The Millstone

by Margaret Drabble

  When he had gone, I went to bed and lay there for some time thinking over what we had said and done. I could not get to sleep. For the first hour I was more happy than not, but as the night wore on and I came no nearer to sleep my mind became wracked by suspicion and by doubt. It was not that I felt guilt or regret for the one irreversible thing that had happened: about that I continued to feel nothing but relief. But such things do not happen in the abstract, and the circumstances worried me. I went back over every word George had said, and the more I looked back, the clearer it seemed that he had expressed no liking or affection for me at all. He had said I interested him, but he had said that only as a ploy, as a gambit. And anyway, what ground was interest on which to enact the event that had taken place? As I tossed and turned and tried to find a cool place for my cheek on the pillow, it became increasingly clear to me that he had made no overture at all: that I myself had made the decisive move, in going to sit next to him on the settee after switching on the radio, and that what I had taken to be a look inviting me to do just that had probably been nothing of the sort. I had offered myself, and thinking what he did of me he had accepted, through kindliness or curiosity or embarrassment; not in any case through anything like the tender emotions that had prompted me. The more I thought of it, the more hopeless it seemed: had he liked me, he would surely have made some suggestion that he might see me again?

  I ended up by convincing myself, almost, that the worst must be true: yet at the same time I knew it was not true, I knew that he would ring me, and that he had liked me, and that he would be happy to go on liking me. But I had to prepare for the worst. I did not wish to be deceived, I did not wish to be taken by surprise.

  George did not ring. After a week I knew that he was not going to, and I abandoned the idea. I could have seen him, easily enough, by calling at his pub or even by walking down Portland Place and Upper Regent Street on the off-chance, at some likely hour, but pride restrained me. If he does not want to see me, I thought, I do not want to see him. So I kept resolutely away from anywhere where I might be remotely likely to bump into him: I even took a different route to the British Museum each morning, and on one occasion when I was obliged to accompany a friend along Wigmore Street I found myself trembling with fearful expectation. But it is easy to avoid people in London, and I managed it well enough. The geography of the locality took on, however, a fearful moral significance: it became a map of my weaknesses and my strengths, a landscape full of petty sloughs and pitfalls, like the one which Bunyan traversed. I avoided each place where we had ever met, and each place which I had even heard him mention: one day I found myself pretending that I was obliged to go and buy a certain article from Peter Robinson's on Oxford Circus, and I only just caught myself out in time. I stuck to it and, of course, as the week lengthened into a fortnight, and the fortnight into a month, it became increasingly impossible to change my line of retreat.

  It took me some time to realize that I was pregnant: the possibility had of course crossed my mind fairly early on, but I had dismissed it as being too ridiculous and unlikely a symptom of my sense of doom to be worth serious attention. When I was finally obliged to acknowledge my condition, I was for the first time in my life completely at a loss. I remember the moment quite well: I was sitting at my usual desk in the British Museum looking up something on Sir Walter Raleigh, when out of the blue came this sudden suspicion, which hardened instantly as ever into a certainty. I got out my diary and started feverishly checking on dates, which was difficult as I never make a note of anything, let alone of trivial things like the workings of my guts. In the end, however, after much hard memory work, I sorted it out and convinced myself that it must be so. I sat there, and I could see my hand trembling on the desk. And for the first time the prospect before me seemed so appalling that even I, doom-suspecting and creating as I have always been, could not look at it. It was an unfamiliar sensation, the blankness that occupied my mind instead of the usual profuse images of disaster. I remained in this state for some five minutes before, wearily, I set my imagination to work. What it produced for me was very nasty. Gin, psychiatrists, hospitals, accidents, village maidens drowned in duck ponds, tears, pain, humiliations. Nothing, at that stage, resembling a baby. These shocking forebodings occupied me for half an hour or more, and I began to think that I would have to get up and go, or to go out and have a cup of coffee or something. But it was an hour before my usual time for departure, and I could not do it. I so often wanted not to do my full three hours, and had so often resisted the lure of company or distraction in order to complete them, that now I felt myself compelled to sit there, staring at the poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, in a mockery of attention. Except that after some time I found myself really attending: my mind, bent from its true obsession with what seemed at first intolerable strain, began to revert almost of its own accord to its more accustomed preoccupations, and by the end of the morning I had covered exactly as much ground as I had planned. It gave me much satisfaction, this fact. Much self-satisfaction. And as I walked down the road to meet Lydia for lunch, I discovered another source of satisfaction: now, at least, I would be compelled to see George. I had an excuse, now, for seeing him.

