was with Augustus as a rule. ‘He resented my absence and he is not used to babies. But it will not happen again.’
Augustus nodded, as he did when someone made a particularly acute point in a debate but he had not yet decided whether to agree or to oppose.
‘Thomas will be always with me or Philo,’ I said. ‘Mrs Platt left him with a child while she went gallivanting. You cannot know what any wet-nurse is doing unless you have her in the house and watch her constantly. The baby has no voice to tell you.’
‘It is true that your mother intended to keep the baby with her.’
I did not say anything. I could sense his thoughts swaying this way and that. How much better it would be for him if his work was not interrupted. He would not in conscience be able to leave Thomas with a nurse now, unless he visited him often.
‘Let us try again for a month,’ he said at last, ‘and then I believe we had agreed that it would be time for Thomas to come home.’
Home, I thought. There was little chance of that, if Caroline Farquhar had any say in the matter. Thomas would always be an outsider. But Augustus had assumed his authority as father, and God knows, even if Thomas had been my own, my wishes would have counted for nothing against that authority. Augustus was alive to the baby’s existence now in a way that he had not been before. Thomas looked more of a person, perhaps. He no longer had the crumpled, dangling legs and pulsing head of the newborn. I’d seen how gingerly Augustus touched him then, and how quick he was to hand him back. My child, Augustus called him. He meant to claim him. Up until now I had only thought of Thomas as Mammie’s child, with Augustus’s parenthood as something which could be set aside. He was her baby. He had come out of her body and had killed her in doing so.
And yet I could never blame Thomas for Mammie’s death. I remembered it all too well. He had been forced towards birth by a pressure nothing could have withstood. I heard again Mammie’s cries cutting through the rooms. She could not resist either. Death had been as strong as birth and it had swept her away. It was so simple and yet it had taken me so long to understand even a part of it. I still felt under my fingers the hardness of her dead flesh. I felt in my arms the damp, living solidity of the baby who had come out of that flesh. Like me, I thought. It went through me like a dart that we were indeed truly brother and sister.
‘I have rarely seen a man angrier than John Diner was today,’ said Augustus. He looked at me penetratingly, and now his face was not sheep-like at all. I wondered, suddenly, what Diner had said in his anger.
‘You must be careful, Lizzie,’ he said. ‘You must not rouse such anger against yourself.’
I would have liked to resent his words, but I could not. I thought, oddly: Augustus is my stepfather. We had never used the word. Augustus had never claimed me in any way as a daughter. Nevertheless it was the fact, and now, with Mammie’s death between us, we were bound more strongly than we had been when she was alive.
‘I am very careful,’ I said.
22
January 1793
I slept poorly, waking again and again to feel for Diner beside me and find him absent. At last I fell into a heavy sleep and did not wake until past six, when I heard the door close downstairs. I lay still, pretending to sleep on, while Diner came in, pulled off his clothes and lay down. Almost at once he fell asleep, as still as a stone.
When I went downstairs, I found his coat in a heap in the hall and his boots by the kitchen door. I picked them up, scraped off the mud and brushed his coat while Philo clattered around the kitchen with Thomas tied into an old cotton shawl of mine, to keep him from crying.
There was a rip in the lining of Diner’s coat, and I mended it. It was consoling to make the stitches very small and the mend almost invisible. I did not want to wonder where he had been tramping.
I was cooking mutton stew with carrots and pearl barley for his dinner. I knew he liked it. We owed too much money at the butcher’s for me to order there any longer, and I went instead to the market stalls. The stew bubbled gently. We would eat together, at the kitchen table, and I told myself that we would be content together. He seemed to have accepted Thomas back into the house, and the days had passed calmly. Soon the bad, cold, inactive months would be over. It was January already; only February, and perhaps March, and building could begin again. I did not dare to think of how the men would be paid.
I heard his feet on the stairs. He must have found his boots, for they clumped heavily on each step. I wondered if he’d noticed that I had cleaned them.
‘There you are,’ I said, and I went over to him, but he did not reach out for me. I looked down and wiped my hands on my apron. I must smell of the kitchen. Very likely there was a smear of grease on my cheek.
‘Lizzie,’ he said. He looked around, as if he were confused.
‘Come to the fire,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you are cold.’
The kitchen was warm, and
I also kept a small fire burning in the attic grate, where Philo was with Thomas. We brought in wood for the fires, but it was never enough.
‘They have killed the King,’ he said.
I was slow with lack of sleep. ‘What, Farmer George?’
‘Lizzie, you cannot be as stupid as you pretend. They have cut off the head of the King of France,’ and he took his hand from behind his back. He was holding the newspaper. ‘Sit down, Lizzie. I will read the account to you.’
‘By an express which arrived yesterday morning from Messrs. Fector and Co. at Dover, we learn the following particulars of the King’s execution:
‘At six o’clock on Monday morning, the KING went to take a farewell of the QUEEN and ROYAL FAMILY. After staying with them some time, and taking a very affectionate farewell of them, the KING descended from the tower of the Temple, and entered the Mayor’s carriage, with his confessor and two Members of the Municipality, and passed slowly along the Boulevards which led from the Temple to the place of execution. All women were prohibited from appearing in the streets, and all persons from being seen at their windows. A strong guard cleared the procession.
‘The greatest tranquillity prevailed in every street through which the procession passed. About half past nine, the King arrived at the place of execution, which was in the Place de Louis XV, between the pedestal which formerly supported the statue of his grandfather, and the promenade of the Elysian Fields. LOUIS mounted the scaffold with composure, and that modest intrepidity peculiar to oppressed innocence, the trumpets sounding and drums beating during the whole time. He made a sign of wishing to harangue the multitude, when the drums ceased, and Louis spoke these few words. I die innocent; I pardon my enemies; I only sanctioned upon compulsion the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. He was proceeding, but the beating of the drums drowned his voice. His executioners then laid hold of him, and an instant after, his head was separated from his body; this was about a quarter past ten o’clock.
‘After the execution, the people threw their hats up in the air, and cried out Vive la Nation! Some of them endeavoured to seize the body, but it was removed by a strong guard to the Temple, and the lifeless remains of the King were exempted from those outrages which his Majesty had experienced during his life.’
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