Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard Read Free Book Online

we can have plum tarts and bottle the rest. Do mind the wasps.’ She had found the largest trug there was in the
greenhouse, and the small ladder which she had lugged to the kitchen garden wall and methodically stripped each espaliered tree. It was better than sewing with the aunts, and better than trying to
write her weekly meaningless letter to her mother who was paying a visit of indefinite duration to her friend in the Isle of Wight. Since last year, Zoë had tried to be kinder to her mother,
to pay her more attention, but the most she seemed able to manage was not to be
unkind.
Ever since June when she had lost the baby she had been sunk in an apathy so entire that she found
it easier to be alone. Alone, she did not have to make any effort to be ‘bright’ as she called it; she did not have to contend with sympathy or kindness that either made her feel
irritable or want to cry. It seemed to her as though for the rest of her life she was going to have to endure undeserved attentions, to attempt insincere responses, to be seen continuously in the
wrong light and also, she could foresee, be expected to ‘recover’ from what everybody excepting herself perceived as a natural tragedy. Pregnancy had been quite as arduous as she had
imagined; nothing they predicted happened as they said it would. The morning sickness that was supposed to last only three months persisted throughout, and did not confine itself to the mornings.
Her back ached for the last four months so that no position was ever comfortable, and her nights were broken every two or three hours by trips to the lavatory. Her ankles swelled and her teeth
developed endless cavities, and for the first time in her life she experienced both boredom and anxiety in equal proportions. Whenever she was feeling really bored, not well enough to do anything
that interested her, the anxiety began. If it was Philip’s child, would it
look
like him? Would everybody immediately see that it was not Rupert’s child? How would she feel
about a child whom she would have to pretend was Rupert’s if she knew that it wasn’t? At those times, the desire to tell somebody, to confess and be berated, even
not
to be
forgiven, but simply to
tell
someone, became overwhelming, but she managed never to do that. She was so depressed that the notion that it could as well
be
Rupert’s child
hardly ever struck her. And Rupert had been so sweet to her! His tenderness, his patience and affection had continued throughout her sickness, her frequent tears, her withdrawals into sullen bouts
of self-pity, her irritability (how could he understand her when he knew nothing?), her reiterated apology for being so hopeless at the whole thing (this when her guilt was its most oppressive)
– he seemed willing to contain anything that she was through all those months, until at last she’d had the baby, at home with the midwife that the family always used for their births.
Hours and hours of agony, and then Rupert, who had stayed with her, had brought the bathed and wrapped bundle to lay in her arms. ‘There, my darling girl. Isn’t he beautiful?’ She
had looked down at the small head with its shock of black hair, at the tiny wizened yellow face – he was born badly jaundiced – framed by the lacy white shawl the Duchy had made. She
had stared at the high forehead, the long upper lip and
known
. She had looked up at Rupert, whose face was grey with fatigue, and unable to bear the innocence of his anxiety, and concern,
and love, had shut her eyes as scalding tears forced their way out. That had been the worst moment of all: she had not imagined having to accept his pride and joy. ‘I’m dreadfully
tired,’ she had said. It had come out like a whine. The midwife had taken the baby away and said that she must have a nice rest, and Rupert had kissed her and she was alone. She had lain
rigid, unable to sleep due to the thought that she would never now be free of this consuming lie: