The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (7 page)

He made no reply.

‘Well let me tell you,’ Ainsley said, and for the first time he sounded as determined as his father. ‘I don’t care what you think of me. Do you understand? All I care about is that you help me to help my children.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’

Ainsley searched for words. ‘Rose has always felt that they’ll need the protection of the family if they’re to get along in life. I’ve always felt that it would be pointless to make any kind of approach. Then I saw your name in the lists. It made me think again. I realized that Rose is right.’ He paused. ‘This campaign should be over in, what, a matter of weeks? When it is, I intend to resign my commission and take my family back to Jamaica.’

Cameron stared at him in disbelief. ‘You can’t mean that.’

‘It’s our home, Cameron. It’s where we belong.’

‘But—’

‘Oh, you needn’t worry, I shall be discreet. I shan’t live openly with Rose. I shall establish her somewhere far away from Fever Hill – near Kingston perhaps. As far as Society is concerned, I shall simply be returning to Jamaica after some years of . . . “delicate health”. Isn’t that what Father gave out? That I’d gone to some sanatorium on the continent for my health?’ He gave a wry smile. ‘So you see, there won’t be any sort of scandal. One can get away with almost anything as long as one doesn’t do it openly. That was always our mistake.’

They began their descent down the bluff, and the horses jostled for position on the narrow track. Cameron said, ‘You seem to have everything worked out. Why bother to tell me?’

‘Because I need you to tell my father.’

‘
What?
’

‘He returns all my letters unopened. Just like you. He doesn’t even know he’s a grandfather.’ He paused. ‘I’d rather not have him learn of my return in the
Daily Gleaner
.’

Down in the zeriba the next detail was waiting to relieve them. Cameron watched the red men stalking the red earth in the red light. He felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare.

He wanted to grab Ainsley by the throat and shake him till he saw sense. Couldn’t he see that his plan was impossible? Had he no idea what things had been like after he left? Having to watch poor, soft, obedient Clemency cradling her dead baby in her arms, and failing utterly to comprehend the ruin of her life. Proud old Jocelyn humbling himself to buy the silence of her upstart brother. The odious May taking control with unspeakable relish.

He remembered that beautiful little girl in the snow at Strathnaw. Why had Clemency’s child died, while the bastard had thrived?

There is no justice, he thought. The wages of sin are a successful army career, a comfortable house in Scotland, and a blossoming mistress and child.

They were nearing the zeriba, and men were coming forward to take the horses. ‘We must be civilized about this,’ said Ainsley. ‘I need you to help me. And by God you shall—’

‘
Enough
’, said Cameron. ‘I’ve heard enough.’ He dismounted and tossed his reins to his man and walked away.

‘Cameron, come back. Come back! Damnit, man, that’s an order!’

‘Go to the devil,’ said Cameron.

Chapter Five

Dr Baines never came back to Cairngowrie House. Perhaps he forgot. Perhaps he fell ill. Whatever the reason, the days passed and the snow kept falling, and nobody came.

Madeleine didn’t greatly mind. She didn’t mind about anything, for she was safe inside her shell. Her smooth, shiny, unbreakable Easter-egg shell, which allowed her to see and hear and smell and taste, but only in a muffled sort of way, as if she were under water.

She didn’t like the baby any more than when it had first arrived, but it had proved impossible to ignore. It gazed at her with eyes as dark and deep as a seal’s, and when she left the room its outraged howls followed her through the house.

From Dr Philpott she had learned how to look after it. She classified the tasks as easy (bathing) down to most horrible (cleaning up the mess), with dressing, feeding, and making it sleep coming somewhere in between.

Dressing was the easiest because there were lots of baby-clothes, and it was very like dressing a doll.
A flannel binder about the abdomen, a napkin or sanitary towel, a flannel shirt, two substantial petticoats, a muslin dress, bootees and a cap. Nothing tight.
It wasn’t
absolutely
the same as dressing a doll because the baby wriggled so much, but that became easier as the layers went on, for they made the baby’s arms and legs stick out, which slowed it down.

Bathing was easy too, because the baby liked it. And by now the geyser had become Madeleine’s friend. Its trusty blue light burned constantly and never failed to belch into life, although she wondered how long the gas would last.

