Hester's Story

by Adle Geras

  1952

  Hester woke up on the morning after her parting from Adam feeling as though she hadn’t slept all night. Maybe she hadn’t, although the dreams she thought she’d had meant that she must have drifted off at some point. She went through her morning routine – vomiting, having a biscuit and a cup of tea, and then getting ready for class. She couldn’t speak to anyone in the theatre. They all seemed to be moving behind a glass wall, mouthing things at her to which she made some kind of answer, saying she had a bad headache. Her own voice sounded to her as though she were speaking underwater.

  ‘Are you with us, Hester?’ Piers asked, looking at her rather too sharply.

  She nodded. ‘I’m fine. Really. I’ll be all right.’

  It was an effort to go through the usual pliés, arabesques, pirouettes, grand jetés and the rest. She moved as though lead weights were attached to her feet. I can’t bear this, she thought. I can’t bear not being able to dance properly. Is it the baby stopping me? Filling me up and making me heavy? She imagined a tiny copy of Adam inside her, eating her up as it grew and grew, and she was suddenly filled with revulsion. I’ve still got it, she thought. The piece of paper. I can get rid of this. I don’t have to have this baby. That doctor of Dinah’s will scrape every bit of Adam out of me, and I’ll never have to think of him again. A surge of energy filled her and she made up her mind to phone the number as soon as class was over. As she’d kept the piece of paper, it must mean that part of her had always intended to consult him. Didn’t it? Maybe it did. Hester didn’t know very much about the progress of a pregnancy, but she did know that the sooner you could have an abortion the easier and safer it was. And what they take out looks far less like a real person early on said a voice in her head, which she pushed away and decided to ignore.

  *

  May isn’t supposed to be like this, Hester thought. She was walking down a long road full of boring, ordinary houses and the rain was pouring down. She had an umbrella but her feet were soaked through. A woman (the doctor’s receptionist, probably) told her on the phone that it was only a few minutes from the tube station, but it seemed as though she’d been walking for hours.

  She’d made the appointment after class yesterday and now here she was, somewhere at the end of the District Line, in a part of London she’d never been to before. The people she passed on the street were blank-faced and wrapped up against the weather, but Hester imagined that they were looking at her, pointing at her as she passed, saying there’s the young woman who’s going to have an abortion. Shame on her.

  She’d been to the bank and taken out enough money. It cost a hundred pounds to get rid of a baby, apparently. Was that reasonable? Dinah had said it was. Luckily, Hester had saved enough over the past few years to be able to pay for the operation herself, but it left her rather short. I’ll help you financially and so forth. She could still hear Adam’s words and they made her furious all over again.

  This was the house. It looked just like all the others. A bay window; a green-painted front door with a skylight at the top. Number 56. A neglected garden, a little overgrown, with roses which had never been pruned already putting out buds at the end of long, leggy stems full of far too many thorns. She knocked at the door.

  ‘Miss Gordon?’ A woman stood in the dark of the hall and for a moment Hester wondered who Miss Gordon was, before remembering that she’d given a false name. She nodded. The woman stared at her, then said, ‘Come in. The doctor will see you in a moment.’

  She looked, Hester thought, as though she ought to take up residence in a coffin: pale, dressed in black, with a damp smell about her. She led the way to the front room of the house. This was supposed to be a waiting room. There were ancient magazines on the table in front of Hester, but as she was clearly the only patient, she couldn’t help wondering why she was being kept waiting. The room was chilly.

  ‘The doctor will see you now,’ said the woman in black, returning. ‘Follow me.’

  The surgery, or whatever it was called, was across the hall from the waiting room. The doctor was sitting behind a desk and smiled and got to his feet as he introduced himself. He was thin and small, and as pale as his assistant or nurse or whatever she was. She stood, waiting – to do what? Help him with the operation? Hold the patient down? Give an injection? Mop up the blood? Hester could scarcely answer the doctor’s questions because of a creeping feeling of terror and nausea that threatened to overwhelm her.

