Sheltering Rain (47 page)

“Has—has Edward been out much, do you know?” she had asked her mother afterward. Alice stayed at the apartment often, worried that Wai-Yip would not be able to comfort little Christopher in the appropriate manner.

“Out? Not really. Oh, he went to a reception at the Commander's house last week. And racing at Happy Valley on Thursday. Was that what you meant?”

“Yes, that's it,” said Joy, leaning back on her pillows with barely hidden relief. “The Commander's do. I just wanted to make sure he hadn't forgotten that one.”

Edward didn't go out much at all, said Alice. She had actually told him he should get out more, “enjoy his little bit of freedom” (which was a bit rich, thought Joy, coming from the woman who once beat her own husband around the head with an egg whisk for coming home in the early hours). But Edward would eat his evening meal, prepared for him by Wai-Yip, stop in to his son's room to say good-night, and then hide himself away in his study, working, occasionally head for Happy Valley, or perhaps go for a late night walk around the Peak.

“I need to come home,” said Joy.

“You need to look after Baby,” said Alice, touching up her powdered complexion. “No point you rushing back when we can all manage fine without you.”

She was eventually allowed home at twenty-two weeks, with the promise that she would rest properly, avoid exertion, and drink at least two pints of water a day, at least until the humid season was over. Edward, in shirtsleeves and slacks, came to meet her in the Morris 10, and greeted her with a more affectionate hug, so that Joy immediately relaxed, convinced that from now on things would improve again. Christopher, after an initial brief reserve, clung to his mother's newly stockinged legs and demonstrated his disapproval of all the upheaval by waking three or four times a night for the first week Joy was home. Alice, meanwhile, seemed to struggle with relief and disappointment that her daughter was no longer an invalid and therefore in need of her help.

“I'll stop by for the first week or two anyway,” she said, as Joy opened the door to her apartment, feeling strange and alien in her own home. “You'll need the help. And Christopher needs to maintain his routine. We've got a very good routine going, he and I.”

Joy looked around at the immaculate parquet floors, and teak furniture of her home, trying to make it feel like hers again. It seemed like somewhere she had known a long time ago, rather than a place she belonged. Wai-Yip, who had brought through a tray of cold drinks, looked up at her, nodded a brief greeting, and then walked away. Even she's gotten used to me not being here, thought Joy. She's probably trying to remember who I am. She walked softly to the mantelpiece, above which sat the blue horse on white paper, now framed in a pale mount with an ornate gilt frame. She gazed at it for a minute, and then looked over at Edward, who was watching her, apparently also trying to get used to the sight of her in their home.

“It's good to be back,” she said.

“We missed you,” said Edward, his eyes on hers. “I missed you.”

Suddenly not caring about the raised eyebrows of her mother, Joy walked swiftly across the room to her husband, and buried her face in his chest, feeling his solidity, remembering the scent that she loved. He placed his arms around her, and lowered his head, so that his cheek rested on her hair.

Alice looked pointedly away, until Christopher ran back into the room, and tried anxiously to squeeze into the limited space between his parents, his chubby arms outstretched as he yelped, “Car-ry, car-ry.”

As it had been during her last pregnancy, Joy and Edward became close again, once she recovered completely from morning sickness. He was unusually affectionate, even for him, often bringing her back flowers, and boxes of Swiss chocolates he had traded with officers on the incoming vessels, and was loving to the point where Alice would get openly irritated, and tell him “do put her down. It's not good for Christopher to have to watch all that.” He had also rediscovered his habit of following her around, from room to room, so that on occasion Joy found herself locking herself in her bathroom, pursued by both male members of her family. So if he had lost a little of his sense of humor along the way, become perhaps a little more watchful, Joy put it down to problems in the dockyard. She knew Edward was under a lot of pressure at work, because his naval colleagues told her when they came to dinner. Boring old Edward, they said. Took it all far too seriously. No fun at all, lately.

