“You’ve come too late for me, but give me some pamphlets for my girls. I don’t want them to have the life I had.” The woman gripped her handbag as if afraid Audrey might snatch it.
The grim, grey walls gave the room the air of a bunker, and it felt as though they were hiding, the four of them: Audrey, Miriam, Gloria, who managed the clinic, and this woman—Betty, she called herself, but who could say if this was her real name.
“What do I know of a French letter?” she was nearly whispering now. “I thought it was one of those fancy papers. Who would I write to in France? I thought to myself? But I knew more than some. My friend Louise, she had no idea how the baby got in there, and had no idea how it was going to come out.”
It was Audrey’s idea to visit the clinic. They would go and listen, she said. Miriam considered it spying at first and thought it both thrilling and shameful under the current circumstances in which they lived. Recorded lives, watchful neighbours.
But Audrey had explained that they would be helping the women, too, giving them “access to knowledge”—a phrase she was using a lot these days. She said it as if together they were an oracle, a well of authority from which these women could draw information they so desperately needed. This is what she liked about Audrey, the way she would speak to her, and of her, as if Miriam had this “knowledge,” too. It made her surer of herself, and sharper. Sometimes in their conversation Audrey would speak to Miriam as if she were an audience, and she knew this was part of why she was valued, someone on whom Audrey could try out arguments.
There were other things Audrey valued in her, she knew.
“You have a certain bravery,” she’d said.
But this made Miriam feel like it was something she had stolen. Bravery belonged to soldiers, with their headlong rush into death, and so she denied it, told Audrey that she was not at all brave.
“But you are,” Audrey argued. “You have endured losses most women won’t know of, and now you are learning to fly. That’s bravery of a different sort.”
“I have no choice,” Miriam told her. Grief was a trait she had mastered; it felt nothing like bravery. Nothing seemed a matter of choice. “I have to exist in the world. We all do.”
The clinic was in Farnham, some twenty miles away, and Audrey had driven Frank’s car to it. They were told it was around the corner from the fishmonger’s, a location that was discreet but accessible.
When they came upon it, the clinic appeared shuttered, though the door was unlocked. Inside, the quiet of the waiting room allowed only the brisk scrape of a chair leg, the gentle clearing of a throat. Betty had been waiting in a chair in the corner of the room. One hand kept brushing down her skirt, the other adjusting the brim of her hat, and when Gloria entered from the back room, she started, half rising before settling back, waiting to be told what to do. They were led into a small room that had a large window overlooking the back alley. From outside Miriam heard the steady beating of someone cleaning a rug, but otherwise there was a stillness as they settled into their chairs, Gloria telling the woman that Audrey was a famous campaigner on birth control. She didn’t explain Miriam’s presence.
Later, when they had time to talk before the next visitor, Gloria’s tone had been apologetic.
“The doctor refuses to send them here,” she told them. “He thinks those vending machines in pubs, the ones with condoms, is all that’s needed. And women won’t come here on their own. They might be seen as promiscuous, or disloyal to their husbands. Sexual intercourse is not something to be discussed. In their view, ignorance protects them, naïveté is a way of preserving their innocence. So, few women know we’re here, and those who come arrive like fugitives, afraid their husbands will find out.”
Tea was made, and Gloria told them about women, married women, who were left floundering when they were told to “take the kettle off before it boils,” with no idea what this meant.
“Those that do get pregnant come to ask about herbal remedies, or a gin bath, wondering how much gin to take, and how long to sit in a hot bath. One woman claimed her aunt used a leech to help bring on the miscarriage.”
Miriam looked to the door, willing someone to come in so she didn’t have to hear more.
“Five hundred pamphlets, we distributed.” Gloria’s voice, normally high-pitched, had reached another octave. “We’re like a secret society.” She went on with more stories of the women in the village, but Miriam had stopped listening. She was thinking about secrets, the way this room seemed like a repository of concealed lives, and whether the keeping of knowledge was the same as keeping a secret. A secret, like currency, to be saved, or to be traded. The women who came to the clinic gained this currency, passed on the information, informers all, careful who heard them, often shutting out those with whom they shared a bed. What secrets had she held from Edmund? What did he keep from her? Could she hide such a thing as contraception from him? Could she acquire these pessaries Gloria was speaking of and use them without Edmund’s knowledge?
At breakfast Edmund had told her about the “spyclists” that he’d read about in the Daily Herald. The article was based on a translation from a German cycling magazine offering advice to Hitler Youth groups travelling abroad. They were asked to take photographs, especially of industry, and to get lists of names of all those taking part in anti-German movements. They were told to record “in their head” landmarks like steeples and towers and bridges in such a way that they could recognize them at night. Edmund had been so enraged by this article, the pretense, the subterfuge, so galling. That these youth would be welcomed as tourists, perhaps given directions, offered a cup of tea, in some cases celebrated at a local hall, only to betray their hosts in this way. It was the moral degradation that upset him, that people would do such a thing without conscience, rather than the fact that they were instruments in the preparation for war.
This is what she felt like now, a spy, gathering information covertly, the purpose of which was questionable. She would tell Audrey that later, that she’d felt like an intruder, that she didn’t feel she had a right to this information because surely she’d have been told about it by now.
