Becoming Belle Read online

  “Does the air throb?” she asked. “I’m sure it beats down on me.”

  “She needs chloroform,” Flo said. “Mother always called for chloroform at her birthings.”

  “She needs the midwife,” Wertheimer said. “I’ll fetch her.” But he stood, instead, alarmed by the creases of pain that distorted his friend’s face and by her keening. “Oh, my heavens,” he said, and sat to try to comfort her with pats to her arm.

  “Go quickly. I can’t stand this.” Flo soaked a flannel in her sister’s basin and dabbed at her face. “Hush now, Isabel. It will be over soon.”

  Isabel put her hand down between her legs and looked at Flo in alarm. “The baby will get stuck,” she said. “Take off my knickers.”

  “They’re off already.”

  “Maybe we should remove her gown, too,” Wertheimer said. “It’s constricting her.”

  “You do it.” Flo gestured at Wertheimer and he began to undo the buttons.

  Isabel batted his hand away and propped herself on her elbows. “Help me,” she said, gripping Wertheimer’s arm. He bent over her and she used him to pull herself onto her side; turning, she crawled toward the footboard and gripped it. She rocked and wailed as the pains thundered one on top of another, then dropped her head and grunted from deep in her throat, an alien, animal noise that alarmed Wertheimer and sent Flo scurrying for linens and hot water. Wertheimer knelt on the bed behind Isabel and rubbed her back.

  “This is good, Isabel, this is right. You’re doing everything you need to do.”

  “Am I? How do you know?” she roared.

  “I don’t,” Wertheimer said, “but I also somehow do.” Isabel needed him and what could he do but act as if he knew what he was about and encourage her? There was nothing else to do.

  Isabel gasped and dropped her hand down between her thighs; there she felt the wet pulse of the baby’s crown. “It’s coming!” she roared and, leaning full into the end of the bed, she screamed and pushed.

  The baby slithered out into Wertheimer’s waiting hands, a grease-caked, blood-spangled bundle. He held him like an offering, marveling at the baby’s rotund belly and his occidental eyes; at the gray rope pulsing from his stomach.

  Isabel looked over her shoulder, tears dripping down her face. “Well?”

  “A boy!”

  She collapsed onto her side and Wertheimer had to carefully maneuver her leg, and the baby on its cord, to let his mother hold him. She rested her back against the footboard while opening her arms to her son. Wertheimer placed the boy in her embrace and the little one yawned and opened his creased eyelids to reveal navy eyes, glassy as a tippler’s.

  “He looks like he’s had one too many,” Wertheimer said.

  “He’s elephant’s trunk! Drunk as a lord!” Isabel giggled and watched every unflexing of the baby’s hands, every purse of his lips. His eyes, she saw as he looked up at her, were wise. She cradled him, finding his compact body exotic; he was a creature of wonder. “Isn’t he magnificent?” she whispered.

  “He certainly is.”

  “I shall name him for you. Here he is. Baby Isidor.”

  A BABY

  Babies crawled through Isabel’s dreams. Rotund ones, long-legged ones, scarlet-mawed ones—they screamed like the newly hatched and she felt stranded between half sleep and none. She drowsed, sure that she had left an infant somewhere that was unsafe and needed to recover it. Weston’s face dove in and out of her sight, and she felt herself duck away from him as much as she wanted to catch hold of him and demand his help. She lay in bed and tried to escape the mewling tots of her nightmares, but they clung to her as she flickered in and out of slumber. The cries of a real infant roused her at last and she remembered that he was here now, baby Isidor, the howler. Only a day old and the boy bawled, bucked and carped for his life. And where was his father? Ensconced in a cell and, no doubt, he rested easy by night and supped like a lord by day.

  * * *

  —

  Healthy lungs,” the midwife had intoned the afternoon before as she plopped the last of the birthing’s bloody mess into a copper bowl. Isabel turned her head; the idea that she had carried that meaty lump inside her along with the baby sickened her. What was it even for? The midwife slid a tin pannikin under Isabel’s behind to catch leaks, while she prepared to clean her up.

