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Caroline had done it twice before, but it did not get easier.
She lay in the hospital bed with all the curtains drawn and a veritable meadow of flowers, and the baby, temporarily supine and silent in a white cot.
This one was at least fully done, overdone really, having had the courtesy to wait until after her due date before putting in an appearance. The other two had been, respectively, worryingly early and early, and the resultant fuss had nearly put Caroline off the business altogether, but at least that had necessitated a separate room with special equipment, instead of marooning Caroline with it, expected to see to its numerous and repulsive needs.
It was also a girl, which had delighted Logan.
Caroline had also wanted a girl, a little dark-eyed beauty, a nice change after two boys and a childhood filled with brothers, but still in a matching colour scheme, still resembling Caroline herself.
Instead, the baby had already developed a fair fuzz over its skull, suspiciously similar in colour to Caroline’s eldest and least favourite brother.
Logan, nearly as dark-haired as she herself was, had rubbed an investigative finger over it and said, joking-not-joking, You haven’t been giving me the run-around-now, have you, Carrie? But even accounting for the blue of the newborn, those eyes were surely his.
Perhaps, Caroline thought hopelessly, they would darken as it grew up, but somehow she doubted it. The boys too had acted contrary to her wishes. Kendall had been male, dark, and very early. Darling Ro-Ro had been male, dark, and though not nearly so early rather scrawny. And all Caroline had wanted then was a daughter, a little blonde bit, a little golden girl. Now she wanted a child in her own image.
The English love an underdog, Ewan had humourlessly joked back when he had been on speaking terms with Logan. Kendall ought to have been the underdog, Caroline supposed. Such a difficult baby, after the incubator, colic, refusal to latch and all the works, and then the delays, the stutter, the tears.
And Logan had practically accused her of being the cause of it, a bad mother, when it wasn’t as if he were ever there. If he were he would know how fucking boring that all was. To hell with Drs Spock and Bettelheim and the rest of the paternal crew of morbid pricks so eager to rule on the many, many ways mothers ruined their children, surely a boy needed his father more than his mother.
Mummy and Daddy had seen them every morning and evening, and Mummy had written a weekly letter when they were sent to school, and that was quite right, how it should be done. Anything else bred dependence, weakness, particularly amongst boys.
Boarding school was off the cards, alas, as Logan had chosen to make abundantly clear. Caroline had sniped about softness, projection, about his own early and permanent parting from his mother, and for a moment she had thought he would kill her. His eyes had rolled in his head, his face had turned puce, his heavy hands had clenched and released as though they were already around her neck.
The terrible thrill of it lit her lightening-sharp from crown to foot, the hair on the nape of her neck stood up, and then he screamed and hurled his whisky glass over her head against the wall. She’d had shards of glass threaded through her hair, across her shoulders, glancing off her to litter the floor.
But regardless, Kendall was a daddy’s boy from the off despite Logan’s frequent lack of patience for or interest in his son. Poor Roman didn’t even garner a head pat and a my boy. If she didn’t pet him a little, nobody else would.
A daughter, now, a daughter would be all hers. Logan’s precious sons, his heirs – quite literally the heir and the spare, just like Caroline’s own appalling brothers – they were his. He should have no interest in a girl. He should leave her upbringing to Caroline.
What fun they would have together, a conspiracy of femininity. Dressing girls was much more fun, and when she was older, teaching her about make-up, clothes, men…
Men were all children, really. Caroline’s brothers, still carolling for Nanny, still longing for nursery puddings, all milk and mush and sugar. Logan with his extremes, his tantrums, his inability to cope with being thwarted, was to her the most childlike of them all. Doubtless taken too young from his mother’s breast and so on. It always did seem to be Mummy’s fault, didn’t it? A daughter would come to understand that.
Watching Logan lean over the cradle, murmuring lovingly though, Caroline had felt her heart sink. She unwillingly recalled Cousin Imogen, like Caroline the youngest of a large and otherwise masculine brood, unlike Caroline her father’s spoilt darling. Logan would take this one from her too.
And Siobhan, why Siobhan, what sort of name was Siobhan for her daughter? Why not Elizabeth or Sophie or Antonia? Arabella or Lucy or Viola?
You’ve got some Irish in you, Logan had said defensively.
Anglo-Irish, gentry-Irish.
It will irritate your mother. Magic words, she perked up, acceded, but why had she let that win her over? Daphne, they could have called the baby Daphne, which was a name her mother abhorred, mostly because she found the novels of Daphne du Maurier deeply vulgar.
One could nickname Siobhan, Caroline supposed, dreadful schoolgirl names like – Von, maybe? Little Vonnie? Not very pretty but then Cousin Imogen had been known as ‘Dibs’ at school, and Caroline’s own brothers were always ‘Bim’ and ‘Buff’, Caroline herself relegated to a comparatively merciful ‘Caro’.
