The Millstone

by Margaret Drabble

  "I suppose it is, in a way. But she won't be angry enough to go."

  "She might be," said Sarah. "You never know, she might be."

  Octavia and I went home by bus, and got back at six. There was still no sign of Lydia. I gave Octavia her bottle and put her to bed, then switched on a concert and sat down to wait. It occurred to me that she and Joe might arrive together, as they frequently did, which would make my confession quite insupportable, for I had always prided myself on regarding Joe from a position of dignity and control. It meant a lot to me, the safety of my attitude. Just after eight, however, Joe phoned and asked if Lydia was in yet; I said not, and was he expecting her to be in. He said that he was, and that she would be arriving shortly, and could I tell her that he'd be round to pick her up at nine, and would she make sure to be changed and ready. The thought of her imminent arrival filled me with sudden panic and I found myself, to my own surprise, starting to relate the whole story once again to Joe. He listened in silence, and when I had finished all he said was:

  "Well, well, you really have gone and done it. She's so inefficient, she'll never get round to patching it up. And she loathes rewriting, you know."

  "That's very cold comfort," I said. "Will she be very cross?"

  "Cross? No, I don't imagine so. Shall I come round straightaway and tell her and hold your hand?"

  "No, don't bother, I'd better do it by myself," I said. "I hope you're going somewhere nice this evening, to cheer her up and distract her."

  "We were going to a party," he said, "but after a tragedy like this perhaps she won't want to go. I'll take you instead if you like."

  "I don't think that would be very tactful," I said.

  "No, I suppose not," said Joe. "Never mind. I'll be round at nine to pick up the pieces. Remember exactly what she says for me, will you? I might use it some day."

  "So might I," I said. "Or so might she. Let's all write a book about it."

  "All right," said Joe. "I'll be seeing you."

  "Fine," I said, and rang off. I could not escape the impression that Joe had been distinctly pleased by the news of Lydia's professional setback; he really hated anyone except himself to publish anything, unless it got atrocious reviews and ruined the reputation of its author. I wondered, in view of this, why I liked him. Because I did, and do.

  At twenty to nine, Lydia arrived. She rushed in, evidently in a hurry, calling in the sitting room only to say that she had to go out again quick. Feeling a little sick, I followed her along the corridor to her room and arrested her at the door by saying feebly:

  "Joe rang."

  "Oh, did he?" she said, her hand on the knob. "What for?"

  "He said to tell you he'd be round for you at nine."

  "Oh hell," said Lydia. "I'm late, I know," and she started to turn the knob.

  "Lydia," I said bravely, "Lydia, the most terrible thing happened today. Really terrible. I don't know how to explain to you."

  "What do you mean?" she said, turning to me and turning the knob at the same time, so that the door opened, revealing the mess within to me but not to her. I realized that there was no need to put my offense into words, so I pointed to the scraps of paper and said:

  "Look. Just look at that. Octavia did it."

  She looked. I was curiously satisfied, on some level, that she actually blenched. She said nothing at all but went in and started to inspect the damage, picking up a few of the more undestroyed sheets and putting them on the bedside table, with a bemused expression on her face. Then she gave up but did not look at me.

  "I'm so sorry," I said. "I can't tell you how upset I am. It's all my fault, I went into your room this morning to see if you were there, to tell you something, and I must have left the door open. I don't remember, but I must have done. And Octavia got in. I can't tell you how sorry I am."

  She sat down on the bed, weakly. I thought for a moment she was going to cry, but she didn't. She said, after a long pause,

  "Oh dear. Never mind, I suppose I can patch it together again."

  "I didn't touch it," I said, "after I'd found it. I thought I might do more harm than good."

  "You mean you didn't look at it? You didn't read any of it?" she said, with some faint growing signs of animation.

  "No, no," I assured her. "Not at all. I just shut the door. I was so horrified."

  "Oh well, that's just as well," she said. Then she knelt down amongst the scraps and said, quite cheerfully:

  "I'm sure I can put it together again. And if I do have to rewrite a few bits, that'll be good for me, because things are always better the second time, I'm just too lazy to do it, that's all. It'll probably be good for me, going through it again."

