Someone Special (5 page)

She was sick several times in the next few months, and when she told him she was expecting a baby he was delighted, genuinely pleased and proud.

‘It’ll be a boy … the way my confounded grandfather left his property it’s got to be a boy,’ he said, hugging her exuberantly. ‘Give me a kiss, my little golden angel-girl.’

She knew, though, that as her figure burgeoned and billowed, he would be unfaithful again. She cared, but there was little she could do. She did say she wanted to live at Goldenstone, to move out of their flat in the city and into the country when the baby was born. He wasn’t in favour, but he said if that was what she wanted he supposed it would be all right. And though she knew he thought it a temporary thing, just while the baby was small, she was determined to keep him out at Goldenstone. His infidelity was bearable only if she did not have to see it, and besides, country living would be better for the child and for their marriage.

He wasn’t present at the birth but she was deeply disappointed when he did not come and visit her in the hours following Anna’s arrival. She supposed, tearfully, that he was angry because Anna wasn’t a boy, but even so …

He came the next morning, carrying drooping red roses. He was still drunk from his excesses of the night before, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling. For the first time he was not beautiful and she was quiet with him, not pretending to be overjoyed to see him, though she was, she was!

‘Pity it wasn’t a boy this time,’ he said thickly, hugging her, shoving the roses, thorns and all, into her arms. ‘But who cares, eh? Who cares a jolly old bean, so long as
you’re safe an’ well an’ the kid’s got all its fingers and toes. Better luck next time, eh, old girl?’

A small frosty voice Constance didn’t recognise as her own observed that there would not be a next time. She had not enjoyed giving birth, her pelvis was narrow so it had taken thirty-six hours of protracted bearing down to get the baby born and she was still sore and torn. JJ bent over her, then winced as the movement hurt his head.

‘No next time? Nonsense, nonsense, you’ll want a big family, especially if we live at Goldenstone, the way you say you want.’

‘I do want,’ Constance said. ‘But I think one baby is quite enough.’

He shrugged. ‘You’ll change your mind, or I’ll change it for you. Darling, when will they let you come home? I’m lonely.’

She smiled at him. He missed having a woman about the place, someone to order the meals, to laugh at his jokes, to answer the telephone. A woman in his bed was another matter; she supposed, miserably, that he had already remedied that particular defect.

‘I’ll come as soon as they think I’m fit enough. Have you seen the baby? Isn’t she the most perfect thing? And fair, like me.’

‘And perfect, like you,’ he murmured, taking her hand and planting an impassioned kiss in the palm. ‘Sweetest Constance, you’d be astonished how much I miss you!’

She wasn’t, that was the odd thing. She accepted the fact that he could miss her despite the fact that it gave him freedom to pursue other women, while simultaneously worrying that he might discover life without a wife was more fun than life with one. But she wouldn’t leave the nursing home a day before they wanted her to do so, because with that first glance at her baby she had known the child would be the main weapon in her armoury against losing JJ. No one, she was convinced, could fail to
fall for that sweet, pink and white, blonde-topped scrap.

So Constance continued to lie in bed most of the day, to take gentle exercise when the nurses said she might, and to contain her fear and impatience over what JJ might do in her absence. She took pleasure in her little daughter, wrote letters, read books, listened to the wireless, and reminded herself ten or twenty times every day that he was missing her, that it would do him good to realise that she was not always at his beck and call.

Her mother, a languid willowy woman, still determinedly blonde in her mid-fifties, came quite often and baby-worshipped, though she made no bones about telling Constance that she must not spoil the child, must hand her over to the nanny as soon as she got home, the nanny who had experience and would understand what to do in all circumstances.

‘My pet, JJ is the sort of man who needs a woman’s whole attention,’ she said earnestly. ‘Darling, he’s far too handsome … be thankful you’re such a pretty thing and remember a woman can only hold a man by working at it. If you start neglecting your looks or spending all your time with the baby your marriage will suffer.’

Constance remembered her honeymoon; it hadn’t taken either self-neglect or a baby to make JJ unfaithful then, it seemed to come naturally to him. But she would take her mother’s advice and do her very best to bind JJ to her with ribbons of velvet. The dear little baby would have to take second place – it was only right and proper, after all. One’s husband must come first.

