She sat there and stared. “No,” she said.
The dream. The dream. It had been true. The yellow eyes she had looked up into. “Oh God,” she said.
Roman came over to her. “Clare is just putting on,” he said, “holding his heart that way over Leah. He’s not that sorry. Nobody really liked her; she was stingy, emotionally as well as financially. Why don’t you help us out, Rosemary, be a real mother to Adrian; and we’ll fix it so you don’t get punished for killing her. So that nobody ever even finds out about it. You don’t have to join if you don’t want to; just be a mother to your baby.” He bent over and whispered: “Minnie and Laura-Louise are too old. It’s not right.”
She looked at him.
He stood straight again. “Think about it, Rosemary,” he said.
“I didn’t kill her,” she said..
“Oh?”
“I just gave her pills,” she said. “She’s asleep.”
“Oh,” he said.
The doorbell rang.
“Excuse me,” he said, and went to answer it. “Think about it anyway,” he said over his shoulder.
“Oh God,” she said.
“Shut up with your ‘Oh God’s’ or we’ll kill you,” Laura-Louise said, rocking the bassinet. “Milk or no milk.”
“You shut up,” Helen Wees said, coming to Rosemary and putting a dampened handkerchief in her hand. “Rosemary is His mother, no matter how she behaves,” she said. “You remember that, and show some respect.”
Laura-Louise said something under her breath.
Rosemary wiped her forehead and cheeks with the cool handkerchief. The Japanese, sitting across the room on a hassock, caught her eye and grinned and ducked his head. He held up an opened camera into which he was putting film, and moved it back and forth in the direction of the bassinet, grinning and nodding. She looked down and started to cry. She wiped at her eyes.
Roman came in holding the arm of a robust, handsome, dark-skinned man in a snow-white suit and white shoes. He carried a large box wrapped in light blue paper patterned with Teddy bears and candy canes. Musical sounds came from it. Everyone gathered to meet him and shake his hand. “Worried,” they said, and “pleasure,” and “airport,” and “Stavropoulos,” and “occasion.” Laura-Louise brought the box to the bassinet. She held it up for the baby to see, shook it for him to hear, and put it on the window seat with many other boxes similarly wrapped and a few that were wrapped in black with black ribbon.
“Just after midnight on June twenty-fifth,” Roman said. “Exactly half the year ‘round from you-know. Isn’t it perfect?”
“But why are you surprised?” the newcomer asked with both his hands outstretched. “Didn’t Edmond Lautreamont predict June twenty-fifth three hundred years ago?”
“Indeed he did,” Roman said, smiling, “but it’s such a novelty for one of his predictions to prove accurate!” Everyone laughed. “Come, my friend,” Roman said, drawing the newcomer forward, “come see Him. Come see the Child.”
They went to the bassinet, where Laura-Louise waited with a shopkeeper’s smile, and they closed around it and looked into it silently. After a few moments the newcomer lowered himself to his knees.
Guy and Mr. Wees came in.
They waited in the archway until the newcomer had risen, and then Guy came over to Rosemary. “She’ll be all right,” he said; “Abe is in there with her.” He stood looking down at her, his hands rubbing at his sides. “They promised me you wouldn’t be hurt,” he said. “And you haven’t been, really.
I mean, suppose you’d had a baby and lost it; wouldn’t it be the same? And we’re getting so much in return, Ro.”
She put the handkerchief on the table and looked at him. As hard as she could she spat at him.
He flushed and turned away, wiping at the front of his jacket. Roman caught him and introduced him to the newcomer, Argyron Stavropoulos.
“How proud you must be,” Stavropoulos said, clasping Guy’s hand in both his own. “But surely that isn’t the mother there? Why in the name of-“ Roman drew him away and spoke in his ear.
“Here,” Minnie said, and offered Rosemary a mug of steaming tea. “Drink this and you’ll feel a little better.”
Rosemary looked at it, and looked up at Minnie. “What’s in it?” she said; “tannis root?”
“Nothing is in it,” Minnie said. “Except sugar and lemon. It’s plain ordinary Lipton tea. You drink it.” She put it down by the handkerchief.
The thing to do was kill it. Obviously. Wait till they were all sitting at the other end, then run over, push away Laura-Louise, and grab it and throw it out the window. And jump out after it. Mother Slays Baby and Self at Bramford.
Save the world from God-knows-what. From Satan-knows-what.
A tail! The buds of his horns!
She wanted to scream, to die.
She would do it, throw it out and jump.
They were all milling around now. Pleasant cocktail party. The Japanese was taking pictures; of Guy, of Stavropoulos, of Laura-Louise holding the baby.
She turned away, not wanting to see.
Those eyes! Like an animal’s, a tiger’s, not like a human being’s!
He wasn’t a human being, of course. He was-some kind of a half-breed.
And how dear and sweet he had looked before he had opened those yellow eyes! The tiny chin, a bit like Brian’s; the sweet mouth; all that lovely orangered hair . . . It would be nice to look at him again, if only he wouldn’t open those yellow animal-eyes.
She tasted the tea. It was tea.
No, she couldn’t throw him out the window. He was her baby, no matter who the father was. What she had to do was go to someone who would understand. Like a priest. Yes, that was the answer; a priest. It was a problem for the Church to handle. For the Pope and all the cardinals to deal with, not stupid Rosemary Reilly from Omaha.
Killing was wrong, no matter what.
She drank more tea.
He began whimpering because Laura-Louise was rocking the bassinet too fast, so of course the idiot began rocking it faster.
She stood it as long as she could and then got up and went over.
“Get away from here,” Laura-Louise said. “Don’t you come near Him. Roman!”
“You’re rocking him too fast,” she said.
“Sit down!” Laura-Louise said, and to Roman, “Get her out of here. Put her back where she belongs.”
Rosemary said, “She’s rocking him too fast; that’s why he’s whimpering.”
“Mind your own business!” Laura-Louise said.
“Let Rosemary rock Him,” Roman said.
Laura-Louise stared at him.
“Go on,” he said, standing behind the bassinet’s hood. “Sit down with the others. Let Rosemary rock Him.”
“She’s liable-“
“Sit down with the others, Laura-Louise.”
She huffed, and marched away.
“Rock Him,” Roman said to Rosemary, smiling. He moved the bassinet back and forth toward her, holding it by the hood.
She stood still and looked at him. “You’re trying to-get me to be his mother,” she said.
“Aren’t you His mother?” Roman said. “Go on. Just rock Him till He stops complaining.”
She let the black-covered handle come into her hand, and closed her fingers around it. For a few moments they rocked the bassinet between them, then Roman let go and she rocked it alone, nice and slowly. She glanced at the baby, saw his yellow eyes, and looked to the window. “You should oil the wheels,” she said. “That could bother him too.”
“I will,” Roman said. “You see? He’s stopped complaining. He knows who you are.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rosemary said, and looked at the baby again. He was watching her. His eyes weren’t that bad really, now that she was prepared for them. It was the surprise that had upset her. They were pretty in a way. “What are his hands like?” she asked, rocking him.