by Liz Byrski
The Embankment was a heaving mass of people when they got there and, looking around her, Zoë felt a mounting sense of panic about whether she would find Richard. She was furious with Charlie, and the weariness she had felt on her way to the flat had turned to agitation that made her heart race.
‘If you’d let me come earlier, I’d have found him by now. He might be up near the front. I’m going up there to find him.’
‘No, stay with us, please, Zoë,’ Charlie insisted, ‘Rich’ll be busy. He won’t be able to look after you, and he’ll be pissed off if you get in the way.’
‘Richard wants me to get involved,’ she persisted. ‘He wants me to be here. I know he does.’
Charlie grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘Like hell he does! Don’t you understand, Zoë? If you get in the way, he’ll never forgive you. He’s already walking all over you; do you want him to start kicking you as well?’
With a sudden burst of energy, Zoë twisted free of his grasp. ‘He’s not,’ she shouted above the noise of the crowd. ‘You don’t understand, Charlie. I shouldn’t have listened to you in the first place; you just wanted to stop me seeing him. Leave me alone.’ And she pushed past him and began to jostle her way forward, trampling blindly over people’s feet and grasping at the arms of strangers to steady herself.
The marchers moved on, away from the Embankment into Fleet Street, and then towards Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square. Deaf to the protests of those around her, Zoë pushed her way through the mass of marchers. Her head was buzzing with the noise; people were merging into blurred, multicoloured shapes, swaying chaotically before her eyes. Lurching sideways, she bumped into a man who staggered to regain his balance, and the placard he was carrying slipped and hit her sharply on the side of the head, but on she went. Staying upright and putting one foot in front of the other seemed to be getting more difficult. Her chest was tight with tension; her breath coming in short nervous gasps. And then just ahead of her, she saw him. He was so close she reached out to touch him only to find her fingers entangled in a stranger’s hair. She dragged her hand away.
‘Richard!’ she called. ‘Richard, wait for me!’
Her legs were shaking now; buildings and people swirled chaotically around her and she staggered sideways. The last thing she saw was a stone bollard as it reared up towards her face.
‘They’d better not start playing silly buggers around here,’ Simon said irritably, coming in from the balcony, where he’d been staring along the street in the direction from which the marchers were expected.
‘Or what?’ Julia asked.
‘Or I’ll be calling the police. There was a lot of trouble with this mob back in March, apparently; people throwing stones, hitting other people with placards. They had to bring in the mounted police. We don’t want another Paris happening here.’
Julia tossed her magazine aside and stood up. ‘Richard’ll be there,’ she said, ‘and Zoë said she might go too.’
‘Bloody fools. They should stay out of it.’
‘Mmmm. But maybe, well; you know, sometimes I think it’s good to have something important to believe in.’
‘Huh!’ Simon said, turning to her. ‘You’re not going to get all bolshie like your brother, are you?’
She grinned. ‘And what if I do?’
He grabbed her from behind, grasping at her breasts. ‘Cheeky! Getting all assertive now, are you?’ And he nibbled at her neck.
‘Don’t give me love bites,’ she cried, twisting away. ‘My mother will have a fit.’
‘That would be a sight worth seeing,’ Simon said, turning her to face him. ‘When we’re married, I’ll smother you in love bites.’
Julia leaned away from him, laughing. ‘You’re all talk, Simon,’ she said. ‘Really, you’re just a pushover.’
Simon gave a playful growl and pulled up her skirt. ‘Mmmm,’ he said, ‘nice.’ He moved black slightly, undoing his fly, and, taking her hand, put it on his penis.
‘You’re just a show off,’ she taunted. ‘A big show off.’
‘Very big, as you can see,’ he said, pushing her down onto the sofa. ‘Now, I know a much nicer way of spending a Sunday afternoon than poncing around the streets protesting.’
Julia, weak with laughter, pulled him down on top of her, lost her balance, and they rolled onto the floor.
‘The floor is very nice, actually,’ Simon said, easing himself on top of her. ‘It offers greater resistance.’
‘I’m not resisting.’
