The Custodian of Paradise (17 page)

“Joe Smallwood,” I said.

“Smallwood,” he said. “Smallwood. The son of the man who owns the shoe store and factory. The ‘boot man,’ they call him. A merchant. He has money and a name. So his son is the father. Well, it could be worse.”

“You are thinking of Fred Smallwood,” I said. “The boy’s father is Charlie Smallwood. Fred’s brother. Fred is the uncle who paid for Joe to go to Bishop Feild. No, the boy’s father is Charlie. I believe that you have heard of him.”

“My God. He is one of my charity patients. Charity Charlie they call him. He is indigent. A drunkard. He hasn’t a penny to his name. He is laughed at on the waterfront by stevedores. He has, I think, ten children. Why in God’s name would you consort with the son of such a man?”

“Do you mean that I should, following your example, have consorted with my social equal?”

“This must not get out. It mustn’t. You pregnant by the son of Charlie Smallwood. My good name would be destroyed. All that remains of my reputation would be lost.”

“Whereas I would go on to a life of prosperity and happiness.”

“Why would?—Smallwood. What would possess you?”

“He did.”

“Mockery. Mockery. And this is what it leads to. This is what, all these years, I have been warning you against. Mockery.”

“Lechery. His
and
mine.”

“Not another word like that. The size of you. You could fight off any boy, any man—”

“If I wanted to.”

“Not another word. You will have nothing more to do with him. You may think you are in love with him.”

“I was. But not now.”

“I wish to hear nothing of love, or elopements, or marriage.”

“I could just go away for good. Easier for you if I simply disappeared. I could pass for a woman of thirty, change my name.”

“You will do as I say. I can’t have you trying to run off and making a mess of things.”

“And there is the matter of how much you would miss me.”

“Smallwood. I have seen that scarecrow of a boy. That worthless wretch. Skin and bones. A crow’s nose. Skulking about like a thief. Wears the same thing every day. A boy like that at Bishop Feild … His father’s son. Pure scruff. Scruff bred from scruff. Why on earth?—a boy like that.”

“You asked me not to speak of love.”

“How
could
you love a boy like that? And even then, how could you—
why
would you—?”

“You cannot even bring yourself to use a euphemism.”

“What man could, even if he knew he was your father? What proper word is there for such degenerate behaviour? I can think of many euphemisms, but you would not want to hear them. A mere girl, well brought up, sent to the best of schools. Where on earth could such a thing have taken place?”

“It’s not as if we would have had to sneak about this house, is it? Given how rarely you are here—”

“In my own
house
—”

“I can see no point in providing you with details.”

“My God. What has happened to you? You sound as though you were brought up like that boy. The words that I hear coming from your mouth.”

“Well. It has been a long time since we spoke.”

“Do not even think of blaming me for this disgrace. Your mother—”

“May I think of blaming her for this disgrace?”

“I blame you both. I have done my best. As much as any man could do in such circumstances. You, girl—you. I once expected so much more from you. So much better.”

“Perhaps you should have said so.”

“Yes. I can see that you will blame me. And her. Everyone except yourself.”

“I blame no one
but
myself. Not even
him.”

“Did you ever visit this boy’s house?”

“No. Never. I could not tell you where it is.”

“I have been inside such houses. Perhaps if you had been. I do not understand it. Are there no supervisors at these schools? Headmaster Reeves, Miss Stirling, they both have much to answer for. Yet I cannot speak a word against them. And my so-called housekeeper—”

“Is not to blame. Like all the others we have had, she does what I tell her to and then goes home. What I tell her you told me she should do.”

“How could so much have been going on without my knowledge?”

“The world has been going on for years without your knowledge.”

“You know nothing of the world, girl. I see the world every day. Illness, misery, unhappiness, poverty. And ignorance. I have pledged myself against these things. Do you think, child, that you are worldly because of what you did with that Smallwood boy? Because you are old enough to reproduce?”

“No. You are right. I have yet to see the world. But I would like to.”