After washing, Dr Philpott said that the baby must be
dusted with wheat-starch or violet powder to prevent chafing
. To begin with that had been a problem, for there was neither starch nor violet powder in the pantry, so she’d had to brave her mother’s room and fetch the rice powder from the dressing-table. But the baby liked being powdered, and generally stopped wriggling – although sometimes it sneezed when she did its face.

To begin with, feeding had been impossible. Dr Philpott said that
If the mother is unable to suckle, the baby should have a few dessert-spoonsful of warm water and loaf sugar every two hours. On the second day, good cow’s milk may be added to the sugar-water, or tinned or Swiss milk.
There was plenty of loaf sugar and Nestlé’s Condensed Milk in the pantry, but the problem was getting it into the baby.

If a baby is brought up by hand, the feeding bottle must be kept very clean.
The first bottle Madeleine chose was a pretty blue glass one which she emptied of syrup of figs and thoroughly washed, then filled with sugar-water. The baby howled and batted it away with both fists. Madeleine tried other bottles, but none of them worked. She tried pouring sugar-water into the baby’s mouth from a teaspoon, but it only spluttered and coughed it back again. She was on the point of giving up and dosing it with a sleeping powder from her father’s secret drawer when she chanced across Dr Philpott at his most severe:
On NO ACCOUNT should the baby be given anything OTHER than milk or sugar-water. In particular, sleeping draughts or quieting syrups MUST NEVER BE GIVEN.

Finally she had the idea of soaking a corner of her best handkerchief in the sugar-water. The baby’s mouth fastened on it like a magnet. From then on feeding was easy, although it always took an extremely long time.

The section on
changing
puzzled Madeleine at first, but she quickly realized why it came straight after
feeding
. She also learned the truth of the statement that
no-one likes a smelling baby
. This meant another dash into her mother’s room to fetch the Barnett’s Wood Wool Diapers for Ladies, which she cut into pieces and strapped in place with her father’s handkerchiefs. They worked fairly well, although they had a tendency to leak.

The final challenge was to find somewhere for the baby to sleep. Dr Philpott said
in a cot beside the mother’s bed
, which wasn’t possible, so instead Madeleine dragged the cot from the nursery into the spare room. She slept in the spare room too. She preferred it to her own room.

All this left her with little time for herself, but she didn’t mind that. She was safe inside her shell; she didn’t need much looking after. There was bread in the pantry and seed cake and a ham, so when she felt dizzy she chewed a piece of ham, or toasted bread on the spare-room fire and dipped it in treacle. She kept the gaslight low for the sake of the geyser, went to bed early to save on candles, and apart from splashing her face and hands she neither washed nor changed her clothes. She began to smell like the Reverend McAllister’s retriever, but she didn’t care. She found her own smell vaguely comforting.

Sometimes, when the baby was clean, fed, changed and asleep, Madeleine would sit on the spare-room bed and look out of the window. The garden was a white, humped smoothness leading down to the beach. The seals and the cormorants had gone. Everyone had gone. Perhaps there was no-one left in the world except herself and the baby – and her father, of course. But he was away in the desert, so that was no use. He was always away when they needed him. If it hadn’t been for the shell, she would have been angry with him.

And she was surprised at her mother, too. Why had she left her all alone like this? Why had she left her to look after the baby by herself? It wasn’t fair. Mothers weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. If it hadn’t been for the shell, she would have been angry with her mother, too.

On the morning of the tenth day there was a knock at the door.

Madeleine was in the spare room, adding coal to the fire. When she heard the noise she froze. Visitors never came to Cairngowrie House. That was why Papa had taken it, because it was isolated. So who could be knocking? The postman never knocked. And it didn’t sound like Dr Baines’s ebullient tattoo.

She glanced at the baby. It was fast asleep after a breakfast of condensed milk, its fists soft and pink and curled, like prawns.

Moving quietly, Madeleine went downstairs and opened the door, letting in a blast of cold, clean air that made her blink.

An unknown couple stood on the porch: a short, plump gentleman with damp jowls, and a tiny rigid lady in a quilted purple cape and a Tyrolean hat adorned with half a dead pheasant.

The lady had a narrow waxy face framed by old-fashioned ringlets of crimped horsehair. Her eyes were close-set and colourless, and they fastened on Madeleine with no discernible expression. ‘What’, she demanded, ‘is your name?’ Her voice was as emotionless as her gaze, but she managed to sound as if she intended to disapprove of whatever answer Madeleine gave.

