Folly's Child

by Janet Tanner

  ‘And I’m Laura-Jo Bayne. But I told you that, didn’t I?’

  They chatted on. By the time Laura-Jo left an hour later Sally had accepted the party invitation – and made a new friend. Perhaps things were looking up a little at last, she thought.

  By nine-thirty the party was in full swing and Sally was enjoying herself. Laura-Jo’s friends were an uninhibited crowd, many of them Americans themselves, and they treated Sally like an old friend. The only awkwardness arose because Laura-Jo insisted on telling them that Sally’s sister was married to a New Yorker and hiding the truth about his identity stretched Sally’s ingenuity to the full. As she struggled to evade the questions of one particularly persistent soul a voice in her ear whispered: ‘ You might be able to fool them, you know, but you can’t fool me!’ and she turned to see a young man smiling at her over the rim of his beer glass.

  Her first impression was that he was very like Edward – so much so that her stomach fell away. Then she registered the differences. His face was thinner, his hairline receding slightly to accentuate, a high forehead and his nose was more prominent – classical Greek, or was it Roman? Sally wondered. His eyes were a lighter shade of blue and deeper set and there was a trace of a Northern accent in his voice. No, definitely not Edward, but enough like him to stir all kinds of old memories – and to make her warm to him, forgetting how Edward had hurt her and remembering only the good times.

  ‘Can’t fool you?’ she repeated, smiling. ‘Now what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Oh come on, it’s not so easy to hide celebrities’ lights under bushels. You realise most of the guys here would flip if they knew who your sister is – and most of the girls would go bananas if they knew your brother-in-law is Hugo Varna.’

  ‘Shh!’ Sally hissed, covering his mouth with her hand. ‘Please – don’t say anything. I’m sick to death of being Paula’s sister. I want to be me.’

  He took her hand with his own, his light blue eyes teasing, ‘All right, I’ll keep quiet. But there is a price.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘You don’t try and run away from me. You’re the best-looking girl here tonight, did you know that?’

  ‘Oh yes? Compliments slip off your tongue very easily, don’t they?’ she said, trying to sound cynical, but secretly she was flattered.

  ‘It’s no more than the truth. Oh come on, don’t look like that. You’ve been told so before.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Hey – your glass is empty. Can I get you another? What are you drinking – uh, what was it they called you?’

  ‘Sally. But I thought you knew everything about me.’

  ‘I do – all I need to know at least. You are very beautiful, Sally, and very modest, and I am going to see you home tonight.’

  She laughed aloud. ‘You won’t have very far to go. I’m from upstairs.

  ‘Well, well.’ There was a twinkle in his eye. ‘ So what do you say I get us both a drink and we take them up to your flat, where it’s quieter.’

  ‘How dare you!’ But it was impossible to be angry with him, so irrepressible, so wicked … and so like Edward.

  They had another drink and another. His name was Stuart, he told her, and he was a representative for a paper firm – he toured offices selling stationery and taking orders for individually printed advertising calendars. The flat was very crowded now and very noisy and the air was a blue haze of cigarette smoke. Squashed in a corner of the kitchen they were still chatting but Stuart’s arm had crept around her waist and his mouth closer and closer to her ear and she had not objected. More than that – she was enjoying it!

  Ironic, really, she thought – or perhaps a stroke of incredible good fortune. During the long and lonely nights Sally had made up her mind to stop objecting the next time a man who was halfway decent came along. Objecting was not the best way of making friends and influencing people. On the contrary it seemed a sure-fire way of driving them away. Sally had sat wrapped in Paula’s old woollen dressing gown filing her nails and thinking of all the relationships she had ruined by being too much of a prude. There had once been a time when she had thought that men didn’t respect girls ‘ who did’. Bitter experience had changed her mind. It was girls ‘who didn’t’ they despised because there was no station along the line that was acceptable as a stopping point. All very well for actresses like Grace Kelly to look glacial and regal on screen – a normal-looking girl behaving with similar frostiness would be written off, not relentlessly pursued. But after that first show of warmth then any girl who failed to deliver was labelled a cock teaser. Though she had not been a virgin for a very long time Sally had continued to behave in a way that parodied the virginal. Now, she had decided, it was time to let go a little and see if that produced any better results.