‘So I notice. What would your mother say about this, I wonder?’
Without bothering to answer, Julia lifted her hips so he could pull off her knickers. But, outside, the singing voices grew suddenly louder.
‘Dammit,’ Simon said, getting to his feet and pulling up his trousers, ‘ruined my concentration.’ He reached down to Julia, helping her up. ‘Let’s go and have a look.’
From the fourth-floor balcony, they watched as the head of the march turned into the street. At the front there was a small group carrying a stretcher draped in black, on it a figure shrouded in white like a corpse and scattered with yellow flowers. Simon snorted in disgust. But Julia felt a sudden surge of emotion; there was something noble and beautiful about the sight of this great orderly mass of ordinary people, walking together with a single purpose. She felt a twinge of nostalgia for Paris; for the excitement, the fear, the nights when smoke hung in the air and the skyline was tinted orange with fire. Where was Tom now? Was he down there, part of the marching crowd, or was he still on the sidelines? For a moment, she thought she saw him there; that he looked up and saw her, that their eyes meet. She gasped, gripped the balcony rail, and looked down again straining her eyes to find Tom.
‘What is it?’ Simon asked, slipping his arm around her waist. ‘What happened?’
‘There,’ she said, pointing, but the man had gone. ‘I must be seeing things. I thought it was . . . oh, never mind, I must have imagined it.’ She paused, peering down into the moving sea of people, and then turned back to Simon. ‘Do you ever feel like protesting about anything at all?’
‘Frequently,’ he said, drawing her back into the room and pulling the curtain across. ‘The price of champagne, my father’s quaint ideas, and the fact that I can never get enough sex.’ He slipped his hand up her skirt again. ‘You strumpet, you have no knickers on.’
‘You’re a sex maniac.’
‘I am, indeed.’ He pulled her down onto the sofa, more gently this time. ‘That’s why I’ve got you, for instant gratification. So, come here and gratify me.’
‘But what were you doing there, anyway?’ Richard asked Zoë, hours later.
Propped up in the hospital bed with her hair matted with blood, her face grazed and bruised and her neck in a brace, Zoë looked entirely pathetic.
‘I wanted to be with you,’ she mumbled through swollen lips. ‘I wanted to show you I could be what you want. Be like you.’
Richard sighed with frustration. ‘But it’s not like that. Being there doesn’t mean anything if you don’t really care.’
‘But I do care,’ Zoë protested. ‘I love you, Richard. You know I do.’
‘It’s not about me, Zoë. It’s not about me and you. It’s something much bigger than that. Can’t you see?’
When Charlie had finally caught up with him and told him that Zoë had been taken away in an ambulance, Richard had been consumed with anger. He’d almost refused to go to the hospital at all but eventually his better nature won out. Now he knew her presence in his life was a burden from which he desperately wanted to free himself.
‘Look, Zoë,’ he began, knowing it was neither the time nor the place. ‘I don’t –’
‘Miss Conran?’ A bearded man in green overalls pulled back the curtains. ‘I’ve come to take you to x-ray. Doctor wants some pictures of your neck.’
‘What, Richard? What were you going to say?’ Zoë asked as the orderly pushed the trolley alongside her bed.
A nurse appeared
and nudged Richard out of the way. ‘We’re going to lift you onto the trolley, dear,’ she said, lowering the back of Zoë’s bed and nodding to the orderly. ‘On three, Jacko – one, two, three.’
Zoë reached out to Richard. ‘What were you going to say?’
Awkward seconds passed before he took her hand. ‘Don’t worry about it now. I’ll come back later.’ He stood watching the trolley disappear down the corridor towards the lifts, and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.
‘You can’t smoke here,’ the nurse said abruptly, pushing past him to straighten the bedclothes. ‘There’s a café on the ground floor where you can get a cup of tea. She’ll be a while; there’s a bit of a backlog in x-ray.’
Richard picked up his jacket and made his way down the ward. The unmistakable voice of Alvar Lidell reading the radio news drifted through the open door of the patients’ lounge and he pushed open the door just as the bulletin finished. An old man in a dressing gown was stretching forward to reach some pages of the Sunday Express that had slipped from his lap.
