She became superstitious: if there are any melons left in the market by five o’clock, if those lights change to green by the time I get there, it’ll start. It didn’t.
At the weekend Dean came home, tired, depressed; sales were not good. Desperate for her alibi, she tried to force him to make love to her, and failed utterly.
‘Honey, I’m tired, just leave me alone, will you. I need to sleep.’
She turned over on her pillow and wept.
In the middle of the following week she began to be sick. She was sick not just in the morning, but three or four times a day; she seemed to spend her entire life these days in the lavatory. Her breasts were sore; her head ached.
‘There’s no doubt you’re pregnant,’ said Amy, who had taken to dropping by every morning to check on her and cheer her up. ‘I know it’s hell, but it’s such good news too. And you’ll feel great in a little while. Now listen, you have to start on extra vitamins, right away, and cut out the booze, of course, just orange juice; lots of fruit, and for goodness’ sake you will cut out any medication, won’t you, stop taking all those aspirin you’re so fond of. They’re dreadfully toxic. And you should take bran every morning too, pregnancy is terribly constipating. And lots of rest. Have you told Dean yet?’
‘No,’ said Lee listlessly.
‘Well he must have the brains of an ox not to have worked it out for himself. I suppose he’s got a lot on his mind. Do tell him, honey, he’ll be so pleased, and he can look after you, help a bit. This place looks terrible, Lee, even by your standards. When did you last clean that sink?’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Lee.
‘It shows. Well look, let me do it for you. And then I’m going to take you for a walk to the beach. You look as if you could do with some fresh air.’
Lee did as she was told. She didn’t have the strength to do anything else. She had just finished a prolonged bout of throwing up when Hugo phoned. She crawled over to the couch and sat there, trying to sound normal, as he chatted away about New York, and how much he had enjoyed his last trip, and was it still all right for the following weekend?
Torn between a longing to see him and a strong desire to tell him to fuck off, she sat silent; she knew what he was doing, the bastard, he was leaving all his options open, maintaining contact with her while making it perfectly plain he only wanted their relationship to continue on the most superficial level, that next time at least he wanted to be sure Dean was there as well, lest she might start to think he was taking things too seriously. She suddenly felt violently sick again.
‘I have to go now,’ she said and put the phone down, rushing to the bathroom, vomiting again and again, and then she sat there, on the floor, resting her head tiredly on the toilet, hot tears trickling down her cheeks, hating him, longing for him, wishing most fervently that she could die.
The phone rang again. It was Hugo.
‘Lee, are you all right? You sound awful.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said lightly, ‘just a bit of a cold, that’s all.’
‘So is next weekend all right?’
‘What?’
‘Lee, are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Hugo, I’m all right.’
‘Good. Then can I come next weekend?’
‘Oh, yes, sure. Sorry. That’ll be nice.’
They arrived together, he and Dean; she had made a huge effort, tidied up, made up her face, drunk lots of glucose water to help with the vomiting.
‘You look wonderful, honey,’ said Dean, hugging her, ‘doesn’t she, Hugo?’
‘Marvellous,’ said Hugo, but his eyes went sharply over her, and she was afraid he must guess.
Later, Dean went to bed early; she tried to make an excuse to follow, but Hugo put out a hand and caught hers.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said harshly, ‘nothing at all. Why don’t you just leave me completely alone, Hugo, instead of nearly. It would be much easier for you, I would have thought.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said gently, ‘I couldn’t imagine not seeing you any more. It’s difficult, that’s all. And a little bit dangerous. You must understand.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I understand all right. Good night. Hugo. You’re in your usual room.’
She got just a tiny bit of satisfaction from the expression on his face. He didn’t look merely hurt; he looked worried as well.
She woke up early and shot into the lavatory; the glucose water had failed her. Wandering miserably into the living room a few minutes later, sipping a glass of water, she found Hugo, standing by the patio windows.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘hello.’
‘You’re not well, are you?’
‘I’m perfectly well, thank you.’
‘You don’t seem well.’ He crossed to the couch, sat down, patted the seat next to him. ‘Come here. Come on. Darling, please. Don’t be so hostile. What is it? Aren’t we to be friends any more?’
Lee turned to look at him, and there was all human knowledge and experience in that look: humour, love, scorn, despair; then she sighed and said simply, ‘I’m pregnant.’
Hugo was quite quite silent for a moment; then he looked at her intently, searching, exploring her face, her eyes.
He took her hand.
‘And is it mine? It’s mine, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Lee, ‘no, no it isn’t. It’s not yours, it’s Dean’s.’ She pulled her hand away, and she felt the tears hot behind her eyes. Dear God, she thought, don’t let me cry. Not now. Not in front of him.
‘Lee,’ said Hugo, ‘Lee, look at me.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t. I can’t. Leave me alone. The baby is Dean’s.’
‘But you said . . .’
‘It doesn’t matter what I said. Obviously I was wrong. This baby is Dean’s. I know it is. I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh, Hugo, stop it. I can count, that’s how I know.’
‘I see.’
