Garden of Stars (29 page)

“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 mouth 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.

The day after one of these dreams is always terrible. I am always cold, whatever the weather, and shattered from the lack of sleep. I wrap up warm, walk onto Parliament Hill, stride to where the kite flyers gather, watch the kites dip and soar, and then walk and walk. I go up to Kenwood House, or over to South End Green, and over the months and years I have got to know the Heath inside out. I'm often able to set other walkers on the right path, even while I wander unguided myself. Sometimes I go home through the streets instead of the park, prolonging my journey so that I am out all day.

The bombing here was not nearly as bad as elsewhere, nothing like in the East End or in Docklands, but still decay is evident everywhere, in the gap-toothed terraces of houses and the piles of rubble that have not yet been cleared away. Paintwork blisters and peels on doors and window frames, splintered panes of glass go unrepaired. Weeds push through the gaps between paving slabs and run rampant in the rubbish-filled gardens.

If I feel up to it, I buy a newspaper from the street vendor but more often than not, I'm not in the mood for reality, and I go home and read instead. I read obsessively; everything I can lay my hands on. My tastes are wide and eclectic; Graham Greene's
The Heart of the Matter
and Norman Mailer's
The Naked and the Dead
are current favourites.

I am aware that sometimes, in my solitude, I talk to myself in Portuguese. Every now and again, I am so lost to the world that I don't notice that there are other people nearby. They stop, listen, concentrate on what they are hearing and only when they are sure that the language isn't German, they nudge each other, nod and move on. I take no notice.

Everything, or so it seems, is still rationed, and we no longer have a maid, cook or housekeeper, so I have to plan, shop for and cook all the meals myself. It's selfish and pathetic of me, I know, but I find it extraordinarily hard. I have never been very domestic – and there is so little available and what there is, so different to what I have always been used to. But I do my best, try new dishes, smile when John gets home from work, and somehow I get through the days.

“It will improve with time,” I tell myself, often. But my hair remains short, thin and sparse.

London, 1949

I found myself walking in a different direction from normal today, not north to the Heath but south towards Bloomsbury, ending up outside the small park and playground called Coram's Fields. A plaque set into the boundary wall informs visitors that it is the site of a Foundling Hospital, the first in England, established in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram. In the 1920s, the old Hospital was demolished, and later the site re-opened as London's first public playground.

The birds were singing gaily in the trees and the sun, after a long winter, held some warmth again. I rested my forehead against the railings and looked into the park. I listened to the laughter of the children playing there, and thought of all the babies abandoned in this place over the years, orphans or those given up by mothers who simply did not have the means to keep them. Many of the infants were left with letters and scraps of ribbon or fabric; identifiers by which their desperate mothers hoped, if their fortunes were to change and their circumstances improve, they might one day be able to find them again. Of course, hardly any were ever reunited – but those mothers had tried and done what they could.

I felt suddenly so tired, and cold to my very bones, despite the watery glow of the sun. I pictured Portugal, of how at this time of year the cork trees on the
montado
would be growing and strengthening their bark in preparation for the nine-yearly cycle of harvesting, ready and able to give of their essence time and again. I longed for the heat, the blistering summers when the birds in the trees would cease to sing and the grass would wither and die under the relentless onslaught of sunshine, when railings like these would burn to the touch and the few tarmac roads would melt and turn sticky underfoot.

I longed, too, for an end to my sorrow, with its bitter taste and nauseating smell.

It's enough, Inês, I told myself. You have grieved for a long time and however much you cry, whatever pain you feel, Isabel will never come back. It's time to accept that.