The Millstone

by Margaret Drabble

  "I'm afraid we can't possibly do that," the other one said when the first speaker said nothing. Like her friend, she had a timid, undetermined note in her voice, and I felt mean to pursue my point. I did pursue it, however; I told them I had no intention of not seeing my baby, that I didn't think it would upset her at all, but that on the contrary it would cheer her up, and cheer me up, and was in every way desirable, and that if they didn't tell me how to find her I would just go and look for myself. No, no, I couldn't possibly do that, they both said at once, their voices hardening from personal timidity and embarrassment into the weight of authority. They had that whole building behind them, they knew, and I had nothing behind me at all except my intention. I have never been good at getting what I want; every impulse in me tells me to give up at the first breath of opposition. And yet this time I felt that I would not be the only one to lose; somewhere Octavia was lying around and waiting for me. It was no longer a question of what I wanted: this time there was someone else involved. Life would never be a simple question of self-denial again.

  "I must see her," I repeated. "If you won't let me go, go and get Sister, or Matron, or whatever she's called. Go and fetch her for me. Or I'll wait here till she comes."

  "She won't be here till two," said one, and the other said, "You can't wait here, you aren't allowed to wait."

  "What do you mean, I'm not allowed?" I said crossly, suffering greatly from this as yet mild degree of self-assertion. "Who doesn't allow me? Who says I can't wait?"

  "Sister won't see anyone anyway, at this time of day," they said. "And she says that no one must be allowed to wait."

  They began to look frightened; I could see they were going to get into trouble if I were still there when Sister came back. I was sorry for them, but not as sorry as I was for Octavia. I sat down on the desk and I waited. After five minutes one of them disappeared, perhaps in an effort to find someone more persuasive to dislodge me, but before she returned Sister arrived, and the remaining girl had to bear the brunt of her wrath.

  "Well, well, Mrs. Stacey," she said snappily as she bustled in. "So you're here again, are you? Now then, Miss Richards, how many times have I told you this isn't a convenient time for visitors? Mrs. Stacey, I'm afraid that I can't possibly talk..."

  "I'm not supposed to be on duty now," said Miss Richards querulously, interrupting. "I was only here because of Mavis, and then Mavis went off to look for..."

  "I don't care who went off where," said Sister, fiercely, "I have said again and again that my office must not be used as a waiting room. Mrs. Stacey, I'm afraid I am far too busy to talk to you now. Miss Richards, would you show Mrs. Stacey to the lift, please. If there is anything you wish to discuss, you must..."

  "I don't want to discuss anything," I said. "I've come to visit my baby."

  I felt happier now; I had not enjoyed upsetting those unimpressive nurses, whose discomfort in the situation had been almost as great as mine. In Sister, however, I sensed the kind of will that can be fought: she found pleasure, not torment, in assertion, so I felt free to assert myself too.

  "I told you this morning," said Sister, "that visiting is quite out of the question."

  "I don't care what you told me," I said. "I want to see my baby. If you don't take me straight there, I shall walk round until I find the way myself. She's not kept under lock and key, I assume?"

  "Mrs. Stacey," said Sister, "you are behaving most foolishly, and I must ask you to leave at once."

  "I won't leave," I said. "You'd much better take me straight there, I don't want to be compelled to wander round upsetting the whole of your hospital until I find my baby."

  "Now then, now then," said Sister, "this is neither the time nor the place for hysterical talk like that. We must all be grateful that your child is..."

  "Grateful," I said. "I am grateful. I admire your hospital, I admire your work, I am devoted to the National Health Service. Now I want to see my baby."

  She came over to me and took my arm and started to push me gently towards the door; I have spent so much of my life in intelligent, superior efiort to understand ignorance that I recognized her look at once. She pitied me and she was amazed. I let her get me as far as the door, being unable at first to resist the physical sense of propulsion, but when we got to the door I stopped and said, "No, I'm not going to leave. I'm going to stay here until you change your mind."