Richard gathered up the paper. ‘Anything on the news about the march?’ he asked, folding the pages and putting them into the shaking hand.
‘Huh?’
‘The march,’ he said, louder this time. ‘The anti-war rally. Was there anything on the news?’
The old man smacked his toothless gums. ‘Troublemakers,’ he said, coughing violently and then regaining his breath. ‘Trouble-makers, the lot of ’em. Protesting. Why aren’t they at work?’
Richard stared at him. ‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ he said mildly.
‘Eh?’
‘Oh, forget it.’ He strode out of the lounge and to the main entrance. Out in the street, the air seemed to hum with the energy of thousands of people gathering not far away. He paused to breathe it in and glanced at his watch. He’d told Zoë he’d be back later but he hadn’t said how much later. And, casting a guilty look back at the hospital, Richard set off as fast as he could in the direction of Hyde Park.
Zoë closed her eyes; watching the ceiling as the trolley rattled along the corridors had made her feel sick. The radiographer had taken x-rays of her neck from every possible angle, and now she was supposed to keep the brace on until the doctor had a chance to look at the pictures.
‘Do you know where my boyfriend is?’ she asked the nurse, once she was back in her bed in casualty.
‘He went down to have a cup of tea and a smoke, I think,’ the woman said. ‘Feeling all right now? Doctor’ll be along in a minute and then you can have a nice cup of tea.’
Zoë leaned back against the pile of pillows. She was desperately tired but each time she began to doze off, images of the crush of people, and of the bollard rising up to smash into her face, woke her with a start that made her heart pound. She’d just settled into a kind of half-sleep when the doctor arrived.
‘You’ll be glad to know the x-rays are clear,’ he said, noting something down on the chart. ‘No damage to your neck, so we can get rid of the brace, and it’ll just be a bit sore for the next few days. But that’s quite a nasty cut on your forehead. The nurse will clean up the wound and I’ll be back shortly to have a look; it’ll probably need a couple of stitches. And we’ve got the results of the blood test. You’re acutely anaemic; have you been prescribed any iron?’
Zoë shook her head.
‘Hmm. Well, we’re going to have to keep you in for at least a couple of days, maybe more. I’ll arrange for you to have iron administered intravenously tomorrow. It means you have a drip going into your arm for about six hours; all you have to do is lie back and rest.’
‘Couldn’t I just have some iron tablets and go home?’
‘Afraid not. We have to fix the anaemia, and because of that and the fall we need to keep you here to monitor you for a few days until we’re sure the baby’s okay.’
Zoë’s head shot up, sending pain like a hot poker through her neck. ‘Baby?’
‘Yes. You did know you’re pregnant, didn’t you? No? Oh dear. You’re about twelve weeks. When was your last period?’
‘I don’t know. Months ago. They’ve never been regular. I can’t be pregnant, I’m on the pill.’
‘Mmm. Well, you’re definitely pregnant. Could you have missed a day or two?’
‘I do sometimes, it’s easy to forget . . .’ She paused, remembering finishing a packet, and not getting to the chemist for more until a couple of days later. ‘I thought it wouldn’t matter, just a few days . . .’
The doctor smiled. ‘It does, I’m afraid.’
She stared up at him. ‘But nobody told me . . .’
‘It should be in the instructions on the packet,’ he said, writing something on her chart.
‘But surely . . .’
‘Anyway, I’ll be back shortly and stitch up that forehead and . . . congratulations. Yes, congratulations.’
THIRTEEN
London – November 1968
‘Why?’ Richard yelled, banging his fist on the table, ‘that’s what I want to know, Zoë. Why did you stop taking the pill?’
Zoë, devastated about her condition and crushed by his anger and the arguments that had been a daily event in the two weeks since she had broken the news to him, rested her head wearily on her folded arms. ‘I’ve already told you, Richard, I didn’t deliberately stop taking it, I ran out. It was the middle of the week and I couldn’t get out of work early enough to get to the chemist before it closed. It was a couple of days, that’s all. I didn’t mean this to happen.’
