by Lulu Taylor
Julia gives her a sideways look. ‘As if that matters. The point is that it can’t be good for the baby if you run around.’
‘Mmm.’ Alice does not seem shocked, either by the casual mention of the baby, whose existence has not yet been acknowledged out loud, or by the thought that activity might not be good for it.
‘But also,’ Julia continues, ‘it’s bound to be noticed. You can’t hide it so well in kit, and then there are the showers . . .’
At least, she reflects, it’s a comfort to know how little we are looked at. Dunleavy didn’t notice. But it can’t go on like that.
She asks in a rush, ‘How have you hidden it so far? Didn’t your mother see it?’
Alice laughs with a touch of bitterness. ‘No. I’ve covered it up in jumpers. If you don’t know what to look for, it’s not very evident, really.’
‘But it will be soon.’ Julia feels desperate. Why won’t Alice think about the reality of her situation? ‘Someone’s bound to find out. And what about when the baby starts to come? Do you know when it’s due?’
Alice shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t entirely know when . . . it . . . happened.’
They stop, Julia facing Alice, her hands in the pockets of her coat. ‘So . . .’ she says, her face heating up with the embarrassment of it all. ‘You and Roy. You . . . you did that.’
‘Yes.’ Alice tosses her head defiantly. ‘I let him do it to me. It wasn’t rape, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wanted to do it! At least he loved me, in his own way. I felt special. He said I made him feel like no one else in the world, and he told me I was beautiful and amazing, and his gift from God. He said I was a consolation.’
Julia gazes at her, open-mouthed. She feels helpless in the face of this. On the one hand, she can understand the power of being loved and wanted. In her secret heart, she has thought that if Donnie loved her and asked her, she would do the same with him that Alice has done with Roy. But she can also see the futility of it and the danger. What is the point of a love that can never be, when its consequences are so dreadful? Roy, with his wife and children, and the absolute impossibility of the relationship. ‘But,’ she asks at last, confused, ‘do you love him? Roy?’
Alice sighs dreamily. ‘I love to be loved, and he loved me. And even though – if you want the truth – it was horrible, it was also lovely, because it showed me how much he longed for me.’
‘Even though it only lasted for a short time?’ Julia asks quietly. She is thinking of the way Roy hit Alice and wondering how that can be reconciled with the love she thinks he showed her.
‘Oh no,’ Alice says. ‘It lasted ages and ages. I thought it would never end. You’ll see when it happens to you.’
Julia feels odd to think it might. She can’t imagine it. It must be years off.
They walk on together in silence for a while, Alice still dreamy and disconnected. Julia says, ‘I think you need to tell your mother.’
Alice is startled out of her reverie. ‘What?’
‘Tell her about the baby. What else are you going to do? If you don’t know how far along you are, you can’t know when it’s coming. You can’t have the baby here at school.’
Alice frowns and says irritably, ‘I do wish you’d stop going on about the blessed baby.’ She begins to stalk away along the path. ‘You’re like a stuck record!’
‘But what are you going to do about it?’ persists Julia, hurrying after her. ‘If you won’t do anything, I’ll have to. I’ll have to write to your mother, or tell Miss Allen, or something.’
Alice halts and whirls around, sending a little flurry of gravel into the air. Her expression is furious, her eyes blazing. ‘Don’t you dare!’ she shouts. ‘Don’t you dare do anything, or tell my mother. I’ll decide what to do, and no one else, and that’s that.’
She storms off back towards the school and Julia can only follow.
Snow comes that afternoon, as the winter darkness is falling. They are in a history lesson, Julia sitting by the window when she sees the first swirl of flakes through the diamond panes. The big radiator that her leg is pressed against is giving out a mild heat.
Snow, she thinks. How pretty. If it gets too thick on the ground, there will be no games but they’ll be allowed to go out and amuse themselves in it with snowballs and building snowmen. Such activity now seems so innocent, the pursuit of another time, before she had to nurture Alice’s deep, dark secret.
