A Good Woman (24 page)

“Miss Worthington, I believe you are suffering from battle fatigue. Perhaps you need to go away for a few days, and try to recover.” None of them had taken a break in months, and she didn’t want to, but she also knew that her days at the hospital were numbered. Her belly was growing exponentially now and was harder and harder to conceal, no matter how tight her binding. “Is there anything else about your health you haven’t told me?” he asked with a look of concern. The last thing they wanted was their medical personnel spreading infectious diseases or starting an epidemic, or simply dying from overwork and illnesses they had concealed. They were all so conscientious about their work that many of the nurses and doctors hid it when they were sick. He was afraid that was the case with her. She looked awful.

She started to shake her head, and then he saw the tears in her eyes. “No, I’m fine,” she insisted.

“So fine that you just fainted twice,” he said gently. He had the feeling there was something else, but she was determined not to tell him, and she looked as malnourished as many others. He asked her to lie down so he could feel her body through her clothes, and as soon as she lay down, he saw the gentle bulge of her belly and met her eyes. He ever so gently put his hands on it, and could feel the swelling she had concealed with such determination for so long, and he understood instantly what it was. She wasn’t the first young woman to get pregnant by a soldier during wartime. As he looked at her, she began to sob.

“I think that’s the problem,” he said as she sat up, took out a handkerchief, and blew her nose. She looked mortally embarrassed and desperately unhappy. “When are you expecting?”

She nearly choked on the words, and wanted to explain how it had happened, but didn’t dare. The truth was so awful, and surely he and everyone else would blame her, and never believe her. She was certain of it, she had seen it happen to others before. Women who said they had been raped, when in fact they had simply had an affair out of wedlock. Why should he believe her? So, like Josiah’s secret that she had safeguarded for him to protect him when he left her, now she was keeping Viscount Winshire’s. And the one who paid the price for all of it was her. “In April,” she said, with a look of despair.

“You’ve managed to keep it secret for a long time.” He loosened her apron, undid her waistband, and lifted up her blouse, and was horrified when he saw how tightly she had bound herself, and obviously had for months. “It’s a wonder you can breathe.” It was far tighter than any corset, and a cruelty to mother and child.

“I can’t,” she said through her tears.

“You’ll have to stop work soon,” he said, telling her what she already knew. “And the father?” he inquired kindly.

“Dead,” she whispered. “I just found out today.” She didn’t tell him that she hated Harry and was glad that he was dead. He deserved it. She knew the doctor would have been shocked if she said it.

“I see. Will you be going home?”

“I can’t,” she said simply, for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand. She was no longer welcome in New York and Newport, and being pregnant would finish her forever.

“You’re going to have to find a place to live. Would you like me to try and help you find a family where you can stay? Perhaps you could help take care of their children.” Annabelle shook her head. She had been thinking about it recently as her belly grew. She couldn’t go back to the medical school either, at least not for now. But the one place she could think of was the area above Antibes near the ancient church, where she had gone occasionally when she got a break from medical school. If she could find a small house there, she could hide until after the baby was born, and then either come back to the front or go back to school. It was hard to imagine coming back to the front with a baby, and she had no one to leave it with. She had much to figure out, but she declined his help. She wanted to sort it out for herself. And he couldn’t know that she could make her own financial arrangements, and was capable of renting or buying a house if she chose.

“Thank you, I’ll manage,” she said sadly, as he helped her off the gurney.

“Don’t wait too long,” he advised her. It amazed him that she had been able to conceal her pregnancy for six months.

“I won’t,” she promised. “Thank you,” she said with tears in her eyes again, as he patted her shoulder to reassure her, and they left the room. The two young nurses were still waiting outside to see how she was.

“She’s fine,” he told them with a smile. “You all work much too hard here. I told her she needs to take some time off, before she comes down with cholera and starts an epidemic.” He smiled at them all reassuringly, gave Annabelle a knowing look, and left. The other two women escorted her to her room, and she took the rest of the afternoon off.

