Ellie told Bonny about her last couple of weeks in Oklahoma, the small party the cast had thrown for her leaving, and about Sir Miles suggesting her for the part of Megan in Soho next year.
‘I want to do it more than anything in the world,’ she admitted. ‘I agreed to go for a screen test in early February and he sent round a copy of the script for me to study before I left London. But I’m so confused right now. I really can’t look ahead more than one day at a time.’
‘Everything will sort itself out,’ Bonny said soothingly. ‘Will you ever tell him who your mother was?’
Ellie shook her head firmly. ‘No. I’m happy that he seems to like me. It might put him off me.’
‘Some things are best kept quiet,’ Bonny agreed, an odd look passing over her face. Ellie thought perhaps she was thinking about her past.
‘Speaking of keeping things quiet, how did John react when you pretended to miscarry?’ Ellie asked, suddenly remembering Bonny hadn’t mentioned it.
‘Would you like some sherry?’ Bonny jumped out of her seat and went over to a small cabinet.
A chill went down Ellie’s spine. Was Bonny being deliberately evasive? ‘I don’t want sherry, Bonny,’ she replied. ‘I want to know what John said.’
Bonny turned and her face was bright pink. ‘He didn’t say anything,’ she said in a faint voice. ‘He thinks I’m still pregnant.’
Ellie forgot that just a minute or two ago she’d been admiring Bonny’s new maturity. ‘Bonny!’ she gasped. ‘You aren’t serious? You’d be six months pregnant. At that stage you can’t just claim you flushed it down the toilet.’
‘I know,’ Bonny whispered.
Ellie looked hard at her friend. There was anguish in those blue eyes, robbing them of their customary sparkle. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said crisply, determined to get to the bottom of everything. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ Bonny admitted wearily. She sunk down on the settee beside Ellie and laid her head on her friend’s shoulder. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like, Ellie. I’m so ashamed of myself, I can’t begin to explain.’
‘Start at the beginning,’ Ellie insisted. ‘You told me at your wedding that when you got your next period you were going to make out it was a miscarriage.’
‘I didn’t get one.’ Bonny sighed deeply, burying her head against Ellie’s neck like a small child. ‘I thought that meant I was pregnant after all and I was so thrilled. I even put on weight! But as the weeks passed I sensed I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t feel queasy or anything.’
‘The old tummy troubles?’ Ellie sighed. She remembered Bonny had never been regular and when it did happen she often had very bad pains. ‘But couldn’t you just fake it?’
‘How?’ Bonny asked, her eyes wide and troubled. ‘Men aren’t stupid, Ellie. When someone’s sleeping with you night after night they get to know you very well. But that wasn’t the only reason.’ Her voice was little more than a faint whimper. ‘I really do love John, Ellie, not for all this –’ she waved her arm, indicating the house and all its contents – ‘but for himself.’
Ellie listened carefully as Bonny explained how happy they’d been, how she hadn’t wanted to add more lies to the ones she’d already told.
‘I was desperate to tell him the truth, but it just got harder and harder because he was so thrilled about the baby. When he said he was going to America, I thought maybe I could do something then, or at least write to him there and admit what I’d done.’
‘But you haven’t! Why not, Bonny?’ Ellie said impatiently.
‘Because of what a specialist in Bristol told me,’ Bonny sniffed. ‘You see, after John had gone away I thought I’d better have a check-up. He gave me a whole series of tests. He said I definitely wasn’t pregnant – what’s more I couldn’t ever be, because both my Fallopian tubes are severely damaged.’
Ellie was at a loss for words. The doctor in Great Yarmouth had hinted at this, but they’d both been so young then, and they hadn’t fully understood the implications. She hugged her friend in silent sympathy and let her go on.