She watched him; trying to analyse what she really wanted, what she really felt. She had so longed to see him again, that was why she had allowed him to come, but she couldn’t imagine why. She had thought that perhaps in some miraculous way he would be able to help, make her feel better, but she had been wrong. There was no way he could help her, and he was making her feel worse. They could hardly disappear into the Californian sunset together. And she had to stick to her plan, of not admitting even to herself that the baby’s father might be anybody but Dean. In time, she knew, she could make herself believe it. Sometimes, already, she managed to persuade herself that it was just possible. One word, one hint to Hugo, and she was lost.
He looked up at her, his eyes full of anxiety. She trembled. A tender word, now, and she might give in. Fear made her harsh.
‘Just leave me alone, will you? I’d like to go back to bed. I don’t feel too good.’
‘What does Dean think?’
‘I haven’t told him.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t.’
‘But Lee, if it is Dean’s baby he would be over the moon. He’s always wanted kids. He was born to be a father. You should tell him.’
‘I will, I will. But I . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to be sure.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of being pregnant.’
‘Oh, Lee, that’s ridiculous. You look terrible.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You know what I mean. And you woke me up vomiting this morning. He’s not stupid.’
Lee turned to look at him. ‘He is, quite. In some ways. I just told him I had a stomach bug. He believes anything I say. Anything,’ she repeated with an odd insistence.
‘And can’t he count either?’
‘He’s been away a lot. I’ll tell him soon. When I see the doctor.’
Hugo was silent again.
&n
bsp; ‘And is that all you have to say to me?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘You won’t change your mind?’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘Well, I’m sorry. More than I can tell you.’
Lee suddenly started to weep, huge shuddering sobs, burying her face in her hands. He took her in his arms then and comforted her as best he could, stroking her hair, holding her to him tightly, just murmuring quietly as if to a small child. She stopped crying, blew her nose hard, and pulled away from him, curling herself up into a small ball in the corner of the couch.
‘It would kill him, you see,’ she said very quietly, ‘if – if he had any idea, the faintest idea that it wasn’t his baby. He wants kids so much. He’d like a dozen. It would be far, far worse than if he thought I’d just slept with someone. The fact that someone else could make me pregnant. He just couldn’t bear it.’
Another silence. Then: ‘Did you think about abortion?’
She looked at him hard, aware that he was leading her into a trap.
‘Why should I have an abortion? It’s Dean’s baby. I’m really very happy about it.’ She smiled, a bright tremulous smile. ‘I’m just a bit over-emotional. But I tell you something, Hugo, if you ever imply, by so much as a look, that you think it might – might not be Dean’s baby, I shall come to England and I shall find your wife and I shall tell her everything.’
‘Oh, Lee,’ he said, with a heavy sigh, ‘I won’t. Of course I won’t. I’ll do whatever you want. But you know I’m there if you need me.’
Lee wasn’t going to let him get off that lightly.
‘I’m afraid,’ she said, walking towards the door, and turning to look at him with infinite scorn, ‘I know nothing of the sort.’
She began to feel better quite soon after that. She couldn’t quite figure out why, but she supposed that having confronted Hugo, laid that ghost, she could only go forward, believing in what simply had to be the truth. Dean was so beside himself with pride and joy when she told him, he didn’t even pause to consider that their sex life had been a trifle spasmodic over the past couple of months. He even remarked quite spontaneously that it had been worth all the temperature-taking and counting.
He talked non-stop about the baby, what they would do together, he and his boy (he seemed to have no doubts at all about its sex), how they would fish together, play football, camp, ride, hike. Lee listened quietly. She was calm now, serene, happy. She looked beautiful. Pregnancy suited her.
Amy had taken her health in hand, and had her on an entirely wholefood diet, and a formidable array of vitamins and minerals to top it up. Lee swallowed them all obediently; she couldn’t quite see how seaweed and whale oil were going to do anything for her baby, but it was easier not to argue. Amy also insisted on her going to yoga classes, so that she could enjoy a painless, natural birth. Lee had serious doubts about how a birth could be both, but she went to the classes anyway. She enjoyed the meditation part of it, and the part of the sessions which were set aside for visualization; you were supposed to visualize the baby emerging painlessly and easily from your body, but she used the time rather differently, and would sit in a trancelike state, fervently visualizing a baby girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, emerging as painfully and awkwardly as she liked; fervently dismissing any stray picture of a dark-eyed little boy that might drift into her head.
It had just become fashionable for fathers to be present at the birth. Dean was initially very enthusiastic, and attended classes with the other husbands, practising different breathing levels with Lee and learning how to rub her back, but after watching a film called Happy Birthday put on by the obstetric unit at the hospital for prospective parents, he became very quiet and told Lee in the car on the way home that he thought after all a father’s place was in the waiting room. Both the yoga teacher and the Natural Childbirth teacher were shocked and distressed and tried to persuade him to participate, assuring him he was going to miss the most important and beautiful experience of his entire life, but Lee didn’t mind; she thought she was going to have quite enough to put up with without Dean rubbing her back all the way through, which he did extraordinarily clumsily, and worrying if he was going to faint at the crucial moment.
