The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Fresh glasses, I think,’ she said, not really knowing what she was saying but wanting to fill the silence. She rummaged in a cupboard and retrieved two more glasses—genuine sherry glasses this time—gave them a quick polish and poured two small amounts, one into each glass, and held one out to Felicity. It reminded her suddenly of her youth, those endless cocktail parties at little flats in Bloomsbury and in large country houses where one inevitably found oneself in the kitchen at two in the morning half sloshed with some girlfriend or other, discussing some man or what some other girl had done with some man. One did not associate Felicity with such scenes. And Felicity didn’t drink.

  Felicity took the glass and took a quick sip. She grimaced.

  ‘Harriet, I must talk to you about something. It’s—rather delicate.’

  Oh Lord.

  ‘Of course, anything I can do, naturally …?’

  ‘The thing is—’ Felicity paused. ‘It’s the silliest thing, you’ll laugh …’

  Upstairs Leo did laugh, loudly, and Felicity winced.

  ‘I don’t quite know how it can have happened …’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, just tell me!’ What the devil had she done? Been caught shop lifting?

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant?!’ Felicity was dead right—she did want to laugh.

  ‘Yes. I can’t think how it can have happened …’ she repeated.

  ‘Can’t you?’ Harriet shook her head in some confusion. Pregnant! Felicity!

  ‘Well, obviously one understands how it happened. What I meant was, well—’ She paused (and one’s mind baulked at the thought of Felicity discussing birth control). By the look of it, Felicity’s mind had similarly baulked as she was unable to complete the sentence.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Harriet, getting down to business—after all, this wasn’t the first such conversation she had had with a girlfriend in a kitchen. Although it had been some years since the last time. And she did not exactly put Felicity in that category.

  ‘Yes, quite. It’s been two months. And I went to a doctor. Not our doctor, naturally, but he confirmed it.’

  ‘Why not your doctor?’

  Felicity stared at her. ‘Because I can’t keep it! Obviously.’

  Now it was Harriet’s turn to stare.

  ‘Why on earth not?’ she replied, but even as she said it the reasons seemed clear enough. Felicity was not mother material; had not the slightest interest in babies; was approaching her forties. And she had her career.

  ‘But I can’t! I simply cannot have a baby. It would destroy everything. Everything! Don’t you see?’ Felicity’s voice rose a little hysterically. ‘I would have to give up my job!’

  ‘Now, darling, take a deep breath. It’s quite all right, it’s all going to be fine,’ said Harriet automatically though she didn’t, at this moment, see how. She waited as Felicity took a deep breath and another sip of the sherry. ‘Good. That’s better. Now, let’s just think clearly and rationally about this. Leo—does he know?’

  ‘No, of course not. I couldn’t tell him; he’d want it.’

  ‘But, my dear, doesn’t he have a right to know?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he does, and I’m sure he has a right to be a father, but he doesn’t have to give up everything to do it, does he? No, I’m sorry, Harriet, but I’ve made up my mind. He isn’t going to find out.’

  ‘But, then, why are you telling me, if you’ve already made up your mind?’

  Felicity closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘I need help, Harriet. I don’t know … how to go about it. How to get rid of it,’ and for the first time her eyes became pleading, desperate. Frightened.

  Harriet leant back against the kitchen cupboard and took a sip of the sherry. It tasted sweet and sickly and she put the glass down on the kitchen table. She reached around for a cigarette, but they were upstairs; there was only a packet of Mrs Thompson’s wretched Craven A’s by the sink.

  There had been other occasions, of course, before the war, when girls had got themselves into trouble and she had heard a name mentioned, seen an address passed furtively from hand to hand—a doctor with a foreign-sounding name, a woman with a kind heart in the East End. But so many years ago now, she had nothing she could pass on as useful advice. And there were the horror stories, too, of coat-hangers and blood poisoning and lice-infested rooms and girls who could no longer have babies. Of girls who had died.

