Friday's Girl Read online

  She turned away from the men, who were staring from her to each other and back again, and Celandine took the opportunity to pull off her gloves, wondering why it was that so many men looked so strangely helpless at just the mention of a baby.

  ‘Can I see her? If she is safely delivered of the baby now? Will she see me now, do you think?’

  Celandine looked up at Napier, who had moved to stand in front of her.

  ‘I have no idea. I cannot speak for Edith, Mr Todd,’ she said, but her voice was a little less cold because the expression on his face was so haunted. ‘It would be impossible for me to say. What I can say is that the baby looks exactly like his father, which is all to the good, most especially in these circumstances. Now I must go and change.’

  Sheridan followed Celandine out of the room. ‘You must tell Napier who the baby looks like, Celandine! You can’t be that cruel.’

  Celandine turned at the staircase. ‘I am in no position to speak for Edith, Sherry, and you know it.’

  Napier too came into the hall. ‘Are they really all right?’ he asked, looking up at Celandine, who was at the top of the stairs by now. ‘Are you quite sure they are all right? Edith is so frail, such a frail little person.’

  Celandine relented. ‘Not only are they all right, Napier, they are very well.’ She looked down the stairs, trying to avoid the pleading look in Sherry’s eyes. ‘Not only are they very well, but as I told you the little boy is bonny and bouncing and looks—’ But she could not do it. ‘He looks, as I said, just like his father.’

  Napier and Sheridan turned away, defeated.

  ‘I should try your hand tomorrow, old fellow, really I should.’ Sheridan put a brotherly arm round Napier’s shoulders. ‘You know mares and foals – best to leave both to get on with it until the straw’s a bit flattened around them, my father used to say. Least disturbed, less to be mended.’

  Napier sighed and walked off into the gathering dusk, looking as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  ‘I am very sure it will all turn out for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’

  Napier turned back at the gate that led to the road. ‘I wish I had your certainty,’ he said in a low voice, before walking off down the narrow winding street.

  Edith stared down at the baby. She had fed him and laid him beside her in the crib brought in by Gabrielle. A ruddy-faced nurse had been sent up from the village and was hovering proudly around the bed as if she had just delivered the baby herself.

  The baby moved his head slightly, only a vague shifting, but to his mother it seemed enormous, a whole stride of a movement.

  ‘If there is nothing more I can do, I will fetch me a cup of tea.’

  Edith nodded without looking up. It was odd that she had loved her son the moment she saw him. More than just odd, it was most odd – most particularly since he looked just like Napier. She stared towards the closed velvet curtains, remembering. When he was first laid in her arms Napier’s face in miniature had stared up at her, and yet it had not upset her. Napier’s face looking up at her had only filled her with devotion. Did that mean that she still loved the baby’s father?

  Sheridan could not leave the subject alone.

  ‘She must allow Napier to see her now surely, Celandine?’

  ‘I hardly think there is a must about it, Sherry.’

  It had been two weeks since the birth and while agreeing to disagree about her duty to Edith, Sherry still seemed determined to take Napier’s part.

  ‘We could arrange it, couldn’t we?’ he pleaded. ‘It could be so romantic. Napier surprising her—’

  ‘That idea is not one I would recommend, Sherry.’ Celandine could not help laughing. ‘Gracious heavens, imagine the scene. Napier surprises Edith, Edith drops the baby, tragedy ensues and it is all our fault!’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course I know what you mean, dearest. But truly there is only one way out of this muddle. We must pray that Edith gives in to the idea of seeing Napier, of letting Napier see the baby, so that he may discover who is the father for himself.’

  ‘He loves Edith so much, wants her back so much, I truly don’t think he minds who the father is now,’ Sheridan said ruefully. ‘He only wants to have Edith back. He keeps saying that, cares for nothing more than that she should forgive him for his selfishness. He can’t paint, can’t even draw, he is not eating. He has suffered enough, surely?’

  ‘I am sure he has, Sherry, but what can I do? I am not Edith. Now I must rush off to the admiral or I shall be late.’ Celandine glanced up at the clock. ‘Oh dear, I think I must know more about the battle of Trafalgar than anyone now. Goodbye, darling, and don’t worry about Napier. I am sure he will be forgiven, eventually.’