She lay on her bed, thinking. He was right. She had to leave soon, she knew. Before everyone found out, and she was once again disgraced through no fault of her own.

Annabelle managed to stay in Villers-Cotterêts until the first of February, and then regretfully, she said she had to leave. She told her supervisor that she was going back to medical school in Nice. But no one could complain. She had been there for fourteen months, and she felt like a traitor leaving now, but she had no other choice.

It was a sad day for her when she left the hospital and the people she had worked with. She took the train to Nice, and it took her two days to get there, with sidetracked trains, and long waits in many stations, to allow military transports to pass them by, carrying supplies to the front.

The first thing she did when she reached Nice was go to a small jeweler and buy a gold wedding band. She slipped it on her finger, as the jeweler congratulated her. He was a kind old man, and said he hoped she would be very happy. She left the shop in silent tears. The story she had concocted for herself was that she was a war widow and her husband had been killed at Ypres. There was no reason for anyone not to believe her. She looked respectable, and the country was full of widows by then, many of whose babies had been born after their husbands’ deaths. Annabelle was just one more in a sea of casualties and tragedies caused by the war.

She checked into a small hotel in Nice, and bought herself several black dresses in larger sizes, and was shocked to note that once she no longer wore the restrictive bindings, her stomach was surprisingly large. Not in Hortie’s league, but it was obvious that she was having a baby, and there was no reason to conceal it now. With a wedding band on her finger, and the black dress of a widow, she looked like the respectable woman she was, and the sadness anyone could have seen in her eyes was real.

She would have liked to visit Dr. Graumont at the medical school, but she didn’t feel she could. Later, she would reappear with the baby, with her story of the man she had married and who was then killed. But it was all too new for now. She didn’t feel ready to face anyone until after the baby. And she was not yet sure how to explain that she would not change her name. She would figure it out later. For now, she had to find a place to live, and one day she went back to Antibes, and the little church she loved so much. It was a sailors’ chapel and had a full view of the port and the Maritime Alps. She was leaving the church when she asked the guardian if she knew of any houses in the area, preferably to rent. And the woman shook her head, and then cocked her head to one side with a pensive look.

“I don’t think so,” she said, in the heavy accent of the South. Annabelle’s French was so smooth by then that no one would have suspected she wasn’t from Paris, or any of the northern cities in France. “There’s a family that lived here before the war. They moved back to Lyon, and both their sons were killed. They haven’t been here since, and I don’t think they’ll ever come back. Their boys loved it here. It would break their hearts.” She told Annabelle where the house was. It was in walking distance from the church, and was a small, pretty villa that looked like it had been a summer home. There was an old man tending the grounds, and he nodded when Annabelle spoke to him, and asked if there was a possibility that the house was for rent. He said he didn’t think it was, but was willing to write to the owners for her. He said all the furniture and their belongings were still there, if that was a problem for her. And she assured him that it wasn’t, and in fact she would prefer it.

He could see that she was heavy with child, seven months pregnant by then, and she said she was a widow. She told him she would be grateful to rent it for as long as they wanted, till the end of the year perhaps. She was hoping to go back to school for the fall term, or January at the latest. In September, the baby would be five months old, and she could go back to medical school, if she could make some arrangement for the baby. She might even be able to travel back and forth from this house, if she could find a vehicle to get there. She left the name of her hotel, and the caretaker said he would contact her when he heard from the owners, one way or the other. She hoped he’d feel sorry for her, and press the owners to rent her the house.

And on the way back to Nice, she thought to herself that she could stay at the hotel if she had to, although it wasn’t an ideal set-up for a baby, but it was neat and clean. A house would have been better for her, but if she couldn’t find one, she could stay where she was.