  “You managed without our Queen’s ‘blessed chloroform,’” the midwife said. “You’re strong.”

  “I’m like the wreck of the Hesperus, if you must know. I feel absolutely wretched. As if my lifeblood has been dragged from me with the child.”

  “Oh come now. You’re young and hardy, and there is muscle aplenty on you.” She squeezed Isabel’s calf. “You’ll be back on your feet in no time, girl.”

  Isabel doubted that; she felt as if she might never walk with ease again, never mind dance. What would happen if she could not resume her position at the Empire? How would she survive? Flo could not earn well alone, it was the Sisters Bilton that everyone now wanted. “I feel lower than I’ve ever felt,” she said, a maudlin whisper that the midwife heard.

  “Lower than ever? Well, you gave birth in a rush, I suppose. It’s to be expected.” The midwife swabbed Isabel between the thighs and she winced in discomfort. “It’s good for the child that he arrived in haste. ‘The babe who is born quickly will ever quick be.’ That’s what my mother used to say and she escorted thousands into this world.”

  “Quick?” Isabel looked at the baby, swaddled and wakeful beside her. He tossed his head and frowned as if he was plotting an escape. When he slept, his mouth was a perfect red purse that he moved now and then, as if he dreamed of sucking. Would he be clever? Neither of his parents was particularly sensible, Isabel thought, or they wouldn’t have ended up where they were. She, unwed and a mother; he, a fraud and locked up. None of this had been part of her dreams of London life, that was certain.

  The midwife wrung out the cloth she was using to clean Isabel, and she watched the blood drip, dark and foreign.

  “You enjoy a certain domestic felicity in this house, Miss Bilton. You are very fortunate indeed. There are not many men like Isidor Wertheimer in this world, truly.”

  “I know it,” Isabel said, and thought of Wertheimer and his unassailable goodness. She thought, too, of Weston in all his learned, narcissistic, impoverished idiocy. He was of no use to her now, nor had he ever been. Alden Weston had trampled on her, taken advantage of her. Flo liked to say he had corrupted Isabel, but can you corrupt someone who complies with you?

  “You can recuperate nicely here,” the midwife said as she shifted her patient this way and that, “for as long as Mr. Wertheimer will have you.” She fitted Isabel with a sanitary towel, fixing the belt loosely across the slack jelly of her stomach. “Now, we are done. Your sister might purchase more of these towels. Tell her to buy Southall’s—they’re the most hygienic.”

  “I will and thank you. Can you also show Mrs. Seymour how to make pap for feeding the baby?”

  “You do not intend to nurse him, then?” The midwife frowned.

  “I’ll be returning to work as soon as possible. At the theater.”

  “You should think more about your rest, Miss Bilton, and less about planning a dance parade.”

  “I have little choice,” Isabel said. A woman can’t survive on air and a child certainly can’t.

  The midwife gathered up the copper bowl and cloths and left the room. Isabel hoisted herself up on her elbows, hoping for a view of the garden below, its flower beds and neat lawns. But she could not see beyond the windowsill. She wondered if she would ever own such a garden attached to such premises. If she would ever meet the man who could give it to her, not on loan but permanently. A home ought to be a shrine, a solid place for all life to happen in, the joys and the sorrows. It should be a shared place for a family, not some temporary stop-off in which to lay her he
ad, no better than the stable in Bethlehem was for Christ and his mother. It was not that she was ungrateful. Wertheimer was a dear friend, the kindest of fellows, but he was not the man she could attach herself to.

  I could be happy as a lark with a hearth of my own, Isabel thought, lying back to ease her aching flesh. A garden with lawns for picnics, some nice furnishings inside: a huge Venetian mirror, Turkish carpets and a pianoforte. It wasn’t that she craved grandeur or splendor. These things would not even have to be new: Isabel liked the patina of used furniture and its knowledge of earlier times. She imagined kneeling in prayer, morning and evening, with a phantom spouse and a scatter of little ones, as her own family had done. She smiled to remember Flo’s deliberate mixing up of the words—invoking the Holy Goat could still make them laugh like girls.

