by Ray Connolly
We went home early that day. She didn’t have to say that she was ill, because she couldn’t hide it. And by the time we were home she was very quiet. And went straight to bed, calling me in before I went to sleep to tell me through a thick and hoarse throat that she thought she had tonsilitis and she would ask Grandma to make the blackberry tart tomorrow, and you be a good boy because I’ll probably have to stay in bed for about a week if I have got tonsilitis. She never said anything about diphtheria. Nor did the doctor who came to visit. No one said anything about diphtheria until her throat was closing up and her breath wouldn’t come and her face was purple from trying to breathe through infected tubes. And then they wouldn’t let me in to play on her bed. And they kept me away from school. And the other children. In a lonely quarantine. And even away from mass. Though I fell asleep at night singing hymns for her. To get well. And be my mother again.
‘When … how soon is the baby due?’ Clare was gazing at her knuckles, white from clutching into each other so tightly.
‘September. Maybe October.’
Suddenly I felt stifled and I was on my feet and turning quickly away.
‘Congratulations.’ The word was thrown awkwardly, bitterly over my shoulder. Clare didn’t move, or show any emotion. She must have been prepared for anything. Memories of the long winter flooded my mind. Of New Year’s Eve, and her Judas kiss goodnight. And the hours of waiting and praying. I wondered, was it the executioner, whose face I’d never seen. And when it had happened. Had she spent the next few weeks playing Russian roulette with her ovaries? Strange that she should have made me take such care, but been so careless with somebody else. And yet, now that I thought about it, she’d never mentioned contraception after that very first night. She’d always left it up to me. And trusted me. Silly girl. No man can be trusted at a time like that.
‘Why have you come to me?’ My voice sounded distant: my mind was in a state of shock. Clare refused to look up. Gripping tightly to the edge of her chair, her face expressionless.
‘There’s nobody else to tell. Nobody who would be interested.’
‘There’s the father,’ I said, surprising myself with the viciousness of my voice. A bitterness that I knew already was only a skin over a well of pain: a veil over compassion.
‘He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. He doesn’t even know me. And I don’t know him.’
And why should he know? Do I know every girl I’ve been with? You put it in, empty it and pull it out. And that’s that. Good night, love. I hope you’ve had the sense to look after yourself, because I didn’t look after you. How can I blame her? Or him? How do I know that Mary Jane Tinhorn isn’t pregnant in Phoenix, Arizona, right now? Getting bigger every day? Carrying my baby? I never stopped to ask was it all right, was she equipped with pill, coil, loop or jelly. We’re mad. We’ve disassociated sex from babies as well as from love. The only fear now is, will she have some socially embarrassing infection? Every young girl these days has the wit to take care of herself, we think. But can I be certain that I’m not the father of a family already? Can any man? Screw them. Then scrap them. And never another thought about whether a foetus sired by Benedict Kelly on some careless night was last seen floating in a plastic sandwich box down the river to join the other water-babies.
‘Easy lay then, weren’t you!’ Clare not reacting. Her eyes stony. Slight bags under them that were never there before. You should have stuck to nursing, love, you were safer there. Or stayed in your Guildford cocoon, and forced the blackguard to marry you while the local tennis club made a guard of honour with unsheathed tennis rackets. Which would have a Freudian suitability for the occasion. A naughty girl who let her knickers down. Tou should have got yourself fitted up, Clare. Or the pill, or something. Probably he assumed you were. Most girls are these days. Well, most girls that want to do it are.’ See how easily my temper subsides. But still no expression of fear, regret, remorse or even worry from Clare. So cool. Accepting anything that I might throw at her. You’d be wiser, my love, to consider shedding a few tears, if it’s my pity that you’re after. Yet I don’t believe that’s what you came for. Not really. ‘What will you do?’
Clare shaking her head. Yet she must have thought of nothing else for weeks.
‘You are sure, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You’ve seen a doctor and all that.’
‘Yes. I couldn’t believe it at first. It just didn’t seem possible. So I waited until my second period didn’t come. And then went to the doctor’s…’
I waited, encouraging her to go on by my silence.
‘…I had this strange, silly feeling inside of me that said that nine months is so far away that it will never happen. And then I’d panic and think it would begin to show straight away. I went home last week, and although I know it’s too early I had the feeling that my father could tell. Although I know really that he wouldn’t notice if I were twelve stone and eight and a half months gone.’
‘He doesn’t know?’
‘No. I told you. Nobody knows. Except you.’
‘Will you have an abortion?’
‘Would you advise it?’
‘I don’t think it’s really up to me to advise anything. I’m not involved. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other… if you want an abortion then I’m sure your friend Tibby will know any number of phone numbers. Or you could get it done on the National Health if you have a sympathetic doctor … I mean, there’s nothing easier … I’d ask Tibby if I were you. She’ll know all about these things.’
