by Rosie Thomas
‘I’m trained, I can’t waste that,’ she explained to Clio. ‘And the work is as important as anything I could do. One of the ways that women can take control of their own lives is by limiting the number of children they have to bear. If they are not worn down by constant pregnancies or disabled by abortions, they will have energy to spare for themselves.’
Ruth herself had plenty of energy. She ran her small household and looked after her children and her husband with capable ease, and then she rode off on her bicycle to the Mothers’ Clinic and dispensed the same friendly common sense there as well. Marriage and motherhood had not changed her very much. She was still the same mixture of feminism, strong opinions, and suspicion of anything that was outside her own knowledge or experience. Clio regarded her sister-in-law with affection and admiration. She also knew that Jake loved his wife and was proud of her. But sometimes, just occasionally, she caught him looking at her with an expression that she could only describe as cold, and judgemental.
Ruth took Clio to the Clinic because Clio asked to see it.
Clio sat in the waiting room with all the other women, watching and listening. The women lined up on hard benches, shoulder to shoulder, patiently waiting. Some of them had brought babies or small children who cried and wriggled on their laps, or stared at each other with round eyes in small faces. There was a sour smell of dirt and poverty, and – more disturbing, Clio found, because she had never encountered it before – an atmosphere of absolute resignation, as if disappointment and the absence of hope were inevitable. She felt aware of her own neat clothes and clean hair and skin. But no one looked at her with any curiosity.
Most of the women sat in silence, only whispering commands to their children. There was just one who talked. She was enormously fat, shrouded rather than dressed in a shapeless garment of unsuitable polka dots. She talked to the room in general in a wheezy Cockney monologue.
‘Eleven kids I’ve ’ad, seven of ’em still living. Been knocked up eighteen times in all –’ there was a burst of rasping laughter ‘– before and after getting the ring on me finger. I’m not ashamed of that. Why should I be? Not much else to do down our way, is there, my duck?’
No one laughed with her, but there was no current of disapproval either. It was simply familiar truth to all of them. Except to me, Clio thought.
The voice went on. ‘I’ve come ’ere, see what they can do. I’ve been bad since I fell with the youngest, and they said to me then there shouldn’t be no more. But I’m married, aren’t I? We’ve all got ’usbands, all of us, else we wouldn’t be ’ere.’
Clio’s ringless hands were folded under her gloves.
‘Mine’s a good man, I wouldn’t complain. Works down the docks in the day, goes on the beer at night, comes ’ome and ’e wants it. Well, that’s a man, innit? Stands to reason.’
There was a gusty sigh. The fat woman spread her hands, purplish slabs, and the white flesh all up her arms quivered.
‘So ’ere we all are,’ she said, as if pronouncing a valediction on each of them, all of the silent women ranged on benches around her.
Ruth came out of one of the consulting rooms, small and straight in her nurse’s white uniform. ‘Mrs Miller?’ she asked, smiling at her. The polka-dot mountain heaved itself up and was shepherded in to see Jake.
Clio watched the women coming out again. They carried brown paper bags containing the contraceptive supplies that the doctors had fitted them with and the nurses had explained how to use. Every time, she noticed, there was a change in the woman’s expression. There was a suggestion of daring, a curious glance to each side, as if from now on there might be time to look at the world. Then came a movement to hold the paper bag closer. Every single woman looked younger, and taller. Clio was moved by the sight of them.
‘There must be something I could do to help,’ she said later to Ruth and Jake, reiterating her old plea.
‘We need a supplies clerk, just for a few hours a week,’ Jake said. ‘You could do that easily enough.’
And so Clio added her voluntary work at the Mothers’ Clinic to her responsibilities at Fathom.
She had plenty of time, because Fathom did not occupy more than half of her attention. She still read whatever Max asked her to read, and gave him her punctilious views that he had come to trust, and she typed for him and dealt with the subscriptions and the galley proofs and the printers. She also acted as an informal confidante to all the aspiring poets and writers and critics who drifted into her office in search of Max and acclaim in the pages of Fathom. She listened to their grievances, made them tea, and consoled or congratulated where it was appropriate.
