An hour later, as she was transferred into the delivery room, she knew she’d been right to be worried. The pains were so frequent, and so deep, that it was impossible to breathe normally through them – and impossible not to cry out.
‘Come along, dear,’ a different midwife was now saying to her. ‘You’re almost fully dilated. There’s not long to go now. Just imagine there’s an orange in your vagina and that with every pain you’re pushing it a little further out.’
It wasn’t an image she found helpful. The pain was so intense, so unlike anything she had ever previously experienced, that she knew she was fast losing control.
‘Here’s a little gas and air,’ another voice said, putting a mask over her nose and mouth. ‘Now when the next pain comes, try and work with it.’
She tried to work with it and heard someone groaning as if they were being racked. As she realized that the person was herself, she became dimly aware of Artemis’s voice some distance away, saying frantically, ‘But I am the husband! Or, at least, I’m here instead of the husband, because there isn’t one and I promised Primmie I’d be with her!’
Whether Artemis was with her or not, Primmie neither knew nor cared. She was being split apart. Split in a way she knew she couldn’t possibly survive.
‘Pant,’ someone was saying urgently to her. ‘Pant! Pant!‘
Seconds later she heard herself scream and then there was a rushing, slithering sensation and instead of screaming she was crying with relief and joy as one of the midwives helped her to raise her head and she was able to look between her blood-smeared, sweat-sheened legs and see her baby.
Covered in mucus, it was kicking and crying, its blond hair clinging wetly to its skull.
‘Oh! Is it all right? Is it all right?’ she demanded in a frenzy of anxiety.
‘She is perfect,’ the midwife attending to the baby said. ‘Now just let me check her air passages and then you can hold her for a minute or two while we wait for the placenta to come away.’
Wrapped in a towel, her still bawling daughter was placed in her arms, and as she felt the weight of her against her breast, and looked down at her little crinkled face, she was filled with such love it seemed impossible to contain it.
There came the sound of someone entering the delivery room and seconds later Artemis was saying to her in reverent awe, ‘Is it a boy or a girl, Primmie?’
‘It’s a girl, Artemis.’
With tears of emotion streaming down her face, Artemis looked down at the baby and said, ‘Please, may I touch her, Primmie? Please?’
Primmie nodded and Artemis bent down to gently cradle the now quiet baby.
‘And now you’ll have to leave the room,’ one of the midwives said to her, briskly. ‘We don’t usually allow husbands to hold the baby at this stage, let alone girl friends.’
As Artemis reluctantly stood upright again, Primmie said in a voice raw with emotion, ‘Her name is Destiny, Artemis.’
‘Destiny?’
Incredibly, naming the baby had been something they had never discussed.
Primmie nodded. ‘Naming her is the one thing I can do for her, Artemis. And I like the name Destiny. It’s unusual and special’
‘It’s a beautiful name, Primmie.’ Tears continued to stream down Artemis’s cheeks. ‘And she’s beautiful, Primmie. She’s perfect.’
‘And you now have to leave,’ the midwife said, running out of patience. ‘This is a delivery room, not a private ward.’
As Artemis finally did as she was told, the other midwife said chattily, ‘It’s most unusual for anyone to have their best friend in the delivery room with them. Have the two of you always been so close?’
‘The four of us were always close,’ Primmie said, too exhausted to care that she wasn’t making much sense. ‘But now things are different.’
The midwife, accustomed to the disorientating effects of gas and air on her patients, lifted Destiny from her arms without asking her to explain herself.
Primmie, watching as Destiny’s umbilical cord was cut, thought of just how different things now were. She thought of Kiki, at Cedar Court with Francis. She thought of Geraldine, in Paris. And she thought of Artemis, with whom her relationship would never be the same now that Destiny would grow up calling her ‘Mummy’.
Things were not merely different now – they had changed beyond all recognition. An era had ended and another era – one she found impossible to imagine – was about to begin.