  "I have no intention of changing my mind," she said, and once more took hold of my elbow and started to push. I resisted. We stood there for a moment; I could not believe that physical violence could possibly take place, but on the other hand I did not see what else I could do. So when she started to push, I started to scream. I screamed very loudly, shutting my eyes to do it, and listening in amazement to the deafening shindy that filled my head. Once I had started, I could not stop; I stood there, motionless, screaming, whilst they shook me and yelled at me and told me that I was upsetting everybody in earshot. "I don't care," I yelled, finding words for my inarticulate passion, "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about anyone, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care."

  Eventually they got me to sit down, but I went on screaming and moaning and keeping my eyes shut; through the noise I could hear things happening, people coming and going, someone slapped my face, someone tried to put a wet flannel on my head, and all the time I was thinking I must go on doing this until they let me see her. Inside my head it was red and black and very hot, I remember, and I remember also the clearness of my consciousness and the ferocity of my emotion, and myself enduring them, myself neither one nor the other, but enduring them, and not breaking in two. After a while I heard someone shouting above the din, "For God's sake tell her she can see the baby, someone try and tell her," and I heard these words and instantly stopped and opened my eyes and beheld the stricken, confused silence around me.

  "Did you say I could see the baby?" I said.

  "Of course you can see the baby," said Mr. Protheroe. "Of course you can see the baby. I cannot imagine why you should have ever been prevented from seeing the baby."

  I looked at the breathless circle surrounding me, which had changed its composition considerably since I had last seen it: Mr. Protheroe himself looked agitated and white with anger, Sister was sitting in a corner and crying into a handkerchief, the nurses were looking stunned, and there were a couple more men also looking angry. It was as though I had opened my eyes on a whole narrative caught in a single picture, a narrative in which I myself had taken no part; it had been played out between the Sister and the others, quite clearly, and she had lost and was now suffering her defeat. It was nothing to do with me at all, I felt; I shut my eyes, wearily, upon them, for I did not want to know. I had no interest in their story; I wished to know only my own. I felt I could no longer bother to endure their conflicts; if I had gained my point, that was enough for me.

  "Can I go now and see my baby?" I asked.

  "I will take you myself," said Mr. Protheroe, and I got up, and he took my arm and conducted me down the corridor. To my surprise I found that I needed his arm, for my knees were weak and the blood was singing in my ears, sensations odd enough for one who had always looked and felt as strong as a horse, as my parents used to say. We went along various devious passages, through swing doors and up and down half-flights of stairs, while I tried in vain to memorize the route, like Theseus in the labyrinth, and finally emerged in a long, cubicled ward full of small children. The cubicles must have been soundproofed, for when we reached Octavia I heard nothing until they opened the door, and at once her sad, piercing and recognizable wails met my ear. She was lying there on a cot much like the one in which she had spent the first days of her life, and wearing the same kind of institution nightie, but this time she was strapped in. I stood on the threshold, overcome with feeling, and she turned her eyes towards me, and I was afraid she would weep all the more bitterly, or fail to recognize me at all, but instead she stopped crying, and I went up to her, and her face became suffus
ed with its habitual enchanted and enchanting total smile. She lay there smiling, unable to move but smiling, and I went up to her and stroked her cheek and she smiled more and more. She had forgiven me for our day of separation, I could see, and such generosity I found amazing, for I am not generous. Fair, but not generous.

  I stayed with her all day, and helped to feed her, and watched her sleep and watched her wake and watched her cry, for she did cry, but through restless boredom and pain, not through desertion. Mr. Protheroe, who had had to leave me after five minutes, had said that they were to find me a chair, and let me in any day I wished to come, and that I could eat in the canteen. I asked him, when no one was there, whether this was preferential treatment, and whether I was receiving it because I made such a fuss, or because he had known my father: he said that it was not preferential treatment, the policy of the hospital was to admit mothers with children, the policy of the nation was to admit mothers with children, but that nevertheless the human element intervened. "Our buildings here are old," he said, "and our staff are old. We have to put up with it." "Admit it, though," I said. "I only got in because I made a fuss. Other mothers don't get in, do they?"