‘Pay attention, please,’ says the teacher, as the girls begin to notice the whirling snow with a murmur of excitement. ‘I’m afraid that the Civil War is more important than the weather. Now, who can name the first battle of the conflict?’
Julia looks down at the page in her notebook where she has been scribbling. There is nothing about the Civil War there. Instead there is the beginning of a letter.
Dear Mrs ?
She will have to find out Alice’s mother’s new name, as she is sure it isn’t Warburton anymore, now that she has remarried.
I’m afraid I have to tell you some news about Alice.
She
Here she stopped, unable to think of how to continue. It seemed indecent to write it down. Beneath are suggestions for the rest.
She is in an interesting condition . . .
She isn’t well . . .
She has had an accident and is expecting a . . . an event that . . .
Oh dear. None of it is right. She tries to remember what Donnie said and writes that down.
She is in the club.
Will Alice’s mother understand that? It seems too obscure. She might think Julia means the stamp-collecting club, or the woodland craft club. Julia glances over at Alice, who is gazing dreamily into the middle distance, tapping a pencil on the desk with light, regular strokes. Is she thinking of the child inside her, imagining its future? Perhaps she is feeling a kick or a movement that is reminding her of its presence. Or, more likely, she is pretending that it doesn’t exist and never will, and forcing herself to forget.
At that moment, as Julia looks over at her friend, Alice starts and goes very still. A look of horror appears on her face and an instant later, she turns and looks at Julia. The expression on her face is one of terror tinged with something else. A word springs into Julia’s mind.
Triumph?
But what on earth could she take as a victory from this awful situation? Then Julia thinks she might understand. Alice has taken her disobedience to the limit. As scared as she is, she is also exultant because now they will find out just how naughty she has been.
Oh, Alice. It’s all too serious for that. Why can’t you see?
But Julia will have to help her. There is no other way.
The moment the lesson ends, Alice runs to the lavatories and shuts herself in a cubicle. Julia follows, skittering along the corridor after her, and into the loos. She knocks on the door.
‘Alice? Alice?’ she hisses urgently.
Other girls come in, glancing at Julia standing outside one of the stalls, but they ignore her as they drop their books, use the lavatories, wash their hands and leave. There are only a few minutes between lessons, and there is one more class before the day is over. Julia grabs one of the girls as she is leaving.
‘Clara, tell Miss Brown that I’m taking Alice to Matron, will you? She’s not a bit well. She’s throwing up in there, and when she comes out I’ll take her to the sanatorium.’
‘All right,’ Clara says without interest. ‘But you’d better get a shift on, you know it’s not allowed to miss lessons because of someone else.’
‘Yes, I know, but it’s urgent,’ she says impatiently.
Clara shrugs and heads out. They are alone again.
‘Alice?’ Julia raps on the door.
‘What?’ The voice is muffled and strained.
‘What’s going on? Are you all right?’
There’s another long pause, then the flush of the lavatory and the door opens. Alice is pale but seems normal. She smiles. ‘I’m fine, of cou
rse.’
‘No, you’re not. I saw your face. Something’s up.’ Julia scans her face anxiously. ‘Has it started? Is the baby coming?’
‘No, no. I just had a cramp or something, that’s all. Come on. We’d better get going, or we’ll be in trouble.’ She heads out, leaving Julia to follow behind.
All that afternoon and evening, Julia keeps a watchful eye on Alice but can learn nothing. Alice remains pale and is apparently studious in the last lesson of the day, keeping her face firmly turned down to the desk. Once, Julia thinks she sees Alice stiffen and her knuckles whiten as she holds her pencil in a tight grip, but it passes and there is no other sign of any trouble – no moan or exclamation of pain.
Perhaps I imagined it. It must be nothing.
The process of pregnancy is a mystery to her, beyond the knowledge that the woman carries the growing child inside her and then pushes it out down below in a painful and lengthy process. If Alice were having the baby, surely she would be lying on the floor and screaming by now. As that isn’t happening, Julia concludes that nothing is out of order. Perhaps Alice was telling the truth and she really did have a touch of cramps.
That might be normal, for all I know.
All she can do is watch and wait.
