Privileged Children (6 page)

Anatole Brécu was sitting with Alice in the tiny garden at the back of the Woods’ house in Gordon Square. He was hardly more than five feet tall, and had a leg which was twisted so that the foot was turned sharply inwards. He was very thin. His face was pale and small, with high, sharp cheekbones and surrounded by coarse dark hair which was threaded with grey although he was only thirty-three. His nose was very long and pointed. He had a thin, wide, mobile mouth and large charcoal-grey eyes which were rimmed with long thick eyelashes. Above his eyes his eyebrows formed a broken arch. Clementina described him as ‘physically repulsive, with an ugly little face crammed with nose and mouth and eyes’. Alice promised herself that she would take him to bed as soon as her child was born. She was five months pregnant now, and it hardly showed. Four months was a long time to Alice.

‘Alice, I do not mean to doubt your capabilities, but how are you going to look after your baby? You are so young. It would be a shame in a way, to tie yourself to a child. Children are a lot of work.’

‘I shall manage‚’ said Alice fretfully. ‘I might have it adopted.’

‘Don’t look so frightened, Alice. You could manage it alone, of course. But you might not want to manage. When Liza and Jenny were born my wife ran away. She didn’t want children. She wrote for money for a few years. She’s dead now, poor woman. But anyway, for a couple of months I had to go out to work and feed two babies with a bottle, and
change them and everything else. Kate saved my life then. I was twenty-five, and you are eight years younger than that.’

‘I didn’t know you’d been with Kate that long,’ said Alice.

‘Oh yes. She mothered the twins. Now … well, they’re nine and they can look after themselves and she and I – we just live together.’ Alice glanced sharply at him, and he noticed it.

‘Did you pay her to care for them?’ asked Alice.

‘Not exactly. She had just left her husband and Charlotte had just deserted me, so we were flung together. I went out to work and we both lived on the money. But half the money was her right, so you could say I paid her. It was when they were three that she won the scholarship to medical school. And now she is a doctor. She is a great success,’ said Anatole. He was a musician, but he rarely finished what he composed, and earned money by giving music lessons and playing in restaurant bands.

‘Why did you give your daughters English names?’ asked Alice.

‘I called them after Jane and Elizabeth in
Pride
and
Prejudice.
Kate called them Liza and Jenny. I couldn’t think of French names for them. I hardly speak French any more. When I went to Russia I learned Russian in two months and forgot a lot of French. Now I can’t speak a word of Russian. The same with English. If I left the country I’d forget it all.’

‘You’re right, Anatole. You’ve made me think about it. I don’t really want it. In fact, it’s like a cancer, eating me,’ said Alice very quietly.

‘I never said you don’t really want it.’

‘I know that’s what you meant.’

‘Alice, I did not. I meant that you should only think hard about the whole business before the child is born. No child should have a miserable and indecisive mother. Alice, I will come again tomorrow and give you that book.’

‘Will you bring Liza?’ said Alice.

‘Not Jenny too? Well, yes I shall ask Liza.’

Anatole looked up at the calm, comfortable, dark grey house. On his way out, he mentioned the matter of Alice’s baby to Augustus and Clementina. Since Alice had arrived, Clementina had made a great fuss of her. She had insisted on
her eating strengthening foods, and going to bed early, and cutting down her smoking, and keeping warm and not walking up or downstairs unaided. Clementina had had two miscarriages and a stillborn child. She was now in her early forties.

‘Alice, did you mean to get pregnant?’ said Augustus at dinner on Sunday.

Alice paused. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Why did you do it?’

‘So I could get away quickly from my uncle’s.’

‘Did you start having the affair simply in order to become pregnant?’

‘No. It was for companionship. I liked Luke. And I think he was in love with me. But I hope not,’ she added, and frowned. ‘I enjoyed the affair. I stayed on for quite some time because of him. Then I couldn’t stand it any more. It was my governess who really drove me away. And the alternative to her was school. So I decided to become pregnant.’

‘And you thought only of the pregnancy, not of the baby?’ said Clementina.

‘Yes,’ said Alice, and added, ‘I was desperate!’

‘I’m not criticising you, Alice. What it is to be young!’ Clementina shook her head.

‘You have every right to criticise me for it. It was a stupid, thoughtless thing to do and God knows I’ll pay for it.’

‘Now you’re talking like a Catholic,’ said Augustus with a faint smile. ‘Or an ardent Protestant for that matter. The wages of sin and all that.’ He paused, and then said nervously, ‘What was Luke like?’

