The Edge of the Fall (38 page)

Celia woke up and the sun was streaming through the windows. She was confused for a moment, disoriented. Why was she not in her bedroom? Why was her chest hurting? Then she realised. She was at Stoneythorpe and she had Michael! She sat up. Her body ached and her legs were weighted with exhaustion. Her throat was dry and her breasts were throbbing, hard with milk. Emmeline was in the corner, fully dressed, dozing on a chair.

‘Emmeline!' she hissed. ‘I need to feed Michael.' She gathered her nightdress around her and hobbled out of bed, pulling on a dressing gown by the door. Emmeline started, sat up.

‘Oh, sister,' she said, holding out her hand. ‘How are you?' A tear formed in her eye.

‘I think I need to feed Michael!'

Emmeline sniffed. She was starting to cry in earnest now, tears pouring down her face. ‘Wait, sister.'

‘Where is he? It doesn't matter if he's asleep. Let's wake him up.' She seized the dressing gown, pulled open the door.

‘Wait!' said Emmeline. ‘Stop.'

Celia pushed past the door and out into the hall. She felt stiff, a hundred years old. She began to walk down the stairs.

‘Listen, Celia,' Emmeline was saying behind her. ‘I need you to sit down. Please.'

‘I've been asleep all night,' she said, over her shoulder. ‘Where's Michael?'

‘You've been asleep for almost three days, sister. The doctor gave you something. Please, I need to tell you.'

‘Two days? But what about Michael? Who has been feeding him? Did you get someone from the village? Why did you let me sleep for so long?'

‘The doctor woke you up to give you some water, then gave you another injection. You weren't ready to be totally awake, that's what he said.'

Celia looked down and Verena was standing in the hall.

‘You must be hungry, Celia.' She was clutching her cheek, her face white. Emmeline was weeping now, noisily behind her. ‘I'll call for some tea.'

Celia gripped the banister. ‘Where is Michael?'

Verena took a step forward. ‘Celia. Come and sit down.'

She ushered her towards a chair. Celia's head was flashing, awful colours, black, purple, red. Tom's scarred face shot through her mind. ‘Where's Michael? I want to find Michael.'

Emmeline was close behind her. ‘Celia. Please.' She was weeping still, tears running down her face. She tried to catch her arm and Celia shook her off.

‘Where's Michael? I want him.'

Verena looked at her.

‘Now! Take me to him, now!'

Emmeline moved around to stand in front of her, put her hand on Celia's shoulder. Her face was wet with tears. ‘He's dead, Celia. I'm sorry.'

‘He died not long after he was born,' said Verena, her eyes ringed red. A tear fell down her cheek. ‘You saw he was a little weak. We thought he was getting better. Then he went downhill.'

Celia stared at them, shook her head. ‘Why didn't you wake me?'

‘We couldn't,' said Verena. ‘We tried but you were fast asleep.'

Emmeline was holding her now. ‘I'm sorry, Celia. The doctors said they tried everything. But he just couldn't breathe. I'm sorry.'

‘You're lying,' Celia said. ‘You're lying.' And then she was falling on to the floor, the sobs coming up and smashing through the pictures on the wall, the marble vases, the sofa and chairs, and then the walls, and up and into her childhood bedroom, into the one in which she'd given birth, the sound echoing over and over, going out, coming back, every time weaker and quieter, empty noise.

PART FOUR

TWENTY-EIGHT

London, April 1923

Celia

Celia was walking. She knew she was walking. She put one foot forward, then the other, on to the pavement, and she was walking. But it didn't seem like walking, not in the way it had before. In those days, she had been going somewhere, moving
forward
. Now, she was just walking. She had never realised before how much it hurt to put her foot on the ground. But she had to walk, she had to. There was no other way she could get to where she was going. No buses went there, and taxis would only ask questions, in those dark roads near Oxford Street, houses with red lights in the windows, where a small old man would open the door and hurry her in, not smiling.

Every memory of Michael burnt her heart.
Why did I let him go?
she thought, over and over, begging. The moment when the nurse reached down came back; she reworked it, changed it, imagined her holding him back, refusing to let him go.
Why didn't I? Why?
When she heard about the funeral, all she'd wanted to do was throw herself on the coffin, pull it out, take his body for herself and
make him live again
. But she didn't, couldn't, he'd been buried before she woke and so she wept on Emmeline instead. And now here she was, begging these women in darkened rooms for help, words, anything.

Rudolf had recovered. He had grown stronger, was nearly back to his old self. This, Verena told Celia, was on the condition that she never talked about the baby – for that might send him straight back into the sickness.

She walked to dark rooms, glowing red lights in the corners, the only place she could be alive. There, holding hands with six, seven people, arms resting on the black tablecloth, the women in the centre, Eva or Claudia or Mrs Ern or Mrs Silver, dozens and dozens of names, faces. The others would give their stories first – Celia preferred it that way – talk of husbands lost at the Somme, Passchendaele or Mons, or battles you had never heard of, places you didn't even know there was fighting at all.

