The Lorimer Legacy (34 page)

Even before they reached London, Margaret was reminded that this was too facile an approach – that no part of life could be completely without consequences. Margaret herself was not a good sailor. She had none of that love of the sea which had driven her Lorimer forebears to seek their fortunes in ocean-going ships: the slightest swell could upset her. Alexa, though, on the outward voyage – excited by the thought of new worlds waiting to be conquered – had seemed able to enjoy even the roughest day. When now she took to her cabin to ride out a mid-Atlantic gale, it seemed possible that her illness was caused as much by her state of depression as by the motion of the water. But the steamship entered the calmer coastal waters of England, and still Alexa was sick. Margaret recovered sufficiently from her own misery to worry about her sister's inability to take any food, and was able almost at once to guess the cause. She stared at Alexa in dismay.

‘It is not yet certain,' said Alexa, when Margaret at last put her question into words. ‘Everything that has happened in the past month – the shock of the earthquake, the expose to the weather, Frank's death, jolting about on the railroad, the storm – all these things, surely, must upset one's system.'

‘Yes,' agreed Margaret. ‘But they wouldn't cause you to be sick in this continuing way. I agree that you will need to wait for another month before you can be quite
sure. But it is not too soon to begin thinking about what you should do. The baby is Frank's, I suppose.'

‘Well, of course.' Unwell and worried, Alexa showed her apprehension by snapping.

‘So there is no possibility of marriage. Unless, of course, you could find someone in England, quickly, who would be willing –'

‘No!' Alexa sat up in her berth. Pale and bedraggled, she looked very different from the glamorous creature who charmed audiences and dominated balls and parties, but her eyes flashed with all the energy which had carried her so quickly to the top of her profession. ‘I'm not prepared to bend my life ever again to fit in with that of a man. I am able to earn my own living and to manage my own affairs. Men may come to me if they wish, but I will not take a step out of my way to go to them. I have had too many disappointments.'

‘You speak as though Frank deliberately let you down,' exclaimed Margaret. ‘It was not his fault that he died.'

‘Of course not. It was not Matthew's fault that I was born his aunt: not Caversham's fault that he needed to marry an heiress. I am not concerned with fault or blame. I am saying only that I do not propose ever again to be the victim of circumstances – of other people's circumstances. I intend to keep my life in my own hands from now on. To marry is always to surrender to a man's selfishness. He sets out a style of living, and his wife is supposed to conform to it in every way.'

‘It is what most women wish for,' Margaret said gently, attempting to soothe down her sister's uncontrolled emotions.

‘Then most women are welcome to it. What I am saying is that I am not most women. I depend on no one for my income. I can do whatever I like.'

‘It sounds as though you are merely claiming the right to be as selfish as the men you criticize.'

‘Yes!' cried Alexa. ‘That is exactly right. What is selfishness in them is selfishness in me. But if it is praiseworthy for a man to maintain himself, to preserve his independence, to be successful in his career, then it must be equally praiseworthy for me to do the same. You must understand that, Margaret. For twenty years I have admired you because you have managed your life with as much strength and efficiency as any man could do, and have been more use to the world than most of them.'

Margaret made no answer to that. In her heart she knew that she was no different from the majority of women whom Alexa professed to despise. She could have been happy as a wife and mother, and it was not from her own choice that she had enjoyed only the briefest taste of domestic life. It was true that she had used ambition and a wish to be of value to the world as a means of conquering her disappointments, just as she would now need to do again: Alexa's declaration, although it emerged from a deeper bitterness, was not so very different. Nevertheless, there was still one circumstance which she seemed to be overlooking.

‘You are not taking the baby into account,' she pointed out. ‘Oh, Alexa, how could you be so foolish?'

‘Do you think it was intended!' Alexa's temper flared up again. She made an attempt to laugh. ‘At least there will be no difficulty in choosing a name. The child of Frank, conceived in San Francisco at the moment when the earth moved. It will have to be Francis, won't it? If it is ever born.'

