The Peacock Emporium(112)

“What are you going to do?” said Vivi, having watched as he jiggled the baby under his arm while trying to negotiate with a feed merchant on the telephone. “Why don’t you get a wet nurse, or whatever it is that babies have?”

“She’s too old for a wet nurse,” he replied, lack of sleep making him snappy. He didn’t say what they both thought: that the child needed her mother.

“But you can’t possibly manage everything by yourself.”

“Don’t you start, Vee. Not you with everyone else.”

She bridled, hurt at his assumption that she belonged with “everyone else.” She watched silently as he walked up and down the room, dangling his keys in front of the baby’s grasping hands.

“I’ll help you,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ve got no work at the moment. I’ll look after her for you.” She didn’t know what had made her say it.

His eyes widened, hope flickering across his face. “You?”

“I’ve done toddlers. Babysat them, I mean. When I was in London. She can’t be that much harder.”

“You’d really look after her?”

“For you, yes.” She blushed at her choice of words, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, Vee. You’d really look after her? Every day? Until I can get something else sorted out, of course.” He had walked toward her, as if he was already keen to hand Suzanna over.

She hesitated then, suddenly seeing in that dark, satiny hair, the wide blue eyes, the memory of a painful time. Then she looked back at him, at the relief and gratitude on his face.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would.”



* * *



—

Her parents had been appalled. “You can’t do this,” her mother had said. “It’s not even your child.”

“We mustn’t visit the sins of the fathers, Mummy,” she had replied, sounding more confident than she felt. “She’s a perfectly adorable baby.” She had just rung Mr. Holstein to tell him she wouldn’t be returning to London.

Mrs. Newton, agitated, had gone so far as to call on Rosemary Fairley-Hulme, and had been surprised to find her just as fierce in her opposition to the whole sorry scheme. The young people appeared to have made up their minds, said Rosemary, despairingly. There was certainly no telling Douglas.

“But, darling, think about it. I mean, she could come back at any time. And you have your job, your career. This could go on for years.” Her mother had been close to tears. “Think, Vivi. Think of how he hurt you before.”

I don’t care. Douglas needs me, she said silently, enjoying the sensation of the two of them being united against the world.



* * *



—

They had all softened in the end. They had to: who could hold out against a beaming, beautiful, innocent baby? Vivi found that—as the months went on, as Suzanna’s presence in the house became less remarkable, as the explanations for her appearance were less discussed in the village—occasionally, on hearing the child cry, Rosemary would emerge from her kitchen “just to check she was all right,” that Cyril, finding her in his son’s arms before her bath, would chuck her cheek and blow raspberries at her. Vivi, meanwhile, was besotted, her exhaustion blown away by the uninhibited smiles, the clutching hands and blind trust. Suzanna brought her and Douglas together too: every evening, over a gin and tonic, when he came in from the fields, they would sit and laugh over her little foibles, commiserate over her teeth or sudden, mercurial tempers. When she had taken her first steps, Vivi had run all the way to the forty-acre field to find him, and they had run back together, breathless and expectant, to where she sat with the housekeeper, gazing around her with the benignly merry countenance of the much-adored. And there had been one perfect day when they had taken her out together, wheeling the big old pram across the estate to have a picnic, as if, Vivi thought secretly, furtively, they were a real family.

Douglas had been cheerful that day, had held the child close, pointing out the barns, a tractor, birds slicing through the sky. And something about the perfection of it all, about her own happiness, had forced the question to Vivi’s lips. “Will she want her back?” she had asked.

His eyes, which had been bright and cheerful, looked suddenly haunted. “I’m going to tell you something, Vee. Something I haven’t told anyone.”

With the baby seated between them, he had told her exactly how this child had ended up in his care.

Vivi knew now that the reason he loved this child so much was because she was an abiding link with his former wife: he believed that while he cared for her, there was a strong possibility that Athene might return. And that no matter how much he confided in Vivi, how much he depended on her, how much time they spent talking babies or acting out life as a family, she would never be able to traverse that barrier.

I mustn’t begrudge a child its mother, she thought, pretending there was something in her eye and ducking away. It must be enough that he needs me at all, that I am still part of his life.

But she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just about Douglas anymore, she thought, as she tucked baby Suzanna into her cot that evening, blessing her face with kisses as she settled her down to sleep. She didn’t want to give either of them back.