by Sarah Waters
‘Don’t be daft. You saw how I charged about, didn’t you?’ He rubbed his head.
She looked away, feeling desperately sorry for herself. ‘It’s always the same,’ she said bleakly. ‘It ends up nasty, every single time. Even now.’
He was still working the switch. ‘Like what? What is?’
‘Like this.’ Her voice dissolved. The show of bitterness, the flood of self-pity, had worn her out. She began to cry again. He left the fire and rose; came to her and sat awkwardly beside her. He took her hat from her head and smoothed her hair and kissed her.
‘Don’t, Viv.’
‘I feel so awful.’
‘I know you do.’
‘No, you don’t. I wish I were dead.’
‘Don’t say that. Think how I’d feel if you were. Does it hurt?’
‘Yes.’
He lowered his voice. ‘Was it horrible?’
She nodded. He reached, and put his hand on her stomach. She flinched, at first. But the warmth and weight of his palm and fingers were comforting; she placed her own hands over his and held them tight. She remembered her dream about the bull, and told him.
‘A bull?’ he said.
‘A German bull. It was sticking its horn in me. When all the time I suppose it was Mr Imrie—’
Reggie laughed. ‘I knew he was a dirty old man the moment we went in. What a sod, though, to hurt my girl!’
‘It’s not his fault.’ She got out her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Mine! I like that!’ He kissed her again. ‘If it wasn’t for you, driving a fellow crazy…’ He rubbed his cheek against her head. The weight of his hand on her lower belly began to feel different. He had moved his fingers. ‘Oh, Viv,’ he said.
Now she pushed him away. ‘Get off!’ She laughed, despite herself. ‘It’s all right for you—’
‘It’s hell for me.’
‘The thought of—Oh!’ She shuddered.
He laughed, too. ‘You say that now. We’ll see what you think in a week or two.’
‘A week or two! You’re loopy. A year or two, more like.’
‘Two years? I will be loopy. Let a man hope, at least. That’s more than they give you for desertion.’
She laughed again, then caught her breath and shook her head, suddenly quite unable to speak. They sat for a minute or two in silence. He moved her hair with his chin and his cheek, and now and then put his mouth to her brow. The room began gradually to warm up. The pain in her stomach and back subsided, until it felt like the deep but ordinary ache one got, every month, with the curse. But she felt utterly without strength.
In time, Reggie stood and stretched. He looked at the bar and said he fancied a drink. He went and picked out a bottle; when he opened it up and smelt it, however, he made a face: ‘Coloured water!’ He tried another. ‘They’re all the same. And, look!’ There were cigarettes in a box; but they were made of pasteboard. ‘What a dirty trick. We shall have to make do with this, I suppose.’
He’d brought a little bottle of brandy with him. He pulled the stopper from it, and offered it to her.
She shook her head. ‘Mr Imrie said I ought to have stout.’
‘I’ll get you some stout later on, if you like. Have a nip of this for now, though.’
She hadn’t eaten all day, because of the anaesthetic: she took a sip, and felt the liquid as she swallowed it, travelling down her throat to her empty stomach, warm as a tongue of fire. Reggie drank some, too, then lit up a cigarette. She couldn’t quite manage that; but the smell, at least, didn’t make her sick. I must be better, she thought—realising it then, in that moment, for the first time. I must be OK. The thought spread through her like the brandy. She closed her eyes. There was only the pain, now; and that, compared to everything else, would be easy.
Reggie finished his cigarette and got up; she heard him go to the lavatory, and then he was moving about in the bedroom, drawing back the curtain, looking out into the street. The street was quiet. The whole house was quiet. There must have been empty flats, like this, on every side.
When he came back she was almost sleeping. He crouched beside her and touched her face.
‘Are you warm enough, Viv? You feel cold as anything.’
‘Do I? I feel all right.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to lie on the bed? Do you want me to take you?’
She shook her head, unable to speak. She opened her eyes, but almost at once they closed again, as if the lids were weighted down. Reggie put his hand on her forehead and drew the collar of her coat more closely around her neck. He kicked off his shoes and sat on the floor, resting his head against her knees. ‘You tell me if you want anything,’ he said.
