The Centre of the Green

by John Bowen

  *

  There was a moment’s awkwardness at the station, since both the Colonel and his wife hung back a little from their reunion, but Julian smoothed everything over. He dropped the suitcases on to the platform, and came forward to kiss his mother, and soon they were walking down the road to the bus station, and once they were in the bus, Julian sat next to Mrs. Baker, with the Colonel on the seat behind. All Julian’s conversation on the way was of his pleasure in being back, and of how beautiful the Devonshire hedges and fields looked after the dried-up landscape of Majorca, and of the long talk they must have together when once they were home. The Colonel felt rather left out of things, and when they reached the cottage, he went off for a look at the garden. There was a lot of work to be done there, he noticed. Plenty to keep him busy.

  Perhaps he ought not to go back into the house at once. He’d take a walk down to the village—give them a chance to talk a bit. Stupid that he should feel so flat. Chaps can’t be on top of the world the whole time; you have to expect a bit of a let-down, especially after a holiday. The important thing was that he had done something. He tried to recapture and treasure for a while in his mind the pride he had felt at the change in Julian—not, of course, that he himself had done much, only, dammit, when he thought of the difference between Julian as he was and Julian now, like the Before and After pictures in the newspapers, well, he’d had some part in making that change, and, with so little else to be proud of, might reasonably be allowed to be proud of that. It occurred to Colonel Baker that it wasn’t only Julian who had changed. An Indian Summer! he thought bitterly; an Indian Summer, when a plant you had thought dead suddenly puts out a ragged blossom. Things had come to a pretty pass with him if such a small thing—the merest holiday friendship, born of politeness and contiguity—could affect him so. It wouldn’t do. He held up his head angrily, and blinked, quickening his pace down the road to the village. He didn’t need anyone else; he was too old for that. He had managed to live out time so far without giving away to that need, and with determination he would last the rest; indeed, not giving way was what kept him alive, as well as his reason for living. At the cross-roads, the vicar, a retired Bank Manager from Sutton Coldfield who had come late into the church, drove suddenly round the corner on his Vespa. “Hullo, Colonel!” he cried. “Keeping fit, eh? Glad to have you with us again. We must have a talk sometime,” waved his arm, and swept on with a squat, precarious dignity.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Baker had found Julian changed indeed, but delightfully changed. On the station platform, he had been the first to kiss; she had not needed to invite it. And in the bus, when usually he would have hung back and so forced her to sit next to her husband, he had steered her instead to an inside seat in the front, and had sat down at once beside her. It was like old times again. Here they were in the kitchen—her kitchen—making tea together, and drinking it, and washing the crocks, and rattling on. She heard all about Myra—“dear Myra Plumface”, as Julian said—the silly, boring, middle-aged woman, who had monopolized the Colonel—“Poor old father! His head was quite turned. It was funny to see him, only sort of sad too, you know.” Still, at least this had allowed Julian to wander off by himself rather a lot, which was all for the best really. “Father’s all right in his way,” he said, “but you know, I haven’t really got much to say to him. I mean,”—with such a wicked smile—“it was wonderful having him along, but I’d have gone right up the wall if I hadn’t been able to get away sometimes.”

  So they had a really good talk about the holiday. “And what have you been doing while we’ve been away, luv?” Julian said, “I expect it’s been terribly dull for you.” Mrs. Baker admitted that she hadn’t known what to do with herself for much of the time. “I stopped in bed rather a lot,” she said. “It’s better having your father back. It gives me something to do.” Then Julian said, “Well, you’ll have me to look after too for a bit. I mean, until I get things tidied up, and make a fresh start and all that. I’ve been thinking a lot about the things you said to me before I went away.”