‘I didn’t think you agreed with casual abortions.’ Clare ignoring my callous dismissals. Trying to draw me in. To involve me.
‘For Christ’s sake. I keep telling you. It doesn’t matter what I think. Or what I’d do. You went out of here on New Year’s Eve like a little girl going to a church party, and for months, for three bloody months I didn’t hear … not one word from you. You said you’d come back and talk. Do you remember that? You promised me that, at least. And I waited. For weeks. While you were getting yourself fucked and pregnant. And now you come back, as cool as you like, and try to involve me in it all. I mean … for Christ’s sake … I never expected you to love … to want me the way I used to think I wanted you. But you could have let me down gently. I mean you could have telephoned. Just once. Don’t you realise what it’s like to be hurt by someone? You can’t be so bloody insensitive. I would have done anything, anything you wanted, to have made you happy. To have kept you. But you went. To your bedsitter in Ladbroke Grove. And I waited here, by that bloody phone. So it’s no good coming back now looking sorry for yourself and expecting sympathy … I’m sorry you got pregnant, but apart from that it doesn’t concern me. You’ll have to decide what to do by yourself.’
Clare let out a deep breath, as though expelling an unspoken tension. A slight shining about her eyes. But she showed no emotion. Half ashamed of my outburst I turned round and gazed gloomily into the garden. I sensed Clare was watching me in a silence which grew increasingly oppressive.
‘Oh Christ—I’m sorry, Clare. I don’t suppose now is the best time to start reproaching you. I know it wasn’t your fault, any more than it was mine. Not really.’
‘It was all my fault. And … I am sorry for what I did to you.’ Clare playing nervously with a loop of her hair which had been curling round her face and under her chin. ‘Look. I’d better go now. I don’t really know why I came. I think just to say that I was sorry. No, that’s not the only reason. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t keep it inside any longer. And you seemed to be the only one … the only person I wanted to tell. I didn’t really intend to mix you up in it all. Not in all the mess. But I can see that it would. You must hate me for all this … anyway, I’ll go now. I wanted to see you again…’
‘You don’t have to go yet, Clare. Stay a little longer. You know I couldn’t hate you. I didn’t mean half of what I said.’
‘Yes you did. And I think I should go.’
‘I’ll give you a lift.’
‘No. Thanks any way. I’d like a walk over the hill. It’s not that far.’
Clare through the hall and outside. Clean as I’d remembered her all those months. Her lips turning down in that expression of comic fatalism.
‘Well. Goodbye.’
‘Clare…’ I struggled with a tiger inside my mind. ‘Clare, what’s your phone number?’
Edging the white Citroën into the side of the kerb and turning off the engine I snuggled back in the blue armchair seat, and gazed apprehensively up at the dismal crumbling façade of elaborate Victoriana towering above the street. While Saturday had been sunny and warm with a false hint of the approaching summer, a cold front had moved in from the Atlantic during the night and Sunday was chilly and wet, with squally showers punctuating a steady and heavy drizzle. Peering over my shoulder I stared up at the tiny fourth-floor windows, and wondered which one she was watching from. Then at street level a shabby scarlet door opened, and Clare slipped out into the rain, running towards the car, bibbed dungarees pushed into an old pair of Wellingtons and plastic mac held over her head. This had been our arrangement. I was to wait in the street, and she would come down. As she neared the car, I leaned across and swung the passenger door open for her.
‘Put your mac in the back.’ It fell onto the floor, and little lakes of rainwater began to form on the carpet. I started the engine, and turned on the heater.
‘Why did you phone?’
‘Oh, you know, I felt just a bit worried about you. Well, I felt guilty actually, about all the things I said yesterday, and so I thought perhaps we could talk about things with a bit less passion, and a bit more common sense. Or rather with less passion from me.’
‘Oh, I see. I thought you didn’t want to get involved.’
Her tone was gently chiding. And irritating. ‘I can’t help but be involved,’ I said.
For several moments we sat in silence. Already I realised that I’d started out by snapping at her, when all morning I’d been promising myself that I wouldn’t say anything which might upset her. But of course I was involved. I’d been involved since the moment I met her and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. I did care what happened to her. Yesterday she’d come back into my life, and since I saw her I’d thought of nothing else. And again my mind had gone over and over the erotically miserable fantasies that had plagued me months ago. But all the same the practicalities of the situation needed to be faced. Unhappily I had remembered, late in the night, that I hadn’t even bothered to ask her if she wanted the baby or not. The shock had been like a thump in the eye. Pregnant. Oh God! Yet seeing her again had excited me.
‘What do you think I should do then?’
‘Well…’ I tried desperately to remember what I’d been going to say to her. ‘I don’t think you should have an abortion.’
‘Why not?’ For a moment I thought I caught a slight tease in her voice. But dismissed it as a figment of my imagination.
