‘Oh God,’ said Jacqueline.
‘You had no idea, no idea at all that this might be – well, possible?’ said the headmistress.
‘Of course not. Of course I didn’t.’
‘I see.’
There was a long silence.
‘What – what should I do?’ said Jacqueline. ‘What would you suggest?’
‘Well, naturally, she must be removed from the school at once. That goes without saying.’
‘You mean permanently?’
‘I’m afraid I do.’
‘But why?’
‘Mrs Miller, do be reasonable. This is a highly respected, much sought-after school. You must be aware of what it would do to our reputation if it became known that a girl here was pregnant. Even had been pregnant.’
‘I see. Suppose –’
‘Yes?’
‘Suppose it was a mistake. A hysterical pregnancy. They do happen.’
‘Mrs Miller, she has had a pregnancy test, the Aschheim-Zondak test. It is highly accurate. Perhaps you don’t know exactly what that involves,’ said Matron carefully. ‘Her urine has been injected into a mouse. The mouse, on biopsy, showed distinct ovarian changes. There can be no mistake.’
‘Well, suppose she had a – a miscarriage?’
‘Mrs Miller, I’m sorry. I know what you are saying. But the answer is no. Now shall I send for Caroline?’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Jacqueline.
Going home in the car, they were both silent. Caroline was white, and had to ask for the car to be stopped twice, so she could be sick; otherwise she said nothing at all. Jacqueline stared out of the window.
When they finally got home she went upstairs to her room. ‘I’ll talk to your father when he gets home,’ was all she said.
They confronted her in the drawing room after dinner. They had discussed it carefully, they said, and had a long conversation with a friend of Jacqueline’s who was a gynaecologist in London. He had contacts who might be able to help. It would mean going to a clinic somewhere in the country. Caroline had no idea what they meant. They asked who the father was, and when it had happened. She told them, and listened to them calling her a slut and a disgrace, and stood shaking while her father rang the Dudley-Leicesters and asked them to come over.
She felt very sick and very faint, and said so; they told her to go to her room and to stay there. She lay on the bed crying, and afraid, and listening to her parents shouting at the Dudley-Leicesters, and wondered whatever was to become of her.
Later that night her mother came to her room, looked at her distantly and merely told her that they would be going up to London with her the next day. Caroline did not dare ask why.
There were interviews with doctors, with psychiatrists, endless internal examinations that hurt, questioning about her last period, the last occasion intercourse had taken place. Finally she found herself in a small hard bed in a tiny white bright room in a clinic somewhere in the wilds of Northumberland, being given an enema by a hatchet-faced nurse, and then pushed roughly from the lavatory, where she was sitting at once vomiting and straining, on to the bed and given yet one more of the internal examinations, this time not even with a gloved hand, but a hard steel probe. It hurt horribly.
‘All right,’ said the doctor (she supposed he was a doctor), ‘I think we can just about do it. Get her ready now.’
And they put her into a robe and shaved her pudendum and told her to climb on to a trolley, and without a word, pushed her, sick with fear, along the corridors and into another small room. There the same doctor was standing, sleeves rolled up, black rubber mask in hand.
‘Now then,’ he said, pushing the mask over her face, making her feel she would stifle, ‘let’s hope this is going to be a lesson to you.’
As she lost consciousness she felt him pushing her legs apart and saying, ‘Put her in the stirrups . . .’ and she tried to scream but the mask was smothering her, and the room was swimming and they were pushing her trolley into the brilliant lights next door.
When she woke up, she felt terribly sick; she moved, leant over from her bed and threw up into the basin beside her. Her stomach ached badly; feeling herself cautiously, tears streaming down her face, she found she was padded with cotton wool, and that in spite of it the sheet and her gown were soaked with blood. Terrified, she pressed the bell; the nurse who had given her the enema came in.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m bleeding. Terribly. And it hurts. Is it – is that all right?’
The nurse looked at her with distaste. ‘You should be grateful you’re bleeding. You girls are all the same. What do you expect?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Caroline meekly.
And she didn’t.
She didn’t expect the pain, which was bad; the endless bleeding which was frightening; the internal examination she had to have next morning before she was allowed home; the weakness, the soreness that lasted for weeks; least of all she didn’t expect the misery, the tearing, awful misery that went on day after day without relief. Her mother continued to ignore her, treating her like some unsatisfactory housemaid; her father was awkwardly more kind, and once took her in one of his bear hugs when he found her sobbing in the drawing room one morning, but never mentioned the matter either. Only Janey cared for her, held her as she wept, filled endless hot-water bottles, made her cups of hot tea, through the first few dreadful days, brought her books to read from the library, lent her her old wireless to listen to. But Janey didn’t talk about it either.
About two weeks after it had all happened, when she was just beginning to feel better, she was sitting in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate and reading Cook’s Daily Mail when she heard the door open and Jack Bamforth came in.