‘Alexa –'

‘There are ways,' said Alexa stubbornly. ‘You are a doctor, Margaret. You must know how to end a pregnancy.'

‘I chose to be a doctor so that I could learn how to preserve life,' said Margaret. ‘You can't ask me to kill your baby.'

She met her sister's defiant look with a steadiness of her own, and probably Alexa had known even before she asked that it was too much to expect, for now she shrugged her shoulders.

‘There are other doctors.'

‘It is illegal,' said Margaret. ‘No reputable doctor will do it. And it is extremely dangerous. You must not interfere with nature.'

‘You interfere with nature every time you cure someone who has been afflicted by nature with an illness,' Alexa pointed out, but the anger seemed to have gone out of her voice. ‘Very well, then, suppose it is to be born. I have two choices, I imagine. I can disappear from London at once and move around Europe from one opera house to another with such speed that no one will notice the time when I am not to be found in any of them. Or I can make no attempt at concealment and receive sympathy for my misfortune in being widowed in the San Francisco disaster.'

‘How can you say such a thing when you were not married?'

‘And who will ever be able to discover that?' countered Alexa. ‘Do you think there is a single official document left unburned in the city? Even the names of all the dead are never likely to be known. The bodies of a good many people who were killed in the first shock must have been consumed in the flames afterwards. I never intend to return to the city. As long as I make no claim on anyone, there can be no harm done.'

‘Alexa, you cannot lie about something as important as this.'

‘What solution do you propose that doesn't involve
some deception? A moment ago you were suggesting that I should look hastily for a husband. Even though you presumably expected me to tell the truth to the man concerned, you would not have made such a suggestion unless you were intending that the child should be passed off as his in the eyes of the world. A big lie or a little he, what is the difference? What I suggest would protect the reputation of the child throughout its life, at no cost to anybody. I will keep my own name and refuse ever to mention my husband's, on the grounds that it would distress me too much.'

‘And the child himself?' asked Margaret. ‘What will you tell him when he is old enough to ask about his father?'

‘I shall not be there to be asked. I shall find someone to adopt him.'

During the past hour Alexa had managed to shock her sister with almost every sentence she uttered, but this last announcement was so much more horrifying than the rest that for a moment Margaret could only gasp incoherently in her attempt to protest.

‘Alexa – you cannot possibly – your own child!'

‘Do you seriously see any alternative?' Alexa's voice was weak and flat with depression. ‘If Frank had lived to marry me I would have taken pleasure in giving him an heir. But as things are, I don't want the baby. I have no maternal feelings at all. The birth will be a nuisance. The existence of a baby would be an impediment to my career, and I cannot believe that to be dragged from one opera house to another all over Europe is the best upbringing for any child. I cannot face it, Margaret, now that I am completely alone.' She lay back again in the berth and began to weep, turning her face to the pillow as Margaret stared down at her with a worried look.

‘You know you are not alone, Alexa, I'm here to help you.'

‘You have refused to help me.' Alexa's voice, like her sobbing, held an undertone of hysteria. ‘You criticize every suggestion I make, but you have nothing to offer in its place. And if you had come with me to the Opera Ball, none of this would have happened.'

With an effort Margaret restrained her indignation at the attack. It was true that she did feel some guilt in this respect. But Alexa, although it had suited her to pretend to a younger age, was twenty-nine years old, perfectly well able to know right from wrong and to look after herself. The chaperonage for which she had asked had never been more than a social device.

Margaret was used to dealing with pregnant women. She knew how easily they became upset even when the babies they expected were wanted and would be born into a happy home, and how very much more terrifying their condition became when there was no husband to support them. She considered the situation for quite a long time while Alexa continued to sniff into the pillow.

It was not difficult to guess what Alexa wanted her to say. But a simple offer and promise, quickly spoken, could involve twenty years' responsibility. Margaret reminded herself that she was nearly fifty: too old to play the part of a natural mother to a young child – too old to be certain even that she would live to see the child become an adult. And she, just as much as Alexa, had a living to earn.

