Shadow Baby (38 page)

- and somewhere pleasant to live, then he might convince himself he was doing the girl a favour. And the girl herself might see it this way too and be pleased and agree. But when Henry did come home at the end of that day he said nothing, and she curbed her impatience and held her tongue for another week before she could restrain herself no longer.

‘Henry,’ she said on Sunday night, after church, after the girls were in bed and Clara had left, ‘Henry, have you thought of what I suggested, about the girl?’ She could hardly say the word ‘girl’ and blushed nervously.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘It seems possible. I made inquiries. I could find a place for her in Halifax and see she was looked after.’

‘So it is settled?’ She knew, as she asked, it was not and she knew why, but he must say it.

‘No. I spoke to Evie and she does not wish to leave this city, she is afraid of moving.’

‘But she has hardly been here! Only a year …’

‘More than a year now, nearly two. She was in service a year.’

‘Very well, two, only two. Why, it is nothing for a young woman, nothing at all, it is not as though she has lived here all her life …’

‘She says her only happy memories are here, of her early childhood, before she found Mary dead and was put into a Home …’

‘Henry, please.’

‘It is what she said. She is going to rent a little house near Holme Head. It is a kind of settlement where …’

‘I do not wish to hear anything about settlements or houses.’

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‘You asked.’

‘I asked only why she will not do the sensible thing and move.’

‘And I was telling you, she is settled here and afraid to move, and attached to her childhood memories, though God knows it is pitiful enough what she has to remember.’

‘She is cunning.’

‘There is no cunning about Evie. She …’

‘How fond of her you have become.’

‘Fond? I told you, everyone is fond of her, because …’

‘She is cunning.’

‘Leah, you are being ridiculous.’

‘She wormed her way into your employment knowing what she knew - that was cunning … and now …’

‘Stop! She knew nothing when she came to work for me.’

‘So she says.’

‘Why would she say otherwise? How could she have known I had any connection with her? Tell me that. If she knew, which she could not have done, that my wife was her mother, why did she not come here, to confront you?’

‘Because she is cunning.’

Henry left the house. It was dark, but he left the house and walked rapidly up the Scaur and out along the road to Rockcliffe, furious with his wife. He had hardly been able to look at her during the last few minutes - her beautiful face so contorted with malice, her eyes glinting and cruel. Was she ill? Fear gripped him, as he walked and walked, that she was suffering from some mental condition he had occasionally suspected. It was not normal, it had never been normal, for her to feel this revulsion towards her first child. Perhaps she needed some kind of treatment, but he could not bear to contemplate such a thing - his head was full of frightening visions of Leah in a strait-jacket, and he moaned as he turned back at last. She must be made to see she was poisoning her own mind with absurd fantasies in which, it was clear to him, she expected some form of revenge. She thought of little Evie Messenger as an instrument of vengeance about to be let loose upon her for her rejection of the girl. She could not forgive herself for what she had done and did not expect Evie to do so. But was that right? Had he got it right? Or did he not understand, as Leah alleged, was he incapable of understanding the strangeness of her attitude to Evie? The fact was, he had never been able to believe Leah. It had not, and

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was not, a matter of understanding but of belief. He, a man, could not believe that any woman could not bear the sight of a child, and a daughter too, whom she had borne. It was unbelievable, especially when such a woman was the good and kind and intelligent Leah he had known now for eighteen years and seen as the perfect mother to his own two daughters.

He re-entered his own house quietly. The lamps were out in the parlour. Leah had gone to bed. Thankfully, he sank into the chair nearest to the fire and wondered if he dared to think about other reasons for his wife’s detestation of Evie Messenger, her own flesh and blood. He had trained himself from the very beginning not to think about the man before him, the man she said she had loved yet whose name he had been forbidden to ask. There was no real cruelty in Leah’s past, he was sure of it. She might have been cheated and tricked, though even that he could not be sure of since he knew no : details and had accepted that he never would, but he was convinced there had been no violence. Evie, he was almost certain, had been a love child. Somewhere there was a man, her father, whom Leah at a most tender age had loved and been loved by. Since it upset him to think this and he had recognised his own envy, Henry had banished the awkward knowledge from his head, but now he regretted doing so. In his fear of losing Leah he had acquiesced too readily to her conditions and he ought not to have done so. If he knew now who Evie’s father was and what had become of him then perhaps he would be nearer to that understanding which Leah accused him of lacking.

