The Spoils of Sin (32 page)

He was running ahead, as if by sheer force of will he could make Fanny sufficiently competent to keep the child alive. She shuddered at his words. ‘There must be a woman who can take it. I have no skill in caring for a child. Find a woman, sir, I beg you.'

He sighed wearily. ‘I can try, of course. But…you must be aware of your status in the town. The child of a girl such as you might not find a decent foster mother. Do you understand me?'

‘A whore's bastard would reflect badly on a decent family,' said Fanny baldly. ‘I understand perfectly.'

He barely flinched. ‘And she would fare badly with a poorer person.'

‘I can pay,' said Fanny, thinking for the first time that night of the wealth that Carola had left behind her. ‘She is heir to a fortune.'

He blinked. ‘Indeed?'

‘If I understand aright, then yes indeed.'

The doctor yawned shamelessly. ‘I must be off to my bed before I fall down. I was out much of the night before with a patient. I offer you my profound sympathy for this trouble,' he said again.

‘You will return? With a woman?' Fanny begged him. ‘I cannot manage otherwise.'

‘You will if there is no alternative. The child is robust, well formed, and appears to have a placid disposition. You will find she forgives you your mistakes. All she needs is warmth and food. Even a dog could provide her with those.'

‘Not this dog,' said Fanny. ‘As you yourself observed.' But she already had a mental picture of Hugo curled protectively around the baby, offering warmth and protection, at least.

The doctor thrust the infant into her arms, gathered his unopened bag, and took his leave, reciting something official about the disposal of the remains that lay upstairs.

Remains
, though Fanny, with a rush of tears. Was that all her friend had come to now?

She could not simply leave the child on the floor and take to her bed. She would have to keep it with her. Carelessly she set it down on her own bed, in the large room she had shared with Carola, and removed her clothes. Hugo had followed them up the stairs, against the usual house rules. Glad of his company, Fanny permitted him into the room, where he flopped down with a deep sigh.

Exhaustion ensured she slept for a few hours, without a single dream to disturb her. She was woken by a strange squawking noise and a wet nose in her face. Outside it was barely light, but at least morning had very nearly arrived. The new day would bring solutions, even perhaps a discovery that none of the terrible things she recalled from the previous night were real. It could have been her imagination, all along. Carola would be in her room, contentedly stitching and waiting for the first coffee of the day.

But the squawking somewhere under her bedclothes had not gone away. Pushing back the cover, she found a red-faced little body, mouth wide open and eyes tight closed, expressing extreme displeasure. Arms jerked spasmodically and legs kicked. How such a thing could ever expect to grow into a proper human being was beyond Fanny. It was all noise and mess. There was a deposit of something revolting underneath it, she found. Yellow and sticky, it could only be the first bowel movement of the new child. It would have to be swaddled somehow, in rags that would catch the stuff. And then the rags must be washed or replaced. There would be leakage and smell. It was all entirely horrible to Fanny's mind. The sooner that doctor found a willing foster mother – or better still, a permanent adopter – the better.

Or, she supposed idly, she could simply kill it. By holding the thick coverlet over its face, she could quickly stop its breath. It could be buried with its mother, and nobody the sorrier for it. Its father was already dead – the whole family could meet in heaven, and good luck to them. She put an experimental hand over the small face, wondering how such an act would feel. The infant squirmed vigorously and cried more loudly. Hugo whined. The dog, it seemed, would be sorry to lose their little interloper. And her parents, if they knew of its existence, would value the new grandchild, even though a boy would have surely been better than this black-haired girl.

The black hair was dry now, and oddly spiky. It stood in tufts from the head, like a brush. How could Carola, so fair, and Reuben hardly less so, have created such a creature? The question soon flew away. What did she know of such matters? Likenesses were ephemeral, shifting, one moment conjuring a remote cousin, the next a replica of a grandfather. There had been people in Providence who made much of the family nose, passed down from an early Pilgrim Father, or a recurring rolling gait that was said to repeat through every successive generation. But in general it was a matter treated more in jest than otherwise.

