A Good Woman (26 page)

It was a thrill when she signed herself into the hotel as
Docteur
Worthington. Her eyes lit up like a child’s. She was still the beautiful young woman she had been when she arrived in Europe, and when she played with Consuelo, she looked like a girl again. But beneath the youthful spirit was a responsible, serious woman, someone others could confide in, and entrust their health and lives to. Her manner with patients had been the envy of her fellow students and colleagues and had won all her professors’ respect. Dr. Graumont knew that she would make an excellent physician, and be a tribute to his school.

They settled into the hotel. Dr. Graumont was going to send their things later, once they found a house. Annabelle wanted a place where she could establish her medical practice and see patients.

The day after they got to Paris, she went to the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris Hospital, to see about their permission to allow her to put patients there, while Brigitte took Consuelo to the Luxembourg Gardens. The beautiful blond child clapped her hands in excitement when she met her mother back at the hotel.

“We saw a camel, Mama!” Consuelo said, describing it to her, as Brigitte and her mother laughed. “I wanted to ride it, but they wouldn’t let me,” she pouted, and then burst into delighted giggles again. She was an enchanting child.

The Hôtel-Dieu Hospital’s permission had been granted with Dr. Graumont’s recommendation. It was an important step for Annabelle. She took Consuelo and Brigitte to dinner at the Hôtel Meurice as a special treat, and one of the Russian taxi drivers drove them all around Paris to see the sights of the city at night all lit up. It was a far cry from when Annabelle had arrived there during the war, brokenhearted and freshly shunned in New York. This was the beginning of a whole new life that she had worked hard for.

They finally went back to the hotel at ten o’clock. Consuelo had fallen asleep in the taxi, and Annabelle carried her upstairs and set her gently down on the bed. And then she went back to her own room and looked out the window into the Paris night. She hadn’t felt this young and excited in years. She could hardly wait to begin work, but she had to find a house first.

For the next three weeks Annabelle felt as though she were seeing every house in Paris, on the Right Bank and the Left, while Brigitte took Consuelo to every park in Paris—Bagatelle, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Bois de Boulogne, and rode the carousel. The three of them went out to dinner every night. It was the most fun Annabelle had had in years, and was a whole new grown-up life for her.

Between seeing houses, Annabelle went shopping for a new wardrobe, serious enough for a doctor, but stylish enough for a Parisian woman. It reminded her of when she had shopped with her mother for her trousseau, and she told her own Consuelo about it. The little girl loved hearing stories of her grandmother and grandfather and Uncle Robert. It gave her a sense of belonging to more people than just her mother, and always made Annabelle’s heart ache a little for the family she couldn’t give her. But they had each other, and she always reminded Consuelo that it was all they needed. Consuelo commented solemnly that they needed a dog as well. Everyone in Paris had one, and Annabelle promised that when they found a house, they’d get a dog too. They were happy days for all of them, and Brigitte was enjoying herself, flirting with one of the bellboys at the hotel. She had just turned twenty-one and was a very pretty girl.

By the end of July, Annabelle was getting seriously discouraged. They still hadn’t found a house. Everything they saw was either too big or too small, and didn’t have the right set-up for her medical practice. It felt like she was never going to find what they needed. And then, finally, she found the perfect place on a narrow street in the sixteenth arrondissement. It was a small but elegant little house with a front courtyard and a back garden, and a unit with a separate entrance where she could see patients. It was in excellent condition, and was an estate being sold by the bank. And Annabelle liked the fact that it had a dignified look. It seemed wonderfully suitable for a doctor. And there was a small park nearby where Consuelo could play with other children.

Annabelle made an offer on the house immediately, met the asking price established by the bank, and took possession of it at the end of August. In the meantime, she ordered furniture, linens, china, some adorable children’s antiques for Consuelo’s room, and some lovely things for her own rooms and some simple furniture for Brigitte. She bought some serious-looking furniture for her office, and spent September purchasing the medical equipment she needed to run an office. She went to the printers and ordered stationery, and hired a medical secretary who said she had worked at the Abbaye de Royaumont as well, although Annabelle had never met her. Hélène was a quiet older woman, who had worked for several doctors before the war, and was delighted to help Annabelle start her practice.

