‘We’re here to help you, Mother. Don’t let them kill your baby.’
Tessa stood rooted to the spot, staring down at the pavement, noticing the pattern of its tiny cracks and fissures. She had been called a mother, made a mother – an instant and official one; the blob of frogspawn in her womb transformed into a living breathing child – a child she was about to kill.
‘If you come along with us, dear, we can help you sort things out – even find you a place to stay, if you’ve no one else to turn to.’
Tessa hesitated. She was all alone; Charlotte’s house now locked and barred until the family returned in late July. She had agreed to stay at the clinic overnight – hadn’t any choice, in fact, since there was nobody to fetch her, and she wasn’t officially registered with a local Brighton doctor. Then, first thing in the morning, she’d turn tail back to Oxford, lug her stuff to Juxon Street – another empty lonely house.
She raised her eyes to the woman’s face, a wrinkled and wind-roughened face, but sympathetic, kind. ‘But how can …?’ she began, breaking off uncertainly as the small blond boy came skipping up, exclaiming over a ladybird which was crawling up his arm. She’d have given almost anything to swap her life with his – to be that young, and a male, so that there would be no chance of getting pregnant; to be more interested in ladybirds than in the placard he’d let fall.
There was a sudden undignified scuffle, as another male pushed his way into the group, a taller and more brawny one in a dark blue uniform. Tessa tried to shrink away, but he was striding straight towards her, his face looming into close-up, his voice a husky baritone as he asked if she had an appointment at the clinic. She could feel herself tugged in two directions, answering with two voices, stepping forward, flinching back. She heard a squall of protests; glimpsed the woman with the crucifix raising it above her head like a gleaming dangerous weapon. She shut her eyes, entered a strange dream-state in which her legs were paper, her spine a piece of string, yet she was still somehow moving forward – through a gate, along a path, up some steep stone steps – half-carried by the dark and solid stranger. Once she’d regained her senses, he had already disappeared, and she was standing in a shabby room she recognized. She and Charlotte had waited here a terrifying hour, when she’d attended for her initial consultation; Charlotte taking charge, while she’d been just the anatomical specimen – the womb they’d poked and prodded, the blood and pee they’d scrutinized.
This time, the place was busier – at least a dozen people squashed up on the scuffed grey vinyl chairs, including a girl with her whole family in tow: an infant in a pushchair, a toddler with a toy giraffe, and an embarrassed blue-jeaned husband, who was trying to soothe the baby. Its shrill and fractious whining seemed to affront the silent room; all other voices stilled, as if the notice on the wall said ‘No talking’, not ‘No smoking’. Even those in couples were totally subdued; every face a mask. Several girls were sitting on their own – a thirty-something yuppie in a smart designer suit, picking at her scarlet-painted nails; an Indian in a sari, with a sallow haggard face, and a spiky-haired teenager whose bulge was clearly visible, despite her baggy smock. No one else looked pregnant – their condition hidden, secret, as if they were here to see the doctor about some trifling cold or rash.
Tessa chose a seat in the far corner, trying to compress herself to nothing; aware of several pairs of eyes swivelling towards her, surveying her as the latest mild distraction. She kept her own eyes on the carpet, a cheap brown hessian affair, badly stained and worn. Everything was cheap – except the price of the abortion – the skimpy net curtains which barely screened the neglected waste of garden; the dog-eared magazines on the battered fake-wood table. It could have been the foyer of a second-rate hotel, except that above were wards, not bedrooms, and beyond her not a restaurant, but an operating theatre.
She tried to steer her mind away from anaesthetics, suction tubes, but soon became obsessed instead with the turmoil of the last two weeks, starting with the Sunday when she’d returned from her weekend with Michael. Outwardly, it had been a huge success, and they’d enjoyed the most fantastic sex, scaling new exquisite heights together. But while Michael had relaxed, recharged, she’d been secretly distraught; the whole occasion ruined for her by the fact that the few drops of blood she’d welcomed on the Friday evening had amounted to no more than that. The doctor had explained it when she’d seen him four days later; referred to it as ‘spotting’, which he said sometimes occurred in pregnancy at the time a woman’s period was due.