‘You can’t imagine how stunned and upset I felt, Ellie. You see, I always thought that other doctor back in Great Yarmouth said those things to teach me a lesson because he guessed I’d had an abortion, and babies weren’t a priority in my life then. Deep down I didn’t really, truly believe it. Now it’s been confirmed, it feels like a punishment for all the nasty things I’ve done. But the more I think about it, the worse it gets. How can I tell John why I can’t have babies without admitting the past? Besides, John just couldn’t imagine marriage without children, he wants lots. He’s always talking about tree houses, sandpits and things. It’s bad enough to admit I married him under false pretences, but to have to tell him I can never give him a child, that’s just awful.’
‘But men don’t set such store by children as women do,’ Ellie said. The irony of both their situations stung at her. Maybe Bonny deserved a little pain in her life, if only to teach her she couldn’t have everything, but it was tragic to think both she and John should pay dearly for a youthful mistake. ‘You must tell him the truth, Bonny. At least as far as you aren’t pregnant now.’
‘I wouldn’t have to if I had a baby when he came home.’
Ellie turned in her seat in shock. ‘What do you mean?’
Bonny was twisting her fingers nervously. ‘Well you’ve got to give your baby away. Why not give it to me?’
Ellie moved back from her friend, startled by such a ridiculous suggestion. ‘This is a joke, isn’t it?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘You couldn’t be serious?’
‘Oh I am,’ Bonny sighed. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else for weeks since John went away and I got that frantic letter from you. It’s the perfect solution for all of us.’
‘No, Bonny.’ Ellie got up and crossed the room, suddenly so hot she felt faint. ‘Never in a million years.’
‘Hear me out,’ Bonny begged. ‘This isn’t some crackpot silly scheme, I promise you.’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Ellie turned her head away. ‘I actually thought you’d grown up.’
‘I have. I can work out for myself what it’ll do to you when you hand over your baby to a complete stranger. You might go on to become a big star and forget all about it. But it’s more likely you’ll feel so wretched it will ruin your life.’
‘And you think it will make me feel all right about leaving my baby with you? A woman who’d do anything so the lies she’s told don’t come out?’
‘That’s not the reason,’ Bonny said hotly, her eyes flashing. ‘You’d be leaving it with a couple who want a baby more than anything. A couple with a lovely home and money. What guarantee will you get about the couple the hospital find for your baby?’
‘They check out people who want to adopt,’ Ellie snapped back.
‘Like they checked out the homes for evacuees, you mean!’ Bonny smirked. ‘Suppose your baby ended up with another Grace Gilbert?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Ellie’s voice was raised now. ‘That was wartime. It couldn’t happen now.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’ Bonny asked. ‘There’s orphanages full of kids born illegitimately during the war and after. I heard the other day some have been shipped out to Australia, when their mothers believed they’d been adopted by nice couples. I wouldn’t put my faith in a system that lets that happen. Not when I knew there was a better solution.’
Ellie slumped back into a chair. Perhaps Bonny was temporarily deranged after hearing she couldn’t have a child. She wished now she hadn’t taken her up on her offer of a few days’ holiday here.
‘Bonny, you know nothing about babies,’ she said eventually. ‘I know I don’t either. But you’ve never been sensible. You rush into things headlong, then run off when you get tired of something.’
‘I’m not like that any more,’ Bonny said indignantly. ‘Look how I’ve got this house together! I’ve learnt to cook and garden. I want a baby to
o. But you wouldn’t be giving it to just me. There’s John who you like and trust, there’s my parents and Aunt Lydia too, the baby would be shared by all of us. You can be his auntie, maybe his godmother, the perfect excuse for coming here and seeing your baby any time you like. We’d share him.’
Deep down inside, Ellie could feel a tiny spark of wanting what Bonny was offering, and that frightened her more than anything. ‘It couldn’t be done anyway,’ she said impatiently. ‘You can’t just hand your baby to someone else because you feel like it, or it seems a good solution. What are you going to say to John when he comes home? “Sorry dear, I wasn’t having a baby after all. But I’ve got Ellie’s instead”?’
‘He would never know,’ Bonny said. ‘Nobody would.’