Chapter Sixteen
March 1978
It was the first day of spring and Primmie was making a mug of tea for the carpenter/odd-job man who was fitting new kitchen units for her. The units were a present to herself and one she had wanted for a long time, for years, in fact. When she had first moved back into her childhood home in order to look after her mother, the upheaval of having new kitchen units fitted had been more than her mother could face, and after her death Primmie simply hadn’t had the heart to begin the refurbishment the run-down terraced house so badly needed.
Another reason she hadn’t done so had been lack of money. New kitchen units, even bottom-of-the-range ones, weren’t cheap. She switched on the radio as she waited for the kettle to boil, reflecting that, if she’d stayed on at BBDO, she would have been earning a very healthy salary by now and would have been able to buy solid wood units, not merely the functional plywood ones now being installed. Staying on at BBDO, gaining promotion to account director level, hadn’t been an option, though, not once her mum’s health had deteriorated to the point where she needed full-time nursing.
Afterwards, when her mother had died, she hadn’t approached BBDO to see if they would re-employ her – and she hadn’t approached any other advertising agencies either. Instead, she had taken a job as general office manager in a small import/ export company five minutes walk from her Rotherhithe home. It was a far cry from the glamour of advertising, but it suited her. Though not ill, her father was growing increasingly infirm and she preferred to go straight home after work, to make him a meal and to keep him company, rather than frequent glitzy wine bars with colleagues as she had done in her BBDO days – or as she had done if she hadn’t been meeting Simon.
‘I like this song.’ Ted Dove, who had been measuring a unit and the space it was to fit into, leaned back on his heels and stuck the pencil he had been using, behind his ear. ‘It’s very gentle and somehow folksy.’
The interruption was both unexpected and deeply welcome. Over long, painful years she had schooled herself not to dwell on thoughts of Simon, and she refused to allow herself to do so now. Instead, she zeroed in on what was being played on the radio. It was ‘Mull of Kintyre’by Wings.
‘Yes,’ she said, aware that the kettle was boiling and had probably been doing so for several minutes. ‘I’ve always liked Paul McCartney. I was a real Beatles fan when I was a teenager.’
‘Were you?’ he began rifling through his battered tool-bag. ‘I was more of a Frankie Laine fan, myself. But then, I was a teenager in the early fifties, when teenagers weren’t yet called teenagers – if you follow what I’m saying.’
She smiled to acknowledge that she did know what he was saying and poured boiling water into an already warmed teapot.
He withdrew an electric drill from his tool bag. ‘My late wife was the last person I saw do that,’ he said, watching her. ‘Most ladies now use tea bags.’
The flare of shock she felt at his being a widower tempered her amusement at his use of the word ‘ladies’. He didn’t look like a widower – his shirt was far too crisply ironed – and she wondered if he was living with a girlfriend. One thing she did know was that though he was engagingly friendly there was also something reassuringly respectful about him. As she’d contacted him via a card he’d placed in a sweetshop window, the latter realization had come as something of a relief.
‘Yer want ter be careful who you’re getting, gel,’ her dad had said to her, when she’d told him of how she’d found the carpenter who was go
ing to put their kitchen in for them. ‘What if’e’s one of these’ere cowboys?’
She’d had doubts herself, but his hourly rates had been so reasonable that she’d overcome them. Then, after she’d telephoned him and he’d come to the house to have a look at the size of the kitchen and to estimate how long the job would take him, she’d felt reasonably sure that she was safe in employing him.
He’d looked trustworthy, for one thing. And he’d had a nice manner.
He hadn’t gone round her kitchen tut-tutting and shaking his head, saying that for a job such as hers he’d have to put his hourly rates up, and nor had he made her uncomfortable by trying to flirt with her. He’d simply told her how many days he thought the job would take and asked her when she would like him to start. Even more breathtakingly, he hadn’t let her down. Two days ago he’d been there on the agreed morning and, as chunkily built as a boxer, his hair a thatch of thick curls, dressed in a short-sleeved chequered shirt and faded corduroy trousers, he had also looked remarkably neat and tidy.
