mother, and her mother’s singing voice, inherited by Lottie. “She knew so many prayers by heart, and so much poetry. The dresses she made were always meticulous—she invariably used the narrowest of ribbons, complicated stitches that few other people could do, and she chased all over the place for unusual silks and cottons; suppliers were always doing her favors because she was so pretty, and the dresses she made were so striking. And because of that, my sisters and I always won fancy-dress competitions at school. We became well known in the area where we lived because of the costumes our mother made.”
She talked about how their father always blamed his wife for giving him four daughters and no sons. “Toward the end, or when he had been drinking, they argued about it, a lot, and it may have contributed to our father’s drinking. But that was an excuse in my view. On the other hand, I did—do—miss having a brother. At teacher training college, my best friend was close to her brother, and she made it sound fun, just as your relationship with Izzy sounds fun. A family of all girls can be a bit of a hothouse, an echo chamber of petty rivalries and grievances.”
Did Sam want me as a brother? It crossed my mind, of course, but on our walks she would put her arm in mine, we would hold hands; we grew closer gradually.
And we complemented each other. I knew a lot about science but, of course, Sam was very familiar with Shakespeare, his tragedies and comedies, his Iagos and Malvolios. She may not have seen the nightclubs of Munich or the trenches of Flanders, as I had, but her grasp of psychology was astute. Shakespeare had something to do with that.
On weekdays, Lottie offered to babysit as often as we wanted. That’s when Sam and I went to the theater, to concerts, or to lectures at the Royal Institution or the great hospitals. And it was at one of the lectures in that spring of 1916 that Sam got talking to a woman who was a teacher. I never did know whether Sam offered her services or whether the woman, as Sam said, let slip that there was a vacancy at her school, and that Sam might just fill it.
She didn’t say anything to me on the way home, or the next day, or the day immediately after that. But that Saturday, after Lottie had gone off to stay somewhere and we were taking Will for a walk (which is to say, I was pushing him along Chelsea Embankment), Sam said, “How would you feel if I went back to teaching?”
I looked at her without saying anything for a moment. Will was gurgling away.
“What about Will?”
“Lottie says she’ll look after him.”
“You’ve already discussed it with Lottie?” I was… I was out of sorts.
“It was Lottie who gave me the idea.”
“What!”
Sam put her hand on my arm. “Don’t get angry. I’m trying to be helpful and practical here.”
“Practical? How?” I remember that this was the first cross word I had exchanged with Sam.
It didn’t last. She raised herself on tiptoe and kissed my cheek, even though we were in the street, in public. “Hal, you’ve been wonderful to … to Will, to me, to Lottie. We can’t go on just accepting your generosity—”
“I don’t know why not—”
“No!” She said it softly, but insistently.
Will was looking up at us. The gurgling had stopped.
“I love having a baby, Hal, I really do. But I miss teaching too. Lottie’s obviously not going to get a job anytime soon. The woman I met at the lecture the other night said there was a vacancy in their school and, well…”
She faltered.
“Well?” Why was I helping her out?
“I went to see them yesterday.” She smiled. “The job is mine if I want it.”
“Don’t they want references?” That was my second cross word.
“They know the college where I trained, and it has a good name. I told them what happened at Middle Hill, and the headmistress was understanding. A big city like London is different—they have seen plenty of women made pregnant by soldiers. We are going to need all the people we can breed after the war. The headmistress said she doesn’t have to tell the rest of the staff but, so far as she is concerned, it won’t be a problem.”
A horse-drawn cart went by and Will focused on that.
“And did you tell them who Will’s father is?” I couldn’t help