The Millstone

by Margaret Drabble

  "And otherwise," I said. "Otherwise, what would happen?"

  "I am afraid," he said, "that there is no real alternative." And then, looking mildly concerned, he rose to his feet and said, "Now then, Mrs. Stacey, I think you'd better go home and talk it over with your husband, and do remember that we have every confidence..."

  "Talk it over with who?" I said, ungrammatically, crossly, teetering on the edge of my self-control.

  "Oh yes, of course, my goodness me," he said, looking back at his pile of documents. "But you do have someone you can discuss it with, surely? Your parents? Some relatives, surely?"

  "My parents are in Africa," I said, standing up and buttoning up my coat, ready to go.

  "In Africa?" He looked strangely interested by this piece of information, which I had volunteered in a spirit of defiance rather than of helpfulness; he sat down again and did a little thinking, and then looked up and said:

  "You're not related to Herbert Stacey, are you?"

  "As a matter of fact, I'm his daughter," I said grudgingly, aware that my avowal in these circumstances did my father little credit: but a change immediately passed over the whole demeanour of this man, who made me sit down once more and rang for another cup of coffee, and started to tell me how he was at Oxford with my father, and how they had belonged to this and that together, and spoken at this debate and that debate, and how he had always thought he would go in for politics, and how was my mother, and how were they finding Africa? Clearly, from his conversation, he had known both my parents quite well, and indeed, now I came to think of it, his name, which was Protheroe, was a name I had heard bandied around the dinner table a good deal at one time, and with favourable mention, too, for he was on the right side about the Health Service, and sufficiently distinguished to make distinguished remarks about it at conferences. A good socialist, this man was said to be, and we looked at each other with renewed interest.

  We chatted amiably for at least a quarter of an hour more, during which time all the other wretched patients doubtless piled up in the waiting rooms outside with weary resignation; when he finally rose to let me go, he shook my hand warmly, took my telephone number, and said that I could bring the baby in for observation for a day in about a week's time, and that they would probably operate, all being well, in about a fortnight.

  "Believe me," he said, "I won't pretend it isn't a big job, but she does seem to be unusually well despite her condition, and the chances of recovery, once we get past the initial stages, are excellent, quite excellent. And believe me, Miss Stacey, though I say it myself, she's in good hands here, you couldn't get her anywhere better."

  And I believed him, too. Although I had never doubted his competence, I felt happier when he asserted it with a smile in this way. Flesh is weak, and we ask for too much, but it's a comfort when we get it, and without paying.

  I did not know what to do with myself for the next fortnight: I was really off work, and consistently off, too, not just fancying I was off until I made myself open the books. I struggled through the days as best I could, tormented by Octavia's lovely smiling gaiety, and trying not to pick her up too often. Then, the second evening, it occurred to me that I needed a drink, so I took to drink. I think I have said elsewhere that drink always cheers me up, and it even managed to cheer me now. Being rather hard up, I bought very cheap red wine, which I quite liked if I warmed it up in a saucepan first. I drank a lot each evening, and after an hour or so reached a state where my thoughts swam dizzily from one optimistic refuge to another: one moment convinced of the immortality of the soul, the next that no pain is without purpose, but basically, quite simply sure, as I never am when sober, that luck and the odds were on my side.

  Most nights I was in bed before Lydia got in, as her affair with Joe was at this time at its height. I tried to avoid her, deliberately, as I had not imparted the truth about Octavia, and did not wish to be trapped into doing so. One evening, though, she and Joe came back together just after eleven while I was lying on the hearth rug with my head on a cushion, wondering if I had the energy to get up and go to bed. I did not hear them coming and they discovered me there. They noticed at once the evidence that I had been drinking, and decided to join me. They told me about the film they had been to see that evening at the Cameo-Poly, and Lydia said that she had just about finished her novel, and I asked Joe about his, and he said which, and I said whichever one he was writing, and he said he wasn't, and I said that was a change. Then he started on about when were my parents coming home, and when would Lydia have to move out, and what was I going to do for a flat, it must be difficult finding one with a baby. Whereupon a sudden faintness seized me, for I knew with piercing premonition exactly what everyone would say if Octavia were to die. They would say it was a blessing in disguise. I could hear them saying it, even those who knew and understood me, for apart from myself there was nobody in the world who cared about her, or who realized that I cared. Perhaps there are some for whom no one cares, deserted, abandoned, unloved, unwanted, whose existence is a needless burden to the earth they lie upon. Perhaps I was obliged to make up for what Octavia lacked in quantity of mourners by the quality of my caring.

  Luckily, they soon passed from the subject of flats and babies, and I was able to recover myself, though only momentarily, for what Joe said very shortly was "I was talking about you, Rosamund, the other night, to that friend of yours from the BBC. George he's called, isn't he? George what? I can never think of his other name."

  "George Matthews," I said. "George Matthews, you mean."

  "That's right," said Joe. "George Matthews."

