Pearls

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘It’s like a fish shop – I shall feel like a cod fillet lying down there!’ exclaimed a fleshy, grey-haired Englishwoman, pointing at the sloping slabs of concrete on either side of the long, bare room.

  Rain began to fall, pattering ceaselessly on the tin roof and dripping down the walls. The captives were of every age and nationality; many were mothers with babies which screamed with hunger throughout the night. In the atmosphere of hellish despair the women’s clothing still performed the heraldic function of femininity, and signalled the crucial facts about the people who owned the garments. In the gloom, Jean noticed the tattered grey uniforms of Australian army nurses, the black habit of a nun, and one or two bedraggled silk dresses which had no doubt fluttered elegantly in the mild breeze of Singapore’s Tanglin Club a few days earlier while the owners watched the bombing across the bay.

  After a week of fetching food and water for her, supporting her as she staggered to the open latrine outside, and silently willing her to recover, Jean was relieved when Betty’s strength returned.

  ‘Was there any news of Gerald?’ she demanded one day, and Jean told her that she had tracked her own husband down at his hospital unit, and he had told her that Gerald and the rest of their volunteer company had reached Singapore safely.

  ‘I suppose he’ll be a prisoner-of-war now,’ Betty sighed, not unhappily. No one had repeated to her the stories of Japanese atrocities which were circulating the camp. ‘We’ll just have to wait until the war is over. It won’t be long, Jean, will it?’ Her eyes, as blue and blameless as ever, looked for reassurance and Jean reached out a freckled hand to pat her arm. Betty might have her strength back, but she was still living in the mood of unrealistic detachment that had characterized the months of her pregnancy.

  The camp had no supplies of any kind. The women slept in their clothes, and improvised cooking, eating and toilet utensils from what they had brought with them. The only food was a meagre ration of adulterated rice dispensed daily by the guards, and some of the more improvident captives began trading with daring Chinese who came to the perimeter fence in darkness with food, clothing and drugs for sale.

  One day some Japanese soldiers inexplicably threw a whole basketful of bread scraps over the fence of the prison compound, and Jean was pleased to see Betty join the rush to gather the food, but shocked when she realized that Betty was swallowing crusts whole as she pretended to help the other women.

  The next day Jean was startled to see Betty wearing a fresh, almost white, blouse.

  ‘I didn’t know you had that with you – what luck,’ she commented with suspicion. They had boarded the Marco Polo with almost all the possessions they had brought from the rubber estate, but, like most of the survivors of the bombed freighter, Betty had seized the nearest, smallest bag before taking to the water. Jean had been exasperated to open it and find nothing inside but a wad of sodden baby-clothes.

  ‘Yes,’ Betty agreed brightly, ‘wasn’t it lucky? I found it in my case.’ Jean was almost sure she was lying, and had snatched the blouse from the washing-lines that now festooned the outside of the building.

  ‘Your friend will make herself most unpopular if she doesn’t mend her ways,’ commented the thickset Englishwoman who had compared their accommodation to a fish shop. ‘I’d have a word with her if I were you – in a place like this feelings tend to run very high, you know.’

  ‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ Jean apologized, knowing that the woman’s advice was sound but still feeling loyal to Betty. ‘She’s been terribly ill, she lost the baby she was carrying and she just hasn’t got any strength, you see. My husband – he’s a doctor, her doctor – used to say she hadn’t the strength of a newborn lamb. He meant mentally, of course, not in the physical sense. She isn’t strong enough to be unselfish. She can’t do anything for herself in life, just survive, that’s all.’

  The older woman glanced down the length of the prison building, taking account of the sick and injured, the fretful children, the drawn faces and tattered clothes, the shins already blistered with tropical ulcers and the bones beginning to poke through dwindling flesh. ‘That’s all any of us can do – survive,’ she said, her pale lips set in a grim half-smile. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if your friend turned out to be a great deal stronger than you imagine.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Every day on her way to college Monty passed a brass plate beside a black front door halfway down an elegant Kensington terrace. The inscription on it read, ‘Dr Mary Wilson, MD, FRCS, FRCOG.’