By early October, Annabelle was ready to open her office. It had taken longer than expected, but she wanted everything to be just right. With trembling hands she hung out her shingle, and waited for something to happen. All she needed was for one person to walk through the door, and after that things would get started by word of mouth. If Dr. de Bré had still been alive, he could have referred patients to her, but he wasn’t. Dr. Graumont had written to several physicians he knew in Paris, and had asked them to refer a few patients to her, but that hadn’t borne fruit yet.

For the first three weeks, absolutely nothing happened. Annabelle and Hélène, her secretary, sat looking at each other with nothing but time on their hands. She went up to the main part of the house and had lunch with Consuelo every day. Then finally, at the very beginning of November, a woman walked into her office with a sprained wrist, and a man with a badly cut finger. From then on, as though by magic, there was a steady stream of patients in Annabelle’s waiting room. One patient referred another. They weren’t difficult cases, they were all small things that were easy for her to handle. But her seriousness and competence and gentleness with her patients won them over immediately. Soon people were switching from other doctors, sending friends, bringing their children, and consulting her on minor and major problems. By January, she had a constantly full office. She was doing what she had trained for, and loving every minute of it. She was careful to thank other physicians for their referrals, and always respectful of their earlier opinions, so as not to make them look like fools to their patients, although some would have deserved it. Annabelle was meticulous, skilled, and had a lovely bedside manner. Despite her beauty, and look of youth, she was clearly serious about her profession, and her patients trusted her completely.

In February, she hospitalized the son of one of her patients. The boy was only twelve and had a severe case of pneumonia. Annabelle visited him at the hospital twice a day, and was gravely worried about him at one point, but the boy pulled through, and his mother was forever grateful. Annabelle had tried some new techniques they had used at the hospital at Villers-Cotterêts with the soldiers, and she was always creative about mixing new methods with old ones. She still read and studied devotedly at night to learn about new research. Her openness to new ideas stood her in good stead, and she read about everything in all the medical journals. She stayed up reading them late at night, often while cuddling Consuelo in her bed, who had begun saying she wanted to be a doctor too. Other little girls wanted to be nurses, but in Annabelle’s family they set a high standard. Annabelle couldn’t help asking herself at times what her mother would have thought of it. She knew it wasn’t what she had wanted for her, but she hoped she would have been proud of her anyway. She knew how devastated Consuelo would have been about Josiah divorcing her, and she wondered if he would have, if her mother hadn’t died. But it was all water over the dam now. And what good would it have been to stay married to him if he was in love with Henry all his life? She had never had a chance. She wasn’t bitter about it, but she was sad. Whenever she thought of it, it pained her with a dull ache she suspected she would carry all her life.

The one thing that never made her sad was Consuelo. She was the happiest, sunniest, funniest child, and she adored her mother. She thought the sun rose and set on her, and Annabelle had created a fantasy father for her, so the little girl didn’t feel deprived. She told her that her father had been English, a wonderful person, from a lovely family, and that he had died as a very brave war hero before she was born. It never seemed to occur to the child to ask why she didn’t see her father’s family. She knew that all her mother’s relatives were dead, but Annabelle had never said that Harry’s were. Consuelo never mentioned it, she only listened with interest, and then one day Consuelo turned to her over lunch and asked if her “other” grandmother could visit her sometime, the one from England. Annabelle stared at her across the table as though a bomb had exploded, and didn’t know what to tell her. It had never dawned on Annabelle that this day might come, and she wasn’t prepared for it. Consuelo was six, and her friends in the park all had grandmothers. So why couldn’t hers visit too?

“I…uh…well, she’s in England. And I haven’t talked to her in a long time…well, actually”—she hated lying to her child—“ever…I never met her. Your daddy and I fell in love and married during the war, and then he died, so I never knew them.” She was fumbling with her words as Consuelo watched her.