  Besides, it was illegal.

  ‘Darling, I don’t really see what I can do.’

  ‘But surely you must know someone—someone who can help?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t think of anyone. It’s not the sort of thing one—’

  ‘You must know something!’ There was a note of something close to panic in Felicity’s voice.

  Harriet turned away and replaced the corkscrew in the draw. She slowly slid the draw back into the dresser. Cecil had said, in this very house eight years ago:

  ‘Are you expecting me to help you? To help him? Because I won’t! I will not—do you understand? How dare you put me in this position? How dare Freddie put you in this position!’

  And she had expected him to help, or at least to understand. But he hadn’t. He had not helped her. He had refused.

  She turned to face Felicity, holding out both her hands.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Felicity.’

  Felicity stared at her. For a moment she said nothing and it seemed as though she had pinned all her hopes, had gathered all her strength, had sacrificed all her dignity, for this one conversation, this single plea for help—and it had come to nothing.

  Her eyes hardened and she nodded slowly.

  ‘Well. No matter, I’m sure I can sort it out myself,’ she said briskly.

  There was a silence during which Harriet could have said, ‘Look, I don’t know who to go to but I can ask around, I can see if anyone knows something …’ But she remained silent, and in another moment Felicity turned and went back upstairs.

  ‘There you are!’ exclaimed Leo loudly, as though they had been gone for some hours. ‘Thought you’d got lost,’ he added brilliantly, but not even Anne laughed. Felicity stood stiffly at the back of the room and smiled, but it was a rather grim smile that made Harriet look away and wish they would leave.

  They did leave eventually, but only after Leo had downed two more sherries and Cecil had reminisced about some childhood Christmas that he obviously felt surprisingly sentimental about, but which Felicity refused to get drawn into. Anne had got bored and gone off to her room and Julius had stood surreptitiously beside the sherry decanter and then edged out of the room and fled upstairs so that one assumed he had taken a furtive swig. Let Cecil deal with it. And finally Felicity had announced that it really was time they were off and there was relief in the flurry of coats and hats and farewells.

  ‘Goodbye, Harriet,’ said Felicity, leaning forward and brushing against her cheek. Her hands were cold and stiff and her eyes turned away before Harriet could reply. The door closed behind them and Harriet stood in the hallway for a long moment.

  It was too bad. One couldn’t help everyone. Sometimes one was unable to help even those one cared the most deeply for. There was nothing to be done about it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  JANUARY 1953

  The Bentley boy was to be executed at Wandsworth Prison that morning at nine o’clock for the murder of a police constable. The papers were full of it. A crowd had gathered at dawn outside the prison, petitions had been submitted. A last-minute appeal for clemency had been rejected and the Home Secretary had not intervened.

  Cecil glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve-thirty and by now the boy was dead. To be hanged by the neck until you were dead, to wait in a cell and count down each day until you were scheduled to be put to death by your own government, your own countrymen. It was unthinkable, barbaric.

  The boy’s face stared at him from every newspaper in the carriage.

  The Central Line t
rain rattled into Tottenham Court Road station and screeched to a halt. It was lunchtime and the platform was crowded with office workers and shoppers making the most of the last days of the post-Christmas sales. The doors opened and a sea of people swept out and a sea of other people surged in, shopping bags knocking against each other, briefcases, hats, umbrellas, small children, all jumbled together. Jostling each other, talking, rustling newspapers, stepping on toes. Just as though it were a normal Wednesday in January; as though a nineteen-year-old boy had not been executed at Wandsworth Prison barely three-and-a-half hours ago.

  It was twelve thirty-five. He was going to be late. Felicity got cross with people when they were late. The doors closed and the train rattled onward on its journey westbound.

