IZZY WROTE TO Elspeth. ‘I have goofed. I have truly messed up my life. I’m going to have a baby. I am a fool. Obviously, I’ve left the ATA. To be honest, I feel so stupid and ashamed, I hate going out. I am going to be that most reviled thing – an unmarried mother.’
Within days, Elspeth replied. ‘Oh Izzy, I’m so sorry. I wish I could get away and come to you.’ Then, ‘By the way, does your father know?’
He did. Izzy had written to her parents, telling them. A pile of crumpled paper had gathered under the kitchen table as she worked out the best way to break the news. Looking back, she decided her approach had been too flippant. She should have been remorseful, begging forgiveness.
‘The good news is, I’ve left the ATA and I am no longer seeing my American doctor. He’s gone to France. I haven’t heard from him in a while. The bad news is I’m expecting his baby.’ She’d asked if she could come home and give birth to their grandchild there.
The reply, from her father, came a week later. ‘I worry about you. Your life seems to be a journey from stupidity to more stupidity. I wish you and your child well. Unfortunately, you can’t come home. Your condition would make a mockery of all my sermons. I’d be a laughing stock.’ But, of course, he would pray for her and the child. In fact, Hamish felt there was scandal enough about him without his daughter being spied, fat with child, trudging up the High Street. He thought it better she kept away, gave birth, then discreetly married someone suitable. She could then come home in triumph. Of course, he did not mention this in his letter.
Izzy read the letter several times, then folded it carefully and put it away in her underwear drawer. She imagined her father sitting in his study, furiously writing to her. She thought he might have ripped up her letter to him. The atmosphere in the manse would be thick, black with disapproval and fury.
When she cried, it wasn’t from self-pity. It was sorrow for faded dreams. She had imagined sitting at the kitchen table with her family – mother, grandparents and child. She’d dreamed of her father and Buster walking hand in hand in the garden, him stooping low to point out flowers and bumblebees, the child marvelling at the old man’s wisdom. This was not going to happen.
So, Izzy stayed at the cottage. She had nowhere else to go. Once a week she travelled three miles to the next village to attend the clinic at the local cottage hospital. She’d sit in the waiting room ready to be examined, knickers off, utility stockings rolled down, to her ankles, clutching a urine sample in an old ink bottle. She went on her motorbike.
She lay on a long table while the doctor pummelled her stomach, told her the baby was coming along nicely and warned her that there were strange blue flakes in her sample. ‘Wash out the bottle properly next time.’
A nurse, who Izzy reckoned could only be about four foot six, stood on a box while she pressed an extremely cold trumpet against Izzy’s stomach listening for a heartbeat. ‘Ticking away,’ she said.
The doctor asked where Izzy planned to give birth. ‘Here or at home? It’ll cost you one and sixpence to have it in the hospital.’ His tone was curt. He didn’t look her in the eye. He thought her a disgrace and wanted her to know it.
When Izzy said the hospital, and one and sixpence was fine with her, the doctor checked his admissions book. ‘You’ve left it too late,’ he said. ‘I doubt there will be a bed available when you go into labour. Home birth it is.’ He nodded to the nurse, who said she’d tell the Inspector.
‘Inspector?’ said Izzy.
‘The Health Inspector will visit you at home, a general cleanliness check.’
Izzy said the place was immaculate. ‘Mrs Brent would be very hurt at your suggestion it wasn’t.’
The doctor said there were rules to be obeyed. ‘The Inspector will call in a few days. And,’ he added, ‘if I see you on that motorbike again, I’ll refuse to treat you.’
Chided, Izzy went home.
Mrs Brent was at the cottage when the Inspector came, and accompanied her and Izzy on the cleanliness check that took in the kitchen, the bathroom and Izzy’s bedroom. ‘This is where you plan to have the baby?’
Izzy nodded.
‘Now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Who is going to tend you?’
‘That would be me,’ said Mrs Brent.
