Philippa Carr - The Adulteress

“Oh, Dickon, darling,” cried Sabrina, “you were a baby once.”

“Well, I grew out of it.”

“So do we all,” Sabrina reminded him.

“Sometimes they get stillborn,” he said, “which means they die being born. Some people used to put them out on the hillside to toughen them up. I think it was the Romans or the Stoics or somebody like that. It was good for them. The weak ones died and those that were really strong lived.”

“My baby will not be put on the hillside,” I said. “He … or she … will toughen up very satisfactorily in the nursery.”

Dickon glowered. He had never forgiven me for my discovery about the burned barn. That, I remembered, had been the cause of Jean-Louis’s trouble. No one had ever mentioned it in that connection. It was the sort of thing Sabrina and my mother would be very anxious to keep from stressing.

The preparations for the baby helped me considerably. I was saved from brooding as I was sure I should have done if I had not had this great event to look forward to.

Often I thought of Gerard, of course. I went over and over our meeting—the strangeness of finding him in the haunted patch and the manner in which he had risen from the ground. Almost uncanny. … It was as though he had been sent for the purpose of … what, destroying me? No, never that. Giving me a glimpse of the ecstasy two people could find in each other … giving me my child.

Then I would think of Uncle Carl sitting there watching me shrewdly, calling me Carlotta. Had he really been wandering in his mind? Did he really see that long-dead girl in me?

Sometimes my fancy wandered on. I let myself believe that I had been possessed. Uncle Carl had said: “She was cut off’ when she was young … she never lived out her life … and she was so full of life.” What a fantasy! Suppose she had come back and entered my body … and suppose Gerard was a reincarnation of that lover whom she had met at Enderby!

It was excuses, really. I was trying to say Yes. I met him, I loved him, I gave way abandonedly. I did so. … But it was not really sensible Zipporah, it was long-dead passionate Carlotta.

Such feeble reasoning must be dismissed as the worthless excuse it was. I had reveled in my lover. It had been no other than myself, a passionate, sensuous woman who had been awakened to what she really was. I knew myself now. I knew I had been vaguely dissatisfied without knowing it. I now realized that I had wanted the sort of love which Gerard had given me.

Be sensible, I admonished myself. Don’t shirk the facts. This is you … wanton adulteress, about to bear the child of a guilty union and pass that child off as your husband’s.

It was not the first time such a situation had arisen. But that it should be you. …

It showed how strange life was, how one could never be sure of people and how easy it was to be ignorant of oneself until such circumstances arose to throw a light on that subject.

My baby was a little girl. She was strong and healthy and on impulse I wanted to call her Charlotte.

Charlotte, I thought. It’s not quite Carlotta … but near it. Living evidence of that time when I seemed to become another person, when I behaved as my long-dead ancestress might have done.

So my daughter was born, and Charlotte, being, as my mother said, a somewhat severe name, we began to call this adorable creature Lottie.

TWO YEARS HAD PASSED since the birth of Lottie. I adored her. She was more than a long-wished-for child. She it was who had made bearable those months after I had said goodbye to Gerard. Preparing for her had occupied my time; I had found then that I could shut out almost everything in contemplating the joy her arrival would bring me.

Of course I had moments of deepest depression when I felt weighed down by my guilt; but Jean-Louis’s joy in the prospect of the child soothed me considerably. I could say to myself: But for what I have done this could not be happening now. But that could not make me forget the great deceit, and my conscience, after lying dormant for a few days, would rise up to torment me.

I had not paid another visit to Eversleigh but I was constantly saying that I must do so. I received letters from Uncle Carl and I gathered from them that everything was as it had been when I left. “Jessie takes good care of me,” he wrote, and I could hear him chuckle as he wrote that. He would remember that it was I who had insisted that she be told about the will for his own safety. I believed I had at least done what was best for him.

Jean-Louis was rather concerned about the state of affairs on the Continent, and I paid more attention to the talk about this than I ever had before because of what I believed to be Gerard’s involvement. There was a great deal of speculation about Madame de Pompadour, who was the power behind the French throne. Jean-Louis had engaged a young man, James Fenton, as agent and this was a sign that he could not do as much as he had done previously. James Fenton was a good agent; he had been for a spell in the army and seemed very knowledgeable about the military position. He interested Jean-Louis in it, saying that wars affected us all. We were indifferent in England because the war was not fought on our soil. We had had experience of how devastating that could be during our own civil war, but we felt remote from what was happening on the Continent; all the same, we should remember that England was involved in it.

I wondered often about Gerard. I guessed that the purpose of his visit to England had had something to do with the political situation. No doubt he had been discovering how England would react to events on the Continent and perhaps even assessing the effectiveness of our defenses along the coast and sending messages back across the sea. I would listen avidly to James Fenton, who noticed my interest and was delighted by it. He directed his remarks to me as often as he did to Jean-Louis; and the three of us would become involved in discussions of the rights and wrongs and the possible effects of the conflict.