‘Well … well they’re not bloody seals, you know…’
‘They’re not what?’
‘Not baby seals. You can’t just club them over the head and crush their brains and pretend that they don’t matter. Everybody’s always going on about the quality of life all the time, but nobody ever seems to care about the value of life any more, and if you’re a baby you haven’t got much say in it. Nobody ever asks the aborted baby what he thinks of the quality of life, or the ecological problems or anything. They just rip them out and shove them on the side, and if they’re not dead, they leave them until they are. And that’s true. It was in the Guardian. Everybody’s rushing in and out for lunch-hour abortions all the time…’
Clare stared at me with astonishment, while I scratched the back of my head, trying like mad to remember the lines from the mental script I’d prepared.
‘I mean it’s not as though you’re not healthy or something like that. You could have a baby, and be a good mother … and everything…’
‘For God’s sake, Benedict, doesn’t the mother have any right to decide what she’s going to do with her body? You’re totally obsessed with an irrational opposition to the whole question of abortion. Is it right that anyone should bring into the world a child that she doesn’t want, and that no one will want? Or that she can’t keep? Life isn’t only flesh and blood. Doesn’t the mother have any rights to decide for herself?’
‘She shouldn’t get pregnant, then. She should decide earlier what she’s going to do with her body. You could be a good mother. I know it. Really, you mustn’t get rid of it. I don’t want you to.’
Clare smiled affectionately. And patted my arm: ‘I thought you’d come to talk dispassionately about things. You couldn’t discuss the weather, let alone abortion without your emotions running the conversation for you. I don’t know… D’you remember when you first came to St Jude’s that afternoon? When we first met. I heard the other nurses saying they’d never had anybody come in in the state you were. You looked as if we were going to strap you down and electrocute you. You wear your emotions around you like a coat … and whenever anything clashes with your Catholic upbringing you’re thrown into complete emotional confusion.’
There was something in Clare’s tone which annoyed me, and I wanted to defend myself, but somehow I could only listen. I think she must have sensed my anxiety because a smile flickered hesitatingly around her mouth before she began firing her second series of blasts at my ego.
‘Honestly I’m not being unkind, but really you’re living a sort of sham. When I first met you I thought you were the totally liberated man … well, that’s the image you seem to project. But really you’re incredibly reactionary … and just… just incapable of changing yourself, while everything all around you is changing. Your values are completely set … and although you may want to be integrated into what’s going on today … you’re not really, because you’re so unbending.’
We sat in silence again for a few moments, while I was given time to digest her outburst.
‘Anything else?’ My voice was now spiky with irritation.
‘Don’t be cross, Benedict. I’m not criticising…’ Clare was looking at me now with what seemed an older and more worldly-wise fondness than I’d ever seen in her before. ‘You know … you’re a romantic who wants everything to be … well, nice … to run smoothly according to the rules you were brought up with. It would be nice if it could be like that, but I’m not sure those rules work any more…’
‘You seem to have me weighed up pretty thoroughly.’
‘I’ve thought about you a lot…’ Suddenly Clare stopped, and looked away down the street, startled perhaps at her own outspokenness. Gloomily I reached for a cassette from the glove compartment, and pushed it into the slot in the radio in front of her. It was Elgar’s Chanson de Matin, and we sat in an awkward silence, listening to the soaring violins. At last I turned the conversation back to her:
‘I don’t see what all this has to do with you being pregnant.’
‘Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t involve you.’ I felt a door slam in my face. I wanted to be involved. We sat without speaking for a while, both feeling uncomfortable, and watching the road as though it were a river. She was right, of course. About everything. Her condition was entirely her own affair, and I was ruled by my emotions. Twenty years of Catholicism had conditioned my reactions to so many issues completely. I would never escape my upbringing, even if I wanted to. And I didn’t. On the surface I might have joined the fancy-dress party, but deep inside I couldn’t adjust. While the world danced a wild frenzy around me, I kept slowly and safely to my one-two-three waltz time.
‘Well. I just thought I’d tell you what I thought.’
Clare nodded: ‘Me too.’ She paused: ‘I won’t do anything without telling you. Now I must go.’ And she allowed her hand to fall onto mine for a second, before grabbing her mac and getting out of the car.
I peered at the names, and then pushed the top
button on the double row of bells. Thursday night. At 11 o’clock. The street was quiet, apart from a gang of youths shouting and fooling about outside a club on the opposite corner, and as I waited in the shadow of the first floor balcony which covered the stops, a tube train ran across the elevated track and over the bridge at the end of the street. I’d once had a bedsitter overlooking a railway line at West Kensington, and the rush and rattle of the wheels and the ticking of the electric motor was nostalgically friendly. Suddenly there was a light in the hall, and Clare’s face appeared timidly around the red door.
‘Benedict! What are you doing here at this time of night?’
She was in a nightie, with her dressing gown pulled tightly around her.