  She started to pick up the bits, trying to put them in numerical order: I stood in the doorway watching her. After a moment or two she lost patience and said:

  "Oh God, I can't be bothered with it now, I'd better get changed or Joe'll come and be angry with me. He's got a frightful temper, Joe has."

  And she started to undo her mackintosh and then took off her skirt and jersey and wandered over to the wardrobe in her petticoat and started to look for something to wear.

  She might have been able to leave it at that, but I was not.

  "Lydia," I said, "I've been thinking. It can't be much fun for you living here with the baby all over the place, baby food and crying at night, and then awful things like this. Don't you think you ought to move?"

  "I hadn't thought of it," said Lydia, getting down a strange gold lurex jersey top and starting to pull it over her head. "I really haven't noticed the baby, I mean except when I baby-sit for you. I think she's lovely."

  "But she's such a nuisance," I said. "And when she starts to walk, it'll be worse. I won't be able to keep her out of anywhere."

  "Are you trying to get rid of me?" said Lydia, trying on a black fringed skirt and discarding it in favour of a full-length purple wool one. Her petticoat, once lemon yellow, was now an amazing shade of grey, and full of holes and ladders.

  "Of course not," I said. "I just thought you might not want to go on staying here, that's all."

  "Well, I'll have to go when your parents come back anyway," said Lydia. "But till then I'd much rather stay here. I like it here. Where else could I go?"

  "You could go to Joe's," I said.

  "Oh God, no," said Lydia, wrinkling her nose in horror. "It's so dirty there. It smells. You should just see what he keeps under his bed. Perhaps you have seen what he keeps under his bed."

  She started to put her hair up into its familiar droopy, straying evening chignon, and I reflected, not for the first time, that she and Joe had an uncanny physical similarity, for they both looked dirty and shabby from close to, yet both had a great degree of loose objective and not purely contemporary beauty. Lydia never looked clean; her skin was not pitted like Joe's but it had a permanent greyness, the greyness of one reared on baked beans, jelly and bread and dripping. They both looked unhealthy, whereas I have the hard fit shine of the well-nurtured. Lydia did wash from time to time, for I had seen and heard her do so; she washed her clothes, too, but perhaps not quite often enough. Since Octavia's birth I had become more conscious of dirt and washing myself, and had even started to think of Lydia's aspect with mild reprehension.

  When she turned round from her mirror she looked beautiful all right, though in her usual tawdry way.

  "What's the time?" she said. "Have I time to put some make-up on before Joe comes?"

  "It's five to," I said.

  She turned back to her mirror. "I do overdress, don't I?" she said as she started to slap on a little foundation.

  "Lydia," I said firmly, trying to pull her back to my preoccupation. "Do you really want to stay?"

  "Of course I do," she said. "It's so handy for me here."

  "I suppose you can, then," I said. "Because my parents aren't coming back. Not for another year."

  "Really?" She turned round, evidently delighted. "I say that's wonderful. How did you persua
de them to stay away?"

  "I didn't," I said. "They just wrote and said they were staying."

  "How marvellous." She turned back and put on some lipstick, then, with her back still towards me, said:

  "I say, Rosamund, you didn't rip up my book on purpose, did you? To try to get rid of me?"

  "What?" I said, righteously indignant. "What a fantastic notion. Of course I didn't. Whatever could have given you such an idea?"

  "Oh, nothing, nothing," said Lydia. "No, I know you wouldn't do a thing like that. Can I really stay?"

  "If you really want to," I said, kindly, magnanimously, and at that Joe rang the bell. I went to answer it; Joe was slightly drunk and kissed me with warm affection when I let him in.

  "What did she say?" he said.

  "I'll tell you later," I said, and Lydia appeared, gaily painted, the stray cheek curls of her hair matted with accidental pink foundation and little dusty pools of powder in the corners of her large eyes.

  "Isn't it wonderful?" she said, as she joined us. "That I can stay?"

  "What do you mean?" said Joe, and I had to explain once more about my parents not coming back, and we all had a drink to celebrate, which Joe actually went out to buy as I was too poor that month for alcohol. Then they went off to their party, and that was it, except for the fact that Lydia really did have to rewrite two whole chapters as well as doing a lot of boring sellotaping, and when it came out it got bad reviews anyway. This did succeed in making Lydia angry; she stormed up and down for several hours, grimly abusing the private lives, education and affinities of her critics, and when I pointed out that she was bound to get bad reviews sooner or later she stormed at me too, and would not forgive me for a long time. Joe was naturally delighted with her notices, though from a distance, as he and Lydia had by then parted forever, and now never met; though I still saw him, infrequently, for an incestuous friendship will outlive, as I have discovered, any passionate love.