  It was one thing, of course, to plan a retreat from innocence, quite another to carry it out. She had worried about it a good deal – and worried because she was worrying. Paula had never had such doubts, or if she had she had never showed them and since school age Sally had been ashamed to discuss her worries about her own sexuality with any of her friends. To admit to them seemed the very essence of failure.

  Now, however, with Stuart’s hand moving up to surreptitiously fondle her breast she began to experience the tingly heady waves of desire. Perhaps this time it would be all right. Perhaps this time she could forget she was a small-town good girl and actually enjoy being wicked.

  ‘Shall we go now?’ he whispered. His breath was hot on her ear. Small shivers ran down her neck.

  She nodded without speaking. She felt shameless, abandoned – and it was wonderful! He guided her through the smoky kitchen and bodies parted to let them pass. Sally felt quite floaty and intoxicated though she did not think she had had very much to drink.

  ‘I ought to thank Laura-Jo,’ she said when they reached the door.

  ‘Thank her another time.’ He nibbled her ear and her knees went weak. ‘She’s busy. She’ll understand.’

  They went out onto the landing which was lit by one garish bulb. He pushed her against the wall, cupping his hands under her buttocks and squeezing her close against him so that she could feel his body, hard and eager.

  ‘You are beautiful.’ He kissed her, his mouth running a line of kisses down her throat and back to her mouth. ‘ You are very beautiful, Sally.’ His words were like wine to her. His hands followed the curve of her body and the warmth of them seemed to burn through the thin silk of her dress. She groaned, desperate with wanting him.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

  It was what he had been waiting for. Arms around one another they staggered up the stairs, then outside her door he pressed her against the wall again, lifting her skirt high enough to enable him to run his fingers up her soft inner thighs above the tops of her stockings. She groaned, parting them a little, and he eased his fingers under the filmy silk. Thank God she was wearing a suspender belt, not one of these terrible roll-on girdles, or even pantie girdles, that some girls wore! Gently, probing, he rotated his finger and felt her squirm. He kissed her again, parting her lips with his tongue and flicking it in and out in time with the movement of his finger. Her body had begun to move now in unconscious rhythm and he stopped, sensing she was already on the point of climaxing.

  As the movement ceased Sally opened her eyes, puzzled. She had been on another plane – she simply wanted it to go on and on. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he whispered urgently.

  ‘Oh yes …’ she was pliant, acquiescent. She fumbled in her bag for her key and opened the door. They stumbled inside and he began fondling her again before she had time to change her mind.

  The sofa bed was already pulled out – Sally had thought it would be nice to fall straight into it after the party. They collapsed onto it and as he pulled down her panties she wriggled free of the constricting silk. She felt the hot hardness of him against her thigh and then he was inside her. No pain, no discomfort, she had been moist and ready f
or him. He moved with eager thrusts and she clung to him enjoying the experience for the first time in her life. Then suddenly he withdrew, spurting wetness across her stomach. Her sense of let down was enormous, she writhed trying to recapture the aching ecstasy. He slipped his hand between her legs and she moved against it aware of nothing but her mounting excitement. It couldn’t go on getting better and better … could it? Her lips parted in a silent scream and wave upon wave of tremors shook her. Beautiful … beautiful! Oh beautiful! Then she was coming down again from that high plateau, floating down, down … and reality was intruding.

  ‘Oh heck, what have we done?’ Sally asked in sudden panic.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. There’s your proof.’ He took her hand and pressed it to her stomach. She withdrew it quickly, oddly embarrassed and a little frightened now by the speed of what had happened and how easy it had been.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ she asked. It seemed an incongruous thing to say yet she could think of no other way to restore normality.