They stayed like that for more than an hour. They might have been an old married couple. They had never been so much alone together before, without making love.
And then, at half-past ten or so, Viv gave a start. She made Reggie jump.
‘What is it?’ he said, looking up at her.
‘What?’ she said, confused.
‘Is it hurting?’
‘What?’
He got to his feet. ‘You’re white as a sheet. You’re not going to be sick?’
She felt really odd. ‘I don’t know. I need the toilet again, I think.’ She tried to rise.
‘Let me help you.’
He walked her to the bathroom. She went more slowly even than before. Her head seemed separated from her body—as if her body were squat, dense, ungainly, her head attached to it by the merest thread. But the further she walked, the sharper the ache grew in her stomach; and that brought her back to herself. By the time she sat on the lavatory she was bent almost double with griping pains. The pains were strange: part like the pains of the curse, still; but part like a bowel pain. She thought she might have diarrhoea. She pressed with her muscles, as if to pee; there was a slithering sensation between her legs, and the splash of something striking the water. She looked in the bowl. The plug of gauze was there, quite sodden and misshapen with blood; and blood was falling from her still, thick and dark and knotted as a length of tarry rope.
She cried out for Reggie. He came at once, frightened by the sound of her voice.
‘Jesus!’ he said, when he saw the mess in the bowl. He stepped back, as pale as her. ‘Was it like this before?’
‘No.’ She tried to stop it with sheets of lavatory paper. The blood slid about, got all over her hands. She’d begun to shake. Her heart was beating wildly. ‘It won’t stop,’ she said.
‘Put the thing against it.’ He meant the sanitary towel.
‘It just keeps coming out, I can’t stop it. Oh, Reggie, I can’t stop it at all!’
The more afraid she grew, the faster the blood seemed to tumble. At first it was viscous with specks and clots; soon it was ordinary blood, astonishingly red. It struck the lavatory paper in the bowl with a sound like water in a sink. It got on the seat, her legs, her fingers, everywhere.
‘It shouldn’t be like this, should it?’ said Reggie breathlessly.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did Mr Imrie say? Did he say it would be like this?’
‘He said I might get a bit of bleeding.’
‘A bit? What’s a bit? Is this a bit? This can’t be a bit, this is tons.’
‘Is it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you know? What’s it like when it comes out normally?’
‘Not like this. It’s getting everywhere!’
He put his hand across his mouth. ‘There must be something you can do to make it stop. You could take more aspirins.’
‘Aspirins won’t help, will they?’
‘It’s better than nothing.’
It was all they had. He fumbled about in her coat pocket, getting the tub. She couldn’t touch anything with the blood on her hands. She took three more tablets, chewing them up as she had before; he gave her another sip of brandy, then drank the rest of the b
ottle himself. They pulled the plug of the lavatory and watched water gush into the bowl. It settled clear and pinkish at the top, dark red and syrupy at the bottom—like a clever sort of cocktail. More blood immediately began to flow from her, and to swirl and spread about.
‘And you don’t think,’ Reggie said, nodding again to the sanitary towel, ‘if you were to just put the thing against it—’
She shook her head, too panicked to speak. She pulled off sheets and sheets of paper and tried to stop herself up with them. They held for a minute or two, and she grew a little calmer; but then they fell from her, just like the gauze. Reggie tried again, with more sheets. He put his hand over hers, to hold the paper in place. But those sheets fell out, too, and the blood came faster than ever.
At last, almost beside themselves, they decided that Reggie should call up Mr Imrie and get his advice. He ran into the sitting-room; she heard the little ting of the bell in the pearly white phone; but then Reggie gave a cry, a sort of yelp of frustration and despair. When he came back he was lurching about, pulling on his shoes. The telephone didn’t work. Its wire ran for two or three feet and then stopped. It was like the bottles of coloured water, the pasteboard cigarettes, and just for show.
‘I’ll have to find a kiosk,’ he said. ‘Did you see one, when we came?’
The thought of him leaving her was terrifying. ‘Don’t go!’
