Shadow Baby (13 page)

Catriona shook her head and to Shona’s relief brought out a tissue and applied it to her streaming eyes. ‘Archie will tell you,’ she whispered back.

‘Dad?’ Shona said, her stomach suddenly lurching. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Not here,’ hissed Archie, looking agonised. ‘Later, later.’ After that, they left hastily, shuffling out of the room, all three with their heads down, as though apologising for some disgrace. In the street Archie stood for a moment, ahead of the women, as if making some momentous decision only he could make, then set off at a rapid pace without looking back to see if they were following. ‘Honestly,’ Shona muttered, aggrieved. Catriona clung on to her arm, afraid of falling on the slippery surface along which they were being forced, by Archie’s speed, to hurry. He took them to where the cable car started up the mountain and before they had reached

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him he had paid for their tickets. There was hardly anyone in this early morning car and they all sat in separate seats by the window. At the top, Archie got out. ‘Are we staying?’ Shona asked. ‘Where are we going? Where is there to go?’

‘Nowhere,’ said Archie, ‘we’ll just stay here until the next car comes back.’

They were soon alone, the three of them. The sun was out now, growing stronger by the minute, and it was pleasant enough leaning on the rail looking down on the city strung along the seaboard. Without looking either to his left, at Shona, or to his right, at Catriona, Archie began to speak. Shona was hardly listening at first, the words simply did not penetrate. She was expecting her father to launch into a travelogue, a little lecture on the history of Bergen or to begin to wax nostalgic about all the time he had once spent here, or near here. She intended to listen, to take an interest, but found her attention wandering to the ships sailing into the harbour, her mind full of curiosity as to where they had come from and what was in their holds. But then she realised she had heard something odd.

‘What?’ she said. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t really listening, sorry, what did you say?’ Her father put his head in his hands, leaning his elbows on the rail. ‘Dad, I’m sorry, what did you say? Say it again, something about how I was born it was, wasn’t it?’ She was sure it had been but equally certain there had been something unusual about the familiar story, some mention of the word ‘secret’.

‘I can’t go through it again,’ her father said, his voice muffled. Another car was coming up, this one much fuller. Shona waited. Other people, freshly arrived, joined them and began pointing and taking photographs. ‘Let’s go down,’ her father said. He looked awful. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘what’s wrong? What is it?’ - but he shook his head and half-smiled, a weary smile that made him look so pathetic.

All day, Shona had intimations of disaster and yet could not think what this catastrophe was going to be. Again and again she scrutinised first the face of her mother and then of her father and tried to imagine the worst. But what was this worst? Their deaths, she supposed. The death of one of them. Was that what this tension was about, this sense of strain which had hung over them now for so long? Was that what her father had been trying to tell her, all mixed up with the well-known tale of her birth? One of them was mortally ill and she had been brought here, where she had been born, to be told the news. It did not make sense, there was no connection to be

made and she discarded the notion, annoyed with herself. It must be a different kind of bad news, not so sinister, not so shattering, but serious enough to arouse such anxiety and more likely to be revealed on a last family holiday together. Suddenly, as the three of them wandered in a dazed fashion round Bergen, Shona thought she had it: divorce. That would make a kind of sense - last family holiday end of family - back to the beginning of it to make the breaking of the news not so painful … A sort of sense but not enough. How weird it would be, to think of her parents apart when they had been together for what seemed an eternity and all that time completely content. Who would it be worse for? Her mother, of course. Her apprehension grew. She would not be able to desert her mother. Her mother would be pitiful and cling. She felt sicker and sicker.

They ate in the evening in a restaurant her father said he knew well. He said it while staring hard at Catriona. ‘We used to come here,’ he said, ‘and talk about you, Shona.’

‘Not here,’ said Catriona, ‘please, Archie, not here, not now.’

Shona turned to her. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘all day it’s been talk of not here, not now. I can’t stand this a minute longer. You look terrible, Dad looks terrible, I feel terrible. I’m sorry I wasn’t listening when you tried to tell me whatever it is I’ve got to be told, but I’m listening now. Tell me.’

Archie stirred the thick fish soup.

‘Not in a public place,’ Catriona said. ‘It might be better in a public place,’ Archie muttered. ‘Force us to be sensible.’

