‘Oh, she wasn’t all that deliberate about it. One never is. But have it your way. You’re trying to get him back on to the “one true path” then. Is that it?’
Emma’s face expressed inner enlightenment. ‘Yes, you’re right. But there are many true paths. I only want him to be like me and mother. Different to you and father.’
Clara shook her head. ‘What rubbish.’
‘I want him to be civilized. He’ll find out what I mean when he makes his choice.’
Clara wanted to be alone. She had nothing else to say. There was a limit to the amount of talk she could put up with. ‘I’ll be glad to start the spring-cleaning tomorrow. We can do the drawing-room first, and that’ll take some work. The place hasn’t been cleaned for I don’t know how long.’
‘A few more days’ – Emma stood – ‘and it’s into town for me. I want to spring-clean my life, not this dreadful old house. I wouldn’t care if it fell down, as long as we weren’t in it,’ she laughed.
She had been glad to seek refuge here, Clara thought after Emma had gone to her room. If Emma was tied in all ways to the baby, she was harnessed into organizing the household, and for a while neither could go into town. The most they did was to go shopping or to the bank in Highgate village. Otherwise they kept to the house as if they had rented that also. The upstairs back windows looked south, and they could see the Houses of Parliament on a good day. The sun fitfully blessed the grey sprawl, as if they were on the outskirts of a strange city after two seasons in a distant wilderness. Clara reached to the fable for her journal and fountain pen, too weary to write yet too stimulated by the conversation with Emma to resist doing so.
The maid accepted Thomas as if he were her brother or son. She fed him, played with him, and daily pushed him in the pram to Waterlow Park or Parliament Hill, walking along the foliaged pathways and under trees turning to a heavier green as the year went on. In the rain she clipped the hood and canvas barrier into place, so that he was snug against the elements.
With much screaming he was weaned from the breast and put on to bottled milk. Audrey fed him, as well as cleaned him, put him to bed, and got him up in the morning. A new girl did odd tasks in her place and hurried about on errands, and Audrey was solely in charge of Thomas.
Clara looked at him. Emma was in town, and Audrey had not yet taken him out. He lay in his pram, eyes open and staring at her, so clean and calm, so innocent. She wondered how much he saw at six months old, how much he knew of what was going on around him. He was unwanted, and would have to take his chance in life. The choice Emma had so thoughtlessly lumbered him with would be no advantage. He would be better off knowing nothing, at least until a time when such problems no longer mattered. Maybe Emma wasn’t serious. In her life of going about town she would forget her ideas, one enthusiasm often being swept away by the onslaught of another.
He saw her properly, and smiled. She was sure he smiled. His lips moved, and his eyes sparkled on opening wide. He stared, as if wondering why he smiled. His thin dark hair already had that subtle sheen of red. She lifted a finger, as if telling him to be still because he had nothing to smile fulsomely about. He reached for her thumb. He made a noise of laughter, and she felt sorry for him, as well as pity for Emma. She knew a moment of grief for her mother, her father, and for herself – feelings she disliked intensely. She touched his warm cheek consolingly, then told herself not to be stupid, and walked upstairs to see why the maid was taking so long getting ready.
Her father, on his afternoon walk, made sure he went in the opposite direction to Audrey and Thomas. He did not have the physical strength to force his face towards the baby when he was anywhere near his perambulator. He passed him as if some form of contamination might leap across.
Since Rachel died he had turned his back on life, as if she had taken his spirit with her. His nerves were no good again, he said, not hiding the fact that he blamed Emma for her mother’s death. His face was a mask which prevented any sympathy breaking through. No one deserved it, his expression said. The hurt flesh around his grey eyes indicated that he had had enough of trying to understand. Such efforts hadn’t worked and never would. Emma told him there might still be something to live for.
‘Father,’ she said at dinner, on a rare evening when she stayed at home, ‘why don’t you get married again?’
The cook brought in a platter of lamb chops, and Clara dropped one before getting it to her place.
‘Careless,’ Percy said. ‘Grip it tight.’
They took food on to their plates, and Clara hoped that her sister would forget her unseemly question. Why must she make more trouble than was absolutely necessary? Or any trouble at all? It was too much to expect.
‘I asked,’ said Emma, whose place at table was to his left, ‘whether or not you might ever think of getting married again, father?’
‘Oh do stop,’ Clara called.
He looked up. ‘I loved your mother too much. Besides, I’m an old man.’
Emma laughed. ‘You’re not much more than sixty. And if you really did love mother you’d certainly want to marry again. It would be nice for you, and good for the rest of us.’
He was about to smile – Clara was sure of it – but changed his mind. She saw it happening, in his predictable, half-conscious yet deliberate way, all emotions mixed to create the effect he absolutely wanted. And who, she thought, is any different? But she longed to get out of such force-fields, which by their spreading torment robbed you of life’s enjoyment. Her ideal state was an existence, if she must pass hers with other people, of placid well-bred diplomacy. Otherwise, she would live alone.
‘One usually meets someone and falls in love before getting married.’ He spoke less severely. ‘I haven’t yet seen anyone who would be a likely prospect. A marriage of convenience, or one to suit my wayward daughter, isn’t the sort of thing I would care to indulge in.’
Emma persevered. ‘You might meet a pleasant young woman. There are plenty about.’
She wanted him – and Clara could see that he knew it – to marry only so that she could then accuse him of never having loved their mother. He’d had enough, however. ‘When you yourself get married, I could be in a better frame of mind to think about it.’
‘Does Clara have to get married, too?’
‘I’d rather go on with my dinner,’ he said, ‘than put up with your tyranny.’
‘I’ll never get married,’ Clara announced, feeling like a boulder before the floodwater.
‘I suppose we’re lucky mother didn’t feel that way,’ said Emma. ‘Or are we?’
Clara picked up the handbell and rang for cook to come and take their plates. ‘Perhaps she did.’
‘Though I suppose,’ went on Emma, ‘that she would quite like you to marry again.’
‘She would not,’ he said. ‘She is now in heaven, and she would be eternally distressed.’
He had thought himself safe behind the palisade of his last request. But he doesn’t know Emma. He can’t possibly know her, Clara thought, since he didn’t really know mother very well, either. Or so Emma believed. Perhaps she was right, having a sure knowledge of people’s weaknesses. But he torments her, so she’s only getting her own back. No, it feels much worse than that.
He stood, and threw his napkin on to the table. The cook moved around to lift his plate. He put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. Clara asked cook to bring in the dessert, then said to Emma: ‘Why can’t you know when to stop?’
He sat down. ‘I must ask you never to mention that subject again, not in any way whatsoever. If you do I will find it impossible to be in the same house with you.’