  Later that afternoon I realized that I was going to see George now less than ever. It took some time for the full complexity of the situation to sink in. When I realized the implications of my deceit, it became apparent that I was going to have to keep the whole thing to myself. I could not face the prospect of speculation, anyone's speculation. So I decided to get on with it by myself as best I could. I have already recounted my ludicrous attempt with the gin: after this I got in touch with a Cambridge friend of mine who had had an abortion, and asked for the address and details, which I obtained. I rang the number once, but it was engaged. After that I went no further. I do not like to look back on those first months, before anyone but me knew what was happening: it seemed too much like a nightmare, like an hallucination, and I kept waking up each morning and thinking it must be a dream, the kind of dream that my non-conformist guilt might be expected to project: I even wondered if all the symptoms from which I suffered might not be purely psychological. In the end it was the fear of being made a fool of by my subconscious that drove me to the doctor.

  Seeing the doctor was not as simple an operation as one might have supposed. To begin with, I did not know which doctor to see. It was so many years since I had been unwell that I did not know how to set about it: in fact, I had not been unwell since I had become an adult I had never had to do it on my own. The only doctor I knew was our old family doctor, who lived near our old but now abandoned family residence in Putney, and he was clearly unsuitable. I supposed that I ought to go to the nearest GP, but how was I to know who he was, or where he lived? living within two minutes' walk of Harley Street as I did, I was terrified that I might walk into some private waiting room by accident, and be charged fifty guineas for what I might and ought to get for nothing. Being my parents' daughter, the thought outraged me morally as well as financially. On the other hand, it did not seem a good plan to pick a surgery so evidently seedy that it could not exist but on the National Health: though this was in fact what I did. I passed one day, in a small road off George Street, after visiting an exhibition by a very distant friend, a brass plaque on a front door that said Dr. H. E. Moffatt. There was a globular light over the door, with SURGERY painted on it in black letters. It was not the kind of door behind which anyone could be charged fifty guineas, and I made a note of the surgery hours and resolved to return the next day at five-thirty.

  I visited the doctor the next day. That visit was a revelation: it was an initiation into a new way of life, a way that was thenceforth to be mine forever. An initiation into reality, if you like. The surgery opened at five-thirty, and I made a point of going along there quite promptly: I arrived at about twenty-eight minutes to six, thinking that I was in plenty of time, and would have to wait hardly at all. But when I opened that shabby varnished door, I found a wa
iting room overflowing with waiting patients, patiently waiting. There were about twenty of them, and I wavered on the threshold, thinking I might change my mind, when a woman in a white nylon overall came in and said irritably:

  "Come on, come along in now and don't leave the door on the jar, it's on the bell, it makes a dreadful noise in the back."

  Meekly, I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I had no idea what I ought to do next: whether I should sit down, or give my name to somebody, or what. I felt helpless, exposed, before those silent staring rows of eyes. I stood there for a moment, and then the woman in white, who had been talking to a very old man sitting almost on top of the noisy gas fire, came over to me and said, in a tone of deliberate strained equanimity:

  "Well, are you here to see Dr. Moffatt? You're a new patient, aren't you?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Have you brought your National Health card?"

  "Oh no, I quite forgot, I'm frightfully sorry," I said with shame; I had known that I would make some mistake in procedure. I did not know the ropes.

  "Oh dear me," she said, and sighed heavily. "Do remember to bring it along next time, won't you? What's your name?"

  "Stacey," I said. "Rosamund Stacey."

  "Mrs. or Miss?"

  "Miss."

  "All right then, take a seat."

  "As a matter of fact," I said, "I do know the number on my National Health card, if that's any use."

  "Oh, do you really?" She brightened faintly at the news of this extraordinary feat of memory, and I reeled it off, glad to have helped, but rather confused by my eccentricity. I had been forced to learn the number by a ferocious matron at school when I had forgotten to take my card along to one of those routine knee-knocking inspections to which schoolgirls are periodically subjected. I had never since had occasion to use it. Everything comes in some day, I suppose. She noted it down, and said once more "Do take a seat," then disappeared behind a small hardboard partition in a corner of the room. I tried to follow her advice but there was not a space left: I was preparing to prop myself up against the wall by the door when two women shuffled up along the bench to make a grudging gap for me. I sat down and prepared to wait.

  I waited for one hour fourteen minutes precisely: I timed it. And during that time I had plenty of leisure to observe my companions in endurance. The people that I was used to seeing on my home ground were a mixed enough lot, but they were a smart, expensive mixed lot, apart from the occasional freak, beggar or road worker: but here, gathered in this room, were representatives of a population whose existence I had hardly noticed. There were a few foreigners; a West Indian, a Pakistani, two Greeks. There were several old people, most of them respectably shabby, though one old woman was worse than shabby. She was grossly fat and her clothes were held around her by safety pins: a grostesquely old and mangy fur coat fell open to reveal layers of fraying, loose-stitched, hand-knitted cardigans in shades of maroon, dark blue and khaki. Her legs, covered in thick lisle stockings, were painfully swollen, and overflowed at the ankles over her soft cracked flat black shoes. She was talking to herself all the time, a low pitiable monologue of petty persecution. Nobody listened. Then there were a couple of young secretaries or waitresses who were sitting together and looking at pictures in a magazine and giggling: my eyes kept going back to them as they were the only people in the room who did not look depressed and oppressed. Those who looked worst of all were, ominously enough, the mothers: there were four mothers there with young children, and they looked uniformly worn out. One held a small baby on her knee, at which she smiled from time to time with tired affection and anxiety. The others had larger children, two of which were romping around the room; they were doing no harm, apart from disturbing the magazines, and nobody minded them except their mothers, who kept grabbing them and slapping them and shouting at them in a vain and indeed provoking effort to make them sit down and keep quiet. It was a saddening sight. I wondered where all the others had gone: the bright young women in emerald green coats with fur collars, the young men in leather jackets, the middle-aged women with dogs on leads, the gay mothers with their Christopher Robin children, the men with umbrellas against the rain. Sitting in Harley Street, no doubt, just along the road.

