Consider the Lily (55 page)

‘I remembered Antibes and how much I liked it. It’s modest, but full of what I love.’ The pale skin stretching over the cheekbones developed a touch of pink as Daisy talked. ‘Colour and heat. Good food. My French has improved, you know, not Versailles French, street French. I worked at a local
boulangerie
for a couple of weeks, then I helped out at a cafe until I became too big to be of use. I got good tips.’

For God’s sake, thought Kit.

‘Pregnancy didn’t suit me.’ Daisy’s eyelashes hid the expression in her eyes. ‘One of God’s little tricks on women. I felt dreadful quite a lot of the time, and I got into the habit of having a drink in the afternoon and I shouldn’t have done. And in the evening,’ she added. Her eyelids snapped up and she directed her quick, slanting look at Kit. ‘Do you know what, Kit? And I can only say this to you because I know you understand me in a way no one else does.’

‘What?’

‘I liked the sensation of going down. Slipping. Leaving everything behind. Not caring much.’ Not caring at all, she thought, remembering the afternoon when, desperate for francs, and also any human contact, she had gone with a tall fisherman to a hotel room. The give and take of the episode – her giving of her thickened body, which was not very expert in the business of undressing and sex, and taking the money in consequence – seemed ridiculously easy.

Because Daisy did not have the strength to shield Kit and because her predicament had made her impatient with false pride, she told him.

His chair screeched along the stone floor. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ he said, punching his fist on his thigh. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘It didn’t matter, Kit. Truly. It was over in fifteen minutes and I ate dinner that night. A good one.
Coq au vin,’
she added, echoing Susan in a way he had never imagined.

‘Is that meant to be funny?’ he said bitterly.

Afternoon sun streamed into the room from the cloister. A couple of the sisters were pacing round it, the rosaries at their belts swinging in time to their bodies.

‘In the end, I had enough to rent rue de la Coin. The sisters were kind and let me have the baby here, but I didn’t want to stay because I could tell they didn’t approve, so I went back to the room. But I didn’t seem to recover very well.’ Daisy slid over the nightmare birth, the bleeding afterwards, the chilly expression of the nun attending her, the impatient doctor, the fear, and the freezing sensation of being alone.

‘How long ago?’

‘Two weeks. A bit longer.’

The thought flashed across Kit’s mind that he had been a father for all that time.

‘So you see, my darling, why I had to ask you to come because it is all very well me behaving for
me,
but now I have your son, my son, to consider.’

Kit did not reply for a long time, and Daisy thought of the letter she had written telling him she would love him for ever, and reflected that promises like that had a way of spoiling lives — and that was why events like the fisherman did not matter.

The baby stirred in the cradle, puckered his face and moved his head from side to side. Daisy watched him, rather as she might a small, furry animal in the zoo. ‘I suppose he needs feeding,’ she said. ‘Do you think you could lift him up for me?’

The baby rooted unsuccessfully at his mother’s breast, but failed to find what he wanted and began to yell. Daisy tried to help him, but she was still too weak. ‘I don’t like this bit,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m a natural mother, but the sisters say this way is the best.’ She made an attempt at a joke. ‘It’s not like me to be unfashionable.’

Uneasy with the crying, Kit abandoned his scrutiny of the cloister and helped to position the baby’s head against Daisy’s breast. The crying broke off into blissful silence. Daisy raised her face to Kit. ‘He’s greedy, your son,’ she said.

Later on, the nun came in and dismissed Kit in a swish of cheap black cotton. ‘Vows
pouvez revenir demain, Monsieur.’

‘Can’t I stay, Sister?’

‘
Monsieur, je suis désolée...’

Kit got into the Dion, and drove down to Cap d’Antibes where he walked along the cliff above the sea until it was quite dark. As dusk fell, a fresh breeze blew up and the sea grew dark and winy. He pulled off his hat and, in characteristic fashion, ran his fingers repeatedly through his hair.

He looked back at the town. The lights in Antibes flicked on and, from that distance, threw a sparkled enchantment. Behind one of them lay Daisy. Love for her welled through him and spilled over: passionate, longing, filling both body and soul, generous and complete.

Love had given Kit wholeness and transcendence; but love also brought the threat of fracture and madness, and those things had to be avoided. Daisy appeared to know that instinctively. Kit had been slower to learn.

