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be young!’ Clementina shook her head.
    ‘You have every right to criticise me for it. It was a stupid, thoughtless thing to do and God knows I’ll pay for it.’
    ‘Now you’re talking like a Catholic,’ said Augustus with a faint smile. ‘Or an ardent Protestant for that matter. The wages of sin and all that.’ He paused, and then said nervously, ‘What was Luke like?’
    ‘He wasn’t a fool. He was very kind.’ She thought a moment. ‘He was a good lover,’ she finished.
    ‘What did he look like?’ asked Clementina.
    ‘Red hair and brown eyes. He wasn’t very big, but he was strong. He was only twenty.’
    ‘You talk as though he were dead,’ said Augustus.
    ‘Alice, we ought to have discussed this earlier, but I somehow — you were always so sure of what you wanted as a child, I thought you would be now. Do you know what you want to do?’ asked Clementina.
    ‘It doesn’t matter what I want to do. I couldn’t keep it. I know I couldn’t cope with a baby. I’ll have to have it adopted somehow, but I don’t know how I could make sure that it would be well looked after and loved.’
    ‘We would like to adopt it, Alice,’ said Augustus. ‘You know we’ve never been able to have children. Clem said she wanted seven when we got married.’
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Alice. ‘It’s just too easy like that.’
    ‘Oh, the wages of sin again,’ said Augustus. He put his hand over hers across the table. ‘Look, Alice, you want your baby to be loved, and preferably loved by people whom you know, I expect. Clem and I never adopted a child because we’ve always wanted to know something about the child’s parents.’
    ‘Of course you can have it the minute it’s born,’ said Alice in bewilderment.
    ‘There’s one problem,’ said Clementina. She put her elbows oh the table and clasped her hands. ‘I want your baby very much. I’ve always felt you didn’t appreciate it. You’d run downstairs two at a time if I let you. But if you let me — us — have it, I shall never let you have it back, if you want it in two or five years’ time. And I insist that if we adopt it you sign a contract to say that you will never make any claims on the child although you’re the natural mother.’
    ‘Clem, that’s so cold-blooded.’
    ‘No, Augustus, I want it in writing.’ Her eyes were glittering.
    ‘You can have it,’ said Alice: ‘But it’s not up to me to make claims on it, or over it. It’s a human being, not property, whatever the law says about children.’
    ‘I’ll make out a contract,’ said Clementina, rising.
    ‘No,’ said Augustus. ‘Alice, I advise you not to sign anything till the child is a month old. You may fall in love with the infant when you first hold it.’
    ‘I don’t have to hold it now,’ said Alice.
    ‘I never dared think about it before,’ said Clementina, sitting down again, slowly. ‘If I had, I’d never have dared ask you about it, for if anyone had suggested such a thing tome when I was pregnant, I’d have killed them. And I’d have grown to hate you.’
    ‘Did Anatole put you up to it?’ asked Alice suddenly.
    *
    Alice’s baby was born on the day of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Her confinement lasted seven hours. The doctor gave her chloroform to ease the pain, but she still felt it. Though each contraction was torment, between contractions Alice could not remember the nature and strength of the pain. In one of the last contractions, she cried: ‘It’s not fair! It’s not my fault I didn’t have the last rites!’
    Though after the birth she did not remember much of the pain, she remembered the blazing heat of that summer, which ever afterwards people claimed was the most wonderful England had seen in years, with loathing.

CHAPTER 7
    GORDON SQUARE
BLOOMSBURY
    November 1914
    Since coming back to Bloomsbury, Alice had not visited Red Lion Square. She set out from the Woods’ house one morning, her insides feeling warm, feathery