QUITE soon after the note, I began to suspect – what I had never even thought about, for some naïve reason – that I might be pregnant. Then it became doubly important not to think back, and so I never had, not until this moment. I had only known, positively though without details, that there was no help and no comfort forthcoming from the source, and that being so I shied away from any mental flashbacks which could only make me more unhappy and ashamed.
And now that I’d forced myself to take it all out of its cobwebby cupboard and look at it remorselessly from start to finish, I knew I had been instinctively wise not to do it before. If I had done it before, before my visit to Dr Graham, for instance, I’d now be sixty guineas the poorer and no longer pregnant. Sitting in my L-shaped room, stone-cold to my very marrow, with John still sleeping as peacefully as a child at my feet, I faced that fact, too, while I was at it; and also a few others.
For instance, that there were quite definitely no mitigating circumstances. I was not in love with Terry, never had been; I went after him, deliberately, because I was ripe for an affair and I thought with him I could have one and enjoy it and still feel like the nice clean girl-next-door afterwards. I saw now what I’d known all the time, only I’d hidden it craftily from myself because it didn’t fit in with what I wanted to do, that Terry and I had no basis for a love-affair; we were friends who happened to be attracted to each other physically, which was far from enough, and by thinking it was enough we’d gone against the very nature of our relationship. I also recognized that it was more my fault than his. That didn’t stop me from thinking bitterly that he’d got away scot-free.
I also had a look at the fact that Toby might well be – or have been – the man I’d been waiting for, though God knows I’d never have recognized him in a million years if we hadn’t happened, entirely by accident, to stumble into each other’s arms. The pool that had been so jarringly empty when I took my premeditated dive into it with Terry, I fell into with Toby and found it full of champagne.
But it was too late, that was the terrible thing. It had happened at a time when all I had to offer him was absolute misery for both of us.
Now I was thinking clearly and coldly. The doctor had been right. Who did I think I was imagining glibly that I could bring up a child all by myself? I had no money. I had no home. I had no job. And most important, I had no moral courage. I didn’t want the child, I wasn’t at all sure I was going to love it, even – certainly I’d had no hints up to now that mother-love hadn’t been completely left out of my make-up. Wasn’t it plain, common-or-garden cowardice, not the sturdy self-righteousness I’d credited myself with, which prevented me from ending the whole business? If only I’d gone along with the doctor’s proposals, it would have been over by now – completely and painlessly over, and any feelings of guilt I might have had as a result I would surely have dealt with ages ago. After all, as he had said – and now every word of our conversation came back to me as clearly as if played back on a tape – a woman has a right to decide, on the basis of her own capacity to cope with the situation, whether she is justified in going on with it. Justified – that was the word. It was the child that had to have first consideration, and what had I got to offer it that justified my bringing it into the world? Nothing.
And besides, I couldn’t face it. I’d suffered enough for my mistake. One little mistake! What horrible injustice, to impose a life-sentence for that! What moral law can compel anyone to stay in prison if they can get out?
I looked at the time. It was, to my astonishment, only a quarter to six. I felt as if I’d been sitting there half the night. But that was good – not six o’clock yet – Dr Graham might still be at his office. And suddenly I had to act quickly. My pulses were hammering in panic, as if I were really behind bars and spied an escape route that would close forever in a matter of seconds … I’d heard somewhere that you can’t stop it after the end of the third month.
I lifted John’s head carefully with both hands and slipped out from beneath it. He grunted a little as I rested it against the arm of the chair, but didn’t wake. My leg had gone completely to sleep and I couldn’t feel it at all, but I managed to hobble to the door, collecting fourpence out of my wallet, and down the stairs to the first landing where the telephone was. It struck me as I fumblingly dialled the number that it would be better to go out to a kiosk, where I would be more sure of privacy, but having come to this decision I only wanted to hurry, hurry – every minute’s delay seemed dangerous.
It rang a long time before a woman’s voice answered – the same woman.
‘This is Miss Graham,’ I said, surprising myself by the furtive urgency in my own voice. ‘I came to see Dr Graham two months ago. May I – is he there now? Could I have a word with him?’
The voice was chilly and formal. ‘I’m sorry, the doctor’s off duty from five-thirty. Is there anything I could do?’
‘I want to make an appointment to come and see him again – tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ The voice held the same polite incredulity as it had the first time. ‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. His appointments book is full until –’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘please.’ It was exactly like the first time. Only now I knew all the facts, and I knew what I wanted. ‘I can’t wait. It’s most urgent. I’m sure if you tell him, he’ll remember me.’
‘Well … I could give him a message. Miss – who, did you say?’
