‘It’s hardly ridiculous to want a baby, Frances. Most women do.’
‘That’s exactly it. Most women do, so all women must. And, if you don’t, you’re a freak, and a monster and a … Yes, Viv, I admit I feel ashamed. It’s so much easier to be normal and maternal and want the things which other women want. It’s almost wicked and unnatural to realize you’ve no desire to procreate, that the thing you’ve set your heart on for the past few years suddenly means less than nothing. What do I do now, for heaven’s sake? Return to the fashion world and write hollow puffs about thigh-length boots and bat-wing sleeves? Or take refuge in Good Works? Or buy a goldfish?’ The words were pouring out, struggling past her throbbing, grudging head, blasting through the sewer of her mouth. It was as if she had been wound up to some frantic fever pitch, and all the wine she had gulped down at the party had turned into spurts of clumsy, drunken rhetoric. ‘My whole existence feels as if it’s been wrenched inside out. I hardly dare examine it too closely, in case I find out something even worse about myself. God! I realize now why women daren’t be different. It’s just too terrifying.’
Viv took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re just upset, that’s all. Don’t you see, you’ve had such an awful shock about the baby, you’re trying to drown it in a tide of words. It’s just a form of rationalizing. You wanted that child so desperately, now you’ve got to persuade yourself you didn’t – just to make it bearable.’
Frances snatched the hand away. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s rubbish! You’re as bad as Charles. You both refuse to allow me any opinions of my own. You’re rationalizing things as much as I am. You’re so horrified that any woman might prefer not to be pregnant, you’ve got to twist it round.’
She groped to her feet and started clearing up. Her body seemed to be blundering a pace or two behind her, as if she were dragging it along on a broken string.
Viv tried to sit her down again. ‘I don’t want to sound smug, but you can’t really know about having babies, until you’ve actually got one in your arms.’
Frances swung round to face her, almost fell. ‘And what d’you do then, I’d like to ask, if you find you still don’t want it?’
‘But you will, Frances. You told me yourself you’d been longing for a child. That’s a true, natural, undistorted instinct. It’s stupid to disown it, just because you’ve been disappointed once. You go on trying, love – with Charles, I mean – and I’m sure you’ll have one soon. Then you’ll realize that all this intellectualizing is nothing but sour grapes.’
‘Oh, shit, Viv! Look, I’m sorry, but you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. I keep trying to tell you, what I actually wanted all the time had nothing to do with babies. It was only a sort of pride. Trying to prove myself, that’s all; do what was expected of me, not let anyone down, least of all myself.’ Frances leaned her head against the cold glass of the bookcase. Her tongue had been taken away and swapped with somebody else’s. The new one didn’t fit, just sat there, hot and swollen in her mouth, choking all her words. Yet, she had to go on talking, had to tell the world what she believed.
‘Look, Viv, what’s the very first word we all learn? Mama! We don’t even know what it means, before we’re lisping it. We have to be mothers. That’s what we’re made for. Society tells us, and so does our biology. Even all the great religions put in a plug for motherhood. It’s like the Annunciation, in a way. You just fold your hands on your cosy little prie-dieu – and lo! – God fills your womb and your life, and everyone bows down to you as a Sacred Receptacle.’
She stopped. Nobody was listening, not the world, not Viv. All she was doing was mouthing soggy, reconstituted words which she had picked out of other people’s mouths like scraps of food. She wasn’t even sure if she believed them herself, and they were hardly flattering to Viv, who had filled her life with five Annunciations. Perhaps it was sour grapes. So much easier to cloud the air with slogans, than face up honestly to your own conflicting feelings. She slung an empty bottle in the wastebin. Why was she always so confused? Other women seemed to know what they wanted, whether it was half a dozen pregnancies, or a seat on the Board. All she was certain of was a labyrinth of question marks. ‘Forgive me, Viv. I don’t know why I’m ranting on like this. I sound like a fanatic women’s libber, yet really, I’m so muddled. It’s not just this baby thing, it’s the whole of my life. It’s all in such a mess, I just don’t know what to do.’