  Yes, the temporary nature of everything had begun to make Isabel feel unsettled. Now this show, now that; now this hall door, now that. A need for permanence had simmered in her along with the baby, a longing for firm habits, a home, a root-taking spot. Weston was never going to offer it; Wertheimer would like to—he thought—but he could not either. Isabel needed love to feel secure, it was that simple. She had realized it after Weston: she never felt safe with him—everything was always on the brink of toppling. She needed a strong love, a man to feel sheltered by but one who also leveled her out, made her feel love was a refuge for equals. Yes, some other would have to come to her, make himself known.

  The midwife bustled back in, her jacket buttoned to her neck. She was dressed in serviceable navy from cowl to calf; she was a decent woman, no doubt, with an ordered life: a husband, a house, tidy children.

  “I will say good day to you, Miss Bilton. I wish you well.” She shifted her bag into her elbow crook. “I will return later in the week to check on you and the child.”

  “Thank you. Mr. Wertheimer will see to you on your way out. He’s in the parlor, I daresay.” Isabel hated having to mention money, but she feared the woman would look to her for payment and her funds were low.

  The midwife glanced around the bedroom, at the fine decor and the sunlight from the windows that burnished the floor in fat, golden strips.

  “You have everything you could want here,” she said. “All you need now is a husband.” She nodded and left.

  * * *

  —

  Flo walked back and forth with baby Isidor in Isabel’s room, trying to soothe his rigid body by rocking him, but he would not give up. Isabel beckoned her over to the bed. Flo sat, still holding Baby, and Isabel spooned pap into his outraged mouth. He burbled the pap out and she was afraid he would choke.

  “Did you put enough sugar in it?” Isabel said.

  “The midwife said to use but a pinch of sugar; she explained it wasn’t good for him.”

  “What does she know? We were reared on sweet pap. Get more sugar and a dollop of butter and mix it in.” She thrust the bowl at her sister. “We need to get a pap boat; it will be easier to get it into him.”

  “You need to nurse him, Isabel. It’s you he wants.” She gestured at her sister’s front where two wet stains were spreading like stars across her peignoir. “Won’t you just try?”

  “That’s not for me, Flo, and you know it.” She stared at the baby, stiff in her sister’s arms and red mottled from screeching. He barely drew breath between wails. Where was the quiet little sot she had held straight after birthing? Why had he been replaced by this squawler? “Wertheimer mentioned a wet nurse. Some countrywoman he knows. Quick, go ask him.” Flo went to lay the baby in the bed beside his mother. “Can’t you take him downstairs for a spell? My head hurts so.”

  “Everyone’s head hurts, Issy. My addled husband has gone into town already, for he can’t stand it.”

  “Well, poor bloody Seymour. Am I his keeper? It’s not as if he has to stay here—he may come and go as he pleases, he may return home. You’re both free to leave, Flo.”

  “I only meant that Baby can make a frightful noise when he wants to. I don’t blame him, or you.”

  Isabel raised her voice to be heard above the boy’s crying. “Ask Wertheimer about the wet nurse. I’ve about had it up to my gills with this racket.”

  Flo took the wailing baby with her and Isabel lay back, pressing her forearms to her breasts to stop the leaky tingle in them. She took her hand mirror from the bedside table and gazed at herself. There were murky crescents under her eyes and her hair was dull. It pained her, when she brushed it, to see great nut-gold clods caught in the bristles; she fluffed out her fringe but it fell flat against her forehead. She was tired of looking poorly, fed up with the fat that larded her body and the weariness that threatened to keel her over every minute. When was she going to look and feel normal again? She sighed, discarded the mirror and closed her eyes, but rest would not come when the baby had every nerve excited. She sat up and hauled the copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management into her lap. It was a gift from Flo during her confinement and, at first, Isabel had thought she gave it to her for fun, knowing Isabel didn’t like to read much, but Flo was perfectly serious about the book.

  “You’ll need it, Issy. You’re soon to be a mother.”