‘Graham, Jane Graham. He’ll remember me because our names are the same. Tell him – tell him I’ve changed my mind. Please.’
‘Very well.’
‘May I come round tomorrow? I don’t mind waiting until he’s got a moment free between patients.’
‘I think it would be better if you gave me your phone number. I’ll telephone you in the morning and tell you if the doctor can see you.’
I gave her the number and hung up feeling baulked of my escape, almost as if I’d expected that the thing could be done now, tonight. But at least I’d taken the first step, and not an easy step, considering what I’d said to the doctor at our last meeting. It proved to me that I was in earnest, that I was truly resolved. Three months was not too late – it mustn’t be. I had sixty guineas, I had a hundred if he asked for it. That was about all I did have, but it wasn’t much to pay for peace and a future of freedom. And it was for Toby, too, and for the baby itself. I stood by the phone prodding away at my mind with the unanswerable rationalizations, wondering why I didn’t feel happier and better now I’d decided.
I climbed the stairs slowly. On the next landing up, there was a faint suggestion of Chanel No. 9 and a small, tell-tale movement of a door swiftly closing the last two inches. I remembered now another give-away sound which at the time I hadn’t noticed – a click on the line at the beginning of my conversation with the woman. So, Mavis at least had been getting a good earful. Had I said anything revealing? I thought not.
John was awake. He’d put some more money in the meter and was warming himself by the newly-lit fire. He jumped to his feet as I came in.
‘I go to sleep,’ he said accusingly. ‘Why you don’t wake me? Let the room get cold …’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. I stood by the window staring out into the foggy darkness, taking deep breaths to try and stifle some hollow feeling of new dis-ease.
He stood awkwardly. ‘You forgive me?’ he asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, a little impatiently.
‘You think Toby come back?’
‘I expect so. I hope so.’ Then I thought of something cheering. ‘He’ll have to, all his things are still here – his writing –’
John’s face broke into a grin; I could see it reflected in the windowpane. ‘That’s right!’ he exclaimed. ‘Then I tell him – I tell him –’ he broke off, the grin fading uncertainly.
‘You can tell him,’ I said, turning and looking him in the face, ‘that you were entirely mistaken; that my boss really is my boss, and that I’m not going to have a baby.’ There. That meant I had to do it. That meant it was as good as done.
He put his big head on one side and looked at me, puzzled. ‘Not going to have a baby?’ he repeated.
‘No,’ I said, trying to sound convincing but daunted by the simple bewilderment in his face. ‘You were quite wrong about it.’
He took it in slowly but uncomprehendingly, and shook his head. ‘Honestly, Johnny. Now, please don’t worry any more. Go on off to the club, and don’t worry. He’ll come back, and we’ll all be friends again. All right?’
He shook his head again, not in denial, but just in unbelief. ‘I sorry,’ he said once again, in a hopeless voice that told me I hadn’t convinced him. He went to the door, and then turned round and said simply, ‘You know, I like you. Even when I sick in the head, I still like you. I like to help you, any way I can.’ His face lit up again. ‘I’m good carpenter. Make you wardrobe shelf, remember? Make you something else – very good cradle, like I see here sometime. You like that?’
I stared at him helplessly. I thought of several things to say to him, but nothing sounded right At last I said, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow,’ and he nodded happily and went padding off to work.
It was very early, but I was suddenly feeling horribly tired, and I thought bed would be a good idea. I got undressed and, after my usual battle with the crumbling Ascot in the bathroom, forced it to yield enough hot water for a miserly bath. On my way back to my room I had another look into Toby’s. It was dark and empty. I thought then that, much as I longed to see him, it might be as well to start hoping he wouldn’t come back until I could truthfully tell him there would be no baby. I wondered uneasily whether he would be able to see from my face that though it might be the truth, it was not the whole truth.
I got into bed, turned the light off and lay with just the fire lighting the room. I lay on my back thinking deliberately how lovely it would be when it was over and I didn’t have to worry any more. I wondered where Toby was – he’d been gone for over thirty-six hours now. I thought of his sweetness in sitting beside me all night, and of the shadows on his face in the morning, and how I had gone off without telling him I loved him. Did I love him? I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. All I knew was that I felt married to him.
My hands were folded over my stomach like a sedate effigy, and now, against my will, they started to explore, pressing gently into the flesh. There was no definable shape to the bulge yet – in fact, I could make the bulge non-existent by drawing in my muscles. Surely a being so undeveloped – no, not even a being, an appendage, a little lifeless nubbin of my own flesh – had no claim on me, no claim on life when it couldn’t even sustain an existence of its own. There couldn’t be any wrong in disposing of it. It wasn’t a baby yet, just a potential; not much more than a seed. The chief reason I’d always been against abortion was that it seemed like tearing up a bill instead of paying it. What a piece of high-flown theorizing that seemed now! Why should one pay a bill that was out of all proportion to the goods received? It was absurd.