  Sheridan watched Celandine from the window of the sitting room. He knew he should be outside painting, but the truth was that since Napier had arrived at Newbourne his friend’s misery had become his own unhappiness, and he found he could not settle to anything. He waved to Celandine, because she had suddenly turned and waved to him. For a second he tried to imagine life without her, and knowing that it would be unbearable he turned away from the window.

  Mrs Molesworth stood at the door. Sheridan thought that she was going to shoo him out of the room so that she could clean it, but instead she announced a visitor.

  ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, sir.’

  Sheridan stared at his visitor, feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

  ‘Alfred?’

  Edith was up and about, eager to push the baby down to the sea front, but fearing to meet Napier she had remained in the garden of Rosewalls, enjoying the sunshine and the feeling of well-being that comes from being restored to health.

  The baby woke her every night, and every night she fed him with delighted attention. She was sure that she would never need anyone else in her life now, that she would become everything to him, although the precise origins of these feelings were not entirely clear to her. What was clear to her was the familiarity of the figure coming across the lawn towards her.

  She quickly started to push the baby in the opposite direction, aiming for the safety of the house, but it was too late.

  ‘No, don’t go, Edith, please don’t go. Please. Don’t run away from me. I am not here to harm you.’

  ‘Napier.’

  Edith’s voice sounded flat, unenthusiastic, unwelcoming, not at all as it normally did, but there was little she could do to colour it with more warmth. Just seeing Napier walking across the lawn towards her brought back such cruel memories. The way he had sent the carriage away when she had gone to see him to ask his forgiveness for falsely accusing him. The way he had refused to have anything more to do with her, the punishments that he had inflicted on her when she had done nothing more than love him. She saw, all too clearly, that she could never forgive him for how he had behaved to her, that to do so would be to give in to the lowest emotion. She would not be craven. She would hold on to the dignity which she had finally recovered, after it had been taken from her in such a cruel fashion by Napier.

  ‘Edith, please, don’t back away from me.’

  ‘I had rather you went away. I am only just recovering from my confinement and I really must be left in some peace. My life has been so good without you, everyone here so kind. I really want nothing more to do with you. Although I wish you no harm, I just don’t want to see you any more. Not ever.’

  For the first time in his life Napier was able to look at the undoubted result of his own selfish behaviour. He had lost Edith’s love, and he could see it. Worse than that, he had lost her respect. If he went down on his knees to her he could see that in all probability she would remain indifferent. Worse again, she would despise him.

  ‘Edith.’ He began again. ‘I know that how I have been in the past has made me seem despicable in your eyes.’

  Edith continued to push the pram away from him, weaving in between the trees. ‘I understand now just how badly you have
treated me, with what indifference to my feelings you married me and ignored me, taking advantage of my innocence.’

  ‘Stop!’

  They had somehow reached the terrace of the house, albeit by different routes, but since Edith had won their strange erratic race she was able to snatch up the baby and hurry indoors with him. She handed him to the nurse. ‘Take the baby, please. His father is here, visiting unexpectedly.’

  The nurse did as she was told, and Edith returned to the terrace to find Napier leaning in despair against one of the rose-laden pillars that bordered it.

  ‘Won’t you please leave now?’

  ‘No.’

  Now that she was close to him Edith could see that Napier was looking shocking. He was pale and thin, with black lines under his eyes, and his clothes were hanging off him.

  ‘Aunt Biddy and the vicar are due back for luncheon very soon. They will not want to find you here, most especially not Aunt Biddy.’

  ‘No, the old gorgon hates me, doesn’t she?’

  ‘What do you expect? She has seen how cruel you have been. How can she respect or like someone who has treated his wife the way you have treated me?’

  ‘Was everything my fault? Truly, ask yourself, was everything that has come between us my fault?’

