Birdsong (60 page)

Having read all the notebooks as well as two or three more books about the war, Elizabeth finally had some picture in her mind of what it had been like. Jeanne, or Grand-mère as Elizabeth knew her, made several appearances toward the end, though the narrative gave away nothing of what Stephen might have felt for her.

"Kind" was the tepid word most often applied to her in Bob's translation; "gentle" made the occasional appearance. It was not the language of passion. Elizabeth did some calculations on a piece of paper. Grand-mère born 1878. Mum born... she was not sure exactly how old her mother was. Between sixty-five and seventy. Me born 1940. Something did not quite add up in her calculations, though it was possibly her own arithmetic that was to blame. It didn't really matter. She dressed and made up carefully for the evening. She tidied her flat and poured herself a drink as she waited for her mother. She stood in front of the fire and straightened the things on the mantelpiece: a pair of candlesticks, an invitation, a postcard, and the belt buckle, which she had cleaned and polished so it shone with the glittering fervour it must have had when first cast: _Gott mit uns._

When Françoise arrived she opened a half-bottle of champagne.

"What are we celebrating?" said Françoise, smiling as she raised her glass.

"Everything. Spring. You. Me." She found the news harder to break than she had expected.

The restaurant she had chosen was one that been recommended by a friend of Robert's. It was a small, dark place in Brompton Road that specialized in northern French cooking. It had benches covered in scarlet plush, and brown smoky walls with oil paintings of Norman fishing ports. Elizabeth was disappointed when they first arrived. She had expected something brighter with a noisy clientele more appropriate to an evening of good news.

They studied the menu as the waiter tapped his pen against his notepad. Françoise ordered artichoke and sole Dieppoise, Elizabeth asked for mushrooms to begin with, then fillet of beef. She ordered expensive wine, Gevrey Chambertin, not sure if it was red or white. They both drank gin and tonic while they waited. Elizabeth ached for a cigarette.

"Have you completely given up?" said Françoise, seeing her daughter's nervous hands.

"Completely. Not one," Elizabeth smiled.

"And have you put on weight as a result?"

"I... well, a bit I think."

The waiter arrived with the first courses. "For you, Madame? The artichoke? And for you the mushrooms? Which of you ladies would like to taste the wine?" When he finally left them and they had started to eat, Elizabeth said awkwardly, "I have put on a little weight, I think, but it's not because of giving up smoking. It's because I'm expecting a baby." She braced herself for the response. Françoise took her hand. "Well done. I'm delighted."

Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes, said, "I thought you'd be annoyed. You know--because I'm not married."

"I'm just pleased for you, if it's what you want."

"Oh yes. Oh yes. It's what I want all right." Elizabeth smiled. "You don't seem very surprised."

"I suppose I'm not. I noticed that you'd got a little heavier. And that you'd stopped smoking. You told me it was a New Year's resolution, but you'd never managed to keep it before."

Elizabeth laughed. "All right. Now aren't you going to ask who the father is?"

"Should I? Does it matter?"

"I don't think it does. He's happy about it--well, happy enough. He's going to help support it financially, though I didn't ask him to. I think it'll be all right. He's a very nice man."

"That's fine then. I won't ask any more."

Elizabeth was surprised by how calmly Françoise had taken the news, even if she had guessed and therefore had time to prepare herself. "You don't mind that your grandchild will be born to a woman who isn't married?"

"How could I mind?" said Françoise. "My own mother wasn't married to my father."

"Grand-mère?" Elizabeth was amazed.

"No. Grand-mère is not my real mother." Françoise looked tenderly at Elizabeth. "I've often meant to tell you, but somehow there seemed no need. It's so unimportant really. Your grandfather married Grand-mère, Jeanne, in 1919, after the war. But I was already seven years old then. I was five by the time they first met!"

"I _thought _it didn't add up! I was doing some sums after I'd been reading his notebooks. I put it down to my bad maths."

"Are there references to someone called Isabelle in these books?"

