Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  “Turn it off,” muttered Bell while the applause was still ringing in the studio. Kay stretched out her arm; the panel darkened; there was silence. “We don’t want anything else — after Cissie.”

  “I wish I’d heard her, Mummy, when she was in what they call her ‘prime.’ ”

  “It wasn’t so different,” Bell paused a moment to consider. “She still makes you feel what she gave you then: a sort of feeling that, whatever comes, you can take it. That was Cissie’s secret: she put heart into you. She’d got so much herself — you just had to rise up and meet her on her own level. I’ll tell you something.” Bell paused in the act of putting on her coat. “If there’d been somebody like Cissie May in Germany that house-painting bastard would never have been allowed to get up and start this war.”

  “Mummy — where are you going?”

  “I’ve told you — I’ve got another job to do before I come back for dinner.”

  “Mummy ...”

  Kay was standing, facing her. Bell felt her heart miss a beat.

  “What is it, Katie?”

  “You haven’t asked me why I’m here.”

  “No,” said Bell. “No,” she repeated slowly. Her eyes were fixed almost forbiddingly on her daughter. “If there’s anything the matter it will have to wait until I come back. I’ve only got a quarter of an hour to be over at Bayswater.”

  “It — won’t — wait,” whispered Kay.

  Bell bit her lip.

  “Now, Katie, you know work’s work. People are doing war jobs; they can’t go shifting times about for other people’s convenience.” She spoke with a sharp, irritable violence, deliberately putting off-putting off what? Her own fear angered her: she wanted to call out, “Oh, whatever it is, Katie, let it alone! I’ve had enough lately, I tell you!”

  Kay was holding out a folded sheet of paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “Read it, please.”

  Bell glanced at the writing.

  “From Jo?”

  Kay nodded.

  “What’s the matter with her? When did you get this?”

  “This morning.”

  Kay had risen to her feet. Her elbow groped for the support of the mantelpiece. She found another cigarette and lit it with a forced nonchalance. She did not look at Bell.

  “Well?” said Bell. Her face was hard, implacable, as if she would not accept the prompting of her brain, of her heart.

  “I’ve just been with her.

  “Well? For God’s sake ... Katie?”

  Kay made some blind movement, which Bell parried; her stiff hands, laid on the girl’s shoulders, thrust her a little away from her. There was a pause. Kay heard her mother cross the room; heard the “ping” of the telephone in the sitting room as the receiver was lifted.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t make it this evening ... Tomorrow, at the same time? ... Right; I’ll be there ... No, of course twenty-four hours doesn’t make any difference! All right, my dear, keep smiling! ... Nonsense, you’ll be laughing your head off before the week’s out.”

  Kay started as Bell appeared again, suddenly, at her side.

  “Now. This is true? She’s got herself into trouble?”

  Kay nodded.

  “He won’t marry her?”

  “He’s in Africa. Anyhow, how can he? He’s married.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told Jo, just before he went away.”

  “And you mean to say the little fool let him ... ?”

  “She’s in love with him, Mummy. He told her after it happened — it was the night she went to see him, before his embarkation leave. He told her then because — oh well, I suppose because he was scared.” “Ay, he’d got something to be scared about.” Bell spoke with concentrated bitterness. A sudden thought struck her; Kay saw a pulse throb in her mother’s temple. “But that’s more than four months ago! ... Katie?”

  “She thought it was going to be all right. I mean she seemed to be normal — you know it can happen —”

  Bell lifted her hand in an authoritative gesture.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in town. She came up to see a doctor, to make sure. Well ... she’s sure.”

  “The little fool. The damned little fool.”

  “Somebody’s given her an address. She’s going there tomorrow, unless —”

  “An address?” Bell repeated.

  “Somewhere off Shaftesbury Avenue. One of those — places. I knew you’d be shocked, Mummy. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell you. But you know the awful things that can happen.”

  “How should I know?” flamed Bell.

  Kay went on, stumbling desperately.

  “You must know somebody — the right sort of person — not one of those awful quacks. You must know — you must know —”

  You must know. She felt her world dissolving. It was like losing one’s grip on a life line and being carried down a swift stream. You must know ...

  Chapter IV

  SHE FELT the blood beating up into her head, the veins of her throat swelling, and her heart threatening to choke her. Never in her bold, independent life had Bell Timson known fear as she knew it in this moment: knew it so intimately that she was forced to recognize it for what it was. An obscure rage took hold of her, along with her fear: What’s going to happen to me? To me ... ?

