Splitting by Fay Weldon

her visit would be reported.
    Rosamund had an abortion and made no attempt to hide the fact. The village was censorious. Sympathy returned to Susan and Lambert, who now did their marketing together, and returned to Railway Cottage together, and were seen in the mornings by the postman night-clothed, bare-footed and cheerful. Poor Lambert, everyone said. He deserves a little happiness. What a dreadful wife for a man to have. Killing her own baby as an act of revenge! And Susan so charming, so lively, so bright; so much in love. Rosamund had never loved Lambert. Career women made bad wives, everyone knew. And mothers bad doctors. They kept having to rush home to their own, instead of tending yours.
    Susan gave birth to a little girl, Serena, with the same prominent brown eyes as her brother. Lambert’s eyes. People nodded and smiled and wished them well. A family reunited at last! Roland was fortunately a quiet child, so Lambert, once installed in Railway Cottage, was at first able to write in more peace than he had ever enjoyed in the rooms above the Health Center. But after Serena’s birth, alas, quiet reflective loving times were out of the question. Serena cried, wept, stormed, shivered: her health demanded constant medical attention: the running of sudden high fevers, the swelling of infant eyelids, the clenching of scarlet baby hands made this unavoidable.
    Up at Rice Court Edwin would drift out of the room if anyone referred to Serena’s existence, or Susan’s difficult labor, but then what man of his kind ever enjoyed gynaecological or paediatric chit-chat?
    According to Natalie, who with Susan happened to share a cleaner—Margaret—the wife of the man who had lost his job at the Post Office, now obliged to go out cleaning—Susan would march into the study (once Humphrey’s) and thrust Serena into Lambert’s paternal arms. “Your baby,” she’d say. “You’re the father, you look after it; you call the doctor; don’t leave everything to me.”
    Lambert would do his best, but there was a certain problem getting doctors to call: Rosamund’s colleagues proved more loyal than expected. Nothing for it but for Lambert to abandon his re-writes midsentence and take little Serena to the Emergency hospital twenty miles away. Serena was always well enough when she got there: symptoms of concussion—Roland suffered from sibling rivalry, tending to lash out at his little sister—disappeared, fevers fell and breathing difficulties evaporated at the first smell and sight of a regular medical establishment, a green or white coat, a kindly and enquiring stethoscope. You would almost have thought doctoring ran in the child’s blood, she and the medical profession had some special relationship—yet how could that be? Word got round that
    Rosamund’s spirit hovered like an unsatisfied ghost in Railway Cottage, for all that her physical self remained in the Health Center, head high, defying the world’s strictures.
    One day Natalie called to see Lady Rice, who was often now at home alone in the evenings. Rice Estate business kept Edwin away: he had been to visit his brothers on tropical islands and had not taken his wife with him—“It’s for the best, my dear. We are too much in each other’s pockets.” Lady Rice could see it might be true. And how would the Rice Court visitors get on without her constant attention? The cream in the cream teas—now a favorite line—might sour; the floors stay unpolished; the accounts un-done; the visitors liked to get a glimpse of anyone titled, upstart or not: just the whirl of a headscarf behind a pillar, the flick of a sensible skirt. No, Lady Rice would not evade her responsibilities. “No such thing,” Edwin would laugh, his favorite joke. “No such thing as a free title!”
    Natalie said to Lady Rice on another day, “Isn’t it odd? I used to be a really nice person. Now I’m not. That’s what being betrayed does for you. I hate Susan not because she took Clive from