  It was the night before Christmas that I met George. The circumstances have an indelible beauty, like the beauty of fate itself. It did not seem so at the time, for confusion obscured their strange outlines, but now in retrospect I feel that I could reconsider forever the paths I walked along, the bonds that bound me.

  Beatrice had invited me to spend Christmas with them, but I had declined. She wanted to see Octavia, she said, but Octavia belonged to me and to London and I did not want to disperse and diffuse her over family and countryside. More strangely, Clare and Andrew invited me as well; courtesy dies hard. Their invitation too I declined, for I did not wish ever to see them again. I felt sad that they should have felt so sorry for me, my brother and my sister, especially as I was in good spirits; I had been offered a good job for the following autumn at one of the most attractive new universities, my thesis was at the publisher's, and on the strength of it my name was in considerable esteem amongst those in a position to esteem it. I was gratified and relieved; I had known all along that it was an exceptional piece of work, and fully deserved any attention it might attract, and yet at the same time I was half expecting it to go unnoticed, as so many others had gone before it. In my general academic goodwill I had gratuitously embarked on a piece of work on Cowley, and had also been invited to write, for considerable remuneration, a chapter in a paperback survey of poetry; so I had good cause for my high spirits. It was gratifying, too, that my name would in the near future be Dr. Rosamund Stacey, a form of address which would go a long way towards obviating the anomaly of Octavia's existence.

  I spent the afternoon of December 24th in the British Museum; I had no worries about the morrow, as Lydia had arranged to cook a turkey for me and had invited dozens of her friends to come and eat it. I like Lydia's parties, especially the ones she holds in my flat, for I do not have to worry about baby-sitters for them, nor getting to bed after them. Lydia is also quite a good cook when she gets going, though bizarre: I am much better at making food edible, but she is excellent at making it amazing, rich and rare. She is usually successful if her ingredients are good enough, and I felt it would take a lot of ill-combined herbs and wine and mashed chestnuts to ruin, right through, a whole large turkey. So I sat there peacefully enough, reading Johnson's views on Cowley, and thinking that perhaps I might move on to Johnson and the eighteenth century next, in a year or two's time. Anything seemed interesting that afternoon; such moods are not common. On the way out, at half past four, everyone wished me a Merry Christmas, and I wished it back to them; I like cloakroom attendants who stay in cloakrooms, librarians who stay in libraries, doormen who stay at doors. It is only when they follow me down the street that I panic.

  On the way home I even remembered to buy a Christmas present for Mrs. Jennings, who had reminded me of my obligation by producing hers for Octavia before I left. It was a nice rolling ball with a bell inside. I bought her a box of soap and perfume, and rushed home with it; when I got back, Mrs. Jennings thanked me for the present and said that Octavia had played with the ball, but that she seemed a little cross, and that her nose was running a lot. I looked at her and, sure enough, her nose was running.

  "It's nothing very much," said Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she could see that she had alarmed me. "Just a sniffle. Teething, I expect."

  "Yes, I expect it is," I agreed.

  "She probably caught it from me," said Mrs. Jennings. "I had a shocking sore throat when I came on Monday, but I didn't want to upset you."

  "Oh, that's all right," I said.

  "Merry Christmas, then," said Mrs. Jennings, and after I had persuaded the baby to wave her good-bye she departed, and I was left to consider the severity of her cold. It did not, I had to admit, seem very bad, yet it was definitely there, and it had not been there that morning when I had left. I looked at my watch; it was after five. I wondered whether I ought to go down to the chemist's and get her some penicillin, for which I had a permanent prescription from Protheroe, but decided against it, for I had nowhere to leave Octavia while I went and could not possibly take her out in the evening in such icy weather. So I decided to pretend I had not noticed, and continued as usual, giving her her bottle and cereal, and playing with her, and putting her to bed, though omitting her bath. She did, as Mrs. Jennings had remarked, seem a little cross, but no worse than cross, and she went to bed quietly and without a murmur, as ever.