Michael had dropped her at the college at five-ish on the Sunday afternoon, and she’d run straight into Charlotte – not the usual cool self-confident Charlotte, but panicking and close to tears because her parents had been due at three, to take her home to Lewes, and she was sure they’d had an accident. The two of them had decamped to Charlotte’s room, where they’d sat drinking tea – then vodka – and she’d found herself somehow pouring out her own fears over the second glass of Smirnoff. When the Harvey-Taylors finally showed up, unharmed but three hours late, she had returned with them to Sussex – a friend and guest in their eyes, but actually a patient. Charlotte knew this ‘super place’ in Brighton: a nursing home called Langham Park, which had been set up eighteen months ago and offered slightly lower prices than its long-established rival on the other side of the town. She had accompanied a schoolfriend there, last Christmas, and so was familiar with the whole grim business – except that she made it sound not grim at all; assured her it was nothing, that you were in and out in half a day; and that she’d take her and collect her, then drive her to the Ciao Bella, to celebrate with escaloppe Milanese. ‘But you’ll have to get a move on,’ she’d insisted. ‘We’re leaving for Lake Como on the morning of the eighth.’
‘I’ve booked you in for the morning of July the eighth,’ the doctor had informed her, refusing her request for an appointment in late June, since the foetus was so tiny, there was a risk that they might miss it if they operated earlier.
How could he refer to it as tiny, when it filled her every waking moment; had stifled all her usual concerns, including Oxford and her work, even supplanted thoughts of the more important doctor in her life? If only Michael had been with her through the nightmare – imbuing her with courage, helping her decide – instead of miles away, both physically and emotionally. She envied the girl opposite, whose boyfriend was right next to her; his arm around her shoulder, their two feet nuzzling toe-caps. Yet the wretched girl looked desolate, her face red and blotched from crying, as if she realized she was ultimately alone; that once they summoned her to theatre, there’d be no boyfriend to play footsie, or whisper words of comfort while she lay unconscious on the slab. Wouldn’t it be better if they could all share their fears, their stories, instead of sitting in this rigid isolation? Twelve unwanted pregnancies in one claustrophobic room. She could almost sense the ripples spreading out – all the parents, partners, friends involved, their shock or guilt or anger; the terror of the girls themselves. She watched the lucky candidate who’d been called up to the desk. Lucky? The poor kid was underage – not to mention foreign – a confused and blushing schoolgirl, wearing sneakers and white socks, stammering out replies in broken English.
Tessa could feel the girl’s bewilderment added to her own; the pain and tension in the room inflating like the pregnancies themselves. If they didn’t call her soon, that ‘tiny’ foetus would develop to full-term, and she’d give birth here, in public, while everyone continued to sit in passive silence, pretending not to notice. The longer she waited, the more queasy she became, yet also more empty and dry-mouthed. The toddler was eating a Crunchie bar, totally absorbed in it; had torn off the whole wrapper and smeared chocolate down his clothes. Her gaze kept straying back to him; each drooling bite intensifying both her hunger and her sickness. And his lanky blue-jeaned father was unashamedly swilling coffee, which he’d fetched from the drinks machine outside. She watched him sip and swallow, trying to remind herself that sh
e was in fact extremely lucky, not just in having Charlotte – who’d turned out to be an angel in disguise – but in living in the enlightened 1990s. She should thank her lucky stars that she hadn’t been around in the days before legalized abortion. She had heard all sorts of horror stories about potions made of gunpowder or lead; ‘fallen women’ pitched into the workhouse, or landing up in mental homes or prisons; back-street botch-ups which resulted in infection – if not death.
All she had to face was a ten-minute operation by a fully-trained professional in the most hygienic of conditions, and with no hint of shame or stigma. Yet she was still ashen-faced when she walked up to the desk – at twenty-five to twelve – still icy cold with nerves when she was shown into the ward; told to leave her things there while she went to pay her fee in a cramped and stuffy box-room on the top floor of the house.