  ‘What do you suppose FRCOG means?’ she asked Rosanna as they idled past one day, on their way to the coffee bar. ‘FRCS is Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, I know that much.’

  ‘FRCOG is Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists,’ Rosanna told her. ‘I know because I’ve got to see Mummy’s gynaecologist before I get married and he’s got those letters too.’ Rosanna did not explain, but Monty could guess, that the purpose of this visit was to be prescribed the birth control pill. Already the Pill was so much identified with sexual licence that admitting to taking it was rather like wearing a placard saying ‘nymphomaniac’.

  Next day Monty went to Woolworth’s and bought a cheap ring with one red stone and two white ones. She found Dr Wilson’s telephone number in the directory and made an appointment, saying, ‘It’s because I’m getting married soon,’ to the receptionist.

  A week later she rang the bell and was admitted through the black door and sat down in the doctor’s waiting room. In the middle of the room was a large, battered rocking-horse. There was a huge pile of dog-eared comics on the table, and a set of sentimental bunny rabbit pictures around the walls. Monty felt ill at ease in this nursery atmosphere.

  The doctor was a tall, white-haired woman with a beautiful complexion and gold half-glasses. ‘I came to see you because I’m getting married soon and my fiancé and I don’t want to start a family just yet,’ Monty told her, trying not to sound as if she had rehearsed the speech for a week. ‘We think we’re too young and haven’t got a proper home yet, as my fiancé may be posted abroad soon.’

  The doctor gave a warm smile. ‘Well, that’s not a great problem nowadays. I expect you’ve heard of the birth control pill? Let me just examine you. Slip off all your clothes below the waist and pop up on the couch.’

  Monty felt first the doctor’s gentle fingers, then a metal instrument inside her. No one’s been in there except Simon before now, she thought. The doctor removed the instrument and decorously folded Monty’s knees together.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have any trouble at all when you do want to have babies,’ she said with approval. ‘All present and correct inside, good childbearing pelvis, plenty of room.’

  Monty smiled back at her, trying to look sincerely complimented, hoping the doctor was not going to need a reminder about the purpose of the visit.

  ‘Now, I’ll write you a prescription,’ Monty heard her say with relief, ‘for three months’supply, but I want you to come back after the first month and let me see how you’re getting on. Are your periods regular?’

  ‘Fairly regular.’ She thought of the endless days of anxiety every time her period was late, the morbid scouring through her diary to verify the date she was due.

  ‘You must start taking the pills five days after the beginning of your next period – assuming the wedding isn’t far off?’ Monty nodded.

  Filled with delight and relief, she walked around the corner to the chemist, paid them £10, and came out with three pink cartons marked Ovulen in a discreet, plain white paper bag. In the privacy of her bedroom at Trevor Square, she looked at the little foil pack, with twenty-one tiny tablets in their plastic bubbles – so neat, so painless, so efficient.

  Soon afterwards it was Simon’s twenty-second birthday. Monty surreptitiously took his front-door key off his keyring for a few hours and had it copied. His parents, reassured now that he had started work in P & G’s offices, agreed he could celebrate
with Monty.

  ‘I’ll come round to the flat at seven,’ she told him. ‘I’ve got a special surprise for you!’

  But at four in the afternoon, she called a taxi, loaded her suitcases into it, and drove round to the apartment, where she installed all her belongings in the wardrobes. On the bed she put black satin sheets, a gift from Cathy who had said, ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t have non-wedding presents as well as wedding presents.’

  A great deal of the bedroom space was taken up with tape-recorders and stereo equipment. Monty slipped a special tape on the machine by the bedside, and adjusted it to play the instant the switch was pressed. She arranged a giant ribbon and bow of red crépe paper across the bed, with a huge label reading ‘Happy Birthday, Simon’. Then she took a shower, washed her hair, did her make-up and slithered naked between the sheets to wait for Simon.

  When she heard the key in the lock, she leaned over and turned on the tape-recorder and her own voice sounded out, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and accompanied by a laboriously compiled 4-track recording of herself on piano and guitar.

  Simon burst into the bedroom with delight, jumped on to the bed, and hugged her. There wasn’t a great deal of point in saying anything while the music played, but when it finished Monty got in first.

