‘I’m sure you are feeding this child more than I have instructed,’ she said, and held Gracie’s feet in the air, moving them in circles, making her thighs wobble like jelly. Gracie chuckled more as Beatrix inspected Gracie. The child had put on weight, so that was something to be grateful for, though she was still small for her age and had an occasional cough.
‘So what are you feeding this fat child, girls?’ she asked.
‘Oh,’ said Edie, ‘we try to follow your instructions to the letter, don’t we, Beth?’
‘Of course,’ lied Beth.
Beatrix wrapped Gracie tightly in the towel, picked her up and came over to peer into the pot again. ‘See, this is the consistency you need in order to bring the goodness out of the vegetable and to make it possible for her body to absorb it. Boil it for two hours if you must — the longer you boil it the more goodness you draw out of it.’
Edie looked at the orange slop in the saucepan and thought she wouldn’t feed it to a dog.
‘That’s good food in there, Miss Cottingham, a darn sight better than any of us got as babies in our day,’ said the nurse sharply. ‘You need to put the pumpkin in a jar until you’re ready to use it. Do it while it’s hot so it seals hygienically.’
Edie poured the pumpkin into the jars and Beth quickly screwed the lids on. Then Beatrix dressed Gracie in her baby dress and wrapped her tightly in two blankets, trapping Gracie in a straitjacket and wiping the smile from the baby’s face. ‘Now I’m putting her in her room, there’s a fire ready, isn’t there, Beth?’
Edie looked at Beth and she nodded.
‘Well,’ said Beatrix, ‘remember: no picking her up for four hours,’ and she looked at Edie, and Edie knew Nurse Drake considered her the most likely culprit to break her rules.
As soon as the last plume of Nurse Drake’s overly decorated and ridiculously large hat had disappeared up the street Edie ran to the nursery and clutched Gracie to her breast. Gracie had short soft curls like lamb’s wool all over her head and her eyes had turned from baby grey to sky blue. Edie followed none of the nurse’s rules. If Gracie was hungry she was fed, regardless of the time of day or when she had had her last feed. If Gracie cried, Edie carried her around, resting Gracie’s colicky tummy over her arm. Edie sang to Gracie so she would know she was loved more than any other baby in the world and she cooed for her smiles. In the autumn months she had let Gracie’s arms and legs hang free so she could feel the warmth of the sun as it came through the dining room windows on her soft duck-down skin. Now it was cold Edie sat on a rug by the cooker with Gracie in her arms and they played with the offcuts of wood that Paul had cut small enough for Gracie’s fingers and then sanded until they were smooth and shone so Gracie could see her reflection.
Edie’s days revolved around Gracie’s needs and her nights around Gracie’s warm and powdery smell. Gracie had filled up Edie’s life. It had been this way for her since the day at the lake when she had stood, her feet in the mud, ready to drop Gracie into the water below. Gracie had been barely balanced in her hands, all it would have needed was a twist of her arm, a movement from Gracie, or for Edie just to take one hand away and Gracie would have plummeted down. But Gracie had smiled at her and Edie remembered what her dying mother had asked of her. So now Edie knew deep in her soul that her task in life wasn’t to be a nurse or to be a wife: it was to be Gracie’s mother. The underground house had helped them all through the mean summer.
‘Your underground house saved Gracie’s life,’ Edie said to her father on many occasions. And Paul smiled; they both knew it was true. But the summer had passed, the autumn had passed, and Gracie no longer slept downstairs in the underground house. She slept in Edie’s bed wrapped up in Edie’s arms. Except for when Nurse Drake was due. When Edie heard her at the door she would call for Beth to let the nurse in while she ran to the nursery, put Gracie in her cot and whispered, ‘Shhhh, not a word, you’ve been here the whole night, haven’t you?’
And Gracie would smile to show she understood their secret.
Paul would arrive home from work at precisely six. He’d done this ever since Gracie was six weeks old, so Edie was always ready and waiting for him. When it was warm she would wait on the verandah, now it was cold she would wait at the study window with Gracie in her arms so they could see him as soon as he walked through the gate.
‘I just can’t bear to work any later these days,’ he told Edie, and she knew that it was because he wanted to get home to Gracie.
This evening he put his umbrella in the stand, took off his coat and hung it on the hall stand, and then took off his boxer, which he hung over his coat, and finally his scarf and gloves. As she watched him, Edie thought he seemed so much older than he was before her mother died. Something about him was frailer, his hair and eyes seemed greyer. And she thought how just eight months ago she had been a girl concerned with no more than making a man fall in love with her. Now she was a woman, aware of life and death and how they walked hand in hand. Edie put Gracie into Paul’s arms and Gracie smiled up at him. Then they went to the dining room and sat down to the dinner
