Lucy Gordon: This Is My Child

Melanie joined David in the garden and said, “Don’t worry about Brenda. She won’t bother you anymore.”

“I’m not a baby,” David said quickly.

“Of course you’re not.”

“But Daddy says I am,” he told her in a wobbly voice.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You leave Daddy to me.”

He looked at her in awe. Then a smile of gratitude and trust came over his face.

“Come on,” she said. “What are we going to do today?”

He slipped a hand in hers. “I’ve got a new computer game,” he said eagerly.

“Come on, then. Teach me.”

They spent the day cheerfully zapping each other on the screen. Like many children of his generation, David was at ease with computers and instructed Melanie with careful courtesy. One moment he was like a little old-fashioned gentleman, the next he was doubled up with excitement and laughter. But then he would grow suddenly quiet, as though all the computer games in the world couldn’t ease the crushing burden on his heart.

Late that evening the telephone rang. Melanie lifted the receiver in her bedroom and found herself talking to Giles.

“Is everything all right?” he said. “Is David behaving himself?”

“Perfectly. He’ll be thrilled that you called him. Just a moment.” She hurried out of her room to knock on David’s door. “He’s just coming,” she said when she returned to the phone.”

“Actually I didn’t—if you hadn’t run off so fast I could have told you that all I meant—” He sighed.

I know you weren’t going to talk to David, Melanie thought crossly. That’s why I called him before you could stop me.

David bounced in. “Is it really Daddy?”

“That’s right,” Melanie said brightly. She added, loud enough for Giles to hear, “He called especially to talk to you.”

“Hello, Daddy- Daddy -”

Listening to the child’s end of the conversation, Melanie formed the impression that Giles was laboring to keep going. He seemed to be questioning David about his behavior when he ought to have been saying how much he missed him. But David’s delight was touching.

At last he said, “Yes, Daddy, I’ll be good. Goodbye.”

“Back to bed now,” Melanie commanded with a laugh.

It took time to settle him down again. In his excitement at receiving his father’s call, he repeated everything that had been said a dozen times. But at last he snuggled down between the sheets and dropped off. Melanie crept out of the room but couldn’t resist returning an hour later. The moon, sliding between a crack in the curtains, touched David’s face, revealing a smile of blissful content that she had never seen before.

Melanie stood looking at that innocent smile for a long time, hating Giles Haverill with all her heart.

During weekdays, when David was at school, Melanie took the chance to explore the house. It had been built about sixty years earlier by the first Haverill to make money, and had a look of forbidding prosperity. The design was spacious but undistinguished, and the best part of the place was the huge garden. Someone had designed that garden with love, arranging trees and shrubs so that there were constant surprises and changes of view.

Downstairs the big piano tempted her. It was locked, but after a search she found the key on a hook behind the door of Giles’s office. Playing again was like rediscovering a lost friend. She sat there for so long that she was nearly late fetching David from school, and had to hurry. When she told him what had delayed her, he stared. “Daddy keeps the piano locked,” he said. “He stopped my lessons.”

“Why did he do that?” she asked gently.

He didn’t reply. His face was set in the rigid lines of misery she’d seen on the day she first saw him at school. “It was my own fault,” he said at last.

After tea she asked him to play for her. As soon as he started, she realized that he had a talent and confidence that were like her own at the same age. Listening to her child expressing himself through the gift that had always been hers, Melanie breathed a prayer of thanks. “You ought to be in the school concert,” she said when he’d finished.

“I was going to, but Daddy said no. He says if I can’t get my schoolwork right…it’s next week.” he finished miserably. “And everyone’s in it except me.”

Melanie drew a long breath and counted to ten to stop herself expressing her opinion of Giles in terms unsuitable for a child’s ears. “Let me hear it again,” she begged. “You do it so well.”

He gave her a smile, full of delight and a kind of wonder at receiving praise, and started again from the beginning. While she listened, Melanie’s mind was working furiously.

The following afternoon she sought out Mrs. Harris, the school music teacher, and found in her an ally. “Giles Haverill…” she said with concentrated loathing, then checked herself. “I’m sorry, I know he’s your employer—”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Melanie said. “I don’t like him, either. But he left me in charge of David and I’d like him to be in the concert. With any luck Mr. Haverill won’t even be back until it’s over.”

David’s joy, when she told him, was so great that she thought he would fling his arms about her. But the moment passed, and he retreated behind the barrier of caution with which he protected himself.

She began to practice the piece with him. She never had to tell him anything twice. These were their happiest times together. It was an effort not to reach out and stroke the shiny fair head bent earnestly over the piano. It was even harder not to gather him up in a hug. But the painful years had taught her patience. She must wait for that hug.

“Try it again,” she said one evening. “I love listening to you.”

He went through the piece easily, smiling at her as he mastered a tricky place, and she smiled back. They were sitting like that when Giles walked in.

“What’s this?” he asked quietly.

They both looked up quickly, and Melanie felt David flinch and move toward her. His lips moved in the word “Daddy!” but his voice was nervous.

Giles’s face was very pale, and his lips were set in a hard line. It seemed to Melanie that his face showed only anger. She didn’t know that he’d heard his son’s whispered word, seen him recoil, and felt as though something had struck him in the chest.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to me, son?” he asked.

David slipped obediently from the piano stool and went across to Giles, who went down on one knee to look him full in the face. David put his arms about his father, but it seemed to Melanie that he did so reluctantly. Giles felt it, too, and hardened himself against the hurt. When he arose his face was grim. “Who unlocked the piano?” he asked.

“I did,” Melanie said. “And I need to talk to you. I’ll come to your study when I’ve put David to bed.”

As they walked out of the room, he heard her saying, “Don’t worry, David. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

There was a protective note in her voice, Giles noted. She was protecting David against him.

In his study he poured himself a stiff brandy and waited for her, not at all relishing the way she’d taken the initiative in this meeting. It occurred to him that he disliked this woman. When she appeared, her face bore none of the unease he was used to seeing in his subordinates when they presented themselves for criticism. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “How dared you encourage him to defy me!”

“And how dared you break that child’s heart by denying him one of the few comforts he has!” she flung back. “How could you be so cruel, so callous?”