  ‘Do you like your present?’

  ‘Love it.’ He started kissing her in the slightly cautious way into which they had fallen, knowing that there was no purpose in invoking too much desire.

  ‘You haven’t had the best yet.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ He looked round the room thoughtfully, then saw one of the closet doors ajar. When he opened it an untidy jumble of Monty’s clothes fell out.

  ‘You’ve done it! You’ve moved in! Yippee!’

  ‘That’s not all – are you sure you can’t guess?’ How could he be so dumb? ‘It’s something you can’t see.’

  ‘You mean that I have got to look for it, you’ve hidden it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I give up then, what is it?’

  ‘Well, come here.’ Monty stretched out a hand and pulled him back to the bed. ‘I’m your present you see and now you can have all of me. I’m taking the Pill.’ He paused in surprise, then hugged her with tenderness. ‘Are you all right – I mean, is it all right – I mean, do you feel OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course I feel OK. I feel wonderful, great, absolutely fab. It’s really easy.’

  He held her very close and the room seemed to pulse with their heartbeats. At last Monty could bear it no longer.

  ‘Don’t you want your birthday present then?’

  ‘Darling darling Monty, of course. Always. I’ll want you forever.’

  The next day, after agreeing that they wanted to wake up next to each other for the rest of their lives, they set about creating the formal reality of their relationship. Simon introduced her to his cleaning lady, and took the tiny card saying S. Emanuel out of the rack by the doorbells, turned it over, wrote Miss M. Bourton and Mr S. Emanuel on the blank side, and inserted it with a flourish. Then he went to the office and spent the whole morning having Monty’s name added to his charge accounts. He had no intention of making any announcement to his parents about his new status; the first rule of Simon’s relationship with his mother and father was never to tell them anything important.

  Monty went to college and used her typewriter to write a letter to Bettina. ‘Dear Mummy,’ she wrote. ‘Simon and I have decided to live together because we love each other. My new address is Flat 4,112 Rowan Court, London W8, telephone Western 2768. I’ll come down in a week or two to get the rest of my things.’ Then she hesitated. ‘Much love’didn’t seem quite right. It certainly wasn’t accurate, since she felt nothing but contempt and dislike for her mother. The vision of that pasty face under its frill of ill-crimped, brown curls made her shudder. Instead, she left the space at the end of the letter blank, and merely signed her name.

  Two days later she was aware of someone watching her as she opened the door to the house, and no sooner had she shut the apartment door than the doorbell rang. It was Lady Davina.

  ‘Your mother has sent me to talk sense into you, but I don’t suppose it will do any good,’ she began, pulling off her brown suede gloves. ‘You’ve always been determined to go to hell your own way and as far as I’m concerned there’s no reason anyone should try to stop you. I shan’t sit down, I’m not staying …’ She peered around the apartment with curiosity, which was obviously the main motive for her visit, and Monty wished that the cleaner had not been in to arrange the cushions neatly and remove the ashtrays. ‘But you must consider your mother, Miranda.’

  ‘Why?’ Monty lit up a cigarette and blew smoke in Lady Davina’s direction. ‘She never considered me.’

  It was a hard assertion to contradict and the older woman did not try.

  ‘And your position, and the rest of the family. We’ve done everything we can to get you settled and you’re simply throwing yourself away on this Jewish boy. I’ve no doubt they’re perfectly nice people, but this idea of – of …’

  ‘Living in sin?’ Monty smiled grimly, feeling elated by the nicotine. ‘That’s the difference between me and my mother – I call it love, she calls it sin.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. You’ve no idea what love is. Decent people will cross the street rather than speak to you. And you won’t get a job anywhere. You haven’t a penny to bless yourself with, don’t forget. You’ll simply be a kept woman.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather be kept by a man who loved me than by a man who’s only fulfilling his legal obligation. Now would you like to look around our bedroom before you leave?’

  ‘There’s no need to take that attitude, Miranda. I’m only doing my best to prevent you from making a dreadful mistake which you will regret for the rest of your life.’