Sometimes she wondered about the women – their stories seemed so pat, like something you'd read in a magazine – and she thought, were you really engaged? Or did they meet briefly, a few tea outings and now it was a story, one to never forget, because that was your excuse for why you were single. Then she chastised herself for being cruel to them; thinking horrid, superior words about the girl in the pale suit next to her, hands twisting nervously, or the red-haired girl in green, the dark-haired one who'd smelt of lavender. For, after all, even if they'd only had two or three meetings over tea with a man who promised the moon but meant nothing – it was more than she'd had.

The girls, after all, you could say they were the lucky ones. They wept on to the table, said they'd never love again. Then they wept more when Mrs Silver or Eva or whoever it was said: ‘Harry's talking to me. He says you must live your life. He says you must see friends on Saturday evenings, not spend them with his mother.' But you could tell, when they left, weeping into their handkerchiefs, that they'd listened and they would do something else on Saturday night, not see a man, perhaps, not yet, but at least meet other girls.

The mothers were the worst of them. They had the most, threw pounds and pounds into the purse at the centre of the table, money catching on money, silver, copper, wasted, useless money falling into the velvet. The mothers were the ones Celia could hardly bear to look at. The mothers couldn't go anywhere, they had to carry on sitting at the table, gazing at the pictures of the football squad, pretty much all of them dead.

And you are the same!
Celia said to herself. You're not one of the
girls, coming to ask if they should take off the engagement ring, put it in the box on her dressing table, take her naked hand out into the world (
Yes
, said Mrs Silver, solemnly.
I'm hearing Jimmy speak. Yes, you should. He said he will watch you happily from heaven)
. You're a mother, like them. You can't replace a child. There's no ring to put in the box.

She could see that Mrs Silver preferred the girls to the mothers. Their grief was too much, too demanding. They wanted to know every detail, how he died, who was with him, where he was,
how much pain?
They remembered every word, totted them up, matched with one or another.
But you said he was in the left flank last time!

‘Oh yes,' said Mrs Silver. ‘So I did. He gets confused with time. It's the morphine they gave him, you know.'

Nothing was ever enough for the mothers. It wasn't enough for Mrs Silver to say, ‘He is happy where he is. He is content.' They wanted to know
why. Why
was he content?
Why
was he happy in such a place? And most of all,
why
did you have to die? Why
you
?

Celia looked at her hands when they started talking, tried to shield herself from their words. But she knew that she was like them, really. Except her child couldn't talk and hadn't chosen to die.
Why did you go away?
she said.
Why did you leave me?

She knew that she shouldn't be here, that Verena would be horrified she had passed intimate details to
strangers
! But Celia told herself that it didn't matter, that the other women weren't listening anyway. They only cared about their own thoughts, they wanted to hear of the flowers, tumbling waterfalls, crystal lakes of the spirit world when it touched them.

‘Michael,' she said, out loud in the room. ‘Michael. I want to hear you.'

But the spiritualists couldn't get him for her. They often found the fiancés and the sons, but they couldn't grasp Michael and hold him. Eva said she couldn't hear him, patted Celia's hand, said surely he was happy, babies had pure souls and went straight to heaven. Claudia could hear him, said he was wonderfully happy, playing with other children, and would wait to see her when she arrived – although it would be some time before that happened.
Bridie said he was laughing although he did cry at the thought that he was no longer with her. Each one told her that was all they could hear – so Celia moved to try another.

Mrs Bright was her fourth, a slight woman living in an overheated flat off Portman Square. She'd been to her every other day for two weeks. Mrs Bright, she was beginning to see, was growing weary of her, had had to rearrange her face to look enthusiastic when her maid showed Celia in.

‘I'm not sure what else I can do for you, madam,' Mrs Bright said, at the end of the third week. ‘I've tried, I've heard his voice, but he's a baby. He can't tell me why he died. If you ask me, you need a specialist.'

‘Please,' Celia said. ‘Tell me.'

‘I wish I could. As I said, you need a specialist! I'll give you an address, dear. No guarantees, mind, but she is very experienced.'

‘Couldn't you try one more time?'

Mrs Bright shook her head. ‘I told you, dear. I can't help you any more. Mrs Stabatsky is the one. She's the best.' She pressed Celia's hand. ‘Try her, dear.'

‘If she can't help me, who can?'

‘That I don't know, dear.'Mrs Bright squeezed her hands again, turned back to her room of women.

Michael would be a year old, if he'd lived. Celia stared at toddlers in the street and the park, trying to judge whether he would be so round or small or so fond of smiling. She tried to imagine him, the tiny baby on her breast grown into a bouncing child, almost too heavy to carry. She knew she shouldn't, but sometimes she found herself following small children with their mothers. There had been one little boy just yesterday, walking through Russell Square with his mother. She'd been carrying him in her arms and he'd smiled at Celia over her shoulder, a gap-toothed, cheery smile. Celia couldn't stop herself. She had to follow him. She waved at him, smiled. He flashed her his grin. And then – just as she was putting her hand on her nose to make him laugh – the mother turned around.

‘He's very handsome,' Celia said, weakly.

‘Thank you,' the woman said, but her tone was quick and sour. She whipped him up to the other side, put him facing forward. Celia supposed she'd feel the same. If you had such a handsome child, you'd want to keep him safe. There were always stories in the newspapers about desperate women stealing babies. ‘I don't want to take him,' she said, under her breath, standing in the middle of Holborn. ‘I just want to
touch
him.'