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  She got up, surreptitiously wiping herself dry with her petticoat and avoiding looking at him. She set the kettle to boil and when she came back into the room he was sitting there like any other visitor flipping idly through a magazine that had been lying on the table beside the sofa bed.

  ‘Well, Sally Bristow, and when am I going to see you again?’ he asked.

  Happiness scared. Somehow with that one simple question he had made everything all right.

  ‘Well I’m a bit busy,’ she lied, intent on maintaining her new image. ‘Shall we say the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘I should watch out for that Stuart Harris,’ Laura-Jo said ‘He has a reputation for being a womaniser, you know.’

  She and Sally were drinking coffee in the kitchen – what luxury to have a kitchen of one’s own Sally thought.

  ‘I don’t know him that well,’ Laura-Jo went on. ‘He’s a friend of a friend really, but they do say …’

  ‘I’m sure he’s all right,’ Sally said smugly. ‘ I’ve been out with him two or three times and he seems very nice.’

  ‘Oh well, as long as you know what you’re doing.’ Laura-Jo shrugged. Just as long as she’d warned her. Sally was a big girl. It wasn’t for Laura-Jo to interfere. And when a person had that look on her face that Sally was wearing now, Laura-Jo had the feeling that she would take no notice at all.

  ‘Here – have one of my brownies,’ she said, pushing a plate of chocolate cakes towards Sally. ‘They are almost – though not quite – as good as Mom used to make.’

  Sally took one. She had completely given up worrying about calorie counting and watching her weight this last few weeks. She had too many other things on her mind. Like being in love.

  She was seeing Stuart almost every night now and making love almost as often and it was almost always just as wonderful as that first time – better, because she had stopped being embarrassed or worrying about it. Stuart was careful – he ‘took precautions’ as he put it – and she wondered why she had been so terrified of something that could be so wonderful. Even better he had started talking about getting engaged and married, clear proof, if one were needed, that the old advice about men not marrying girls ‘who did’ was nothing but hokum. The first time he had mentioned it had been in a little pub in Kensington where Flamenco dancers performed and Sally thought there could have been no more romantic background to a proposal than the wonderful wild music and the rhythmic click of high heels and castanets.

  Sally stretched, deliciously happy. Already she had begun to plan the wedding. It would be at home, she decided, in the local church, not at Caxton Hall like Paula’s, and she would wear a dreamily romantic dress with a fall skirt and a veil. Perhaps Hugo would design it for her. Paula could be a matron-of-honour and perhaps she would ask Laura-Jo to be a bridesmaid too since it was through her that they had met. They might even go to America for their honeymoon. It was like a dream, a lovely exciting fairytale. Sally hoped fervently she would never wake up.

  Sally was worried. She sat hunched up on the sofa bed, her diary on her knee, doing quick calculations. Had she made a mistake? No, her period was definitely three weeks overdue. And last month she had been very late too and when at last to her immense relief she had found the tell-tale stains on her pants on one of her frequent hopeful visits to the bathroom the ‘ period’ had been strangely short and light – a few hours of extreme stomach cramp, a couple of lightly soiled Tampax and nothing more. What was even more ominous was that not only did her breasts feel swollen and tender but also she had felt definitely queazy the last two mornings and this afternoon at work she had almost fainted. She had laid her head down on her typewriter and taken deep breaths until the room had stopped spinning, but the queasiness had not gone away. She could feel it now, a leaden weight deep inside her, and the misgivings seem to rise and whirl from it.

  I can’t be pregnant! she thought. Stuart is always so careful! But despite all the arguments she put to herself deep down she knew that she was.

  For another week she continued to pray that she might be mistaken, waking each morning with fresh hope only to feel it slipping away with the onslaught of nausea. At last she could bear the suspense no longer. She paid a visit to her doctor and was upset but not surprised when he confirmed her suspicions.

  ‘Oh yes, you’re going to have a baby all right,’ he said, straightening up from examining her. ‘In about six months, I should say.’

  Sally lay very still on the couch. She had known it, yes, but hearing him put it into words was still a shock.

