I was with her constantly during those two weeks with Harriet, but I knew I had to go. To be parted from my daughter from time to time was the price I had to pay for my unconventional behaviour.
My mother welcomed me warmly.
“How could you stay so long away from us!” she said reproachfully. “Let me look at you. You’ve grown thinner. You’ve grown up.”
“Dear Mother, did you expect me to remain a child forever?”
“And to have travelled so far and lived abroad so long! You will miss all that now you are home. I suppose Harriet will want to be off again shortly. She was always a wanderer. It’s amusing about the baby. I’ll swear she wasn’t very pleased when she first discovered her condition.”
“Harriet loves Carlotta dearly. Oh, Mother, she is the most lovely little girl.”
“One would expect Harriet to have a beautiful daughter. If she is only half as good-looking as her mother she will be the toast of the Court.”
“She is going to be a beauty, I am sure.”
“She seems to have charmed you, at any rate. Come into the house. Oh, Cilla, it is good to have you home.”
I wanted to say it was good to be home, but it wasn’t. No place could be good unless Carlotta was in it.
I told my mother that Harriet had suggested Sally Nullens go over to Eyot Abbas as nurse to the baby.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “Sally will be mad with joy. She’s been going round like a shepherd who has lost her sheep ever since Carl escaped from the nursery.”
“Shall I go and tell her right away?”
“Do. There’s no point in withholding such good news.”
I went up to Sally’s sitting room. It was just as it had been before I went away. She was sitting watching the kettle which was beginning to sing and was close on boiling; and Emily Philpots was with her. They looked startled to see me and I thought they had aged a little since I last saw them.
“Well, if it’s not Miss Priscilla,” said Emily.
“Back from foreign parts,” added Sally. “Why people want to go off like that I can’t make out, and to bring a little baby into that sort of place … it’s likely to affect it for the rest of its life. It’s heathen, nothing more.”
“I am sure you will soon make a nice little Christian of her, Sally,” I said.
There was a hint in my words which made her perk up her ears. She looked at me rather breathlessly. Babies were to Sally Nullens what lovers were to romantic young ladies.
I said quickly: “Lady Stevens suggested to me that you might be prepared to go over to the Abbas and look after her child. I thought it was a good idea.”
Sally’s nose had turned slightly pink at the tip. I heard her whisper something like “a dear little baby.”
“Would you consider going, Sally?”
It was an unnecessary question. I could see that in her mind she was already getting the nursery together.
She pretended to consider. “A girl, is it?”
“The most beautiful little girl in the world, Sally.”
“I never cared much for beauties,” said Emily Philpots. “They give themselves airs.” I could see by the way she screwed up her face that Emily was growing sick with envy. She was seeing a dark future when she hadn’t even Sally Nullens to complain to.
I was overwhelmed with pity for them suddenly. I thought how sad it must be to be old and unwanted.
“The child is going to need a governess, too,” I said. “I believe a child cannot begin to learn too early.”
“It’s true,” agreed Emily Philpots fervently, the red colour suffusing her face by now. “Children need the guiding hand even before they can walk.”
“I think it is very likely that Lady Stevens will ask you to go along with Sally to the Abbas.”
“Well, I never!” cried Sally, beginning to rock vigorously in the rocking chair which she always used. “A little baby again.”
“May I write to Lady Stevens, and tell her that you accept, Sally?” I asked. “At the same time I’ll suggest that Mistress Philpots goes with you.”
Happiness had suddenly arrived in that room. I could tell its presence by pink-tipped noses, watery eyes and the squeak of the rocking chair.
Life was unsatisfactory. The periods I looked forward to were those when I could go to Eyot Abbas. Naturally I could not go too frequently. Even going as I did aroused comment.
Harriet contrived that I should see Carlotta as much as possible; she visited us and stayed for quite a long time. Sally Nullens was already installed in the nursery and Emily Philpots was there too, fussing over the baby’s clothes and adorning all her garments with the most exquisite stitching.
Carlotta had soon become aware of her importance. As she lay in her cradle, kicking a little and smiling contentedly, she was like a monarch receiving her courtiers, and she would look with what must surely have been a certain complacency on the adoring throng who gazed down at her in rapture. Benjie was her devoted slave and worshipped with the rest. He thought it was exciting to have a little sister and he was very glad because his mother was home again. Gregory doted on her and I believed that Harriet had willed him to think the child really was his. Harriet continued to play the proud mother and Sally Nullens looked younger every day and grew more and more aggressive towards the rest of us, declaring, “I’m not having my baby kept from her rest!” and trying to shoo people out. Oddly enough, almost as though she had some extra sense, she never tried to turn me out of the nursery. She said it was as pretty as a picture to see me sitting there petting the baby. Mistress Carlotta had taken a real fancy to me, she told me. “And that’s something with Mistress Imperious, I can tell you!” Then there was Emily Philpots, fussing if her clothes were not immaculate.
“They’ll ruin the child between them,” said Christabel.
Carlotta took all this adulation as her right.
My father scarcely looked at her. I wondered what he would have said if he had known she was his grandchild.
He once made a comment on her. “She’ll be another such as her mother,” he said, and that was not meant to be a compliment, for as I have said there was a definite antipathy between him and Harriet.
We passed into the unsatisfactory summer when I made an effort to continue with my life as it had been before the great adventure. Christabel and I made a show of taking lessons together but my thoughts were always at Eyot Abbas with my child. Christabel, too, was absentminded; that unhappy look had come back to her and I could tell by some of the bitterness of her comments that she was dissatisfied with her lot.
Once she said: “What will become of me when I am no longer required to teach you?”
I answered: “You could stay with me as long as you wished to.”
“I’d be a sort of Sally Nullens or Emily Philpots, I suppose.”
“You would never be like that. You and I have been friends.” She turned away and I saw her lips move in that pathetic way which always upset me. In spite of her aloofness there was a closeness between us. After all, she knew a great deal more about me than anyone else in the house did.
There was a great scare that year and my mother was very anxious. Ever since the Popish Plot had been the great event of the time, showing us that our comfortable lives could be easily and tragically interrupted, an uneasiness had settled on her. I knew it concerned my father.
He was a very forceful man and not inclined to keep his opinions to himself. He had grown firmly anti-Catholic, and as the heir to the throne was James, Duke of York and he made no secret of his leanings, she could see trouble ahead. My father was a great friend of the Duke of Monmouth and my mother always said that he was one who was born for trouble.