‘Did you know that the Duchess of York, what’s her name, yes, Elizabeth, had a baby the same day as me? She’s going to call the child Elizabeth Alexandra Mary.’

Constance indicated the announcement in her newspaper and looked curiously across at JJ’s larger and more imposing broadsheet. She had been home for ten days now
and little Anna was all but weaned from breast to bottle. In her ignorance she had thought that this would be an easy matter, but it had proved quite otherwise. The baby didn’t care for the bottle and Constance’s breasts did not wish to find themselves bursting with milk. Binding had proved painful, and being forbidden more than a couple of sips of drink each day had been a real deprivation now that the finer weather had come. JJ’s attitude – that he rather liked her big breasts and that they should be allowed to remain – had caused Constance not only annoyance but also some doubts about the wisdom of bottle-feeding.

But she had to keep her figure; JJ would soon get tired of large breasts if they began to sag, which everyone said was what happened when you breast-fed for too long. And while she fed the baby she was tied to the house; JJ doubtless rather enjoyed that, she thought bitterly, but he would have to realise that this state of affairs could not continue. The baby had a good nanny, so once breast-feeding was finished Constance would be free to go everywhere with JJ again, and if it spoiled some of his plans, hard luck!

‘What did you say?’

JJ lowered his paper and looked at her rather ill-temperedly across its top. Last night, during the two o’clock feed, Nanny had been forced to come and fetch Constance because her charge had cried so hard and refused the bottle so emphatically that the noise had woken JJ.

‘I don’t advise putting baby to the breast again,’ Nanny had hissed as the two of them stood in the corridor discussing the situation, Constance white with tiredness and sleep interrupted. ‘But if you’d just hold her, Mrs Radwell …’ Constance had held the baby and given her the bottle and after a sniffle and a mutter or two, Anna had taken the lot. Nanny, gratified, had promised that it wouldn’t happen again, it was just that baby still hadn’t quite accepted …

Constance went back to bed. She was sleeping alone, JJ was in the dressing-room since he hated being disturbed and some disturbance was inevitable while the baby was being weaned. But apparently her voice and Nanny’s had woken him and he was cross and bleary-eyed at the breakfast table as a result.

‘I said that the Duke and Duchess of York had a little girl on the twenty-first of April, the same day our baby was born,’ Constance repeated patiently now. ‘They’re going to call her …’

‘I know. It’s in here.’ JJ raised his paper again. From behind it Constance could hear him crunching toast. ‘I expect lots of people did.’

‘Did what?’

Really, he made things very difficult sometimes; why couldn’t they have a normal breakfast-time conversation like other people?

‘Oh, Constance, honestly! I expect a lot of people had babies on the twenty-first of April. Babies get born all the time, you know.’

‘Well, yes, but the Duke of York’s the king’s son so baby Elizabeth is the king’s granddaughter. That makes her a bit special, doesn’t it? And it’s always nice to share a birthday with someone special.’

‘Our kid’s someone special on her own account,’ JJ said, flinging his paper down on the table and apparently discarding his ill-humour with it, for he gave Constance one of his most blinding smiles. ‘Poor darling, was I cross? But I hate disturbed nights and, dearly though I love the baby, her caterwauling did wake me, and then you two hissing away like the witches in Macbeth right outside my room completed the job and I lay there for hours trying to nod off again. I’ll come back from the office early, I think, and have a nap after luncheon, then I’ll be my usual cheerful self. Because I’ve got a rather important dinner date tonight, I shall need to be at my best.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, darling, but she’s nearly weaned,’ Constance observed, trying not to sound abject. The trouble was she did hate being in JJ’s bad books. ‘Soon we can move out to Goldenstone; it’s such a marvellous house, so big and roomy, and the baby will be up on the nursery floor, where we shan’t hear her if she howls all night. Not that she will, because Nanny Galbraith’s a marvellous woman, she’ll soon settle down. And what’s this about a dinner date? I don’t remember anything.’

‘No, well, it’s a club function, darling, so women aren’t allowed, I’m afraid. Why not ask a friend round to dine if you think you’ll be lonely, or you could ask your mother. That’s the only objection I’ve got to moving out to Goldenstone; you’re bound to be lonely when I’m not able to spend the whole evening with you.’

Constance folded her paper, laid it by her plate and stood up.

