Mistress of My Fate (39 page)

“You will forgive me, miss,” the woman addressed me, “for Mrs. Reid was brought to bed of a girl this evening and it is a fair walk hence from World’s End.”

She swung her light over me and it was then I noticed her fingernails, still blackened with Mrs. Reid’s birthing blood. I gazed over at my friend, my expression imploring her to observe the woman’s unclean hands, but Gertrude Mahon just smiled and stroked my head.

“All will be well, dear, if you do as she bids you.”

The midwife went between my knees and pushed her hand into my cavity. By God, how I howled! The agony of it! The sense that I was soon to die gripped me so fiercely that I could think of nothing else. I was tortured and torn, and was to be slowly disembowelled by the writhing knot inside of me. I believed then that this woman intended to wrench apart my womb. I imagined my innards slithering out, like those of a steaming pig hanging in a butcher’s yard.

“The infant is turned,” she announced, her hand still within me. I felt the chill wetness of my blood all about.

As my eyes fluttered open and shut, my body was taken with spasms. “So here it will end,” I heard my voice from within my head. “Allenham, my dear, dear George,” I called to him, willing him one final time to my side. I cleared a path for him through the heavens, it lay open and waiting, but he did not come. My vitality was burning away. I was bereft of strength, and after treading such a long and harrowing course, had begun to consider that death might be a comfortable bed in which to lie.

A just punishment. A divine retribution for your sins
, I heard. I knew not where these words came from, though in my confusion I guessed them to be my own.

A cloud settled upon my senses so that all noises became no more than a humming din and all sights no more than mere outlines. The lantern hung over me, like a pole star. Against its light, I strained to focus my vision upon the circle of women gathered around me. Beside the midwife in her frilled cap stood her youthful apprentice. To my right appeared Mrs. Mahon, her face now cast in an anxious expression. Soon there was another figure, whose form appeared quite hazy. She moved along either side of me, shifting her position to gain a better view perhaps. I took her to be some servant of the house, though I knew not what her purpose there might be. It was only when she stood beside the lantern that I saw her face.

“You will never keep him!” Her mouth framed the words, though no discernible sounds came from it.

Her unexpected appearance put a burst of breath back into my lungs “Cathy!” I wailed in horror.

“It is nearly at its end, madam,” said the midwife, “the head is almost through.”

I grunted and thrashed in a final thrust of pain as I felt my child being tugged loose of me.

And then, all at once, he came free.

I saw before me the bloodied, slime-covered form of my son, dangled by the ankles as if he were a plucked goose. The midwife tapped upon his back several times before his tiny mouth parted and issued forth a long, shrill wail.

“A boy!” she cried.

“A boy!” echoed Gertrude Mahon.

But at that moment, I hardly heard their news. I was too stunned, too frightened to speak, until I knew for certain that she and her shadows had gone.

Chapter 29

George Allen St. John. The names were my choice. I had bestowed them upon him as soon as he was laid into my arms. The infant’s “father” was at that time yet to be located. When I was taken into her house, Mrs. Perrot had sent two of her servants to trawl the avenues of Ranelagh. Eventually, St. John was found at his home, popping with rage in the belief that I had run off with the help of Gertrude Mahon. When it was explained to him that, in fact, I had been brought to bed of a son,
his son
, at a house near Ranelagh, he was utterly dumbfounded. At four o’clock in the morning, he raced to my bedside and, upon seeing me with the infant, fell to his knees in a fit of tears. At that moment I understood that it would not have mattered what I called the boy. Why, I might have named him George FitzAllenham, and St. John would have neither raised an objection nor questioned my decision. He was in raptures. Indeed, I have never seen a man so entirely subdued by a child. When Mrs. Mahon explained to him that an attempted robbery in the gardens had startled me into an early labour, St. John seemed entirely uninterested. He cared only that his son was well and healthy.

As you might have gathered from my story, the birth had brought me very close to death, so that it was nearly three days before I was fit enough to return to Park Street. In that time, a proper nurse had been located for Georgie, who squawked and cooed and drank a good deal of milk. It seemed an odd thing to me to hand over my child to another
woman’s bosom, when my urge was to clutch him to mine, but Mrs. Mahon assured me that it was for the best, as I would be likely to drive St. John away if I always had an infant hanging from my breast.

