Shadow Baby (21 page)

Malcolm, normally acutely sensitive to her mood, noticed nothing. He was so thrilled to be a father that he failed to detect, underneath her smiles, the tremors of real fear and, though she was an expert at suppressing emotion, she found it hard. Handling Philip, changing his nappy and seeing the fragility of his tiny body, watching his head loll if it was not supported, hearing his cries - all these things unnerved her. She felt so ill at the thought of once having wilfully abandoned such a dependent creature. It was brutal to remember, especially when she was feeding Philip, when his minute hands clawed at her full breast and her milk spilled from his mouth. None for that other baby. It had been denied everything, she had denied it her milk, her care, her tenderness and yet it had been hers, it had belonged to her, as Philip now did.

When she began to have nightmares it was almost a relief. She woke Malcolm with her screams, but could not tell him what had made her scream. She said she had dreamed that Philip was harmed and made a performance of getting up and checking him in his cradle. Since it was so easy to understand why she had this hideous dream, always beginning with that glimpse of the dangling shadow on the white wall, the shadow of her other baby, she tried hard to rationalise the content of the nightmare. Everything she had not let herself feel then she was feeling now. The nightmare was about acknowledging not just guilt but emotion. Though during the day she worked all this out satisfactorily, she still, however, woke up screaming at night. Malcolm held her close, soothed her, put the light on, made her a calming milky drink, did everything he could

132

think of to reassure her. But he knew, after several weeks of these shattered nights, that this was not the natural anxiety of a mother for her newborn baby.

‘Come on, Hazel,’ he said, stroking her hair back from her damp forehead when at last her shivering had subsided, ‘what’s this about? What are you dreaming of? Tell me. I want to know.’ She was silent, but began to move away, out of his arms. He resisted, holding her closer still. ‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘tell me. This is no good. You’re making yourself ill. Tell me.’ She murmured there was nothing to tell, it was all ‘silly’, the way nightmares always are. ‘You wouldn’t scream like that if it was just silly,’ he said firmly. ‘You scream because you’re terrified. What terrifies you, what do you see?’ She said she couldn’t bear to talk about it. Depressed, he realised there was no point in pressing her. They went back to sleep. But the next time the nightmare happened and her screams began he was ready. He didn’t put the light on, nor did he hold her. He stayed quite still and let her scream and saw in the half dark how she sat up and seemed to push something away, shouting, ‘No! No!’ Then she collapsed back on to her pillow muttering almost incoherently about babies and weeping.

Next morning, he said to her, quite calmly, ‘You had your nightmare last night.’

‘Did I?’ She looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘No. I didn’t wake you up out of it. I thought I’d watch and listen.’

‘And did you learn anything interesting?’ she said, smiling, but alert, knowing he had.

‘Yes. You talked.’ He waited. Tricks like this were well known to them both. ‘You talked about babies, in the plural. And you fought something off and shouted “No”, repeatedly.’

‘So?’

‘So tell me. Don’t make me guess.’

‘I’m sure you’ve already guessed.’

‘Stop it, Hazel. Why do I have to put into words what you can say much better? Is it some kind of test? Do I have to go through this when all I want to do is understand and help?’

‘You can’t, you couldn’t understand. And no one can help.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s true. I couldn’t explain so you couldn’t understand. It isn’t an insult. I don’t understand myself. I’m quite happy.’

133

‘So happy you wake up screaming at least three nights a week,’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s exactly what you kept saying last night. “Sorry, sorry.” You don’t need to apologise, not to me. But of course you weren’t saying sorry to me, you were saying it to her, that other baby, right?’

He thought she might hit him, so great was her anger. But she mastered herself and sat down on the bed, looking suddenly defeated. ‘Yes,’ she said, voice flat, ‘I dream I see the shadow of her again, growing bigger and bigger and coming towards me. Pathetic, isn’t it? Ten years too late and I discover I have a conscience.’

‘It’s all delayed guilt, brought on by Philip’s birth.’

‘I know that.’

‘Of course you do. Right. So the only way to deal with it, if you can’t persuade yourself that retrospective guilt is pointless, is to be practical. Your daughter …’

‘Don’t call it that, don’t! I hate those words.’

‘Your baby, then …’

‘The baby, that will do, the baby, Ť>.’

