‘What nonsense. She’s not a snob,’ (Of course he’s right, she is) ‘that’s nonsense,’ Rose repeated.
‘It is not. She’s kind. You have told me how kind she has been to you, how she looked after you when you were ill, sent George—by the way, what about George?’ A whisp of doubt slid across Mylo’s mind, but he went on treading the track of Edith’s kindness. ‘She was kind to me when I worked for them, she even bought me clothes when she couldn’t stand my French workmen’s blues. I never told you that, did I? She is being kind to all these homesick servicemen you are going to entertain—don’t go over the top with them, will you?—she just happened along with old Loftus in tow because he is staying with them. He possibly smelled a rat, she didn’t.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I am not. As far as your glossy reputation is concerned, it’s safe with Edith Malone, and Loftus won’t gossip; it wouldn’t be in his nephew’s interests.’
‘How wouldn’t she? Why?’ Rose, tired and already irritable, resented Mylo’s tone. She laid Christopher back in his cot.
‘As I said, I’m her son’s tutor, a servant, not someone a person like you would sleep with.’
‘How can you talk such rubbish! How can you be so ridiculous?’ Rose’s raised voice roused Christopher, who had been on the point of sleep. He rallied his strength, filled his lungs, whined, changed gear, screamed.
Sitting on the side of Rose’s bed Mylo clenched his fists in exasperation. He didn’t blame the baby, he told himself, he blamed Ned. During the lonely months in France when he dreamed of Rose, gentle, pliant, gloriously roused to passion, he forgot Ned’s existence, but now—he eyed the screaming infant with distaste. He had wanted to make love to Rose as he had the night before, he had come to her room full of erotic anticipation, he felt choked with jealousy and frustration. ‘If that were my child, I’d drown it,’ he said.
Rose grew quite pale.
‘What I meant,’ said Mylo, ‘was that I wish I could drown your husband Ned.’
‘No, you didn’t. You want to murder my innocent baby.’ She had to shout to make herself heard above Christopher’s screams. ‘And, if you must know, I love my husband,’ Rose yelled. (What devil possessed her to voice this patently obvious lie which Mylo, gorged with jealousy, chose to believe?)
There followed charges, counter-charges, tears, remorse, apologies, forgiveness, explanations and, since Christopher tired before they did and hiccoughed himself to sleep, fucking.
Next morning Rose shivered as she watched Mylo being driven away. What happened to us? she asked herself. We must never let such a thing happen again. She felt quite sick and ill as she stood on the steps and waved to Mylo; then the car turned the corner and was out of sight.
39
DURING THE FOLLOWING WEEKS Rose suffered. The words and tones of the row reverberated and echoed through her mind. They had been too shattered by their own violence to have a satisfactory love-making. Mylo, hampered by his wounded leg, climaxed too soon. Rose was too tense to have an orgasm. They lay wakeful for the rest of the night, too distraught to sleep, clinging together in silence.
When he left her bed in the morning Mylo looked sourly at the Bonnard and the ideal it represented.
Watching him drive away in the car sent to fetch him Rose felt an astonishing spasm of relief.
During the next week she attended assiduously to her Australian guest, telephoned the person in charge of the hospitality scheme to arrange for a succession of visitors, rearranged the house to make room for them. By filling her life to the brim she thought she could endure Mylo’s absence. She worked harder than ever in the garden, increased the hours spent on the farm. Attended by her dogs, she carted Christopher about with her so that for ever after he would wonder why in times of stress he would smell the scent of cow-byres and think of his mother.
When Mylo telephoned she felt their separation fiercely. Listening to his voice, she craved his physical presence. When their short conversations ended she was more lonely than before. The conversations were of necessity brief, most of the three minutes allowed by wartime restriction, in retrospect, wasted. When next he telephoned she knew by his voice that he was leaving the country.
‘You are going away again?’
‘Yes, darling, tonight.’
‘Your leg, how is your leg?’
‘Quite healed. However long I am gone, don’t forget me.’
‘As if I could. I love you.’
‘And I love you. Keep watch over the girl in the camiknickers for me.’
‘I will. I will.’