‘Now you’re being preposterous,’ Ellie snorted with derision. ‘I’ve got to have my baby in a hospital, its birth gets registered.’
‘But in what name Ellie? Your mother didn’t tell the truth, did she?’
‘That was different, she only lied about her marriage.’
‘No one asks you for your birth certificate when you have a baby,’ Bonny retorted, a sly look on her face. ‘If you book into the nursing home as Mrs Bonny Norton, why should anyone disbelieve you?’
‘You mean I go through a charade like at that doctor’s in Harley Street?’
‘He didn’t doubt you. He was only interested in examining you,’ Bonny said. ‘I called myself Veronica Smith when I went to the doctor in Bristol. He never questioned it either.’
Ellie looked at Bonny in total amazement. Her friend had always been adept at thinking up schemes to get what she wanted. But this one beat them all.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘Do you really believe I could see a doctor, book a bed in a nursing home and have the delivery, all as Mrs Norton? That I calmly give birth, register the baby, pretending to be you? Then one day just disappear, leaving you with the baby? You telephone John and the relations with the good news and everyone sends you flowers and cards?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Bonny said calmly. ‘Except you’d stay here for a bit until I got used to feeding and changing the baby. There is a tiny nursing home in Wells, that’s far enough from here that no one has ever met the real Mrs Norton. There aren’t more than four local people who know me anyway.’
‘But you’re forgetting one important thing.’ Ellie felt Bonny was having a brainstorm, perhaps through being alone so long. ‘John’s going to look at the baby and wonder why it doesn’t look like you.’
‘He’ll think it looks like him,’ Bonny said with calm assurance. ‘He’s got dark brown hair and dark eyes, remember?’
‘But supposing it grows just like me,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ve got a distinctive face!’
‘People see what they want to in kids’ faces.’ Bonny shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t look anything like either of my parents. I don’t think my dad ever considered there was anything odd about that.’
Ellie silently stared into the fire as Bonny went out into the kitchen to make some cocoa. If she’d seen such a plot in a film she’d applaud it for being brilliant, but however attractive Bonny had made it sound, that didn’t alter the fact that it was morally wrong, and possibly even criminal.
‘Forget it,’ she said as Bonny came back into the room. ‘It’s not right and we both know it. Tomorrow I’ll help you write to John and explain.’
Bonny put the cups down on a side table. ‘If I tell him the truth I’ll have to tell him your part in it, because of the pregnancy test,’ she said slyly. ‘He’s honourable enough to worry about you too. I just hope he doesn’t let it slip to Sir Miles some time.’
Ellie felt another cold shiver run down her spine. ‘That sounds dangerously close to blackmail,’ she said, getting up on to her feet, her voice like ice. ‘You reminded me just in time what a bitch you can be, Bonny.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Bonny said, blushing furiously.
‘You did,’ Ellie said emphatically. ‘I’m going to bed now. And I think it’s better if I leave tomorrow.’
‘Please don’t, Ellie,’ Bonny pleaded with her, taking a step forward and grabbing both of her hands. ‘I didn’t work this out just for myself. Honest I didn’t. I’m worried about you. You’ve got no one but me and I love you.’
Ellie was exhausted, but she couldn’t sleep. The bed was the softest she’d ever slept on, the sheets were crisp, sweet-smelling linen and the wind in the trees outside should have been soothing. But she was rigid, stiff with anger that once again Bonny was manipulating her.
There was so much rightness in the idea; that was, if she could put aside the conspiracy against John. This house was so lovely, Bonny was aching for a baby. Ellie herself would get the best of both worlds, able to continue on the stage, yet see her child grow up.
Ellie knew John would make a wonderful father. If it were possible to tell him everything and get him to agree to adopt the baby, that would be a different matter entirely.
But Ellie knew in her heart that under the circumstances, and because of her part in the initial deception, he’d close his ears to all pleading. In fact he would probably never want Ellie anywhere near his house or Bonny again.
