Ambition's Woman by Jeanne Jones

Author:Jeanne Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590773901
Publisher: M. Evans & Company
Published: 2015-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

ANDREA SAT QUIETLY IN ONE CORNER of the room on the second floor at Eaton Square that George had occupied as a boy. The crib in which he had lain almost a half century earlier, and his father before that, had been brought down from the attic and refurbished. Its oaken slats gleamed with a new coat of varnish. The room had been repainted, and there were fresh bright blue curtains at the windows. In the opposite corner stood the small rocking horse with its bright red reins and real leather saddle, a contributory present from Myra. “Boy or girl, the child should learn to ride,” she had said. “A rocking horse is a good beginning.”

It was a bright Monday afternoon. The previous Wednesday, May 19, 1971, Charles George Augustus Harrington had been born at 9:03 P.M. But the nursery at Eaton Square was still unoccupied. The crib was empty. Andrea’s child, the boy George had hoped for, lay instead within the antiseptic confines of an oxygen tent.

He had been born with a hole in his heart. Sometimes, the doctors said, their voices low and sympathetic but without a hint of the real optimism Andrea longed to hear, such a child could survive for weeks or months, long enough to make an operation feasible. They used words like prognosis and feasible, and Andrea had been glad to get away from them, to come home and wait in silence.

She had seen Charles only once, just before leaving the hospital herself. He was perfectly formed outwardly; you wouldn’t have known that anything was wrong except for the flush on his face as he struggled to breathe, and the slight bluish tinge to his hands and feet that was the result of his impeded circulation. His blue eyes looking up at her from under the plastic tent seemed puzzled, but he did not cry. It was as though crying was an effort that was beyond him. She wanted to pick him up, hold him to her, comfort him, but she could not. She wondered if she would ever be able to do that.

Andrea jumped. Down the hall the telephone had begun to ring. It had been ringing all day, as word spread among their friends. Even Princess Margaret, whom Andrea had met only three times, had telephoned with words of encouragement. George, who knew her better, had talked with her. He seemed buoyed by the calls, and she let him take most of them. She found it difficult to know what to say, but George was unfailingly gracious, the embodiment of that peculiarly British tradition of the stiff upper lip. But Andrea was convinced that underneath his surface calm he was taking it harder than she was. She moved back and forth between the hope that Charles would survive, and a certainty that it would be a miracle if he did. She didn’t really believe in miracles, and she found her thoughts wandering to the prospect of carrying another child.

She had had an easy pregnancy, the kind other women envy.

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