What else did they say? Take care of yourself … come back soon … come back safe … don’t forget, oh, don’t forget … I could never love anyone else … Words, just words. Did he hear the catch in her voice? She thought she heard a hint of uncertainty in his. Did she doubt him? How was she to know that he was to be dropped by parachute into France that night and the prospect turned his bowels to water?
‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you. Don’t worry.’
What a bloody stupid thing to say: don’t worry.
She put the receiver back and went to the kitchen. Edwina was making tea for the postman. The Australian visitor was peeling apples to make apple rings for apple pie in the coming winter. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Come and join us. Mrs F doesn’t believe in idle hands.’
‘Good morning,’ said the postman.
‘Cup of tea?’ suggested Edwina. ‘Here’s your post. Three letters from his highness.’
The Australian looked up. The postman snubbed a grin.
‘Don’t call him that.’ Rose took the letters. ‘His highness is worse than “the master”.’
Edwina raised her eyebrows. The postman put down his empty cup, muttered goodbye and left.
Rose slit the airmail letters open with a knife. ‘I have written,’ said Ned, ‘to put my son’s name down for my old school. It is important to get his name on the list for a good house. I have written to Uncle Archibald to find out the best housemaster for when my son is fourteen, if he is bright, thirteen. I have also provisionally put his name down for my old prep school.’
Rose picked up the rest of the letters and left the kitchen. In the library she sat on the sofa and re-read the letter. Her eyes had not deceived her. Ned wrote, ‘my’ not ‘our’ son, not Christopher, nor even ‘our baby’. He wrote ‘my son’ twice. Comrade, sensing that there was something wrong, leaned against Rose’s leg. Her pup, still juvenile, lay on his back, exposed his stomach and wagged a beguiling tail.
In the next letter Ned gave news of his health (excellent), that of various friends (passable), hinted of imminent promotion to Major (excellent also, since he was not a professional soldier) and ‘now for the good news, it is highly probable that I shall be back with you ere long’.
Rose wondered whether her heart, already ebbing, could sink any lower. She opened the third letter. ‘Dear Rose,’ he wrote, ‘my bank manager is worried … you seem unaware … before spending so freely you should … while I am away fighting for my country … (Fighting? At a desk?)… not earning as much as in peacetime … now I have a child to … Is it necessary to cash such large … try to be economical as … is it, for instance, necessary to buy so many books? Hatchards account is … try please to imagine what it is like for me out here to …’
She was grateful for Christopher’s cries. Time for his mid-morning guzzle.
‘I don’t seem to satisfy him,’ she said presently to Edwina. ‘He’s fearfully collywobbly and he has not been fretful before.’
‘Being worried dries your milk. How about a supplementary feed?’
‘A bottle?’
‘Yes. Shall I mix him one?’
‘If you think it will help.’
The older woman went away. Rose brought up Christopher’s wind. Squinting with indigestion, the baby looked remarkably like his father. ‘He’s putting your name down for Eton. His son! Poor l
ittle sod.’ Christopher belched. ‘That’s better. Ah! Here’s Edwina with an itsy bitsy bottle, try it.’ Rose put the teat into Christopher’s mouth. ‘My God! He loves it! I’ve been starving him. Look, he’s uncrossing his eyes.’
‘Loves it …’
‘In that case I shall wean him, and the Major can complain of a remarkably heavy bill from Cow and Gate.’
‘The Major complaining of extravagance?’ Edwina, latching on, let her eyes swivel towards Ned’s letters. ‘Been promoted, has he?’
‘About to be.’
‘Send on the bills from his tailor, then. He told me to keep them back when he went overseas; re-address them, shall I? They are in the kitchen dresser drawer.’
‘Edwina!’ Rose was lost in admiration. ‘Yes. Please do.’
‘All right. Leave the baby with me for a bit. The children can push him round the garden. You take the dogs for a walk, you’ll feel better when you’ve been on your own for a bit.’
‘Shall I? Do you really think so?’
‘Give it a try.’ Edwina swooped on the baby. ‘Come with old Edwina then, we’ll push your pram to the post and shovel Dada’s billsy-willsies into the postbox.’ Christopher chuckled as she carried him off.