  As she left, her grandmother fastidiously pulled her coat around her, as if to avoid so much as brushing the door jamb of this immoral dwelling with her skirts. Monty shut the door with a feeling of triumph, conscious that she had won her first battle with the old order.

  As the weeks passed, she felt less and less inclined to fetch her few remaining possessions from her mother’s home, particularly since Simon took delight in buying her whatever she wanted. Their Saturdays were orgies of consumption, spent floating up and down the King’s Road, meeting friends, choosing clothes and hoping to spot Michael Came or Julie Christie among the glamorous throng which spilled off the pavements almost under the wheels of the Rolls Royces and Jaguars in the road.

  Only two of her grandmother’s words had any impression on Monty, and they were the phrase ‘kept woman’. Monty’s secretarial college fees were paid to the end of term and she kept up the farce of her attendance, often asking another girl to sign her name in the register and doing nothing all day but sleeping late, meeting Simon for lunch, then whiling away the afternoon windowshopping. But a kept woman, with its connotations of concubinage, was the last thing she intended to be.

  ‘Why not? He’s loaded isn’t he?’ Swallow, her old school friend, lay back on the floor cushion and expertly sealed a fresh joint with her tongue.

  ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want money to be part of why we’re together.’

  ‘You’re too pure to live, my girl, that’s your trouble.’ Swallow lit up and inhaled deeply.

  ‘It’s like – to live outside the law you must be honest. I just don’t want to have to depend on Simon. What to do, though? I’d hate an office job. I’m too fat to be a model.’ Monty looked with distaste at her rounded breasts, which had developed alarmingly since she had moved into Simon’s apartment. Her legs had also thickened and her waist was threatening to disappear completely. The scales in the doctor’s surgery showed that she had gained 10lbs in the six weeks since she started taking the Pill. She waved the joint away.

  ‘I’ll only get the munchies.’

  ‘Come and help me for a bit,’ Swallo
w suggested. ‘We can split the proceeds.’

  ‘Why – what are you doing?’

  ‘Finding houses for chemin-de-fer parties mostly, but that won’t last long, now they’ve made gambling legal. People keep asking me to organize things for them, Monty. They think I’m the only person in Chelsea cool enough to know where to find things and together enough to deliver them. I was thinking of making a business of it. Call it Something In The City maybe. Strictly for freaks, you know – no straights allowed through the door.’

  Monty felt this sounded too good to be true, but two days later Swallow telephoned. ‘I’ve got an office and they’re putting the phone in tomorrow. Are you going to come in with me, Monty? I’ve got to do six hampers for Glyndeboume and find a miniature Rolls Royce for some pop manager who wants it so John Lennon won’t have the only one in London. Please come in on it, Monty. It’ll be a gas.’

  And it was. It was the sort of job Monty never really believed could exist, starting any time between 10.30 and 11 o’clock in the morning and dealing exclusively with groovy people who knew each other only by their Christian names and worked to the ceaseless beat of the new pirate radio stations. It was also the sort of job she needed to cope with the lifestyle she and Simon fell into as easily as flies drowning in jam. Every evening they would make love, then dress and go out to one of the new raffish rock nightclubs where the music was overpowering. There they would fall in with a crowd of their friends, perhaps go to someone’s place to take drugs or listen to music, and then come back to their own apartment in the dawn hours to shower, make love again, and go to work.

  At weekends, and in all their unstructured time, they sat around the apartment playing records, making music or experimenting with song-writing. Simon composed long, rambling songs with clever guitar breaks and very few words. Monty found she could write nothing but pretty ballads about love.

  When they were exhausted, they either slept or bought some speed. They smoked marijuana continually in private. If Simon was bored he would take some LSD, but Monty tried it once, was overwhelmed with mad terror and never dared to do it again. Their ideal was a way of life which challenged established authority and the drugs were an essential part of that. Since Simon was known as a rich boy there was no shortage of people pressing him to buy every kind of mood-altering or mind-expanding chemical. Their favourite dealer was a Cypriot boy they called Tony the Greek, who got into the habit of dropping into the apartment on Sunday afternoons with a briefcase of samples and a dog-eared pharmacological encyclopaedia in which to check out his wares.