  There was a following silence, in which I registered the loud beating of my heart, the sudden burning of my face, and some weird interruptions of my breathing, which indicated the extent of my concern. It was months since I had even heard his name, for I had not even had the privilege, so often enjoyed by other unrequited lovers, of hearing his character and affairs discussed by friends; I had so sedulously avoided any vague connections that he might well have never existed, and indeed, had I not held the fruit of his existence so often in my arms, I would have thought the whole episode nothing but a dream, begotten from some strange frustrated quirk within myself, some wishful dream of what might have taken place. Now that at last I heard him mentioned, now that he emerged at last from the private recesses of my memory, I did not know what to say, nor how to behave with any semblance of flippancy. There were a hundred things that I wanted to ask; what he looked like, what he was wearing, whether he had recalled me with tenderness, indifference or hostility, whether he had known about my baby, whom he had been with, who loved him, whom did he love, a hundred questions like these, so long repressed and restrained, came at once into my head, but I could not think how to phrase them, so I said nothing. I said nothing, and I felt my face settle inexorably into its lines of habitual dismissive blankness. I must have convinced Joe of my total lack of interest, for when he looked up from stubbing out his cigarette he did not pursue the topic but continued instead to talk about his television program. Lydia was going to be on it, talking about the modern novel. "Why not, after all?" said Joe. "She's as much right to talk about the modern novel as anyone else, haven't you, Lydia? And she's pretty, too, so why not?"

  Why not, indeed, I said to myself as I took myself to bed and left them to it. Why ever not? It seemed to me of no importance. I was sick of them, sick of hearing them and being with them and thinking about them. And yet I liked them. If I liked anyone, they were the kind of people I liked. I began to think that I did not like anyone any more. Except George, George with his quiet anonymity, George who could live within half a mile of me and remain for over a year unmentioned, unseen, receding endlessly out of recollection and out of my life. I thought I liked George. I wished I could have had an opportunity for telling him so.

  The night before Octavia's operation I lay awake, enduring what might have been my last battle with the vast shadowy monsters of doubt. Some on such occasions must d
oubt the existence of God; it does not seem to me natural to survive such disasters with faith unimpaired. I find it more honourable to take events into consideration, when speaking of the mercy of God. But, in fact, the subject of God did not much cross my mind, for I had never given it much thought, having been brought up a good Fabian rationalist, and notions such as the afterlife and heaven seemed to me crude quite literally beyond belief. Justice, however, preoccupied me. I could not rid myself of the notion that if Octavia were to die, this would be a vengeance upon my sin. The innocent shall suffer for the guilty. What my sin had been I found difficult to determine, for I could not convince myself that sleeping with George had been a sin; on the contrary, in certain moods I tended to look on it as the only virtuous action of my life. A sense of retribution nevertheless hung heavily over me, and what I tried to preserve that night was faith not in God but in the laws of chance.

  Towards morning, I began to think that my sin lay in my love for her. For five minutes or so, I almost hoped that she might die, and thus relieve me of the corruption and the fatality of love. Ben Jonson said of his dead child, my sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. We too easily take what the poets write as figures of speech, as pretty images, as strings of bons mots. Sometimes perhaps they speak the truth.

  In the morning, when it was time to get up and get dressed and gather together her pitiably small requirements, I got out of bed and got down on my knees and said, Oh God, let her survive, let her live, let her be all right, and God was created by my need, perhaps.

  We went to the hospital and I handed her over, and she smiled at me, then cried when they took her away. The world had contracted to the small size of her face and her clenching, waving hands. The poignancy was intolerable: her innocence, her gaiety, her size. I went away, and I walked up and down Marylebone Road. I cannot think what I did with the hours. I did not go back till half an hour after they had told me to inquire, and when I got there I did not dare to ask. I stood there, waiting, till someone recognized me and came over smiling and told me that everything had gone extremely well, and that Mr. Protheroe sent his regards and hoped to see me, and that there was every hope of complete success. As on the day when I had first guessed at her condition, I could not believe that a mere recital of facts could thus change my fate: I stood there, dumbly, wondering if it could be the truth that she had told me, or whether she had got the wrong name, the wrong data, the wrong message. But she went on smiling and reassuring me, and soon I believed her, for it became suddenly clear that it was quite out of the question that anything should have gone wrong, that of course we had been lucky, Octavia and I. When I got round to speaking, I asked if I could see her, and they said to come back in the morning, as she was still unconscious and not to be disturbed. Of course, I said humbly, and backed away, full of gratitude towards the lot of them: then I went and wept copiously in the cloakroom, and then I went home.

  It was only when I got home that I began to be preoccupied by certain details upon which I had not previously dared to exercise my mind. What would Octavia think when she woke in hospital? Would she be in terrible pain from the operation? Would they feed her properly? Would she cry? Earlier it had seemed presumptuous to have considered these things, but now their importance swelled minute by minute in my mind. The threat of fatality removed, the conditions of life at once resumed their old significance. It was the strangeness, I thought, more than the pain that would afflict her, for she liked nobody but me; even Mrs. Jennings and Lydia she regarded only with tolerance, and strangers she disliked with noisy vehemence. Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember, because they cannot torment our consciences with a recital of their woes. By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget. We cannot stand the injustice of life, so we pretend that a baby can forget hours spent wrapped in newspaper on the floor of a telephone kiosk, the vicious blows of the only ones that might have loved it, the sight of its elder, unsaved brothers in a blazing mass of oil-stove flames. Like Job's comforters, we cannot believe that the innocent suffer. And yet they do. We see, but we cannot believe.