It had been an awful thing he had had to do. Sending for Evie first thing he had felt as faint as any woman with apprehension. She was such a frail, pathetic sort of girl, though he had already come to suspect that there was a strength of character about her which was not apparent. She was not an empty-headed, silly girl and, though she rarely looked him in the eye, he had seen enough to rate her intelligent beyond her education. When she appeared and stood obediently before him, a quiver of anxiety about her clasped hands, he could not at first find the heart to proceed. He cleared his throat then cleared it again and made a performance of finding a strong mint to suck. He could not speak with such a thing in his mouth and felt foolish when he was obliged to extract it and wrap it in a piece of paper and throw it away. All the time, during this fussing, Evie had stood patiently, declining to sit on the stool he had waved her

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towards. Her very patience distressed him. He was going to hurt her and it was like hurting a dumb and defenceless creature. But she had surprised him with the dignity she showed. ‘Evie,’ he had said, ‘I have some news for you.’ She said nothing, there was no start of expectation, no eager looking-up. ‘It will come as a shock and not a pleasant one.’ Still no response. ‘It is complicated.’ He hesitated. ‘There is no easy way to tell you, but I believe, in fact I know, who your mother is.’ Now, at last, there was a reaction. She smiled, a small tremulous smile, the first he ever recalled seeing on her wary little face. The smile made everything far worse. ‘It is not necessarily happy news, Evie,’ he had said, ‘and I wonder if it might be better for you to remain in ignorance.’ She looked alarmed and he hurried on. ‘Oh, your mother is perfectly respectable, my dear, it is nothing like that, don’t think the worst, it is only that your mother prefers not to open up wounds, which is to say, it is to say …’ He had floundered and stopped and sighed and started again. ‘… Which is to say, you will understand, she is married and has her own family now and she, well, she is reluctant to meet you.’ He had been sweating by this time and felt red in the face. ‘Would it not be better to know nothing, Evie?’

She had stared at him long and hard, her smile now quite faded. He waited, trying to encourage her by nodding his head. Her silence went on so long he was compelled to repeat his suggestion. ‘Evie, would it not be better to remain in ignorance?’ At this she shook her head. It was like dealing with a mute. He could not have this settled by a shake of the head. ‘Evie,’ he said, as solemnly as possible, giving her name as much gravitas as he was able and deepening his voice to do so. ‘Evie, you must tell me properly. Are you prepared to take the consequences of knowing who your mother is? Do you understand those consequences?’ She nodded. ‘It is not enough to nod or shake your head, Evie. You must speak clearly, or I cannot be sure you do understand.’

‘I understand,’ she said.

‘And what precisely do you understand?’

‘My … she, she does not want to know me.’

After that, what else could he have done? Climbing the stairs to bed, Henry could hardly bear to remember the painful dialogue that had ensued. Colour had flooded Evie’s face when he had revealed the identity of her mother - he had been frightened by the sight of such pallor changing in a second to such a violent hue. She had

