Kane & Abel (1979) (2 page)

‘Congratulations, sir, you have a son. A fine-looking little boy.’

What silly remarks people make when a baby is born, was the father’s first thought; how could he be anything but little? Then the news dawned on him - a son. He thought about thanking a God he didn’t believe in. The obstetrician ventured a question to break the silence.

‘Have you decided what to call him?’

The father answered without hesitation: ‘William Lowell Kane.’

L
ONG AFTER
the excitement of the baby’s arrival had passed and the rest of the family had gone to bed, the mother remained awake, holding the child in her arms. Helena Koskiewicz believed in life, and she had borne nine children to prove it. Although she had lost three in infancy, she had not let any of them go easily.

At thirty-five, she knew that her once lusty Jasio would give her no more sons or daughters. God had offered her this one; surely he must be destined to live. Helena’s was a simple faith, which was good, for destiny would never allow her anything but a simple life. Although she was only in her thirties, meagre food and hard work caused her to look much older. She was grey and thin, and not once in her life had she worn new clothes. It never occurred to her to complain about her lot, but the lines on her face made her look more like a grandmother than a mother.

Although she squeezed her breasts hard, leaving dull red marks around the nipples, only little drops of milk squirted out. At thirty-five, halfway through life’s contract, we all have some useful piece of expertise to pass on, and Helena Koskiewicz’s was now at a premium.

‘Matka’s littlest one,’ she whispered tenderly to the child, and drew the milky teat across its pursed mouth. The eyelids opened as he tried to suck. Finally the mother sank unwillingly into a deep sleep.

Jasio Koskiewicz, a heavily built, dull man with a luxurious moustache, his only gesture of self-assertion in an otherwise servile existence, discovered his wife and the baby asleep in the rocking chair when he rose at five. He hadn’t noticed her absence from their bed that night. He stared down at the bastard who had, thank God, at least stopped wailing. Was it dead? He didn’t care. Let the woman worry about life and death: the most important thing for him was to be on the Baron’s estate by first light. He took a few long swallows of goat’s milk and wiped his moustache on his sleeve. He finally grabbed a hunk of bread with one hand and his traps with the other before slipping noiselessly out of the cottage, for fear of waking the child and starting it wailing again. He strode off towards the forest, giving no more thought to the little intruder other than to assume that he had seen him for the last time.

Florentyna was next to enter the kitchen, just before the old clock, which for many years had kept its own time, chimed six times. It was no more than a vague assistance to those who wished to know if it was the hour to rise or go to bed. Among her daily duties was the preparation of breakfast, a minor task involving the simple division of a skin of goat’s milk and a lump of rye bread among a family of eight. Nevertheless, it required the Wisdom of Solomon to carry it out so that no one grumbled about another’s portion.

Florentyna struck those who saw her for the first time as a pretty, frail, shabby little thing. Although for the past two years she’d had only one dress to wear, those who could separate their opinion of the child from that of her surroundings understood why Jasio had fallen in love with her mother. Florentyna’s long fair hair shone and her hazel eyes sparkled in defiance of her birth and upbringing.

She tiptoed up to the rocking chair and stared down at her mother and the little boy, whom she had adored at first sight. She had never in her eight years owned a doll. In truth, she had seen one only once, when the family had been invited to a celebration of the feast of St Nicholas at the Baron’s castle. Even then she had not actually touched the beautiful object, but now she felt an inexplicable urge to hold this baby in her arms. She bent down and eased the child away from her mother, and staring down into its blue eyes - such blue eyes - she began to hum. The change of temperature from the warmth of the mother’s breast to the cold of the little girl’s hands made the baby start to cry. This woke the mother, whose only reaction was to feel guilty for having fallen asleep.

‘Holy God, he’s still alive, Florcia,’ she said. ‘You must prepare breakfast for the boys while I try to feed him again.’

Florentyna reluctantly handed the baby back to her mother and watched as she once again pumped her aching breasts. The little girl was mesmerized.

‘Be about your work, Florcia,’ chided her mother. ‘The rest of the family must eat as well.’

Florentyna reluctantly obeyed when her four brothers began to appear from the loft where they all slept. They kissed their mother’s hands in greeting and stared at the intruder in awe. All they knew was that this one had not come from Matka’s stomach. Florentyna was too excited to eat her breakfast that morning, so the boys divided her portion among themselves without a second thought, leaving their mother’s share on the table. No one noticed that she hadn’t eaten anything since the baby’s arrival.

Helena Koskiewicz was pleased that her children had learned early in life to fend for themselves. They could feed the animals, milk the goats and tend the vegetable garden without any help or prodding.

When Jasio returned home in the evening, Helena had not prepared supper for him. Florentyna had taken the three rabbits Franck, her brother the hunter, had caught the previous day, and started to skin them. Florentyna was proud to be in charge of the evening meal, a responsibility she was entrusted with only when her mother was unwell, and Helena rarely allowed herself that luxury. Their father had brought home six mushrooms and three potatoes: tonight would be a veritable feast.

After supper, Jasio Koskiewicz sat in his chair by the fire and studied the child properly for the first time. Holding him under the armpits, his splayed fingers supporting the helpless head, he cast a trapper’s eye over the infant. Wrinkled and toothless, the face was redeemed only by the fine, blue, unfocused eyes. As the man directed his gaze towards the thin body, something attracted his attention. He scowled and rubbed the delicate chest with his thumbs.