‘He wasn’t a fool. He was very kind.’ She thought a moment. ‘He was a good lover,’ she finished.

‘What did he look like?’ asked Clementina.

‘Red hair and brown eyes. He wasn’t very big, but he was strong. He was only twenty.’

‘You talk as though he were dead,’ said Augustus.

‘Alice, we ought to have discussed this earlier, but I somehow — you were always so sure of what you wanted as a child, I thought you would be now. Do you know what you want to do?’ asked Clementina.

‘It doesn’t matter what I want to do. I couldn’t keep it. I know I couldn’t cope with a baby. I’ll have to have it adopted somehow, but I don’t know how I could make sure that it would be well looked after and loved.’

‘We would like to adopt it, Alice,’ said Augustus. ‘You know we’ve never been able to have children. Clem said she wanted seven when we got married.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s just too easy like that.’

‘Oh, the wages of sin again,’ said Augustus. He put his hand over hers across the table. ‘Look, Alice, you want your baby to be loved, and preferably loved by people whom you know, I expect. Clem and I never adopted a child because we’ve always wanted to know something about the child’s parents.’

‘Of course you can have it the minute it’s born,’ said Alice in bewilderment.

‘There’s one problem,’ said Clementina. She put her elbows oh the table and clasped her hands. ‘I want your baby very much. I’ve always felt you didn’t appreciate it. You’d run downstairs two at a time if I let you. But if you let me — us — have it, I shall never let you have it back, if you want it in two or five years’ time. And I insist that if we adopt it you sign a contract to say that you will never make any claims on the child although you’re the natural mother.’

‘Clem, that’s so cold-blooded.’

‘No, Augustus, I want it in writing.’ Her eyes were glittering.

‘You can have it,’ said Alice: ‘But it’s not up to me to make claims on it, or over it. It’s a human being, not property, whatever the law says about children.’

‘I’ll make out a contract,’ said Clementina, rising.

‘No,’ said Augustus. ‘Alice, I advise you not to sign anything till the child is a month old. You may fall in love with the infant when you first hold it.’

‘I don’t have to hold it now,’ said Alice.

‘I never dared think about it before,’ said Clementina, sitting down again, slowly. ‘If I had, I’d never have dared ask you about it, for if anyone had suggested such a thing to
me when I was pregnant, I’d have killed them. And I’d have grown to hate you.’

‘Did Anatole put you up to it?’ asked Alice suddenly.

*

Alice’s baby was born on the day of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Her confinement lasted seven hours. The doctor gave her chloroform to ease the pain, but she still felt it. Though each contraction was torment, between contractions Alice could not remember the nature and strength of the pain. In one of the last contractions, she cried: ‘It’s not fair! It’s not my fault I didn’t have the last rites!’

Though after the birth she did not remember much of the pain, she remembered the blazing heat of that summer, which ever afterwards people claimed was the most wonderful England had seen in years, with loathing.

Since coming back to Bloomsbury, Alice had not visited Red Lion Square. She set out from the Woods’ house one morning, her insides feeling warm, feathery and empty from a long night with Anatole in which they had made love six times, and suddenly felt that she wanted to see the house.

She shivered a little as she passed through the narrow street which joined the square to Southampton Row, and looked round. There was the house: at the other end of the square. It had not been demolished. She walked towards it, hastening her step as she neared it. She looked up at it.

It seemed so small. She had remembered it as an imposing, if dilapidated, large building, although she had been scarcely an inch shorter when she left for Melton Balbridge than she was now. It had been repainted a gleaming white. There was a brass plate on the door, which read:
J.N.
Kettering
,
M.D.
There were window boxes along the ground-floor window sills. A lace curtain in the window which had once belonged to Diana’s library prevented Alice from seeing to what use the room had been put. The area was neatly kept. The railings had been repainted. As a child, Alice had picked her way along these railings: she would have recognised any chip in the paint, and remembered its individual flavour, the problem of picking it, whether or not Tilly had caught her at it, if the chips had not been painted over. On looking more closely, however, Alice saw that only a thin coat of black had been applied. Most of the chips had disappeared, but farthest away from the kitchen window the proudest picking of all
showed through. She could still discern
A.M.M.
1907.
It had taken Alice days to inscribe that.

Augustus had recently introduced Alice to a publisher friend of his who wanted someone to illustrate a children’s book which he was bringing out. He could not afford a famous illustrator and, on seeing some of Alice’s work, had agreed to commission her. He had specified closely what he wanted. Alice was finding the illustrations very hard work, and the limitations placed on her efforts by the specifications very frustrating. She had no time to paint what she liked at the moment. There were times when she felt that this commission had sapped her of her talent and her energy.