  The time passed pleasantly in this way, until Julian said he thought he’d better wash off some of the grime of the journey, and change. He left his mother, and went upstairs, but he did not proceed at once to the bathroom. Instead he sat for a long time in his own room, writing in his journal. Here and there in the body of the daily narrative he had left blank spaces, and he now filled these by sticking in them photographs which he took from a rather dirty brown-paper envelope he had been keeping in an inside pocket. When he had finished writing, and the photographs were in place, he drew two thick lines beneath the last day’s entry, using a Penguin book as a ruler. Then he blotted the page carefully, closed the book, and sat thinking. He left the desk, and went into his father’s room, where he placed the book on the bed, changing its position several times as if it were a cushion. But this would not do; there was no reason for it to be there. He tried several places in the room, but was satisfied with none. Finally he dropped the book casually on the landing in a position about equidistant from his father’s door and the door of the bathroom. He let it lie there as he returned to his father’s bedroom, opened the door to come out, saw the book, mimed his surprise at seeing it, picked it up, held it for a while dubiously, then opened it and began to read. Finally he carried the book back with him to his own room, saying aloud, “Not yet, I think,” pronouncing each word as if it were a separate sentence.

  Now he would have his bath. Half naked in the bathroom, he examined his face in the mirror. This was his face, but it was also the face which people saw, and the two were not at all the same. He knew how to fool people, and he would. “Jolly evening,” he said. “Jolly, jolly, evening!” The secret of success was to be what people wanted you to be; it was the old, tried Dale Carnegie method, and it always worked. He stripped, and lay in the warm bath water, lying with only his head above the water level, luxuriating in the water and in the fantasies that proliferated in his mind.

  *

  The door to the doctor’s surgery opened, and a middle-aged lady came out. Fifteen minutes earlier, she had been one of the group of patients who still sat in the waiting-room on the leather bench or the upright wooden chairs turning over the pages of magazines, but now she avoided looking at them, and hurried self-consciously out into the street. A voice from the other side of the door called, “Next”. Penny said, “That’s us, I think,” and went in with Betty Monney to see the doctor.

  The doctor’s desk was placed directly beneath the window, so that when he sat, as he now did, completing one of the Ministry’s forms, he could not see the people entering the surgery. He said, “Good evening. Name, please,” without looking round, and Penny replied, “Elizabeth Monney. She is on your list.”

  The doctor’s chair was of the revolving sort, and he revolved it to face them. He was a man of middle age, brown and broad and tweeded, and still preserved his Irish accent in spite of fifteen years of practice in south-west London. “Which one of you’s sick?” he asked.

  Penny said, “Well, it’s——”

  “It’s not you?”

  “No.”

  The doctor turned his attention to Betty. “She’s pregnant, is that it?” he said. “Beginning to show. Who are you? Aunt? Older sister? You’re not her mother, I take it.”

  “My name is Penelope Baker. Mrs. Baker. I’m on your list as well.”

  “That tells me nothing. What kin are you to the girl?”

  “Her father asked me to bring her. Her mother’s dead.”

  “I see. How old are you, Betty.”

  “She’s seventeen.”

  “Well, that’s not too young to bear healthy children, praise the Lord. How long has she——?”

  “About four months.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any doubt about it by now, but I’d better examine her anyway. Perhaps you’d care to wait outside. I’ll call you when I’m ready for you.”

  Betty looked up quickly at Penny, and
then looked down again at her own hands, which she kept folded in her lap. Penny said, “It’s all right, Betty,” and the doctor said, “Sure it’s all right. This won’t take a moment, my dear. It’s just to make sure.” Then Penny went back into the waiting-room. A young Siamese in a checked shirt rose quickly from his chair, and then hovered where he was, as he saw that Penny had come out alone. Penny found herself blushing, partly because the doctor’s curtness had angered her, and partly from embarrassment: really, he might just as well have let her stay. She said, “I’m afraid we’re not quite finished yet,” took the top magazine from the pile on the table, and sat down as composedly as she could. She opened the magazine, set herself to concentrate on its pages, and discovered that what she had was a copy of Chick’s Own two months old. She did not care to exchange it, however, but sat there while the time went slowly by, and at last the doctor opened his surgery door, and said, “Will you come back in now, please, Mrs. Thing?”

