Epilogue
Two years later
It’s over.
After the long night of pain, the dark hours of labouring, he is born as the day is beginning. She has asked that the curtains be kept open throughout it all so she can orientate herself like the ancient sailors did, navigating their way by the moon and stars through dangerous waters, steering their course through uncharted seas. When the sky lightens and the storm of pain inside her has finished raging, she finds herself washed up, exhausted and elated, on the shore of a new land.
Mrs Burgess from the farmhouse has been there all night, her face swimming in and out of focus. It is she who eases the baby into the world and tells them that they have a son, and suddenly they are all crying—Kate, Jem (who was supposed to stay downstairs but has been with her from the first raw shout of pain), and their tiny, perfect boy. Even Mrs Burgess, who has delivered five healthy children of her own and more calves and foals and piglets than you can count, has tears rolling down her tired face.
It’s over.
Afterwards, there is the cleaning up—the bundling up of bloodied sheets and the changing of her sweat-soaked nightgown for a clean one. Mrs Burgess shoves everything into the basket of her bicycle to take to the farm for laundering, coming back upstairs to make sure Kate is settled before she leaves, bringing her a cup of sweetened tea.
She has lent them a crib: a beautiful old swinging one that has rocked numerous babies in its embrace, including, more than half a century ago, Mr Burgess. In the slow, ripe days of autumn Kate trimmed it with fresh white linen and took the piece of fine Nottingham lace Miss Dunn gave her for her wedding veil to make a canopy. The dragonfly brooch is pinned to it, and nestles in its delicate folds. She will lay the baby in the crib soon, but for now she wants to hold him against her heartbeat. To gaze at his miraculous face as he sleeps away his first morning in the world, his secretive smile suggesting he knows more about its workings than they do.
‘He has your mouth…’ Her voice is a whisper of wonder as she hands the baby, swaddled in a snowy blanket, to Jem. With infinite tenderness he carries his son to the window and holds him at arm’s length, twisting his head to get a look at him.
‘He has your dark hair.’
His vision is mostly back. There is a gap—a patch of blankness in his right eye—that means they can’t make him pick up a gun again, no matter how long the war lasts and how desperate the army gets. But he can harness a horse and steer a plough and take charge of the harvest. He can fix a roof and chop wood for fires and make a home for them. He can look into her eyes on sleepy mornings in their creaking brass bed and he can see the face of his newborn son.
Between them they can do anything.
‘He’s called Jack, isn’t he?’ she says. They haven’t discussed it, but it seems obvious—natural—though for a moment he says nothing, and she wonders if it’s too painful for him and he’d rather choose something else. But he nods, and she realises that he hasn’t spoken because he can’t. He comes to the bed and places the baby back in her arms, where he already fits, and kisses her softly on the mouth.
‘I love you.’
He goes downstairs to get one of the remaining bottles of champagne from the crate that Lady Hyde bought for their wedding (arranged as soon as she had received a reply to her enquiry about Alec Ross, and confirmation that he had died of dysentery in hospital at Wimereux in March 1917); and Kate lies against the bank of pillows and watches the milky mist lift a little, to reveal the apple tree, where a few fruits cling to the topmost branches, and the plums and the damsons, still wearing the last of their faded autumn finery. Through the haze of her own happiness she spares a thought for Eliza’s baby, born without a cry in the room across the landing. Eliza has made her promise that she will write the minute there is news. She wants to come and visit as soon as possible, though Kate mustn’t go to any trouble. She’ll bring buns from the shop on the corner, Eliza says. You can’t tell the difference between shop bought and homemade, anyway, and she is flush with her factory wages.
Jem brings the champagne up and they drink it from teacups, and it tastes of sunlight and celebration. She is already drunk with exhaustion and happiness, reeling from the perfection of what they have created together. She lays the baby in his crib and slips into a half slumber.
She comes to with the clamour of voices downstairs—Joseph and Davy—and smiles, glad that they have come. Joseph lives up at the farm in a bothy with the farmhands, and has taken over responsibility for the poultry. He walks down several times a week (a little unevenly now, though his limp is less pronounced than it was) and brings eggs, which she exchanges for the cakes she makes with them, and jars of jam and loaves of bread (because it’s still impossible to fill him up). Last year, when Mary Wells’s heart finally gave out, it was Joseph who suggested Davy as an apprentice. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that Davy, who has an animal’s instinct, has a way with them too. No one can soothe a flustered hen like he can (the egg yield has almost doubled) or calm a farrowing sow as easily. It’s a gift, Mr Burgess says. He’s never seen the like.
Jem comes in, and for a moment she can’t read the expression on his face. And then he is beside her, kneeling down and taking her face between his hands as he tells her the news that Joseph and Davy have brought—that in the early hours of the morning, while she was caught in the eye of the storm, men were gathering in France to sign a treaty to bring the war to an end. Their son has been born into a world at peace.
Jem gets up and opens the window. The cold air is as clear and sparkling as the champagne. At the sound of the church bells echoing over the damp winter fields, Jack opens his dark blue eyes and blinks.
It is over.
And it is just beginning.