(Even if you knew in advance what the bill might be?)
Why should I pay it all alone? Anyway, I paid at the time.
(And since when was living a matter of straightforward cash-and-carry transactions? How do you know you’re not paying now for something you’ll get later?)
So you’re back, are you? I snarled at the inner voice. A fine time you picked to wake up! Where were you in my hour of need? I was still arguing childishly against myself when I heard a little noise at the door.
It wasn’t a knock, really – more like a dog scratching to be let in. I lay frozen for a moment, and then I called out, ‘Who is it?’
There was no answer, but after a moment the scratching was repeated. I got out of bed and put on my dressing-gown with shaky haste. Could it be Toby? I ran round the corner to the door and opened it.
It was Mavis.
I was completely taken aback. She had never come up to my room before, in fact I’d never seen her outside her own. She had a shawl-thing round her shoulders, and a knitting bag in her hand, which seemed oddly heavy. She smiled at me shyly, as if uncertain of her welcome.
‘Hallo, dear,’ she said brightly. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming up – I thought I’d just come and see how you were, and perhaps sit and chat with you for a while.’
I said of course I didn’t mind, and stood aside to let her in.
‘Oh, but you’ve been in bed!’ she exclaimed as soon as she went round the angle. ‘I’m disturbing you!’ But she made no move to leave, so I had to say not at all, I’d gone to bed because it seemed the warmest place.
‘Quite right,’ she said approvingly. ‘Now, you just jump back under the covers, and I’ll sit myself here. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’ I did as she suggested, keeping my dressing-gown on, and watched her settle herself in the arm-chair and get her knitting out. She looked very homely and comfortable, but I had a feeling of misgiving. It was so unusual for her to move out of her own domain. I wondered suddenly whether her unexpected visit could have anything to do with my phone call. And almost at once, she confirmed it.
‘Well now, how are you feeling?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been quite worried about you – you haven’t been looking well lately, I noticed it this evening particularly when you dropped in.’
She had nothing at all to go on, I thought, except that phone call, and she naturally wouldn’t admit to having listened to that. I decided to bluff it out.
‘I don’t know where you got the idea I was ill,’ I said as heartily as I could. ‘I’m fine – I just felt a bit sleepy and chilly, that was why I went to bed so early.’
‘Oh come now, dear, you can’t fool an old hand like me.’ She smiled complacently down at her swiftly-flashing knitting needles.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, with an edge in my voice.
‘Just that I know, dear – that’s all.’
I felt myself turn pale with the sort of impotent fury a goldfish in a bowl might feel. Was there nobody who didn’t know? Did I look so obviously the sort to get into trouble that I couldn’t go about with circles under my eyes, or telephone a doctor, or throw up once in a while, without everyone immediately jumping to a single conclusion? Tears of futile anger and chagrin stung my eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I almost shouted.
Mavis laid her knitting aside and came over to the bed, where, to my redoubled annoyance, she sat down and took my hands.
‘Now listen, dear,’ she said kindly. ‘Don’t get upset. I know how you feel because I’ve seen other girls go through it. You may think it’s none of my business –’
‘I do!’ I interrupted rudely, enraged now more by the tears streaming down my face than by her.
‘– And I wouldn’t have said a word, ducky, if I hadn’t heard you phoning that doctor.’ My nose was starting to run and she released one of my hands and put a Chanel-smelling handkerchief into it. ‘Now, Jane, you must be sensible. Don’t go to that awful man and spend all that money.’
I stared at her, aghast.
‘Yes, dear, I know all about him. One of the girls in the company, ever such a nice little thing she was, she thought she’d got into trouble; well, I could’ve told her she would, the way she was going on – actors – you wouldn’t believe! They say the stage is a respectable profession nowadays, well maybe it is, but I can’t think it’s changed all that much in the five years since I left. There was one – the same one this little girl was carrying on with – tall handsome brute, not my type I’m glad to say, too florid like, but he was a regular goat. You couldn’t walk into his dressing-room five minutes after the curtain came down for fear of what you might find him doing. Where he found the energy – ! Anyway, this poor child, only nineteen she was (he should’ve been ashamed of himself and him a man of forty) – if she’d only come to me at the start! But no, she let him tell her what to do – him that was the cause of it all – and what does he do but fix up for her to go and see this Dr Graham? Mind you, he paid, I’ll say that for him, but it might just as well have been her – the money was thrown down the drain all the same!’
