The Love Child

“Back from foreign parts,” added Sally. “Why people want to go of! like that I can’t make out, and to bring a little baby into that sort of place … it’s likely to affect it for the rest of its life. It’s heathen, nothing more.”

“I am sure you will soon make a nice little Christian of her, Sally,” I said.

There was a hint hi my words which made her perk up her ears. She looked at me rather breathlessly. Babies were to Sally Nullens what lovers were to romantic young ladies.

I said quickly: “Lady Stevens suggested to me that you might be prepared to go over to the Abbas and look after her child. I thought it was a good idea.”

Sally’s nose had turned slightly pink at the tip. I heard her whisper something like “a dear little baby.”

“Would you consider going, Sally?”

It was an unnecessary question. I could see that in her mind she was already getting the nursery together.

She pretended to consider. “A girl, is it?”

“The most beautiful little girl in the world, Sally.”

“I never cared much for beauties,” said Emily Philpots. “They give themselves airs.”

I could see by the way she screwed up her face that Emily was growing sick with envy.

She was seeing a dark future when she hadn’t even Sally Nullens to complain to.

I was overwhelmed with pity for them suddenly. I thought how sad it must be to be old and unwanted.

“The child is going to need a governess, too,” I said. “I believe a child cannot begin to learn too early.”

“It’s true,” agreed Emily Philpots fervently, the red colour suffusing her face by now. “Children need the guiding hand even before they can walk.”

“I think it is very likely that Lady Stevens will ask you to go along with Sally to the Abbas.”

“Well, I never!” cried Sally, beginning to rock vigorously in the rocking chair which she always used. “A little baby again.”

“May I write to Lady Stevens, and tell her that you accept, Sally?” I asked. “At the same time I’ll suggest that Mistress Philpots goes with you.”

Happiness had suddenly arrived in that room. I could tell its presence by pink-tipped noses, watery eyes and the squeak of the rocking chair.

Life was unsatisfactory. The periods I looked forward to were those when I could go to Eyot Abbas. Naturally I could not go too frequently. Even going as I did aroused comment.

Harriet contrived that I should see Carlotta as much as possible; she visited us and stayed for quite a long time. Sally Nullens was already installed in the nursery and Emily Philpots was there too, fussing over the baby’s clothes and adorning all her garments with the most exquisite stitching.

Carlotta had soon become aware of her importance. As she lay in her cradle, kicking a little and smiling contentedly, she was like a monarch receiving her courtiers, and she would look with what must surely have been a certain complacency on the adoring throng who gazed down at her in rapture. Benjie was her devoted slave and worshipped with the rest. He thought it was exciting to have a little sister and he was very glad because his mother was home again. Gregory doted on her and I believed that Harriet had willed him to think the child really was his. Harriet continued to play the proud mother and Sally Nullens looked younger every day and grew more and more aggressive towards the rest of us, declaring, “I’m not having my baby kept from her rest!” and trying to shoo people out. Oddly enough, almost as though she had some extra sense, she never tried to turn me out of the nursery. She said it was as pretty as a picture to see me sitting there petting the baby. Mistress Carlotta had taken a real fancy to me, she told me. “And that’s something with Mistress Imperious, I can tell you!” Then there was Emily Philpots, fussing if her clothes were not immaculate.

“They’ll ruin the child between them,” said Christabel.

Carlotta took all this adulation as her right.

My father scarcely looked at her. I wondered what he would have said if he had known she was his grandchild.

He once made a comment on her. “She’ll be another such as her mother,” he said, and that was not meant to be a compliment, for as I have said there was a definite antipathy between him and Harriet.

We passed into the unsatisfactory summer when I made an effort to continue with my life as it had been before the great adventure. Christabel and I made a show of taking lessons together but my thoughts were always at Eyot Abbas with my child. Christabel, too, was absentminded; that unhappy look had come back to her and I could tell by some of the bitterness of her comments that she was dissatisfied with her lot.

Once she said: “What will become of me when I am no longer required to teach you?”

I answered: “You could stay with me as long as you wished to.”

“I’d be a sort of Sally Nullens or Emily Philpots, I suppose.”