K
atherine Alexandra Ballantyne was born a week early at the same hospital where Joy had spent most of her summer months, in a labor that was almost, the doctor said, indecently short. “Not slow out of the starting gates, that one,” he joked to Edward, who, having finally been allowed in, was gazing, enraptured, at his new daughter. The doctor was also a racing man, and the two had met occasionally at the evening meetings at Happy Valley.

Joy, meanwhile, lay back among the pillows, her elation mixed with a deep, deep relief that the nightmare of pregnancy was now over.

“How are you feeling, my darling?” Edward said, stooping to kiss her forehead.

“A little tired. But looking forward to coming home,” she said, smiling weakly. “Make sure you tell old Foghill to get my horse ready for me.”

He had grinned approvingly at that.

But there was less riding for Joy this time around, for the initial months at least. Katherine was, as Alice frequently noted, a “difficult baby,” slow to pacify, frequently colicky, and liable to wake several times in the night, and managed swiftly to exhaust the combined forces of her mother, Alice, and Wai-Yip, shredding the “traditional” theories and remedies of the two latter women with the efficacy of a cheese grater.

Edward, oddly, was the most patient with her, often taking over for an hour when he returned from work, and forgoing his usual gin and tonic to take her for a quiet stroll around the Peak (at least it would have been a quiet stroll if Katherine had ever stopped screaming). He was tender with her, when Joy was too exhausted to feel anything but exasperation, and she, in turn, seemed to behave better for him, her milky eyes blinking at him with some kind of instinctive recognition.

“There, a daddy's girl,” said Alice, who was frankly glad to devote herself to little Christopher. “You were just the same.” She managed to make it sound almost unhealthy.

“I don't care whose girl she is, as long as she stops crying,” said Joy. She had not had a full night's sleep now for almost two months. Wai-Yip was meant to be responsible for taking care of her in the night, but the baby's cries still woke Joy, managing to trigger some primeval response system, and she had obviously exhausted Wai-Yip, too, because often Joy would rise to find the girl fast asleep and oblivious on her cot bed.

Joy didn't think she had ever been so tired; her eyes were permanently gritty, and lightly red-rimmed as if by an unfortunate choice of makeup, her vision often blurry. Sometimes she was so exhausted that she would hallucinate that she had seen to Katherine when she hadn't, so that Christopher would come and wake her, and announce rather seriously that “Baby was crying
again
.” She tried to make light of it to Edward, desperate for them to recover the closeness of their pre-Katherine days, and since the doctors had allowed the physical side of their marriage to resume, she had made sure not to refuse him once, despite her own exhaustion. “I'll be more like myself once she starts sleeping,” she would say to him apologetically, conscious that she must be as exciting as an old blanket.

“You're fine. I just want to be close to you,” he would say, from above her, and she would become almost tearful with gratitude.

He had agreed to the doctor's “methods” this time.

S
o consumed had Joy been by the demands of her family, that she had only barely noticed how exhausted her young amah had become. Twice, Joy came in to find her sleeping in the day, a state of affairs her own mother thought scandalous, although Joy, who herself now lived in a permanent state of torpor, felt rather more sympathetic and declined to chastise her. “She did enough for us while I was in hospital,” she told Alice, as Wai-Yip shuffled to the kitchen to fetch them their lunch. “She's been very good, as a rule.”

She jiggled Katherine on her knee, trying to stave off another crying jag. At three months, the doctor said, she should be getting less colicky, but no matter how hard Joy looked for the signs, she still seemed alarmingly predisposed to tears.

Joy, who had been leafing through a magazine, looked up as Wai-Yip laid the two plates on the table, and with a small bow, exited from the room.

“I'm going off that girl,” Alice said, her mouth set in an ungenerous line. “I think she's cheating you. Nothing I dislike more than a dishonest help.”

Katherine, unable to contain herself any longer, let out a piercing wail. Joy began to bounce her furiously on her knee, desperate for her not to wake Christopher, who had only just gone down for his nap.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Have you not looked at her lately? The weight she's put on! She was as thin as a flagpole when she came here. She must be eating you out of house and home.”

