Patty fell backwards onto the unmade bed and lay there exhausted. This made the sixth morning in a row that she had awoken feeling queasy and had soon afterwards had to run into the bathroom and actually throw up. It was also a fact that she was almost two weeks overdue. The possibility which inevitably suggested itself was however too unexpected, and in view of recent events too badly timed, seriously to ponder. But wouldn’t it be just like life, she thought, for it to happen now, when Frank—oh, Frank. Here he was.
He stood in the doorway, looking deeply embarrassed. He had been tip-toeing around her ever since his return with an air of terrified circumspection, and as far as Patty was concerned, he could go on doing so. His defection had been papered over, as far as Wonda Tiles was concerned, and he was now back at work after a semi-fictitious malady bearing an impressive Latin name.
“You’re damned lucky,” said Patty. “Another doctor might’ve left you to take the consequences.”
“I know,” said Frank. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
“Let’s see you show it, that’s all,” said Patty.
She didn’t mean to stop tightening the screws just yet, if ever.
“Are you okay?” said Frank in the doorway.
“No,” said Patty. “I feel bloody.”
And so she did.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes,” said Patty. “I’ll have it here. I don’t feel like getting up just yet. Not too strong. And I’ll have some sugar in it.”
She lay and looked at the ceiling. After a while Frank came in with a tea tray, and the spectacle it presented almost melted her stern heart. The poor devil was certainly trying. He had found a tray cloth and on it sat the teapot, some milk in a jug and the lump sugar—how had he managed to find that?—in a matching bowl. And from the back of the cutlery drawer he had retrieved the sugar tongs. It was a vision of the genteel tea tray of yesteryear. Oh Lord. Patty sat up.
“That’s very nice,” she said. “I could get used to this.”
She sat and sipped the tea.
“When you saw the doctor,” said Frank, “did you tell him about being sick in the morning?”
“Well maybe I did,” said Patty. “That’s between me and the doctor, isn’t it?”
She hadn’t actually discussed this matter with the doctor, who’d easily been persuaded to give her a chit for some sick leave on the strength of the trial she had lately and so bravely endured.
“Well but,” said Frank, “what did he say?”
“Never you mind,” said Patty.
“Well—” exclaimed Frank, standing up abruptly and nearly upsetting the tea tray—“I do mind. I do mind! I live here too! I am your husband, aren’t I? You haven’t thrown me out yet. I know I’m not much. I know I’m stupid—well, rather stupid. I never passed any exams. It’s all right for you, you had a proper home to grow up in. You don’t know what it’s like for some of us. I do my best even if it isn’t so bloody good. But I do know this. I said I’d make it up to you and I will but I ought to know what’s going on. You’ve been sick every morning since I got back. Are you pregnant?”
Patty was stunned. She put down her teacup. This was the longest speech Frank had ever made; she could hardly begin to take it all in. And now that the word had been uttered, the idea given a real form, she felt suddenly shy and inhibited, and at the same time overjoyed. For it really was possible, even if it was happening at what had seemed to be entirely the wrong time. And all these feelings oddly recalled that night, that saturnalia preceding Frank’s weird escapade. She suddenly felt that the secret world they had then entered might not after all be lost to them forever, hidden away and forbidden. She looked at Frank’s face and glimpsed in his eyes a pleading and bewildered expression which she had never seen, and was sure she had never aroused, before: she suddenly sensed that he too was remembering that night, and was daring to recollect, if not to acknowledge quite candidly, that realm of wordless and unimaginable intimacy which they had fallen into more or less by accident, whose strangeness had so terrified Frank that he had immediately thereafter vanished into thin air.
Frank came over and sat on the bed once more.
“Please tell me,” he said. “I’ve got to know, I’ve got a right to know, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” said Patty. “I suppose you have. The fact is I’m not sure yet. I might be and I might be not. And it’s too soon to find out for certain, I know that. So if I go on like this, I’ll visit the doctor in a few weeks and then we’ll know. That’s all I can say at the moment.”
Frank said nothing and Patty suddenly saw that there were tears in his eyes. She sat in silence, and then she touched his hand.
“It’ll be our secret for now, okay?” she said. “Don’t say a word.”
“Right you are,” said Frank huskily.
Then he took her teacup and put it on the tray, and put the tray on the floor. He lay down beside her and began to caress her, and the entrance to the secret, the wordless and unimaginable realm suddenly once more gaped hugely before them.