The Morning Gift

But, of course, Penelope did come in, concerned for her motherhood, and within minutes the boys were at each other’s throats and Thisbe was lying on the floor drumming her heels. Too many sages had made their way into Penelope Hartley’s head: Rudolf Steiner who said children should not learn to read till their milk teeth were shed; the Sufi chieftain who set Penelope to her meditations instead of the washing up; A. S. Neill with his child-centred education. The poor, confused children of Penelope Hartley were so child-centred that they almost imploded each night in the confines of the tiny cottage – and tonight, as so often before, Ruth who was supposed to finish her work at seven, carried Thisbe upstairs and eased her into her nappies and sat with her till she slept.

And then the long evening began when she went to her attic under the eaves which was at least her own and looked out at the darkness and the rain, and longed for her mother and the lore and certainties of her own childhood and the painted cradle, now splintered wood, in which her baby should have lain.

But she wouldn’t yield. It wasn’t so long now – less than two months. She would see it through on her own. Not whose I am, but who I am, there lies my search . . . The lines of some half-remembered poem ran again through her head.

Only who was she? Someone who had loved and been rejected; a daughter who had caused her parents disappointment and pain . . . and now, soon, a mother who knew nothing.

And yet she had no regrets. She blamed no one, not even Verena, hissing her ultimatum in the cloakroom, threatening to expose her condition unless she left Thameside then and there, and for ever. In a way Verena had done her a service, bringing home the contempt and disgust with which the world might now regard her state. If her father, so strict, so upright, had turned his back on her as a fallen woman, Ruth couldn’t have borne it: she’d have revealed the marriage and then it would have all have begun . . . finding Quin, letting him know . . . begging for a place in his life . . . And Verena had kept her own side of the bargain; no one at college knew what had happened or where she was.

Nor had Quin carried her dreamily from his sofa to his bed. He had said: ‘Wait; there are things to be attended to.’ He had said it very gently, very lovingly, cupping her face in his hands, but firmly: he had begun to leave her, and it was she who had clung on to him and said: ‘No, no, you mustn’t go!’ . . . because even then she couldn’t bear to be away from him. ‘It’s absolutely safe,’ she’d said. ‘It’s my completely safe time; I know because of Dr Felton’s wife and the thermometers. It’s as safe as houses!’

She hadn’t been lying; she’d believed it and he’d believed her. Only houses, these days, were not so very safe: houses in Guernica and Canton and Warsaw toppled like cards as bombs fell on them, and she’d been wrong. She’d been a whole week out in her calculations and that was another mark chalked up to Fräulein Lutzenholler and Professor Freud. She wasn’t usually sloppy about dates – it was that damnable thing way below the level of reason which all along had wanted nothing except to belong to this one man.

And even now, an official ‘unmarried mother’ from whom the older villagers averted their eyes, even now when Quin had unmistakably rejected her, there was, deep down below the anxiety and fear for the future, an unquenchable sense of joy because she was carrying his child.

Only the child itself had lately disconcerted her. This fishlike creature still unable to breathe or eat except by her decree, had developed a will of its own. Ruth did not need the doctors in the antenatal clinic to which she travelled once a fortnight on innumerable buses, to tell her that her baby was fit and well, but what about its mental state – its obstinacy? It disagreed completely with Ruth’s careful plans and was profoundly uninterested in her voyage of self-discovery.

Bowmont is only sixty miles away, it said, twisting its foot merrily round her spinal nerves. You may be an upstart and an outcast, but I’m half a Somerville.

I want, it said, my home.

At the end of November, Leonie received a visit from Mrs Burtt who had left the Willow to work in a munitions factory and was greatly missed by the customers. Smartly dressed in a new brown coat and a hat with a feather, she was carrying a small parcel wrapped in silver paper and seemed a little shy and tentative which was not her usual state.

‘I’m sorry to be bothering you,’ she said, ‘but . . . well, I thought you wouldn’t mind; you wouldn’t take it amiss.’

‘How could I do this?’ asked Leonie. ‘I am very happy to see you.’

She led Mrs Burtt into the sitting room, in which one could actually sit once more now that the piano had been sent back, and offered coffee which Mrs Burtt refused.