For the next several weeks, she went walking every day in Nice. She walked on the beach, ate as decently as possible, and slept long hours. She found a local doctor through the hospital, and went to see him, telling him the same fabricated tale that she was a war widow. He was kind and sympathetic, and she told him she wanted to give birth at home. She didn’t want to run the risk of running into any of the doctors she knew at the hospital, through her medical school. She didn’t tell the doctor why, but he was willing to deliver her at home.

In March she came back from a walk one day, and found a message from Gaston, the caretaker of the house in Antibes. He asked her to come and see him, which she did. He had good news for her. The owners were sympathetic to her, and happy to rent her the house. They might even be willing to sell it to her eventually, although they hadn’t decided yet. As he had suspected, they said they had too many memories of their children there, and it would be too sad for them to return. For now, they were willing to rent it to her for six months and decide the rest later. He offered to show her around, and she was delighted by what she saw. There was a sunny master bedroom of cozy proportions, and two smaller bedrooms close to it. The three bedrooms shared a single bathroom, which didn’t bother her. The bathroom was old and tiled, and had an enormous bathtub, which appealed to her. And downstairs there was a living room and dining room, and a small glassed-in sunroom that gave onto a porch. It was the perfect size for her and a baby, and maybe a young girl to help take care of the baby later. For now, all she wanted was to be alone.

She penned a letter of agreement to the owners, and said she would have her bank handle the transfer of funds. Gaston was very pleased and congratulated her, he said it would be nice to have life in the house again, and his wife would be happy to come and clean for her and even help her with the baby when it was born. She thanked him and left and went to a bank in Nice that afternoon. She introduced herself to the manager, and had him send a wire to her bank at home, informing them where she was. All they needed to know was where to send her money, since she had closed her account in VillersCotterêts when she left. They had no idea why she was in Nice or what was about to happen to her there, and she couldn’t help wondering how many babies Hortie had had since she left. She still missed her old friend. However badly Hortie had betrayed her, she had done it out of weakness. It didn’t stop Annabelle from caring about her, although they would never be friends again. Even if she went back one day, too much had happened since.

Annabelle moved into the house above Cap d’Antibes on the fourth of April. The doctor said the baby would come soon, although he had no idea when. Annabelle was large by then, and she walked slowly in the hills every day, and went to the church she loved and admired the view. Florine, Gaston’s wife, was cleaning house for her, and cooked occasionally. And Annabelle spent her nights reading her old medical books. She still had mixed emotions about the child. It had been conceived in such violence and anguish, it was hard to imagine not remembering that each time she saw it. But destiny had given them to each other. She had thought of contacting the viscount’s family to advise them of it, but she owed them nothing, and if they were as wayward and dishonorable as their son, she wanted nothing to do with them. She and the baby would have each other, and needed no one else.

In the third week of April, Annabelle went for a long walk, stopped at the church as she always did, and sat down heavily on a bench to admire the view. She had lit a candle for her mother, and prayed for Josiah. She had heard nothing from him now in more than two years, and had no idea where he and Henry were, whether still in Mexico or back in New York. He had let her go, and kept no contact with her. He wanted her to be free to find a new life, but he could never have remotely imagined the twists and turns of fate she had endured.

She walked slowly back to the house in the dappled sunlight that afternoon, thinking about all of them, Josiah, Hortie, her mother, father, Robert. It was as though she felt them all near her, and when she got back to the house, she went to her bedroom and lay down. Florine had left, and Annabelle fell into a gentle sleep. Much to her surprise, it was after midnight when she woke. She had a cramp in her back that woke her, and suddenly she felt a stabbing pain low in her belly, and knew instantly what it was. There was no one to fetch the doctor for her, and she had no telephone, but she wasn’t frightened as she lay there. She was sure that it was a simple process and she could do it alone. But as the night deepened and the pains worsened, she wasn’t as sure. It seemed cruel beyond belief that she had suffered when she conceived the child, and now she would have to suffer again, for a child with no father, whom she didn’t want. All those years she had longed for Josiah’s baby, it had never occurred to her that a child would come into her life like this.