‘What d’you mean, do?’
‘Well, Charles … last night and everything. I mean, how on earth …’
‘He’ll forgive you, Frances. Oh, I admit he was horrified, but I talked him out of it. I told him what a shock it must have been for you.’
Frances rammed an ashtray back on to the sideboard. ‘Forgive me? I don’t want him to forgive me. It’s me that should … OUCH!’ She clutched her hands across her stomach. ‘This blasted period! I’ve never had one like it. It’s so painful, I can hardly …’
‘You shouldn’t be clearing up, then. I’ll get you a hot water bottle, shall I? There’s plenty of hot water in the kettle.’ She stopped suddenly, with her hand on the door knob. ‘Hey, Frances …’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just thought of something.’
‘Well, what?’
‘Perhaps it isn’t just a period. I mean, couldn’t it be an early miscarriage? Did you think of that?’
Frances laughed, unconvincingly. ‘No, Viv.’
‘Well, it could be. You might be pregnant, after all. You might even save it.’
‘No, Viv.’
‘Don’t keep saying ‘‘No, Viv.’’ You can’t be sure.’
‘Oh yes, I can.’
‘Don’t be silly, Frances, there’s no real way of telling – not at this early stage. It would seem like an ordinary period, only heavier.’
‘And that’s exactly what it is: an ordinary period, only heavier.’
‘Honestly, Frances, you’re so determined not to be pregnant, you’re simply overreacting. You must be. I mean, when you can’t even admit …’
‘Look, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t told you everything.’
‘You haven’t told me anything.’ Viv flounced through the door, towards the kitchen.
Frances stared out of the window at the cruel, green brashness of the lawn. It still seemed incredible that it should be morning, summer, bright. It was dark in her head, like her last dark night at Acton. She had stayed there till the early hours, listening to a Ned she’d never glimpsed before. She’d vowed never to mention it to anyone. She closed her eyes a moment against the insolent dazzle of the sun. Her body wanted to creep into darkness, close down on itself, hibernate for a hundred torpid years …
Something warm and clammy nudged her in the belly. Viv had lumbered in again and slipped a plump pink hot water bottle into her arms. It was cradled in a soft white towel like a baby in its shawl. Frances held it close. Her phantom baby. She remembered the absurdly premature things she’d done for it, gulping extra vitamins, buying a guard for Ned’s electric fire, even a Dr Spock.
‘Look, Viv, I really don’t know how to tell you. It’s so – well, humiliating.’
‘Oh come on, love. I shan’t mind. You know me.’
Frances trailed back to the sofa and slumped down against the cushions. ‘Well, you see … I … I couldn’t have been pregnant, anyway.’ She yanked the towel almost roughly from the hot water bottle, leaving it naked and exposed.
‘Frances, you’re driving me mad with these dramatic pauses. What d’you mean, you couldn’t have been pregnant?’
Frances was twisting the towel tighter and tighter around the rubber neck of the bottle, as if she were trying to strangle it.
‘Well, Ned …’
‘Who’s Ned?’
‘Oh, Viv, you know, the father.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, love, I didn’t know his name. Charles didn’t give him one.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. Well, he – Ned, I mean
…’
‘Yes?’
Frances flung towel and bottle away from her. They fell with a muffled gasp on to the carpet. ‘He had a vasectomy two years ago.’
‘What?’
Frances began to laugh. She sprawled back against the sofa and let her body fall into it, heavy and helpless with laughter. Tears were running down her cheeks, gusts of laughter grabbing her by the throat, shaking her whole body, colliding with her breath. ‘Oh, Viv, it’s so funny. It’s so terribly funny …’
Viv tried to smile herself. ‘Why on earth did he do that, Frances?’
‘He … he …’ Frances could hardly speak for laughter. It was a harsh, grinding pain between her ribs, rocking the sofa, tearing at her chest. ‘I mean, there I was, mooning around being gloriously pregnant by a man who had … had … hadn’t …’ The guffaws cut her off again.
