Chapter Eleven 1895
Chapter Eleven
It took a long time after losing Amelia for Theo to feel well again.
The sadness followed her around like a shadow.
After a few weeks she began to dread Ralph’s approach – be it to medicate or to kiss her.
His kisses often led to other things, and she was scared of falling pregnant again.
She’d proved herself unfit for that, and accepted the constant, dragging heartache as her just deserts.
Ralph’s face was terrible when she pulled away from him.
‘Theo, don’t,’ he whispered. ‘I simply cannot bear to have you recoil from me!’
So she would relent, and take whatever he wished to give. None of it was his fault, after all.
‘Another child will mend this hurt,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t be afraid.’
His certainty was a mystery to Theo. They could not say why it had happened with Amelia, except that Theo had been too anxious, or had failed physically in some other way.
So why should it not happen again? Fear was the very thing that might bring about what she most feared, and she could tread that merciless spiral for hours unless Audrey interrupted her with a query, or with a word in the newspaper that she didn’t understand.
Audrey had taken to reading like a duck to water.
Theo had started her off with an ABC, borrowed from Hermione, just as her nanny had done with her: D is for Daisy’s Dolls; H is for Harry’s Hobby Horse.
It was all so childish that Theo was embarrassed, but Audrey didn’t seem to be: she traced the shape of each letter with her fingertip, frowning in concentration.
And the first time she read a word by herself – fry, from one of Mrs Meredith’s recipe books – her smile was one of sheer triumph.
Theo listened to her read aloud as much as possible, and her vocabulary grew all the time.
‘Serendipity,’ Theo said, on one occasion when Audrey interrupted her reverie. ‘It means . . . a happy coincidence. A well-timed stroke of luck.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ Audrey said. ‘And what’s the reverse?’
‘The opposite. It . . . I don’t think it has one. Not a particular word, in any case. Just . . . misfortune. Something that happens by ill luck instead.’
‘I see.’ Audrey fidgeted the paper in her hands. ‘And one might just as easily have good luck as bad, I suppose.’
Theo looked up, noting the conviction in Audrey’s voice. ‘Was it only bad luck, then?’ she asked, barely a whisper.
‘You’d never have done a single thing to harm your baby, miss. Knowingly or not. Is that not true?’
‘It’s true.’ Tears ached in her throat. ‘It is.’
So, Theo dared to believe it. Still, it took more than a year for her to fall pregnant again – long enough for her to think that Amelia had been her only chance.
Ralph sent for a specialist from Southampton, Dr Ogilvy, who examined her with metal instruments that seemed better suited to a veterinarian than a doctor.
He probed inside her with a lamp and his fingers as though she were a machine with a fault, muttering complaints when the discomfort made her fidget.
The intrusion left her feeling less than human, and she hated the way Dr Ogilvy then spoke to Ralph, not to her.
He recommended a further examination under sedation.
‘No,’ Theo said, dry-mouthed. ‘I do not want that man to touch me ever again.’
‘Theo, my dear—’
‘No. This is my body.’
Ralph gave her a steady look. ‘I am both your husband and your physician,’ he said. ‘It is in my care to do what is best for you.’
A shudder of fear, that Theo was careful not to show. She’d learned that her nerves reduced her, in Ralph’s eyes. They gave him cause to overturn her decisions. So she held his gaze, and did not raise her voice.
‘If you love me, you will not force me.’
Ralph frowned and looked away. He seemed torn, but then nodded. ‘Very well.’
In due course another child took root, and Theo felt the wonder of it again.
It shone such a bright light that the shadow of fear all but disappeared.
All but. Traces of it lurked in the corners of her mind, and caught her unawares.
A twinge of indigestion, an ache in her back; any tiny mishap and the fear leapt like a flame given air.
But midsummer had passed before they realised she was expecting, so that could not be a factor.
The fifth anniversaries of Kit’s trial and execution loomed ahead of her; then the date that Toby had left for Durham.
Each came and went until there was nothing else to fear from the calendar, and she breathed a little easier.
The bump was bigger than before, and the sickness a little less, but her mouth tasted strange, and the list of things she wanted to eat grew short.
These subtle differences reassured her: this was a different pregnancy; a different child.
Then the baby began to move – the first time in response to hot cocoa.
Theo felt the nudge of a tiny fist or foot, a wriggle no stronger than a minnow, and her heart thumped in recognition.
