by Angela Huth
‘So? Normally, you say I’m not efficient.’
‘I wouldn’t like you to be any efficienter. What did Jonathan think?’
‘He made up for anything I lacked in efficiency. He stocked up the whole store cupboard, one week. Things I would never have thought about. Only the best brands of everything. He was a terrible snob about marmalade. Nothing but Elsenham.’
‘You speak of him with great affection.’
‘It was rather endearing, his brand-snobbism. That’s all.’
Joshua reached for a cigarette. Our legs stayed in a confused knot.
‘You realise it’s the end of January?’ he asked.
‘Everybody’s been reminding me,’ I said.
'I have to leave for Mexico in three weeks. And you have to make your decision.’ He smoked almost to the end of his cigarette in silence. ‘Are you going back to Jonathan?’
I sighed.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s time.’
‘Not a lot.’ He crushed the cigarette out on his thumb. ‘And sadly, I’ll have to miss the kippers, unless you’d keep them for to-night.’
‘Why?’
‘Work.’
‘But it’s Sunday.’
‘So you say. I’m sorry, Face, really I am. But I’ve got to get this thing finished before we leave. When I say work, I mean work, you idiot. I’m not off with a blonde.’
‘With Annabel.’
‘I’m not off with Annabel.’
‘I believe you, but you’re always going’
‘Cheer up. I’m always having to cheer you up. I’ll be back about five, I expect. You can have a whole day to think in.’
He sat up, so I sat up.
‘I don’t need a whole day,’ I said. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going back to Jonathan.’
Joshua smiled disbelievingly.
‘How odd. If I’d had to put a bet on it, I would have sworn you would have decided the other way. So what will you do instead?’
‘Stay with you, of course.’
‘That might be difficult, fixing for you to come to Mexico. But you could wait for me to come back.’
We looked at each other for a long time.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘I haven’t been very nice to you, really, when you think about it. I can’t think why you want to stay.’
‘Don’t you want me to?’
He laughed.
‘Face, you must know me by now. As I never know what I want in the abstract, I’m usually fairly satisfied with whatever I have in reality.’
‘That doesn’t sound as if you would be exactly desperate without me.’
He took my chin in his hand and lifted my face towards him.
‘You funny thing,’ he said. ‘You funny, small thing.’ Very soon after he left the flat forgetting, as he sometimes did, to say good-bye.
Chapter Twelve
The first time I discovered I was pregnant was in Portsmouth, ten days after Richard had sailed for Barcelona. I had felt sick for several mornings, and skipped those hushed breakfasts alone in the dining-room. Finally, I went to a doctor. ‘Two months gone,’ he said.
It was news for my next letter to Richard. ‘Won’t that be lovely?’ I wrote, ‘I’ll be having it in April’ I sent the letter express. The baby would be a girl, I decided. Called Ophelia.
That night a searing pain strangled my stomach and I began to bleed. I rushed from the bathroom, a bath towel between my legs, and picked up the old, heavy telephone beside the bed. The receptionist, who had taken the job because it fitted in with her insomnia, took her usual three minutes to answer.
‘What is it, dear? It’s getting on for midnight.’
‘I need a doctor.’
‘A doctor?’
‘Yes. Quickly, please.’ The blood was beginning to soak the towel.
‘Is there anything the matter?’
‘Yes. I need a doctor.’
‘Is there anything I can do? I took a course in nursing, once, you know, myself – .’
‘Please,’ I said. She seemed immune to the urgency in my voice. ‘Please just get me a doctor.’
‘Well, Dr Harris, I know he’s on to-night. But then you know he hasn’t been well, himself, lately. I wouldn’t like to call him out unless it was really urgent.’
‘It is,’ I screamed.
Dr Harris arrived an hour later. The receptionist let him into my room.
‘Ooh dear,’ she said, when she saw me, ‘you did need a doctor.’ Dr Harris sent her to ring for an ambulance and immeasurable time later I groaned and cursed on the stiff white sheets of a hospital bed. By the next morning it was all over.