Sibby, that was a reasonable amendment, wasn’t it? A not-unnatural diminutive. And prettier. She’d insist on it to Logan, if he called her that, everybody would…
Where was Logan, anyway? In another meeting, doubtless, forgetting he had promised to come, promised to lay down the law to the doctors so that she and the baby could come home. Caroline wanted out of the bed the way she had wanted the baby out of her and was increasingly frantic with it. But did Logan even want her home? Safely tucked away in the hospital while he – well, quite.
At the thought of having to open her legs for him, putting up with the huffing and puffing that was what she got nowadays (when had he put on so much weight? You’d think he was the one who’d just had a baby), Caroline wanted to lie back down and pull the sheet over her head. Six weeks at least, thank God, but there were downsides to that. Logan was not one to deny himself any pleasure just because his wife had had a baby.
That was how he put it, as if he had nothing to do with the matter. Once it was out of her it was his child, all his, and she had played no part in its creation, hadn’t given it flesh, let it weigh her down, let it expand her feet two sizes and destroy the skin on her stomach and wreck her breasts and take two of her teeth (an unexpected horror no one had bothered to inform Caroline of until it happened). She was all wrinkled flesh, wilted before her time. But no. The children were Logan’s; they’d made that quite clear.
When Caroline cat-curled on the end of Logan’s bed, sliding her stockinged feet against her legs and looking at him corner-eyed from her perch atop the sheets, when she leant against his chair as he sat at his desk and let her shirt sleeve brush so gently against his bare arm it was like she wasn’t there at all, ghost-woman, gossamer girl, he would do anything for her. Not skip a meeting, admittedly, but come home early, fire someone she didn’t like, buy her any piece of jewellery she wanted.
When they had met at a charity dinner in New York and she wouldn’t dance with him, wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t give him the time of day or the shirt off her back or the flick of her lashes, none of it, none of it, he would have cheerfully cut off his right hand for a chance at her.
Wouldn’t he.
Like this though, splayed helpless on her back, skin still sagged from pregnancy and oozing from unmentionable places, she was at his mercy which was not a place she cared to be.
When the tap came on the door, it woke Baby Siobhan, who let out a screech. Caroline shot upright in the bed, winced, and tried to finger-comb her hair, look alert and if not pretty, passable.
But it wasn’t Logan. It was Gerri Kellman.
For one terrible moment, Caroline thought there had been an accident, that something had happened to Logan and they had sent this woman to tell her. Then she saw Gerri’s arms were full of flowers. Sunflowers, brashly bright and ripe to bursting. Singularly vulgar.
‘Hello, Caroline.’
‘Gerri.’
‘I wanted to congratulate you,’ Gerri said, carefully adjusting her glasses with one hand. They were unflattering, those glasses. The clothes were smart, but also not attractive, not designed to suit. Still, one couldn’t help but admit she was a handsome woman.
Caroline wasn’t handsome. She was not beautiful, whatever Logan at the height of his romantic assertions had said, but she was pretty in a delicate, fine-boned way – or would be, once she’d got rid of the pregnancy bloating.
Suddenly that felt a terribly vulnerable spot to be, set up against this buxom blonde career-woman. Spinster, she though viciously (though Gerri was married). Dried-up hag. Unfeminine tramp.
‘I was expecting Logan,’ Caroline said without meaning to.
Gerri carefully put the flowers down on the bedside table. Then she removed her glasses and polished them.
‘He couldn’t make it. The president rang, he couldn’t get away. He sends his love, and these flowers. He’ll be in tomorrow.’
Sunflowers! As if.
‘How perfectly sweet of you to play go-between. I suppose they have other secretaries to fill in for you.’
‘Lawyers,’ Gerri said quietly.
‘What?’ Caroline heard herself bark, frighteningly like her mother who could be heard three fields over from horseback.
‘Other lawyers,’ Gerri said more loudly. ‘I’m a lawyer. They have other lawyers.’
‘Oh, I’m sure, Caroline said. That Logan had had the nerve not to show, and then to send this bluestocking bitch to pacify her – it was the living end. What had he said? Go and be a woman at her. She bet he’d slapped twenty dollars in her hand and said Give her flowers or something as well.
Blonde, busty Gerri. Logan loved a blonde. His first wife had been a plumpish creature with long fair hair, the opposite of Caroline’s own darkness, her sharp angles and fashionably short hair.
If Gerri didn’t wear those dreadful prim clothes, she’d be downright blousy. That was a Logan word, some Americanism he’d picked up from somewhere, along with such delightful phrases as round-heeled.