Viv plaited and unplaited the silk fringe on the cushion. She could hear the radio droning in the kitchen, almost drowned by Frances’ splutterings. She waited. Frances wiped her eyes. She was still laughing, but weakly now, her body limp like a piece of crumpled paper.
‘Well, you see, his … wife was terrified of having children. She’d had a botched abortion in her teens. Every time they made love, she got into a panic, imagining she was pregnant. She couldn’t take the Pill – some medical reason – I’m not sure exactly what. So, in the end, Ned agreed to a vasectomy – much against his will. He wanted kids.’
How flat it sounded. The story of a life. Or half a life. Ned had made it comic, played it as a farce. The surgeon rambling on about the test score while he snipped Ned’s balls with nail scissors, Ned borrowing his little sister’s bikini bottoms to keep the dressing tight. The sequel wasn’t quite so funny. Six months later, his wife was pregnant by another man.
She realized Ned was bitter. He had still kept up the banter, but she’d heard the resentment scowling underneath, curdling all his jokes. Ned survived by clowning. It was a life-escape, like Charles’. But, now she had discovered there was hurt and bitterness behind it, it wasn’t so diverting any more. She needed Ned to be her court jester, a sparkling, surface person, whose job was only to amuse. Once she’d found the scars beneath pierrot’s painted face, the whole carnival collapsed.
She had lain there, silent, on Ned’s crumpled, sway-back bed, feeling like a stillborn child herself. First, the shock of her period, and the double shock of realizing she was glad about it. Next, the crazy laughter, which ended up with their making love again. Then while they were still bloody and entangled, she had somehow blurted out the whole, stupid story of her phantom pregnancy. Which Ned had countered with his Eunuch’s Tale. She’d been so angry, so astounded, she’d simply stared at him. Why, in God’s name, couldn’t he have told her at the start of their relationship, saved her all that crowing jubilation, those wrenching conflicts, that absurd, agonizing build-up to Day Thirty-Five?
Ned had been angrier still. He didn’t want a clucking, broody hen fussing into his nest and trying to take it over, some woman he had valued as unobtainable and independent, helping herself to his sperm, so that she could turn him into a father by stealth and subterfuge.
‘How could you, Fran? You can’t go around using men like that, creating life one-sidedly and irresponsibly.’ He had sat cross-legged on the lino, raging at her, repeating her own most secret and shameful self-accusations, while midnight sulked into two A.M. and the whole happy myth of pastoral parenthood shattered into a thousand tiny fragments.
‘I can hardly be accused of creating anything, now you tell me you’ve been … neutered.’
He winced. ‘But you didn’t know I had, Fran.’
‘And whose fault was that? At least, you might have told me at the time.’
‘I’ve told other women. And they never believe you, anyway. I’m beginning to think it’s more or less impossible to have an honest relationship with any female at all. That’s probably why I live with two male cats.’
The bantering again, disguising the hurt. All those jokes she’d laughed at were not just a bachelor’s simple-minded clowning – there were treacherous currents swirling underneath. But, like Charles, he disguised them. She’d assumed she could read Ned like a book, but she’d never got further than the jolly, blue-skied picture grinning on the front.
The Ned inside was different. Almost as limited as Charles, in some respects. Because he’d been hurt, he wouldn’t take life seriously again. She was right to have left the lion behind at Acton – a plaything for a little boy, a Peter Pan who refused to grow up, or build a new relationship, or believe in the future. Whereas Charles could live only in the future, barricading himself from the terrifying impact of the present. She was caught between them, uncertain of the way out of the maze she’d made by circling round them both, knowing only that both were wrong.
She was surprised to look up and see Viv still sitting there, pouring a second round of tea. A hundred thousand hours had passed since the last bloody dregs of that aborted Friday evening, to this hung-over Sunday morning in her own pale and shaky drawing-room. Only Viv looked real, substantial, bright. ‘I’m really sorry, darling,’ she was saying. ‘You’ve had a rotten time of it. Never mind – at least it’s over now. You can pick up the pieces and pretend it never happened.’