‘I wish I could believe that,’ Richard said, pushing his chair noisily away from the table and pouring himself another large whisky. ‘This really is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
Zoë lifted her head and looked at him in disbelief. ‘How can you say that?’ she asked, hearing the despair in her voice. ‘I love you, Richard, I want us to be together always but I didn’t do this deliberately. Why are you being so horrible?’
There was a ring at the doorbell and they both jumped. Charlie had gone to Brussels for a job interview and they had the flat to themselves. It was a freedom that Zoë had often longed for but right now the place felt like a torture chamber. Richard’s fury seemed to know no bounds and when he wasn’t shouting and interrogating her, he sank into a morose silence. Zoë sat up straight and dried her eyes as he went to answer the door.
‘I’ve brought some lovely cakes,’ Julia said with an awkward smile, putting the box on the table. ‘I thought you might both need something sweet to cheer you up.’
Richard made a harrumphing noise and disappeared into the bathroom.
‘How’s your face, Zoë?’ Julia asked, bending down to kiss her and examine the stitches in her forehead.
‘Bit better, thanks,’ Zoë said, wiping her eyes again.
‘And how are you?’
‘Dreadful,’ Zoë replied, the tears starting again. ‘Richard hates me. He thinks I did it deliberately, to trap him, and he wants me to have an abortion.’
‘He doesn’t hate you,’ Julia said, taking her hand. ‘He hates what’s happened, he doesn’t know what to do and he’s taking it out on you. What do you want to do?’
‘I can’t have an abortion, Julia, I just can’t.’
Julia nodded. ‘I know.’
‘I didn’t choose this but now that it’s happened . . .’
‘Do you want to keep it? You could have it adopted, you know.’
Zoë’s distress was laden now with the burden of having to explain again. She had battled constantly over the last few days with her inability to consider an abortion and her conviction that she had to keep the baby. And she had also made several attempts to explain it all to Richard, although he seemed unable or unwilling to hear. Since she had been old enough to understand the limited options that had been available to her mother, Zoë had occasionally wondered why Eileen had made the decision she had. Abortion would, she knew, have been even more dangerous and difficult to arrange then than it was today. St
ill, Zoë thought, her mother had had more reason to choose that or adoption than she herself had. Eileen, after all, was completely alone, whereas she at least had Richard. But Eileen had given birth to her and kept her, and although it went against the grain for Zoë to admit to admiration for or gratitude to her mother, she did, she realised, feel a considerable measure of both. For Zoë to take either way out seemed to her a profound offence against her mother and herself.
‘I haven’t heard you say one good thing about your mother until now; until it suits you,’ Richard said, coming back into the room as Zoë was explaining to Julia. ‘This is just manipulation on your part, Zoë.’
‘Shut up, Richard,’ Julia said. ‘Stop being such a prick. Zoë loves you, although I can’t imagine why, considering the way you treat her. It was a mistake, I’ve done it myself. And it’s easy for you, isn’t it? We’re the ones who have to remember to take the bloody pills every day and put up with the side effects, and you men are happy to let us do it. You moan about condoms, and can’t wait to put the responsibility on us, so just shut up. You are so selfish! You and Zoë were just unlucky, that’s what it comes down to in the end.’
‘Ha! Well, that’s a great help,’ Richard said, kicking a chair leg.
‘Julia’s right,’ Zoë began, considerably heartened by his sister’s passionate support. ‘Honestly, Rich . . .’ She stopped abruptly for, as Richard slumped quite suddenly onto the window seat and sank his head into his hands, she saw that he, too, was crying.
‘I thought I’d come with you to hospital,’ Julia said on the phone two days later. ‘I mean, I know you’re perfectly capable of going alone but I thought you might not feel like it. Not that having stitches out is awful or anything, but . . .’
‘Oh, yes please,’ Zoë said; she had been dreading the trek to the hospital. ‘But are you sure? I’ll probably be hanging around in the waiting room for ages.’
‘It’ll give us time to talk,’ Julia said. ‘And then, if you feel like it, we can go and have lunch somewhere nice.’