Jack Bamforth was her father’s groom; he had been with the family for most of Caroline’s life. He’d taught her to ride, holding the fat little Shetland steady while she dug her small heels in and shouted, ‘Giddyup.’ He had carried her into the house when she had had her first bad fall and been concussed; he had taken her out hunting for the first time, reining his horse in patiently so as to be near her, urging her over the fences, steadying her nerve; he was, she often said, her best friend. When she discovered this annoyed her mother, she said it more frequently. Jack was thirty-five years old, small – about five feet seven inches tall – and very slightly built; he had a gloriously equable disposition, an eye for a horse that was legendary, and a face that would have sent Michelangelo into raptures: perfectly sculpted, classically beautiful bones, wide, innocent grey eyes and a mouth that said little but spoke volumes – mostly on the subject of carnal desire.
Jack had a wife, a big, sexy woman with a sharp tongue on her; but he also had a most awesome reputation for taking his pleasures elsewhere. All these elements set together, with his soft, flat Suffolk accent which gave his every utterance a kind of lazy charm, made him wonderfully easy to talk to, confronting any painful or difficult situation with a head-on gentleness that took any embarrassment out of it. Once when Caroline had been about fourteen and her period had started right in the middle of a day’s hunting and her breeches had become horribly stained, and she just didn’t know what to do, he had ridden up beside her and said, ‘Best if we go home now, Miss Caroline, you look very tired and that horse is lathering horribly.’ As she had sat riding back beside him across the peaceful fields, silent, near to tears with misery and embarrassment, even while grateful for the rescue, he had simply said, ‘Nobody noticed, you know, nobody at all, only me because I was supposed to keep an eye on you,’ and she had immediately felt eased and soothed. And another time, when she had been much younger at a gymkhana, and no one would pair up with her for the games, he had come over and put his arm round her and said, ‘Silly lot of children round here, aren’t they?’ instead of pretending not to notice.
; She looked up at him standing there, looking at her rather seriously, anxiously even, and wondered how much he knew, and how much she wanted him to know. What had happened to her had been the ultimate disgrace; best hidden, best buried. Even from Jack. Only – only burying it seemed to be making it worse.
‘Morning, Miss Miller.’
‘Good morning, Jack.’
‘How are you?’
‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you,’ said Caroline crisply.
‘Good. Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Because you don’t look fine. Not exactly.’
‘Well I am,’ said Caroline and burst into tears.
‘Dear oh dear,’ said Jack calmly. ‘Dear oh dear.’ He put his arm round her gently, and held her, like a father, like a brother; she could smell him, horsey, faintly sweaty. For the rest of her life those things were associated for Caroline with comfort. ‘Here, have a hanky,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Thank you, Jack.’ She blew her nose hard. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just that – well I don’t seem to be able to stop crying.’
‘Want to tell me about it?’ he asked carefully.
‘What? Tell you about what?’
‘Your illness. The virus you’ve had. I heard about it from your mama. I was very sorry.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Caroline, remembering her mother had told her that everybody knew she had had a strange virus which had necessitated a brief spell in an isolation hospital, but that she was hopefully clear of it now. She looked up at Jack and saw that not for a moment did he think she had had a virus, and that his grey eyes were very soft and concerned. ‘Oh, no, Jack, it was nothing serious. I’m better now. I’m just – well a bit tired, that’s all.’
‘Well,’ he said, gently careful, ‘that’s all right then.’
‘Yes. Yes, I hope so. Anyway, it’s over now. Well and truly over.’
‘Good. Well I just wanted to let you know I was here if you needed me.’
‘Thank you, Jack. Thank you very much.’
She was sent to another school, a morbidly depressing establishment in the Midlands. When she complained about its harsh regime, with its cold showers and daily hikes in all weathers, its terrible food, her mother told her she was lucky that any school would take her in.
But after only two terms, she had behaved so badly, been so rude and difficult to all the staff, so totally uncooperative when it came to doing any work, broke bounds, played truant, that they expelled her as well.
‘You’re seventeen now,’ said her mother coldly when her trunk was unpacked for the last time, and she was lying on her bed, wondering what on earth was going to become of her. ‘I see no reason to try to give you an education which you clearly have no interest in. You can stay at home and learn to be useful. Janey is leaving, to go and work in a factory in Framlingham, silly girl; all this war business has gone to her head, and Cook will need help as well. I suppose your father and I will need to find some sort of future for you, but I really cannot quite imagine what – unless it is on the pavements in Piccadilly.’
‘I’d prefer that to helping Cook, thank you,’ said Caroline.
Jacqueline lifted her hand and struck her across the face. ‘I am at a loss to understand you,’ she said.
‘That’s half the trouble,’ said Caroline, and walked out of the room, refusing to let the tears start until she was safely out of her mother’s hearing.
Jack Bamforth had said much the same thing as her mother, only more kindly. He made a special journey to the house one day, to ask her if she would like to come to the stables and talk to him.
‘I don’t know what about,’ said Caroline rudely.
‘Yes, you do. And it would do you good. Come on. You can help me with some tack at the same time.’ He held out his hand; oddly moved, her eyes filled with the tears that always seemed to be at the back of them these days, Caroline took it.
Later, up to her elbows in warm soapy water, she said suddenly, ‘I’m a bit of a case, aren’t I, Jack?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You seem all right to me. Miss Miller,’ he added after a few moments.
