Fall of Giants

“I just realized. I looked in my drawer and saw my clean rags.” He winced. Evidently he did not like talk of menstruation. Well, he would have to put up with it. “I worked out that I haven’t had the curse since I moved into Mrs. Jevons’s old room, and that’s ten weeks ago.”

“Two cycles. That makes it definite. That’s what Bea said. Oh, hell.” He touched the cigar to his lips, found that it had gone out, and dropped it on the floor with a grunt of irritation.

A wry thought occurred to her. “You might have two heirs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sharply. “A bastard doesn’t inherit.”

“Oh,” she said. She had not seriously intended to make a claim for her child. On the other hand, she had not until now thought of it as a bastard. “Poor little thing,” she said. “My baby, the bastard.”

He looked guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. Forgive me.”

She could see that his better nature was at war with his selfish instincts. She touched his arm. “Poor Fitz.”

“God forbid that Bea should find out about this,” he said.

She felt mortally wounded. Why should his main concern be the other woman? Bea would be all right: she was rich and married, and carrying the loved and honored child of the Fitzherbert clan.

Fitz went on: “The shock might be too much for her.”

Ethel recalled a rumor that Bea had suffered a miscarriage last year. All the female servants had discussed it. According to Nina, the Russian maid, the princess blamed the miscarriage on Fitz, who had upset her by canceling a planned trip to Russia.

Ethel felt terribly rejected. “So your main concern is that the news of our baby might upset your wife.”

He stared at her. “I don’t want her to miscarry-it’s important!”

He had no idea how callous he was being. “Damn you,” Ethel said.

“What do you expect? The child Bea is carrying is one I have been hoping and praying for. Yours is not wanted by you, me, or anyone else.”

“That’s not how I see it,” she said in a small voice, and she began to cry again.

“I’ve got to think about this,” he said. “I need to be alone.” He took her by the shoulders. “We’ll talk again tomorrow. In the meantime, tell no one. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good girl,” he said, and he left the room.

Ethel bent down and picked up the dead cigar.

{II}

She told no one, but she was unable to pretend that everything was all right, so she feigned illness and went to bed. As she lay alone, hour after hour, grief slowly gave way to anxiety. How would she and her baby live?

She would lose her job here at Tŷ Gwyn-that was automatic, even if her baby had not been the earl’s. That alone hurt. She had been so proud of herself when she was made housekeeper. Gramper was fond of saying that pride comes before a fall. He was right in this case.

She was not sure she could return to her parents’ house: the disgrace would kill her father. She was almost as upset about that as she was about her own shame. It would wound him more than her, in a way; he was so rigid about this sort of thing.

Anyway, she did not want to live as an unmarried mother in Aberowen. There were two already: Maisie Owen and Gladys Pritchard. They were sad figures with no proper place in the town’s social order. They were single, but no man was interested in them; they were mothers, but they lived with their parents as if they were still children; they were not welcome in any church, pub, shop, or club. How could she, Ethel Williams, who had always considered herself a cut above the rest, sink to the lowest level of all?

She had to leave Aberowen, then. She was not sorry. She would be glad to turn her back on the rows of grim houses, the prim little chapels, and the endless quarrels between miners and management. But where would she go? And would she be able to see Fitz?

As darkness fell she lay awake looking through the window at the stars, and at last she made a plan. She would start a new life in a new place. She would wear a wedding ring and tell a story about a dead husband. She would find someone to mind the baby, get a job of some kind, and earn money. She would send her child to school. It would be a girl, she felt, and she would be clever, a writer or a doctor, or perhaps a campaigner like Mrs. Pankhurst, championing women’s rights and getting arrested outside Buckingham Palace.

She had thought she would not sleep, but emotion had drained her, and she drifted off around midnight and fell into a heavy, dreamless slumber.

The rising sun woke her. She sat upright, looking forward to the new day as always; then she remembered that her old life was over, ruined, and she was in the middle of a tragedy. She almost succumbed to grief again, but fought against it. She could not afford the luxury of tears. She had to start a new life.

She got dressed and went down to the servants’ hall, where she announced that she was fully recovered from yesterday’s malady and fit to do her normal work.