All the dear faces by Audrey Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

every detail. Carefully Annie unwrapped the binding and the tiny body lay trustingly beneath her gaze. The child's legs jerked and bent and the small, hidden fold of her female gender was revealed. A girl. A female child who would, one day, be subjected to the hurt and fear and humiliation she herself, and her own mother, had suffered. Poor little girl. Poor baby. So quiet, so patient, it seemed to Annie, and she wondered if her own submission to Anthony Graham's mastery of her – since what else had there been for her? – had transmitted itself to the child who was inside her .
    Slowly, not at all sure what the correct procedure was but hoping the baby would know, as newly born lambs did, she opened Polly's nightgown and turned the child in the general direction of her breast. At once, but with the utmost delicacy, the small rosebud mouth fastened on Annie's nipple and began to suck. It did not hurt, Annie discovered. In fact it was quite pleasant. Quite companionable really, as though she and the baby were friends and, like friends, one was doing the other a favour. The child's hand rested on her breast and Annie smiled, putting her finger inside the tiny fist. Immediately the child gripped it and it was then that it happened. A great wave of loving tenderness, a great drowning in which she and the child went down together, deep, deep, then floated in perfect harmony to the surface where they lay, fastened together by an invisible, indivisible thread which, she knew, would never be broken .
    They were both asleep, she and the child, when, the rush over, Polly put her head round the door several hours later. She smiled. The child was held protectively in the curve of the mother's arm, trusting, well fed, loved, Polly could see that and her smile deepened in satisfaction. That was it then. What had not happened at once had happened now.
    “ She's all right now," she said to Seth as they tumbled into the great feather bed they shared.
    “ Why shouldn't she be?" he grumbled, reaching for her comfortable, still enticing breast and giving it a hopeful squeeze.
    “ She didn't take ter t' little 'un right away, not like I did wi' mine."
    “ Oh, aye." His hand explored his wife's ample body with greater urgency and Polly let him since, though he was a great daft lummox, she was fond of him and knew exactly how to get what she wanted from him.
    “ Aye, a grand lass an' a good worker, like I said. We'll keep 'er on, I reckon. Babby'll be no trouble," hitching herself into a position more accommodating for her husband's questing masculinity.
    “ Righto, Poll. Now then, here's a little mouse lookin' fer a hole."
    “ 'An here's a little 'ole fer 'im to 'ide in," neither of them seeing anything ridiculous in the obviously well-used words .
    She was there for six months, sleeping with the child in the furthermost attic of the inn where, Polly hoped, she would not disturb Hesper, the guests, nor herself and Seth who both needed their sleep but the baby, thriving and as pretty as a picture, even Seth agreed, was not the slightest trouble to anyone, least of all her doting mother whose hitherto untapped source of love sprang into full bloom and was lavished unstintingly on her child.
    “ What you callin' it?" Hesper asked interestedly when Annie was back at the kitchen sink. They worked steadily side by side in the hot kitchen, a good team, Hesper was inclined to think and she said so to Mrs Pearsall, adding that she didn't know how she'd managed before Annie came, her being such a devil for work .
    Annie's hands which were busy peeling potatoes with their customary vigour, became still and her eyes turned to the basket where her child's fingers could be seen clutching the air above the rim of the wickerwork. Her feet kicked and her voice murmured some bubbling sound to the smoked hams and dried herbs which hung above her head.
    “ I hadn't thought," Annie answered slowly.
    “ She'll 'ave to 'ave a name, duck."
    “ Yes, I suppose