Now, after the remark about her pleasantly old-fashioned way of making tea, he got on with his work without further chat, obviously happy at having the radio on for company.
As she got on with some ironing, doing it in the living room whilst her dad watched snooker on the television, it occurred to her that though she’d taken three days of her holiday time to be at home whilst he was putting the units in for her she really hadn’t needed to do so.
‘Penny fer ’em,’ her dad said, as Cliff Thorburn potted a blue into the centre pocket.
‘I was just thinking that I needn’t have taken three days’holiday to be at home whilst the kitchen’s being done – and that set me to thinking that we haven’t made any arrangements for a holiday this year. What would you like to do, Dad? Would you like to go to Whitstable again, for a week?’
‘I’m’appy anywhere, gel, you know that. But what about you?
Don’t yer want to go off somewhere exotic, with a couple of friends from work or somefink?’
‘My friends at work are all married, with families.’
Wryly she was aware that it sounded as if she had a host of married friends, when in fact there were only another five office staff at Perrett & May Import and Export and, though she was on friendly terms with all of them, she wasn’t friends with any of them. Not in the way she had been friends with Geraldine, Artemis and Kiki.
She folded the pillowcase she had been ironing and put it to one side, wondering if such intense, urgent, passionate friendships were only ever forged in youth. Certainly, she couldn’t imagine making such close friendships again. They had been friendships she had believed would last a lifetime and that, for reasons she knew in some cases and was mystified by in others, were now nothing but ghosts of what they had once been.
Geraldine, for instance. As she began ironing her father’s pyjamas and as the sound of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’came mutedly from the kitchen, she pondered on the mystery of why Geraldine had, ever since moving to Paris, remained so firmly out of contact. There was always a birthday card and a Christmas card from her, though never with a return address so that she could respond in kind. Why, when they had never had a cross word over anything, had Geraldine cut herself off from her with almost the same finality with which she had cut herself off from Kiki?
It just didn’t make any sense to her – and Artemis had not been able to throw light on it, either.
‘A couple of cards are all I get from her, as well,’ she’d said the last time they had mulled the hurtful mystery over. ‘Perhaps she just doesn’t want any reminders of her old life – the life that included Francis. He and Kiki are living in America now, according to an article in a magazine I read at the hairdressers. Apparently, she’s huge over there. Almost as big as Gloria Gaynor.’
Kiki was also big in Britain. As The Jimmy Young Show continued to be audible from the kitchen, Primmie knew it was only a matter of time before a Kiki Lane record was played. Even her early records, ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers’and ‘Twilight Love’, continued to get plenty of airtime. Kiki had written both songs with Geraldine and, whenever Primmie heard them, she wondered how Geraldine felt about receiving her share of royalties from their collaboration.
For all she knew, of course, Geraldine’s bitterness towards Kiki could well be a thing of the past. Ten months ago, in a newspaper gossip column, she had seen a photograph of Geraldine. Wearing a halter-necked evening gown, she’d looked stunningly elegant and had been on the arm of a French cabinet minister. A week ago there’d been another photograph, this time in a different newspaper and with a different escort. The occasion had been a reception at the French Embassy, in London, and her escort had been André Barre, a major European industrialist.
The photographs had left Primmie in no doubt that Geraldine was leading the kind of high society life that came so naturally to her and, with all her heart, she hoped that Geraldine was happy again.
Although Geraldine hadn’t kept in touch – apart from the occasional card – Kiki had, or at least she had for a short while.
‘Hi,’ she would say over the telephone, uncaring of the time difference between Britain and America and waking her in the middle of the night. ‘How ya doin’, Primmie? How’s tricks?’
There was usually a cacophony of noise in the background. Laughter and music and glasses clinking. Valiantly Primmie would try and rouse herself into full consciousness in order to hold a sensible conversation with her. Even when she succeeded, it was generally to no very good purpose, for Kiki was always high on drink or, Primmie often suspected, drugs, and meaningful conversations were impossible.
