Diamond Read online

  I was still the baby, and acted accordingly, because it meant that sometimes Ma held me close or nursed me on her knee. She had no real interest in me. She adored her three harem-scarem boys and she needed Mary-Martha. She used me like a doll, cuddling me when her arms felt unbearably empty.

  Pa favoured me though. I was little and lithe like Ma, my nose was small and snub, and my hair was fair and soon grew long. When Pa was in a good mood from the drink, he’d dance me round and round till we were both dizzy. He’d call me his very little Lizzie, making a song of it. Sometimes he brought me trinkets when he came back from his travels – a blue ribbon for my hair, a set of Indian baby bangles for my tiny wrist. I don’t know how poor Mary-Martha must have felt. Pa never brought her bright baubles.

  I tried to tie my ribbon in her hair, but it would never stay in her straggly brown locks and my bangles wouldn’t fit over her fat little fists.

  ‘It’s all right, Baby. I don’t mind one bit,’ she said cheerily – but once or twice I came upon her peering anxiously into our cracked looking glass, sighing at herself.

  Ma sighed too, seldom able to shrug off her melancholy. Pa brought home a pile of fairytale books, mainly bound in leather, and set Ma to colouring in the pictures. It was intricate work painting the gossamer wings of the fairies, the coils of the serpent, the alarming genie half in and half out of his bottle. It was far harder to keep the paint within the fine lines. The boys were too impatient and Mary-Martha and I not yet skilled enough, but Pa knew Ma had a careful, steady hand. If she tried hard and did her best, he could sell the volumes at twice the price.

  Sometimes she managed perfectly – but then she would start daydreaming and went over the lines. She painted a picture of a fairytale christening superbly, putting in an extraordinary amount of detail, mixing her paint so cleverly that the child looked almost real, his soft pearly flesh carefully contrasted with the shaded folds of his christening robe.

  ‘That’s my girl, Lizzie! My, it’s a little masterpiece,’ said Pa. ‘I don’t think we’ll sell that book. We’ll cut out that colour plate and pin it to the wall.’

  Ma smiled weakly, but she seemed troubled by the picture even so. She looked at it every day, the tip of her finger stroking the fairy baby, but then she realized that her hopes of another son were vain, and she seized the pot of black paint and obliterated the whole glowing picture in five frantic strokes of her paintbrush.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Lizzie?’ Pa cried in despair. ‘Why hanker after yet another child when you have three fine sons and two dear daughters? Compared with many other women, you are so blessed! And you have your own snug little house and a husband who thinks the world of you. Why aren’t we good enough for you?’

  ‘You are good enough. You are too good to me, Sam. But I cannot help it. I am so frightened of losing you. If only I could have my little John, then I would feel that the angels were smiling at me and I would be in Heaven on Earth,’ Ma wept.

  Mary-Martha and I cried too, because we hated to see her so unhappy, but the boys were restless and embarrassed by all her tears, and reared away from her like frightened ponies when she tried to embrace them.

  ‘Ma’s mad, Pa,’ said Matthew bluntly. ‘All this weeping and moaning! She’s sick in the head. Why can’t she be like other mothers?’

  Pa whacked him hard about the head. ‘Don’t you dare talk about your poor mother in such a way! How dare you call her mad! She’s simply sad, boy. Don’t you see the difference?’

  Ma didn’t have any real women friends because she’d always kept herself to herself, but she’d been close to the midwife. Pa invited the woman round to see if she could talk some sense into her. But Ma cried worse than ever when she saw the midwife with her white apron and her big black bag. It reminded her so painfully that she didn’t have the fourth baby boy she longed for. The midwife spoke to her softly, and then ferreted in her bag and brought out a little checked-cloth bag containing crushed seeds and herbs. It looked like the lavender ‘tea’ Mary-Martha and I made for our dolls, but it did not smell anywhere near as sweet.

  ‘Try my herbal tisane. It will lift your spirits, dearie – and you never know, it might just do the trick, though I shouldn’t be encouraging you to have another child. You’re in no fit condition.’ The midwife looked at Pa. ‘That will be five shillings, please.’

  ‘Five shillings for a bag of tea?’ he said. ‘Are you mad, woman?’

  ‘I’m not the one who’s mad, but if you don’t want to help your poor wife, then I’ll save it for those who are more grateful,’ she replied, snatching her bundle back.

  Ma groaned – and Pa hesitated. ‘Can’t she have half the herbs for half the price?’ he asked.

  ‘She must take them all for them to have any effect,’ said the midwife. She dropped the bundle back into her bag.

  Ma did not groan again, but she sank down, her chin on her chest, her face hidden by her long hair.

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll find you your five shillings,’ said Pa, sighing heavily.

  It took him two days to sell enough tracts and angels to gather the money together. Then we had to endure two whole weeks of turnip stew and stale bread – but Ma got her herbal tisane and swallowed a cupful at every meal time. It was so bitter it made her shudder, but she gulped it down eagerly all the same. It acted just like a magic potion. She dressed with care, she braided her hair and pinned it into place, she joked with the boys and she taught Mary-Martha and me to sew. I was too small to do more than stitch fancy purses in bright wools, but Mary-Martha had nimble fingers and Ma taught her how to make nightcaps for Pa to sell to old-fashioned folk. Plenty of pedlars sold caps, plain or lace, but Ma stitched a tiny angel on each of ours to watch over the sleeper at night, and these proved very popular.

  Soon she was sewing other clothes too: very tiny gowns, with lace and embroidery.

  ‘That’s beautiful, Lizzie dear, but I’ll have to charge dearly for all the fancy work and my customers are never going to fork out a fortune,’ said Pa.

  ‘These aren’t for sale,’ said Ma. A radiant smile lit up her face. ‘These are for our baby.’

  Perhaps it was the herbal tisane, perhaps it was all those prayers to the angels, perhaps it was sheer chance – but Ma was going to have the child she longed for.

  Pa was terrified she might lose the baby before her time, but she stayed strong and fit, and her stomach swelled until there was hardly room for me to climb on her lap.

  I patted her big belly and pretended to talk to the baby inside.

  ‘That’s right, Ellen-Jane, say hello to little John,’ said Ma, laughing. ‘My sixth child, and my most blessed.’

  Most sixth children in poor families like ours have to put up with cut-down nightgowns and old shawls, and sleep in drawers padded with an old pillow. But Ma prepared for the new baby as if he were a little princeling. She sewed his elaborate layette, and spent a mint of money getting an old woodcarver to make a special rocking crib.

  Pa sighed at the sight of it. ‘The baby will grow out of it in six months, Lizzie!’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s beautiful though, Sam? Look at the shine on the wood! And the way the hearts have been carved. It’s a work of art!’

  ‘It’s fine enough, but it’s madness. What else are you going to order for him? A silver dish and spoon? A gold chamber pot?’ said Pa. ‘Do you think I’m made of money? Do you want your other children to starve?’

  Ma bit her lip and looked as if she would crumple. She stroked the wooden crib, her hand trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps the woodcarver will take it back?’

  ‘Oh, come now, you can keep your little crib. I can see how much you like it,’ said Pa. ‘Just don’t go in for any further nonsense.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t, Sam, I promise! Thank you, thank you! You’re the dearest, kindest husband in all the world. You’re so understanding. It’s just I’m so happy to be having my little John at last,’ said Ma, tender