Rose pulled on rubber boots and a jacket, whistled up the dogs. Walking up the river, watching the trees shed golden leaves into the water, she tried to imagine Ned in Egypt. His letters brought no mid-Eastern vision, he might as well be writing from his London club, she thought resentfully, and anyway what I want to see is France, Mylo in France. Will he be wearing his workmen’s blues, melting into the French crowd? Will he be singing as he sings in his bath: Par les routes de France / de France et de Navarre / Je fais ma révérence / Je m’en vais au hazard. Will he sing? Watching the leaves fall, running to catch one and missing it, she heard Mylo’s voice in imagination and cried out in the empty meadow, startling the rooks feasting on acorns in an oak tree. ‘I am lonely, lonely, lonely.’ But she was not to be lonely long. Five weeks later she realised she was pregnant.
40
HAVING BELIEVED THE OLD wives’ tale that it is not possible to conceive while breast-feeding Rose could not at first believe her predicament. She left Christopher with Edwina Farthing, travelled to London for the day and had a pregnancy test in a hospital, giving an assumed name and telling glib lies. A week later she received an intimation through the post that the test was positive.
Mylo was gone, there was no means of communicating with him. He had volunteered no address; she had been too proud to ask whether messages could be transmitted via Victoria. She had no means of knowing when he would be back or, coldly she faced up to it, whether he ever would come back. She must manage alone.
Who could she ask for help?
If she asked for help it meant she thought to get rid of the child.
No need for help if she had it. Ned would be home soon. She could, with a lot of luck, present him with a little brother or sister for Christopher (born prematurely). He would speak of ‘my’ daughter, ‘my’ younger son. This scenario was ridiculously and improbably silly.
She could not bring herself to involve childless Edwina. The permutations of help which could be offered were endless.
Emily? Would Emily be the right person to ask? Had she not recently presented the neighbourhood with Laura and had not ‘the talk’ already died away? Emily had Nicholas’s backing. People feared Nicholas, kept on the right side of him. Rose too feared Nicholas, shrank from putting herself in his power. Neither he nor Emily had rumbled Mylo, nor must they.
Should she confide in Edith Malone? No, said her inner voice, she is too close a neighbour. She would be too kind, too bossy, she would gobble me up, baby and all.
When last year she had told him she was pregnant Mylo had cried, I wish it were mine; in her mind’s ear she could hear his voice. She daydreamed that she had not married Ned, that Mylo had not vanished into France, that she had money of her own. Sleepless at night, her thoughts plagued her; however busy she was by day the fears, the arguments for and against pursued her.
Her milk dried up and Christopher prospered on Cow and Gate baby powder, growing chubby and contented.
It is cowardly and ridiculous to be afraid of ‘talk’, Rose argued in robust mood. What have I to lose?
Everything, said the voice of sense. Husband, home, child, work, good name (whatever that means), security. Oh, ah, security! ‘Fuck my good name, fuck security,’ she said out loud.
At the sound of her voice the dogs looked up, wagging their tails. ‘I might even lose my dogs,’ she thought.
On impulse, in desperation, she telephoned Flora Loftus, the most improbable person she could think of.
After enquiring after Flora’s and Uncle Archibald’s health, she said, ‘I need your advice. We only have three minutes. Our landgirl is in trouble. So tiresome—yes, that kind of trouble. What?’
Flora Loftus’ voice fluted from Argyll, clear, confident, cheerful. ‘Funny thing,’ plump laughter, ‘Archie’s landgirl had the same thing; it’s all the fresh air, these town girls are not used to it. I’ll send you the address on a postcard. She’ll need eighty pounds in cash, that’s the price apparently, take it or leave it. Archie grumbled but, as I told him, a good landgirl’s price is above rubies. You telephone the man for an appointment and the service is immediate, I gather. How is your darling baby? I long to see him. What a bore the war is, everything so difficult and—oh, dear, are we about to be cut off, these telephone operators could teach Hitler a thing or two, they enjoy their power, I’ll post the address …’
‘Oh, thank you … so sorry to bother you … with Ned away I’m supposed to be responsible … you are always so kind.’
