Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  “No. Go back — Susan will be in any moment.”

  She groped into Knightsbridge, and the Alert went as she waited on the pavement for a taxi. The one that drew up at the curb seemed as old and dilapidated as its driver.

  “Do you mind driving in a raid?”

  “Lord love yer, mum, us old sweats don’t pay any attention to Jerry; it’s the young’uns as gets the wind up,” the old man told her contemptuously. Bell gave him the address and got in.

  They had hardly reached Park Lane when the guns opened up. Two bombs came down. She sat, with an unconscious smile plastered on her face, watching the driver’s stolid shoulders. Every now and then the interior filled with gun flash and a little shrapnel spattered on the roof of the cab. A red glow appeared ahead of them. The old man pushed the window back to say laconically, “Ampstead way.” Bell nodded. She was going Ampstead way herself.

  There was a man in Marylebone who had got a good reputation, and Pixie Carpenter had scribbled a telephone number on a card — if she could lay her hands on it. Could one risk either? She knew their methods — which all the professional in her condemned; yet so far as she had heard they had had no failures. On her knees, her strong, blunt hands moved restlessly, and suddenly she knew, like Prospero, their magic was ended. As soon, of course, as she had examined Jo, she would know if there was any chance ... And suppose there was not?

  They would be all right of course — the three, or perhaps the four, of them: not well off — not in the Brockett class any more — but able to manage without skimping. All the money she had sent out of the country — that must be written off, or the greater part of it. The American end might recover in time, but one must not count on it. But the house property was safe, and the one or two small investments she had made in British industries: worthless at present, these would begin to show their returns a few years after the war was ended. And Avenue House; when they were able to start up again in London it might still represent one of her best securities. Just a few meager years ... What are you haggling about? she asked herself fiercely. If all goes well — she did not stop to analyze the ambiguity — you’ll work on, as you intended, to the end of the war, and then retire in comfort, to enjoy whatever the government’s left you of your gains!

  The ancient taxi was groaning up what she guessed to be Haver-stock Hill. Presently it stopped; the man got down and opened the door. The sky was laced with searchlights and tracer, the hum of enemy aircraft heavy overhead. She pushed a pound note into his hand, felt with her hand a rickety iron gate, and groped her way through.

  “J’ou warn me to wait, mum?

  “No. I’d get under cover if I were you.” There was enough light from the sky to make out a flight of steps leading to a blackened porch. He stood indifferently by the gate.

  “Better see if they’re at ’ome. Most folks up ’ere ’as got the shelter ’abit.”

  “It’s all right,” said Bell after a pause in which the distant jangling of the bell echoed in a seemingly empty house. “I hear somebody coming.”

  Her words were lost in a gun salvo that shook the stones on which she stood; shrapnel sounded like hail on the shrubbery trees below, and Bell was glad of the porch that at least protected her head.

  The door opened grudgingly.

  “Mummy ...”

  “Hello, dear.”

  Again her voice was drowned in the roar of the guns from the Heath and Primrose Hill. Something screamed, plunged, and concussion, rocking the floor under their feet, brought a little glass tinkling from an unseen window. There was no light, as Bell had put out her torch. Jo said in a constrained voice:

  “You’d better take my hand. There’s a light down in the basement.”

  “It’s all right — I’ve got one, when you’ve closed the door. Are you by yourself?” asked Bell as she followed Jo down some uneven stairs into an untidy basement, with the remains on the table of a haphazard meal.

  “Looks like it. I’ve been asleep. I suppose the others have gone out.”

  “What others?”

  “The people who live here,” was Jo’s evasive answer, as, reddening, she turned away from her mother’s gaze.

  The child looked heavy and round-shouldered in her crumpled tunic; her flushed face held already the faint thickening of pregnancy, her enlarged breasts strained against the khaki. She tried, by her hunched position, to conceal these changes, of which, Bell saw, she was so painfully aware. A deep, maternal tenderness, mingled with compunction, welled in Bell. Jo, who had always asked for so little and now needed so much, called out for the first time her mother’s passionate solicitude which had always gone to Kay. Jo, with knitted brows of resistance, said reproachfully:

  “You shouldn’t have come out in the raid, Mummy ... I shan’t forgive Kay for telling you!”

  “Pooh! I’ve been out every night in the last week.” What to say next? How to break down the barrier, which Jo was evidently stubbornly prepared to maintain? “I suppose you don’t happen to have such a thing as a cup of tea about you?”

  “It’s wartime Indian; awful muck.” Jo slouched to perform the necessary actions. There was silence, except for the loud ticking of an alarm clock. Jo came from some inner, darkened region with a teapot in her hand and put it on the table among the debris of the earlier meal, at which Bell cast an involuntary look of distaste.

  “Who owns this joint anyhow?” It was a relief to voice some of her dissatisfaction regarding the situation in which Jo had chosen to house herself.

  “One of the girls’ parents. You needn’t bother your head, Mummy,” said Jo suddenly, loudly. “Of course I know, in your position, you can’t have anything of this sort happening.”

  “It seems to have happened.” Bell could not restrain a wry smile.

  “It’s my business, and I’m seeing to it. I told Kay that. I don’t know why she’d got to pass it on to you.”

  “What do you mean by seeing to it’?” asked Bell in a level voice. Jo stared, gulped, mumbled something.

  “Sit down,” said Bell very quietly. “Now listen to me, Jo. Is that really what you want?”

  “Wanting doesn’t seem to come into the picture, does it?” There was a new, hard bitterness in Jo’s voice that stung Bell. She waited a moment before continuing, still on the same slow, level note.