‘It will be ten. It’s been brought up by whoever adopted her - I can’t go on unless I can at least use the personal pronoun, Hazel and she’s happy and settled and hasn’t a clue about you nor does she care.’

‘You don’t know that. You don’t know it’s either happy or settled or that it doesn’t think about me and wonder what kind of woman would give away her own baby, and never try to trace it and …’

‘Is that what you really want to do? Trace her?’

‘No. I dread the thought, though, of being traced, hunted, and having to give an account of myself

‘Not very likely.’

‘You don’t know that either.’

‘All right then, for the sake of argument, Ť/you could be told the baby was happy and settled and knew nothing about you and cared less, would that help?’

‘Yes. It would let me off the hook, for the moment.’

‘Then let’s try and find out.’

Hazel didn’t ask how. Malcolm was not a solicitor for nothing. He was expert at knowing whom to approach, how to get information. And he was discreet, there was no need for her to beg him to take care that her own name and address and circumstances should not be revealed. She had to provide him with some details, of course, or he

134

had nothing to give a researcher or detective to go on. His expression, when she told him about the two women in Norway, was curious. Pained, she thought, it pained him to hear of all the subterfuge, or was the pain she thought she saw for her, for her young self in that predicament. But all he said was, ‘Your mother. My God. Your mother …’ ‘She did her best,’ Hazel said, quite defensively. ‘Her best? My God,’ Malcolm said, and left it at that.

She had no nightmares while Malcolm, or someone on his behalf, several people, she imagined, though she didn’t ask, pursued inquiries. He’d promised not to mention the subject again until he had definite news, and for her part she had promised to try to wait patiently - which she did. Just knowing that frightening shadow of her dreams was to be given substance helped to calm her, and she was able to devote herself to Philip without the very sight of his fragile baby body making her shake. And at last they bought a house and moved from the fussy flat, and all her time was taken up with choosing paint and wallpaper and furnishings. It wasn’t the house they had envisaged, nor was Muswell Hill an area they knew and liked, but she found that the lack of familiarity was exciting.

Once installed in the house, Hazel felt a new person. She wasn’t sure who that person was, or how she related to the old Hazel, but there was an exhilaration in feeling the boundaries of her life had changed dramatically. Being Malcolm’s wife and Philip’s mother in this friendly north London district was completely different from being her parent’s daughter in smart Holland Park, or even Malcolm’s mistress in chic Canonbury. She saw how, long ago, she ought to have found her own home, her own place, and not been content to depend on others. Surroundings did matter, after all; a break with the past, that break she had wanted, did follow on from a change of scene. Who you were depended more than she had ever guessed on where you were, or at least in her case it proved to be so. She felt so much better that she wished she had never let Malcolm try to trace her shadow-baby; she was on the point of telling him to cancel any investigation, when he came home one day with the result.

If he had asked her again, at that point, whether she was still sure she wanted to know, then Hazel would have shaken her head and told him to forget it. But he didn’t ask. It made her think afterwards that he had guessed she would say no, and that he had decided to force the knowledge on her, believing it was for her own good. He

135

didn’t even wait until after supper but launched straight into a matter-of-fact account, as though relating one of his cases to her.

‘She lives in Scotland,’ he said, reading from a single sheet of paper he’d taken from his briefcase, ‘name of Shona Mclndoe, father’s a captain in the merchant navy, mother doesn’t work. She’s healthy, an only child …’

‘Why did you have to tell me her name?’ She watched him put the paper down.

‘Shadows don’t have names. This was all about turning a shadow you were afraid of into a person you don’t need to fear, a little tenyear-old girl called Shona, living in Scotland beside the sea with a daddy who’s a captain and a mummy who is devoted to her. Can you see her now? Not at all threatening, is she? Bears no comparison to that huge black heavy shadow.’

She didn’t reply. He’d spoken very slowly, as though to someone of limited intelligence. There had been an edge to his normally even, quiet voice which she hadn’t liked. He was angry, she deduced, but whether with her, and her reaction to his information, or with himself, for caring about this Shona, she was not sure. He did care, she knew that. She only cared because she was afraid of the longterm consequences this girl might bring about, but Malcolm cared about the girl herself, about Shona as Hazel’s daughter, not as an instrument of possible vengeance. He wanted her for their own, that was what it was, she felt. They ate in silence. She didn’t ask him how these details had been obtained. Slowly, she was absorbing them. Shona. A pretty name, wildly Scottish. Her father a seacaptain. An image came unbidden into her mind of a seashore and a girl running along it waving to a ship … Romantic nonsense. She half smiled at that absurdity.