In the event, she gave birth to her son with the minimum of trouble, albeit three weeks late; they placed him in her arms, and she looked down at the blue eyes, and stroked the blond downy head, and reflected that either she had been hallucinating in ever thinking that Dean might not have been his father, or that visualization was an extraordinarily powerful force.
Hugo Dashwood, arriving at his New York hotel one day in early January, found a card waiting for him with a California postmark. ‘Miles Sinclair Wilburn has arrived,’ it said. ‘Born January 2nd, 8.30 p.m. Weight 8½ pounds. A big ’un. Mother and baby well. Come and meet him soon.’
Chapter Five
London, 1959
WHAT FATE HAD in store for Eliza was not a job: it was something rather less predictable and came in the truculent form of Peter Thetford.
Peter Thetford was thirty-two years old, and trying rather too hard to reconcile a burning socialist ideology with a strong desire not only to achieve political power but to savour the good things of life, so far fairly sternly denied to him.
His father had been a Nottingham miner; Peter had been his fifth child, and had won a scholarship to the local grammar school, where, mixing with middle-class boys, he became totally obsessed with the essential injustice of British society and its caste system. He found the barrier thrown up between him and David Johnson, the local doctor’s son who sat at the next desk, not so much insurmountable as incomprehensible. He could play soccer with David, and score goals alongside him, could thrash him on the assault course in the cadet corps, get higher marks at mathematics, and alternate term by term with him, winning the form prize. Yet when he sought his friendship, tried to communicate with him, tell him filthy jokes, discuss the female anatomy, borrow the dog-eared centrefold spread of Playboy which went the rounds of the form every month, tried to join David in the group that went to the local youth club every Friday, he met a polite, slightly stilted rejection.
Then at Cambridge, where he won an outright maths scholarship, he comprehended it better and loathed it more. It enraged and embittered him that there was no equal ground between him and Anthony Smythe Andrews who had come up from Eton, and who was also reading economics; no way they could communicate except on the most self-conscious and false terms, and yet he was cleverer than Smythe Andrews, he worked harder, he had read more, they had passed the same exams, and indeed he knew he had done better, simply to get the scholarship from a position well back from most people’s starting line.
It was no use fighting it, he could see that, or at least not at Cambridge; no use trying to climb the fence, to become Smythe Andrews’ friend, because there was absolutely no basis for friendship. Smythe Andrews despised him, and he despised Smythe Andrews, not because either thought the other stupid, unpleasant or rude, but because each had roots in something the other could not begin to comprehend and indeed was deeply wary of.
Anthony Smythe Andrews knew he was Peter Thetford’s superior because he was born to a different class, spoke in a different voice, used different words and had different friends, who were all exactly like him; and when Peter Thetford won the Economics Exhibition at the end of the first year, and Smythe Andrews failed his first Tripos, it was Smythe Andrews who remained the superior.
The sense of isolation Thetford knew at Cambridge also had a profound effect on his sexual attitudes. There were very few working-class boys at the university in the late forties, despite Oxbridge, and certainly no working-class girls. The girls were an extraordinarily elite clique, all from intellectual, upper-class backgrounds, most of them witty and clever, eccentrically dressed, outrageously self-confident, with the power to pick and choose from quite literally hundreds of rich, amusing, charming young men. The social climate was heady, hectic, modestly
promiscuous; the fact that you were sent down for being caught in bed, or even in the room of a member of the opposite sex after ten o’clock, was a considerable, but not total, deterrent.
It took a strong intellectual and sexual confidence to break into that set, if you were not born to it; Thetford had neither. The girls would in the early days politely dance with him, if they were asked, talk to him in the dining room, even invite him to an occasional tea party; but they were not, he recognized quite quickly, going to enter into any more intimate relationship than that.
Consequently he was lonely, isolated, and quite often angry; he would sit alone in his room studying at night, surrounded by the sounds of social and – more dreadfully isolating still – sexual pleasure down the corridors, and wonder not only how he could bear it, but why he should. His virginity accompanied him back and forwards to Cambridge each term, an increasingly embarrassing burden which he was finally able to lay down in the bed of an art student he met at a Christmas party in Nottingham; they wrote to each other for a brief time into the following term, both anxious to pretend that they felt more than they did and that it had not just been a one-night stand. Shortly after he came down from Cambridge he met Margaret Phipps, a student teacher, for whom he felt quite a lot and in whose arms he enjoyed considerable pleasure; and in due course he married her. But he continued to regard sex as something inextricably bound up with class; as privileged territory, with access automatically granted to the rich and successful, the expensively educated, the socially secure; and denied, unless with-an attendant load of responsibility, to those who were none of those things.
Then he met Eliza Morell.
Eliza had been invited by Hugh Gaitskell to a party at the House of Commons ten days after she got back to London, and had been strongly disinclined to go, when Julian called from New York to say he would be away for a week longer than he had thought and that he was coming home via Paris in order to look at sites for a second Circe with Paul Baud.
‘Is that all right, darling? I can go later, if you’d rather.’
He sounded anxious, conciliatory. Guilty conscience, thought Eliza, good.
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