My mother came down to Portsmouth to drive me back to the hotel. She had gold chains on her crocodile shoes to match the handles of her crocodile bag. She was dismayed by the fact that I had been treated the same as everyone else.
‘Good heavens, darling, why on earth didn’t they get you into a private room?’ She wrapped a rug round me in the car and said I looked pale. ‘You’re such a worry, Clare. Are you sure you don’t want to come home for a few days? You know you can come whenever you like.’ I thanked her, but declined. She was used to my declining most of her invitations.
Back at the hotel she filled my hot water bottle and put a vast basket of fruit on the table beside my bed. It was wrapped in cellophane paper and topped with a cellophane bow.
‘There are figs, somewhere,’ she said, brightly, with the confidence that figs would cheer my day, ‘I know you’ve always loved figs.’
She paced about my room uncertain what to do, picking up then putting down her precious handbag. We listened to the rattle of the central heating and the croak of gulls, clear against the traffic noise, outside the window. Finally she picked up a photograph of Richard from the dressing-table, stiff and alert in his uniform.
‘What a good looking man Richard is, darling, isn’t he? So mature, I’ve always thought. Do you suppose he’ll fly back?’
‘Not for a moment,’ I said. ‘Anyhow, there’s no point.’
‘I suppose not.’ She picked up her bag again. ‘I must be off, I suppose. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want? Just let me know if there is. Ring me any time, won’t you?’ She bent down to kiss me. She smelt sickeningly of the oily gardenia scent she always wore. ‘I hope you don’t mind my going, but you know what it is. It’s such a busy time of year, one way and another. – No, no. It hasn’t been a trouble, coming all the way down here. You mustn’t think that.’
Three days later came the reply to my first letter to Richard. ‘How lovely, little one, as you say. I’m sure it’ll be a boy. We can call it either Richard or Clive – both family names. You choose. I don’t mind as long as it’s one of those. I will, of course, expect him to follow in the naval tradition of our family. Anything else would be unthinkable. Take care of yourself and I’ll be home long before April… ’
That night he rang me from Barcelona.
‘So sorry to hear, little one.’ He sounded quite sad. ‘Still, these things happen. Don’t take it too badly. We’ll try again next time I’m back.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I felt no enthusiasm about starting again. My stomach ached and my room was a huge, vacant gap all around me. ‘I wish,’ I said, ‘I could join you in Spain. I’d like to be with you.’ There was a long pause.
‘Little one,’ he said, at last. ‘I don’t think you should. For your own sake. You’d do much better to recover where you are, quietly. I’m out most of the day, and you know what the food’s like over here.’
‘None of that would matter,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you should,’ he repeated. I felt cold. My hand began to sweat on the receiver of the telephone.
‘I could spend most of my time lying on the beach,’ I said.
‘The beach isn’t very nice.’
‘Well, I could drive about.’
‘You don’t speak Spanish.’
‘I
could get by.’
‘I don’t think you should.’ He sighed. I sighed.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here.’
‘Oh, little one.’ His relief was infinite. ‘I think you’ll find I’m right. I’ll call you again soon. Or you ring me, any time, if you want anything, won’t you?’
I got up the next day and went back to normal life. The days went slowly as they had done before. Richard didn’t ring again. Three weeks went by. Then a letter:
‘Little one,
How can I ever explain? You know I once told you about a woman called Matilda? Well, in a word, I love her. I have fought it, she has fought it, but there is no denying it. We are in love with one another. We live together and want to get married one day. None of that is to say I don’t love you. In a strange way I still do, and perhaps always will. I will always think of you as my Little One. Please, please don’t take it too badly. These things happen. Perhaps we should never have married. Your mother always said I was baby snatching. But still, I believed in it, in us, at the time. Oh dear, I never have been very good at letters. I’m putting it all very badly. You can cite Matilda, of course. Your father will know a good solicitor. I think of you often. I wish this needn’t have happened just after the miscarriage, but love attaches little importance to timing, does it, and I felt it would be wrong to keep it from you any longer.