‘I agree,’ Shona said, though wondering if she did. Would she cry? Would her mother cry? Was there going to be a scene? She could hardly sit still, fidgeted about, picked up her napkin and found herself screwing it viciously into a ball and longing to throw it. Sighing, his soup pushed aside, Archie looked straight at her and she saw in his eyes anger, not misery, and knew this was nothing to do with divorce.

‘We were very stupid,’ he said. ‘I especially. Stupid and maybe you’ll think wicked. We wanted you so badly, Shona, you cannot imagine how badly. Your mother …’ He stopped.

Shona felt a flash of impatience. ‘Yes,’ she urged, ‘go on, I know Mum had always wanted a baby more than anything and she’d miscarried and there’d been the stillbirth and then I came along, I know all that.’

‘No,’ said Catriona. She had blushed. Her pale face was a bright

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and ugly red, Shona saw. ‘No, you don’t know all of it. You came along differently.’

‘Catriona, I thought we’d agreed …’ Archie began.

‘I know what we agreed. I’ve changed my mind. I can manage. It should be me. Oh, God …’ The waitress had come to clear the dishes away and ask what else they wanted. They waited. Shona’s heart thumped. Coffee was put on the table and poured. Her mother, she noticed, seemed to find comfort in holding the hot cup. ‘It should be me,’ Catriona took up again. ‘I want to tell her. I ought to. Shona …’ and she turned right round, to Shona sitting beside her, and looked her in the face with such determination that the effort it cost her was touchingly obvious. ‘Shona, it’s simple really, even if it comes out all complicated. I wanted a baby. I was nearly forty and desperate. We heard about this girl in Bergen, in the care of Miss Ostervold, whom your father had known in the war. This girl was going to have a baby and couldn’t keep it. We came here and we made inquiries and when you were born we had it all fixed up. It was difficult to arrange, very difficult, but we adopted you. We had you from the moment you were born. I held you in my arms from when you were an hour old and I thought you were mine. You were so much mine I thought you truly were. I begged and pleaded with your father to go along with my plan to pretend I’d given birth to you …’

‘I was stupid,’ Archie said.

‘No, I was mad,’ Catriona said. ‘You had to be mine, I believed you were. The moment I saw you and held you I believed you to be mine. You are mine. But your father …’

‘It’s your right, Shona,’ said Archie. ‘You’re eighteen, we’re getting old, you have a right to know the truth and to know it from us.’

‘It wasn’t necessary, but your father …’

‘It was, it is necessary,’ Archie said. ‘I believe it to be necessary. But I hope it won’t make any difference to us. That’s what I hope.’

They were waiting, both of them. How glad she was for the public place, the noise and bustle of the packed restaurant. She could not have coped in a quiet room, just the two of them waiting amid silence. Even more blessed was the arrival of the bill and the offer of more coffee and the ordinariness of the transactions this involved. Had she turned deathly pale? Was the coldness she felt on her skin noticeable? She put a hand up to brush away her hair and

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her mother flinched. She must say something, quickly. ‘I’d like a drink,’ she said, her voice embarrassingly croaky. ‘Whisky or something, Dad?’ Archie ordered three schnapps even though the bill was already paid. He held his glass up, as though in a silent toast. She responded by doing likewise and was pleased her hand did not shake. She cleared her throat. ‘It’s just amazing,’ she said feebly. ‘I can’t take it all in.’ Then she thought a minute. Her mother seemed to have her head bowed so humbly whereas her father had relaxed and seemed once more his old self, at ease, bland and placid. ‘Who knows?’ she asked finally. ‘Does Grannie McEndrick know?’ Catriona shook her head. ‘No one knows,’ she said, ‘no one at all, except Miss Ostervold and her friend and they are dead.’ ‘Imagine,’ Shona said, ‘pulling it off. It’s incredible.’ They couldn’t sit all night in the restaurant. At eleven, they left and walked through the dark side streets to the guesthouse. Once there, they stood awkwardly in the tiny snug. I’m tired,’ Shona said. ‘I can’t think.’ ‘Go to bed,’ Catriona said. She looked exhausted herself. It seemed wrong to go to bed and leave them, abandoning them to speculation, she was sure, as to how she felt, but Shona could not wait to be alone. She made a point of embracing them both extravagantly, though she could not bring herself to say she loved them. They never said such words, they would sound false and insincere. But she pressed against each of them hard and smiled and it was as if she were telling them nothing had changed. Once in her room, the door locked, the door joining their two rooms, she found she was shaking, but whether with excitement or shock she could not decide. She got into bed and pulled the thick duvet over her and crouched under it, thinking. She felt no inclination to weep. She asked herself if she felt any different and knew she did not. Did she still feel Archie was her father and Catriona her mother? Yes, of course she did, there was no doubt at all in her mind. She should have said this to them at once, it ought to have been instinctive, and she felt ashamed she had not done so. They needed to be reassured, both of them. She would give them reassurance tomorrow, in bucketsful. Nothing had changed. But it had. That bit was not true. She tossed and turned, got up for a glass of water, stood looking out of the window at the sleeping city. Somewhere, in this very place, a girl had lived who had given her away. Who was she? What had happened to her? Somewhere, out there in the wider world, that girl lived with the memory of a baby she had given away. A great pity