  Edith turned away. ‘No, not everything.’ She paused, and then said with dreadful simplicity, ‘I realise now that I should never have married you. It was the mistake of a foolish innocent, although that is no excuse, for foolishness and innocence of purpose are never, finally, forgivable, even in the very young. I did not know you. I hardly even knew what you did, and yet I agreed to marry you. When I look back, I think I married you to get away from the Stag and Crown as much as you married me in an effort to recapture your wretched muse.’

  Edith’s honesty made Napier feel as if she had stabbed him in the side, and yet it was this, more than anything perhaps, that made him realise just how incapable she would always be of any kind of infidelity.

  ‘So. So – neither of us really loved the other, is that what you are saying?’

  Edith lifted her large eyes to his. ‘Oh, I loved you all right; yes, I loved you. But not in the way that I should have loved you. Not in an honest way, but in a passionate all-giving way that is not healthy. I should have spoken up for myself when you neglected me in that unkind way, instead of which I suffered in silence, always thinking that you were repulsed by me in some way, or that I was simply not good enough to be anything except your model. But there, I was young and foolish, and you – you were mature and selfish.’

  ‘Is there no hope for us?’

  ‘Not that I can see. Can you?’

  Napier summoned every inch of his waning emotional strength, straightened his back, and after a few seconds during which he felt he might lose control, he spoke.

  ‘I – er – I can see – some hope.’ His voice was on the verge of breaking. ‘I think one should see hope for – for – two people who have been through so much together. For two people who have a child as proof of their passion, there surely must be some hope?’

  ‘You don’t yet know the child is yours.’

  Napier smiled at her, the sudden tenderness in his eyes tempering his forlorn appearance. ‘Of course the child is mine, Edith dearest.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Napier took her hands. ‘Because despite everything I think you still love me. That is why I know the child is mine. I know that you love me, despite everything you have said, perhaps because of everything you have said. I also know that you are incapable of dishonesty, or deception. I am sure that I am the only man to have made love to you. Edith. Please try to love me again. Please?’

  Edith freed her hands. ‘No, Napier, I can’t.’

  ‘You mean – you won’t? You mean you won’t even try?’

  Edith hesitated. How could she say she would not even try to love him again without sounding at best stubborn, and at worse hateful? Her hesitation proved to be fatal.

  Napier moved closer to her, dropping his voice because he thought he could hear sounds of Aunt Biddy returning.

  ‘Let me call on you, let me woo you again, and again, until time has taken the dreadful hurt I have inflicted on you away for ever. Please, please, Edith. I love you, and only you, and I will only ever love you. You are the centre of my life, the captain of my soul.’

  ‘Very well, you can visit me – perhaps next week.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long.’

  ‘You have no alternative!’

  ‘Edith! Edith dear! The vicar is here!’

  Aunt Biddy’s voice floated across the garden as Napier seized Edith, trying to pull her towards him, trying to kiss her, but Edith pushed him away from her, frowning.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Napier,’ she said in a voice that surprised even her by its unnaturally firm tone.

  ‘How can I not want to love you? How can you know how I feel? Look at me, do, I have become ill with longing for you—’

  Edith could see the truth of his words, because Napier did look quite ill, but she was not prepared to be moved either by his looks, or by him.

  ‘You must go before Aunt Biddy sees you, truly you must.’

  She looked at him in a detached manner. She felt sorry for him, but not so sorry that she was prepared to forgive him. She might try to do so, but she could not put away the harm he had done her.

  Napier backed off down the lawn. ‘I will go, but only in order to come back.’

  Edith shook her head. ‘No, don’t come back, Napier, not yet. If you come back too soon I will never change my mind, I promise you.’

  Even at a distance she could see that he had lost what remaining colour he had.

  ‘Do you hate me that much?’

  Edith turned away from him so that her words seemed to come floating back down the lawn. ‘No, I don’t hate you, Napier, but I confess I do keep wondering if I can ever love you again. Something has gone from me these last months, shut down, perhaps never to return.’

  The luncheon with the vicar and Aunt Biddy passed as all such luncheons must, with equanimity, a feeling of everyone doing the right thing, and without any undue excitement beyond the vicar being pressed to some more pudding.