Still, the phone calls had always been very welcome. They had been a link, however inadequate and tenuous, with a part of her life that was now firmly in the past.
‘Will that young chap be needin’ another mug of rosie?’ her father asked, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘Yer mustn’t neglect him, Primmie. Workmen need reg’lar mugs of tea. It’s what keeps’em going.’
‘I’ve just made him one, but I’ll make him another, if it will keep you happy. And he’s not a young man, Dad. He was a teenager in the fifties and he’s a widower.’
‘Is he indeed?’ For some reason she couldn’t fathom, her father seemed to find this information interesting. ‘So the two of you’ave got chattin’, ’ave yer? That’s nice. And bring me a mug of tea as well, Primmie, will yer? This snooker’s thirsty work.’
Going back into the kitchen, this time to the sound of Abba’s ‘Take A Chance On Me’, had been a relief, because the way her thoughts had been going Artemis would have been the next person to dominate them.
‘My Dad thinks you might be ready for another mug of tea,’ she said, filling the kettle again, wondering if the day would ever dawn when she and Artemis would be able to be friends again without there being the most unbearable tensions between them.
‘Blimey!’ Ted Dove didn’t pause in what he was doing. ‘The last lot isn’t cold yet, Miss Surtees.’
‘Primmie,’ Primmie said, her thoughts still on Artemis. ‘Please call me Primmie.’
The difficulties between Artemis and herself had kicked in from the day Artemis had left Greenwich Hospital with Destiny in her arms. The pain of parting with Destiny had been indescribable, her only comfort her certainty that the parting was in Destiny’s best interests.
The first harsh reality she had had to come to terms with was that on-going contact with Destiny just wasn’t possible. The emotional trauma of playing auntie to her own child was simply too much. It was easier to follow Destiny’s progress via regular lunch meetings with Artemis in London and by their frequent telephone calls to each other and the photographs Artemis constantly sent her.
For nearly a year, it was an arrangement that, oiled by the fact they both loved Destiny fiercely, treasured every minute of talking about her and trusted each other completely, had been as successful as any arrangement could be, under the circumstances.
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Then had come the thunderbolt that had turned her world upside down. Rupert made it known that he found the arrangement emotionally unhealthy and that he wanted it to end.
‘And that is what all the adoption societies advise as well, Primmie,’ Artemis had said to her, ashen faced. ‘They say it’s much better for the birth mother to make an absolutely clean break with the child she’s given up for adoption – and in most cases, of course, that’s what happens automatically.’
‘But I don’t visit Destiny! I don’t have her here to stay with me, or take her out for the day! I don’t have the contact with her that even an aunt or a godmother would have! All I have are photographs – and lunches and phone calls with you, when you tell me how she’s progressing and what she’s been doing, when I can at least talk about her!’
The conversation had taken place at their usual meeting place for lunch, a Greek restaurant in St Martin’s Lane.
‘I know, Primmie, I know.’ Artemis, wearing a Jean Muir pink wool crêpe dress, its matching swing-coat disguising a figure that was way overweight again, began silently weeping. ‘It’s just so hard, Primmie,’ she said, the tears streaming down her beautifully made-up face. ‘Rupert can be quite … quite fierce about things he feels passionately about, and he feels passionately about this. He doesn’t want me to continue giving you a blow-by-blow report of Destiny’s progress, especially as the little darling is a little late in doing some things. It’s nothing to worry about, of course, because some babies are walking at a year old and others stay very firmly on their bottoms for ages longer than that – but Rupert thinks there’s a situation where, as she gets older, you might begin questioning some of the decisions we make about her … that you might … might …’ The expression in her china-blue eyes was agonized. ‘That you might begin to interfere.’
Primmie had been so aghast, so devastated, that she’d thought she’d been going to faint. ‘You mean that you’re not going to meet me for lunch any more, so that we can talk about her?’ she’d said, disbelievingly. ‘That we’re not to phone each other to talk about her? That we’re not to be friends any more?’
The Four of Us Page 21