Please forgive me if you can, and don’t think badly of the many good times we’ve had together.
Love, Richard.’
*
The second time, with only two weeks to go before Joshua went to Mexico, I felt sick in the evenings. I had kept it from him for a couple of weeks, but decided to tell him when he came home that Sunday from work.
‘Two bits of news in one day,’ I said. ‘Not only am I not going back to Jonathan – ’
‘ – but you’re pregant too, I suppose.’ He was flipping his vodka backwards and forwards in the glass.
‘Exactly. How did you know?’
‘You look pregnant,’ he said. ‘You’ve looked very-careful for the last two weeks.’ I laughed. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’
‘Of course I am.’ He paused. ‘Did you mean to?’
‘No, honestly.’
‘I believe you.’ He smiled, quite kindly. ‘The only thing is, don’t forget, I haven’t said anything about marriage.’
‘Nor have I,’ I said.
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Do about it?’
‘Are you going to have it?’
‘Have it?–’
‘Are you going to have it, I said ?’ I paused to think, pushing the ice cubes round my glass with a numb finger. At last I said:
‘Of course I’m going to have it.’
‘I see.’ He got up and went over to the table for a packet of cigarettes, not looking at me. ‘If you changed your mind, I know a particularly good doctor, even though it’s all legal now.’
‘But I’m not going to change my mind. Don’t you see? I want it.’ Joshua sighed and went back to another seat, farther from me.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘you’d better find us somewhere to live. Quickly. We couldn’t stay here with a child.’
‘Of course not.’ Potential houses. Prams. Joshua lifting it up to look at it when he came home. Warm milk, small fingers. I began to drown in a heavy calm. Mrs Fox would knit things. ‘And there’s just one other thing,’ I said.
‘I know what that is, too.’ Joshua shifted about on the sofa, unusually restless. ‘As you’re pregnant, it would be quicker and easier and generally more convenient if Jonathan cited me in the divorce. Yes, I accept that too. Is there anything else, while we’re about it?’ He was frowning. I got up and went over to him.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Go and sit down or you’ll feel sick.’ I stood my ground. ‘Go on. You must take care.’ He seemed briefly concerned. I went back to the sofa.
‘About the divorce – ‘ I said.
‘There’s no more to be said.’ He stubbed his cigarette out with his thumb. ‘I’ve agreed happily to being cited. You go ahead and do whatever it is you have to do, as fast as possible, for the sake of the baby. I won’t make any kind of fuss, I promise, and the whole pattern will fall into place. We will all play our parts, Jonathan and I, I’ve no doubt, just as you imagined. It will all be very neat and easy and tidy. No fuss. First husband dies, second husband is divorced, lover agrees to support both you and his child. What more could you want? – Oh, and probably, if you play your cards right, which no doubt being you you will, one day I might even offer you marriage as well. So there’s a lovely future for you, all planned out. All lovely –’
‘ – Joshua!’ I rose in a daze of nausea and tears.
‘Sit down. You’ll feel sick. Stop stomping about.’
‘I do feel sick.’
‘Sit down, then.’ I sat. There was a long silence. Neither of us could think of anything to say. Then:
‘I won’t have it if you really don’t want it,’ I said. ‘I could have an abortion.’
‘No, no. You wouldn’t want that.’
‘Would you?’
‘Probably not, when it came to it. I’m sorry, Face. As usual, I went too far.’ He smiled. ‘But you’ve sprung a lot on me in one day.’ I smiled back.
‘Oughtn’t we do something?’ I asked.
‘You have an infallibly awful sense of occasion,’ he said, ‘but as there’s no food in the place, I suppose we ought. If you’re not feeling too sick, we’d better go out to dinner.’
*
The morning Jonathan brought home the pink toy bear for our unconceived baby he also brought pink roses and the inevitable bottle of champagne.
