‘Yes, you have a little brother.’
She remembered her reaction as one of huge joy. She had been an only child for so long and had always longed to have a brother or sister. Some of the women in the village had very large families; though the children did not appear to have much in the way of clothes and toys, they made their own fun and were company for each other. When she was out with her mother, primly taking a walk in her smart clothes and dainty shoes, she had seen the children romping about and making a great deal of noise. Oh, how she had envied them!
She had once asked her mother why she did not have any brothers and sisters and had been told, ‘It is God’s will’, a statement she had learned to accept, but it did not stop her adding the wish to her prayers in the hope that He might change His mind. Then it seemed He had.
‘May I see him? Oh, let me see him, Papa, please.’
‘Let her come in.’ Her mother’s voice, though weak, was clear.
Her father stood to one side. ‘A minute, no longer.’
She had darted into the room and run to the bed where her mother lay. She had a shawl-wrapped bundle in her arms. ‘Here, Kate, here is your baby brother.’ She pulled the shawl away to reveal a tiny pink screwed-up face. ‘We are going to call him George.’
Kate had gently touched his face with her finger. He opened bright blue eyes and seemed to be looking straight at her. In that moment something happened to her. Her heart seemed to melt with love. Here was the playmate she had prayed for. ‘He is very little,’ she said, overawed.
‘He has only just come into the world, but he will grow.’
‘How did he come into the world?’
‘I will tell you one day when you are a little older and able to understand.’
But she never did. Mama died that night and the whole house went into deep mourning. It had been a terrible time. She never saw George or heard his cries again. Her grandmother had moved in to take charge of the running of the house because her father seemed incapable of doing anything, and one day she asked her what had become of the baby. ‘He has been sent to a kind lady who is looking after him until he is a little bigger,’ she had said. Kate could not understand why he had to be sent away and she was convinced her father, whose grief was terrible, had given him away because he did not want him. He did not seem to want her either. He shut himself up in his study, had his meals sent in to him and took no interest in the parish or his parishioners. Kate had mourned alone.
She had not even had her brother to console her. Whenever she saw someone with a baby, she would run up to them and look at the child, wondering if it was her sibling, until her governess or grandmother dragged her away, tight-lipped and disinclined to tell her what she wanted to know. Where was her brother?
She had been passing through the hall one morning, when she had overheard her grandmother remonstrating with her father. ‘If you cannot minister to your flock,’ she was saying, ‘then give up and do something else. Move away. There are too many unhappy memories here. Brooding will not bring them back.’
Kate, listening outside his study door, waited a long time for his answer and when it came, it shocked her to the core. ‘It was my fault. I killed her. Him too.’
She had stuffed her fist into her mouth to stop herself crying out. Why would her father do such a horrible thing? He had loved her mother, everybody did. And what did he mean, ‘Him too’? Had Grandmother lied to her when she said George had been sent to a kind lady? She had run and hidden herself in the shrubbery in the garden, half-afraid he would kill her too. It was a long time before she understood what he had meant and it was her grandmother who had enlightened her.
‘What is the matter with you, child?’ she asked her one day about a year after her mother died. By then her father had come out of his torment enough to make plans to move to London. He was trying his best to be the father he had once been, but Kate was too wary of him to respond. ‘You flinch whenever your papa comes anywhere near you.’
She had mumbled something incoherent about not wanting to go to London.
‘Why not?’
‘We will be leaving Mama behind.’
‘No, your mama’s spirit will be with us wherever we go. She is watching over you now, just as she always did. She would be ashamed of the way you have been behaving of late.’
‘Does she know Papa killed her?’
‘What in heaven’s name are you talking about?’
It had all spilled out, what she had overheard, her fear. And then to her consternation, her grandmother had laughed. ‘Of course he did not kill her,’ she said. ‘Your papa felt bad because your mama had died and he did not think he had done enough to save her. People often think like that when they are torn with grief, even when there is nothing they could have done. One day you will understand.’
‘And the baby?’
‘That is another matter altogether.’
‘Where is he? Why hasn’t he come home?’
‘Kate, he was a puny little thing. He did not thrive…’
‘You mean he is dead too and Papa did not do enough to save him either.’ It was an accusation delivered in an angry voice. She had been looking forward to having her brother home, thinking, in her childish way, that his presence would make everyone happy again.
‘No, I mean he was born too weak to live. You see, he was not ready to come into the world and the woman who looked after him did not have enough milk for both him and her own child.’
‘We could have given him milk, we always have plenty. There is a whole herd of cows on the farm. And you let him starve to death.’ She was furious and stamped her foot. ‘That is what Papa meant, isn’t it? Oh, how could he? How could you?’ And she had burst into tears. ‘You lied to me,’ she said between sobs. ‘You said he was with a kind lady and he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all.’
Her grandmother had grabbed her and pinned her arms to her sides because they were flailing about. ‘Don’t take on so, child. I see I shall have to try to make you understand or you will brood over it for years.’ And so Grandmama had taken her on to her lap and, after taking a deep breath, tried to explain about pregnancy and premature births and the need for human milk to make a baby grow strong.
Kate’s seven-year-old brain could not take it all in and it had not made her feel any less bitter at the loss of her mother, nor convince her that if her brother had not been sent away, he would have been well and happy and a playmate for her at the rectory where she was often lonely. She did not want to believe he was dead. Dead of neglect, that was the worst part of it.
As time went by and she grew up, she had begun to understand, to accept that both her mother and brother had gone and that her father was not the ogre she imagined him to be, but an unhappy man who had loved his wife, a little too well, for he had been told she should not have more children. That was why he felt so guilty.
She dragged herself back to the lecture, which was coming to a close.
‘Children are the future of our country,’ the doctor was saying. ‘If they are badly treated,