“Sentimentality will do you no favours, my dear,” she counselled me as I sat abed adorned in my new linens and lace cap. Sweet, warm Georgie gurgled against me. Her words caused me to frown.

Noting my expression, she began to shake her head and then rose from her seat in order to shut my bedchamber door. “Now hear me, Henrietta,” she began, her voice a low whisper, “if you wish any command of your life, you must not permit your heart to rule your head. You have been exceptionally foolish in your devotion to St. John and never once heeded my advice. Now you have only him on whom to rely, so take care not to drive him away.”

For the first time ever, I glared at Mrs. Mahon and then dismissed her with a laugh. It was ungrateful and impertinent behaviour, but I was growing weary of her designs for me. At eighteen, I believed I knew best. I was now a mother and no one should tell me how to mind my life and that of my child.

“St. John adores Georgie and would want only what is best for him.”

“And what is best for your son, madam, is that St. John remains foremost in your affections—so it is true for all men! The moment you refuse St. John’s advances in order to coddle your child, to suckle him, to stanch his tears, is the very instant you have lost your keeper, and all your peace and comfort. He will find another to take your place. Remember this, Hetty: you are not a wife. He has no duty to you. You are indeed blessed that St. John adores little George, but to play wet nurse to your own infant is an indulgence that a woman of your position cannot well afford.”

Gertrude Mahon’s advice was correct, of course. Many years later, I found myself repeating her words to other young ladies who trod a path similar to mine. You see, she was that rare thing among the
demi-monde
, which is to say a true friend. She wished the best for me, as
might a mother or an elder sister, but I was still too inexperienced to appreciate her wisdom. Safe in the knowledge that St. John loved Georgie, I saw only the advantages to be gained in the immediate present.

Long before Georgie’s appearance, St. John had ordered the conversion of several rooms in the attic for the purpose of creating a nursery. He took great pleasure in this and in commissioning the furniture: acquiring the cot and tallboys and a nursing chair. During my period of lying-in, the house on Park Street was a scene of familial bliss. My keeper hovered frequently beside the infant’s cot, begging like a young girl for permission to lift the boy. His face beamed with wonder as he admired the child’s wide blue eyes and dark patch of hair. At first, I must confess that Georgie’s appearance caused me some concern, for there was a good deal of Allenham imprinted upon him, but doting adults see only what they wish to in a child’s features; and where I recognized my beloved, St. John recognized only himself.

During that month, visitors bearing well wishes came and went regularly. To be sure, I drank so much caudle that by mid-September I could scarcely tolerate the sickly, spiced taste of it. It was offered along with seed cake to all of my lady callers, each of whom wished to admire and coo over the head of my angelic Georgie.

At first I found it curious that Lady Lade, who had the least feminine charms of any woman of my acquaintance, seemed most possessed by the little infant. She, more than any of my companions, fussed and bustled about him, rocking him in her arms while mimicking his yawns and burbles. This attention from the swaggering woman, who seemed more devoted to horses and swearing, surprised me immensely.

“Ho,” she exclaimed as she attempted to silence his wails with some gentle bouncing, “he has a pair of lusty lungs, just like my Jemima.”

I turned to her with a puzzled expression.

“Why, in all these months I have never once heard your ladyship mention a daughter.”

“I had two. And a son. He is in the army, I know not where.”

The room, in which sat Mrs. Mahon, Miss Greenhill and Miss Caroline Ponsonby, fell suddenly quiet.

“And they are Sir John’s children?” I enquired with some hesitation. The others watched me closely, knowing that I had ventured on to precarious ground.

“Of course not,” she snapped, and then laughed. “Too much damned pox in my veins to bear him a child. I bore the others when I was young. The boy, Billy, was named after his father. Raised by his relations in Ireland. The girls, twins, were by that devil John Rann, who had my maidenhead when I was fourteen. One is married to a goldsmith, and Jemima is in St. Marylebone’s churchyard.”

“Oh,” said I, meekly, ashamed to have raised the matter, “how unfortunate.”

“No,” came her quick reply. “Children come and go, that is the way of things. You think I desired those three? Why, I could not get them out of me! I took rue and ergot and pennyroyal. I had my cold baths. Still they stayed fixed. The others were got rid of with more ease.”