But what of Matty? How much could Kit expect of her – knowing that by his behaviour he could expect nothing at all?

‘Darling Kit.’ Daisy was sitting up, looking better. The nuns had washed her hair, and there was more colour in her cheeks. ‘You would be proud of me. I ate a whole plate of soup and some bread.’

He put a couple of yellow-wrappered novels and a bottle of brandy onto the table with the crucifix. ‘I don’t think you looked after yourself at all, Daisy.’

Daisy tried to remember exactly what she had done, and failed. ‘I think I just drank,’ she said.

The baby began to cry. Daisy gestured to a bottle standing in a tin jug. ‘Why don’t you give him his bottle?’ she said. ‘I’ve given up the other business.’

‘Me?’

‘Don’t look so surprised. I imagine some men somewhere in the world give bottles to their babies. Pick him up, darling Kit, and sit down. He
is
yours.’

The baby was surprisingly light and, expertly wrapped into a papoose by the nuns, easy to hold.

‘Go on,’ urged Daisy, and lay back to watch him struggling to hold the baby at the correct angle and to deal with the bottle. Eventually, the rubber teat was in place, the baby sucked and a runnel of milk snaked down his chin and onto the shawl. Daisy was amused.

‘I never thought,’ she said, ‘that I would say the things I am going to say to you over a baby’s bottle. I imagined a serious, dramatic talk with a lawyer or something.’

Milk was seeping into Kit’s jacket sleeve. The baby sucked and nuzzled and grew heavy with contentment. ‘What have you called him?’

Daisy rolled the edge of the sheet between her fingers and said carefully, ‘I thought perhaps you would like to choose since I would like to give him to you.’

Kit stiffened, the baby lost the teat, and it was a good half-minute before he replied. ‘I didn’t think you meant it when you first said it.’

‘But I did. I’m giving him to you to do with what you think best. You must decide. That is both my punishment and yours.’ She reflected. ‘Nothing is without its consequences, is it?’

‘And what about you, Daisy?’

The sheet rolled back and forwards in her fingers. ‘What will I do? I will stay here for a while. You know how I like France. I like the food, the sun and the people. Who knows, I might find a rich man at one of the hotels.’

‘Stop it, Daisy.’

‘Don’t worry. Perhaps, after a decent interval, I’ll come home and see if Tim will still marry me. I don’t know. I don’t see my way quite yet. But don’t worry about it.’

Kit’s sleeve was sodden. Trapped, he could only stare at Daisy and say, ‘Of course I’ll worry.’

‘That woman we met in the
boîte,
wearing a striped jersey and a fringe – you didn’t like her but I’ve often thought about her and wondered if she and I had something in common. If you like, she had cast anchor.’

‘Daisy, will you please stop talking such nonsense.’ Kit had had enough. He got up, dislodging the baby, and thrust him and the bottle at Daisy. ‘I can’t bear to hear you say things like that.’

To the baby’s wail and Daisy’s cry of protest, he left the room and let himself out through the convent door. On the seafront, he walked into the Bar Leduc where he ordered a double brandy. Three glasses later, Kit tottered back to the hotel and flung himself onto the bed.

When he woke up it was ten o’clock in the evening and his mouth was so dry and furred it was painful to swallow, but that was nothing to the pain that thumped in his head. Moving like an old man, he found the bathroom and plunged his head into a basin of cold water. When he looked up, a stranger’s face regarded him from the brass-framed mirror. Daisy’s voice echoed in his ear. ‘Extremes.’ And Kit shivered. He knew about extremes. He put his face into the cold water for a second time, and knocked his nose on the brass tap. Eyes streaming, nose throbbing, head pounding, he got dressed as quickly as he could and snatched up his hat.

The convent was in darkness when the Dion drew up in front of it. Kit hammered on the door and when no one appeared hammered louder. A light went on in the house opposite and a man poked his head out through the shutter.

‘Go home,
salud.
That is a house of
religieuses,
not
poulettes.’

‘Monsieur.’ When she finally opened the door, the nun was so outraged by Kit’s presence that she stammered.
‘Allez-vous-en...
This is not the time. Leave us in peace. This is a house of God.’

‘I’m so sorry, Sister,’ he said and, placing his hands on her shoulders, pushed her gently to one side. The nun’s hands flew up to her chest and she sagged against the wall.