  “She’s fine and well,” the doctor said. “Coming along very nicely. I’m going to give you a note to the Clinic. I don’t do babies myself. Haven’t the time for it.”

  “Doctor….”

  “Yes?”

  “I wondered….” Penny turned her head to look at the girl, who sat on the hospital bed by the wall, gazing intently at the two of them. What had Betty told him? Did he know about Julian? “I don’t know whether——” she said. But it was a foolish thought of hers; Betty would not have told him about that, and even if she had, it made no difference. Penny had come here to do a job. She had promised her help to Mr. Monney, and she had not been of much help so far. “I’m afraid we didn’t just come here for an examination,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “Betty is very young, Doctor, as you know.”

  “Young? She’s in no danger, if that’s what you mean. She’s not too young to bear a child. Plenty of girls younger than Betty have done that with no trouble at all.”

  “I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to arrange for her to have an operation?”

  “A Cæsarean? Why?”

  But this was wilful of the man to force her to speak so plainly. “An abdominal operation,” she said. “An abortion.”

  There was a short silence. Then the doctor said, “And what the bloody hell gives you the right to ask me such a question?”

  They were both angry now. Penny’s hands trembled, and the doctor’s face was red beneath his tan. Penny said, “I promised her father——”

  “Her father or the father?”

  “Her father.”

  The doctor remembered that Betty was still sitting with them in the room. He said, “Betty, my dear, I’m afraid you’d better wait outside for a while.” Betty rose obediently, and went into the waiting-room. “Now then, Mrs. Thing——” the doctor said.

  “Baker.”

  “Mrs. Baker. First of all, do you realize that you have just asked me to commit a criminal offence?”

  “Well, really I hardly think——”

  “Do you?”

  Penny said, “Surely we’re more sophisticated than that nowadays?”

  “How sophisticated? Sophisticated enough to commit a murder?”

  “Well, really. It isn’t a question of murder, or anything so melodramatic. Everyone knows that these things can be arranged within the law. You’re being most—most unfair and insulting. There was a case the other day. A girl of fifteen had been raped by some American airmen. Of course, that came to court—it was a test case or something—but the doctor wasn’t struck off. I mean, surely if you can get a psychiatrist to say that the girl is too young for motherhood…. Anyone can see that Betty——”

  “Is she fifteen? Has she been raped by American airmen?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Who is the father?”

  What should have been a moment of shame became almost a moment of triumph, as Penny scored what was in effect a debating point. “My husband actually,” she said, and succeeded in disconcerting the doctor.

  That put an end to the round. Both Penny and the doctor stopped to take thought. Then the doctor said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Baker. But you must see for yourself that it cannot be done. Even if you could find a psychiatrist to back me—and I don’t think you would—I still wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “But surely it’s done.”

  “There are a lot of things that are done, Mrs. Baker, but that isn’t to say we should do them. I’m a Catholic, as you should know, and the way I see it is that you’re asking me to do a murder. Who’s to say whether that foetus she’s carrying within her—about six inches long, but with a heart that’s been beating there two months—who’s to say whether it has consciousness or not? Do you know? Because I tell you, I don’t. All I know is that when that child was conceived, even if it were conceived in rape, it became something individual; the genes combined and began something that wasn’t there before—a new human being. I’ll tell you frankly, Mrs. Baker, I don’t pretend to know the mind of God; I don’t know the moment when he decides to give each of us a soul. But I’d say it’s at least likely that we get a soul from the moment that we get our individuality, wouldn’t you?”

  Penny was silent. She was too confused to speak. It seemed to her that, for a doctor to oppose her request on religious grounds was in some way particularly unfair. The doctor said, “Have you no children of your own, Mrs. Baker?”

  “No.”

