Michael did his best to persuade Laura to leave Chateau d’Aigse with him, but she refused. She was determined to stay in Clochamps to have her secret baby. She used my tragic situation, claiming that she could take a year out to help me and that she could not simply abandon me, the grief-stricken, childless orphan. Her brother was surprised by her sudden devotion to me. He came to ask me if I was sure that Laura could be of assistance.
I did not tell him the truth of Laura’s predicament. I needed help though. My hands were still bandaged, and while my neighbours were generous and kind, I was on my own. Michael insisted that he and his friends would take no payment for their work. It was gracious of him. They were truly sympathique. He and Laura were good, good people.
I witnessed Oliver’s leave-taking of Laura from my bedroom window. I was afraid that she would make herself pathetic, but she took his hand and whispered earnestly into his ear. She surreptitiously pressed his hand to her belly, but he snatched it away, and never once during this encounter did he meet her eyes. He stood at a distance, fidgeting with his wrists. I thought then how cold he was, how insensitive and uncaring, and I wondered how my father and my son could have loved him. As he followed the others into the truck that was to take him to the city, Laura began to weep and Michael, knowing nothing of the baby, must have thought her tears were marking the end of her affair with Oliver. He hugged her quickly and gave her his handkerchief. I could see he was trying to persuade her to change her mind about staying, but she was shaking her head. They hugged again, and he got on the truck, and it drove away. She waved as it motored up to the gates, and when it was out of sight she looked towards the spot on the horizon where it had been, and then she looked down and said some silent words to her belly. Even within my grief, I felt sympathy for the girl.
I got to know Laura then. Without the other English speakers around, her French improved rapidly. She was a brave and determined young lady. By the time the others left, she was in her third month of pregnancy, barely showing, but she was more settled now that she had made a plan. When the baby was born the following March, she would give it up for adoption at the Sacred Heart convent in Bordeaux and then return home and go back to her normal life. She had been educated by Sacred Heart nuns in Ireland and trusted they would be kind. I very much doubted that she had any idea what a mother might feel for her newborn baby, but, like I say, I was too preoccupied with trying to inhale and exhale to put much thought into it.
Laura was enormously helpful to me, although it took me time to realize it. At first, it irked me that she would insist on saying prayers for me and with me, lighting candles and blessing herself as she passed the ruin of the east wing. As if any God would allow a child and a war hero to burn to death, but gradually I began to see that there was some comfort in the ritual and that it kept the darkness at bay. Laura’s faith assured her that there was a purpose, a reason, and that, while it may never be revealed to us, it was for the ultimate good of mankind. To this day, I cannot say that I subscribe to such a theory.
Laura asked permission to move into the house as the residential workers were mostly gone by November and the bunk-houses were not suitable for the winter. My rule about the house being only for family made no sense now that there was no family. Over the winter months we slowly became friends and confidantes, Laura and I, as she nursed me, fed me, cared for me. How shocked she was when I told her about Jean-Luc’s paternity, and utterly aghast that my father had encouraged it. She had assumed I was a widow, and insisted that being a single mother would never be acceptable in Ireland, that in her country it was a shameful thing. It was the same in France, I told her, only I had an exceptional father. She insisted that it was not too late for me to fall in love, to marry, to have other children. I was just thirty-nine then, twice her age, but I was sure that I did not want love. It was not worth the risk of losing it. She nodded sagely, but did not dare to compare her loss of Oliver to my loss, although I knew that was what she was thinking. After just a month, she no longer spoke of Oliver. He did not reply to her letters or take her phone calls. She accepted that it was not possible to make somebody love you and, knowing that, she just got on with her life and with nurturing the one inside her.
I think that towards the end of the pregnancy, Laura was beginning to think of taking the baby home and risking the opprobrium of her family. She used me as an example of how one could lead a perfectly normal life. She was sure that her parents would be horrified at first, but that they would not ultimately turn her away. Her family were wealthy enough to support her, and even if they would not support her, there was an aunt who lived in a remote part of the country where she might live as a ‘widow’. I encouraged this, believing that in most circumstances a mother and child ought never to be separated, and encouraged her to write to her family to tell them the truth. She insisted she would wait until the baby was born before making her final decision to bring her child home.
I was very disappointed when I realized that Laura had lied to me and to Oliver. I can understand why she lied to Oliver, of course I can, but there was no reason not to tell me the truth. Even after the evidence was staring us in the face, she persisted with the lie, and I think living that lie ultimately unhinged her mind. Oliver’s refusal to meet her eye when he left, and indeed his distancing himself from her, began to make sense when the truth of the baby’s conception became clear.
Laura went into labour in the second week of March, a little early, but safely so. Anne-Marie was back by then. We did not call for the doctor. There was no need. Anne-Marie, as well as being our family’s retainer, was an excellent midwife. She had no qualifications as such, but she had delivered me, Jean-Luc and half the village. She was always the first person called when waters broke. A quick examination in her bedroom, and Anne-Marie correctly predicted that the labour would be no more than four hours and that, given Laura’s health and age, it would not be difficult. I paced outside as Anne-Marie and Laura laboured together, and then I heard a cry, first Anne-Marie’s cry of shock and then, within a moment, the baby’s cry. I entered the room as Anne-Marie handed the bundle to a red-faced Laura, but smothered my own cry of surprise when I saw the baby. Anne-Marie left the room with her hands in the air and a shrug. The baby was unambiguously métisse, mixed race. She was a beautiful child, with Laura’s clear blue eyes, but the undeniably dark curls and facial features of an ethnic African infant. Laura had obviously been unfaithful to Oliver with one of the South African boys. I was shocked. This child was an enormous surprise.
Laura’s reaction to the birth was extraordinary. She did not appear to notice at first the baby’s colouring, just clasped the child to her, holding on, as if to life.