by Frances Pye
But tonight, she was able to let it all pass over her. Because of the baby. Ultimately, that was all that mattered. She was going to supersede all her memories of Diana with memories of her child. She was going to replace her mean, bitter, dysfunctional mother with the family she was creating right now.
“I’ve never had this pudding done quite as well,” lied Ian Dunne. Jules found herself hiding a smile. The pudding was as undercooked and tasteless as ever, and the custard had curdled. She thought it might be a good time to excuse herself and go to the toilet; Diana would never forgive her for smiling.
She got up, murmured to her father to explain where she was going, and walked to the door. Halfway there, she felt a sharp pain in her back and staggered for a moment.
“Drunk, I suppose,” said Diana, who was watching this.
Still hurting but determined not to show it, Jules ignored her mother and continued out of the room. Outside the door, she doubled over as her stomach began to cramp. Half-bent with the pain, she inched along the corridor and down the half landing, to the ladies’ room. She pushed the door open, lurched through into the empty, impersonal, white-tiled room, and collapsed on the floor. The pains continued to rip through her and she started to cry. Not because she was hurting but because she knew what was happening.
She was losing her baby.
THE DOOR to the toilet swung open. Still on the floor, her chest shaking with sobs, Jules opened her eyes a crack, praying that it would be Alice or Elena. Or even a stranger. But the elegant tan shoes, shapely legs, and gossamer-fine stockings told her that she had been unlucky. It was Diana.
“What on earth are you doing there on the floor?”
“I think…I’m…having a…mis…carriage,” Jules said, struggling to get the words out. It was bad enough that she had to admit it out loud, to herself, but to have to say it to Diana?
“A what? Speak up, Juliet.”
“A mis…carriage.”
“Rubbish. You’re just trying to draw attention to yourself as usual. Miscarriage, indeed. Now get up.”
“Mummy. I’m losing my baby.” Jules hadn’t called Diana Mummy in years. Not since she had managed to banish her childhood longing for a real mother. Or thought she had. But one last remnant must have still lurked in her mind somewhere. And decided to surface now. Jules found herself praying that Diana would offer her some comfort. Would play mother, at least for a few moments.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Pregnant?” Diana’s voice went up an octave. “Pregnant? You’re not married.”
“I know.” If she hadn’t been crying so much, Jules would have been tempted to laugh. It was so typically Diana. Social standing mattered more than anything else. And having an unmarried mother in the family was unthinkable.
“I thought you had done everything you could to hurt me, but obviously not. In the club too. Everyone will know. Everyone.”
“Please, Mummy.” Jules hated the idea, but she was going to have to ask her mother for help. She had to get to a doctor as soon as possible. Just in case he could save her baby. That was all that mattered now. Not her pride. “I need your help.”
“Help?”
“Call an ambulance. A cab. Please, hurry. I’ve got to get to hospital.”
Lady Dunne looked at her daughter lying on the cold, hard floor of the ladies’ room, at her hand clutched over her stomach, at the tears streaming down her face. “I’ll get the girls,” she said, and walked out.
Barely a minute later, she was back with Alice.
“Now, Alice, you hold one side of her. I’ll take the other. We’ve got to get her out of here. Elena’s gone to get a cab.”
“Mummy, she’s not well.”
Diana grasped Jules’s right arm and tried to lift her limp body into a sitting position. “Alice,” she shouted sharply. “Help me.”
“Don’t you think we should get a doctor first?”
“Here? Don’t be stupid.”
“No, Alice. I need to go to hospital. Now. Please.”
“See? She wants to go.” Diana managed to lift her daughter enough so that she could prop her against her legs.
“We should call an ambulance. Look, she’s bleeding.” Lady Dunne had moved Jules enough to allow them to see a smear of blood on the floor.
“No. The whole club will know.”
“Mummy!”
Diana stared at her oldest daughter. “Don’t ‘Mummy’ me. I’m thinking of Juliet. An ambulance in London can take up to half an hour to arrive. I saw a piece on the news about it.”
“A taxi is fine. Really. Don’t argue about it. Just get me there. Please.”
Alice had to accept that. She knelt down, put her sister’s left arm over her shoulders, and together she and Diana pulled Jules to her feet. She swayed, staggered, leaned on her sister for support, but she stayed upright.
“Come on, Juliet,” said Alice, trying to encourage her sister. “Can you walk a bit?” Jules put one foot in front of the next. Then again. “There. We’re here. Just lean on us and we’ll get you there.”
As Diana held open the door to the ladies’, Alice helped Jules walk out of the room and into the corridor outside. Then, with her mother supporting her on one side, her sister on the other, Jules inched her way down one flight of stairs and along a narrow passageway to the main entrance hall of the club. It was empty. Diana breathed a massive sigh of relief.
The sound of men’s laughter drifted out of the open door to the bar off the lobby.
Jules lurched forward, half supported, half dragged by her mother and sister, toward the exit.
“Quickly, now, Alice,” muttered Diana. “Anyone could come out of the bar and see us.”
“Hush, Mummy. I’ll take her from here. Why don’t you get the door? Come on, Juliet. Just a few more steps. That’s it.”