  When I went round in the morning to visit her, I found myself met by a certain unhelpful stalling. The lady in charge, a lady in white whose title was not clear to me, assured me that all was well, that all was progressing most satisfactorily, that the child was as comfortable as could be expected. "I'd like to go and see her," I said then, summoning up a little courage.

  "I'm afraid that won't be possible," said the lady in white with calm certainty, looking down at her file of notes.

  "Why not?" I said. "I would like to see her, I know she'd like to see me."

  The lady in white embarked upon a long explanation about upsetting children, upsetting mothers, upsetting other children, upsetting other mothers, justice to all, disturbing the nurses' routine, and such topics. As she talked, in her smooth even tones, all kinds of memories filtered back into my mind, memories of correspondences in The Times and The Guardian upon this very subject, composed of letters from mothers like myself who had not been allowed in. "What about visiting hours?" I said, and back came the civil, predictable answer,

  "I'm afraid that for such small infants we don't allow any visiting time at all. We really do find that it causes more inconvenience to staff and patients than we can possibly cope with. Really, Mrs. Stacey, you must understand that it is of no practical use to visit such a young child, she will settle much more happily if she doesn't see you. You'd be amazed to see how soon they settle down. Mothers never believe us, but we know from experience how right we are to make this regulation."

  I didn't like the sound of that word "settle": it suggested a settling into lethargy and torpor, such as I remembered to have read of in The Times. Octavia had never been settled in her short life, and I did not want her to begin now. Already, in twenty-four hours, we had endured the longest separation of our lives, and I began to see it stretching away, indefinitely prolonged. Also, because they would not let me see the child, I suspected that they had not told me the whole truth about her recovery; was there now in her small countenance something too dreadful for me to behold? I voiced this fear, feeling that it would have effect, and be at least appreciated.

  "I can't believe until I see her," I said, "that everything really is all right. I just can't believe it."

  She took my point. "Mrs. Stacey," she said, looking up and meeting with straight, woman-to-woman frankness my anxious gaze, "you must believe me when I say that I have given you all the information there is about your daughter. We are making no attempt to conceal anything from you because there is nothing to conceal. Mr. Protheroe expressed personal satisfaction at the progress of the operation and is calling in this morning to check on progress. If you would like to see his report, here it is."

  And she detached a piece of paper from the file marked Not To Be Seen By Patient and pushed it over to me. I glanced at it, but could see it was nothing but a mass of technicalities, so I did not try to read it. I felt better, though, by virtue of the fact that she had let me look, for she could not reasonably have relied upon the exact extent of my ignorance. By this time it was quite easy to tell from her expression that she considered I was nothing but an ordinary and tedious time-waster, and as I dislike being any such thing, and as I could see that I was making no progress, I decided that I had no choice but to leave gracefully, so I did.

  "Oh well," I said, "perhaps you're right. I'm sure you're looking after her properly; it was just that I wanted to see her, I thought she might be missing me. But perhaps you're right, perhaps it wouldn't do any good to see her so soon."

  And I picked up my bag and prepared to go. She got up from behind her desk and opened the door for me; I was out in the corridor before I heard her saying t
hat perhaps in a fortnight or so I might be able to visit. I half turned to retort, but had not the energy, so I continued on down the corridor and out of the building. I knew my way round that place now as well as if it were my school or my college or the British Museum itself.

  I had not expected that they would let me stay with her all day, and had arrived prepared to go on to the BM to work, intending to call back at teatime. I went on to the BM mechanically, and spent an hour or two there trying to check up on some very insignificant footnotes, but it was not the kind of work that could occupy the mind, and by lunchtime I had had enough. My thesis was so nearly finished that I anyway somewhat disliked the prospect of its final completion and all the rethinking and restarting on new projects that it would entail. I went downstairs for a sandwich and a coffee, and while there sat quietly and told myself that I should be grateful, that I should not now be worrying about not seeing my child for a fortnight, that regulations were regulations, that I should be grateful and should not obstruct. But the more I told myself all this, the less I convinced myself, for I had only to think of my baby's small lonely awakening for the whole pack of thoughts to seem so much waste irrelevant rubbish. And when I had finished my coffee, I got up and put my books back in my bag and went back to the hospital.

  It was lunchtime and I could not find the lady in white. There were a couple of nurses guarding her office, who said she would not be back till two.

  "That doesn't matter," I said."It wasn't her I wanted to see, it was my baby. Would one of you take me to see my baby? She's in ward 21G. Octavia Stacey, her name is."

  The two nurses looked at each other, nervously, as though I were a case.

  "You're not allowed to visit in this ward," one of them said, with timid politeness, propitiating, kind, as one speaks to the sick or the mad.

  "I don't really care," I said, "whether I'm allowed to visit or not. If you'll tell me where it is, I'll get there by myself, and you needn't even say you saw me."