And Gerri was discreet, not outspoken, lowered her eyes behind those glasses and made quiet noises. Even as the current object of Logan’s personal and professional adulation, she didn’t puff herself up, didn’t throw her weight around, as the last of Logan’s little women had (secretary, bottle blond, cow). Wouldn’t last, of course. Logan had the attention span of a lobotomised rabbit.
She was more evasive than the rest of the Waystar court, not like Frank, panting at the door to be let in, taking his godfather duties oh-so-seriously. Caroline had seen him swing Kendall up in his arms once, though not again – not after he’d seen the slight furrow of Logan’s brow.
Gerri was always abruptly not in the room, when Roman and Kendall were passed round. Probably worried they’d remember she didn’t actually have balls if they saw her holding a child. Logan had praised her steeliness to Caroline before, her ambition, her subtle mind.
That’s a woman for you. No fucking fuss, no tears, no trouble. Kellman’s a lucky son-of-a-bitch.
The baby suddenly let out a loud shriek, and then settled in for a good sustained grizzle. Caroline winced as she felt her breasts burn in response, the milk – disgusting – let down. God, and they expected her to feed the little termagant. Not in front of fucking Gerri. Gerri, who’d put on some weight herself.
However.
‘Could you pass me the baby,’ Caroline said sharply, and when the woman bent over her with the squalling child, ‘Thanks.’
She’d seen what she’d needed to see.
‘Is it Logan’s?’
‘Excuse me?’ That nasal edge to her outrage. God, these Americans.
‘Yours. Is it Logan’s?’
Gerri hesitated. But her hands had skimmed her stomach for one brief betraying moment as she straightened, and she couldn’t imagine she’d get away with it.
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’ Caroline said. ‘No, of course not. How could you be?’
‘It’s Baird’s,’ Gerri said quietly. ‘I know it’s Baird’s.’
Baby Sibby began to cry again, as if aware that she had been forgotten.
Caroline rocked her and mechanically reached for the top button of her top before stopping.
‘I think she’s hungry,’ Gerri said. She began edging towards the door.
‘Oh, don’t go,’ Caroline made herself say, smiling manically. ‘We’re all women here aren’t we? And you’ll need the experience, the advice.’
She forced her hand back onto the buttons and put the baby to her breast. Gerri couldn’t have caught so much as a flash of nipple. Siobhan – Sibby – was a greedy little pig evidently and latched straightaway. Roman (Kendall had never made it onto the tit) would have shown her straight up, so thank god for a champion feeder at last.
‘That’s all right,’ Gerri said, looking a little ill at the uncouth snuffling noises coming from Caroline’s breast. The suck and pull, the tingling, the painful tug, Caroline would never get used to it. Just a stupid fucking heifer in the end. Doing the only thing one was bred for. After they were weaned, superfluous.
‘You really can’t be squeamish about these things,’ Caroline continued, business-like. ‘It’s all so mucky and degrading, this women business, and soon you’ll be down in the mud with the rest of us! Might as well adjust. And Baird too, of course.’
‘What?’
‘Men find it so-o difficult. Logan can’t stand to be near a pregnant woman, puts him right off his feed. The first time, maybe, but once they know what’s coming…’
Gerri was polishing her glasses again. That was a very useful trick, Caroline was almost considering getting a pair herself.
‘And when they come in at the end of the day and the house is a tip – ’ they had three maids, a fleet of nannies, and yet, still, somehow, the boys managed to turn the place into a bomb-site every day. God, school couldn’t come soon enough. ‘And one hasn’t had time to – glam up, well. They find that rather disappointing. Don’t they. Start wondering where the woman they married is.’
Gerri, still industriously at her glasses, made a noise that was not assent.
‘And you of course – might be a bit of a shock for Baird, with you in the house all the time. I do hope you know how to cook.’
‘But I won’t be,’ Gerri murmured.
‘What?’
‘I won’t be staying home,’ Gerri said firmly. ‘I’ve got my career.’
‘Really,’ Caroline drawled. ‘Baird won’t mind?’
‘He understands.’
‘But will Logan?’ At Gerri’s furiously pursed lips, ‘I mean, if you want your job still waiting for you…’
‘I’ll be back in the office as soon as possible.’
‘You think that now but just wait until it’s actually happening. The first time’s always worst, you know.’
Gerri shrugged. ‘My mother and sisters had an easy time. Bounced back. Some women aren’t built for it. Are they?’
Narrow-hipped Caroline bared her teeth in her very best smile. The baby, losing her latch, let out a furious squawk.
‘You’ll be godmother, of course,’ she said, and smiled pursed-lipped like her mother.
The useless armful of sunflowers she had the nurse throw out the next morning.