Joy shook her head, unwilling to get exercised over a few bowls of noodles. If one had good staff, it was worth overlooking a few foibles. There were few who didn't try and recoup something. Joy had recently been told by Leonora Pargiter on the second floor that while she was out, her amah had been renting out her brand new electric food processor. Made a fortune, apparently.

“I'll leave it this time. She was probably starving in China,” she said, placing Katherine over her shoulder and patting her so enthusiastically that the baby's eyes bulged. “This may be the first time she's had a decent diet in her life.”

She had felt less charitable when, a month later, as Joy and her mother sat on the balcony, enjoying a brief moment where both children were asleep, Wai-Yip had approached her, and told her, tearfully, that she had to return to China.

“What? For how long?” said Joy, horrified at the thought of losing her. Katherine had just begun to get attached to her. The previous two nights, Joy had been able to go out with Edward, leaving her in Wai-Yip's arms.

“I don't know, miss.” The girl looked down. Two large, salty tears plopped noiselessly onto the wooden floor.

“I knew it. Didn't I tell you she was taking advantage?” said Alice, sipping at her sherry.

“Wai-Yip? Are you all right?” Joy looked at the hunched figure in front of her, suddenly guilty that she had not taken her exhaustion seriously enough. “Are you ill?”

“No, miss.”

“Of course she's not ill. You've paid her so much she can afford to go on a holiday. Probably off on one of those new cruises.”

“Wai-Yip, what on earth is the matter?”

“Miss, I cannot say. I must leave, return to my home,” she said, still not meeting Joy's eye.

Alice had turned from the view, and was looking hard at the young servant, her gimlet eyes studying her closely. She shifted slightly in her seat, as if trying to observe her from several angles.

“She's got herself into trouble,” she announced. “Look! She's gotten herself into trouble!” It was said triumphantly, this time. “No wonder she's been putting on weight. She's gone and gotten herself in the family way. Oh, you disgraceful child. You'll have to go, you know, no question about it.”

At this point, Wai-Yip began to sob, her shoulders still hunched around a shape, which Joy now had to admit, had filled out quite considerably, although had remained largely hidden under loose cotton clothes.

“Is this true, Wai-Yip?” Joy's voice was gentle, probing.

“I so sorry, miss.” Wai-Yip's shoulders shook, her face stayed buried in her work-worn hands.

“You don't have to apologize to me,” she said. “It's you who is going to have to cope with it. I take it you are not married?”

Wai-Yip glanced up at her, as if briefly uncomprehending, then shook her head.

“Of course she's not married. Probably been putting it about to some American serviceman. That's what they're all after now, a passport to the United States.”

“So what will you do?”

“Please, miss. I want to come back to my work. I work very hard.”

“And what is she going to do with the baby?” Alice, who now had her arms crossed, sniffed dismissively.

“I don't know, miss . . . maybe, my mother . . .” Here, she began to cry again.

Joy thought about the prospect of another baby in the house. Edward wouldn't like it, that was for sure. She knew he was keen for a little normality to return to their lives as it was. Which meant him and her, and as little disturbance as possible. But she felt rather sorry for Wai-Yip, who didn't seem to be much more than a child herself (Joy realized, a little to her shame, that she had never bothered to ask her age). And she did work terribly hard.

“You let her bring a baby home, and there'll be no end to it,” said Alice, shaking her head.

“I'll have to talk to my husband, Wai-Yip. You understand that.”

The girl nodded, bowed her head, and slunk away. They could still hear her sniffing down the corridor.

“You'll regret it,” said Alice.

A
ccording to Chinese legend, there were once ten suns in the sky, and their combined heat scorched the earth. When an archer, Hou Yi, managed to shoot down nine of the ten suns, The King of the Earth gave him a magic potion that would make him live forever. The archer's beautiful wife, Chang Er, unaware that the liquid was magic, drank the potion, and began rising high into the night sky until she reached the moon.

The archer missed his wife, the Moon Lady, and asked the King of the Earth to help him get to her. The King allowed the archer to fly up to the sun, but he still could not get to the moon except when it was full and round.