The woman guarding the cash-box was hard-voiced and flinty-eyed, and dressed in a white coat, as if extracting money was a medical procedure. Tessa longed to have her mother there, so that she could cling to her hand – that plump, hot hand, spiky with cheap rings, which had smoothed the blankets, tucked the sheets, spread jam on bread, or Savlon on grazed knees, and which could lead her out of danger now, down the stairs and through the door. Instead, she was a prisoner here, subject to her gaoler. She perched uncomfortably on the edge of a hard chair, wrote out her cheque as slowly as she could, then fumbled in her handbag for her card.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman, as she glanced at it. ‘This card only guarantees a sum of up to fifty pounds, so I can’t accept your cheque.’
‘But I … I’d no idea. I mean, I thought you …’
‘The instructions are printed quite clearly on your form.’ The woman was speaking slowly and deliberately, as if dealing with a foreigner, or a halfwit. ‘We do take cheques, but not above the limit of your card. After that, you have to pay in cash.’
‘But I … I haven’t any cash.’ Tessa emptied out her purse – just a fiver and a few odd coins.
‘You’d best go straight down to the bank, then. You’ll find all the main branches in the town. Turn right at the corner and …’
Tessa stared at her aghast. The pickets! She’d have to pass them twice again – on her way out, and coming back – quite apart from losing her original appointment time. Once she’d returned from her long trek to the town, she was bound to find the waiting-room crammed and overflowing, worse than it was now. ‘Look, please,’ she implored, ‘can’t we phone the bank from here? I’ve got the money, honestly. I paid it into my account last week. My father wrote me out a cheque and …’
‘I’m afraid a phone-call won’t be any use. A rule’s a rule, and I’m not allowed to change it. I need cash down on the table.’
‘You’ve got enough, for God’s sake!’ Tessa shouted suddenly, gesturing to the cash-box, piled high with fivers, tenners, a wad of twenty-pound notes, and several ostentatious fifties. She strode to the window, stared down at the tangled grass, the weed-infested beds. Langham Park indeed! The name suggested the gracious lap of luxury, not this sordid dump. The whole thing was a racket – clinics making money from desperate panicked girls; raking in their profits like the biggest of big businesses. She’d read the statistics, knew the damning figures: seven hundred abortions performed every single day; two hundred thousand every year – and that was just in England. It was millions in America – billions if you counted them in dollars. Even counselling cost extra at this clinic, plus any drugs they pumped into you, if anything went wrong. Yet Charlotte had convinced her how ‘reasonable’ it was; had cautioned her continually about going National Health – the already long delays made longer still by medical men with consciences (mainly born-agains and Catholics), who deliberately postponed appointments until the girl was past the legal limit. Maybe Charlotte was exaggerating, but she hadn’t dared to risk it, although she’d been worried sick about how to find the money. Finally, as a last resort, she’d been driven to approach her father and beg him for a loan (ostensibly as payment-in-advance for the house in Juxon Street).
‘How on earth can they demand so much when you’re only renting it?’ Dave had carped suspiciously; both he and Tessa uncomfortably aware that never in her life before had she asked his help, either financially or otherwise, let alone on this gargantuan scale.
In the end, he’d given her a cheque – an outright gift and not a loan – which she’d guessed was a sort of guilt-offering for his eighteen years of absence. Twenty minutes later, she’d banked it in the Croydon branch of Barclays, a stone’s throw from his house, then returned to Charlotte’s place, feeling a racking combination of shame, relief, and misery.
Well, now she’d better go and draw it out again – in banknotes – watch that voracious cash-box overflow; her father’s first and only gift paying for a death.