"A couple, yes. An old girlfriend, I assumed."

"She was my mother. She was Jeanne's younger sister."

Elizabeth looked wide-eyed at Françoise. "So Grand-mère was not really my grandmother?"

"Not in the flesh, no. But she was to all intents and purposes. She brought me up and she loved me like her own child. Your grandfather went to stay with a family before the war. He had an affair with Isabelle and they ran away together. When she discovered she was pregnant, she left him and eventually went back to her husband. Years later, during the war, your grandfather met Grand-mère in Amiens. She took him to see Isabelle again, but Isabelle made Grand-mère promise she would not tell him about the baby."

"And the baby was you?"

"That's right. It was a silly subterfuge. I don't know. She just wanted to spare his feelings. He didn't find out until he was about to marry Jeanne. I was sent to Jeanne from Germany, where I had been living, because my real mother had died. She died of flu."

"Of flu? That's impossible."

Françoise shook her head. "No. There was an epidemic. It killed millions of people in Europe just after the end of the war. Isabelle had always said that if anything should happen to her, Grand-mère was to bring me up. That was agreed between them when she first went to Germany with the man she had fallen in love with. He was a German called Max."

"But didn't he want to keep you with him?"

"I don't think so. He was very sick from the war. He died himself not long afterwards. And I wasn't his child, after all."

"And so you were brought up as though you were Stephen and Jeanne's child?"

"Exactly. Grand-mère was wonderful. It was like having a second mother. We were a very happy family."

The waiter brought more food.

"Do you mind?" said Françoise after a minute. "Does it matter to you? I hope not, because it doesn't matter to me. Where there is real love between people, as there was between all of us, then the details don't matter. Love is more important than the flesh-and-blood facts of who gave birth to whom."

Elizabeth thought for a moment. "I'm sure you're right," she said. "It'll take me a bit of time to digest it, but I don't mind at all. Tell me about your father. Was he happy?"

Françoise raised her eyebrows and inhaled. "Well, it was... difficult He didn't speak for two years after the war."

"What, not a word?"

"No, not a word. I don't know, I suppose he must at least have said "I do" when they got married. He must have said a few words, just to stay alive. But I never heard him speak then. And Grand-mère said it was two years of silence. She says she can remember when he first spoke again. It was one morning. He quite suddenly stood up at the breakfast table and smiled. He said, 'We're going to the theatre in London tonight. We'll take the train at lunchtime.' I couldn't believe my ears. I was only nine years old."

"And you were living in England then?"

"That's right. In Norfolk."

"And was he all right after that?"

"Well... he was better. He talked and was very kind to me. He spoiled me really. But he wasn't in good health."

"And did he talk about the war?"

"Never. Not a word. From that day on it was as though it hadn't happened, according to Grand-mère."

"When did he die?"

"Just before I got married to your father. He was only forty-eight. Like a lot of men of that generation, he never really recovered."

Elizabeth nodded. "Just a couple of years before I was born."

"Yes," said Françoise sadly. "I wish he could have seen you. I wish so much he could have seen you. It would have made him... much happier in his heart." Elizabeth looked down at her plate. "And Grand-mère? How did she manage?"

"She was a wonderful woman. She loved him very much. She nursed him like a mother. She was the heroine of the whole story. You do remember her, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," Elizabeth lied. "Of course I do."

"I'm sorry," said Françoise. She held a napkin to her face. For a minute she couldn't speak. "I didn't mean to cry in a public place. I don't wantto spoil your happy day, Elizabeth. It would have meant so much to her too."

"It's all right," said Elizabeth. "It's all right. Everything's all right now." In the course of the summer, Elizabeth attended the prenatal clinic of her nearest hospital. There was some concern about her age; she found herself referred to as

"elderly" by members of the staff. The concern never became a worry, however, because she was never seen by the same person twice.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bembridge," said the doctor who examined her at eight months. "I'm sure you know the routine by now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, number four, should be second nature to you."