Lady Dunne went to hold the door open for her two daughters. And Michael Hungerford walked out of the bar and into the lobby.
By now, Alice was almost carrying her sister. Michael, looking deeply shocked, backed up against the wall, leaving as much room for the girls as he could. Without saying anything, the two staggered out of the club, into the taxi that Elena had found. And away to the hospital.
Diana turned to Michael. “I do hope you won’t say anything to anyone about this regrettable incident,” she simpered. “So embarrassing. So typical of Juliet.”
Michael looked at her. And looked at her, seeing for the first time the full nightmare of what Jules had had to cope with all her life. Finally, he nodded. And walked on into the depths of the club.
fifty-six
Jules opened her eyes to see unfamiliar blond-wood furniture, a small television perched on an elevated platform, and an enormous vase full of yellow roses. She was in a hospital. Sitting next to her was Lily, on the end of the bed was Mara, and in an armchair in the corner was Terry. Jules looked at her friends, at their concerned faces, and she burst into tears. She’d lost her baby.
The night before had been horrendous. Her sisters had brought her into the emergency room, but it had been five hours before she was seen. Five hours of that bright, neon world of green curtains and beeping machines and the mixed smells of strong disinfectant and human waste. Five hours of Alice and Elena holding her hands while her cramps slowly decreased but she continued to bleed heavily. Then, just before two o’clock in the morning, it had all been over. She’d lost her baby. Exhausted and expecting her to sleep for the rest of the night, Alice and Elena had gone home.
But Jules hadn’t slept. She couldn’t. Instead, too beside herself to think of asking to be transferred to a private clinic, she’d had her first experience of being in a National Health hospital. The place was full to the seams, the staff was harassed, and the patients were expected to take what they could get and be grateful. She had lain on a trolley in the emergency room until four o’clock, when the young, overworked intern who’d been given her case finally wangled her a prop
er bed and she’d been taken to a ward for observation.
The hours passed. She knew that. Every time she glanced at the institutional clock hung at one end of the room some time had elapsed. Ten, once even fifteen minutes. But more often it was only one or two as the night crept past, second by miserable second. Apart from an occasional cramp, there like a hollow echo of what had gone before, the pain had disappeared. The physical pain, that is. The other hurt grew and grew as Jules listened to patients cough and snore and struggle for breath and came face-to-face, over and over, with the realization that she had lost her own child.
Finally, when bedraggled light began to seep into the ward, signaling the start of another cold, wintry day, Jules had managed to drag herself out of her bed and to a phone and called Lily. Half an hour later, Lily bustled in and used a combination of her charm and her celebrity to magic up a private room and peace and quiet and blessed sleep.
But nothing had changed. Jules had escaped from the public ward. She was more rested. Her sisters had called. Her father had sent flowers. She had her friends with her. But she had still had a miscarriage.
Lily leaned over to hold her. “There, there, sweetie. It’ll be okay.”
“No it won’t. It can’t. I’ve lost my baby. All that work, all those schemes, and now nothing.”
“It’s a setback, that’s all,” Lily said.
“A setback.” Jules’s voice was empty.
“I lost my first, remember? And then three months later, I was pregnant with Moo. The doctor said it often…often…” Mara began to cough, a deep, rasping cough that sent spasms through her chest. Days spent in her cold, drafty, damp house, the smoke from the fire, nights in the icy bedroom she couldn’t afford to heat, the stress of not knowing what was going to happen, when the Moores’ ax was going to fall, was taking its toll. She’d caught a cold a few weeks before and had not been able to shake it off. She struggled to finish her sentence. “…often…hap…pens.”
Terry came over to the bed and rubbed Mara’s back, “Are you okay, love?”
“Sorry. It’s just…just the end…of a cold.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a packet of lozenges, and popped one in her mouth. “I’ll be fine.”
“Doesn’t sound like just a cold to me.”
“Please don’t worry about me. It’s Jules needs our…our he…help…,” Mara said as she bent over, coughing again.
“We do worry,” Lily said. “Have you been to see the doctor?”
Mara shook her head. How would a doctor help? Could he make her house water-and windproof? Could he mend her central heating? Could he stop the Moores from taking her girls away?
“Don’t you think you should, sweetie?”
“There’s no…need. It’s getting…better. Really.” Mara’s coughing fit eased off a bit as the lozenge did its work. “There, see? I’m fine.”
“Mara.” Horrified by the chesty, hoarse sounds that had been coming out of her friend, Terry was about to argue. Until she saw Lily winking at her and mouthing, “Later.” And so held off. If Lily had a plan…
“Mara’s right,” Lily said to Jules. “About the baby. You just give your body time to recover and, wham! you go at it again.”
“You’ll be pregnant in no time. Honestly.” Mara’s voice was husky from the coughing but her breathing was getting easier.
“No I won’t. Not unless I find someone else to donate the sperm.”
“What’s wrong with Sean? He’ll do it again. No problem.” Lily didn’t like the idea, but she wasn’t going to deny her friend in her time of need.