“Well, you will see it soon. Like mother, like daughter. This confirms my suspicions. You are no child of mine. You must tell no one of this. No one. Once I am certain of your condition, I will take—the necessary measures.”

“Such as?”

“I will need to think about it. There are things that can be done. I know of certain cases. Will you give me your word that you will not abominate this child? You would never commit such a crime, would you? Against God. Unforgivable.”

Abominate. The first three letters were the same. I had considered this possibility as well. But I had no idea how to go about it. No one to confide in who might help me and whose discretion was assured. And I was afraid for myself. I had heard rumours of women who had died or who afterwards were barren. I had given little thought, as yet, to the child itself. I knew only that I wanted to be rid of it. It seems harsh to say so. But I had no idea what “to be rid of it” would mean. All I knew of childbirth was what I had seen and read in The Vile, which terrified me now even more than before.

“I will not, as you say, abominate this child. But neither will I raise it as my own.”

“That, too, is out of the question. Of course. I will take the necessary measures.”

I suspected that he had no more idea than I did what he meant by the necessary measures. I felt sick at the likelihood that he would somehow let slip our secret, that the whole thing, left to him, would end in a welter of scandal, confusion, accusations.

“When you are considering ‘the necessary measures,’ would you keep in mind that I am your daughter? I am sorry for the trouble I have caused you.”

“Galoot of a girl. The horse has bolted. Apologies are like barn doors. My father told me that. Too late to bar the door. Were you thinking of whose daughter you supposedly were when you let that boy? Were you thinking of whose life you might destroy?”

“I was thinking neither of destroying nor creating life.”

“Well, I dare say you are thinking of it now. You are to have nothing more to do with Smallwood, you understand. You must not, above all else, tell him that he made you pregnant.”

“Of course not. It would come as a great surprise to him.”

“I would tell him some things if I could. Idiot boy. This is how he repays his uncle’s kindness. But what would one expect. A boy from a family like that. With a father like that. And a mother. The two of them breeding like a pair of animals.”

“He is not the sort of boy you think he is,” I said.

My father examined me to make sure I was pregnant. I had no doubt that I was. I was more than a month late. Queasy every morning, sometimes all day long. He told me that his having to examine me was itself “an abomination, a humiliation that I will spare you, though not myself, by conducting it while you are under ether.”

One evening at his surgery, after all his patients had left, he had me lie, fully clothed, on his examination table. I saw, in one corner of the room, an apparatus whose purpose I divined from the two metal stirrups that descended from it. He tied a cloth mask over my mouth
and nose, instructed me to close my eyes. My heart raced. I smelled what I thought was alcohol. An instant later, unaware of having been “under,” I opened my eyes. My head ached, pounded with each pulse. In my mouth a strange, medicinal taste that made me want to gag. The mask he had tied around my face was gone. There was something wet and cold between my legs.

“Humiliating,” my father said. “My own daughter. No man should have to. Unforgivable.”

By nearly a month later, my father had still not told me what “measures” would be taken. In fact, he had, in all that time, not spoken a single word to me. I was going to Spencer each day, sitting as usual among my classmates, feigning attentiveness as best I could.

One day, in history class, Miss Emilee said she wished to see me in her office after school. My first thought was that she somehow knew I was pregnant. That my father, in whatever “measures” he was taking, had included her. Or that she was somehow able to “see” I was pregnant, so acute was her perception when it came to girls. Or that my father, in any one of a million possible ways, had blundered and our so-called secret was now common knowledge. I sat at her desk as before in that sparely furnished, almost empty room.

“Something has happened at Bishop Feild,” Miss Emilee said. “I am accusing you of nothing. If you are responsible for what has happened, you will need no further explanation. Are you responsible, Miss Fielding?”

“I have no idea what you mean, Miss Stirling,” I said.

“You must understand, Miss Fielding, that should I discover that you
were
responsible, you will be expelled.”

“I still have no idea what you mean.”

“Very well,” she said. “I have no choice but to accept your word.”