Darkness has descended even earlier than usual and outside the windows of the school the snow is falling ever more thickly, quickly blanketing the lawns and hedges, the fountains and stone balustrades. The world outside is a mass of eddying flakes, and inside, the mood is excited but also muted. They will be snowed in, and that could last days and days.
Supper passes and Alice barely eats, but that is not so unusual. She often goes through periods of hardly touching food. Julia feels she should urge her on for the sake of the baby, but that seems an odd thing to do, and besides, how could she, when they’re surrounded by the other girls, not to mention the staff?
When they say goodnight, and curl up in their beds in the dorm, separated only by flimsy low walls, Alice seems even paler and has begun to look genuinely ill.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to Matron?’ Julia asks, worried, as she looks over the low partition into Alice’s section. ‘You don’t look at all well. How are the cramps?’
‘I’m fine,’ Alice says, but her eyes are tired and her cheeks look hollow. Nevertheless she smiles. ‘It’s going to be all right. You’ll see. I’ll be all right in the morning.’
Julia curls up in her bed and waits for the cool sheets to grow warm so that she can sleep, listening for any sound from Alice, but there’s none. Before long, she can’t listen anymore as she drifts off into half-consciousness, thinking of the snow and the warmth of Egypt.
She wakes suddenly, and knows at once that something is wrong. Jumping out of bed, shivering in the chill air outside the blankets, she runs lightly to the partition and looks over it. Alice is gone. Her bed is empty.
Oh no! Where is she? Panic races through her as she stares wildly about the dark dormitory, as though hoping to see Alice in the shadows. I have to find her.
As quietly as possible, she opens her drawer and pulls out her weekend clothes: trousers, a blouse and a thick jumper. Then a pair of socks and her coat and hat. It’s so cold in the school, she’ll need all of that to keep warm. Then she picks up her boots, gets her torch from its hiding place in her bedside table and tiptoes out of her cubby hole and into the main dormitory. There is not a sound. She is sure that Alice is not here.
Her instinct takes her the way they have always gone when sneaking out of school: down to the end of the hall and out through the little arched door onto the stone staircase. ‘Alice?’ she whispers and it seems to hiss down the stairs. There is no reply. She bends to put on her boots, her cold fingers stumbling over the laces, and then starts slowly down, switching on her torch so that she can pick out each step as it curves away from her. Where can Alice be? Where has she gone, and why?
Julia knows that there is only one place that Alice would be heading.
But why? Why would she go there?
She catches herself up with a rush of unexpected sadness.
Where else can she go? Who else can she tell?
But would it really be so bad to go to Matron, or Miss Allen or any of the other women here in the school? They’re not monsters. When they saw Alice in trouble, in desperation, surely they would help her. But Alice lives by her own rules and her own idea of what the world should be. Whatever she sees in her future, Julia can guess that it is not being the naughty schoolgirl who surrenders herself in pregnant disgrace to the tongue-clicking disapproval of the spinsters in authority. She will want something grander and more dramatic than that.
Julia is on the ground floor now, and she tiptoes along, following the wavering beam of her torch, looking for signs of her friend, hoping that she has got onto her trail before she has gone too far. But there is no trace of her all the way past the changing rooms and out through the canvas sheeting into the pool room. Julia crosses it quickly, noticing that the wooden door at the end is already pushed ajar, and draws in a sharp breath as she looks at the world beyond. The snow has stopped and the sky is clear, shining with a huge silver moon that sets the snow glittering with millions of tiny twinkles. Across the fresh virgin snow that has fallen over the dirty building site, hiding its mud and filth and mess, there is a set of deep footprints leading towards the boundary between the school and the field where the caravans are.
Julia can’t help gasping in horror. So she was right, the baby is coming. Why has Alice decided to set off like this? What can she hope to achieve? She hurries on, scrunching through the fresh snowfall, her breath coming in puffs of icy smoke, feeling afraid of what she will find at the end of this fantastical journey. She hardly needs her torch now, as the moonlight reflects on the snow’s surface and lights up the way as if showing her the route to Alice.
