Chapter Fourteen
I pressed my hand against my now thankfully empty belly while I used the other to blot the tears from my cheeks. Mrs Daw, who was holding my hair out of the way as I bent over a washbasin, passed me a wet cloth.
‘Have ye told him yet, Mrs S?’ she asked.
I drew the cool towel across my face, pressing it into my eyes. ‘No, not yet.’ My throat was raw. ‘I wanted to make sure first.’
Mrs Daw made a clucking noise and, releasing my hair, draped a cloth over the pungent bowl. She looked pointedly at my swollen breasts and the slight swell of my stomach. ‘If ye wait any longer, it’ll trot over to the master and call him da.’
I released a very unladylike belch. She was right. But once I told Bram, my condition would be real.
The rattle of carriages and coaches, the low drone of street talk, interspersed with some sharp whistles, drifted in the open window.
A dull, deep horn sounded – shipping upon the river.
There was the faint trill of birds. Summer was upon us, not that the weather had been notified yet.
The light delayed its departure a little longer each day, but the rain and cold decided to remain.
It made shopping a singularly unpleasant task, especially as Matilda and I had to rely on the crowded omnibuses to take us to our preferred stores.
How could I leave the house, let alone shop, when I had my own growing baggage to carry?
While Mrs Daw fussed, I sat in the chair by the window.
Would this be my lot once my pregnancy was revealed?
Confined to the flat, unable to entertain, to visit, to roam anywhere?
My eyes alighted on the vase of geraniums upon the dresser.
The scent had been faint, but with the door closed, and mingled with the sickly-sweet odour rising from the basin, it was altogether cloying. My stomach flipped.
Carrying a child meant I’d be restricted in every sense of the word, and the life I was just starting to make for myself would become insipid, dull, and yes, cloying.
Mrs Daw had to understand, the longer I delayed telling anyone about my state, the longer I was guaranteed some freedom. Nevertheless, I gave her the answer she wanted to hear.
‘I’ll tell him soon.’
‘Make sure ye do, Mrs S,’ she said, lifting the basin carefully and screwing up her snub nose. ‘I fear if ye don’t, either his brother or sister will say something and that wouldn’t be right.’
‘You think they know?’
Mrs Daw chuckled. ‘I think everyone except the dear master does, what with you barking like a seal every morn and looking so wan and pale. It’s no wonder, mind, what with ye gaddin’ about the streets, hosting your teas every other Sunday and the like.
A woman in your condition needs rest, and lots of it. ’
Mrs Daw had been so excited when she’d found me up-chucking three days in a row.
Her reaction would have been heartwarming if I wasn’t so afraid.
Not just of being restricted, but of the birth itself.
One didn’t grow up in a large family in a busy neighbourhood like mine without being aware of what happened to a woman when she became pregnant, and the dangers of birthing.
I thought of Mother’s agony when Alice was born, her sorrow when first Mary, then Maggie, died.
Then there were all the other babbies that slipped away in rags or the privy.
Mother became so ill after each one. What if this baby never made it either?
When we were very young, Phil and I would ask what happened to the babbie growing inside of Mother, aunty or a neighbour, why it was that one day they were swell-bellied and the next they weren’t. We were told the kiddykin was lost.
We’d lie in bed at night, faces close together, and whisper about lost babbies, wondering where they went.
They must be very tiny to fall out of the woman, so we imagined them trapped in another part of the body – under the arm, behind a rib, or perhaps escaping out of the belly button or another orifice, the most obvious one not occurring to us then.
We decided lost babbies must go to a special place in heaven, not where Great-grandma and Grandpa, Maggie, Mary or Cousin Bobby Balcombe went, but one with fields of flowers, carpets made of dewdrops and windows of ice-lollies; where angels with rainbow wings would feed and care for them.
Then there was what childbearing did to women.
My trim mother gradually turned into a sagging, depleted sack of flesh with heavily stretched breasts and a flabby stomach.
It was the same for the women in my Clontarf neighbourhood.
Bearing more than two children altered them beyond recognition, stole their youthful svelteness and beauty.
Their bodies ceased to be their own and were surrendered to the will of others, to motherhood, before, as time passed, they became invisible.
And what did motherhood mean but a body that oozed, leaked, bled, stretched, ached, was torn asunder and then never put back the same way again? Maybe it was the expression on my face, or my pallor, but Mrs Daw suddenly took pity on me.
‘How about I fix ye a nice cup of tea and some toast afore Mr Stoker rises?’
Before I could answer, bile flew into my mouth. In a flash, Mrs Daw had the basin under my chin.
Just in time.
‘I’m with child.’
It was midday, Saturday. George was at the hospital; Matilda was in the kitchen, talking to Mrs Daw. Emma was cleaning Bram’s study. He’d be leaving for the Lyceum shortly. We’d a moment alone. It was the opportune time to tell him.
