Good Hope Road: A Novel (46 page)

‘I might never be able to dance again,’ she’d said tearfully to Jim that night. ‘The hipbones, sometimes they never quite come back together the same again.’

It would turn out just fine, he said, choosing his words carefully. Women had been giving birth for centuries, hadn’t they?

Maybe they’d had an easier time of it because their husbands had petted and fussed over them, she said petulantly. ‘My girlfriend’s husband,’ she informed him, ‘is taking her to Italy as a birthing gift.’

Jim eyed her laconically. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s the cattle fair next spring . . .’

Despite herself, Madeleine had started to laugh.

When she heard, Ellie had gone up to Jim as he was brushing down the horses and whacked him lightly on the head. ‘She’s not a country girl, she’s still getting used to our ways,’ she told him. ‘
Show
her you care, and James William Stonebridge, I’ve seen the way you look at her when she doesn’t know you are, so don’t you go shrugging your shoulders at me now.’

Jim mulled over what Ellie had said as he drove back to the farm. He thought again of that brief time in Washington DC with Madeleine, before the rout at the camp. That flight they’d taken, soaring through the skies. The look of sheer joyousness on her face as she’d turned to him. ‘Do you like it?’

He remembered too, how disappointed she’d been that they couldn’t go to the inauguration. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea, to enjoy a weekend somewhere before the baby came, he mused, calculating how much it might cost. Unknown to Madeleine, he’d taken up an opportunity to be a guide for some rich flatlander tourist who’d wanted to go fly fishing in the Connecticut. When the man had asked around in town for someone who could take him to the best spots, it was Jim’s name that kept coming up. It was an easy gig, just a few hours for a couple of days. The ’hoppers had been hatching and the fish readily taking the bait; the flatlander had amassed a haul of brook, brown and rainbow trout, one among them so oversized that he’d tipped Jim handsomely.

Jim had set the money aside thinking it would come in handy for when the baby was here, but now he wondered otherwise. The orchard had done well this year, and folks everywhere were saying that the Depression was drawing to a close, that it was only a matter of months . . .

He turned on an impulse down a side road that led to the river, just a few yards from the sinkhole. He walked down to the shoreline, shading his eyes as he looked up at the overhanging ridge. It was just over a year ago that they had both swum here with such abandon. Like a bird swooping midflight she’d been, arcing gracefully into the water.
My Venus Anadyomene
.

Jim made up his mind. He walked back to the truck, spirits lifting as he began to contemplate their holiday. Maybe it could be an early anniversary gift from him to her, he thought as he drove. He wound the window down further, letting in the summer sun, starting to whistle as he drove through the hills.

Thinking he’d surprise her with it, Jim started to plan their getaway in secret, calling up hotels for the best rates and scanning the newspapers for bargains. He’d very nearly finalised everything, when Freddie called for Madeleine.

‘We’re having a theatre workshop, Cookie, and we miss our star. How about you come down too?’

Madeleine listened with growing interest as he outlined just what the multi-week programme would cover. ‘Come on down,’ Freddie urged again. ‘That is, if you aren’t already too much of a fat cow, darling, we can hardly have you waddling about the stage.’

She told him not to be so catty, and said maybe, but it was a long time to be away. She’d have to think about it.

‘How long?’ Jim asked.

‘Five weeks,’ she told him.

Angered that she would even consider staying away for so long – ‘You should go,’ he said distantly, saying nothing to her at all about that surprise trip to New York City that he’d been planning, about all that he’d lined up for them to do. Things he’d thought she might enjoy – a horse carriage ride through Central Park, the picnic at sunset there that he’d arranged through the hotel, the Broadway shows he’d shortlisted, based on the reviews, dinner at the Waldorf Hotel since her friends kept going on and on about how
wonderful
it was, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, just like King Kong had done in the motion picture they’d both enjoyed so much that they’d watched it twice.

‘I’ll drive you down,’ is all he coolly said to her.

Upset that he didn’t seem to care whether she was gone or not, Madeleine said breezily that the train was perfectly fine; if he could drop her off at the station, she’d have Freddie pick her up in Boston.

Hemmed in and isolated as she’d begun to feel on the farm, to her chagrin, Madeleine was equally restless in Boston. She was enjoying the workshop, but all the same, she couldn’t help thinking it was all a little trite, a piece of frippery in a world where there was so much more to explore. Slowly, as she lay in bed night after night, absently massaging her belly and unable to sleep, Madeleine started to gain insight into her angst, gradually tracing its roots all the way back to the events of last summer. The pregnancy had brought it into focus, but the restiveness had begun well before that, she realised.

Anacostia.

Being there, actually being right there when the camp was routed, had awakened something within her. All those half-articulated thoughts melding together into a desire to do something of substance in this world, to participate in it as wholly as she could.

And Jim . . . He’d been central to that burgeoning impetus, their marriage the supposed anchor from which to explore the world with all its possibilities together . . . What she hadn’t bargained for was how shuttered he could turn, as if there was a hidden core of him that she never could seem to access, and how lonely it could make her feel.

Freddie shadowed her, constantly by her side at the rehearsals. When she compared him with Jim, he seemed unbearably boyish and immature. Remembering then that Jim had barely even called since she’d left for Boston, she took Freddie’s hand playfully in hers. He tried to kiss her, and she hesitated a moment before pushing him away.

