Their father said in a letter that the emptiness of the house became more appalling every day. He passed the time in a trance, looking forward to the night, but when sleep did come he woke up because the house was on fire, only to find that it was not. The nightmare came back, and he was afraid that he would be burned to death on a night when he did not dream at all. He wanted to hear real voices instead of imaginary ones, no matter what they said about him. The servants had left, and he didn’t know why. Perhaps Clara would arrange things. Emma and the baby could have the large sunny room overlooking the garden.
The letter was not a concession, she knew, but a demand that Clara could not ignore. She reflected on how the world must be full of old, selfish and no longer innocent children. Most had never been innocent, though they had all been helpless. Her father still was. He took care to remind her that he did not have much longer to live. He lied out of self-pity. She thought about his life of recurring and debilitating mental agony that was inexplicable until John had been killed in action, and Rachel had died. He and Rachel had been such sweethearts; right till the end, she thought scathingly; and he would never know how lucky he had been that one of the Chosen had chosen him.
The only hope of getting another house, Clara said, was to take a cottage. It was impossible to find anything in Cambridge. But Emma couldn’t bear to be cut off somewhere in the countryside. ‘I’m dying of loneliness as it is. In any case, can you imagine me in some honeysuckle bijou rural slum without even room to swing a baby? Lighting oil lamps and getting water from a well? I’d become prim, and eccentric, and as coarse as an old witch. I don’t feel like growing old just yet.’
‘The Jenkinsons will be back from New Zealand in three weeks,’ Clara reminded her. ‘We have to move.’
‘It’ll be fun having nowhere to go. Do you think we’ll be put out on the street like vagrants? What an adventure if we have to go to the workhouse!’
‘Oh do be serious.’
‘All right. If it upsets you, I’ll do as you say.’
‘Father asked us to go back.’
‘You mean he wants you to be his housekeeper?’
‘He’d like us to go home.’
Emma was silent.
‘Don’t pout like that. I suppose he does think we’ll make his life tolerable, but it might suit us. After all, Highgate’s a good place to live, and you’ll be quite close to town. Maybe we’ll get to a show, or go to dinner now and again. Even I fancy a bit of distraction.’
The baby cried, and Emma ran up the stairs calling: ‘Anything you like. I’ll do whatever you say.’
14
Emma watched her pack. ‘You’re like the Rock of Gibraltar.’
Clara hadn’t thought of it like that, saw herself as stupidly undertaking tasks beyond her strength, and never able to change her mind or complain once she had started, but always more or less muddling through. It was not a matter of assuming her mother’s place so much as of facing situations Rachel wouldn’t have considered. There seemed nothing but herself standing between order and disaster, yet the chaos inside could dissolve her strength at any moment. She knew she must hold on and not let it happen, and felt frightened at each new responsibility.
The carriers came for their trunks, cases and perambulator. In half an hour a motor cab would take them to the station, and Mr and Mrs Jenkinson would not know that the house had been occupied in their absence. Clara would lock all doors and give the keys to the estate agents on their way to the railway. The maid had been sent off with her box and an extra ten shillings, and there was nothing to do but sit and wait. ‘We won’t notice the bad weather in London,’ Clara said.
Emma sat by the last of the embers with the swaddled baby on her knees. ‘The first thing we must do is get a nursemaid, so that we can go out together.’
‘It’ll be spring on Hampstead Heath,’ Clara said.
‘We’ll have supper at Romano’s! London’s going to be marvellous. I hope our old gramophone still goes. We’ll go to the Alhambra and the Empire. We’ll actually see people in Hyde Park! I want to come back to life. I feel I’ve been cut off for years.’
‘You poor thing,’ Clara mocked. ‘I do hope you won’t be disappointed in the great metropolis.’
‘I won’t,’ Emma said vehemently. ‘Believe me.’
‘Well, there’ll be more to do than just go around enjoying yourself.’
When Emma reached to press her hand the baby almost fell from her knee. She caught him in time, but cried out: ‘Don’t bother me with your sanctimonious advice. I’ve told you before that I don’t like it. I can look after myself.’
Clara sat straight. Perhaps there would be an end to it soon. There had to be. She wanted to go away, be by herself at a quiet resort in Switzerland where the scenery would rest her soul. She would stay at a hotel on the Rigi for a couple of months and refresh herself, and perhaps meet some other woman of the right sort to talk to in the lounge, or go on long walks together.
‘I keep losing my temper,’ Emma said, ‘but I don’t mean to. I’m sorry.’
Clara smiled. What nonsense to consider taking a holiday while her family needed her. ‘I suppose I’d lose mine if I were in your place. Thank God we’re going home. We’ll be better off there.’
In the train, thin vomit slopped down Thomas’s shawl, and Emma’s eyes enlarged with panic. ‘What shall we do?’
An elderly white-haired man reading his newspaper moved along the seat for fear he would be showered.
‘We must get him to a doctor,’ Emma cried.
‘I wouldn’t pull that communication cord if I were you,’ the man said. ‘It’s a very serious offence.’
Emma turned, forgetting about Thomas. ‘It’s my bloody baby, and he might be dying, and if he is I’ll pull whatever I bloody well like. That’s what the bloody communication cord is for.’ She passed Thomas to Clara, who lifted him high against her shoulder and patted him gently till the vomiting and screaming stopped.
‘Well, that’s my advice,’ the man said. ‘It’s not necessary now, is it?’
Emma sat down. ‘It might have been. I’d stop the world if I thought it was necessary, and since it’s my baby, I’m the one to know, not you.’
Thomas slept, and Clara gave him back. ‘I often get the horrors,’ Emma said, ‘thinking that something dreadful will happen to him. He sucks me dry, yet seems so frail at the same time.’
‘He’s strong and healthy,’ Clara asserted. ‘Look at him. He gets bigger every day, the way he feeds from you, and goes out in all weathers.’
‘I know, but I can’t help the thoughts I have. I dream he’s dead, and when I hear him screaming in the morning because he’s hungry, instead of being annoyed at not having slept properly, I feel so glad that I cry as I feed him.’
Clara could only think that maybe Emma was lucky at being able to give such full expression to her emotional ups and downs. Yet she suffered for no real reason, and her dread was a contagion that spread many times compounded, though it was different for Clara who had nothing in her own mind and body by which to give it reality. Emma’s misery was based on the fulness of herself, but in Clara it only engendered emptiness or dread.
Percy stood inside the iron gate, looking along the road for their taxi. When it stopped, and Clara was halfway across the pavement, he was still gazing in the other direction. He had short grey hair smartly brushed, and seemed younger than when Clara had seen him at the funeral. She called. He turned slowly and smiled. His hand shook as it came out to her. ‘I had business in town, but I put everything off so as to be here and greet you both.’