“Doesn’t she want to see me?” Consuelo looked disappointed, and Annabelle felt her heart sink. She had created her own mess, and other than telling her daughter that her grandparents didn’t know she existed, she had no idea what to say. But she didn’t want to be forced into contact with them either. It was a terrible dilemma for her.

“I’m sure she would want to meet you, if she can…that is, if she’s not sick or anything… she might be very old.” And then with a sigh and a heavy heart, Annabelle promised, “I’ll write to her, and we’ll see what she says.”

“Good.” Consuelo beamed at her across the table, and as Annabelle went back to her office she was cursing Harry Winshire as she hadn’t in years.

Chapter 21

T
rue to her promise to Consuelo, Annabelle sat down to write Lady Winshire a letter. She had no idea what to say or how to introduce the subject. The truth that her son had raped her, and she’d later had an illegitimate daughter, hardly seemed like an appealing introduction, and wasn’t likely to be to Lady Winshire either. But she didn’t want to lie to her. In the end, she wrote an extremely pareddown and simplified, sanitized version. She really didn’t want to see Lady Winshire, or even to have Consuelo meet her, but at least she wanted to tell the child she had tried.

She wrote to her that she and Harry had met during the war at Villers-Cotterêts, at a hospital where she had been working. That much was true at least, although saying that he had knocked her down on some stone steps and raped her would have been more accurate. She then said that they did not know each other well and were not friends, which was also true, and that an unfortunate incident had happened, extremely true, as a result of which, she had had a child, a little girl, six years before. She said that she had not contacted them until then because she wanted nothing from them. She explained that she was American, had come over as a volunteer, and her encounter with Harry, and the pregnancy that had resulted from it, was one of those extremely unhappy outcomes of war, but that her daughter was a wonderful little human being and had recently inquired about her paternal grandmother, which was extremely difficult for Annabelle too. She said she didn’t want to flat-out lie any more than she already had. She said the child believed that her parents had been married, which was not the case. And Annabelle then suggested that if Lady Winshire was so inclined, perhaps a letter or a short note to Consuelo, maybe even with a photograph, would do. They could let it go at that. She signed the letter “Dr. Annabelle Worthington” so the woman would know at least that she was a respectable person, not that it really mattered. It was her son who had been anything but respectable and should have been put in prison, but instead he had fathered the most enchanting child on earth, and Annabelle couldn’t hate him for it. In her own way, she was grateful to him forever, but he was not a happy memory for her.

After she mailed the letter, Annabelle put it out of her mind. She had a busy month of May, with her waiting room constantly full. She’d had no answer from Lady Winshire, and for the moment, Consuelo seemed to have forgotten about it. She had started school that winter and went there every day, which gave Brigitte time to help them in the office.

Annabelle had just come back from seeing a patient in the hospital when Hélène told her there was a woman waiting for her. She had been there for two hours and refused to say what it was about. Annabelle assumed she probably had some kind of embarrassing problem. She put her white coat on, sat down at her desk, and told Hélène to let her in.

Two minutes later, Hélène was escorting in a dowager of impressive proportions. She was a large woman with a big voice, wearing an enormous hat, about six long strands of huge pearls, and she was carrying a silver cane. She looked as though she were going to hit someone with it as she marched into the office. Annabelle stood up to greet her, and had to force herself not to smile. The woman ignored Annabelle’s extended hand and stood glaring at her. She did not look sick and Annabelle had no idea what she was doing there. She got right to the point.

“What is all this nonsense about a granddaughter?” she barked at Annabelle in English. “My son had no children, no encumbrances, no important women in his life when he died. And if you’re claiming that you had a child by him, why exactly have you waited six years to write to me about it?” As she said it, she sat down in the chair at the other side of Annabelle’s desk and glared at her some more. She was as pleasant as her son, and Annabelle was not amused once she realized what this was about, and that instead of responding to her letter, his mother had just shown up and barged in.