Dorothy Eden (21 page)

But it was risky writing these long personal letters to her at Eltham. Occasionally there was a formal one which she could show Willie.

“Dear Mrs. O’Shea,

Thanks very much for your letters and telegram. I was rather indisposed yesterday, but am very much better today. I am told that everybody gets a turn after they have been here for three or four weeks. I write you this lest you and other friends should be troubled by exaggerated reports in the newspapers.

“My esteemed friend Mr. Forster has become very disagreeable lately. He refuses to allow me to see my solicitor except in presence and hearing of two warders, so I have declined to see him at all. He also refuses to allow me to see visitors except in the cage, which I have also declined to do, but probably things may be relaxed again after a time.

Yours very truly, C.S.P.”

Her own private letters were addressed to Mrs. Carpenter, at a small shop in Soho. Very plainly dressed, she called there once a week, hating her disguise, but longing for the letter that was her reward.

“My darling,

Now that everything is quiet and with your own sweet face before me I can give my thoughts up entirely to you and talk to you as if you were in my arms.

“I am trying to make arrangements for you to come and see me. I will ask if I may see my cousin ‘Mrs. Bligh who is coming from England’.

“I admire supremely my life of ease, laziness, absence of care and responsibility. My only trouble is about your health and happiness. You must try not to be so unhappy.

“You will be anxious to know what my short illness was about. It was of a very unromantic kind—not the heart but the stomach. However, our doctor by means of mustard and chlorodyne got me all right again. In fact, I have gotten over very quickly the
mal du prison
which comes on everybody sooner or later.

“One of the men in this quarter who has been here for nearly nine months looks after me as if he was my brother. He makes me a soda and lemon in the morning and then gives me my breakfast. At dinner he takes care that I get all the nicest bits and concocts the most perfect black coffee out of berries which he roasts and grinds fresh each day. Finally in the evening just before we are separated for the night he brews me a steaming tumbler of hot whiskey.

“I do not think there is the least probability of my being moved, this is the strongest place they have and they are daily trying to increase its strength according to their own notions which are not very brilliant. My room is warm and perfectly dry. They wanted me to go to another which did not face the sun, but I refused, so they did not persist.

“With a thousand kisses, and hoping soon to lay my head in its old place. Goodnight, my darling …”

His ingenuity was never at an end. Someone, perhaps a friendly warder, had provided him with some invisible ink, and the recipe for it, which he sent to Katharine, instructing her to take it to a particular chemist in London. After that they were able to correspond with the greatest freedom, writing their private messages invisibly between the lines of their short formal letters.

“I continue very well and very much contented with the position of things outside. I am told the Government doesn’t know what to do with us now they have got us, and will take the first decent excuse which presents itself of sending us about our business. Your letters give me great comfort, but I am in a continual state of alarm lest something may hurt you. Do take care of yourself and our child.”

She was going to be forever ashamed of herself, but early in December, after reading in the
Freeman
that the health of the Irish leader in Kilmainham Jail was causing some alarm, she had such a fit of hopelessness and angry despair that she succumbed to the temptation to put all her fears and unhappiness on paper, and to post the letter before she came to her senses.

The next day, before Charles could have received this shameful letter, one came from him, written with his usual thoughtfulness for her anxiety.

“You will see a paragraph about my health in the
Freeman
which may worry you, so I write to say that it is very much exaggerated for the purpose of preventing a change in our rooms to some which are not in any way so nice. I have caught a slight cold which the doctor thinks will pass off in a day or two.

“You must not pay any attention to the newspaper report as it was carefully got up. I don’t eat bread, only for breakfast, and D. and I have two raw chops smuggled in daily which we do for ourselves and also make our own tea. We also always have a cold ham in stock.

“But we hope by the row we are making to compel the Government to make the food sufficiently good to satisfy the men.”

The reply to her own despairing letter came almost by return post.