  "They don't all want to," he said. "They don't all have time to. Some of them have families at home to worry about. I wouldn't think about the others, if I were you. Think about yourself."

  So I did think about myself and I went on coming, regardless of all the others who couldn't come. They did not like me to be there, most of them, and they never found me a chair, but I wasn't bothered about a chair, and when I could not find one for myself I sat on the floor. It was quite peaceful, as she slept much of the time, so I was able to read and get bored in a fairly normal fashion. Sister Watkins would not speak to me, so deep was her resentment for what she had endured through my innocent agency, but the twinges of guilt that I felt whenever I encountered her were fainter than any I can recollect. Towards the end, however, try as I would, I could no longer stifle awareness of the other small ones, crying quietly and unheard behind their glass doors, or lying in a stupor of nothingness at the other end of the long ward, unprotected by partitions. There were only very small children in that part of the hospital; I did manage to see some larger ones, on one of my detours to the canteen, and some of them looked much better, and were reading and playing and shouting at each other. I saw some terrible sights, and even from time to time indulged the dreadful fancy that I was glad that Octavia's illness, however grave, had in no way marred her beauty. But this was but a fancy, for who would not rather endure a hare lip? Before Octavia was born, I used to think that love bore some relation to merit and to beauty, but now I saw that this was not so.

  It must have been the saddest place in the world, that hospital. The decor made faint attempts at cheer, for there were friezes of bunny rabbits round the walls, and from time to time one particularly enthusiastic nurse would come and talk to me and dangle teddy bears at Octavia. Octavia took no interest in teddy bears, being at an age where she would play only with hard chewable objects or paper, but the nurse did not notice. I seemed to spend weeks there, for she was in for a long time, and during those weeks I saw only one other mother; we met, twice, at the entrance to the ward, and the second time accompanied each other more or less accidentally down to the canteen, where we sat, after brief and watery smiles, at the same table with our cups of tea. There seemed little small talk in which one could indulge, for any however trivial inquiry might well in those circumstances let loose unwelcome, dormant fear and tragedy, so finally all I said was, "How did you manage to get in?" I wanted to talk to her, for she looked a nice woman; older than myself, with fair hair parted in the middle and draped looping gently backwards, and wearing a belted grey coat with a fur collar. Her face was one of those mild, round-chinned, long-cheeked faces, without angles or edges, but nevertheless shapely and memorable, with a kind of soft tranquillity. She looked, too, as if she could talk, and I had had enough of my endless battle with the official and the inarticulate.

  "Oh, I got in all right," she said. "I made them give it me in writing before I let him in, that I could come. Then all one has to do is show them the letter."

  "That shows foresight," I said. "I had to have hysterics."

  "Really?" she smiled, impressed. "And it worked, did it?"

  "Evidently."

  "I was always afraid," she said, "that if I made a real fuss, they wouldn't let me in anyway, because they'd say I was in too bad a state to see the children. I was afraid they'd put me to bed, too."

  I thought that this might well have been more than likely in my case too, and I thought about what Lydia had said about not being allowed to have an abortion because it would upset her; degrees of madness were a tricky matter, it seemed, as were degrees of responsibility.

  "Anyway," I said, "you didn't have to make a fuss. You did it all properly. I didn't realize what it would be like; if I'd realized I would have done something about it earlier too, perhaps."

  "One doesn't realize," she said. "The first time, I'd no idea. They wouldn't let me in with the first child. I had to get my husband to write a letter."

  "And that worked?"

  "Oh yes. My husband has some influence here, you see. Some. I don't know what one would do without a little influence." She smiled, wanly, and I noticed that she looked very, very tired.

  "But how many children?" I asked. "More than one child?"

  "It's my second," she said, "that's in now. My second boy."

  There was a pause; she expected me to ask her what was wrong, perhaps, but I did not like to, and I could see that she was relieved by my abstention, for she went on, "It's the same thing with both of them. So I knew it was coming this time, I've known for years. It makes it worse. People think it makes it better, but it makes it worse."