  The room was full of shadows, she noticed. The light shining on to the doctor’s desk made them gather in the corners. She became aware of the woman who had shown her in standing quietly behind her chair, waiting and growing. That was what it felt like. Hester felt that she was becoming larger and larger and looming over her, close enough to smell. She glanced at the woman’s hands, white against the fabric of her dress, and thought she saw claws at the end of each finger, animal’s claws, and she imagined those hands reaching inside her as the monster doctor pulled her legs apart, pulled apart her flesh, and Hester could feel the agony of those claws on her body, and she saw, quite clearly, fountains of blood gushing from between her legs and washing over the floor of this terrible room and then there would be … what? Something. Someone. Taken from her, drowned in blood and taken by the woman with the claw hands to be thrown away into a place she couldn’t bring herself to picture.

  ‘Please take your clothes off and lie on the bed behind that screen,’ said the doctor. Hester stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time,’ she said, every word she uttered almost choking her. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to have the baby. I have to go now.’

  ‘You’ve changed your mind?’ The doctor sighed. ‘You young girls don’t know what you want, do you? Can’t keep away from the sex, of course, but don’t want to deal with the consequences. I suppose the father is long gone? Well, you know your own business best, but I do wish sometimes—’

  ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time,’ Hester said again, cutting him off, and hurried from the room. She was losing her mind. Just yesterday, the thought of her baby filled her with a sick horror and now, here she was, feeling an overwhelming love for this thing, this scrap of nothing in her womb. Her baby. Not anyone else’s. Hers. Her child. I’m mad, she thought. How could I let this person with his white cold fingers prod at me and prick me with needles and take away my baby. Kill it. Murder it. Wipe its blood, my blood, off his horrible plastic bed?

  Hester ran down the ugly street in the rain, letting it fall on her head, soaking her. I can’t, she thought, I can’t do it. She sat on the tube to Lancaster Gate, looking at the ghost-image of herself on the window of the carriage, and felt as though she herself had escaped death. She was sick and cold and wet and there was nothing in her head but Madame Olga. She’ll know what to do. She’ll help me. I must go to her.

  Hester was a little comforted by this thought and yet she knew that Madame Olga would be furious. I’ll never be forgiven for throwing away my career, she thought, and started to cry. How would she reach Wychwood House without telling Piers the whole story? She couldn’t imagine doing that. She said to herself, I could run away now, this minute, without even going back to Moscow Road. I’ve got a hundred pounds in my handbag. It’s only four o’clock. I can be with Madame Olga tonight. Then she can explain to Piers. He’ll send my things up to Yorkshire.

  In a trance, she got off at the next stop and began to make her way to King’s Cross. I want to go home, she thought, but where is that? She wanted Grand-mère, but she was dead and couldn’t help her. She wanted not to be pregnant, but she couldn’t murder her baby. She wanted to dance. How would she ever dance again? Her legs felt as though they could scarcely carry her on to the right platform. She was aware of other people on the edges of her vision, peering at her to see if she was all right. I must be crying, she thought. I must look like a mad person. I don’t care. No one dared to approach her. Hester thought she might have been making strange sounds as she walked.
The glittery, hard floors of the tunnels she was passing through rang with the sound of her footsteps and every advertisement was blurry and swam before her eyes and somewhere, somewhere inside her, her heart was breaking. Someone had taken hold of it and twisted it about, this way and that, until it broke at last. That was how it felt; exactly like that.

  *

  ‘Moia golubchka!’ Madame Olga stood by the door and peered through a grey mist at Hester. ‘My poor darling child.’

  She was too exhausted to speak. The journey had taken longer than she thought, and every part of it was difficult. The train was crowded and she sat looking out of the window and seeing nothing, all the way to Leeds. She fell into a taxi and told him where she was going. She’d noticed the driver staring at her and knew that she looked distraught, but couldn’t summon up the energy to smile and reassure him that he wasn’t letting a madwoman into his cab. Rain began to fall as the car drove into the village and she roused herself a little to watch out for the gates of Wychwood House.

  ‘This is it,’ she told the driver. ‘I’ll get out here.’

  ‘I’m happy to take you up to the house,’ the man said. ‘It’s no trouble really.’