Neither of these facts proved, in the end, to be strong enough to influence her decision. Margaret had never felt quite the same sense of family responsibility which had prompted her elder brother to offer his support whenever she was in need, and which had apparently also made him feel justified in interfering in the most personal affairs
of his brother and sister just because he was the head of the family. Margaret remembered, in fact, how she had stood twenty years earlier in a filthy farmyard in France, looking at a yellow-haired boy who was Ralph's son, her own nephew, and recognizing that she must not acknowledge the relationship.

But that had been for the boy's own sake. When Alexa talked of having her baby adopted, she was speaking out of adult selfishness. Margaret's appalled reaction to the idea revealed to her the strength of family feeling that she still retained. This baby would be her own niece or nephew, the grandchild of her father, John Junius Lorimer. The child could not be abandoned to strangers. There was no choice.

‘You want me to look after your baby?' It was more of a statement than a question, because she knew the answer in advance.

Alexa lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Margaret. ‘Would you?' she asked. ‘Would you really?' She dabbed her eyes dry and sat up in the berth. ‘I know you think I'm being cowardly and selfish,' she said. ‘But what kind of a life can I offer a child? I have no home. I don't know how to look after babies. I don't know how to love them. I don't want to be a mother.'

‘Be quiet, Alexa. You're just going to work yourself up into tears again.' The sharpness in Margaret's voice was not accidental. Briefly she wondered how much of what the younger woman had said was sincere. Alexa was an actress, and a very talented one. She could cry as convincingly when it suited her to do so as when her heart was broken. But on this occasion it seemed likely that her feeling of panic, increased by her physical weakness, was genuine enough. When she acknowledged that she was being selfish, that was true as well, but to punish her for it by insisting that she must bear the whole
responsibility for the upbringing of an unwanted child would also be to punish the child. Margaret's love for Alexa was very deep: but deeper still was her passionate belief that every baby must be welcomed into the world with love. If Alexa was incapable of providing such a welcome, then somebody else must do it instead.

‘Yes, I will do what I can,' Margaret said. ‘But only on conditions. I know now that when I adopted you I was wrong not to tell you the whole truth about your parentage – and you have suffered from it, in your relationship with Matthew. I'm not going to make the same mistake again. I'm prepared to bring the child up. I'm even prepared to adopt him legally, if only in order that he can have a surname which requires no lies either to him or to the outside world. But I should tell him right from the beginning that you are his mother. I should expect you to behave as his mother – to love him and to spend as much time as you can with him whenever you are in London, and to make him feel that it is your care for his security which prevents you from taking him with you on your travels.'

‘And his father?' asked Alexa.

‘His father is Frank Davidson. He will need to know that as well, as soon as he is old enough to ask. And you must remember that Robert has to be considered. He will begin to ask
his
questions as soon as the baby is born.'

Alexa considered these proposals in silence. Then she looked steadily into Margaret's eyes.

‘If you are to tell him all this,' she said, ‘will you also tell him how his father and I ran hand in hand from the ball at which we became engaged, and were married in front of a judge only an hour before the earthquake struck San Francisco?'

Margaret swallowed the lump in her throat, accepting
with distaste the difficulty which Alexa had pointed out earlier, of finding a solution which protected the unborn child without involving any kind of deception.

‘You may tell him that yourself,' she said. ‘How can I know what happened after the ball, when I was at home in bed?' Staggering with dizziness, Alexa left her berth and held Margaret in a long and tight embrace.

‘Thank you, dearest Margaret,' she murmured. ‘No one ever had a better friend.' Then, as she drew away, her eyes sparkled with their former liveliness. ‘But the baby won't be a boy!' she exclaimed. ‘A beautiful girl, with golden hair and Frank's Irish eyes. We shall call her Francisca.'