In spite of myself I was forced to ask, ‘What do you mean? Didn’t the operation – didn’t it work?’
‘Work?’ she said. ‘Work? There was nothing for it to work on. When she came round after the anaesthetic the first thing she says to the nurse is, Well, was I or wasn’t I? Because I’d told her it was funny this doctor never even touched her before he sent her in there. Nothing of the sort, says the nurse, wherever did you get that idea? It was some little blockage or something, not a baby at all. All that money! She could’ve had the same thing free on the National Health! And then of course, silly girl, she went and told him – he was so livid he wouldn’t have nothing more to do with her.’
‘But –’ I struggled to digest all this. ‘In my case, it’s different. There’s no doubt –’
‘Oh, I dare say,’ she said with a sniff. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is, the man’s a crook. He’s not to be trusted. And why should you give him all your money for doing something –’
She stopped. She looked at me slyly.
‘How far along are you, dear?’
‘Three months,’ I mumbled.
She sucked in her breath and shook her head. ‘Pity you let it go so long,’ she said. ‘Have you tried anything at all? No? Well, you know, you’d be silly to spend all that money, now wouldn’t you? If you didn’t have to?’
I was staring at her as if she were turning into a witch in front of my eyes. I felt faintly hypnotized.
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Oh, nothing wrong, dear,’ she said, giving me a clear-eyed look of total innocence. ‘Don’t think that. But you know, there are ways, without any sort of tinkering about. Now, look here.’ She picked up her heavy knitting-bag and took out of it a half-bottle of gin and a small tin of Nescafé – only it wasn’t Nescafé, because it rattled. I had a good idea what was in that. It was the gin that surprised me. It was a good brand. Did Mavis drink? Where did she get the money? Again as if she read my thoughts, she said: ‘After I heard you talking on the phone, I nipped out and bought this – you can pay me back, if you like. Mother’s ruin. Now you know why they call it that – one reason, anyway. Of course, you have to drink lots of it – “lots and lots, no tiny tots”, as they say.’ She tittered genteelly. The double meaning, when it struck me, forced a gasp of half-hysterical laughter out of me before I could control myself; I clamped a hand over my mouth. I felt I must keep a very firm hold on myself if I were not to lose control altogether. The whole situation was so grotesque, so funny and so preposterous. ‘Nothing wrong, dear!’ Oh no, nothing at all wrong. It was all just like being given a new recipe or a knitting pattern. I put my other hand up to my face too, and put my head down on my knees, trying to keep myself from going to pieces.
Mavis thought I was crying, and indeed I wasn’t far from that either. She patted my shoulder with her dry, spinsterish little hand. ‘Now, don’t upset yourself, there’s a good girl. I’ll stay with you, if you like, and by the morning it’ll probably all be over.’
I didn’t answer. I was wondering how often she did this ministering-angel act, and what she got out of it. Not money? Surely not. Not when she wouldn’t take any for making chair-covers. Perhaps she just did it out of the goodness of her heart – or perhaps (and this thought provoked a fresh spurt of giggles in my throat) half the little souvenirs that littered her room were tokens of gratitude – from Torquay, Margate and Llandrindod Wells – I pulled myself together with a great effort, and took my hands from my face. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Mavis, with her neat grey bun and demure brooch linking the lapels of her Peter Pan collar.
I said, ‘That’s very kind of you, Mavis, and of course I’ll pay you for the gin, but if you don’t mind I’d rather be alone. If I need any help, I’ll call you.’
‘Oh – all right, then,’ she said, concealing her disappointment. She got up and gathered her knitting together. ‘Now, you know what to do? Just take two of these every two hours, and drink plenty of gin. If you feel you’re going to be sick, just try not to be, and don’t drink any more till it passes off, otherwise it’ll all be wasted, won’t it? Mind you,’ she said quickly, ‘I’m not making any promises. Three months is rather late.’ It was as if she were giving me some hyacinth bulbs and saying December was a bit late to plant them. I said seriously that I quite understood, and that I wouldn’t hold her responsible if nothing happened.
She started to go, and then turned back, saying cheerily, ‘Just think how nice it will be when it’s all finished with,’ and then she actually added, ‘Well, I must go and feed my puss-puss now, or she’ll be ever so cross.’ She waved to me encouragingly. ‘Good luck, ducky. Don’t forget to call if you need anything.’ And off she trotted, shawl, knitting-bag and all.