‘So,’ Malcolm said, watching her, ‘a ghost, well, a shadow, laid to rest, I hope.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It was for my own sake too. I don’t want my wife suffering nightmares for the rest of her life.’ He paused, frowned, looked worried. ‘Our children,’ he said, ‘will you ever tell them?’

‘Of course not!’ she cried, shocked. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘To stop being secretive,’ Malcolm said, ‘to be open about what happened.’

‘I don’t want to be open. It’s my business.’

136

He shrugged. ‘Maybe when they’re grown-up, you’ll change your mind, maybe if we have daughters.’

But there were no daughters. There were two more sons, at almost two-yearly intervals, and they had agreed three children were enough. When Anthony, the youngest, was two they almost weakened, but Hazel was ill, with an ovarian cyst which burst, and that was that. Three much-loved sons but no daughters. Hazel felt it was a kind of judgement but she was not unhappy to have three boys. It was Malcolm who had yearned for a daughter, who had the fantasy of a golden-haired girl to call his own. Sometimes Hazel thought how pleased he’d be if the unknown Shona emerged out of the shadows to confront her - Malcolm would welcome her and be eager to take her into his family. Hazel did not have nightmares about this any longer, but there were times when she would waken in the night and be unaccountably apprehensive and then a cold feeling would creep over her and make her shiver, and she would think ‘Shona’. She tried to whisper the name aloud to get rid of it but it stuck in her throat. There was not even the smallest part of her that wanted to see this girl’s name made flesh - no, she blocked the reality off completely. Instead, she concentrated on thinking of her as a happy, laughing creature without a care in the world, fortunate and content with her lot, and not even knowing she was adopted - not knowing that the woman who had so carelessly conceived her wished she did not exist. That is the worst thing, Hazel thought, I still wish, however happy she may be, that she had never existed. It doesn’t matter to me what she has made of her life, or what life has made of her, I do not want her to exist. She is not nothing to me, not a bit of it. She is a strong, strong presence out there in the world, and I cannot stand up against her unless I deny her right to force retribution upon me.

But these were the exaggerated, melodramatic meanderings of night-time panics and were, thankfully, rare and soon over. She never spoke of them to Malcolm. As the months went on Hazel’s thoughts were so full of her sons that there was no room for other speculations about her first-born. Gradually, she relaxed into a sense of security she had never had before. Her life, her happy and successful life resumed, with Malcolm and their children at the centre, and there was neither reason nor cause to feel threatened any more.

137

Leah married Henry Arnesen in St Mary’s church on a wild autumn day with the wind howling through the trees in the cathedral close, sending the brilliant-coloured leaves swirling over the heads of the bridal pair as they emerged. Leah pulled her coat tightly around her (she had been married in an elegant pale grey coat and dress made by Henry himself) and shivered. Henry put his arm protectively round her and hurried her along to the Crown and Mitre where the wedding breakfast was to be held. Her head down against the wind, Leah nevertheless saw old Mary, and Evie with her, standing well back in the shadow of the wall, and first anger, then shame, heated her before ever she reached the fire in the inn. She had asked Mary to stay at home, and had thought she had been understood, but now that she had seen her and the child, the pathos of their position was unbearable. She had made them outcasts.

Mary had not after all been evicted, not yet, nor had the knocking-down of her cottage taken place, or been mentioned again by her landlord. She was still living in Wetheral, the sole custodian now of Evie. Henry paid a weekly allowance, enough to mean Mary need no longer take in washing. She couldn’t manage the hens so they had been given away and the garden soon grew wild without Leah’s care. The whole arrangement worried Henry more than it did Leah. She appeared to see Evie as perfectly well placed, whereas Henry fretted about Mary’s age and infirmities and wondered if it was not irresponsible, unchristian even, to leave such a young child with her. He would feel happier, he said, if Mary and Evie were nearer, in Carlisle, but Leah would not hear of it. Henry had wondered also if it might not be kind to visit Evie at regular intervals to check on her welfare and reassure her that she was not forgotten