The Beautiful Child by Emma Tennant

have only a few pages more, Mr James, to complete it …’
    My tone was unconvincing: perhaps my relief at finding I had not been dismissed by my employer (and, after all, he had confided in Mr and Mrs Smith for sixteen years and I had only been twelve or thirteen months at Lamb House) had given me an air of artificiality. But the Smiths had clearly not been believed, at least – and they must have known they had registered a false piece of information. I might tell Mr James, the man they referred to as Master; but I decided against this course of action – concord reigned in my hours of dictation, and I was sure I was not expected to leave the premises as they had forecast.
    But I was not to rest quiet after my reinstatement (in my mind at least) as a valued member of the Lamb House entourage. For Mr James, who had never, in my knowledge at least, expressed an interest in poor Fanny the housemaid – it was I who performed various charitable actions to aid the wretched young woman – now proceeded to speak of her in the same breath as a recently embarked on and set aside short story.
    â€˜I speak of
The Child
– you have the pages, Miss Weld!’ continued HJ. ‘I have informed Fanny the housemaid that I shall need them before I recommence.’
    â€˜The Child?’
I said, aware I sounded foolish – even, perhaps, giving fresh ammunition to the Smiths in their efforts to rob me and send me away from Rye.
    â€˜Hugh Merrow
then’ – and a hand was held out to me as if in supplication.
‘The Beautiful Child,
you have filed it somewhere, doubtless, Miss Weld. But first I must show you the beacon of my inspiration’ – and with a nod Mr James indicated to the Smiths that they should leave the room. ‘Come out here with me. It is hardly raining at all.’ And, still breathless, Henry James led me into the garden, green and damp as it was. We walked under poplars to the far wall, HJ panting, I am sorry to say, with his effort of walking even that short distance. Then, by a row of espaliered fruit trees against the wall, we saw them. Golden-haired, blue-eyed, playing happily by the side of a flower-bed with a pair of small shovels – ‘Mrs Archdean will be pleased indeed when her fondest wish comes true,’ Mr James remarked. ‘A child deserving the brush of Hugh Merrow – and, if I may say so, the pen of Henry James.’
    â€˜But’ – in my attempt to conceal my anxiety I fairly shouted at my employer – ‘which of them will you choose, sir? The boy or the girl?’ And there, Professor, is where he left me, for T. Bailey Saunders could be seen at the gates into the garden and there was little the Master disliked more than a lack of hospitality.

PROFESSOR JAN SUNDERLAND
    N ow I saw Mary Weld in the extremities of old age. Her arm, as it reached to me for a farewell, was so transparently veiled in skin that the blue veins, like dark grapes, were clustered near the visible bone – and her face, propped like a marionette’s on her other arm, appeared one-dimensional, a sheet of paper where too much had already been written and all was finally about to be erased.
    She was tired; she would continue the next day with the extraordinary story of Lamb House; she bade me good-night and hoped I would sleep well. The door in the panelling of the tiny room swung aside to let her pass. And I – my policy of total exposure being essential for the further recounting of this exploration of the aspirations and terrors of Henry James – stood for a moment rooted to the ground, the icy fear which had gripped me at first sighting of the manservant Mr Smith returning to keep me there several minutes.
    I remembered Miss Bosanquet and her account of entering the powder closet from the drawing-room, and after twiddling about with catches and snibs concealed in the skirting-board I found myself free – in a cold, unlit room