“Too many babies,” Betty had said. “What do I want with so many?”
They heard the click of the outer door, but not the footsteps that would take the woman to the chair, so careful she was. They’d finished talking to Betty, who was folding the pamphlet into her purse, her head low as if she might be looking deeper for something inside it. Audrey wondered if she was stalling, not wanting to walk past whoever was in the other room. News of these visits could get around, not always for the judgment of it, but for the assurance. They were not alone. Not a one of them.
Gloria knew what she was up against, knew that only desperate ones come, and knew there was a limit to how much they would expose of themselves.
“Come, Betty,” she said, leading her by the elbow. “It will be quicker to go out this way.” The exit led to the alley, yet Gloria presented it as if it were the main entrance, door swinging wide, head held high.
The woman from the waiting room called herself Elspeth, and despite her pallor there was a haughtiness about her. She’d come for a friend, of course. Two months along. No husband, little money, but Elspeth would help her, she was quick to add.
“Does the father know?” Audrey wasn’t sure if she should be asking such a question. Elspeth blinked, nodded in a swift, twitching manner.
“Is she well? Healthy?”
A quick nod.
“Family?”
“No.”
“On her own then.” Gloria sighed.
Audrey examined the woman because there was something familiar about her. The voice, too. A Northern accent.
“Working?”
“Yes, but the Carringtons left a week ago, so it’s not so bad.” Her hand flew to her mouth.
That’s it, Audrey thought, leaning forward. Elspeth was head maid there. That dinner four months ago, she’d taken Audrey’s coat, helped her with the earring that got stuck in the collar.
Elspeth recognized her, too, though only her widening pupils gave her away.
“She wants rid of it.” A harsh whisper.
Gloria placed her clasped hands on the table before her, dropped her eyelids as if concentrating to compose what she would say next.
“There are herbs she can take.”
“She tried them.”
Shooting a glance at Audrey.
“I’ve heard of doctors . . .”
At her lecture a week ago Audrey was asked what happens when it fails, when women can’t get the birth control they need, or when the birth control doesn’t work, what was left for these women who did not want the baby. Audrey had told them about the Abortion Law Reform Association that had recently been established to campaign for the legalization of abortion. This had been genuine progress, she’d told the women.
“What does that do for me now?” the woman had asked Audrey. “I’ve had four babies in the past six years. My husband will beat the life out of me when he finds out I’m to have another one.”
This knocked the campaigner out of Audrey, leaving her as a woman who could feel the deep personal anguish of another. What does this do for me now?
“Perhaps the father—”
“This was not done by a husband … or boyfriend.”
Audrey felt her breath catch, tried to keep a steady eye on Elspeth as she thought of something to say. She had been violated.
That would not make a difference, she knew. The law was the law. Just months ago, in June, Dr Aleck Bourne was arrested after performing a termination at St Mary’s Hospital in London on a fourteen-year-old girl who’d been sexually assaulted by five off-duty British soldiers from the Royal Horse Guards. She had initially gone to St Thomas Hospital but was sent away on the grounds that she might be carrying a future prime minister. The only justification for abortions in the Infant Life (Preservation) Act of 1929 was when the mother’s life was in danger. Dr Bourne’s argument that she was suicidal won him an acquittal.
“There’s nothing to be done, I’m afraid,” said Gloria, leading Elspeth to the back door. She gave her a pamphlet and a few notes on a slip of paper and walked her out.
The glare of the sun blinded Miriam and Audrey as they walked away from the clinic minutes later, so they didn’t see Elspeth until she stepped in front of them. There was no accusation, no challenge in her look, yet the directness of it shifted responsibility over to Audrey. There were women Audrey knew who’d had an abortion. No one talked openly about it, or even acknowledged it if suspected, but she’d heard of women who’d found doctors willing to risk their practice to help. Help some women, that is.
“I can make the inquiries,” Audrey said.
Elspeth nodded once, whispered thank you, and turned away.
“Does she know who did this?” Audrey called after her.
“Yes.” The answer firm this time.
The Carringtons’ son. So the rumours were true.
Later with Audrey at the wheel, the intensity of the day allowed them to be looser, more vulnerable in their talk.
“There is much we don’t think about,” Audrey said. “Stella Browne considers the bearing of children as a voluntary rather than involuntary condition. She is adamant on that point.”
Miriam looked out the window and saw a motorcyclist by the side of the road having a cup of tea.
“I had not thought of it in that way,” she said after a moment.
“We should not have to pay such a heavy price. Especially if what we want is to love and be loved.”
Miriam glanced at Audrey, felt her face go hot. She twirled the button on her coat, grabbed the handle of the car when Audrey hit a pothole, her speed too fast for the road. Then Audrey slowed suddenly, she was saying that if she’d had a choice she would not have become pregnant, that if she’d had a choice she would not have given up her baby. In that moment Miriam understood what knowledge meant, the power of it.
“We know what we have experienced,” Miriam said to her. “Choice never seems to be an option.”
Audrey’s hands were steady at the wheel as she accelerated. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what we need to talk about. Choices.”