  It was a nuisance, this lunchtime appointment with Felicity. Things were busy at the office; it was awkward making excuses to take such a long lunch break. It didn’t set a good example to the junior staff. But it was the old girl’s birthday and, after all, he was her only brother. And this was her fortieth. Lunch was preferable to an evening appointment, anyway—one couldn’t go anywhere after dark in these dreadful pea-soupers. It was bad enough in the middle of the day, when some ghost of daylight seeped through the yellowish smog, but after dark it was quite impossible.

  The train pulled into Oxford Circus, the doors opened and somehow more people squeezed on. One of them was a young woman in a long beige overcoat, a scarf tied around her head and under her chin.

  It was Jenny Rocastle!

  Cecil half stood up before realising that it was not Jenny Rocastle at all, just a girl who looked a bit like her; who didn’t look very much like her at all, now he could see her properly. And much younger than Mrs Rocastle. The girl pushed her way into the carriage and found a seat opposite Cecil. She sat staring vacantly at the advertisements above his head. The doors closed and the train moved off again.

  He hadn’t seen Mrs Rocastle since the week before Christmas.

  He stirred uneasily, crossing and uncrossing his legs. His umbrella rolled onto the floor and a large man in a Homburg stepped on it. Cecil reached quickly for the umbrella. There was a large muddy footprint marking the black silk and he experienced a moment of revulsion, but resisted the urge to pull out his handkerchief and wipe it off.

  He had gone to visit Mrs Rocastle soon after her husband’s disappearance. It seemed the decent thing to do, one didn’t condemn someone simply because their husband had gone bad. He had made a point of making a return visit a fortnight later and again before Christmas, just to show his support. And Mrs Rocastle had appeared grateful, pleased even, at his visits.

  Yet he had said nothing of his visits to Harriet.

  The whole Rocastle incident was an office matter and as such had no bearing on Harriet. Nevertheless he continued to feel uneasy, leaving work on a pretext, travelling in a taxi at lunchtime to a West London residence like a man visiting his mistress, head tucked into his collar as he climbed the stairs to her flat—it seemed to Cecil that mistresses always lived in upstairs flats—and half expecting her to come to the door in a dressing gown. She never had. She was always dressed very soberly, very properly. Each time she had sat on the edge of an armchair, pressing tea and biscuits on him and listening, gravely, as he told her of the lack of news of her husband, of the extent of the damage to the firm. She had never asked questions, only sat there nodding silently in agreement as though it was all to be expected.

  And soon he had ceased to talk to her of her husband and the investigation at all and had instead talked to her about the office: about Sir Maurice, a take-over scare, the ships scheduled for breaking up, the flu epidemic that had felled the typing pool, things he never told Harriet, and Mrs Rocastle—Jenny—listened and made comments and was interested. Or was that just politeness?

  And still he had said nothing of his visits to Harriet.

  ‘Wot chew starin’ at then? Bloody pervert!’

  Cecil froze in horror as the young girl opposite spat out these words and every head in the carriage turned and stared at him.

  That the girl could utter such vulgar words with such a pretty mouth was shocking. That she could make such an accusation so loudly and in front of a carriage full of people, appalling.

  Cecil started to his feet even before the train had rolled into Bond Street station and stumbled towards the door feeling twenty, thirty pairs of eyes watching him. He stood facing the doorway as the train rumbled to a halt and waited an eternity for the doors to open. Finally they did and he stepped quickly through and away down the platform as fast as decorum permitted. A man in a tweed suit passed him on the escalators and gave Cecil a long frowning look.

  Had he been staring at the girl? If she had been Mrs Rocastle, would he have stared at her? All the times he had sat in her armchair sipping her tea and nibbling her biscuits and she had sat perched on the opposite chair, nodding and saying very little—had he been staring at her?

  Cecil passed through the ticket barrier waving his ticket at the West Indian ticket collector and braced himself for the street.

  Outside it was like the war again, only instead of gas masks everyone wore handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses, and instead of bomb smoke there was the smog. Almost two months of it now and still no sign of it letting up.

  Was this the world we fought for? Cecil wondered, as he fumbled for his handkerchief. This half-life lived in a half-light?