But Kit did not care. He ran down the long stone corridor with its shadowy spaces and plaster saints, through the murmurs of sleeping women, and the half-coughs and groans of patients, until he reached the door of Daisy’s room.

‘Daisy.’

She was awake, watching the moonlight stream at an angle through the window, her face half in the dark, half in the light. As it had once before, in the garden at the Villa Lafayette, the moon lit her hair and skin. She seemed not of this earth and it frightened him.

‘Daisy.’

Kit slid to his knees beside the bed. ‘Have you forgiven me?’

She turned her brilliant eyes on him. ‘Oh, Kit. Only you would organize a break-in at a convent in the middle of the night. Of course I’ve forgiven you.’ Her gaze returned to the door. ‘We won’t have much time before they come clucking in.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps this is the time to say goodbye.’

‘Daisy—’

‘When I left you in the garden that time at the Villa Layfayette, I made a choice, Kit, though I didn’t know it then. You remember. The day you agreed to marry Matty
you
made a choice. I’m not saying yours was the wrong choice, because I think Matty gives you something you need, Kit. Somehow you knew that.’

He cherished her hand against his mouth and kissed each finger one by one.

‘You must do what you think fit with the baby.’

‘He’s your son, too,’ said Kit. He brushed their entwined fingers with his lips. ‘Don’t you want him?’

‘Yes I do, very much. More than I can tell you. But how could I keep him? Think of the whispers and the finger-pointing. The innuendo that will always follow him. In the playground. At school. I would never get away with it. People are inquisitive and children are cruel... I was cruel to Matty so I know. You see, when I refused to visit the convenient doctor in Harley Street, I didn’t understand that bit of it. And now I’ve got him and I love him, I can’t let that happen.’

Kit was silent, and Daisy stroked the bowed head with her free hand. ‘Please, darling. Take him for me. Please. I will abide by whatever you decide.’ She tugged at his hair and Kit raised his face – an older, haunted face. Daisy ran a finger along an eyebrow, which had turned almost white from the sun, along the thin nose, and down to the mouth.

‘Anything,’ said Kit.

Several pairs of rapid footsteps came down the corridor and Kit, burying his head in the curve of Daisy’s arm, turned his face into her full breast and inhaled milky maternity. ‘I will love you for ever.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, catching her breath. ‘But one part of it is over, Kit. And I’ve promised myself not to become a mass of regret, otherwise it won’t have been worth it. Nor should you.’

There was a gabble of whispered, excited French outside the door.

‘I managed it badly,’ muttered Kit into the soft roundness, ‘didn’t I?’

‘So did I.’

With the passion and possessiveness of one who knew that neither was permissible any longer, he pressed kisses onto the breast beneath the starched cotton, desperate to imprint her flesh on his.

‘Monsieur. I must demand that you leave at once.’ Flanked by her flock of nuns, the Mother Superior held an oil lamp high above her head. It cast a long shadow over the room. ‘You have insulted our trust, and our hospitality, and I hope you will leave at once. Your behaviour is not that of a gentleman.’

Kit got slowly to his feet and looked down at the figure in the bed. The black shapes by the door shifted and closed on him.

Daisy lifted her hand and whispered, ‘Take him, won’t you? Please. I trust you, Kit. You’ll know what to do. Don’t worry, I won’t ask for him back.’ She paused and said, ‘Goodbye, Kit.’

‘Daisy.’ Kit bent over and kissed her on the lips. For the last time, her arm snaked up around his neck.

He took Daisy’s hand, held it cupped in both his own and then laid it gently on the sheet.

‘Daisy,’ he said to her, full of longing. ‘Daisy. I may not have loved you very cleverly, but I loved you. Whatever happens, I won’t forget.’

‘I know.’

‘Monsieur.
At once
.’ Mother Superior’s voice was shaking with anger. ‘This is a sick patient. I will be forced to summon the police if you do not leave at once.’

As he went obediently through the door, Kit turned and looked back through the accusing faces. Under the picture of the Madonna with the lilies, Daisy was lying motionless, watching him, her hand where he had placed it. The moonlight lit up the pale mouth and long neck, and the tears that poured in a stream down her face.

‘Smile, darling,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I can’t bear it.’

In the third week of May, Hurricane Betsy slipped her moorings at her Caribbean birthplace and hurled herself, screaming and dust-filled, into the atmosphere. Growing bigger and darker by the minute, she waited until she was ready to unleash her fury on the land below.