‘How would I manage without you?’ Max sometimes asked when he was in a better than average humour. Clio knew perfectly well that he would manage by replacing her with another eager, literature-struck, over-impressed late schoolgirl.
It was still Max who chose the contributions, and made up the issues, and decided who was to be included in the magazine’s favoured circle and who was not. Clio had learned quite early on that he did not welcome her separate suggestions, and if she discovered a promising writer of her own and put his work forward to Max it was guaranteed that Max would turn it down, and so the discovery would be lost to one of the other quarterlies. She had her role at Fathom, a useful role that was quite clearly defined, and although she enjoyed her work and the people who revolved around it, she knew that she had fallen into a comfortable rut. The Mothers’ Clinic provided her with a new focus, and the sense that she was useful, instead of a fixture.
Clio took charge of the Clinic stores, and became responsible for monitoring and reordering the stocks of rubber caps and contraceptive pessaries, sponges and sheaths. She also kept the records, filing the case-sheets after the nurses had completed them, and she set up a simple appointments system to help the doctors and reduce the waiting time for the patients. It gave her satisfaction to see the women coming in, and leaving again, looking around them as they went, with their brown paper bags in their arms.
There was a good deal of open talk amongst the staff. It was part of the Clinic’s philosophy, inherited directly from Marie Stopes, that sexual matters could be freely discussed between adults and professionals. Clio read the books and listened to what was said. Along with her growing expertise on methods of contraception she absorbed the theory that sex was natural, and beneficial, and even desirable for healthy adults. She knew, because she had heard the assurance made often enough, that nothing a married couple did together could be regarded as wrong or shameful, provided that it gave pleasure to both of them. She knew about sexual stimuli and erogeneity and the female orgasm.
Sometimes, with a slight sense of shame, she looked speculatively at Jake and Ruth, and found herself envying them.
Clio was fully aware of the irony of her position. She was a sexually knowledgeable virgin. Peter Dennis’s feverish embraces and Pilgrim’s mild philandering seemed a long time in her past, and there had been no one else since then. She began to understand, with dry regret, that Eleanor’s fears for her had been justified. There were few eligible men of her age, and there were very many eager women. Of the writers and artists she met in Soho and Bloomsbury, most were married, or at least attached. Those who were not were drunk, or hopelessly disreputable, or not interested in women. In the last years, dividing her time between Max Erdmann and the Clinic, Clio had almost accepted the external image of herself. She was a spinster of almost twenty-six.
Even the Babies were grown up. Phoebe Stretton was nineteen, a jazz-mad flapper who had adopted the knowing manners of her generation. ‘How’s your sex life, darling?’ she and her friends would greet each other. At seventeen Tabby Hirsh was shy and quiet, but she had cut her hair like Phoebe’s and was going to dances with her cousins. Alice was fifteen. She was not out yet, but she watched everything the others did with greedy curiosity. All the Babies thought that Grace was an old married lady, and that Clio was simply old.
On the evenin
g of the party for Pilgrim’s retrospective, it happened that Jake and Ruth and Clio had all been at the Clinic. Their various shifts did not usually coincide, but tonight Clio met them outside as she locked the front door of the Holloway house.
‘I don’t want to go,’ Ruth was saying briskly. ‘It will be all drink and arty talk, the usual nonsense.’
‘I would like to go. I would welcome a drink, and art and nonsense are welcome diversions these days. Clio, you’re coming to Pilgrim’s party, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m coming. I’d like to see Pilgrim, and Max will expect me to be there.’ It would be the same familiar faces and arty talk, just as Ruth predicted, but Clio thought with a touch of weariness that that was not a reason either for going or for staying away. She would go because she had nothing else in particular to do. ‘I’ll drive you,’ she told Jake.
Ruth was already wheeling her bicycle to the kerb. ‘Don’t expect a hot dinner when you get back,’ she called in Jake’s direction, and pedalled away. Jake didn’t watch her departure. He bent himself double and folded his long arms and legs into Clio’s tiny car.