‘Viv, for heaven’s sake …’
Oh, what was the use? Viv would never understand. She didn’t really understand herself. It was easy to whoop with laughter because your period had started, but what did you do when the laughter died away? You still had all those empty years to fill. A child would take care of a score of them, at least. Twenty years less to fret and agonize in, twenty years less to wonder who you were. But, if you didn’t want a child …? The women’s libbers always claimed their freedom with some goal in mind; a career, a mission, some social or artistic purpose, even self-fulfilment. But Frances Parry Jones was just a selfish little rich girl who didn’t even like her job, and had no real aim or ambition in her life. She had never panted to discover a lost tribe, or itched to write a symphony. She tried hard to care about underpaid garment workers in the Midlands, or the dwindling numbers of the blue whale, but she knew she’d never be marching in Hyde Park, or setting light to herself with petrol cans. All she could feel was a grey, echoing emptiness.
For the last few years, she’d had her goal, marching to the stirring music of her own menstrual cycle. An easy way of filling up the days, eyes fixed only on the month ahead, clear battle orders from Major General Rathbone, and support from every mother in the land. Now, she knew it was only the myth and mystique she’d wanted, the discipline, the ritual, something to swell the hollowness inside. The charts had been comforting, like Charles’ notebooks and yearly planning guides – lists and tabulations to keep the terror out, to stifle any possibility of mystery or chaos. Without them, life was no longer tidily divided into twenty-eight-day pieces, but stretched out to a limitless horizon that was only a terrifying haze. Hundreds of women would envy her her freedom. She didn’t even have to earn her living, or her luxuries. How could she admit she almost craved to be a low-paid garment worker? Nose to the grindstone at least stopped speculation, mopped up that eternity of days.
She picked up the dishcloth and made a half-hearted swipe at the table. Better to be a plodding skivvy than a paralysed philosopher. Or was it? Germaine Greer would disagree – not to mention Mrs Eady. It was all so complicated. If only she’d been born a hundred years ago, and could divide her time between bottling damsons and her drawing master, without being branded as a traitor to her sex.
Viv eased the dishcloth gently from her hand. ‘I’ll do that. You go and lie down.’
‘No, I’m going to bottle damsons.’
‘Damsons? Now? What for?’
‘Oh, just a joke.’ Frances didn’t laugh. ‘Viv, d’you ever feel … everything’s so …?’
There was a sudden uproar in the passage. The front door slammed and feet pounded up the hall. Frances froze. Charles? No,
he’d never run. Ned? Laura? Oppenheimer, come to get revenge?
‘Viv, I’m not here. I can’t face anyone.’ She dashed to the door to hide, collided with a panting figure in odd shoes and a shabby coat flung over its pyjamas. Bunty. The child pushed Frances to one side, grabbed her mother by the arm.
‘Quick, Mum!’ she shouted. ‘You must come home. It’s Magda. She’s run away from school.’
Chapter Twenty One
‘Frances, you can’t send her back. It’s downright cruel. Even if the nuns would have her, which they probably won’t …’ Viv was baking in her steamy, crowded kitchen. She flung sliced apples into a pyrex dish, showered them with brown sugar.
Bunty was licking out the mixing bowl. ‘They read all her letters,’ she announced, through a fingerful of uncooked dough. ‘She told me. That’s why she didn’t write. And they make you wear your PT shorts just below your knees.’ She giggled. ‘All the girls had to kneel in the assembly hall, and two nuns marched round inspecting them, and if their shorts didn’t touch the floor they had to let them down, go and fetch their sewing things, and miss tea and recreation. Magda cut hers off, instead. They were so short, they were like a pair of knickers, and all jagged round the edges. The nuns were furious. She had to wear her Sunday frock on Monday as a punishment, and a black veil on her head, and kneel in the chapel for two whole hours.’
‘What’s a Sunday frock?’ asked Philip, who was bashing nails into a block of wood. Frances and the table jumped every time another nail went in.
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