After she’d left the room I sat still in bed for a while, thinking it really wasn’t so funny after all. Then I picked up the Nescafé tin and prised the lid off. There were about ten pills inside. I remembered them from when Alice – the wraith-like girl in the rep – had showed me similar ones. I remembered other things, too, things she’d insisted upon telling me later – all sorts of unlovely details. I shook out a couple of tablets, rolled them about in my hand, and then put them back, cursing Alice heartily. I’m afraid I cursed Mavis too. Why couldn’t she mind her own business? Throwing in this unbalancing element of bizarre comedy just when I’d got everything settled. I thought about the gin, but that was tarred with the same brush. ‘No tiny tots’ … The wretched woman had well-meaningly reduced the whole thing to the level of bar-room farce.
Damn it all, you couldn’t just …
No, I thought, none of that. That way madness lies. If I start thinking of It as a person, entitled to a dignified end, the next thing will be of course that I have no right to end It at all. But all the same – not that way. And not, by the same token, all on my own. Was I respecting the life within me, or pandering to my own healthy terror or going through what Alice went through? I wasn’t at all sure. But anyway, I put the pills and the gin firmly aside, turned out the light again, and tried to go to sleep.
I lay wide-eyed and wakeful. I didn’t have to wonder why. I was missing Toby. I discovered it’s a very different matter, lying awake thinking it would be nice to have a man beside you, and lying awake longing for one particular man. In one case it’s a feeling of vague discontent. In the other … you might just as well try to go to sleep when your feet are cold or you want to spend a penny, or you’re hungry for a special kind of food you haven’t got. As a matter of fact, all three now applied, I realized, as well as the other. Almost every part of my infuriating body seemed to be nagging at me for some sort of attention. I even had a tickle between my shoulder-blades that I couldn’t reach.
At last, exasperated beyond bearing, I switched on the light again. It was still only eight o’clock. This seemed to be the last straw – somebody was really gunning for me: slowing the whole bloody earth down now. All right, I thought furiously. I know when I’m beaten. Grinding my teeth with rage at everything, I got up and dressed in slacks and my old trenchcoat. A glance outside told me it was still foggy – getting worse, if anything. Naturally. I knotted a headscarf round my throat so savagely I nearly choked myself, and crept – I had to creep, because of Mavis – downstairs and out into the fog.
The special food I fancied was – of all things – curry. As I strode along, glaring at the ground, hating everything, I thought: I’m not dealing with this matter a moment too soon. Cravings in the middle of the night? And where am I to find curry, in God’s name, in this benighted neighbourhood? Hammersmith? Hardly. Putney? Loathsome place. Chelsea? Yes, at a price. Oh, God damn and blast, why curry? Why not fish and chips?
But the vision, complete with mango chutney and mounds of yellow rice, persisted. I got on a bus and grudgingly paid my fare to the King’s Road. There was an Indian restaurant I’d seen there, near Sloane Square. It would probably, I reflected bitterly, be shut when I got there – some Hindu feastday, or something. Probably the only day in the whole year. Almost certainly there would be no curry to be had in the whole of London. I was actually weeping with advance self-pity before I got there.
The restaurant was, to my surprise (and, in some perverse way, disappointment) open. In fact they were quite busy. Everyone, including the Indians, seemed to be happy and laughing, and in my surly mood I unkindly wished them all in hell – chiefly because no one was in any hurry to serve me and I had to sit and watch a party at the next table consume a feast that looked to me as if it had issued straight from Nirvana, before I was even shown a menu.
I ordered so recklessly that the waiter looked first surprised, then delighted, then alarmed. ‘Are you sure you can eat all that?’ he asked solicitously. I was, quite sure; even when it began to arrive, dish after khaki-coloured dish, covering the whole surface of the table, I was not daunted. ‘Thank you’ I said confidently, and glared at the man when he discreetly placed a huge jug of iced water at my elbow.
The first dish was wonderful. I ladled the curried object, whatever it was, on to a heap of saffron rice, smothered it with sauce, rolled up a chipathi and set to. I demolished it without difficulty, though it was extremely hot and I had recourse to the water when no one was looking. Then I tackled the next dish, which had succulent fat prawns nestling in it. After that the jug of water was empty and I was full, but the waiter was smirking in an enigmatic Eastern way, so I toyed with the final concoction, just to prove I could if I wanted to, and that any I happened to leave was just for manners. I was rewarded by several admiring looks as I paid my sizeable bill and blundered out, sweating, into the fog.
It had got considerably thicker while I’d been eating. I was beginning to feel sleepy, and very cold; the temperature seemed to have gone down, and I was shivering even while I sweated from the furnace-like emanations of the curry.
