The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [211]
“She’ll grow.”
“I want to see all of her.”
Mrs. Ball unwrapped the little body. Elsie touched the raw-looking feet, considered the swollen sex, put out a finger for the wavering hands to grip, and was gripped.
“Ann,” said Elsie, shifting her painful body so that she could rest the nodding head on her shoulder. “Hey, Ann. Stay with me.”
Mrs. Ball, who tried not to be sentimental, and failed, felt tears in her eyes, and a choke in her throat. It was not the first time, and would not be the last.
Philip came to see Ann. The whole business of her birth and begetting had shamed him, somehow. He felt sullen, and put out, and deeper than that, afraid of something that concerned him dreadfully and was out of his control.
“Her name’s Ann,” Elsie told him. Mother and child were clutching each other, Ann’s face pushed into Elsie’s breast.
“Just Ann?”
“Just Ann.”
“It suits her. She looks—she looks all right.”
“You’re her uncle.”
“I know that. You’ll keep her.”
“I don’t seem to have no choice. I thought I might. I didn’t know what I’d feel. I had an idea of turning me head away, you know. And then I saw she was mine.”
She said “They’re unbelievable, those ladies, they sorted it all, just like they said at the meeting about the women of the future, they said single women should be looked after, and they’re looking after me. And Ann.”
“Turn her face this way a bit. I want to draw her. She’s got your brow.”
Neither of them mentioned anyone else she might resemble.
Phoebe Methley came to see Ann, bringing a bunch of wild flowers for Elsie, and a blue vase to put them in. She also brought apples, and two little baby dresses, and a bonnet. She perched on the end of the bed, and watched Philip’s pencil move on his sketch-pad.
She sniffed, and got out her handkerchief.
“I’m sorry, it’s silly, I always cry when I see newborns.”
“Her name’s Ann.”
“You’ll keep her?”
“I couldn’t give her up, I couldn’t.” A silence. “If it wasn’t for you, and the other ladies, I w’d a had to. I can’t ever tell you… ” Both women were weeping.
Phoebe Methley had a fairly clear idea about who was Ann’s father, and could not, for some time, bring herself to look closely at her face. She had had, she now understood, a romantic hope that Elsie would want nothing to do with Ann, that she herself might have to offer this child a home, in a house where her own unmentionable children would never come. This act might entail a generosity of which she would not be capable, she knew also. She said
“Anything you need…”
“You are too good to me.”
“Women must work together,” said Phoebe, with a healthy asperity. That evening she said to her husband “Elsie Warren has given birth to a daughter.”
They were sitting at the dinner table. She served him a stew of haricot beans, simmered with onions and pork rind, and a spoon or two of molasses, and a trace of mustard, flavoured also with rosemary from their garden, and sprinkled with chopped parsley and chives. It was a slow-cooked, thoughtful dish. Herbert Methley sniffed it, and said that it was good. More than good, ambrosial, said Herbert Methley, not meeting his wife’s eye.
“I went to see them. Her name’s Ann. She’s a very sweet, tiny little thing.”
Herbert Methley did not like to talk of children, anyone’s children. He said he had, today, made enormous progress with his new novel, it had finally settled into shape, and was flowing along like water in a river-bed.
Phoebe went on, sternly and bravely.
“We formed a little feminist committee of fairy godmothers to make sure Ann will be well looked after. I wondered if we might even have her here, a little—only now and then, you understand—Marian Oakeshott has offered to ask Tabitha to help—”
Herbert Methley stared distractedly out of the window. He said he thought this new novel might be his best—his best yet—might make their fortune—if he could have time and silence and absence of distractions to write it at its current speed, while the spirit moved him. He said he had a good title.
“Do you, Herbert? What is it?”
“It is to be called Mr. Wodehouse