  I then proceeded to get on with my evening's work: I washed my hair, as a gesture towards the festivities of the morrow, and then sat down by the fire to straighten out my correspondence and income tax, which had accumulated into a mess of staggering proportions. I had a good deal of information about what concessions I was or was not allowed as an unmarried mother, tax-wise, and was just discovering to my great indignation that I really could not get Mrs. Jennings' wages allowed, when I heard Octavia cough. Nothing much: just once. I went to have a look at her, and she was lying there peacefully enough, breathing her quiet baby sleep; her nose was no longer running, and was not even very blocked. As I watched, she stirred and coughed again. It was so mild, so gentle a noise, so like a clearing of the throat, that I knew I should not take it seriously; I knew it was nothing. And yet responsibility lay so heavy on me that I could not take what I knew to be the truth. The thought of a long, doctorless Christmas, without penicillin, oppressed me beyond all reason; I could not bear the thought that any however trifling or permissible negligence of mine should ever cause her any possibility of harm. I would have to go for the penicillin, I realized, even if reason reasserted itself once I had got it, for I suspected that I would decide, if I had it in the flat, that it would not be worth waking her to administer it. And yet, not having it, I had to go. I went out of her bedroom and looked at my watch; it was after eight.

  As luck would have it, I lived within ten minutes' walk of one of the only all-night, every-night chemists in London, John Bell and Croydon, on Wigmore Street. The thought of their proximity had comforted me more than once, though the most I had ever purchased there had been a thermometer and a bottle of co
deine. However, near as it was, I did not like the idea of leaving Octavia unattended at night in the flat. Even though I was leaving her for a mere twenty minutes, and for her own good at that. Even though she never woke in the evening. Even though, even if she woke, she could not do anything but cry, and crying for twenty minutes never hurt anyone. She could come to no possible harm, I said to myself, and yet I was not capable of leaving her.

  I went back into the sitting room, and tried to work out why I was so reluctant to go. There must, I thought, be some rational basis for my fears; or some irrational basis, come to that. I had a dim feeling that it was actually illegal to leave small children unattended in houses after dark, though I knew that this suspicion was gleaned from a stray remark in a modern novel, for which I could have given chapter and verse: hardly the strongest of legal authorities. And even if there were such an unlikely law, it could scarcely be stretched to apply to my particular situation. So what, then, did I fear? Did I just fear, meaninglessly, for the sake of it? Had I got as far as that in the decay of sense? Had so strong a pattern of apprehension been set up in me that it could never now be broken by character or will? I did not believe it, I did not wish to believe it, and I sat there for five minutes before I worked out the answer. Supposing, I said to myself, just supposing, that while I am out the block of flats should catch fire. If it did, I would be out, and nobody but I would know that Octavia was there, and so nobody would bother to rescue her, and by the time I got back it might be too late. This is what I said to myself, and it seemed reasonable enough. I was not cut out for responsibility, but I do my best.

  Having thus finally, like a cat, triumphantly cornered my small mouse-like elusive fear, I knew at once what I would have to do about it, distasteful though it might be. So there is some point in thinking, though I sometimes doubt it. I would have to go round to one of my neighbours and tell them that I was going, and that they must rescue the baby if there was a fire. I shrink abnormally from appeals for assistance, and yet this would have to be done; I wondered which of my neighbours I should select. The couple across the corridor were evidently unsuitable, being themselves extremely old and frail and foreign. Beneath me lived two possibilities; in one flat there was an opera singer and his mistress, and in the other a chilly, disagreeable-looking man of no clear profession, his well-permed wife, and his superior teen-age son. I had never had any truck with either of these ménages, and neither had my parents before me, as far as I knew; the opera singer and his mistress looked good-natured enough, yet somehow indefinably unreliable, whereas the other family looked positively ill-natured and thoroughly dependable. The one lot always smiled in the lift or on the stairs, but the other never; the only words that the well-permed wife had ever spoken to me had been a request to hold the lift door open for her when her arms were too full of Harrods' parcels to do it herself. It had not been a very graciously worded request, either, I remembered. Nevertheless, I felt that I must approach these first, if only because they looked, as I have said, dependable.