  ‘Poor man, he is never fed properly at home. The Church’s stipend to him is so modest, he has hardly enough money to pay for the starch in his collars.’ Aunt Biddy watched the man of God making his comfortable way down her steps, the wind blowing his hat so that he had to hold it tight to his head. ‘Now, dear, what about you, and the baby?’ she asked. ‘I hear tell – Gabrielle and Russo, you know – I hear tell from them that this morning we had an unexpected visitor.’

  Edith turned back towards the drawing room, towards the steady existence to which she had become strangely accustomed.

  ‘Yes, we did have an unexpected visitor, Aunt Biddy, but I have sent him on his way.’

  Aunt Biddy sighed with satisfaction. ‘Unexpected visitors should always be sent on their way,’ she said, reseating herself in her favourite chair and nodding to Edith to sit herself down opposite. ‘Tell me, did he make himself a nuisance, my dear?’

  Edith stared into the fire. ‘Yes, I am afraid he did make himself a nuisance,’ she admitted, flushing slightly.

  Aunt Biddy looked at her and her eyes brightened. ‘This is good, dear, very good. So now you must keep him at bay, like the poor old stag in the painting, for the next few weeks, if not months, which will give you time to make up your mind as to whether you want to go back to him, or not, as the case may be. For myself I shall not wish for either you or Baby to go away. You have both become as much part of my house as the old dears who look after me, and the roses outside; as much as the sea view, and the velvet drapes. But I have to say that a boy should have a father, and if you should resolve the matter satisfactorily I myself will be the first to congratulate you.’

  On hearing this, Edith went up to Aunt Biddy and kissed her warm, rounded cheek. ‘Y
ou have been too good to me and little John Napier, Aunt Biddy.’

  ‘My home will always be your home, dear Edith. Truly I have found in you a dear, dear companion.’

  She sighed, and minutes later was sound asleep, as was her habit after luncheon.

  Celandine was filling in the background of a new portrait. Not, thank heavens, as she explained to Edith, either a red velvet curtain, or a maritime view of some sort, but a beach scene with children playing.

  ‘Mrs Alfred Woodcock, the Mayor of Newbourne’s wife, wants a painting of herself with her children on the beach. Oh bless Mrs Woodcock, if only I could tell her how much it means to me not to have to paint a curtain!’

  Edith, who had left the baby and his new young nurse outside the house, waved to them both as the young girl patiently pushed him up and down, the fringed canopy of the pram swaying gently in the breeze.

  ‘Ah, such a pretty sight.’ Celandine sighed happily, peering over her friend’s shoulder. ‘So, now,’ she said, peering at Edith, ‘what can I do for you, Mrs Todd? No, don’t tell me. First let me fetch us a nice jug of lemonade.’

  She returned with the lemonade jug and some glasses, and beckoned Edith to follow her outside.

  ‘Let us go and sit outside while we may, before the sunshine goes. It does go so quickly from the garden, I always find.’

  Edith sat down, and as she did so she remembered when she had confessed her untouched married state to Celandine in the same garden in which they were now sitting, what seemed years before. She sighed inwardly for the pain she had felt, and sighed again as she realised that it had been nothing compared to the pain she had subsequently endured. Long months without a husband, with only the consolation of friends, giving birth with the almost certain knowledge that the baby was to all intents and purposes fatherless.

  ‘It seems I always come to you for advice,’ she told Celandine. ‘And now here I am again.’ She paused. ‘You see, Napier came to Aunt Biddy’s house yesterday. I confess I was shocked by his appearance.’ She sighed, looking uncharacteristically restless, but Celandine was too tactful to say anything, so she went on. ‘He wants to visit me, to try to persuade me to return to him, but I am reluctant to encourage him. He has, after all, rejected me not once but twice, Celandine. The trouble is – the trouble is – in so many ways, I must confess I am happier now. I do not pine for the excitement which Napier once brought to me. In many ways I am better now; and calmer too. With the arrival of the baby I feel I have reached a plateau of contentment which I could never have anticipated. But yesterday, when Napier called so unexpectedly, the sight of him did not make me happier, it made me less happy, and that is not because I have not forgiven him, it is because I have changed – these last months I have been happier without him.’