Pictures floated into Ellie’s mind, tantalising ones of all those good friends of John’s at the wedding – Norman, a dentist and his jolly wife Vera, Bruce, another chemist, and his pianist wife. There was his godmother too, the kindly Lady Penelope Beauchamp, Lydia Wynter, and Sir Miles and Lady Hamilton. Her child could have all these intelligent, caring people as doting aunts and uncles. He or she would be brought up never knowing the seamier side of life.
If Ellie was to keep her baby she’d be ostracised, whispered about, treated as if she were a streetwalker. No dainty crib or well-sprung pram: an unmarried mother and her little bastard could only expect grimy back streets, outdoor lavatories, the butt of everyone’s jokes.
What if Bonny was right, if the orphanages were full of children no one wanted? What if she handed her baby over thinking it was going to a good home and instead it ended up somewhere terrible?
But could she live with such a mammoth deception? Could she look John squarely in the eyes and tell him his son or daughter looked just like him?
The tinkling of china woke Ellie. She opened her eyes and saw Bonny at the foot of her bed with breakfast on a tray.
‘I boiled you an egg,’ she said in a hesitant voice. ‘It’s only been laid for a couple of hours. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had one that fresh.’
Ellie hauled herself up. Last night’s anger had gone; now she just felt confused. Bonny looked about sixteen in her blue fluffy dressing-gown, her hair tousled loose on her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Ellie cynically wondered if the tears had been for herself, or for her friend.
‘This is a first,’ she said. ‘You cooking me breakfast.’
Bonny came round to the side of the bed, placing the tray across Ellie’s lap. ‘Don’t go away,’ she pleaded. ‘I won’t fight you about anything, or try to persuade you. I just can’t bear the thought of you being alone, frightened and pregnant. You must stay here and let me look after you.’
Ellie felt helpless. One part of her mind said she must leave, but the thought of being alone in a strange city scared her. She was touched by the sincerity in Bonny’s words. There was no one else to run to. ‘I have to think hard,’ she sighed. ‘Give me a couple of days, Bonny, I’m so mixed up I can’t think straight.’
‘I won’t say another word about that,’ Bonny said, her face crumpling again. ‘But I do want to tell you something else.’
‘What?’ Ellie sighed, expecting more trouble.
‘I really am different now,’ Bonny said very softly. ‘Loving John is part of it. But it’s your influence which started it. You’ve always been so kind and honest. I’ve been trying to be more like you.’
During the next two days Bonny didn’t mention the subject again. The weather
improved enough for them to take walks in the surrounding countryside and Ellie was spellbound by the beauty of Somerset. Views from the hilltops were breathtaking, the trees golden, russet and red, lush grass carpeted with autumn leaves. Cottage gardens were still bright with dahlias and Michaelmas daisies, the hedgerows misty with Old Man’s Beard speckled with rose-hips. They picked blackberries, eating as many as they put in their baskets, stole into orchards and helped themselves to the few remaining apples and pears.
Back at The Chestnuts, Ellie helped Bonny plant out winter cabbage and Brussels sprouts. They shared the chores of feeding the chickens, washing and preparing meals, while laughing, chatting and singing together. Enoch was now helping a farmer with his harvest, and aside from the postman and milkman, no one called at the house. At night Ellie drifted off to sleep to the sound of the wind and owls hooting. She knew she wanted this life for her baby.
At four o’clock in the afternoon of her third day, Ellie went out to collect the washing from the line. The sun was a fiery orange ball, almost perched on the garden wall and she buried her nose in a fluffy white towel, breathing in the clean sweet country smell as she unpegged it.
She imagined wrapping her naked baby in such a towel after its bath, and remembered that in London nothing ever smelt that way. She pictured herself as a child taking the slop bucket down the stairs each morning, the stink of that outside lavvy and the kitchen they shared with Edna, always strewn with mice droppings.
London was worse now than before the war for the working classes: uncleared bomb-sites, houses still waiting for repairs, thousands of people still homeless. Where would she end up if she kept her baby? What if a good adoptive mother couldn’t be found?