  By the time my turn to see the doctor came, my complaint seemed so trivial in comparison with the ills of age and worry and penury that I had doubts about presenting it at all. Reason told me, however, that I must do so, and I did. The woman in white showed me into the surgery: Dr. Moffatt was a harassed, keen-looking young man, with pale ginger receding hair. I felt sorry for him: he must have had a more unpleasant hour and a quarter than I had had. He told me to sit down and asked me what he could do for me, and I said that I thought I was pregnant, and he said how long had I been married, and I said that I was not married. It was quite simple. He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger, and said did my parents know. I said Yes, thinking it would be easier to say yes, and not wishing to embark on explaining about their being in Africa. He said were they sympathetic, and I smiled my bright, meaningless smile and said Fairly. Then we worked out dates and he said it would be due in March. Then he said he would try to get me a hospital bed, though I must understand there was a great shortage, and this and that, and had he got my address. I gave it, and he said was I living with my family and I said No, alone. He said did I know about the Unmarried Mothers people in Kentish Town, and I said Yes. They were very nice and very helpful about adoption and things, he said. Then he said that he would let me know about the hospital bed, and would I come back in a fortnight. And that was that.

  I walked out into the cold evening air and wandered aimlessly up towards Marylebone Road, worrying not because it seemed that I was really going to have this baby, but because I had been so surprised and annoyed that I had to wait so long. Everyone else there had looked re-signed; they had expected to wait, they had known they would have to wait. I was the only one who had not known. I wondered on how many other serious scores I would find myself ignorant. There were things that I had not needed to know, and now I did need to know them. I emerged upon Marylebone Road and walked towards the lovely coloured gleaming spire of Castrol House. I felt threatened. I felt my independence threatened: I did not see how I was going to get by on my own.

  Once I had thus decided to have the baby—or rather failed to decide not to have it—I had to face the problem of publicity. It was not the kind of event one can conceal forever, and I was already over three months gone. The absence of my parents was certainly handy from that point of view: there was nobody else in the family that I saw at all regularly. My brother in Dorking I saw dutifully about once every four months, but he would be easy enough to evade. My sister, on the other hand, I thought I might tell at some point as she had three children of her own and I thought she might be sympathetic. We got on quite well together, as sisters go. Nevertheless, I delayed writing; I could not bear the idea of the fuss. I hate to cause trouble.

  My own friends were another matter. I simply could not make my mind up about Joe and Roger; I did not much fancy going around with them while expecting somebody else's child, nor did I think they would much fancy it themselves, though one can never tell. On the other hand, I did not relish the thought of all the spare evenings I would be left with if I disposed of them both. It was difficult enough to keep myself from getting depressed as it was, without having even more solitary time on my hands. Also, I did not know quite how to set about imparting the news: should I leave it till it became evident to the naked eye? Surely not. Therefore I would have to tell them before it became evident, which did not leave me much time. Already I could not fasten my skirts or get into my brassières. I rehearsed each scene a hundred times in my head, but could never even in my imagination manipulate the data with anything like grace, skill, tact or credit to myself. I thought Joe would be the easier proposition, being more familiar, and I plunged into the subject one night almost unintentionally, prompted by a chance remark of his made as we w
ere walking along Park Lane.

  "Did you ever see," he said, "that Bergman film about a maternity ward? The one where all the wrong people kept having miscarriages?"

  "Don't talk to me about maternity wards," I said, almost without thinking.

  "Why not?" he said. "Does it upset you? You don't like all that kind of thing, do you? A very unwomanly woman, that's what you are."

  "Nonsense," I said. "Just don't talk about maternity wards that's all. All too soon I'm going to find myself in one."

  "What?" said Joe.

  "I'm pregnant," I said crossly.

  "Oh," said Joe, and kept on walking. After a few yards he said, "You're not going to have it, are you?"

  "Yes, I am," I said.

  "Whatever for?"

  "Why not? I don't see why I shouldn't, do you?"

  "I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn't. I think it's an utterly ridiculous romantic stupid nonsensical idea. I think you're out of your mind."