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filled Shona as she thought about her and tears at last came. Poor, poor girl, all the rest of her life spent with this shadow over it. Or had the shadow long since lifted and all memory of that baby gone from her mind? No. Shona told herself she could not believe this. No. She could not have been banished in such a manner.

But in any case it did not matter. She had no choice, none at all. Her need to know her mother was urgent and compelling and she would never be able to deny it. She would find her in no spirit of revenge and not to visit upon her any past sin, but to make sense of herself only. Her mother was her, or rather she, in the literal sense, was made from her mother and she could not resist discovering her own inheritance. I will not harm her, Shona thought, but I must know her, and where is the harm in that?

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LEAH RETURNED every stare with a stare of her own, a look not of defiance but of pride. There was no feeling at all in her mind of shame or embarrassment and this was borne out by her carriage. She had always walked with her head up and her shoulders back, she had never huddled into herself as so many girls did, but now she seemed to emphasise the excellence of her posture. Nor did she attempt to conceal her pregnancy. She let her coat fall open, there were to be no straining buttons, and the child she was carrying already thrust itself forward in the most pronounced way. She saw the stares directed at the bump and then at the ring on her finger and then at her face and she smiled, however accusing or hostile the expression in the eyes. People knew she was not married, that it was impossible for them not to have known if a marriage between Leah Messenger of the Fox and Hound and Hugo Todhunter of Moorhouse Hall had taken place. They were outraged that she wore a ring on her wedding finger and yet no one had directly challenged her, as she half wanted them to.

The ring was a symbol, as all rings are. There was, Hugo had said, no law saying a woman must be lawfully married before she could wear a ring on what was held to be her wedding finger. She must not say she was married because that would be wrong - she was not married according to the laws of either the established church or the country - but there was nothing whatsoever to prevent her wearing a ring if she wished to. And she did wish to. She liked to see it there, a shining reminder of the time Hugo had pledged his undying love and devotion to her, at night, in the little church of St Kentigern lit by the candles he had brought with him. He had repeated all the vows from the wedding service in the prayer

book, taking the part of the priest as well as the bridegroom, and she had repeated her own vows, her voice shaking with nerves though there was no one to hear it. There was no music but as they extinguished the candles and walked down the aisle together, their footsteps scraping the stone through the thin torn matting, an owl had hooted outside and then, when it had ceased, a single nightjar sang under the midsummer moon. ‘Perfect,’ Hugo had sighed, ‘perfect.’

Oh, he was such a romantic lover! She had difficulty taking him seriously. Her instant reaction, that first day when he stopped his horse on the road and dismounted, had been derision. She was not a romantic. Her life had been hard and she had faced up to it, never once trying to deny this hard reality by escaping into daydreams. She had not reached sixteen without being aware of how dangerous her own beauty could be, how likely it was to surround her with predators. She scorned flatterers, turned her head away from those who showered her with compliments. There was no barmaid ever as expert at making men feel despised, and yet she was not hated for her aloofness nor did her contempt provoke rage or a desire to see her humbled. She was respected and she knew she was and traded on that respect. Hugo respected her from the beginning. He made no attempt to paw her or to flirt in any way. That first encounter laid the pattern. He walked with her, holding his horse by the bridle, and not one word did he say all the way back to the Fox and Hound beyond ‘Would you permit me to walk a little way with you?’ to which she merely shrugged. He bowed when they reached the pub and that was all. Again and again he did this, day after day, meeting her on the road, dismounting, asking if he might walk with her, walking, not speaking, bowing, and then going away.