  “I see. It’s a pity. I’ll just give you this note to the Clinic then, and perhaps you’ll see that Betty goes along. I’m sorry I can’t do as you ask. I suppose she herself is not a Catholic girl?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry for that. At any rate, she’ll know more clearly later on what her feelings are. Perhaps you’ll let me know then if I can help you.”

  “Feelings?”

  “If she wants to rear the child, Mrs. Baker. I’m not so prejudiced as to believe that a young girl of under eighteen, and unmarried at that, will necessarily do the best for a child. Mother love is a fine thing surely, but there’s some strains we shouldn’t ask it to bear. There’s the Catholic Adoption Society, and I’ve no doubt many others that would give the child a good Christian upbringing. Still, there’s plenty of time to talk of that.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Penny returned to the waiting-room, where Betty sat, not reading, not looking at anyone else, just a silent, obedient dummy, who carried inside her a human life more or less in the shape of a tadpole.

  It seemed to Penny that Betty had never spoken to her, except in answer to a question, or to say, Thank you. What did Betty think? Did she cry at night? Was she frightened? Penny had been worrying in an aimless way for so long about what to do that she had never given a thought to Betty herself. And all the time she had been dickering with that fool of a doctor, Betty had been sitting alone outside, wondering how they would dispose of her. Penny searched her mind for the comforting, the womanly thing to say, and found nothing there but a stilted embarrassment. What a bore! one part of her was saying, while another, more admirable part said, Shut up, you cow. Think of the girl. “He won’t help us, Betty,” she said. “He’s given you a note to the Clinic.”

  “Am I to—to have the baby then, Mrs. Baker?”

  “Unless I can—I don’t know. It might be dangerous if you didn’t. We don’t want to risk your own life, Betty.”

  But this was obviously the wrong note to strike, and could only frighten the girl, as if she were not confused enough already. Penny hurried to reassure her. “Of course, having the baby is quite safe. After all——” a comforting smile—“Most women do it, you know”—and remembered that she had not.

  Betty was silent again for a while, but it was obvious that she too was searching for words to express her thought. Oddly it occurred to Penny that Betty might be trying to reassure her. Then Betty said seriously, “I don’t mind having the baby. Really I don’t. I’m not worried about that. I mean, it’s only an operation, isn
’t it, like having your tonsils out?” They walked the last few yards to the Monneys’ front door. Penny took out her key, but Betty made a little move as if to say, Not yet. “No, I’m not so worried about that,” she said. “What I keep thinking about is after. I can’t sleep sometimes for thinking about it. How am I going to look after a little baby and my dad too? I don’t think I could do that. It almost pulls me in half thinking of that, Mrs. Baker. I don’t think I could do it. I haven’t got the experience.”

  Penny opened the door, and lurched into the hall. She kept one arm round Betty’s shoulder. If she were not careful, she might begin to cry. Stupid of her to feel so weepy, and yet how joyful to know that she could still be touched. “I’ll help you, Betty,” she said. “I’ll help you look after the baby. If you want me to, I’ll adopt him. I’d like to do that, if you’ll let me. After all, it is half——” And then she broke down altogether, sitting helplessly on the stairs with Betty beside her, joy and tears, amazement and the sudden rush of affection between them, all mixed up as they clung to each other, not knowing who was comforted and who the comforter, the words “half mine”, foolish, illogical, unuttered, hanging between them as the justification for something that at this moment, Penny discovered, she most passionately wanted.

  *

  The Colonel rose early, as he always did. He put on his old leather slippers and his dressing-gown, and started on his way downstairs to make the tea. On the landing, about equidistant from his own door and the door of the bathroom, he saw a black note-book. He recognized it at once; It was Julian’s journal; surely Julian had not been writing it up in the bathroom? The Colonel remembered that during his own schooldays he had sometimes taken a particularly difficult problem in Algebra with him to the latrines, there to be considered in enforced calm and concentration. But a diary was hardly the same thing.