The Spoils of Sin (34 page)

The burial was somehow arranged between Miriam and her minister, and its appointed time was quickly upon them, before Fanny felt ready for it. The haste felt unseemly, bundling the corpse away before it could cause more embarrassment. Few, if any, mourners would turn out. Despite the robust town gossip, there would be only a minority of people who knew what had taken place. Carrying the sleeping child, she followed Miriam to the churchyard, and watched in numb silence as the disposal took place. The minister said prayers that felt brief and insincere. A man with a spade began to fill the hole with soil. It was as if the same hole had been bored through Fanny's heart and was now filling with the ordinary demands of the day, blotting Carola out of existence for ever.

She recalled another burial, three years earlier. Mr Fields' wife had died in the final days of the migration, and been buried in Oregon City, when they arrived. Nobody had been especially sorry to lose her. Her sister Charity had married the widower almost immediately afterwards. The ground had closed over that woman's head as if she had never been.

Miriam left her alone, then. Alone with her devoted dog and unfathomable little ward. Somewhere during the day, without her conscious agreement, it had become the case that she was indeed foster mother to little Susanna. The careless selection of a name had cemented a relationship she had not sought and could barely understand. Miriam would visit daily, with help and advice and encouragement. But Fanny was now responsible.

At two o'clock in the morning, a single day after Carola had expired, the baby woke with a scream. Confusedly, Fanny lit the lamp, then blundered to the crib and lifted her out. Hunger, she supposed, and went down for a bottle, already prepared and waiting, though not warmed.

The child sucked without enthusiasm, turning its face away after barely a quarter was consumed. Sleepily, Fanny slid down in the bed, the child tucked against her. But then she found herself crisply awake. In the light from the lamp, she stared at the little face, examining it properly for the first time. Only one day old, and already such a large element in Fanny's life. This was the child of her brother, its veins flowing with some of the same blood as her own. She searched for any sign of likeness, imagining Reuben's features for comparison.

There was none. The black hair was utterly unlike his. The eyes, dark and close together, were as different from his wide blue orbs as could be. They were also in no way like Carola's. The chin was strong, the ears close against the head. Susanna was more like a Mexican, or even an Indian than either of her parents. Fanny frowned in puzzlement. Could it be that all infants looked like this? She thought back to when her sister Naomi had been tiny. While uninterested, at the age of seven, in the details of child rearing, Fanny had a clear image of how Nam had resembled their father. Her hairline was his, and her ears had the same comical fold at the top.

And had the doctor not said that Susanna was a large child, well formed and strong? Was this likely for a baby born three or four weeks before its time? She had assumed that Carola was more ignorant of the time a baby took to grow than she would admit. But could it be,
could
it be, that this was not Reuben's child at all? Had Carola's sponge slipped aside one night, shortly before their journey to the homestead? The story of her awkward and incomplete coupling with Reuben had not seemed one that would be likely to result in pregnancy. Had there been a man with black hair and square jaw, amongst Carola's customers, back at the end of January?

A faint memory of just such a man floated into her mind. He had been big and loud and cheerful, a Canadian of French origins, with a great black beard. Impossible, then, to assess the shape of his jaw. But his eyes had been close-set. And when the girls had been alone again, Carola had confided that he was of immense proportions down below. From her own experience, Fanny knew that this might easily have dislodged the protective sponge.

She did not know whether to laugh or despair. The certainty grew that the Canadian was indeed the sire of this child, this girl who would perhaps grow to be tall and strong and good-humoured, like he was. It seemed a fair destiny, perhaps preferable to that provided by the gentle Reuben, for whom so much had gone wrong.

‘Oh, Susanna,' she sighed. ‘I guess we can only wait and see.'

END