She turned the corner and walked slap into the wind, a vindictive wind blowing off the sea, and letting fly at everything – churning up the waves, buffeting the gulls, ripping through her lightweight cotton dress. She struggled on, head down, cursing the idiot cashier who’d made such a fuss about handing over the money. Apparently, her father’s cheque had taken several days to clear, because she’d paid it in in Croydon, and all the witless man could do was bleat and stall and waffle, then pass the buck to someone else. The second chap had explained to her that he’d have to ring the Oxford branch, to check on her account, but the line had been constantly engaged. She’d finally lost patience, told him she was slipping out to get a breath of air, and would he kindly have the money ready the minute she got back. A breath of air! This was a force eight, the waves crashing on the shingle with a mushroom-cloud of spray; assaulting the West Pier – a tatty ruin, cut off from the mainland like a wrecked and sinking ship. ‘HELP ME!’ begged a notice tacked across its crumbling roof. ‘SAVE ME’, cried another.
‘Help me,’ she repeated, but her words were blown away, lost in the dull booming of the sea. She slumped down in a shelter, beside a frail old woman in a floral-patterned frock, her pink scalp showing through the thistledown of hair.
‘Cold,’ said Tessa, ‘isn’t it?’
The woman didn’t answer. Deaf, perhaps, or foreign, or simply scared of strangers. She was a stranger here, a foreigner who didn’t speak the jolly native language. Brighton was a Fun Town where people came in groups or gangs, bought naughty postcards and sticks of rock, shrieked with laughter when their Kiss-Me-Quick hats blew off, or the wind groped beneath their skirts. No one was alone, except the winos and the grey-heads, the stupid pregnant failures. She gazed out at the sea. Why did people call it blue, when it was a dirty sludgy grey; or come here for sun and swimming when there was a red flag flying on the beach announcing ‘DANGER! NO BATHING’, and the idle (or despairing) sun hadn’t bothered to get up?
She shambled to her feet again, couldn’t stare her life away, like the bag of bones beside her, or the gin-befuddled tramp sprawled out on the promenade with his Gordon’s and his dog. She turned back the way she’d come, passing vast impersonal hotels – rows and rows of bedrooms, where couples would be making babies, only to destroy them once the holiday was over. People coming and going like the waves. Nothing permanent or meaningful. Seven hundred babies murdered every day. Easy, if you had the cash. So many people shrugged it off – Charlotte wasn’t the only one. Several girls who’d spoken in the Union debate had dismissed the whole process of abortion as just another method of contraception, and one strident women’s libber had likened it to ‘yanking out a decaying tooth’. Strange that it should cost so much to pull one rotten tooth.
Her pace quickened as her thoughts returned to money. She must jog back to the bank, and prod those dozy cashiers into action. She hurried on until she reached a second pier – the Palace Pier – a playground, not a ruin. There was a funfair just beyond it – the main attraction a huge Viking ship swingboat rocking back and forth, the kids on board screaming with excitement. Everything was lurching: the fairground rides, her st
omach, the roller-coaster sea itself – brown-speckled adolescent gulls bobbing on the swell.
She stood fighting the wave of nausea, her attention drawn to the family in front of her: two small girls tweaking at their parents’ sleeves, trying to lure them on to the pier. She found herself following, so desperate to belong to someone that she was quite prepared to fall in line as their third and youngest child. She was forced to abandon them, however, when they stopped to buy King Burgers; the reek of grease and onions too much for her poor stomach. Every sort of food-stall had been set up on the pier – shellfish next to doughnuts, curry-flavoured samosas outsmelling fish and chips. No one else was fasting – children sucking lollies, old men guzzling whelks, a Sikh in a turban licking sugar from his fingers. She felt suddenly enraged with them, indignant at the raucous hurting colours – bilious yellow popcorn, brash pink sticks of rock. Oxford was a grey town, tasteful and fastidious, wouldn’t dream of flaunting these racks of lime-green flipflops, those red and silver windmills whizzing round and round. This whole place was a con – a racket, like the clinic. A wonder they didn’t charge you for the view, or even for the wind, jacking up the price as the gale-force grew in strength, like they charged more for abortion, the later you left it.
Michael, Michael Page 14