‘Not at all, my dear. Not to worry, Archie will catch the evening post for me, he’s just off to his Home Guard. What fun the old boys are having! Did I tell you the man is in London? Archie grumbled about the fare down there. It’ll be less expensive for you, of course, than for us …’ This time they were cut off.
Three days later in the train to London Rose looked out at the passing landscape and thought bitterly, ‘Put your trust in the Establishment, for sheer hypocrisy they are peerless, unbeatable.’ Then she thought, ‘I can’t beat them, I am joining them.’
She counted the telegraph poles as the train thundered past, one, two, thirteen, eighteen, twenty, forty … one hundred, one hundred and one. A man opposite her who had been reading The Times watched her lips move, thought her eyes sad: ‘I watch the fences, this lot are well cut and laid, and think myself onto a good hunter and jump them effortlessly behind the hounds who are in full cry, the fox only a field away.’
‘I don’t hunt. I’m afraid of horses.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘surely not.’ A pretty girl like you, he wanted to say, should never need to be afraid, but being English he merely said, ‘Ah,’ again and picked up his newspaper defensively.
‘I am afraid. Full stop,’ said Rose distantly. ‘Here we are in the suburbs. Your ride must end. My telegraph poles go on and on.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I see.’
‘You don’t see anything. Do you see, for instance, that I am about to drown in Establishment soup?’ Rose hissed.
The stranger was glad when the train drew into Paddington; it was folly to speak to strange girls, one should have remembered.
The man in the white overall put the money in a drawer, washed his hands at the basin.
‘If you will take your knickers off,’ said his assistant, ‘and lie back on the chaise.’ (Why did she call it a chaise?) ‘Have you brought some STs? You will need some STs.’
‘Yes.’
‘Open your legs wide,’ said the assistant, ‘while I swab you with antiseptic. You like the smell, yes?’ She too wore a white overall. It all seemed very clean and efficient. The surgical instruments cooking in that tray thing. He was pulling on what looked like new rubber gloves. Full marks for cleanliness.
‘There will be just a
little prick of local anaesthetic, it won’t hurt, takes a minute or two to work. Take a taxi home and go to bed for at least twenty-four hours; if you have pain or excessive bleeding, take these pills. Two, every four hours. Now, just a prick.’ It stung.
‘I tie your legs apart like this so you keep quite still,’ said the assistant.
She had yelled, ‘No, no, no.’ Sprung off the chaise, grabbed shoes and stockings, pushed the assistant aside, rushed to the door, opened it, torn down the passage, put shoes and stockings on in the lift as it went down, run clattering out into the street.
It was dark, she couldn’t see a taxi, she walked fast over the bridge into Chelsea, into the King’s Road. She struggled onto a bus. She was numb, her vagina was numb, there was no feeling there, none at all, local anaesthetic he had said. I wish he had pricked my mind.
‘Oh, the bloody buggers,’ said a woman beside her. ‘Here we go again, another fucking raid.’
‘Knightsbridge. Everybody off,’ shouted the bus conductor. ‘Into the Underground with you.’ He sounded glad.
She was swept along with the crowd down steps onto the moving staircase. Warm air blew up her legs from far below. (I left my knickers in that place.) She let the crowd sweep her with it onto a train. She stood, held upright by the press of people, struggled free at Piccadilly. ‘I’m feeling funny,’ she thought. ‘If I could get some air, if I could sit down somewhere—all these people.’ She walked slowly, picking her way. The crowd frightened her. People were getting settled for the night, wrapped in blankets, cramped several together on mattresses, reading books by torchlight, drinking out of thermoses, playing cards, singing, snoring. A drunken man whooped. The tube trains chuntered into the station—‘Mind your backs, mind the doors’—and out again. She craved air. Half-way along the platform the wrenching pain began. She was outraged, cried out. (How can it? I didn’t let him, he didn’t do it. I saved it. I haven’t had an abortion.) She doubled up, bending over. (Oh, God, this is awful, what a place to—Oh, my knickers, I’m not—oh pain, the pain.) She felt blood oozing out of numb vagina, pouring, streaking down her legs. (I left my STs in that place, oh, Jesus Christ.)