It turned out he had been using the wrong notes. Elizabeth wondered who had been examined in the light of hers. They booked her into a bed on the day the baby was expected and told her not to travel by air in the meantime.

"Remember," said the nurse, "most first labours take a long time. Don't ring the hospital until the contractions are regular and painful. If you come in too soon we'll just have to send you away again."

Irene told her of some classes that the daughter of a friend of hers had attended. Elizabeth signed up and went to a flat in Kilburn where a fierce woman told a group of half a dozen expectant mothers about the different stages of labour and the kinds of painkiller available. Elizabeth made a note to ask for an epidural at the earliest permissible moment.

The child rolled and kicked inside her. The skin of her abdomen was subject to sudden bulges and rippling distortions as it stretched and turned. Her back ached and, as the summer wore on, she longed for cold winter days when it would all be over and she could breathe again.

Sometimes she would sit naked on the edge of her bed with the windows wide open to catch any breeze that might be passing. She held the weight of the child in the palms of her hands beneath the swell of her belly, where a thin brown line had appeared, running down into her groin. Above the hipbones the skin had stretched into small white scars, though nothing as bad as she had occasionally seen on the ravaged abdomens of women in the changing cubicles of shops. Most of the questions at the prenatal class had been concerned with what the women called getting their figures back, and the resumption of sexual relations with their husbands. Elizabeth found that neither question was at the front of her mind. She was preoccupied by an intense curiosity about her child. While she felt protective and maternal toward it, she also felt a respect that sometimes bordered on awe. It was a separate being with its own character and its own destiny; it had chosen to lodge and be born in her, but it was hard not to feel that it had in some sense preexisted her. She could not quite believe that she and Robert had created an autonomous human life from nothing.

After several days of complicated deceit, false trails, and cunning use of his answering machine, Robert managed to arrange matters so he could join Elizabeth for the week before the birth. He intended to stay with her afterward until she was fit enough to go down to stay with her mother. His wife believed he was travelling to Germany for a conference.

He had no desire to be present at the birth itself, but wanted to be on hand in case she needed him. He rented a cottage in Dorset, near the sea, where Elizabeth could relax for the last few days while he looked after her. They planned to return to London three days before the due birth date.

Robert was still edgy about the arrangement as they drove in Elizabeth's car through the Hampshire countryside. "Suppose it comes early?" he said. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing," said Elizabeth, twisting awkwardly round from the passenger seat to look at him. "Just keep the baby warm. Anyway, first labours usually take about twelve hours, so even at the speed you drive we should be able to make it to the hospital in Poole or Bournemouth. Also first babies are very seldom early. So let's not worry."

"You've become quite an expert, haven't you?" he said, accelerating a little in response to her criticism of his driving.

"I've read some books. I haven't had much else to do this summer." The cottage was situated by a track on the side of a hill. It overlooked deep countryside and was about fifteen minutes from the closest town. The front door opened straight into the living room, which had a large stone fireplace and worn, chintz-covered furniture. There was an old-fashioned kitchen with a greasy cooker attached to a cylinder of gas, and cabinets with sliding glass doors. The back door led into a sizeable garden, at the end of which was a large chestnut tree. Elizabeth was delighted by it. "Do you see that little apple tree?" she said.

"That's where I'll set up my chair."

"I'll do it," said Robert. "I'd better go and get some food before the shops shut. Do you want to come with me?"

"No, I've made a list. I'll trust you."

"I was thinking in case you went into labour."

Elizabeth smiled. "Don't worry. It's not due for another eight days. Just stick a chair up there if you don't mind, and I'll be fine."

As the last sound of the car vanished down the track, she began to feel short, sharp contractions. They were like the cramp she sometimes had in her leg at night, but situated in or near her womb.

She breathed deeply. She would not panic. She had been warned that there were often false starts over a period of weeks. They were named after the doctor who had identified them. Braxton Something. Nevertheless, there was no harm in finding a telephone directory and writing down the number of the nearest hospital. She went into the living room and found what she wanted. There was a list of