‘Is it still coming?’ He looked between her legs, and swore. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m going to go down to the old mother downstairs. She’ll know where a phone is.’
‘What will you tell her?’
‘I’ll just say I need a telephone.’
‘Say—’ Viv clutched at him. ‘Say I’m losing a baby, Reggie.’
He checked himself. ‘Shall I? She’ll want to come up if I do. She’ll want to bring a doctor.’
‘Maybe we should get a doctor, shouldn’t we? Mr Imrie said—’
‘A doctor? Christ, Viv, I hadn’t bargained on anything like that.’ He took his hand from her and put it to his head, to grip at his hair. She could tell from his expression that he was thinking of the money, or the fuss. She began to cry again. ‘Don’t cry!’ he said, when he saw that; and he looked, for a moment, as if he might begin to cry himself. He said, ‘A doctor will be able to tell, won’t he? Won’t a doctor look, and know?’
‘I don’t care,’ she said.
‘He could bring in the police, Viv. He’ll want our names. He’ll want to know everything about us.’ His voice was strained. He stood, undecided—trying to think of another way. Then a new surge of pain rose up in her, and she gasped, and clutched at her stomach. ‘All right,’ he said quickly. ‘All right.’
He turned and went. The flat door banged, and after that she heard nothing. Her brow and her upper lip were wet with sweat; she wiped them on her sleeve. She pulled the plug of the lavatory again, then swivelled about and reached into the basin to wash her hands, taking off the gold-coloured ring, because it was so loose. The basin looked as though it had had scarlet paint put down it: she got more sheets of lavatory paper and tried to clean it, tried to clean the seat on which she was sitting, and the rim of the bowl beneath. Then she saw a little blood on the carpet: she leant to it, and grew dizzy; the floor of the bathroom seemed to tilt. She grabbed for the wall; left a smear of pink on one of the mother-of-pearl tiles; eased herself up and sat very still, her head in her hands. If she sat still, the blood ran less freely…She longed to lie down; she remembered Mr Imrie telling her to stay in bed. But she wouldn’t get up, for fear of making a mess of the milk-coloured carpet. She closed her eyes and began to count, beneath her breath. One, two, three, four. She ran through the numbers, over and over. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four—
I’m going to die, she thought. She wanted her father, suddenly. If only her dad were here! Then she imagined him walking in and seeing all the blood…She started to cry again. She sat up and leant her head against the wall, weeping, but weeping so feebly her sobs were like little snorts of pain.
She was still sitting crying like this when Reggie came back. He had the old lady with him. She was wearing a nightdress and a dressing-gown, but had slipped a coat on top and had put on a hat and rubber galoshes. It was probably the outfit she kept ready for when the Warning went. She was breathing hard, from climbing all the stairs, and had no teeth in. She had got out a hankie to wipe her face. When she saw the state of Viv, however, she let the hankie fall. She came straight to her, and felt her forehead, then pulled apart her thighs to peer at the mess between them.
Then she turned back to Reggie. ‘Good heavens, boy!’ she said, speaking sloppily, because of her missing teeth. ‘What was you thinking of, calling a doctor? A bloody ambulance is what she needs!’
‘An ambulance?’ said Reggie, in horror. ‘Are you sure?’ He was hanging back, now that she was here.
‘You heard me,’ said the woman. ‘Look at the colour of her! She’s lost half the blood in her body. A doctor ain’t going to be able to put that back in, is he?’ She felt Viv’s forehead again. ‘Good Lord…Go on! What you waiting for? You’ll get one now, if you call before the sirens start up. Tell them to be quick. Tell them it’s a matter of life and death!’
Reggie turned and ran.
‘Now,’ said the woman, shrugging off her coat. ‘Do you think you ought to be sitting there, dear, letting it all come tumbling out of you like that?’ She put her hand on Viv’s shoulder. The hand was trembling. ‘Don’t you think you ought to lie down?’
Viv shook her head. ‘I want to stay here.’
‘All right, then. But let’s just lift you up a bit and—That’s it, you got the idea.’