  Isabel turned to the chapter near the back on the rearing and management of children. She did not like Mrs. Beeton’s tone—the woman seemed at once scolding and skeptical, as if no mortal could ever be as efficient as she when it came to anything at all. Isabel softened though when Mrs. Beeton admitted that it might be presumptuous to tell a woman how to rear her infant.

  “You’re not presumptuous, Mrs. B., please tell me everything,” Isabel murmured.

  She read: “The children of the poor are not brought up but dragged up” in “reeking dens of squalor.” Isabel began to wonder about entrusting her baby to some lowly wet nurse who might live in a repulsive hovel in Seven Dials. Might he not be better off here with her in the lovely surroundings of Fairleigh Lodge? But she had to work—how else was she to survive? She needed to dance to earn money, that was the plain truth of it. And she wanted to dance, besides. No, there was no room for a squealing infant in this house. Oh, why had she not planned all this a little better? How was one to know how demanding babies were when one had never really met one?

  Isabel flicked over the pages, searching for succor concerning Isidor’s endless caterwauling. Mrs. Beeton finally offered it up in the form of castigation of unprincipled nurses who issue narcotics and items to suck on. Oh joy—there are drafts that will quieten him! Maybe we could get him a gum stick, too?

  A knock to the door and Isabel arranged herself back on her pillow and called out, “Come in.”

  Wertheimer entered. “How are you, my dear?”

  “As well as can be expected. Come sit by me.”

  Wertheimer sat on the bed and took Isabel’s hand in his own; it looked so small in his though their pale skins blended well.

  “Ugghhh. What has my life come to?”

  “There are ways out of this,” Wertheimer said, and he dropped to his knees so their faces were level. Isabel could smell his breath, a little porty, a little sweet. “I have been thinking most seriously and it comes to this, Isabel. We should marry. We should most definitely begin to make plans.” His tone was feverish and, though Isidor had said this to her before, it was always in jest. This time, he appeared to be serious.

  “Isidor, don’t be a clod.” Isabel tried to swat him away, but he only became more fervent.

  “Listen to me, Isabel. Listen well. Would it not solve a dilemma or two? Would it not be an amiable arrangement? Do we not go well together?”

  “We do, Isidor, but really, we’re not a match, we’re friends.” Was this another banter? Isabel looked at him. His eyes were fiery. “You know this is not feasible, Isidor.”

  “We can make it so.” He grabbed her hand and began to kiss it and before she could draw away, his lips were on her mouth in a clumsy
kiss.

  She pulled back quickly. “Isidor, what on God’s earth are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Issy. I merely wished to make things easier for you. I want to comfort you, to make things right.” He collapsed back onto his heels and sighed. “The baby has us all overturned.”

  “The whole household is upside down, for certain sure; everyone is acting mad. You included. Come sit by me and stop being absurd; I have quite enough to deal with.” Wertheimer rose from the floor and sat again on her bed. He looked chastened, though Isabel was not angry with him. She knew him to be impulsive; she knew, too, that their marrying might be a solution of sorts. “Come. Talk to me, Isidor.”

  He sat, looking abashed. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”

  “Forget about it, Isidor. We’re all wrong side up with the child. We’re disrupted. Tired.”

  Wertheimer nodded. “Flo said you wanted to know about the wet nurse.” He told her more about Sara, a capable young mother of Heathfield in Sussex, who would take on the care of baby Isidor for a small sum.

  “How small?”

  “You mustn’t worry about that, Isabel. I will remunerate her until you’re ready to go back to the Empire, until you’re earning once more.” He glanced at her. “Or we could just get married and that way you would never have to work again.”

  “Oh, Isidor, don’t.” She wished he wouldn’t persist with this line. Isabel knew it was more selfish than truly meant. Wertheimer’s mother would stop nagging him to marry and his life with his boys could continue as before. That was how he saw it. But what of her? “Isidor, I love you in my own fashion, you know this. But you also know that marriage is out of the question for us. I’m horribly romantic when it comes to men; I want a true and proper marriage. I have to believe that that waits for me. Despite all.”