  She who had so often rallied other women in similar plight to her own, making robust light of their distress, honestly assured of her own righteousness and reason, pitying them in her heart for their weak surrender to convention — “Why, what about it? What’s a little mishap of that sort in these days? Good gracious me, there’s a war on!” All those easy and flippant phrases, together with her common sense, failed, now they concerned herself. For this — this, she made no bones about it, spelled ruin. I — I of all people, with a fatherless grandchild; it’s crazy. It’s some sort of awful joke. It’s somebody making a fool of me. It’s not true. Katie, tell me it’s not true.

  This pale, useless girl opposite to me ... The nails bit into the sweating palms of Bell’s hands. Shall I tell Katie? I can’t bear this by myself; I swear to God I can’t bear it. Katie, can’t you see what you’ve done to me?

  Pale and useless and scared; what I’ve made her. My girl — that I’ve brought up to be all that I’m not myself. I’ve broken the law of England to buy you immunity, Katie. Immunity from what? From your responsibilities of being born a woman. I’ve kept you out of my life; I can’t suddenly snatch you into it now. I can’t expect you to understand ... My God I’m alone! I can’t tell a living soul, I’m caught; I’m trapped; I’m done for.

  Again the rage in her brain fluttered wildly, like a bluebottle fly, beating itself against a windowpane. All I’ve done for these two girls — and this is what I get for it! Jo, the “easy” one, the one who could “look after herself”! The damned little fool — getting herself into this mess and involving her family in it ... I’ll have nothing to do with it — nothing! How can I? And at her age! An age when it was not only ridiculous for a girl — woman — to have a baby, it was risky as well. These hard, muscular girls — women — always came off worse than the soft, drooping sort that had never toughened themselves up with sports and exercise. Of course you can’t have your baby, you little fool; but don’t ask me anything about it! Don’t dare to ask me!

  From a great distance came Kay’s frightened voice.

  “She’s been taking all sorts of» things ... I tell her she’ll hurt herself ...

  Oh, hold your tongue, Katie; what do you know about it?

  “No use, are they? I mean, they won’t, after the second or third month, will they ... ?”

  “Whose idea’s this — the Shaftesbury Avenue place — your’s or Jo’s?”

  “Why, Mummy, she got it from one of the other girls on the gun site — I don’t know anything about those things! But it’s horribly dangerous, isn’t it? You do know somebody, don’t you?”

  “Of cours
e I don’t know anybody!” Her voice snapped with nervousness. “Flow should I know anybody? Good God, girl, you know that sort of thing’s illegal —”

  “It’s being done all the time. You must have heard of someone ...”

  “Oh, stop parroting ‘You must have heard,’ Katie! There used to be a well-known man on the continent” — Bell moistened her dry lips and tried to marshal her self-possession — “but he died some years ago. You know what it is in England; the penalties are too heavy for reputable people to dabble in that game.”

  “I don’t know whether they’re reputable or not. I know they are doing it.”

  Bell looked at her sharply.

  “You want Jo to have this operation, don’t you?”

  “Well — what else is there to do? I mean, how could Jo go round with a baby ... ? I mean, it’s not even like it was before the war-registration and food cards and all that kind of thing: she can’t even get away with calling herself Mrs. Something — tradespeople and servants, they all see the cards; we haven’t got any personal privacy left in these days,” Kay said bitterly.

  Bell had sat down at the table. She rested her elbow on it, and her fingers drummed the polished wood as she gave Kay a curious look.

  “And how much of all that did you say to Jo?”

  “She said most of it to me,” Kay muttered. “Mummy —” She looked up; her mouth hung open, aghast at the expression on Bell’s face. “Mummy, you’re not going to refuse to help her, are you?”

  A laugh came from Bell, so terrible in its mirthlessness that Kay involuntarily started.

  “Help her? Or help you? Or help — me? It’s all right, Katie; I understand. You’re not cut out for the part of aunt to a soldier’s little by-blow! Don’t look like that, child. I’m not blaming you. Whatever you are, I’m the one responsible.”

  Kay’s face was white, under their lowered lids her eyes ringed with darkness, the full lower lip purple, as though she had bitten it. After a pause her reply came in a smothered voice.

  “Then you’re responsible for Jo as well. If you feel like that — for God’s sake, Mummy, aren’t you going to help her?”

  You’ve done it. Times without number you’ve done it — in circumstances for which the law would condemn and any doctor in the land exonerate you. And what about the law — that sets so much store by the birth of a child but does nothing to ensure that its life shall be one of health and happiness and opportunity? The law — that gives no thought to the welfare of child or mother but insists that, having conceived, you shall reproduce, whatever the circumstances? The law — that consistently penalizes the child through the parent and the parent through the child? The law — which considers that the only way to cure one evil is by heaping another on top of it!