“The Pompadour rules France,” said James, “not so much because of the hold she has on Louis but because he is too lazy to do so himself. He loves to leave affairs in her hands … which are capable enough … but perhaps not so good for France. She is a clever woman. She holds her sway over the king by seeing to his needs … in every direction. She procures little girls to amuse him in his bedchamber. It is said he has a penchant for young girls. The Parc aux Cerfs proves that.”

As I had never heard of the Parc aux Cerfs James explained that it was the Deer Park—an establishment where young girls from all walks of life whose only qualifications need to be beauty and a certain sensuality were trained to pander to the king’s pleasure.

Jean-Louis looked uneasy as though he did not like such matters to be discussed in my company.

“I’m sorry to speak of something so distasteful,” said James to me, “but to understand the situation you must know Louis and the Pompadour, and why she has this hold over him.”

I lowered my eyes. They could not guess that I myself was far from ignorant of the delights of sensual love.

There was a treaty which was called the Alliance des Trois Cotillons—the alliance of “three petticoats.” which referred to the agreement between Madame de Pompadour, Maria Theresa of Austria and Empress Elizabeth of Russia. It was important to us because no sooner had it been signed than England declared war on France.

Gerard’s country and mine were enemies—they had always been that, of course, but now they were engaged in a war … fighting on opposing sides. I wondered whether this would bring him back to England … secretly. … For a time I used to look out for him, telling myself that he would suddenly appear. Nothing of this sort happened and then I asked myself whether love affairs like that which there had been between us were commonplace with him. Could it be that he loved violently, dramatically … and then passed on to the next?

That was something I could not bear to contemplate. I had been shameful but at least for me it was for no petite passion, no passing whim of the moment.

And so the time began to slip by.

I had acquired an excellent nanny for Lottie. She was a great-niece of Nanny Curlew who had long since retired. But, said my mother, it was always wise to keep nannies in the family and we could be sure that a relative of Nanny Curlew’s would have been brought up to serve nobly in the honorable tradition.

And so it proved. From the moment she was installed in the household we knew we had a treasure in Nanny Derring. Dickon had scornfully rejected nannies some time ago, and because they could deny him nothing, the guardian of his nursery had been found another post and Dickon now went to the vicarage for lessons, which he shared with the vicar’s son, Tom, and which were taught by the resident curate. In due course he would go away to school.

Lottie grew more beautiful every day. She was very pretty with magnificent eyes—dark blue, fringed with incredibly long almost black lashes. “Her eyes are darker than yours were at her age,” said my mother. “Hers are violet. They always said that my mother, Carlotta, had violet eyes.”

Remarks like that always unnerved me temporarily. I wondered whether my mother noticed it.

Lottie also had a good deal of dark hair. It was almost black.

“She looks like a little French doll,” said Sabrina.

“French!” I cried.

“Well, Jean-Louis had a hand in it, didn’t he?” said Sabrina. “Sometimes I get the impression that you think you are wholly responsible for her.”

I must be careful. It could be over some small thing that I would betray myself. There was every reason why Lottie should look French. After all, the man who was supposed to be her father was of the same race as her actual one.

Jean-Louis adored her and she was fond of him. I was deeply moved to see him carry her round on his shoulder. I knew it was painful for him because to do so he abandoned his stick, but she loved it and was always trying to clamber up. She was now beginning to talk and was enchanting, murmuring to herself usually about Lottie—which was the word she used more than any other. Everything belonged to Lottie, she seemed to think; she was demanding, showed a lively interest in all around her, loved us to sing or tell her nursery rhymes and she had an endearing habit of watching our mouths as we talked or sang, trying to imitate us. She was the center of our life. Jean-Louis said to me as he watched: “I still cannot believe that we really have a child. Sometimes I dream that it was all fancy and wake up in such gloom … until I remember or she comes in [which she was beginning to do now] at an early hour in the morning to be with us.”

She did more than anything else to ease my conscience, but sometimes I would have a fearful sense of foreboding and when I looked back at all I had done and how I had brazenly carried off my deceit I was still amazed at myself.

People talked about the war but not with any great seriousness. There had always been wars and as long as they remained outside our country we were not greatly concerned. When there were triumphs for us we heard a great deal about them; when there were disasters they were briefly glossed over. We did hear about the execution of Admiral Byng, though. He had lost Minorca to the French and was accused of treachery and cowardice. People were shocked by the case and for a time talked of little else. Prime Minister Pitt had tried to persuade the king to pardon him but to no avail, and he was shot on the quarterdeck of his ship in Portsmouth Harbor.

Jean-Louis was indignant. “It’s harsh and unjust,” he said. “Byng might have failed through bad tactics but that does not merit execution.”

James Fenton said that such executions were performed for reasons other than justice. The French were evidently very interested in the outcome. The writer Voltaire said he was slain “pour encourager les autres” and solely for that reason. Someone else said that Byng was afraid of too much responsibility and was shot to let those about him know that in war those who could not take quick decisions were no use to their country.

In any case the interest in the case seemed to bring the fact that we were at war home to a good many people.

“How will it affect the war?” I asked James.

“Oh, the capture of Minorca is a feather in the French cap.”

Such talk always set me wondering about Gerard. It seemed so strange that we who had been so close, should now be so far apart that we had no idea what the other was doing. I wondered what he would think if he knew there had been a child.