The episode so unsettled her that she called Jim to say she was coming home, two weeks earlier than scheduled. He’d still been angry with her for leaving in the first place, blue eyes cold as he watched the train chug in. But then she stepped on to the platform. The baby had grown, a rotund belly beginning to emerge from her slender frame. Madeleine was aglow, russet hair lustrous; it took Jim’s breath away to see how beautiful she looked. Fecund, fertile, bursting with life.

He kissed her forehead that night, tenderly, her eyelids. Kneeling before her, he placed his arms around her and rested his head against her stomach. Gently he began to kiss her again, across the protuberance of skin and belly button. He parted her legs, slowly lifting the silk of her nightgown and she trembled. He dipped his tongue lower, lapping at her; tears came to her eyes at the tenderness, the near reverence in his touch.

The first killing frost of the season swept in unannounced, freezing shoots and leaves overnight. When the Major watched the sunrise the next morning through its reflection in the mirror, it reminded him with a jolt of the woods in France after a shelling. The same wan, bleak light, and the stubs of trees, jagged and charred.

Snow set in soon after, drifting over the wooden rafters of the old covered bridge, settling on shingle and stone alike. Madeleine went unexpectedly into labour, so early that she was unable to get to Boston for the delivery as planned.

‘Jim!’ she called in a panic, as her waters broke, and he rushed from the shed, tossing the pile of firewood aside.

So it was that on a brilliant November morning, James Henry Stonebridge came into the world, in the very same room where a long line of Stonebridges had been born before him. He arrived perfectly healthy, squalling and crying, tiny red fists balled in protest against the cold. Ellie brought the baby out to meet his grandfather. ‘Go on, hold him,’ she urged, smiling.

The Major took the baby hesitantly in his arms. He looked down at the tiny, blanketed form. ‘James Henry,’ he said softly. The baby blinked sleepily as if in response, gazing up at the Major as he opened his mouth in a big, lopsided yawn. The Major chuckled. ‘James Henry,’ he said again, and his voice shook.

Late that evening, the snow started to fall again, carpeting the hills in pure, untarnished white, and staying on the ground all that winter.

Spring 1935

ou see?’ Major Stonebridge murmured in satisfaction, pointing out the tiny green leaves sprouting atop the apple sapling. He looked over his glasses at his grandson. ‘New growth.’

Jimmy bent precariously forward from his perch in the Major’s arms and tried to pluck at the leaves.

‘Don’t do that!’ Major Stonebridge laughed and swung him around. ‘How do you expect your apple tree to grow if you destroy all its leaves?’

Jimmy chortled, revealing two nascent teeth. Throwing his podgy arms around his grandfather’s neck, he gave him a wet, sloppy kiss. Major Stonebridge hugged the little body closer. ‘Do we remember our grafting lesson? The rootstock from the oldest tree in the orchard, and a scion from within the woods. Together, a new tree, for James Henry Stonebridge.’

Jimmy squirmed in his grandfather’s hold and tried to tug on his glasses. ‘Now, now,’ the Major admonished solemnly, as he continued to lecture the child on fruit buds and cambium.

Ellie shook her head fondly by the kitchen window. Barely a year and a half old, and Jimmy had accomplished what none of them had been able to, rousing the Major from the depths of his despondency. The child had gravitated towards his grandfather almost from the time he was born, his fretting quieting as if by magic when seated in the Major’s lap.

The Major still drank like a fish, far more than was good for him, but it had been a while, Ellie recalled thankfully, since one of his binges. Instead of his solitary rambles about the orchard, he now went with young Jimmy tucked into his arms. And that sapling he’d grafted! The way he fussed and mussed over it, you’d think its roots were dipped in solid gold. He’d not let Jim do the cutting, shaping the tips of the two scions and the rootstock himself, binding the exposed layers together with special care. Right upset he’d been all that week when one of the scions had not taken, withering away on the graft. Thankfully, the remaining one was doing well. Not a morning passed without the Major going out to pet and admire it.

She watched as Jim appeared from around the side of the barn. He tousled his son’s hair and was rewarded with a two-toothed grin.

‘Ootstaw,’ Jimmy said importantly, pointing at the sapling.

‘That’s right, rootstock.’

Their voices floated down to the house and Ellie thought of the Major’s wife with a sudden lump in her throat. How she’d have loved to see the three of them, standing there together, silhouetted against the red of the barn, the apple trees, and the clear blue sky.

The baby’s arrival had brought Jim and Madeleine closer too. It still frustrated her, the way he could withdraw so fully, the impenetrable nature of his silences, but their mutual love for their son further cemented the elemental bond that had always existed between them.

Motherhood had instilled Madeleine with new confidence, settling her in a way she hadn’t foreseen. All the doubts that had assailed her during her pregnancy had stilled as she gazed at the newborn in her arms, Jim steadfastly by her side.

On a whim last year, she’d taken up a short stint assisting one of her father’s university colleagues, a professor in the political studies department, in editing his essays for publication. She’d thoroughly enjoyed the work, and the literary debates that had followed equally so. At a reading hosted for the professor, an acquaintance had suggested to Madeleine that she might do a spot of fundraising for the local library. The gala she organised was such a success that she found herself much in demand, travelling regularly to Boston now to fundraise for a select group of charities and organisations whose ideologies she believed in.