‘You?’ said Izzy. ‘I thought there would be a midwife and a doctor.’
‘Well, naturally, the midwife will see you through the delivery. Dr Grant will come along if there are complications. But I meant afterwards, who will tend you?’
Izzy said she wouldn’t need tending. She’d be fine.
‘Dear girl,’ said the Inspector, ‘you seem to know nothing about having a baby. Who is going to bring you meals? Who is going to deal with your bedpans? Who is going to look after baby as you lie in?’
‘Lie in?’ said Izzy. ‘I won’t have time to lie in, I’ll have a baby.’
Mrs Brent and the Inspector exchanged looks, rolled their eyes.
The Inspector tucked her notebook into her bag and said, ‘The standard recommendation is a fortnight’s bed rest after giving birth.’
‘What? A fortnight?’ said Izzy. ‘I’m not lying in bed for two bloody weeks.’
‘You bloody well are,’ said the Inspector. ‘Is there a neighbour? A relative we could call on?’
Izzy said she shared the cottage with two pilots. But they were away all day, and she was positive neither of them would empty a bedpan.
‘There’s me,’ said Mrs Brent. ‘I’ll look after Izzy.’
‘You’re a relative?’
‘I’m the housekeeper.’
‘So you live in?’ asked the Inspector.
‘No,’ said Mrs Brent. ‘There’s things to do at home. William needs his tea. She can have the baby at my house. I like babies. Can’t be doing with children these days, but babies are lovely.’
‘So plainly,’ said the Inspector, ‘I am inspecting the wrong house.’
Mrs Brent said that anybody was welcome to inspect her house anytime. ‘You’ll find it as spotless as this one.’
Izzy’s days passed slowly. She hid. She spent her time waiting and hoping. She watched for the postman every morning, thinking today would be the day there’d be a letter from Jimmy. Nothing. She sat in the living room staring at the phone, willing it to ring. It never did.
She heard planes flying overhead, wondered who was in them. She listened to the news. She walked by the river, always at five o’clock when nobody was about – everyone went home for tea – as she didn’t want to meet anybody. She couldn’t bear ‘The Look’. She got it everywhere she went.
The Look was about more than disapproval. It went beyond shock and horror that she was – very obviously – a fallen woman. It told Izzy that the bestower of The Look thought she should know better than to get pregnant. Immaculate behaviour was expected of a lady pilot. The Look told Izzy she had no right to get up to mischief with a man. She was a fool, a strumpet, a disgrace.
The first person to give Izzy The Look was the woman in the fish and chip shop. Her eyes had fixed on Izzy’s swollen belly, then moved up to her face. Izzy knew she was no longer a hero. After that came the CO. Izzy squirmed when she entered his office and was greeted by it. He did, however, come from behind his desk and took Izzy by the hand. ‘We’re sorry to lose you,’ he said. ‘If ever I can be of help, let me know.’ It was kind of him. But The Look was what Izzy remembered.
Now, Izzy got The Look from people in the village. A raw hush spread through shops when she entered. She no longer dropped in at the chip shop. The Look kept her away. Wherever she went, she heard tuts and whisperings behind her back. ‘And her a lady pilot, too,’ she overheard someone say. She didn’t turn round to find out who the whisperer was.
Julia didn’t give her The Look, but she often told Izzy she was a goose. ‘You should have got a cap, like me.’
Izzy said she couldn’t have gone to the doctor in her home village. ‘He’d have told my dad.’ And, she hadn’t wanted to go to someone here in Skimpton. ‘I was embarrassed.’
‘A moment of embarrassment, a little bit of discomfort, but look at the trouble it saves you. It’s what us modern women do,’ said Julia.
Izzy doubted she was a modern woman. ‘I don’t think I’m poised like them. I just lumber through life making mistakes.’
‘We all lumber. We all doubt. Just modern women keep their chins up. They don’t let their mistakes show.’
