“However,” Dr. Rudge said, “I do call myself a compassionate man, and this is not the first time that a distressed relative in my practice has—as we call it—eased an elderly person out of a life of suffering—but in your case, Miss Sidney, I’m bound to say, it is very strange of you to try and pin the blame on the daily help.”
“Strange?” Colin said. “It’s monstrous. I’m not trying to take a moral stance, Florence, but honestly, you should have told us what you were up to.”
“We always hope,” Dr. Rudge said testily, “that we don’t have to discuss the matter quite so openly.”
“Prosecute me!” Florence said. “Call the police! Put me in the dock!”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Sylvia said. “You’re embarrassing us all. Think, Colin, I’ll be able to cut down on Lizzie’s hours now. I can go out in the evening again. I can take a more active part in the canal scheme.”
“There won’t be an inquest?” Colin asked.
“Not necessary,” the doctor said.
“But of course there must be an inquest,” Florence said. “I want my name cleared.” She looked around at her brother, at her sister-in-law, at the doctor. Their faces were closed, smug, blank with careful discretion. “What will the neighbours say?” she asked. “They’ll say I did it. They’ll all be talking about me, right up Arlington Road.”
“Better Arlington Road than the
After the New Year, the cold weather set in. Every morning when the new term started Colin had to go out with a shovel at a quarter to eight and clear the drive of snow. Vehicles were abandoned by the side of the road, pipes froze up and burst, and sleet blew in whirlwinds and eddies across the motorway. The black branches of the trees on the Avenue bent under the weight of the winter; and then came a thaw, the gutters running with icy flood water.
Towards the end of February, Suzanne’s baby—a girl—was born in hospital. She did not hear from Jim Ryan. When her mother and father visited her that evening she turned her face away from them and looked steadfastly at the wall. The baby, Gemma, slept by her bed in a plastic bubble. She entertained fantasies of walking up the Ryans’ front path; of dropping in at the bank and laying the baby on Jim’s desk amid the statements and paper clips.
“When people say they want a child,” Colin explained, “when people say that, as Jim did to you, they may be speaking figuratively. They may be saying they want a second chance.”
“She didn’t think he was speaking figuratively,” Sylvia said. “She saw herself walking up the aisle. That was no figure.”
“I didn’t think girls dreamed of their weddings any more,” Colin said sadly. “I thought the world had changed.”
“Oh no.” Sylvia looked down at the child, the drift of dark hair, the formless undersea face. Her expression softened. “I love babies,” she said. “I always did.”
“I don’t love them,” Suzanne said. “I don’t have any feelings.” Her mother patted her wrist. Suzanne twitched her arm away. “Why shouldn’t people have second chances?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” Colin said, “they just don’t, these days. In the seventies, people had second chances. Ten years ago. Now it’s all battening down the hatches, that sort of thing.”
“You could put the baby up for adoption,” Sylvia said. “That is, we could adopt it. I’d be willing.”
“Is there no stopping you?” Colin said. He eyed her sideways. She was planning to stay around then.
“You have your life to make,” Sylvia told her daughter. “You’ve made a mistake, but you don’t have to go on paying for it.”
“Of course she does,” Colin said. “Go on paying is what people do. Ask Jim.”
Sylvia regarded him, unblinking. “I know why you are so bitter,” she said. “I don’t know the details, but I know the gist of it. I really think it’s time you grew up.” She turned to Suzanne. “Don’t listen to your father. I’d be more than willing. You could finish your course.” She was coaxing, trying to cajole the baby out of her daughter. “It’s the least we can do.”
Suzanne turned her face away again. “I’ll never give her to you,” she said. “God knows what you’d do to her. I shan’t be coming home.”
“I see.” Sylvia walked over to the window, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jacket. She looked down into the hospital car park, sucking her lip. “Leave us your address then. Edwina’s, or wherever.”
“Get it from Lizzie Blank,” Suzanne said.
When Colin arrived home, there was a parcel waiting for him. It was wrapped up in brown paper and inscribed “TO GRANDAD, FROM ALISTAIR AND OSTIN.”
“Goodness,” Colin said, “a pressie.” He picked it up, applied his ear to it, and rattled it.
“You are childish,” Sylvia said. He sat down with it on the sofa and began to pick at the string. “We’ve had the bill from the undertaker,” she said.
“I saw it. It’s too much.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you can haggle over.”
“I don’t see why not. They wouldn’t dig her up, would they?”
“Give it to Florence,” Sylvia suggested. “We wouldn’t be faced with it if it weren’t for her.”
“If I tell her that she’ll have an apoplexy.”
“Let her.”
“Then we’ll have to pay for her funeral.”