  "Why did you let him come here, after the other one?"

  "Why? It's the best place, you know. They must have told you it's the best place."

  "Oh yes, they did. But I thought they said that everywhere."

  She smiled once more, her grave slow liquid smile, a smile not of amusement but of tired well-meaning. "Oh no," she said, "it really is. You're very lucky. They really are wonderful here. It's your first, isn't it?"

  "Yes, my first."

  "I wish you luck," she said, finishing her cup of tea, "with your second."

  "I'm not having any more," I said.

  "That's what I said," she said. "They said it wasn't likely to happen twice. And afterwards they told me the odds. Not that it matters. I'd have done it anyway."

  "But how," I said, "how do you bear it?" I did not mean to say it, but I said it in spite of myself and then wished I had not spoken, for her manner, though kind, had been impersonal, a sort of cool human sympathy rather than a personal interest. She did not mind, however; she seemed used to the question.

  "I don't bear it," she said. She picked up her spoon and started to stir the leaves in the bottom of her cup, staring at them intently as though fate were indeed lying there amongst them, sodden and dark brown, to be altered by the movement of a tin spoon. "At first I used to pretend not to mind, I used to laugh if off to my friends and underestimate its gravity when talking to my family, you know what I mean. Extraordinary, the impulse to play things down, don't you think? But in the end I got fed up with it. I got tired of pretending it was nothing just to save other people's feelings. Now I don't care who sees I care."

  She stopped talking as though she had said all she had to say. I too said nothing, awed by this testimony of long-term sorrow. There was still something in me that protested, that told me that it was not possible that a mere accident of birth, the slight misjudgment of part of one organ should so mould and pin and clamp a nature that it could grow like this, warped and graceful, up the one sunny wall of dignity left to it. For, no doubt about it, she wore her grief well: she spared herself and her associates the additional infliction of ugliness, which so often accompanies much pain.

  We sat there
for a moment or two, quietly, and I meant to say no more, but after a while my nature returned, relentless, to its preoccupations, like a dog to some old dried marrowless bone. I could not help but ask; I had no hope of an answer, having always known that there is no answer, but it seemed to me that this woman would at least understand the terms of my question.

  "What," I said to her then, "what about all the others?"

  "The others?" she said slowly.

  "The others," I said. "Those that don't even get in. Those without money. Those without influence. Those who would not dare to have hysterics."

  "Ah, those," she said.

  "Yes, those. What about them?"

  "I don't know," she said, still speaking slowly, her eyes still downcast. "I don't know. I can't see that I can do anything about them."

  "But don't they worry you?" I said, reluctant to disturb her yet unable to desist.

  With difficulty she began to attach herself to the question. She began to speak, and I waited with ridiculous expectation for her answer.

  "They used to worry me," she said. "When I first started on all this, they worried me almost as much as my own. And I comforted myself by saying that nobody felt what I felt. They don't care, I said, or they would do what I do. But that's not true, of course."

  She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, for I agreed with what she had said.

  "They do care," she went on, "but they don't set about it as I do. As time went on, though, and after years of this, I began to think that it was after all nothing to do with me. And it isn't, you know. My concerns are my concerns, and that's where it ends. I haven't the energy to go worrying about other people's children. They're nothing to do with me. I only have enough time to worry about myself. If I didn't put myself and mine first, they wouldn't survive. So I put them first and the others can look after themselves."

  She finished speaking; she had no more to say. I was, inevitably, touched almost to tears, for it is very rare that one meets someone who will give one such an answer to my question. She had spoken without harshness; I think it was that that had touched me most. I had so often heard these views expressed, but always before they had been accompanied by a guilty sneer at those who must be neglected, or a brisk Tory contempt for the ignorant, or a business-like blinkered air of proud realism. I had never heard them thus gently put forward as the result of sad necessity. I saw what she meant; I saw, in her, what all the others meant. I don't think I replied, and after a while she put on her gloves and stood up.