‘Have you noticed this, woman?’ he said, prodding the baby’s chest. ‘The little bastard only has one nipple.’

His wife frowned as she rubbed the skin with her thumb, as though the action would somehow miraculously cause the missing nipple to appear. Her husband was right: the minute and colourless left nipple was there, but where its mirror image should have appeared on the right-hand side, the skin was completely smooth.

The woman’s superstitious tendencies were immediately aroused. ‘He has been given to us by God,’ she exclaimed. ‘See His mark upon him.’

The man thrust the child angrily at her. ‘You’re a fool, woman. The child was given to its mother by a man with bad blood.’ He spat into the fire, the more forcefully to express his opinion of the child’s parentage. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t bet a potato on the little bastard surviving another night.’

Jasio Koskiewicz cared even less than a potato whether or not the child survived. He was not by nature a callous man, but the boy was not his, and one more mouth to feed would only add to his problems. But it was not for him to question the Almighty, and with no more thought of the child, he fell into a deep sleep.

As the days came and went, even Jasio Koskiewicz began to believe that the child might survive, and had he been a betting man, would have lost a potato. His eldest son Franck, the hunter, made the child a cot out of some wood he had collected from the Baron’s forest. Florentyna cut little pieces off her old dresses and sewed them together into multi-coloured baby clothes. They would have called him Harlequin if they had known what the word meant. In truth, naming him caused more disagreement in the household than anything had for months; only the father had no opinion to offer. Finally, they agreed on Wladek.

The following Sunday, in the chapel on the Baron’s great estate, the child was christened Wladek Koskiewicz, the mother thanked God for sparing his life, and the father resigned himself to having another mouth to feed.

That evening there followed a small feast to celebrate the christening, augmented by the gift of a goose from the Baron’s estate. They all ate heartily.

From that day on, Florentyna learned to divide by nine.

A
NNE
K
ANE
had slept peacefully through the night. After a light breakfast, her son William was brought to her private room in the arms of a nurse. She couldn’t wait to hold him again.

‘Good morning, Mrs Kane,’ the white-uniformed nurse said briskly, ‘it’s time to give baby his breakfast.’

Anne sat up, painfully aware of her swollen breasts. The nurse guided the two novices through the procedure. Anne, aware that to appear embarrassed would be considered unmaternal, gazed fixedly into William’s blue eyes, bluer even than his father’s. She smiled contentedly. At twenty-one, she was not aware of needing anything. Born a Cabot, she had married into a branch of the Lowell family, and had now delivered a son to carry on the tradition summarized so succinctly in the card sent to her by Millie Preston, her old school friend:

Anne spent half an hour talking to William, but obtained little response. Matron then whisked him off in the same efficient manner by which he had arrived. Anne nobly resisted the fruit and candy that had come from friends and well-wishers, as she was determined to get back into all her dresses in time for the summer season, and resume her rightful place in the pages of the fashionable magazines. Had not the Prince de Garonne declared her to be the only beautiful object in Boston? Her long golden hair, fine delicate features and slim figure had excited admiration in cities she had never even visited. Anne checked in the mirror, and was pleased with what she saw: people would hardly believe that she was the mother of a bouncing boy. Thank God it’s a boy, she thought, understanding for the first time how Anne Boleyn must have felt.

She enjoyed a light lunch before preparing herself for the visitors who would appear at regular intervals throughout the afternoon. Those who visited her during the first few days would either be family, or from the very best families in Boston; others would be told she was not yet ready to receive them. But as Boston was the one city in America where everyone knew their place to the finest degree, there were unlikely to be any unexpected intruders.

The room she occupied could easily have taken another five beds had it not been filled with flowers. A casual passerby might have been forgiven for mistaking it for a minor horticultural show, if it were not for the presence of the young mother sitting upright in the bed. Anne switched on the electric light, still a novelty in Boston; her husband had waited for the Cabots to have them fitted, which Boston then considered to be an oracular sign that electromagnetic induction was socially acceptable.

Anne’s first visitor was her mother-in-law, Mrs Thomas Lowell Kane, the head of the family following the premature death of her husband. In elegant late middle-age, Mrs Kane had perfected the technique of sweeping into a room to her own total satisfaction, and to its occupants’ undoubted discomfiture. She wore a long silk dress which made it impossible to view her ankles; the only man who had seen them was now dead. She had always been slim. In her opinion - often stated - an overweight woman meant bad food and inferior breeding. She was now the oldest Lowell alive; the oldest Kane, too, come to that. She therefore expected, and was expected, to be the first to arrive on any significant occasion. After all, had it not been she who had arranged the first meeting between Anne and Richard?

Love was of little consequence to Mrs Kane. Wealth, position and prestige she understood. Love was all very well, but it rarely proved to be a lasting commodity; the other three undoubtedly were.

She kissed her daughter-in-law approvingly on the forehead. Anne touched a button on the wall, and a quiet buzz could be heard. The noise took Mrs Kane by surprise as she was yet to be convinced that electricity would ever catch on. The nurse reappeared carrying the son and heir. Mrs Kane inspected him, sniffed her approval and then waved the nurse away.