If she refrained from killing it, then she would have to feed it. Impatiently, she took it downstairs, wondering how the doctor had accomplished so much with the baby balanced on one arm. When she tried it, she spilt some milk and almost dropped the bundled infant. Finally, she set it down on its blanket in the middle of the table they used for eating, and managed to provide some lukewarm milk and the same sucked muslin as before.

It did not go well. The baby continued to cry, and turned its head away from the offered sustenance. Hugo's whining became such an irritant, that she shut him outside in the yard. Where was that doctor? What about Carola's stiff body upstairs? The questions crowded in on her, bringing panic and confusion in their wake. How could she be expected to deal with it all? Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a situation such as this. She had begun to shake the child in an effort to force its cooperation, when rescue arrived.

The man from the previous night was in the doorway, hat in hand, worried frown on his face. ‘Here,' he said, striding forward and snatching the baby. ‘That's no way to treat it.'

He laid the little body along one forearm and began a gentle rocking, accompanied by a soft crooning sound that put Fanny in mind of a pigeon. ‘The little thing is wet and hungry and frightened,' he summarised reproachfully.

She looked at him. ‘Why are you here again?'

‘Simple curiosity as to how events turned out. I have a liking for small beings, as I might have mentioned. This is a fine little … fellow?' He pushed aside the meagre covering and corrected himself. ‘A little lass, then. And only a useless young whore to care for her.' He smiled to soften the words.

‘Take her,' said Fanny, furious. ‘And welcome. Raise her in your fine mansion, with the peacocks and cavalar, or whatever it was. A ready-made daughter to call your own.' For a moment it seemed entirely and deliciously possible that he would do as she bade.

‘You are not your normal self,' he said. ‘Now we must be practical. Have you a bottle? Milk? Diapers? A tiny new baby requires a quantity of equipment, I believe.'

‘The doctor said the same. I am to go and purchase it all, somehow.'

‘Then go. I will remain here as childminder, until you return. And mind you do,' he finished with a close look at her face. ‘No running off and abandoning your responsibilities.'

‘I will come back, but more for the sake of my dog than this nuisance.'

He smiled and sat down in the best chair, wrapping the child closely in a towel that had been warming above the stove.

Fanny was compelled to give an account of herself to the storekeeper and his wife, enduring their curiosity with a poor grace. They assembled an impressive parcel of items, and advised her to obtain goat's milk if possible, as being better for a small infant, as well as more readily obtained. Goats were plentiful around the town, with milk offered for sale on every corner. The death of one of the town's two whores did not appear to cause the couple any grief, Fanny realised resentfully. There was no bereft husband, after all, to commiserate with. She was unlikely to receive active help with the child, it seemed.

But Carola was dead. Her body was still lying abandoned on her bed as if forgotten already. The ill-begotten child was consuming all the time and concern that should rightfully go to the tragic young woman who had not deserved to die as she did. Angry all over again, Fanny stormed home to rectify the shameful neglect.

The man was where she had left him, the infant whimpering miserably in his arm. ‘At last!' he cried, jumping to his feet. ‘Get the milk prepared immediately.'

‘I have no milk – only what is left from yesterday. I am to obtain some from a goat, they say.'

‘Yesterday's will have to suffice for now.'

She thrust her bulky package at him and went determinedly up the stairs. ‘I have to lay out my dead friend,' she called back.

Ignoring the baby's cries, she threw open Carola's door and stood on the threshold, more than half expecting her friend to open her eyes and smile at her, revealing that the whole unhappy business had been a creation of Fanny's imagination. Instead there was a sickening stink, and a grey-white corpse lying crookedly on the bed. The only detail that matched her hopes was the open eyes, and they stared with a ghastly sightlessness at a point somewhere high on the wall.

Why had the doctor not covered her face or folded her hands? He had done nothing except for taking the undersheet and bundling it into a corner of the room where it was stiff and vile from the blood that had soaked it. But the mattress was almost as badly affected, so that Carola lay on a coarse linen ticking, her nightdress rucked up around her torso, leaving naked white legs for all to see.