Caroline hated him calling her Miss Miller; it made her feel distanced from him. ‘Jack, I wish you’d still call me Caroline. I – I think you’re my only friend. I don’t want you to be so formal.’
‘All right. But it’ll have to be Miss Miller in front of your pa and your mama.’
‘Of course.’ She sounded almost meek.
‘Why do you keep doing it then?’ he said conversationally.
‘Doing what?’
‘Getting thrown out of these schools.’
Caroline sighed, and opened a tin of saddle soap. ‘Maybe it’s because I just desperately want to get a reaction out of someone. All my father ever says is, “Talk to your mother.” About anything, anything at all. Good or bad. And my mother is so dreadfully distant and cold, I just want to shock her into some sort of emotion. Even anger. The other day she hit me, and I really felt good for a bit. Does that sound awfully weird to you?’
‘No, not really. A bit extreme maybe, but not weird. You seem to be writing off your own future pretty sharpish though. Just to get a reaction from your parents.’
‘I know.’ She sighed, and looked at him, trying to smile. It didn’t quite work.
There was a silence. Caroline reached out and took another bridle off its hook.
‘This is filthy, Jack,’ she said, and then started to cry again.
Jack put his arms round her and held her for a long time.
‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘Poor little girl.’
‘I’m not really little. Old enough to know better. That’s what everybody keeps saying.’
‘Oh,’ he said, letting her go and returning to the saddle he was polishing. ‘Everybody is quite often wrong, in my experience. I don’t think we’re ever old enough for that. Any of us. Will they find you another school, do you think?’
‘No. They’ve said they won’t. I’ve got to stay here and help Cook. For now anyway. Maybe if there really is a war, I’ll find something to do. Do you think there will be one? Papa doesn’t.’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, I certainly do,’ said Jack. ‘Your pa’s wrong there. No doubt about it at all. We’ll be at war in a very few months, I would say.’
‘Oh, well, that’ll give me something to look forward to,’ she said.
By 1942, when she was twenty and had been leading the life of a middle-aged matron for three years, she was so desperate that she was seriously planning to run away. She had never really liked reading (although she had recently developed what was almost an addiction to women’s magazines, her favourite being Woman & Beauty), she loathed sewing, and her only real pleasure was playing the piano. She had been considered quite a talented pianist at school, and had won several medals at classical music festivals, but it was not the music of Chopin and Bach and Brahms that filled the Moat House now, but songs from the hit parade, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, ‘Blues in the Night’, ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ and the swing rhythms of Mr Glenn Miller. ‘In the Mood’ was to be heard particularly frequently coming from the music room, played sometimes briskly, sometimes as a morose dirge. Jacqueline had once remarked somewhat rashly that she was growing a little tired of the tune; Caroline would have had both hands cut off rather than stop playing it at length daily after that. She had very few opportunities for revenge.
Jacqueline was in any case seriously unwell herself: her headaches had worsened into a particularly vicious form of migraine, and she would lie in her room sometimes for days at a time, vomiting and in appalling pain, her vision so seriously affected that she was liable to fall downstairs or crash into furniture if she tried to move about. Caroline tried to feel sorry for he
r and failed almost entirely; and indeed, as the migraine did provide her with at least a few hours of freedom every so often, she would wake occasionally to hear her mother vomiting or groaning and experience a stab of positive pleasure.
There was a bus twice a week, and every so often, if it coincided with the migraine days, Caroline would catch it into Woodbridge, but it was no fun on her own. Although she did from time to time hang around one or other of the pubs, hoping to get chatted up by the local servicemen, they tended to be wary of someone so obviously out of their class, and to go for the local girls, hanging round the bar in giggling groups, and she would leave in time to catch the bus home again, feeling foolish and more lonely than ever. The only men to be found in the country were the prisoners of war, set to work on the land, and not even Caroline would have considered fraternizing with them.
‘I really think,’ she said to Jack one day as they rode across the fields, ‘I might as well go and join a convent. It couldn’t possibly be worse than this.’
‘Oh, I think it could,’ he said. ‘A bit worse. You couldn’t go riding for a start. Cheer up, Caroline. Something’ll turn up soon. You see if I’m not wrong.’
‘Jack, I know you’re wrong,’ said Caroline. ‘Nothing is going to turn up. It can’t.’
1942–5
There were times, reflected Brendan FitzPatrick as he sat in the Crown in Woodbridge nursing his pint of lukewarm beer, when he felt quite sympathetic towards Adolf Hitler. Anyone who could force these cold, unfriendly, goddammned superior people into some kind of submission deserved a bit of support. He had been in the country for over three months now, three weeks of them stationed in the dank drear wastes of Martlesham Heath, and he had yet to meet a single one of them who seemed remotely worth helping across the road, never mind fighting and quite possibly dying for. He and around a thousand others had arrived in Ipswich from Glasgow where the US Air Force had deposited them, trainloads of nice friendly boys confidently expecting to be greeted most pleasantly, welcomed, quite possibly fêted, and they had been treated more as enemy than ally, met with hostility and suspicion almost everywhere they went.
AN Outrageous Affair Page 3