Something has happened at Bishop Feild
. Why, if it happened there, had Miss Emilee questioned
me
about it? I decided to ask one of the boys of the Feild what had happened, one of the boys so in awe of Prowse he would never presume to speak to him. I waited just off Bond Street after school until almost all the boys had gone by. Then I saw
just the sort of lower-form straggler I had in mind. I stepped out in front of him and laid my cane on his shoulder.

“If you try to run away, I’ll catch you,” I said. “If you start to cry, I’ll crack you on the backside with this cane.”

“Fielding,” he said, looking up at me, eyes and mouth wide open. “I never made fun of you. I never laughed at you. I swear.”

“Yes,” I said. “Big, bad Fielding. Tell me or I’ll send you home wearing nothing but your blazer. What is going on at Bishop Feild? What is all the fuss about?”

“One of the ’Tories,” he said. “One of the dormitory boys.”

“Yes? Something happened to him?”

“No. He did something.”

“Who is he and what did he do?”

“I don’t know who he is.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“A letter. To the
Morning Post
. About how awful things are in the dormitory. That’s where the boys from around the bay live. A pack of lies, Reeves said. At night, it says in the letter, it’s too cold and there’s not enough to eat. And the masters keep their spending money for themselves. And other stuff. There was no one’s name on it.”

“Did you think there would be?”

“What?”

“This letter. It was in the
Morning Post?”

“No. Someone at the
Morning Post
sent it back to Reeves. It’s supposed to be a secret, but all the boys have heard about it.”

“Who is being blamed? Can’t they find out from the writing who it is?”

“It was made with cut-out words and letters.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else do you know?”

He shrugged.

“Get out of my sight,” I said. “And don’t tell anyone I spoke to you or I’ll drag you into Spencer by your ears.”

And Miss Emilee had suspected me. She must have heard of my supposed humiliation at the hands of Prowse and Smallwood and the others. And thought the letter was revenge.

A few days later, my father came home shortly after dark. I was in the front room, reading by the light of a single lamp beside the fire that he stared into after he sat down.

“Arrangements have been made,” he said.

I closed my book.

“I wrote to her. I thought she might not bother writing back, but she did. And signed her letter Mrs. Susan Breen. My letter had no salutation. Except at the end. I signed myself ‘Your husband.’ I couldn’t bear, after all these years, to write her name. Or mine. Who else could I ask for help? I could think of no one. I knew I could count on her discretion. She, too, has her reputation. What remains of it. I did not expect her to reply the way she did. I asked only for her help, you see. I told her it was her fault. Hers and yours. That here was a way to make amends. And spare my reputation that, by divorcing me, she had smeared, given it what could have been a fatal blow.”

I knew that in a letter asking her assistance he would not have said any such thing.

“New York is so much bigger than St. John’s. You could, with their help, have it there or somewhere even farther from St. John’s. Where no one who knows us would find out. It might be adopted or grow up in some orphanage, I said. Her letter reached me yesterday. I cancelled my appointments. I read it in my surgery. It began, like mine, without a salutation. How strange to hear from her. For so long I was certain I would never see or hear from her again. For her, too, I dare say it was strange. Stranger. She was not expecting it. Out of the blue. What must she have wondered when she saw it?”

“You said arrangements had been made.”

“I found it hard to believe what I was reading. I thought I might decline her—offer. But I could think of no alternatives. And we have so little time.”

“What sort of offer?”

“She said they would like to raise the child themselves. As their own. Pass it off as their own.”

“You are suggesting that I give my child to the mother who abandoned me, the woman who when I was six years old abandoned us. My own child is to take my place. Have as its mother the mother who would not have me?”

“As I said, I, too, thought I might decline her offer. And that of a man who took from me the woman I still think of as my wife. Who in the eyes of God is still my wife.”

“Father, no man took her from you. She met her husband in New York—”

“But then I reconsidered. What choice did I have but to accept her offer? Do you think I will just stand by while you shame me? Where in this country could you go to have this child without word getting out that you were Dr. Fielding’s daughter?”