Izzy looked glumly down at her swelling stomach. ‘My mistake is really showing.’
At first, Izzy had thought that the look she’d got from Claire was The Look, but then decided it wasn’t. It was something else. Izzy puzzled over it, till Julia guessed it must be Claire’s fear. ‘She thinks none of us know about her affair. But it’s hard to miss the lustful way she gazes at Simon in the mess. She sees you, Izzy, and she thinks it could be her. She can’t bear to think what her husband would do or say if he came home to find a child that obviously couldn’t be his.’
But Claire was good to Izzy. Understood her discomfort, brought her bottles of dandelion and burdock to ease her heartburn. Made her put her feet up in the evenings and gave her news of the doings in the mess. She kept quiet about the shock Izzy’s pregnancy had been. One of the men had said, ‘That’s the big difference between men and women pilots. The men aren’t going to leave because they’re in the family way.’ Dolores had told him to shut up.
But still, The Look bothered Izzy enough to stop her going out. She tucked herself away and tried not to think about how she’d get by after the baby came. As for the actual birth, she dismissed that from her mind. It was too much to contemplate.
One morning, as Izzy sat in the living room, feet up, listening to the Radio Doctor advising the nation, in his own kindly way, to open their bowels once a day, Mrs Brent barged into the room sideways. It was the only way she could get herself and the large box she was carrying into the room. ‘There,’ she wheezed and dumped the box at Izzy’s feet. ‘For the baby.’
Izzy raked through a pile of knitted jackets, nappies, bootees, tiny shoes, blankets, a shawl and other baby clothes. ‘Goodness. Thank you. Where did you get all this?’
‘They’ve been collecting it in the village. Eddie Hicks put up a notice in the garage. The Izzy Fund.’
‘Gosh.’
‘The word got round, and everyone knows how hard it is to get baby things, so people gave what they no longer needed. Oh, there’s those that disapprove of you. But plenty folk know how it is. A moment’s nonsense, a bit of passion and look what happens – a baby on the way. That’s life for you. Nothing to be ashamed of.’
Izzy said she wasn’t ashamed. ‘My only mistake was to fall in love.’
‘Ach, love,’ said Mrs Brent. ‘It’s all bluebirds and roses, sighing and longing at first. Then, you end up in the family way, waddling about and plagued with indigestion. After that there’s the chapped hands from washing nappies and swollen ankles from being on your feet all day. And you’re tired out from sleepless nights.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Izzy.
‘Well it’s the truth. I fell for Mr Brent and I wound up in that cottage worrying about how to make half a pound of mince feed a family of four for two days.’ She led the way to the kitchen. ‘After you’ve peeled the potatoes, you can go and thank Eddie for all the stuff he collected. Stupid man still thinks you saved his life. After that, when you come back, I’ll show you how to make soup. Soup’s handy. Or are you going to sit staring at the phone all day?’
Izzy said she kept hoping Jimmy or her father might get in touch.
‘If they do, you’ll hear the phone in the kitchen.’
‘I want my father to change his mind and ask me to come home. He’s disowned me.’
‘I know,’ said Mrs Brent. She’d found the letter in Izzy’s drawer, and read it. Put it back, shaking her head. ‘Ach, the man’s a fool.’
Izzy said she wanted him to forgive her.
‘Perhaps you should think about forgiving him. He’s not being very nice, as I see it.’
She took Izzy’s arm, heaved her from her seat. ‘You can peel some potatoes.’
‘He thinks I’m a fallen woman,’ said Izzy.
‘And so you are,’ said Mrs Brent.
The next day Mrs Brent arrived at the cottage and found Izzy on all fours scrubbing the kitchen floor. Izzy looked up at her and said, ‘I don’t know what’s got into me. I suddenly had to do this.’
‘Nest-building,’ said Mrs Brent. ‘It’s a sign. You’re going to be a mother soon.’