It was because she had been a whore, Fanny supposed. The doctor saw no cause for modesty or decency. And yet, he had been civil enough towards her. Perhaps he was not aware of the procedures for a laying-out. It had always been women's work, after all. His task was to save lives, by giving medicines and issuing instructions. Having arrived too late, he had dismissed Carola as no longer in need of his attentions. Her baby was his concern, and he had made a paltry fist of tending her.

But Fanny knew nothing about dead bodies, either. Birth, death – she was equally ignorant of both. Her speciality was that which lay between the two – the warm adult pleasures of the bedchamber, which gave no heed to death and worked assiduously to prevent birth. Somebody must come and carry this thing away, to be buried in the ground. Carola was finished, gone beyond recall. Gone so far that it made no sense even to bid her goodbye.

She went down again. ‘What is your name?' she asked the man. ‘It is ridiculous that I should not know it, after all that has taken place between us.'

‘Philip,' he said with a small bow of his head. ‘Philip Scott. At your service, Miss.' With the infant in the crook of his arm, sucking placidly at the bottle he held, he made a comical picture. ‘She is a vigorous feeder,' he added, with a hint of reproach.

‘Praise be,' she said with blatant irony.

‘Now – I can stay no longer. I have business matters waiting for me. I never intended to linger here. Perhaps I ought not to have returned today at all.'

‘I am profoundly thankful that you did.' Suddenly, Fanny was almost too weary to stand. The enormity of events overwhelmed her as she understood she was to be left alone again. ‘What am I to do?' she whined pathetically. ‘Where do I begin?'

‘The doctor will send a woman and men with a coffin. He cannot leave a dead body in the house for long. It is against all regulations.'

Fanny gave a silent prayer of thankfulness that she was in Chemeketa, where there were at least laws governing such matters, and not the anarchic San Francisco. ‘You trust they will come to a whorehouse?' she said.

He nodded. ‘Undoubtedly.' Then he handed the baby to her, making her sit in the chair he had vacated, and showing her the best way to hold the bottle. ‘You will get the knack in no time,' he promised her. ‘There is nothing to it.'

But the child was displeased by the change of lap, and turned its head away from the teat. Crossly, Fanny gripped the small cheeks and tried to force the head back. The resistance in the tiny frame astonished her. ‘How strong she is!' she said.

‘Do not fight her,' he advised. ‘Her need to win is far greater than yours. Go easy on yourself and follow her lead.'

And then he left, though with several rueful backward glances.

Fanny slumped in the seat, hardly caring whether or not the baby fed. She dozed, until a movement woke her and she found the child had slid almost to the ground, lying across her thighs with its head dangling like a doll. Her first instinct was to let it go, and lie where it fell. But Hugo was close by, and seemed to read her mind. He put his great head against that of the baby and nudged it back into a more secure position. He gave Fanny a look that was horribly similar to that she had received from Philip Scott: a look that said,
Have you no natural female feelings?

‘It is not my child,' she told him. ‘Why do I have to do this?'

Again she sank into a fitful sleep, as if overtaken by a drug or strange illness. It was an escape into oblivion, away from the horrors and demands that her life had suddenly filled with.

Hugo uttered a single low
woof!
When someone knocked on the door. Fanny awoke and the baby whimpered. ‘Come in!' she called.

A woman she recognised came in and rushed to her side, hands out as if to catch a something falling. She gathered up the infant and laid it on her arm, as Philip Scott had done. ‘Oh, the poor little lamb! What a terrible thing! I heard just now, in the store. The whole town is talking of it. Your dear friend, gone so young!'

It was Miriam Myers, who had cared for Marybelle in her final weeks, and then brought word of her death. A Miriam Myers transformed, it seemed, from a nurse into an angel of maternal mercy. She bent low over the child, making soft sounds and even shedding one or two tears. ‘You little darling, just look at you! What a size you are! And so chilled and wet, God help you.'

Fanny became aware of a large damp patch on her lap, where the child had been lying. She brushed at it disgustedly. ‘It's constantly wet,' she said irritably. ‘What is to be done about that?'