Clio drove for a little distance in silence. Then she asked, ‘Is everything all right?’
Jake had grown fleshier since his marriage. He was clean-shaven lately, but even without the curling black beard his resemblance to Nathaniel was growing stronger and stronger.
He said in a flat voice, ‘Everything? Yes, Clio, thank you. Everything is quite all right.’
The Albemarle Street gallery was already crowded when they reached it. Clio and Jake were carried away from each other at once by the cross-currents of people. Clio saw Pilgrim’s head in the middle of the room and she fought her way across to him, ducking between raised glasses and gesticulating hands and the choppy waters of conversation.
‘A purely materialistic functionalism …’
‘Rapacious bloody agents …’
There were familiar faces everywhere, but the familiarity seemed stale rather than comfortable. Pilgrim put his arm around her and kissed her on the mouth. He was wearing a white silk shirt with a yoke and full sleeves that made him look even more like a prosperous gypsy.
‘Clio, my Clio, here you are. What do you think of the hang?’ He waved over the milling heads in the direction of the gallery walls.
‘I’m sure I would admire it if I could only see it.’
‘Oh, they’ll all bugger off before long. Your picture is over there, at the end. Pride of place. And look who’s standing in front of it.’
She looked, and saw Anthony and Grace. They were turned away from The Janus Face and they were talking intently. Even in the crush they gave the impression of being a little apart. Pilgrim winked at Clio.
Clio left him and battled on across the room. She saw Grace and Anthony hardly at all nowadays. The last time had been in Oxford, a few months ago, at Nathaniel’s fifty-fifth birthday party. She knew that Anthony devoted himself to his business and the beginnings of a political career, and that Grace spent her time with a Society set whose doings were regularly written up in the gossip columns. Grace was ‘Party-going Lady Grace’, or ‘Lovely and vivacious wife of that bright young man Anthony Brock’.
Sometimes, very rarely, Clio’s social path intersected hers. They had met at Duff and Lady Diana Cooper’s, who were neighbours of Clio’s in Gower Street, and once at a Twelfth Night party in Gordon Square where Lydia Lopokova had danced for the company. But Clio’s life centred on Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia, and she almost never crossed over into Mayfair.
Anthony and Grace greeted her warmly. Anthony looked tired and there were frown marks between his eyebrows, but his gappy smile and humorous manner were unchanged. Grace was unerringly chic in a black satin tunic dress with long ropes of pearls. The cousins kissed each other, and as they separated a flashbulb popped in front of them. The photographer ducked and was reabsorbed by the crowd as rapidly as he had emerged.
Grace shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Too good a chance for him to miss. The picture’ll be in tomorrow’s Daily Mail captioned “Kiss and make up for Pilgrim’s Janus” or something equally rubbishy.’
‘“Vivacious Lady Grace’s Janus kiss”, more likely,’ Clio could not help saying. She looked up at the picture. It no longer told the truth, even if it once had done. All the tension trapped in it seemed incongruous now. It had dissipated itself in reality, fading away into indifference. Grace and she were grown up, grown away. It was only a portrait, a self-consciously deliberate flouting of convention that looked less outrageous than it once had done.
‘What are you doing here?’ Clio asked. Grace usually took care to avoid Pilgrim.
‘Anthony wanted to come,’ Grace said, as if that were sufficient explanation. Another flashbulb went off in their faces, leaving a white dazzle burning in their eyes.
Grace put her hand to Clio’s arm. ‘Let’s move away. We’re striking altogether too much of a pose.’
They moved into a corner, hemmed in by two of Pilgrim’s still lifes. Clio took a glass of red wine off a passing tray. It was better than the usual vinegar and she drank it gratefully, then replaced the empty glass with another full one. The three of them exchanged family information, trading assurances that Cressida was well for the latest news from Julius. Julius had taken Jake’s place in Gower Street for a time, then had gone to live in Paris. He was beginning to be in demand on the European concert circuit and found Paris a more congenial base than London.
‘I miss him,’ Grace said.
‘Yes,’ Clio conceded. She drank some more wine. The room was very hot, but the crowd was beginning to thin out. ‘But what about you two?’