Madeleine said her name, and the lady and gentleman exchanged glances. Madeleine wondered if she had been wrong to open the door. If it hadn’t been for the shell, she would have been worried.

The couple walked past her into the drawing-room, and after a moment’s hesitation she followed. She hadn’t been in the drawing-room since the baby had arrived, and she was careful not to look at the piano, and the piles of
Amateur Photographer
on the sofa.

Briskly the lady divested herself of hat, cape, gloves and muff to reveal a grimly elaborate gown of green and violet tartan. The collar reached to the jawbone, the bodice was punishingly tight, and the skirts were festooned with batteries of bows. A bustle created an illusion of hips, while the top of the stays stood in for a bosom.

‘I am Mrs Fynn,’ declared the lady. ‘You shall address me as Cousin Lettice. This’, she indicated the damp-jowled gentleman, ‘is Mr Fynn – whom you shall address as Cousin Septimus. Where is your mother.’

Madeleine said her mother was upstairs in her room.

She waited in the hall while the lady and gentleman ascended to her mother’s room. Moments later, Cousin Lettice came back onto the landing with a handkerchief clamped over her mouth. Cousin Septimus followed, looking clammy and outraged.

Madeleine felt obscurely at fault.

When they were back in the drawing-room, Cousin Lettice shook out her handkerchief with a snap and tucked it in her cuff. Then she picked up the
Amateur Photographer
s and placed them on the footstool, and sat down rigidly on the sofa. ‘When did this occur?’

‘A bit more than a week ago,’ said Madeleine.

‘Where are the servants?’

‘We only had one. And she left.’

‘Before or afterwards?’

‘Um. Before.’

Cousin Lettice looked Madeleine up and down.

Cousin Septimus stood with his hands behind his back and fixed his pale eyes on the ceiling rose. ‘The child’, he said, ‘has not washed for days. Absolute disgrace.’

He made it sound as if it were Cousin Lettice’s fault, and a stippling of red appeared on her cheeks. But her gaze never left Madeleine. ‘Did not your mother receive my letter?’ she said with a frown.

Madeleine wondered what she meant. Then she remembered the letter on the doormat. She went into the hall and retrieved it from the mat, and handed it to Cousin Lettice. It was wet from being trampled, and the ink had run.

Cousin Lettice’s colourless gaze went from Madeleine to the letter and back again. ‘How’, she demanded, ‘have you survived?’

Madeleine told her about the geyser, the ham, and Dr Philpott.

‘Dr Philpott? So there has
been
a doctor. Where is he now?’

Until then, Madeleine had been holding Dr Philpott against her chest. Now she held him out to Cousin Lettice.

Cousin Lettice took Dr Philpott and read the title aloud. ‘. . .
Hints on Other Matters Necessary to be Known to the Married Woman
.’ Her head snapped up. ‘How much of this have you read? Tell me the
truth
. I shall know it if you tell a falsehood.’

‘All of it,’ said Madeleine. ‘But the first part had nothing to do with babies, so I only read it once.’

Cousin Lettice narrowed her eyes and scrutinized her. Again Madeleine had the impression that she was mysteriously at fault. It reminded her of the Sunday School disaster – although she sensed that Cousin Lettice was more to be reckoned with than poor Miss McAllister. The Reverend’s sister might succumb to the occasional outburst of nerves, but Cousin Lettice burned with a deeper, more constant fire.

Upstairs in the spare room, the baby began to cry.

Cousin Septimus forgot about the ceiling rose and turned to Cousin Lettice with a horrified stare. Cousin Lettice went yellowish grey. ‘The infant,’ she said. ‘It survived?’

Madeleine nodded.

This time Cousin Septimus stayed below, while Madeleine took Cousin Lettice upstairs to show her the baby.

They stood together beside the cot, and Madeleine watched Cousin Lettice scrutinize the baby. It was still crying, but with less conviction now that it had company.

Cousin Lettice made no move to touch or comfort it. The stippling reappeared on her cheeks, and she gripped the edge of the cot with hands as shiny and yellow as chicken feet. ‘It survived,’ she said between her teeth. The ridge of her stays rose and fell. ‘It were better’, she declared, ‘if it had died.’