The bathroom had a single towel in it—milk-coloured, like the carpet. Viv hadn’t liked to use it. But the woman had plucked it from the rail at once and folded it up; she made Viv stand, and she lowered the lid of the lavatory and put the towel on it. ‘You sit on that, my dear,’ she said, helping Viv back down. ‘That’s right. And let’s take these old drawers off you, too, shall we?’ She stooped, and fumbled about Viv’s knees; lifted up her feet. ‘That’s better. Not nice, is it, having your old man see you with your drawers around your ankles? I should say it ain’t. There we are: when I was your age we hardly bothered with drawers at all. We had our skirts, do you see, to keep us decent. Long great skirts like you’d never believe. There. Never mind. Soon we’ll have you sorted out and looking like a queen again. Why, what handsome hair you’ve got, haven’t you?’
She went chatting sloppily on, lots of nonsense; she let Viv lean against her, and smoothed and patted her head with hard, blunt fingers. But Viv could tell, too, that she was frightened.
‘Still coming, is it?’ she’d say, from time to time, looking into the towel between Viv’s legs. ‘Well, young ’uns like you, you’ve got it to spare. That’s what they say, don’t they?’
Viv had closed her eyes. She was aware of the old lady’s murmurs, but had begun to hold herself rigid: she was concentrating on the blood that was escaping from her—trying to slow it, to keep hold of it, to will it back into herself. Her fear rose and sank, in great dark plunging waves. For what felt like minutes at a time the blood seemed to still, and she would grow almost calm; but there would come another little gush between her legs, which sent her back into a panic. She’d be made frightened, too, then, by the very galloping of her own heart, which was making the blood, she knew, run even faster.
She heard Reggie come back.
‘Did you send for ’em?’ called the old lady.
‘Yes,’ said Reggie, breathlessly. ‘Yes, they’re coming.’
He stood in the bathroom doorway, as pale as ash: biting his fingernails, too awed by the old lady to come in. If only he’d come and hold my hand, Viv thought. If only he’d put his arm around me… But all he did was meet her gaze and make a helpless sort of gesture: spread his hands, shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed. ‘I’m sorry.’ He mov
ed away. She heard him light up a cigarette. There was the rattle of curtain-hooks, and she knew he must be standing at the bedroom window, looking out.
Then the blood seeped again, and the pain inside her shut tight, like a fist around a blade; she closed her eyes and was plunged back into panic. The pain and the panic were utterly black, and timeless: it was like going under the gas at Mr Imrie’s again, slipping out of the world while the world scuttled forwards…She felt the old lady’s hard hands on her shoulders and in the small of her back, rubbing and rubbing, in little circles. She heard Reggie call out, ‘Here it is!’ But she couldn’t imagine, at that moment, what he meant. She thought it must be something to do with the fact that he had drawn back the curtain from the window. When, after another minute or two, she opened her eyes and saw the ambulance people, in their trousers and jackets and tin hats, she supposed them an ARP man and a boy, come to complain about the black-out.
But the boy was laughing. The laugh was throaty, but light, like a girl’s. He said, ‘I like your tiger-skin rug. Doesn’t it ever give you a scare, though, in the middle of the night? I should be afraid of it having a go at my ankles as I went by.’ He examined the towel that Viv was sitting on, and his laugh faded, but his face stayed kind. The towel was utterly scarlet and sodden. He put his hand across her brow. He said to the man, quietly, ‘Skin’s pretty clammy.’
‘I couldn’t make it stop,’ mumbled Viv.
The man had squatted before her. He had bared her arm and was strapping a band around it; now he quickly pumped at a rubber bladder and frowned at a dial. He touched her thigh and looked, as the boy had, at the towel beneath her bottom. She was past embarrassment. ‘How long,’ he asked, ‘has it been coming from you like this?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered weakly. She thought, Where’s Reggie? Reggie would know. ‘About an hour, I think.’
The man nodded. ‘You’ve lost an awful lot of blood by the looks of it. We’ll have to take you to a hospital, as quickly as we can. All right?’ He spoke calmly, comfortingly. She wanted to give herself up to his arms. He still squatted before her, putting the strap and the bladder away in his bag. He worked very swiftly. But he looked into her face again before he rose, and, ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her gently.