Grace looked at Anthony, then put her hand on his arm. Her nails were painted to match her lips. ‘We’ve just come back from Swansea. We’ve heard that Anthony has been adopted as the candidate. You know he was up for selection? Meetings, platforms, speeches. It’s as if he was born for it, Clio. He’s a natural politician.’
There was a resonance in Grace’s voice that Clio had never heard before. She tried to define for herself exactly what it was that was new, and then she realized it was simply that Grace was excited. The possibility of Anthony becoming an MP excited her.
It was good news, and Clio’s pleasure in it was unaffected. ‘Anthony, I’m so glad. Congratulations, and congratulations.’
It was a by-election, following the death of the sitting member in a solid Labour constituency. Anthony accepted Clio’s good wishes with characteristic modesty. ‘It’s not an easy one. There’s a majority of fifteen thousand. But I think we can dent it, a significant dent.’ He put his hand over Grace’s covering hers where it rested on his arm.
They talked for a little while longer, and Clio saw how Grace bent her head towards her husband, and how she listened to what he said. The cold pressure of her own loneliness seemed more evident in the overheated room.
Pilgrim passed by them, with Jeannie and two young men. Jeannie had aged noticeably. Her hennaed hair had thinned to reveal patches of scalp and she had teased the remainder into defiant puffs. The skin of her face was invisible under a layer of white powder patched with rouge and her eyes squinted out of a delta of cracks. She was wearing an elaborate brocaded coat with a dirty lace collar. She was also quite drunk.
‘Grace and Anthony, this is a great honour,’ Pilgrim called out, swooping back towards them. His little retinue stopped short and regrouped around him. ‘You all know Gloriana, of course?’
The comparison was cruelly accurate, like the best of Pilgrim’s malicious wit. Jeannie looked exactly like the ancient Queen Elizabeth, still imagining herself the majestic beauty.
‘And this is Tony Hardy. And Miles Lennox.’
Clio had met Tony Hardy before. He was a publisher with an interest in experimental fiction. And she had heard of Miles Lennox. He had been medically unfit for combat but he had written some acclaimed war poetry, and a year or so after the end of the war had published a highly praised collection of stories.
She had heard someone saying, somewhere, that Miles Lennox would write the great post-war novel. She looked at him with interest and saw a fair-haired man with neat features and clear, light-olive skin. He held out his hand and she shook it.
Conversations began around her. She heard Jeannie making some incoherent overture to Grace, and Anthony complimenting Pilgrim on his work. Tony Hardy said something to her about Fathom, and she made a sensible response and then found herself listening to the words as though they issued from someone else’s mouth.
Too much wine, she told herself, and then, with surprising defiance, Why not?
Miles Lennox smiled at her. ‘You’re Clio Hirsh. I’ve heard about you.’
Jake was in the opposite corner of the room. He was talking to silver-haired Isolde, who seemed only to grow taller, and slimmer, and younger-looking as time passed. Isolde had replaced Jeannie as Pilgrim’s official girl, but it was not an exclusive commitment for either of them.
Jake had drunk several glasses of the good wine. He was thinking sentimentally that Isolde was like a silver birch tree. She had tiny breasts, and hips like a boy’s. She stood very close to him, with her wide-apart pale green eyes fixed on his, and uttered a stream of nonsense in a soft, low voice. She was very unlike Ruth. She was the exact opposite of Ruth, Jake thought, because Ruth was small and buxom with a bloom of dark hair on her upper lip. Ruth was brisk, and sturdy, and she never talked nonsense or stared at him with unfocused lust. Even in bed, Ruth was businesslike.
Jake felt exactly as he had done long ago with Grace in the hawthorn corner of the meadow. He wanted to pull this Isolde down into the long grass and cover the sappy length of her with his black bulk.
It seemed to Clio that when she looked around again the room was empty. Grace and Anthony had gone, and Jeannie had been helped away by Tony Hardy and, presumably, Miles Lennox. Jake was nowhere to be seen.
She walked slowly past the pictures, examining each one in turn.