At last I got on a bus, which trundled quite briskly to the far end of the King’s Road, but after World’s End, where the streets were darker, the fog seemed to close in and the bus was forced to nose its way cautiously along in first gear. The journey went on and on – before long we were travelling at a walking pace, and I and the few other passengers were anxiously clearing the condensation from the windows and peering into the murk in an effort to see where we were. Passing a street-light came to seem quite an event; one watched their brave little sulphurous smudges receding with a feeling akin to despair, as if we might never find another.
I asked the conductor to tell me when we came to my stop, and he said, ‘Lady, you think I got X-ray eyes or something? I can’t see the stops, no better’n what you can.’ He sounded irritable, and whenever the bus stopped (which it did frequently) he went round to the front to talk to his mate. A bus had been rammed in the fog two nights before, when it wasn’t nearly as thick as this, and I wondered if he was scared.
At last I judged it time to get off and start walking. The district was sinister enough at any time; now, with the feeling that any and every form of menace, from a cut-throat to a coal-hole, might be within inches for all I could tell, my small remaining resources of courage were exhausted within minutes. I felt my way along, a few steps at a time, and every time I heard a voice or a footstep I stopped dead, clinging to whatever bit of masonry was under my hand and almost cowering with fright.
After a while, though, when I’d turned down the side-street where the house was (I hoped), there were no more sounds to frighten me, and as a result of course I grew much more afraid of the stuffed, dripping silence. Far, far away I could hear the slow, grinding sounds of traffic – but muffled, as if I were wearing earplugs. The house was right down at the bottom of the street, and I moved like a ghost from lamp to lamp, tiptoeing for some reason, as if I were in a jungle in dread of attracting the attention of wild animals prowling near me. I couldn’t decide whether I felt safer near the lamps, or in the dark stretches between. The thick patches of light seemed to be focal-points, somehow … I was beginning not to feel very well. The mixture of inner heat and outer cold was making my head light. The lamp-smudges seemed to swim towards me, dipping and swaying off-centre as I approached them. My legs were trembling and when I put my hand against my face it was burning, and yet clammy. The next time I reached a lamp-post I clung to it. It was wet and cold, but it held steady, which was more than anything else seemed to. I put my forehead against it and hung on with both hands. Then I felt the post begin to slide upwards through my hands, as if more of it were coming out of the ground. It slid up faster and faster, though I tried to hold it down. Then I felt something hard strike my knees, and I smelt a very strong smell of dog.
‘… Come on, dearie, help me a bit – put your head forward – that’s it. Are you feeling better? Say something, there’s a love – come on, you can’t sit there all night …’
The fog had solidified into a strong pressure on the back of my neck. When I opened my eyes reluctantly, I was staring at a small piece of pavement miles below, between two sloping hills. Then I saw that the hills were my legs, and that my head was being pushed between them. In the process my middle was doubled up and it felt roughly as if somebody were squashing it between two metal plates studded with nails.
‘Oh God –’ I gasped, trying to straighten up, trying to relieve the intolerable pressure in my inside. ‘Let me up –’
The weight on my neck instantly lifted, and I straightened my back. Crouched beside me looking anxiously into my face was Jane, the other Jane. The fog had made her eye-black run and it lay in ridges in the lines under her eyes; her hair was hanging in strands from under her hat. I could smell her scent, very sharp and close, through the fog and dog smells at the foot of the lamp-post where I was sitting on the ground.
‘You must’ve fainted!’ she exclaimed in awe. ‘Lucky I come along when I did! Whatever happened, then? Did you have a drop too much to drink?’
I couldn’t answer. Sitting up had done nothing to relieve the cramping agony inside me. I clasped my forearms over the pain and bit my lips.
‘You look bad!’ she said suddenly. ‘Come on, you can’t stay there. I’ll help you – it’s not far. On your feet, then – there’s a good girl.’ Coaxing and hauling, she managed to get me upright. I clung to her and tried to keep my nails from digging into her arm. With my other hand I pressed my stomach. It made the pain worse, but I kept hugging it, holding it. With the woman urging me, I put one foot ahead of the other and we started to move.
The pain died down for a moment, and I relaxed my hold. Then it came again like a whiplash.
‘No!’ I felt like shouting. ‘No! I didn’t mean it!’
I wouldn’t let her take me beyond the door. I waited until a break came in the pain, and then pinned a healthy smile on my face and told her I felt perfectly well.
‘Are you sure, dear? Because I could easily take you upstairs …’
‘No, really, I’m fine now. I do thank you for finding me –’
‘But whatever do you think made you faint? Do you do it often?’