She told no one. Ralph would be happy, but she wanted it to be hers alone for a little while.
The secrecy felt safer, somehow. She waited three days before showing him, putting his hands in position as she sipped her cocoa.
His delight made her feel bad for having kept it to herself.
‘This one is strong, my love,’ he said.
The pains started on New Year’s Day. Sitting rigid with fear at her writing desk, Theo tried desperately to believe it was indigestion, or back-ache.
But there was no mistaking the horribly familiar feeling.
She sat with it for a while, head bowed, until the blood started and she knew she’d have to move, and call for Audrey and Ralph.
Tears slid down her face. It hurt to breathe.
When the labour was over she pushed herself up from the pillows, peering down before the midwife had the chance to wrap and remove her baby.
A tiny boy about as long as her forearm, with translucent skin and smears of blood on his swollen eyelids.
With a helpless moan she positioned her hands around him, not quite daring to touch him.
She gasped when he stirred – when he moved his arm. An arm no thicker than her finger.
‘He’s alive!’ she cried.
The midwife was pulling at the corners of the bedsheet, ready to gather it all up and take it away; the blood and the sweat and her baby.
Theo glared at her. ‘Stop it! He’s alive!’
The woman left the room, and came back with Ralph. Theo made a shield of her own body, crouching over her baby. She didn’t dare pick him up, but she put the tip of her little finger into the palm of his hand, willing him to close his fingers around it, willing him to move again. But he did not.
‘I saw him move,’ she said, when all trace of him had been scrubbed away.
‘You cannot have done, my love.’
‘I did! He . . . he moved his arm . . .’
‘It’s just not possible, Theo. No foetus so . . . unfinished—’
‘Do not use that word!’
Ralph put his arm around her but she sat rigid, her knees drawn up tight. It felt as though she would come apart if she relaxed even a tiny bit.
‘He was our son,’ she said. ‘He should have a name, and a funeral.’
‘Theo, he was not . . . here!’ Ralph shook his head.
‘But he was! He moved, and I . . . I held his hand. And I loved him!’
‘You must try to be rational.’
‘Does it . . . does it make it easier for you? Is it easier to think of him not as a child, but as a . . . medical condition?’
‘Theo, no. Of course I feel it! But you must not allow yourself to be overwhelmed. These things happen, and life must go on. Why, even Princess Helena, the Queen’s own daughter, failed to carry a baby to term on one occasion!
I have heard of women miscarrying seven or even eight times before succeeding. ’
Theo stared at him, confounded that he could expect that fact to be a comfort. Ralph shifted as if her gaze were too heavy.
‘Perhaps if you had let Dr Ogilvy continue . . .’
He didn’t finish the sentence. Theo turned away from him, curling on to her side. She closed her eyes.
Ralph suggested that Theo stay in bed for several weeks, and she didn’t argue.
He forbade all visitors except Diana, who came, muffled up from the cold, and sat at her bedside for a while.
Theo found herself sitting up straighter and trying to hide her grief.
Knowing that her mother would find it uncomfortable.
‘How far along was it, this time?’ Diana said.
‘Around six months, I think.’
Diana looked away across the room. There were touches of grey at her temples now, and the cold light from the window aged her skin.
At length, she drew in a breath. ‘It is not uncommon.’
Theo sensed a subtle gravity to the words. ‘Do you mean . . . did you lose a child, too? Besides Amy, I mean?’
Diana glanced back at her, mastered herself, and the moment passed.
‘It doesn’t do to dwell, Theo,’ she said briskly. ‘Think of it as of anything else – practice makes perfect.’
This Theo could not allow. ‘It isn’t like anything else,’ she said softly.
Diana turned away again. ‘Well. What we cannot change, we must simply bear.’
The weather turned raw. Theo’s convalescence was monochrome: black silhouettes against a flat white sky.
She felt smothered by her grief. Audrey lit candles to banish the gloom, and read aloud even when Theo turned away and put her hands over her ears like a child.
Only very gradually did the pall begin to lift.
She spoke a little more, ate a little better.
Listened to Audrey’s voice, and to the words she was reading.
‘Quay,’ she said quietly one day. ‘I know it looks like “kway”, but it’s pronounced “key”. It’s just one of those illogical words that come from the French.’
Audrey looked up from the page, and smiled.