Terry said nothing. What could she say? The others had no idea what had happened between Jules and Sean. He hadn’t even told Lily. But he’d told her. And she knew there was no chance of his agreeing to give Jules another child.
“He won’t. I doubt he’d even take my phone call.”
“Why? What happened? He didn’t say anything.”
“He bought me this gorgeous rocking horse a friend of his had made. I told him I didn’t want it. To take it away. I said he had no further place in my or my baby’s life. That he was just a man who provided me with some sperm. He was furious. I thought he was going to hit me.”
Lily and Mara were silent for a moment. Both of them looked shocked.
“Um, perhaps that was a bit harsh,” Mara said.
“It was worse than that. My father had just left after getting me to agree to last night’s dinner with the family and I wasn’t at my best, but that’s no excuse. I should have let Sean down more gently. I owed him that at least. Instead, I was mean and cruel and horrible.”
“You were tense and upset,” said Lily.
“Surely he’d understand. If you explained? Wrote and told him why you’d been so hard on him?”
“You think that might help?”
“Maybe it wasn’t your manner that upset him?” Terry couldn’t keep silent any longer. Although she was reluctant to talk about that night when Sean had come to her house to pour out his woes, she couldn’t stand around and listen to Jules get things so wrong. “Maybe it was cos you told him he wasn’t going to play a part in the baby’s life?”
“Do you think? But she told him that was the way she wanted it right at the start. Didn’t you?” Lily turned to Jules.
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Well, then.”
“Maybe he thought you didn’t mean it?” Terry suggested.
“No. He couldn’t have. I was quite clear.”
“But if he believed you’d changed your mind? After all, from where he’s sitting, you’d done it before. Remember, at the beginning, you said you only needed his sperm and then you decided to have sex with him.”
“I suppose that’s possible. Now I think about it, he did say something like that. Lily? You know him best.”
Lily didn’t want to upset her friend any further. But it did sound like Sean. He’d done that with her. Ignored what she said. Built up a whole fantasy about them living together even though she’d been adamant about not wanting that. “Maybe. It does make some sense.”
“Then writing a letter won’t help, will it?”
“No. It won’t.” Terry didn’t want to upset Jules either, but she felt an obligation to Sean to tell the truth. He deserved so much more than he’d been offered, and part of Terry wanted Jules to realize how unreasonable her expectations had been.
“Not if that’s the problem, no, babe,” Lily said as gently as she could.
Jules started to cry again. “It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been so selfish. So shortsighted. I just thought I could have everything I wanted. My own baby. No father to bother me.” Jules’s sobs got louder. “I never thought about Sean. Or even the child. Just me.”
Terry looked down at her small feet in their sensible, bus driver’s boots. She had wanted to provoke some reaction, some remorse, but not this storm of weeping.
“Come on, sweetie. You’ll make yourself sick.” Lily stroked Jules’s sweat-darkened hair off her forehead.
“You’ll find another donor,” Mara said. “There’ve got to be lots of men out there who’d jump at it.”
“Of course there are.” Lily reinforced Mara’s thought. “A nice young fertile girl like you, they’d be crazy to turn you down. Wouldn’t they, Ter?”
“Sure they would.” Terry still had her doubts, but for now, her friend needed reassurance, not a lecture. Time enough for that when she started to look for a new target.
Jules appreciated her friends’ attempts to cheer her up, but it didn’t help. It wasn’t only that she knew her chances of finding another Sean were slim. In the time she’d known she was pregnant, her child had become real to her in a way she hadn’t imagined before. And now he or she was gone. She’d never know it, never feed it or change it or cuddle it or watch it growing up day by day. And she couldn’t bear it. Her baby was dead.
She realized she needed to be by herself. To mourn in her own way. But Lily and the other two would neve
r leave if they thought she was still desperate. So she made a huge effort, muted her sobs and turned off the tears.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, pretending to stifle a yawn.
Mara took the cue. “Poor Jules. You must be exhausted, and here we are wittering on and on.”
“Not wittering. But I am tired.”
“Come on, you lot. Time to go. Leave Jules to have a nap.” Lily bent over to kiss Jules’s cheek, followed by Terry and Mara. And all three trooped out, leaving Jules alone. To cry.
“IT WASN’T just the cough. She looked like she hadn’t slept for weeks,” Lily said, her hands cupped around a mug of hot tea. Once the three women had left the hospital, Mara had said good-bye to her two friends and rushed off to catch a bus so she could be home in time for Moo and Tilly getting back from school. Lily had steered Terry into a nearby café.
“Or eaten properly.”
“Or eaten properly,” Lily agreed.
“I knew I should have forced her to see a doctor. Why did you stop me?”
“You can’t make her take medical advice if she doesn’t want to. Anyway, we need to remove the cause before we deal with the symptoms.”
“What cause? She’s ill.”
“We’ve been being fools. It’s winter, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s cold?”
“Yes. So?”
“Well, we know Mara’s roof leaks, right? Suppose that’s not the only thing? Suppose the windows are damaged?”
“God, yes. Or worse. Suppose the central heating’s broken?” Terry said.