‘This is nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing compared with what I shall bring when the real time comes. You won’t believe it. I shall have bells rung, guns fired, jewellery delivered. … You wait.’ He was in one of his gayest moods, happy to be away from his study and the blank sheet of paper. He scooped my hair up behind my ears and held it high in an untidy bun. ‘My darling Suki Soo, if you could ever for one moment believe how much I loved you –’, he stooped to kiss the neck he had made naked, ‘ – well, you couldn’t ever believe it. Now. Let’s open the bottle.’
Jonathan toasted our future child. We sat there, side by side on the chintz sofa, hand in hand – his hands were always warm and very soft – Jonathan cooing about what he and his son would do together when the time came. He kissed me on the cheeks, the eyelids, the temples, his lips wet and bubbly with the champagne. He had taken off his coat. He sat in his braces, his shirt very white in the morning sun which slanted through the room and lit up the pot plants in their vases, still tied up in bows.
I drank till I felt weak and dizzy. I laughed and giggled and kissed Jonathan back, on the nose, on the puffy jaws that tasted of after-shave, and at last I was able to say, with all conviction, that I agreed with him. It would be nice to have his baby.
*
Joshua woke in the middle of the night. He put his hand on my stomach.
‘The awful thing is, Face,’ he said, ‘that it looks as if I will probably have to be in Mexico for at least three months. Will you be all right?’
*
Some nights later I was wakened by sharp, familiar pains in my back and stomach. It was three o’clock. I woke Joshua.
‘There’s something wrong.’
‘Oh God.’ He put on the light. ‘Same as before?’ I nodded. He smoothed his hand gently over my stomach and down between my legs. Then he drew it back to the light. It was covered in blood.
‘So the plans have gone wrong after all,’ I said.
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can save it.’
Everything happened very quickly. I heard him telephoning people, making arrangements in short snappy sentences. I heard my own moans as he lifted me from the bed, wrapped me in a blanket and carried me to the car. The leather of the car seat was ve
ry cold. As the engine shuddered to a start I bent double, trying to shut out the pain.
‘Hold on, Face,’ I think Joshua said. ‘The doctor said it would be better if we got you in. I thought I could make it quicker than an ambulance.’
The car screamed through empty streets, the blood rushed warm down my legs.
‘The floor of your car,’ I kept saying. ‘I’m sorry about the floor of your car.’
Someone met us with a stretcher. Grey corridors blistered with neon lights waved like streamers past my eyes. Then there was a white room that smelt of disinfectant. Badly drawn dog-roses on the beige curtains. A nurse bent over me. Three blackheads shaped like a clover leaf were stamped on the side of her nose, sharp points in her starchy skin. She gave me something bitter to drink. A doctor came in and patted me on the flanks like a friendly farmer.
‘How is she feeling, then?’ he asked Joshua, as if I wasn’t there. He flicked down the sheets, lifted my nightgown and pulled the reading lamp, on its metal arm, towards him. Joshua held my hand.
Hours later the doctor came back again. His face was stripped into a thousand coiling pieces as if it had been through a mincer.
‘Good heavens, what a thing, you’re biting the sheet, sheet, sheet, sheet….’ he said, his voice echoing away. I felt Joshua fold up both my hands like a ball of wool and hold them in both his. Then the doctor’s voice came again.
‘I’m afraid that’s that,’ he said. ‘That’s that, that’s that, that’s that…’ I could hear watery noises on the lino floor, someone with a mop, the crackling of paper, nurses’ quick feet going tap-tap, tap-tap, the dry rub of the doctor’s hands. But when I opened my eyes they had all gone. All but Joshua.
‘Oh, Face,’ he said. ‘Are you awake?’ He bent his head down over mine. ‘I didn’t want that to happen, either.’ Then he got up brusquely and strode over to another part of the room, so that without moving my head I couldn’t see him any more.
‘I’ll leave you to sleep,’ he said. ‘I must go. It’s getting on for eleven. The doctor said it would be a good idea for you to stay here for a few days. You’re a bit torn about.’ He returned to my bed and stood looking down at me.