  He retrieved his handkerchief and held it to his mouth as he stepped out onto the street. It was a quarter to one but it may as well have been five o’clock in the evening for all the daylight there was. All around people appeared out of the gloom, only their eyes visible above scarves, collars and white handkerchiefs, then they were swallowed up again by the fog. Cecil thought again of the boy who had been executed. Was it so terrible, after all, to be taken from the world, to be delivered from a future such as this?

  He turned northwards—was it northwards?—and made for Wigmore Street, and if he hadn’t done this walk a dozen times before, hadn’t met Felicity at this café many times in the past, he would have lost his way instantly. As it was he felt a moment of panicked disorientation as he crossed Manchester Place. But there was the pub on the corner, and beside it the old bookshop, and beside that the cafe. Relieved, he almost took a deep breath, thought better of it and dived inside.

  Inside a bell tinkled somewhere at the back of the shop and echoed around the all-but-empty room. Tables and chairs were placed too close together and if the place had been full it would have been impossible to negotiate a way between them. But the café was deserted save for two elderly ladies who huddled in a corner clutching vast handbags, and Felicity, who sat at her usual table by the window reading a book.

  ‘Hello,’ he called and waved apologetically. ‘Train didn’t turn up. Transport’s completely up the creek with this fog.’ He pulled out a chair, remembering to kiss her before sitting down.

  This fog! It was all anyone said these days. One could blame it for practically anything. A few years ago everyone blamed the unions for everything that was wrong with Britain. Or delinquents, or spivs, or Americans. Now one blamed the fog.

  Felicity inserted a bookmark at her page and placed the book on the table. It was Dostoevsky. She smiled at him a little wanly.

  ‘Oh, many happy returns of the day,’ he said cheerfully.

  Her smile became a little more wan.

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was a pause while he waited for her to add something, but she didn’t.

  ‘Well, I’d better order lunch then, hadn’t I?’ he said brightly. Why am I pretending to be cheerful, he wondered as he stared at the cardboard menu on the table. And why am I studying the menu? I only ever have the roast beef and Yorkshire pud.

  He was doing it because Felicity was being so oddly quiet. And wan; yes, she looked distinctly wan. Ought he to mention it?

  ‘What’ll it be, old girl?’ he asked and cringed at his own cheerfulness.
r />   ‘I’ll have my usual,’ she said.

  ‘Right you are.’ The waitress hovered—a slatternly girl in a black dress and a white apron with a purple stain on it and her hair piled high on her head in a stiff bouffant. Cecil beamed at her. ‘We’ll have one toad in the hole and I’ll have’—he felt reckless—‘I’ll have the fish of the day.’

  ‘Fish is off.’

  ‘Oh. Well. The roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, then, please.’ He smiled at the girl then he remembered the girl on the tube train and turned abruptly away. The waitress flounced away and they were left in silence.

  ‘Leo at work?’ Cecil inquired.

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. Of course Leo was at work, where else would he be? Felicity had mornings free as her television program didn’t go out until five o’clock in the afternoon.

  ‘His Spitfire drama begins broadcasting this week,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, right. Very good. Must look out for it. What’s it called?’

  ‘Spitfire.’

  ‘Oh.’ He nodded, and they both knew the Wallises did not own a television set and would never watch a program called Spitfire even if they did.

  ‘Simon Paget still acting as advisor, is he?’

  ‘No. He left before Christmas. He was unhappy with the dialogue and the actors. And the plot. And most of the technical details.’

  ‘Really? Well, old Simon always was a fusspot. Can’t imagine why he got himself involved in such a vulgar scheme in the first place.’

  Felicity frowned and Cecil realised belatedly that the vulgar scheme had been principally Leo’s idea.

  ‘And how’s the hippo? Still got lots of friends, I trust?’

  ‘We’ve been told we have to include a West Indian hippo. There’s a concern we won’t appeal to the children of immigrants.’