  ‘There’s no doubt?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘None. I’ll run a test if you like but I’m sure it will be positive.’ He was a Scotsman; his soft accent seemed to wash over her like a mountain stream. He turned his back to wash his hands and she slipped down from the couch, standing in her bare feet on the cold surgery floor.

  ‘You’re not married are you?’ he asked, casting a shrewd glance over his shoulder.

  ‘No,’ she said a trifle defiantly. ‘ But I am going to be.’

  ‘Good – good. Telephone my receptionist in three days or so for the test. And make an appointment to see me again in a month.’

  Sally nodded. She felt a little as if she might be drowning in a sea of unreality.

  When she left the surgery she walked for a long time. The keen November wind was cutting along the street, blowing the leaves that had fallen from the trees into sad huddles and the traffic swept past in an endless stream. Sally thrust her hands into her pockets and walked unseeing, her head bent.

  Pregnant. No big white wedding, no lovely carefree honeymoon in the States. Her parents would be shocked and disappointed. She dreaded telling them and facing their disapproval. Even more, for some reason she could net explain to herself, she dreaded telling Stuart. So far she had not mentioned her fears to him. She had kept them to herself because to put them into words was to give substance to the shadow and inexplicably she was afraid of his reaction. But now there could be no more shilly-shallying and self-deception. Plans had to be made and quickly. If they acted immediately perhaps the white wedding at least could be saved. She wouldn’t be the first bride to walk down the aisle in a froth of lace that concealed a spreading waistline. And if there were a few whispers behind cupped hands – well, so what? She and Stuart had intended to be married anyway and if everything was happening a little faster than they had meant it to, well, they would just have to adapt their plans accordingly.

  Through the pockets of her coat Sally surreptitiously ran her hands across her stomach. It was still quite flat though she had noticed the waistband of her skirts were tighter recently. A baby. Deep inside her a new life was beginning – and already begun. A baby. A real live bundle of tiny arms and legs, perfect little fingers and toes. Was it a boy or a girl? Would it be like her or like Stuart? Not that it mattered. She thoug
ht of the only baby she had ever known, born to the family who had lived next door to their council house home, remembering the powdery smell of him, the silken cap of hair, the way his blue eyes had gazed up at her, unwinking, trusting, and the wave of tenderness she had felt for him. And that had been someone else’s baby. This one would be hers – hers and Stuart’s. Perhaps being pregnant wasn’t so bad after all. Merely a bit inconvenient.

  Sally lifted her chin, looking around. Where on earth was she? She must have walked for miles. A taxi was cruising along the street and she raised her hand to hail it. Unreal. All so unreal.

  You’d better start getting a hold of yourself, my girl, she said to herself.

  ‘Where to?’ the taxi driver asked. He was looking at her curiously.

  ‘South Kensington,’ she said. ‘And please hurry.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ Stuart said. ‘Pregnant? You’ve got to be joking.’

  They were in their favourite Indian restaurant; they had ordered but the food had not yet come. Stuart’s expression was frankly disbelieving and his voice was loud enough to carry to the nearby tables. Sally began to wish she had waited until they were at home to tell him but now that she knew for certain she had been unable to keep it to herself for a moment longer.

  ‘Shh!’ she cautioned him. ‘The whole restaurant will hear you.’

  He scowled. ‘What do you expect?’ But his tone was lower. ‘What kind of thing is that to say to me? Pregnant!’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘The doctor ran some tests and I got the result today. I’m three months pregnant, Stuart.’

  ‘Bloody hell’

  The waiter arrived with their curries. Sally stared down at her hands, knotted in her lap, as he deftly set out the plates and the dish of chips Stuart had ordered.

  ‘Have you everything you require?’ he asked carefully. He was grinning. Sally wondered if he too had overheard Stuart. But even if he had his English was probably not good enough to understand. There was a quick turnover of waiters at the Rajah, all young men fresh from India – cousins, perhaps, or nephews or some other distant relatives of the proprietor, all using the restaurant as a stepping-stone to a new life.