That and the fact Mrs Daw threatened to if I didn’t.
Bram was enjoying a late breakfast, early luncheon.
I blurted out my news then studied his face to gauge his reaction; the burnished whiskers, the shiny hair brushed back from a wise forehead, those clear grey eyes that even now were looking at me as if I’d spoken in a foreign language. Or with forked tongue.
Would our child look like Bram? Or me?
‘Did you hear, Bram?’ I asked as he stared at me uncomprehending.
I tried not to look at the kippers floating in some kind of sauce on his plate.
I was already breathing through my mouth.
The smell alone had turned my stomach over faster than a Covent Garden tumbler.
‘Come Christmas, we’ll be a family of three – or five if George and Matilda are still with us. ’
He slowly closed the paper he’d been reading, put down his fork, and dabbed his lips with a napkin.
Outside, a quarrel erupted between two cab drivers.
I could see them out of the corner of my eye, flapping their hands, whips waving like ribbons above their heads.
Men gathered, the horses uneasy, disliking the raised voices, the flicking switches and shouts.
There was a sharp whistle, and a peeler in his smart uniform appeared.
As quickly as the affray began, it broke up.
‘I … I … oh my,’ said Bram and blinked furiously.
Any time I’d seen Bram with young ones, he’d been so kind and thoughtful.
Ellen’s two children, Edith and Gordon, were often at the theatre and Bram made a great fuss of them, allowing them to play with the paints in the props room, or pull on the ropes that lowered the sandbags and adjusted the flats.
I thought then what a good father he’d make.
He also did a lot for Mr Irving’s sons, Harry and Laurence, more than their father ever did.
As for me being a mother, well, I hadn’t paid the notion any heed and with good reason.
I knew a baby was inevitable. One couldn’t have conjugal relations, even as rarely and uneasily as we did, and not expect consequences. I just hoped we’d have a little longer as a couple; that I’d have more time to grow accustomed to being a wife before I was also a mother. A mother!
‘Oh my, indeed,’ I repeated.
He slowly stood and, taking my hand, helped me rise. Then he pulled me into his arms. His heart was beating faster than Hamlet’s drummers at Elsinore Castle.
‘There’ll be much to consider,’ he said.
‘There will.’ I broke free of his hold and moved to the window, where I couldn’t smell his breakfast. I began to number off on my fingers. ‘We’ll need a midwife and doctor, furnish a nursery. Then, there’ll be a nursemaid —’
‘They will cost,’ he said grimly.
I wanted to wipe the frown from his brows. ‘But we can afford it, can’t we?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He flashed what passed for a reassuring smile, but I could see the calculation behind it. ‘Have you told Phil?’
I shook my head. ‘Not yet.’
‘Your mother?’
‘I haven’t told anyone, except you. Though, Mrs Daw knows, and she suspects your brother and sister might. I … haven’t been well most mornings. You generally weren’t around to hear. Or asleep.’
‘Oh. Forgive me.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not your fault.’
Bram sat and slowly resumed his breakfast. ‘I suppose we’ll have to tell folk.’
I bit back a laugh. ‘Having a child isn’t exactly something I can hide.’ I smoothed a hand over my stomach.
Bram finished eating in silence.
Cutlery clattered on the plate, and he joined me by the window.
We looked down upon the street, side by side, shoulders and arms touching.
Below, a parade of people and animals passed.
A chimney sweep shedding soot. A child with a kite.
A maid with a basket of wilting flowers.
Vendors wheeling half-empty carts. Shopkeepers in white aprons standing in doorways with folded arms, surveying the street.
Men leading horses, avoiding the puddles or stamping through them.
Broughams jounced along The Strand, two diverging to allow an omnibus passage.
Life. Together, Bram and I had made a life, one more to join the throng.
Surely, this was a joyous occasion, something to celebrate.
Why wasn’t I happier? Why wasn’t Bram? Was he as scared as I was? Did he also think we weren’t ready?
‘We don’t need to tell anyone else just yet, do we?’ asked Bram quietly in his lovely brogue.
Relief made my knees weak. I turned to him. ‘No, not yet. We can keep this to ourselves a little longer, though I might have to explain why I can’t abide —’ I waved my hand towards his empty plate. ‘Certain smells and foods.’
‘Ellen is no fool,’ said Bram.
‘Nor Lady Jane nor the Gilberts.’
‘They can have their suspicions.’ He put a finger under my chin, tilting it upwards. ‘We’ve made a baby,’ he whispered, his eyes full of wonder in the rain-pearly light. Wonder, fear and something else.
‘We have,’ I said, and drew his hand down to rest over my midriff. ‘Another Stoker to add to the cast.’
Bram touched his lips to mine briefly. I braced myself lest the kiss deepened, but he drew away.
‘Thank you, Florence. Thank you.’
At last, I thought, I can give my husband something that Henry Irving cannot.