  “You’ve got to make up your mind. You either have this child or you don’t have it. I’m not here to persuade you either way; I only want to make sure you’ve thought the matter over from all sides before you decide what you mean to do.”

  “I don’t know why you bothered to come then. I told Kay ...”

  “Never mind what you told Kay. You’re four months pregnant. That’s what you say. It looks to me as if you’re more. That means your child is there: living, growing, feeding in you. If you destroy it, you’re destroying life: life which you and another person have made together, in a moment that was happiness for you both. You needn’t tell me it wasn’t, for there was no earthly reason for you to do it if the wish hadn’t been there. This child of yours is the pledge of that moment of happiness, which perhaps won’t come your way again. Anyhow, in your place I’d think twice about it. It’s one of the things you can’t go back on after done.”

  “Do you think I’ve thought about anything else since it — happened?” Jo’s voice was thick, her face averted.

  “Well, there’s another side to it. If you don’t feel equal to seeing it through, to having a child that hasn’t got a father, to facing up to people with a baby in your arms and no wedding ring on your finger — you’d better let it go.”

  “You talk,” mumbled Jo, “as if I’d got nobody else but myself to consider. What about you? What about Kay? I know how you hate gossip, and — and I suppose some of the patients wouldn’t much like it if you — if I —”

  “My dear child, don’t talk balderdash. They can mind their own business, and I’ll do the same. Besides,” said Bell with a deliberate carelessness, “I’m not g
oing on with massage forever. I’d meant to keep going until the end of the war, but there’s no sign of that, and my old ticker’s warning me to give up.”

  “You’re just saying that,” reproached Jo. “We all know you’d be bored to fits if you stopped work. Though I wish you would ...”

  “Leave my affairs alone and I’ll leave yours alone,” said Bell crisply. “I haven’t come up to talk you into anything against your wishes. I just want you to know that, so far as I’m concerned, you’re a free agent; so don’t load anything onto me. You got yourself into this without asking me, and I expect you to get yourself out in the same way. That’s all, my dear; except that I’ll stand by you, whichever way you like to work it out.”

  A thought flashed into her mind: Jo, with her abounding health, her strong, deep-bosomed frame, her gaiety and loving-kindness — what a mother she would make! Suppose I persuaded her to go through with it? Oh, my God, what a prospect for us all! Think of bringing up a child in wartime, and all those nuisances — Katie was right-about registrations and food cards; no chance of keeping it quiet with servants and shopkeepers. And everybody thinking I was mad or I’d bungled it — for of course they’d never believe I hadn’t ... For the love of heaven, let her stick to her decision. That Marylebone doctor will see her through — I can fix it tomorrow.

  “Well, it sounds as if the raid’s quietening down. You’d better get your things together.”

  “What for?” Jo raised her dark, blotched face.

  “You’re coming home with me of course. We’ll fix up the camp bed in my room.”

  “Please — I’d rather not, till it’s over!” she pleaded.

  Bell got up stiffly and laid her hand on the ruffled dark head. “Listen, deary. We aren’t going to rush at this.”

  “Yes — it’s all right — I’ve got it all fixed, for tomorrow.” Bell’s heart gave a loud tick as Jo’s arms were flung round her waist, Jo’s head buried against her, while hard, gulping sobs dragged themselves from Jo’s throat.

  “Sh, sh, baby.” Instinctively the old endearment came to Bell’s lips as she pressed the dark head closer. “We’ll have a good night’s sleep and make up our minds in the morning. Leave it to Mummy —”

  “But I can’t!” Jo cried desperately. “You’ve just said I must decide for myself! I had decided — but somehow it’s all got upset again. And I’m so tired of thinking! I only know I want my baby — so much —”

  The movement of Bell’s hand on her daughter’s hair ceased suddenly. A curious, stoical calm had descended on her, out of which, presently, she spoke.

  “It all amounts to this, Jo: what have you got in yourself that can make up to a child for having no name of its own, and, as things are shaping nowadays, a pretty poor chance of making good in whatever sort of a world they leave us after the war?”

  The words fell into silence — Jo had stopped sobbing — with a curious significance. Even to Bell it seemed as though they had been spoken not by but through her. She waited for Jo’s reply. It came at last, gruff and doubtful.

  “I suppose love isn’t enough?”

  Bell heard herself gasp. She heard the same strange, unowned voice speak through her lips.

  “I dare say we could make it enough, between us.”

  She could not see, for her glasses were misted, and the eyes behind them swimming in tears. Why, you’re crying — you great fool of a Bell Timson! You’re doing the very thing you’ve scoffed at other people for doing — thinking nobody but them ever had a grandchild before! You’re just as soft as the rest — softer; because here you are, getting yourself all worked up about a little by-blow any decent mother would be feeling just as bad as she could about. Your daughter, Bell Timson, is going to have an illegitimate baby, and instead of being upset about it you’re standing here with an idiotic smile — I can feel it — wreathed over your face. Why aren’t you ashamed of yourself? But there: whatever you’ve pretended, you’ve never had any morals — at least not the sort people pride themselves about; so you may as well admit it, if only to yourself. And whatever you and life between you have made of poor Katie, Jo’s pure gold ...

  Another bomb came down, the light went out, and she heard herself laughing as she reached for Jo’s hand in the dark. The hand she found was as warm and steady as her own. Why, she thought happily, Jo’s as healthy as a young mare! Perhaps it will be a boy. It’s time we had a man about the house.

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