The caravans are silent and dark as usual, each with its own heavy counterpane of snow under which it seems to snuggle. Like bugs in a rug, she thinks, and presses on towards the one at the back that belongs to Roy and Donnie.
As she rounds the corner of the van, she sees her: Alice, huddled in the snow, half crouching, half lying, her face twisted and her teeth bared. She is wrapped in a fur coat, one that Julia remembers her bringing back from home after Christmas, laughing about how she took it from her mother’s wardrobe without asking, and the fur is sprinkled with clumps of snow as though she has been rolling in it, like a winter bear taking a bath.
‘Alice!’ She dashes forward as fast as she can through the snow, drops her torch and kneels down beside her friend, touching her gently on the arm as if half afraid to cause her more pain.
Alice is grunting and panting, her skin whiter than ever, her hair wet with sweat, her lips pale. She opens her eyes and sees Julia, a look of relief passing over her face, but cannot speak while the strange stifled moan is in her throat. Julia holds her, wishing desperately that she can remove the pain somehow, but she has no idea what to do. Fright races through her. This is serious. This is birth. What can she do?
Some of the tension leaves Alice and she relaxes a little into Julia’s arms. ‘You found me,’ she whispers with a smile.
‘What are you doing, you idiot?’ Her fear makes her sound petulant, but she knows Alice understands. ‘Why did you come out here?’
‘I wanted to . . . I wanted to have the baby on my own. So that . . . So that I can give it to Roy.’
‘Roy?’ Julia is astonished. ‘But what makes you think he wants it?’
‘It’s my . . . gift. My . . . consolation.’ Her eyes close and her face twists into a rictus again. A great groan comes up from within her, and she clenches her fist with the pressure of keeping it inside. Her mouth is tightly shut. Only a high, quiet sound comes out on the night air. Julia guesses that Alice is doing all she can not to wake the occupants of the caravans.
‘You can’t stay here,’ she says, as soon as she sees that the pain has passed. ‘It’s freezing. You ca
n’t have a baby out here in the snow. Come on.’
‘I can’t move,’ Alice says, her tone almost cheerful. ‘I can’t walk any further.’
‘All right. Then you’ll have to wait here for just a moment.’
Panic flares in Alice’s eyes. ‘Don’t leave me!’ She grips Julia’s hand with a tight, cold grip. ‘I thought I could do this alone. But I can’t.’
‘I won’t leave you – not for more than a minute. But we have to get some help.’ Julia scrambles up in the snow and heads for Donnie’s caravan. Instead of knocking at the door, she goes round to the back to the window. There’s no time for tentativeness now – she raps as hard as she dares. A few seconds later, the curtain is pushed aside and she sees Donnie’s face, bleary with sleep, looking out at her.
She mouths one word. ‘Help.’
He rubs his eyes, squinting at her, and then seems to grasp that this is an emergency. He mouths back, ‘Two minutes,’ and disappears from view. Julia goes back to the door and waits, her arms wrapped around herself, hopping on the spot against the cold. She can only think of Alice, worried for her in the snow alone, and she hears the low muffled wail of another rush of pain.
How long now? How close is she?
The door opens and Donnie stands there, dressed but without a coat. ‘Hell’s fire,’ he says, shuddering. ‘It’s freezing out here. What are you doing here?’
‘It’s Alice. She’s over there. She’s having the baby.’ Julia points to the strange huddled shape in the snow that’s rocking gently. ‘We have to get her inside.’
‘What?’ A look of horror crosses Donnie’s face. ‘The baby’s coming? She can’t have it here!’
‘She can’t have it in the snow,’ Julia says firmly. ‘We’re coming in. You have to help me, she can’t walk.’
Donnie gapes at her, and then sees that she is not to be denied. The seriousness of the situation will not allow it. ‘Holy Mary,’ he says, looking suddenly like a young boy. ‘All right. Come on then.’
They go over to Alice, and find her in a strange state, almost as though she is asleep, although the whiteness of her face makes her look more like a corpse. Julia is panicked until she groans as Donnie struggles to get an arm underneath to lift her.