She drew her hand away to help Emma. The cab driver steadied her out, and laughed as he got ready to catch Thomas in case he fell. ‘My wife dropped the young ‘un,’ he said, ‘so you could say she dropped it twice, in a manner of speaking.’
Percy sent him away with five shillings so as to stop his foul laughter. He tried to smile while looking at the baby. ‘Who’s he like?’
‘Mother,’ Emma said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘No doubt about it.’
‘I see what you mean. And yet I’m not so sure.’
‘He’s from her side,’ Emma insisted.
‘It’s a bit too early to tell, at any rate so vehemently.’ He walked before them to the porch, and rang the bell with great irritation. An elderly woman opened the door. ‘Help in the ladies, and their child,’ he said. ‘Get Audrey to take the cases.’
The cab driver had left their things on the pavement.
15
‘I’m going to like it here,’ said Emma. ‘It isn’t raining, the house is big, and father will soon get used to us.’
Clara lay on the bed. ‘It’s good to be back on my old mattress. Where’s Thomas?’
‘Audrey’s got him. She says she knows about babies because there were nine in her family. She can feed him, as well, when I get him on to bottled milk. I don’t want to be tethered for ever like some animal.’
At the first dining-room meal Emma said she was going to call in a decorator and have her room painted white. While it was being done she would have to occupy her mother’s room. Percy said he thought she should do no such thing. He wouldn’t allow it, in fact. Emma looked at him a full minute without speaking, her caramel eyes glowing as if she would strike him should he say anything further. As soon as he finished dessert he got up and went to his study. They heard his door slam.
Emma opened all the windows. The subtle smell of her mother that remained reminded her of her own. Sunlight cut the bed. She took off the counterpane and turned the mattress, tears falling on to the cloth that covered the springs. I didn’t kill you, she said. No one kills anyone. You don’t even kill yourself.
‘Will you bring Thomas’s crib in?’ Clara said from the doorway.
She turned. ‘Did I kill her?’
The fact that Clara knew who she meant proved that she might well have.
‘Of course not. Father’s a fool for hinting it.’
Emma dried her eyes. While they spread the sheets she said: ‘Audrey can take the crib into her room. Thomas will sleep there. I want to be alone at night.’
Emma knew, she said, that Percy did not like her. She had always felt his hostility, and having an illegitimate baby to their name did not improve matters. He had adored his wife, and had disliked Emma (who closely resembled her) for those faults of Rachel which he had never allowed himself to acknowledge in case they spoiled life between them. Like all people who cherished each other as if they were still children in the nursery, the relationship had only been tolerable when they were mindlessly happy. Percy had known this very well, and had done everything to keep it so. Ruses of brain-fever and nervous breakdown had not been too much to manage, Emma said, when they talked about it in Clara’s room.
They had tea brought up from the kitchen, and sat in armchairs by the window. ‘You imagine too much,’ Clara replied.
Emma’s hand shook when she poured the milk. ‘Anything I imagine is real. I didn’t think that for there not to have been some truth in it.’
‘I dare say there is, but it’s hardly fair to father. Not to mention mother.’ Clara was convinced. Emma’s sense of reality was reinforced by the tone of her voice, which Clara knew was not true of herself because she rarely pondered on such matters, or thought them important when she did. Emma’s speculations could also be outrageous. ‘I wonder what mother and father were like in bed together?’
‘I refuse to talk about it.’
‘Well, I wonder. There’s no harm in that.’
‘Much like anybody else, I suppose.’
Emma broke a piece of toast and passed half to Clara. ‘I find it disgusting to think about – in a way.’
Clara’s mouth was full. ‘Don’t, then.’
‘I try not to.’
Clara could not let the topic go so easily. ‘Is it hard to try not to?’
‘I think about it whether I try to or not. But I don’t mind. Maybe it’s good for me. Such thoughts never occurred to me before Thomas was born.’
Clara changed the subject because there seemed nothing more to be got from it. ‘Why do you always wear that Jewish star?’
She held it between her fingers. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Very attractive, I suppose.’
‘I can tell you don’t think so. Thomas will have it when he’s old enough.’
‘You mean men wear them?’
‘He can put it under his vest.’
‘Why do you want him to, especially?’
‘Mother gave it to him, that’s why. I’m also glad I had him circumcised. She wanted that, too.’
Clara wished they could be together without so much talk. ‘I don’t see that it matters, these days.’
‘It certainly does. Mother wanted him to be part of her line, not father’s. She was getting her sense back at the end. When he grows up he can be what he likes, but if he wants to be Jewish he can be. If I die, at least I’ll leave him with a choice, and you can’t give a child anything better. Anybody can have good health, good looks, and even a good job, but to have a choice to make – that’s special! Not that I’m sure which way he’ll go. It’ll be up to him.’
Clara, sighing, didn’t know what to say. Her hopes sounded so unnecessary. ‘You won’t die, silly. He’ll be what you want him to be. And he may not want anything to do with it.’
‘He will. I only wish mother had given me such a choice.’
Clara thought she had. ‘I jolly well don’t, speaking for myself. There’s enough to worry about, without that.’
‘You’re so plain and shallow. The more one has to worry about, the more chance there is to think other things.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
After a while Emma said: ‘Have you seen mother’s books?’
‘What books?’
‘You haven’t?’
‘Is that why you moved into her room? What a dreadful snooper!’ – a riposte for being called plain and shallow.
‘Her dresses are still there, so I suppose that when you looked you didn’t notice the lid that opens from the inside of the wardrobe. I found letters from father written before they were married, and some he’d sent from the asylum, as well as a few she’d written to him. She must have got them back for some reason, or he gave them to her for safe keeping. They were better than I expected. But there were also a few old books in Hebrew and German – which I’ll keep, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t. But will father?’
‘He won’t have to. Thomas will have them one day.’
‘This Jewish thing has gone to your head.’
Clara was sorry. She had spoken without thought, which one should never do with Emma, who looked anguished, not so much, as it turned out, for what had been said, but because: ‘I still can’t believe mother’s gone. It frightens me to think about her life. If only she’d come back for an hour, for me to say all I’d never said when she was alive. I didn’t tell her how much I loved her, and now it’s not possible.’ She shook her head. ‘Life under such conditions is hardly worth while.’
Clara was alert with disagreement. ‘You’re trying to make Thomas become what mother would have wanted him to be, because she felt guilty at having given up her Judaism.’
‘She never did. She was always Jewish.’