  ‘No, I’d rather walk, thank you,’ Hester said, congratulating herself on sounding almost normal. How could that be, when she felt as though there was nothing in her head but black space?

  ‘Right, then,’ said the driver, and took his money. Hester sat in the back seat, trying to work out which handle to press, how to get out of the taxi, and then saw that the driver had opened the door for her.

  When the taxi had gone, she looked up at Wychwood House and down the road to the village. Beyond the shop and the church was the house where the Wellicks used to live. They’d moved south long ago, but just being here, in this place where she’d spent so many unhappy nights when she was a little girl, made Hester shiver. She turned her back on the village and opened the black gates that would lead her to Madame Olga.

  It was raining again as Hester walked up the drive. At least I’ve got my umbrella, she thought. What will Madame Olga say? Will she send me away? Where to? Will she be angry with me? She’ll ask me why I haven’t got any luggage. I’ll have to write to Nell and ask her to send it on. She won’t mind. She always helps me. I wish I’d thought of phoning her from King’s Cross. By the time Hester rang the bell and leaned, exhausted, against the inner wall of the porch, all she wanted was to be inside, out of the rain.

  ‘Come in, come in, moia bedniazhka’, Madame Olga said. She had her arm around Hester’s shoulders and led her to the kitchen. ‘Sit, sit and I make tea for us, like we used to do. Remember? In the glasses. I have no chocolate, but I have biscuits. Where are the biscuits?’

  Hester sat at the kitchen table and watched Madame Olga as she went from the sink to the kettle and then to the cupboard, getting everything ready. She kept up a constant stream of talk, as though she knew that when she stopped, there would be nothing to hear but bad news. It wasn’t till Hester had drunk a few sips of the hot, sweet tea that she dared to speak.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby, Madame,’ she said, and waited for the whole house to fall down on her head. Madame Olga put a hand up in front of her mouth and made a small, whimpering noise. This was the only sound of weakness and distress Hester had ever heard her utter. She’d barely registered the cry when Madame Olga sat up straighter, took the hand away from her face and smiled bravely. She took Hester’s right hand between both of hers and squeezed it tightly.

  ‘Do not worry any more, my child. I will arrange everything. It will come out well in the end, you will see.’

  ‘I’ve been to a doctor, Madame. I can’t do that. I’m not having an abortion.’ This made Madame Olga frown. ‘You are sure? It is nothing in the early days, I promise you. You will recover quickly.’

  Hester shook her head. ‘I want this baby. I thought I didn’t at first, and I went looking for a way to get rid of it, but now …’ She blinked at Madame Olga through tears that threatened to brim over. ‘I … will love the child. The baby will love me. Don’t you think I’d make a good mother?’

  Madame Olga snorted. ‘To be a good mother is easy. To be a good ballerina is very difficult. How can you continue with the dancing if you become a mother? Tell me that. And where is the father?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him. He’s married. He can’t … he won’t … I wouldn’t consult with him about anything. This is my baby.’ She put her hand on her stomach where, hard as it was to picture, there was someone, a real person, growing. It made her feel dizzy to think about it.

  ‘You must decide nothing now. Stay here and I will speak to Piers and he will make up a story to tell everyone. You have been doing too much work, too much dancing and you must rest; something like that. I will look after you and we will have a class every day until you cannot dance any more. It will be good for you, the countryside, the fresh air, away from London. Then, when your stomach is very big, I will send you far away so that no one will know.’

  ‘I don’t care if everyone knows. How will you keep such a secret when the baby’s born? She – he – will live with me, and I’ll be looking after him – her – so what’s the point of hiding away now?’

  ‘Journalists, the public, the ones who pay to watch you, they must know nothing. Not now, and if it is possible, not for a long time. This is what I think. I will discuss with Piers what we have to do. Till then, you must say nothing. But please do not worry. Please. It is bad for you. You let me worry for all of us. Now you should sleep. I will run a bath and prepare a room for you. You understand, I did not expect you, but is good that you came to me. Yes. I will take good care of you.’

