The Artist's Wife: An utterly absorbing historical novel of love and torn family loyalties (Hearts of Glass Book 2) by Clare Flynn

Author:Clare Flynn [Flynn, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storm Publishing
Published: 2024-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Alice was in her dressing gown staring blankly out of the bedroom window. Since the loss of her baby boy, she had been staying at the vicarage where Eleanor was looking after her. She felt bad at abandoning Edmund, who was travelling to and from London each day, where Christopher Whall had given him a small project to tide him over until the next commission. After paying the rail fares and relying on wages rather than earning his own commissions, it was a struggle. While Whall had said he’d recommend Edmund for any suitable projects these were few and far between because of the war.

Days passed with Alice doing nothing, sitting listlessly by the window that overlooked the vicarage garden. The first snowdrops and green shoots were starting to appear, but Alice was unmoved. She had no interest in taking a walk, reading a book, or picking up her sketchbook and paintbox. Eleanor had been kind and seemed to sense when Alice wanted to be left alone but was always close at hand as a reassuring presence.

Viola Fuller came to call, but Alice couldn’t bear to see her. Having no one with whom to leave her baby and the children, Viola had brought them with her and Alice wasn’t ready to face that. Why were other women like Viola and Harriet able to produce happy healthy children when she herself had failed in that one fundamental task? What was wrong with her? What had she done to fail her baby in this way? Why hadn’t she been able to carry him safely?

It was almost as if, as far as the world was concerned, her child had never existed. She couldn’t even register his birth or death, which seemed a cruel failure to acknowledge him. Not even a name. Stillborn babies were denied a proper funeral by the Church of England and Alice wept at the thought of him being placed in a communal unmarked grave.

Eleanor and Walter had offered some consolation. Although it was against the church rules, the vicar had often arranged with the families and the undertakers to place stillborn babies into the coffin of an adult to buried within the consecrated ground of the churchyard. He and Eleanor had always believed the church’s stance in denying a full Christian burial was uncharitable. This offered some consolation to Alice. But the knowledge that her child was safely buried wasn’t enough. She wanted him to have a name – even if the law didn’t recognise it.

She didn’t know how to talk to Edmund about it. In failing her baby she believed she’d also failed Edmund. Haunted by the memory of him weeping silently over the body of their little boy, a barrier had risen between them that she didn’t know how to cross. Alice had never felt lonelier. But naming their child had to be something they did together.

Dr Collins had been kind. He stressed again and again that she had no reason to reproach herself. All the signs until the day of the stillbirth had been good.

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