She could allow herself to kiss Chilton. She could allow him to remove her clothes, and she could even assist him with the garments that required more than one hand. She could take him inside her and enjoy it immensely. If she became pregnant and went back to Archie, she could pass the child off as his and that would serve him right. If she became pregnant and Chilton disappeared from her life, and she and Archie divorced, her marriage would still protect her, as would her money, the living she was quite capable of making on her own. Among Agatha’s enviable qualities, perhaps the most significant was her ability to thrive in this man’s world. Following the rules but managing also to rise above them.
Her new novel was coming out in one month. As aghast as the headlines made her, in the new flat calm of throwing aside all social mores she allowed herself to think, how many more people will recognize my name, now, when they see The Big Four in a bookshop’s window? Curiosity so often amounted to money spent.
But that was a secondary point of thought. The main point was this bubble, away from every ordinary concern.
A while later, when Chilton lay staring at the ceiling and Agatha lay naked in his arms, several thick blankets piled on top of them, he said, ‘I have to ask. You’ve told me Miss O’Dea is your husband’s mistress.’
‘Yes.’ A small sigh. Nobody wanted the past or world at large to intrude on such a moment.
‘But that’s not the only point of connection. Is it?’
‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘Miss O’Dea is my husband’s mistress because she believes my daughter belongs to her.’
And so she told Chilton everything Finbarr had told her, about my time in Ireland, and how it all ended.
Here Lies Sister Mary
MY LITTLE GIRL was born on 5 August 1919 at the county hospital in Cork City. They say first children come slow and hard, but not mine. A few hours, that’s all. Susanna had warned me I wouldn’t get stitched afterwards – punishment wherever it could be found was encouraged for the girls from Sunday’s Corner, even at hospital – but the midwife who attended me was kind. She had green eyes and freckles that reminded me of my mother and Colleen. Nothing in the way she treated me indicated she knew where I’d come from, though certainly she did know, from my short hair and grey uniform, not to mention the desperation with which I reached for my child, as if I’d never be allowed to hold her again.
‘What will you name her, then?’ the midwife asked, so gently I could believe whatever name I chose would stand forever.
‘Genevieve,’ I whispered, running my fingers down her tiny nose, flattened from her battle into the world. We memorized each other’s faces as she nursed for the first time. A mother is a mother still, the holiest thing alive.
‘Will you send a letter for me?’ I whispered to the midwife. At the same time sifting through my options since Sister Mary Clare’s letter to Finbarr hadn’t worked. My mother. Megs or Louisa. Aunt Rosie.
The midwife’s face darkened with sadness. ‘Hold your baby, sweetness,’ she said, by way of saying no. ‘Give her all the love you can.’
And so I did, all the ten glorious days I lay in at the hospital. There was a cot beside my bed, but Genevieve didn’t occupy it a single time. Instead, we slept cradled together, the scent of colostrum and then milk wafting from her lips as she exhaled her tiny, contented breath across my chin.
You might be thinking: those ten days were my chance. There was no iron gate. At night I wasn’t locked in. Of course I did think about an escape. But these thoughts led to images of myself, out on the road in the dark, clutching a helpless newborn. Not a penny to my name. My hair and clothes announcing my identity to the world, begging me to be returned to the convent, or some place even worse.
So I bided my time obediently. I returned to the convent, lying on my bed in the dormitory that first night while Genevieve lay unreachable in the room below. I thought I’d known what the other girls experienced, hearing their babies cry while unable to go to them. I thought I’d been sharing in their grief. But I hadn’t known the half of it. If I could have made my way out a window and scaled down the wall to the nursery, I would have. Instead, I held my rock-hard breasts, determined that not a drop be released until I could get to her. But then a cry would come through the floorboards and I’d know it was Genevieve, and the milk would let down without my baby to catch it.