I could feel the pain beginning again, and my smile was turning into a grimace.
‘I don’t know …’ I said vaguely. I couldn’t think up a lie, despite all my recent practice. My mind was fastened on this new and fearful thing that was happening. ‘I think I’ll just go and lie down for a while …’ I managed to get my key in the door and immediately forgot about my rescuer. I must have just left her standing on the steps. I stumbled to the first landing before the recurring cramp forced me to sit down on the floor. I felt the world beginning to drift into the distance again, but I knew what was happening this time and got my head down quickly. With my cheek resting on the worn linoleum things came back into focus almost at once. I was learning. The pain faded, and I pulled myself up immediately with the help of the banisters and gained the second floor in the lull.
I was probably more afraid than I’d ever been in my life but I was too busy to notice it. If I could just get to my room…I thought of it as a sanctuary, and something more – as if there were some magic property in the room itself that would stop this happening, if only I could reach it.
The effort of getting up the third and fourth flights, which I tried to manage in one go, muddled me somehow. I hadn’t bothered with landing lights and I wasn’t sure, any longer, where I was – I only knew I had to keep climbing and that somewhere at the top was relief and safety. Then I saw a strip of light. It was more or less at eye level, because I was on the floor at the time, and I crawled towards it with a muffled sensation of triumph. Whatever it was I was trying to do, which was now unclear, I’d done – that line of light was the goal. When I got as far as the door I dragged myself upright again, turned the handle, and lurched in.
Toby was sorting papers at the table; there was an open suitcase on the chair. Everything became bitingly clear to me as soon as I saw him turn round sharply and stare at me.
‘Oh, you’re leaving!’ I said brightly. ‘I wondered when you’d be coming back for your things. Well, I’ll just leave you to pack.’ I turned round to go, but things were blurring again and I misjudged the turn and banged my head against the edge of the door. I closed my eyes tightly because this silly new pain was going to make me cry. Toby’s voice came from somewhere very close. It was loud and harsh.
‘What’s the matter with you? Are you drunk?’
‘Everyone keeps asking that,’ I said conversationally. ‘No, as a matter of fact I’m having a miscarriage.’ Why had I said that, in God’s name? That was the last thing I had wanted to say, especially in that silly, off-hand tone. Then the words rebounded back to my ears and I heard their sound and their meaning, and the pain came back at that moment, too, and it all made sense, the way a policeman’s knock on the door must make sense when you’ve committed a crime. I groped for Toby in the dark and found his hands, and they held on to me, and I shouted again to an unknown listener as I had wanted to in the street: ‘I don’t want this! I didn’t mean it, truly! Stop it, please make it stop!’
Toby picked me up bodily and carried me to his bed. I wasn’t being good about it any more; it was as if the effort of getting upstairs had used up the last of my good behaviour. I was sobbing and pleading; the tears ran down the side of my face into my hair. When the pain came I twisted away from it and clutched at anything I could get hold of, and swore. But I didn’t shout any more. In the back of my mind I recognized the need to avoid attracting a lot of people.
In the first lull I opened my eyes and saw Toby’s frightened face hanging over me. He looked more than ever like a baby blackbird, rakish, half-strangled and very dear to me. I tried to smile at him through my tears, but I realized it hadn’t turned out very well, so I squeezed his hand which I was holding.
‘I’ll get a doctor,’ he said; his voice was breathy and distorted with shock.
‘No –’ I said, shaking my head violently. But I wanted one. He saw it in my eyes. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, trying not to sound on the edge of panic himself. ‘It’ll be all right.’
He drew his hand with difficulty out of my rigid grip.
‘Don’t leave me!’ I implored him, seeing the pain coming towards me like a shadow.
‘Only to phone –’
I was torn between wanting him to get a doctor, and wanting him with me. ‘In a minute –’ I gasped. ‘After this one –’
It overtook me, but it wasn’t quite as bad as before. I clenched Toby’s hand and he clenched back, and I could see his face all the time in the middle of the surrounding blackness. When it withdrew I licked my salty upper lip and said, ‘That wasn’t so bad … do you think it might not be that?’
‘Did you make this happen?’
The tears started coming again. ‘Not on purpose,’ I sobbed childishly.
He saw my eyes begin to widen and his voice changed immediately to anxious concern. ‘It’s all right, darling – hold on – I’ll get someone to help you.’
‘Dr Maxwell!’ I got out, feeling alone and rootless now that he had let go of my hand. By a miracle I remembered his number, which was an easy one, and by another Toby had four pennies. I, who had protested I didn’t want a doctor, now called after him, ‘Tell him to hurry!’
I lay alone under the glaring light. I thought no deep thoughts about the justice of it, or the punishment fitting the crime, or the irony of fate. I thought how the baby would look if it were born now, just a red dead morsel to be wrapped up quickly and thrown away, something disgusting and of no significance, not even fit to be buried as a human being. It didn’t have a chance; not even a tiny chance of living. I hadn’t given it houseroom for long enough. Another pain came. I sobbed again, not because it hurt, which it did, but because I was so helpless against what was happening, and because the small voice was saying blandly, ‘Well? Isn’t this what you wanted?’ and I was answering, ‘It’s not what I want any more! It’s my baby and I want it to live!’
Toby seemed to be gone a long time, but I wasn’t measuring time very accurately. It felt like an hour, but it was probably only a few minutes. When he came back, his face was so strained with worry that I felt the sting of another guilt, and I smiled properly (having just finished with a not-too-terrible pain) and put out my hand to him to show him I was better.
‘Did you get him?’ I asked, trying not to sound as if it were a matter of life and death.
He nodded and sat down beside me. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Better. Much.’
‘You look a bit better.’ He sounded relieved.
We sat in silence for a while, waiting for the next pain. It was less bad than the one before, but I couldn’t tell if they were dying down for good or if this were the prelude to something else.
‘What did he say?’ I asked presently.
‘He said he’d be along in ten minutes.’
‘You were gone ages.’
‘I went to the box at the corner.’
This was something so endearing I couldn’t speak for a moment.
‘In the fog!’
‘It isn’t so bad now.’
‘But you went out … instead of –’
‘You don’t want the whole house knowing.’
I love you, I thought distinctly. But nothing gave me the right to say it now. So instead I said, ‘Mavis knows already.’
‘She would. How?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said wearily. ‘It seems people only have to look at me to know. Everybody seems to have known, all the time.’
‘I didn’t,’ Toby said, with despair.
I’d been so preoccupied with the physical results of my condition for the last hour that I’d forgotten its other effects. Something tightened in my chest as I remembered the two days since I saw Toby last. ‘Where did you go?’ I asked.
‘To Mike’s. He’s a friend of mine. I stay there sometimes.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘No. It’s your thing.’
‘But he doesn’t know me. It would have helped you to tell him.’
‘Well … anyway, I didn’t.’
I love you.
‘Thank you.’
He held on to me through another pain, and wiped my face. Then he said, ‘He should be arriving soon – the doctor. I’ll go down and wait for him, so he won’t have to ring.’
‘Thank you,’ I said again, inadequately. At the door I stopped him. ‘Toby.’
‘What?’
‘The other part isn’t true – about James.’
He hesitated and frowned. ‘Oh,’ he said non-committally. ‘I won’t be long.’
I closed my eyes while he was gone. In the dark it was easier not to think.
Quite soon I heard them coming up the stairs. Toby had evidently asked the doctor to be quiet. He stayed outside and Dr Maxwell came tramping and booming in alone. A subdued boom is almost more formidable than a boom that’s allowed full bent.
‘Now then, what’s all this?’ he boomed in a hearty whisper.
‘Please –’ I tried to formulate some plea in the middle of a pain, but it came out as a whimper.
He examined me and then straightened up, shaking his head.
‘You naughty girl,’ he said severely.
‘Doctor, I didn’t!’ I exclaimed, looking, sounding, and in fact feeling as if the idea had never crossed my mind.
‘Come, come,’ he said sceptically. ‘Then what brought this on? A normal, healthy young woman like you –’
‘I ate some hot curry and then got lost in the fog and fell down …’
‘And I suppose your conscience is perfectly clear?’ he said, good-humouredly. ‘There are more ways than one of ending an unwanted pregnancy, you know. Indigestion, for one. Or am I meant to believe you didn’t realize that?’
‘I didn’t think – I wanted –’
‘Is that young man the father?’ he asked unexpectedly.
‘No.’
‘Not? Pity. Well now, look here, I think we’d better pop you into hospital for a few days, where we can keep an eye on you.’
‘Am I going to lose the baby?’
‘Possibly. I don’t know. You’ve done your best to see that you do – now we’ll have to do ours to see that you don’t.’
‘I don’t want to lose it.’
He looked at me for a moment, halted in the act of folding his stethoscope. ‘Well,’ he said equably, ‘if that’s true, it’ll help. Is there a phone here that I can use to call an ambulance?’
‘Two floors down,’ I said. ‘You’ll need fourpence.’
‘I’ll charge it to the National Health,’ he said.