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looked about to faint and he had rushed to support her, but she had pushed him away and retreated to the door where she seemed to cower against it as though afraid of him. He had felt such disgust to have done this to her and had said over and over how sorry he was. Then there had been the ugly business of the money. He did not want to sound as though he were buying her silence and yet he could not let her go without offering her some token of his sincerity and sense of responsibility. He had wanted so badly to tell her how he had been willing and eager to bring her up as his own daughter, but he had thought it unwise to launch into what would sound like a defence of himself and an attack on his wife. He had wanted also to reminisce, to recall Evie as a baby, to tell her he remembered old Mary and the house in Wetheral and the place in St Cuthbert’s Lane, and glimpses of herself as a child even if she did not remember him. But it was unseemly, in the circumstances. Instead he had tried to be business-like, though the atmosphere had been too emotional for a business transaction. When he told her the sum of money he was settling upon her he had been afraid she would reject the offer, but she made no sign of either rejection or acceptance. She had let him talk without interrupting, showing neither pleasure nor disgust. But when he had begged her not to speak of any of this to anyone, she had shown some spirit, and he had been glad of it. ‘I only wanted to know,’ she said, ‘not to tell.’

There had been no cunning. Slipping into bed beside his wife, who if not asleep feigned it very well, Henry knew such an accusation was unfounded. In fact, he was agreeably surprised at how little cunning Evie Messenger had shown. She had been in a position of great advantage for a while in his office and yet she had not exploited it. She could have bargained and there had been no hint of her doing so. She could have threatened all manner of things, but instead had appeared to accept his proposal without opposition. There had been not one word of resentment against her mother, and Henry had prepared himself to endure the hate for Leah he felt Evie was entitled to express. If only Leah could be brought to see how well, how nobly Evie Messenger had behaved, she might be less afraid and soften towards her. Meanwhile, she would carry on her campaign to get rid of the girl and he would have to withstand her selfish efforts. He was the one who would see Evie virtually every day, see her and know her story. Leah had not thought of the

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embarrassment he would have to endure. Tucked away at home she was protected, whereas he was not.

Henry slept badly and was glad to get up. Leah did not speak to him over breakfast and he did not speak to her, but the girls chattered enough to make their parents’ silence unnoticeable. He ate his kipper and ran his eye over his daughters in a way he had never done before, searching their features for signs of their sister, Evie Messenger. There was none, no comparison to be made. Evie must be like her unknown father. He wondered how Rose and Polly would absorb the news that they had an older half-sister if he were to tell them. But he would not. He would not dare, and he found he had no desire to tell them after all. It was too shocking. They would think less of their irreproachable mother and that would be dreadful. But later in life, if they were to find out? Would they be kind? Kind to Evie? He was full of doubt on that score. Evie was a working girl, she belonged near the bottom of the social scale, whereas Rose and Polly were in the middle and quite likely to look down upon her without thinking this at all cruel. They would be embarrassed by a half-sister like Evie and there was little chance of their clasping her to their bosoms No, on this he stood with Leah, though the matter had not been discussed. Rose and Polly were better left in the dark. The sad facts of their mother’s early experience should not be thrown in their faces, ruining their happiness and endangering their sense of security. His duty to Evie, he decided, did not extend to spoiling his young daughters’ happiness.

Leah, presiding over the breakfast table, seemed calm if quiet. She was wearing a dress he had made for her a long time ago and he wondered if there was some significance in this choice. It was a very pale green cotton day dress with a high collar and leg-of-mutton sleeves and he had edged all the seams with dark green piping. It was an old dress, fit only for mornings at home, but it was unusual and pretty, and he had always liked it. The cotton was very fine and creased easily, the one fault of the dress. He remembered giving it to Leah soon after Polly was born, and his dismay because it did not then fit her. ‘I am a matron now, Henry,’ she had laughed, ‘the mother of two big babies and not the slim sylph you married. Childbirth changes women, Henry, have you not noticed?’ She had teased him and he had loved her lack of vanity. When, after six months, her measurements had changed back again and the dress fitted he had been delighted. ‘See,’ he had said, ‘childbirth did not

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change you for ever. You are still my slim and lovely sylph.’ And now she was wearing it again and though the material across the bust looked a little strained to his expert eye and he suspected the waist was uncomfortably tight, the dress still looked very well on her. He thought he would risk stating the obvious and in doing so break their silence in a harmless way.

‘You are wearing that old green dress, I see,’ he said. ‘It looks as pretty as ever.’

‘It is not pretty and neither am I. It is old and worn out.’