“You frighten me dreadfully when you tell me that I am surely killing you and our child. Rather than that you should run any risk I will resign my seat, leave politics and go away somewhere as soon as you wish. Will you come?”

Would she come? With all the resolution of which she was capable she pushed the tantalising prospect from her. She had not, after all, become so sunk in her own unhappiness as to be so selfish and short-sighted.

She wrote, “I have warned you I would not always behave well, but even I did not know how bad my bad behaviour would be. I was feeling so low and hopeless about the future that my pen wickedly ran away with me …”

His answer came just before Christmas.

“Your letter has relieved me very much. I have been dreadfully frightened about you for the last week. Do take care of yourself, my darling, and I will also take good care of myself. We have both to live for each other for many happy years together.”

Then it was Christmas, and his message, “Many happy returns for Christmas, my own darling.”

The thought of him spending Christmas in jail was too much to endure. From then on Katharine lost patience. She bombarded Willie with requests to do more. Willie was doing all he could, but it still wasn’t enough. It was all very well to put his head together with Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, and discuss terms under which the Government could release the prisoners without losing face. Nothing was happening except talk. He must see Mr. Forster in Dublin, he must see Mr. Gladstone, if necessary. Katharine herself wrote to Mr. Gladstone asking for an interview, but he was visiting Scotland and then Hawarden, and in any case it seemed likely that he would have nothing to say to her at present.

Besides, she was now conspicuously pregnant. Willie was shocked at her suggestion that she see Chamberlain. She could do no more than he was doing, and it wasn’t seemly for a woman in her condition to go about publicly. What was she worrying about? The political prisoners were being well looked after. Her precious Mr. Parnell was snug and cosy while he, Willie, was doing all the running about in foul weather.

She could only write again to Charles, the bottle of invisible ink at her elbow.

“I don’t think I can bear this pretence any longer. When you are released you must promise to come here immediately. But I warn you you must be prepared for my never letting you go again.”

His answer was prompt.

“Yes, I will come to you, my love, immediately I am released. There is nothing in the world that I can do in Ireland nor is it likely that I shall be able to do anything here for a long time to come. I am disposed to think that the Government intends to release me shortly before the opening of Parliament.

“Yesterday and today as three of us were exercising in our yard the gates in the adjoining yard were opened twice to permit some carts to come in. A low wall only separated the two yards across which we could have easily sprung. There was no warder in our yard, and only one with his back to us in the next. But trying to escape is six months with hard labour so we have nothing to gain by it.”

January went by at a snail’s pace. It was February and Katharine knew that her time was getting near. She told Willie she feared the baby was going to be born too soon. He had not expected it until the spring, but it was going to make a February appearance. The doctor confirmed this.

“The sooner the better,” Willie said heartily. He never had liked the last weeks of her pregnancy, and had always made excuses to be out of the house as much as possible. Illness, apart from his own, bored him intensely.

After the long waiting and the strain of the last few months Katharine almost welcomed the physical pain when it struck her. It came very suddenly. She had been across the park to Aunt Ben that morning, feeling no warning that her baby would be there before the day was over.

But immediately after luncheon the fierce pain had stabbed her. She had sent Jane running for the doctor, and had scarcely reached her room before the pain came again so strongly and severely that she thought the birth would be a quick one.

She was filled with wild elation. At last something was happening.

Yet for all her welcoming the agony ahead it was not an easy birth. The hours ran away into night. Lamps were lit and shaded from her eyes. Firelight flickered on the ceiling. Now and then she dozed, and thought that Charles was beside her. Then, with pain and exhaustion, her fantasies grew wilder, and she thought that she was being rent in two to give birth to a strange object shaped like the map of Ireland. The sweet stifling smell of chloroform was in her nostrils, and the little country grew and sprouted green and was filled with crying children.

“Mrs. O’Shea! You have a little daughter.”

That was the crying she could hear. But it sounded feeble, starved …

She lifted heavy eyelids.

“Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. A little small. But time will remedy that.”

There were echoes of Lucy in that prosaic statement. Dear Lucy who had been there for the birth of all her other babies. Tears filled her eyes. She should be so happy, she had safely given birth to Charles’ child. But she only felt terribly lonely. The room seemed too dark. Shadows were pressing on her.

“Doctor—”

“Your husband’s downstairs, Mrs. O’Shea. Would you like to see him for a moment.”

“No.” Her lips trembled with exhaustion. “Just—the baby.”

Dark hair, eyes tightly shut, a miniature but beautifully rounded forehead—his forehead. A slight blueness about the mouth.

Katharine’s eyes flew open in alarm.

“Doctor, is she all right?”

“She’s a little small, but she’ll do nicely. Now you must rest.”

The habit of constant care, constant watchfulness, came back to her. No one must know she couldn’t bear Willie hanging over this baby, making fatuous remarks.

“Tell my husband—I’ll see him—in the morning.”

“It’s morning now, Mrs. O’Shea,” said the nurse comfortably. “And a nasty wet stormy one. No wonder baby keeps her eyes shut on this queer old world.”

“Can I have her beside me?”

“Well, now—I’ve just tucked her in her cradle.”

“Give her to me, please.”

“Well—if you promise to sleep.”

She would sleep, she promised eagerly. With this tiny scrap of his flesh against her her loneliness slowly dissolved into peace.

They were all round her bedside later, Willie looking red-faced, as if he had been drinking, Gerard, her tall fair-haired son, home from school, and the little girls starry-eyed with excitement.

She was ashamed that she could scarcely bring herself to share the baby with them. Reluctantly she folded back the shawl to show its face.

The little girls were absurdly disappointed.

“Mamma, she’s so
small
. Will she ever be big enough to dress?”

“When will she smile at us?”

“Can we put her in our doll’s carriage? She’s smaller than our dolls!”

“Mamma, are you sure God meant her to come like this?”

Katharine met Willie’s eyes over the commotion. He, too, was disappointed. She guessed he would have preferred a boy, but anyway a man couldn’t be expected to go into raptures over such a scrap of human flesh. Wait until she grew a little.

“What about you, Gerard? Are you disappointed, too?”

Being at school had taken her son away from her. Although only twelve he seemed to have entered a man’s world. He was not going to show any but the most offhand interest in his new sister.

“I suppose she’s all right.”

“The thing is,” said Willie heartily, “what to call her. Any ideas, Kate?”

Katharine’s eyes widened. She drew the baby closer to her. She had been so absorbed in wanting this child and waiting for its birth that she hadn’t thought of all the difficulties ahead. Here was the first one. Willie naming
his
child. And after that the elaborate Catholic christening ceremony.

“No, I haven’t thought yet.”

“Well, we’ll all have to get our heads together. We’ll give her a good family name.”

The baby stirred, stretching her minute hands, and beginning to cry. She had a weak cry, Katharine thought anxiously. And so far she had refused to suck. Let her get properly hungry, the nurse had said, but she didn’t seem to have enough strength.

“She’s the first one to take after you, Kate. Brown hair. What colour are her eyes?”

“I think they’re going to be dark.”

“Well, it makes a change,” said Willie cheerfully. “Come along, children. You mustn’t tire your mother. There’ll be plenty of time to admire your little sister in the future.”

The letter came from Dublin.

“I cannot describe to you what a relief your little note was that everything was quite right. I burst into tears … You must be very good and quiet until you are quite strong again …”

Katharine regained her strength slowly, the baby more slowly. Indeed, all of Katharine’s fears were realised. This child was going to be difficult to rear. She took her food badly, she refused to grow, and she cried far too much. The pathetic weak wailing wrung Katharine’s heart. She would sit for hours with the child in her arms, hushing and soothing her. Then there was a terrible time when she caught a cold and her little face went blue with her efforts to breathe.