‘Perhaps that’ll be my only memorial,’ she said, looking at her clouded initials. Later on in the war, the railings were to be taken down and melted, to be made into armaments.

‘Hello,’ said someone. Alice jumped. It was James Bellinger, whom she had not seen since leaving London two years ago. He was in uniform. ‘I saw you in Southampton Row,’ he said. He sucked in his lips as he tried to smile.

Alice had changed. She had colour in her cheeks, and her narrow eyes were bright. Her eyebrows seemed darker and thicker, her mouth more red, her neck longer and more graceful. She was dressed more tidily than she used to be: she wore a tam’o’shanter, a long buttoned jersey, a straight skirt and cloth-topped boots. A long striped scarf was thrown round her neck. Clementina had bought the clothes for her, because Alice had arrived from Melton Balbridge in the black dress which she had worn at Diana’s funeral, and had brought nothing else with her. She looked older and happier and slightly more conventional: she could have been any girl undergraduate, James thought, if she hadn’t been Alice.

‘Hello‚’ said Alice, biting her thumb. ‘So you’ve volunteered.’

‘Yes, I’ve just finished my training.’

‘An officer, too, I see. You don’t do anything by halves, do you?’ said Alice coldly.

‘I’m not a pacifist,’ he said. ‘I never was, if you remember.’

‘I remember.’ There was a pause. ‘You look handsome in that uniform. Quite the gallant young subaltern.’

‘You look very pretty. Where are you going?’

‘Just for a bit of a walk.’

‘Do you mind if I come with you?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Were you — remembering the old days, Alice?’ he said as they walked along.

‘Of course I was. I haven’t seen the house since I left.’

‘Clementina didn’t tell me you were back. Why are you back? You’re only what — seventeen?’

‘Clem was being tactful. And why am I back already? It’s a long story, but mostly because I’ve had a baby.’

‘My God, Alice, why didn’t you tell me? Do you think I wouldn’t have helped you? Is it a boy or a girl?’ She looked very calm. ‘It is mine, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t be silly, James. You know I was with my uncle for more than a year. I wrote to you. You don’t think I could have given birth to my bastard at Balbridge Rectory, do you? No‚ I had an affair with someone down there. The stable-boy, to be precise. I was packed off to Clem when I got pregnant.’

‘The stable-boy!’

‘Oh dear, James, being an officer has changed you! Why on earth shouldn’t I go to bed with whoever I please? He was very nice, too.’

‘And now you’ve deserted him, too?’

‘What do you mean him, too? You dropped
me,
remember? At least … Well,’ she continued, ‘I have got a third lover, if you must know. An enchanting and adorable and skilled lover. He makes me glow all over.’

‘You always were fast.’

‘Oh James, what an outdated reproach that is.’

‘Loose. Whorish,’ he shouted.

‘Don’t be abusive. When do you leave for France, then?’

‘Next week.’

‘Have a nice time. Goodbye, James.’ She shook his hand and walked back to Gordon Square. ‘Oh, Anatole!’ she said to herself as she rounded the corner of Russell Square.

James stood in the street, staring after her. His mouth was twisted up.

*

‘Letter for you, miss‚’ said the maid after breakfast two days
later, just when she met Alice in the hall. Alice sat on the stairs to read it. The baby, Michael, could be heard howling in the nursery upstairs.

The envelope was battered. Alice’s name and address had been carefully printed on it. It had been re-addressed from Melton Balbridge.
Dear
Alice
, the letter began:

Alice went upstairs and wrote a letter to Luke. She told him about Michael, what a fine child he was, and how much Augustus and Clementina loved him. She said that if he liked he could come and see her when he had home leave. She would like that.

Then she went back to the breakfast room, where Clementina was darning socks in the morning sunlight. She handed her the letter, saying it was from Luke.

‘You can argue with the young fools who go off with their heads stuffed with Rupert Brooke’s nonsense,’ she said when she had read it. ‘But what can you do about that?’ She went
on with her darning. Alice stood in front of her. ‘What could he say, poor boy? He never knew you, did he, Alice?’

She looked up. ‘His mother would be so proud of this, if it didn’t have that last paragraph.’ Alice paused. ‘He was so wonderful with animals,’ she said suddenly, and she left the room. Clementina wondered whether she was shocked by his attitude, or puzzled, or saddened, or made to feel guilty.