  *

  The days and weeks that followed ran into one another with nothing much to disturb them, each one tracing a similar pattern: class (more and more gentle as time went on; stopping in the end when she was too clumsy to move freely), a light lunch with Madame Olga, a walk on the moors beyond Wychwood House, early bedtimes. During those months her love for Adam was like a wound. She thought sometimes that it was healing over and forming a scab, and then something would happen, a tune on the radio, or a remark of Madame Olga’s, that would tear the wound open again.

  A letter came from Dinah:

  Where are you? What have they done with you? I’ve come to the conclusion that you must be at Wychwood, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms by Piers (yes, I telephoned him as soon as I heard) that I’m not to come looking for you. You were very ill. A nervous breakdown, he said. When I asked why, he said that people didn’t generally need a reason to have one. Too much work and what he called ‘personal difficulties’. I can read between the lines with the best of them, Hester, and I’m sure I know what’s going on. I’ve thought ever since you came to see me in Cardiff that you might be pregnant. Call me melodramatic if you like but it looks to me as though they’re hiding you away because they don’t want the press to find out. The last time I enquired I was told you had gone to Paris. Can this be true? Have you been in touch with Edmund? Or A?

  Anyway, it’s pointless me wanting to come and see you. I can’t. I have to work or I’d starve and what’s worse, lose my position in this company, where I’m doing quite well. But if you wanted me to, I’d come and see you wherever you were. On a Sunday, I suppose, but still – I do miss you, Hester. You know I’d do anything for you whenever you asked me to. Please write.

  That was the first of many letters from her dear friend. Hester answered them and tried to explain to Dinah how sad and sorry for herself she was feeling:

  I’ve become another person, Dinah. You wouldn’t recognise me. I cry at the least little thing. It’s probably hormones, but I’m frightened too, about what’s going to happen, and I’m sure hormones aren’t meant to make you feel fear. I’m not even sure what I’m scared of. What’s it going to be like after the baby’s born? Will I be able to look after it and carry on dancing?

  Adam, she knew, would hear of the
birth somehow, through Edmund perhaps, and then he’d try and send money or (worse or better? Hester couldn’t decide) not send money. At the very heart of her fear lay the thought I’ll never be able to dance again once I’ve given birth. No one will want me as a principal any longer. The magic will vanish as though it had never existed and then what will become of me? Hester understood that Madame Olga was probably right in everything she said, but she couldn’t think of her baby being given away without wanting to die. She didn’t allow it to enter her mind. Adoption would happen over her dead body. The only thing that gave her the strength to get up each morning during those months was the dream she had of her child.

  Hester spent a long time trying names out in her head. She wrote them down in the blank pages of a notebook. Helen after her mother, Celeste after her grandmother, or Elizabeth, Suzanna, Maria, Marguerite. Names for boys were harder. Matthew, Jonathan, Christopher, Michael. Two names she rejected at once were Adam and Henry. She wanted no memories of fathers – not hers and not her baby’s. Edmund would be the godfather. Dinah would be better than a fairy godmother. Everything would be all right. There were days when Hester almost persuaded herself that she truly believed that she might resume her career and take care of her child in a perfectly normal way.

  A letter came from Edmund, and Hester smiled to read it. She could hear his voice clearly in every word:

  Darling Hester, I am going plumb loco worrying about you. I do wish you’d drop a single line just to reassure me you are really where Piers says you are, in a clinic far away recuperating after some sort of illness. He was amazingly and dazzingly unspecific, and assumed, I think, that I had the usual male embarrassment about Women’s Things. Ha! I pressed him and he confessed after a bit that a nervous breakdown was what you were suffering from and that the doctors had advised peace and quiet and absolutely no visitors. A bigger load of spherical objects I never heard in my life! The thing for depression is friends. Everyone knows that. I would come and cheer you up at the smallest sign from you. I must stop now. I am busy, busy, thank Heavens. If it weren’t for constant work (a production of Red Riding Hood in Amsterdam next) I would seriously not be my usual cheery self. Write to me, Hester, if you can. I think of you constantly. Yours, Edmund.