‘Oh, if you’re out I’ll go round to Felicity’s this evening, then,’ she said with totally false cheerfulness. ‘She’s always nagging me to do so. And now I’ll just pop up to the nursery and have a word with nanny. See you at luncheon, then, darling.’

Mrs Day leaned over the crib and pulled the covers right up to the occupant’s small, rounded chin. The baby stirred, then settled again. She was a love, this latest nursling, Mrs Day decided, forgetting that she had said this of every single one of her babies. Elizabeth, the Duchess of York as she had become on her marriage, was a natural mother. All my babies – the girl-babies – are natural mothers, Mrs Day thought, using the muslin napkin which hung from her wrist to wipe a dribble of milk from the baby’s pillow. One of my successes was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a thoroughly sweet-tempered child, a charming woman and now the sort of wife most men can only dream of.

Mrs Day had never been married, her title being a courtesy one only, but that didn’t mean she was ignorant about marriage, because she was an expert. The onlooker sees most of the game, Mrs Day told herself, crossing the spacious nursery to tidy away the baby’s day-wear, the talcum powder and soap, the big white bath-towel, all the paraphernalia of feeding, bathing and bedding one small girl-child, the one who now slumbered sweetly in the crib. Oh yes, when Elizabeth turned him down, I thought she was running mad – such a dear boy, so polite and sensible, with such love in his eyes when he looked at my dear Lady Elizabeth – but she wanted to be sure, she’s always wanted to be sure. She didn’t want or need high position, the Family (Mrs Day always gave them a capital F in her mind) was an old and honoured one. But Bertie hadn’t let a refusal put him off; he had continued to court her, sweetly but with determination, until Elizabeth had realised she loved him, and said she would marry him after all.

I knew they were right for each other, Mrs Day thought now, contentedly tidying. They made a lovely couple even when they were courting, but as bride and groom … well, I never did see a couple better matched. You don’t often see perfect love but she’d seen it the day her dear Lady Elizabeth had said ‘yes’ to Bertie Windsor, the Duke of York. Now, as their nanny, she was privileged to see that same expression on the faces of the young parents when they looked at their little daughter.

The nanny finished tidying and adjusted the curtain across the window, so that the sun, already low in the sky, would not fall across the baby’s face and wake her. Little Elizabeth would sleep in here until after the ten o’clock feed, when she would be transferred into the night nursery next door, but experience told Mrs Day that a child, even a sleeping child, is soothed by the soft and careful movements of someone it loves in the same
room. Accordingly, having screened the cradle, she took her place in a chair beside the fireplace and picked up her knitting. My babies never wail because I’m never far, she was wont to say. You can’t give a baby too much love, but you can make it unhappy and confused by blowing hot and cold and not being reliable. Babies need love, reliability and firmness, in that order. And that’s what a good nanny gives: love, reliability and firmness.

Thinking of the firmness part of it made her remember weaning baby Elizabeth from breast to bottle at around five weeks. The changeover had been accomplished without any untoward fuss due at least in part to Mrs Day’s expertise, because Mrs Day had been nannying for twenty-five years. But it had been eased first by the baby’s sweet-natured acceptance of the change and next by the Duchess. She had shed tears, had the Duchess, because as she told Mrs Day she so enjoyed the closeness which breast-feeding engendered, but she knew her duty; she had to help her husband in his various royal tasks and could scarcely be a proper helpmeet while she was tied to four-hourly feeds.

Mrs Day had wondered, in this latest job, if she would have any interference from royalty, because her dear Lady Elizabeth marrying King George’s second son meant that Mrs Day was nearer the royals than she had ever thought to be, and folk said that royalty could be difficult, but it had proved to be quite otherwise. Royalty were used to their children being nannied, and respected the dedication of the nannying profession, knew they needn’t interfere.

And Elizabeth – the Duchess of York, Mrs Day reminded herself hastily – was too much Mrs Day’s nursling to kick against the pricks. She knew her duty and would abide by it, though sometimes handing your baby over to another woman, no matter that you loved that other woman as much as you loved your own mother, must be hard. But as the wife of a young man who was in
line for the throne of England, not that Bertie would ever come near it of course with a handsome older brother who won all hearts, the Duchess had not only to be dutiful but be seen to be dutiful. She would always have to take her share of public appearances and so on, though once the Prince of Wales married the Yorks would be able to move thankfully out of the limelight, and let the prince’s wife do the lion’s share.