I attempted to disguise my shock at her revelation, though I am not certain I was so successful.

“Hooper’s Female Pills. They are the best for clearing the womb, if you swallow the entire box at once,” announced Miss Ponsonby with an air of authority.

“Oh no, dear,” began Gertrude Mahon, “if you take too many of those your teeth will turn black and fall out. Blatchford’s elixir is unrivalled in its effectiveness.”

“I have used it and it did not work,” pouted Miss Greenhill.

“But you miscarried,” added Mrs. Mahon.

“Yes… but I believe that was on account of a poisoned oyster, not Dr. Blatchford’s mixture.”

“Pah! Oysters!” cried Lady Lade, rumpling her nose in disgust. “The best use for one of them is to push it up your cunny!” Her quip caused the company to fall about laughing.

“I once moulded some wax into a flat plug and put it in me,” added Miss Ponsonby in her high, nasal voice.

“Did it work?” asked the Greenfinch.

“For one or two attempts, I believe it did, but the sponge and vinegar is best, for the wax came loose and does not take up the seed as does a sponge.”

“I have become very clever at preventing Lord Sefton spending his seed in me, for I pull him out just at his moment of bliss.”

“And he tolerates it?” asked Mrs. Mahon.

“Not always, but I use a douche of lime water if he does, to great effect,” she simpered.

“Well,” said Miss Ponsonby, “he should be grateful you manage yourself so prudently, for it is far more difficult to be rid of the ones that are born…”

Just then, Georgie began to scream loudly. I rose and went to him directly, taking him from Lady Lade’s hands.

“I do believe he heard you…” said I with an uneasy laugh.

It was not as if I had never been privy to such conversation before, for female matters are forever a topic of discussion among the fallen sisterhood, but the coldness of the exchange struck me especially hard. Prior to my life in London, I would never have imagined that the birth of a child would not be a welcomed event, and had foolishly taken for granted that St. John would treat Georgie with such benevolence. Why, Mrs. Mahon and Lady Lade had entertained me throughout my pregnancy with terrifying tales of infants who, on the orders of their fathers, disappeared into laundry baskets and rivers, never to be seen again.

But I had nothing to fear. St. John was the most doting of fathers. He never tired of fondling his son—scarcely a day went by when he did not bring the boy out to be dandled over his card table and toasted by his raucous companions. Indeed, I believed that my keeper desired nothing more than to pass his entire life, like me, staring down at
Georgie as he slumbered and flexed his wee fingers. What happy days were these, thought I, in a type of blind delirium. There seemed no more perfect paradise than the tranquil nursery where I cradled my boy and admired the yellowing leaves from the high attic windows. To be sure, I had not felt such contentment since Allenham closed the door of Orchard Cottage behind him. But dear Gertrude Mahon was correct in her assessment of me: I was desperately foolish. I was a ninny, a giddy-brained little girl. I thought I had seen enough of the world to know my own mind, when I had hardly done more than glimpse it.

Had I listened to her, had I been reasonable, I might have spared myself a great deal of disappointment and pain when St. John announced his intentions to me. As it was, it came quite unexpectedly one morning as we enjoyed breakfast.

“It is time Georgie should be sent out to nurse,” he stated, as he sucked at his cup of tea.

“Sent out?” I echoed.

“Yes, it is time. For the child’s own good. A house such as mine, full of dissolutes and whores, is no place for him. And the air is better elsewhere.”

“But, surely the nurse we have…”

“No, Hetty, you shall not contradict me. Gertrude Mahon said you would object and I must not permit you to sway me on this. You do not know as well as she about these matters.”

“Gertrude Mahon!” I blurted, feeling utterly betrayed that my friend should have advised on such a cruel course of action.

“Do not be so quick to accuse,
chaton
. She merely convinced me of my own sentiments,” said he, straightening himself in his chair. “I am far too sensitive a father and I shall weaken my child through my own sentimentality. Georgie is to go to a nurse in Primrose Hill tomorrow. Mrs. Mahon has been good enough to fix it for you. She knows what is best, Hetty, where you do not.” Then he sent me a disapproving look. “And she warned me to prepare for your protests.”