  For twenty years or more, Bell Timson, you’ve been breaking the law. You’ve saved children coming into a world that would give them a rotten time. You’ve given people a chance to make new lives for themselves instead of carrying the past like a millstone round their necks. You’ve risked your reputation — even your freedom — for the sake of poor devils that got themselves into a jam and had one but you to help them out of it. You’ve brought comfort and hope and peace to hundreds of homes. You’ve seen boys and girls happily married instead of hounded out of society. You’ve saved family pride and prevented heredity playing hell with the new generation. And for all this you’d be doing time if the law had happened to lay its hands on you. All this is sin, according to the law — and according to religion, if you happen to lay any store by that!

  It’s sin to have a child by somebody who can’t marry you. It’s sin to leave an unwanted baby in a railway coach. The very act of begetting a child is sin, according to the Bible! But neither the Bible nor the law calls it sin to bring a child into the world of parents who don’t want it and who are not prepared to make all the sacrifice and effort that raising a child means. The law’s down on you from every angle, unless you live the life of a eunuch; and if you do, there’s the government, screaming at you about keeping up the birth rate! It will be time enough to talk about the birth rate when the public’s civilized out of its present view toward unmarried mothers and children born out of wedlock. When you can promise every child that’s born a fair chance of making good in the world and in society — that’ll be the time to start prosecuting the handful of people that have got the guts to defy the law for the sake of humanity.

  Hold on ... Was it all for humanity?

  And if it was not — one Bell Timson angrily defied the other — hadn’t I to indemnify myself for the risks I was taking — risks that involved not only myself but Katie and Jo? Hadn’t I got to make them safe in case anything happened? Isn’t money safety — the only kind of safety I could have left them if the law had caught me out?

  As it happens, I’m caught out in a different way. This thing has happened to Jo. My Jo. Of course I can help her ...

  I can’t.

  Out of the hundreds I have helped, I can’t help my own child because I can’t let her know I’m — that word they give to people who do what I’m doing; that word that’s meant to frighten them and make it all mean and ugly — the way she’ll find it if she goes to the address they’ve given her, down Shaftesbury Avenue.

  Just now and again, when I’ve been tired or depressed, it’s struck me to wonder what I’d do if one of the girls ... but it seemed nonsense. If it had been either of them it might have been Katie. I’d have banked on Jo. Even now it seems as if it can’t be true. For God’s sake, Katie, take that look off your face. What do you expect me to do? I can’t. I tell you, I can’t! I can’t do it for Jo ... at least I’d be afraid to. All those hundreds of times, and not one mishap. Yet I know, if I were to lay my hands on Jo, something would go wrong. I suppose this is my punishment.

  God is punishing me. But why? I’ve done no wrong. I’ve disobeyed the laws of man — not the laws of God, which are “Do unto others ... Love your neighbor ... Maybe I’m being punished because I took money for it. But we’d got to live! Mother, we’ve got to live!

  Mother, I couldn’t have told you this in the old days. I don’t believe you’d have known what I was talking about. But perhaps it’s different now, since you’ve died and gone to heaven! Yes, I bet if there’s a heaven you’re there; but if you’ve got anything to do with it there’ll be no “glassy seas” or “golden stairs”! There’ll be good English walnut, with a shine on it you can put your cap straight at — queer how I’d forgotten, until just now, about those lace caps you used to wear, with narrow lavender ribbon bunched in under the folds. And there’ll be geranium beds and cherry pie, and grass like green plush, and a meadow with cowslips for the children to gather. You understand, don’t you, about my wanting the children to have all the things like those? You’d got Father to help you; I had nobody — unless I’d married George. Well, perhaps I ought to have done. But when you’ve had one man go bad on you, you don’t feel much like risking another. You were right about Harry, Mother, and I wish I’d had the sense to see it at the time.

  Mother, for God’s sake tell me what to do about Jo. It’s not a little housemaid this time; it’s your own grandchild, Josephine Timson. You’d love Jo. There’s a lot of Father about her. Well — that’s good enough for you, isn’t it?

  You see, I ... m’m? Mother! You’re not there — after all? All ... right ... of course! Silly of me. Of course you wouldn’t understand. How should you? This sort of thing never came in the way of your sheltered life at Crowle. I’m sorry if I scared or upset you. It’s all right; I’ll make out somehow, by myself.

  But how? If the law doesn’t get you, you’re caught other ways. Yes, Bell; you’re caught good and proper this time.

  “Where’s Jo?

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Don’t be silly. What else have you come here for?”

  There was a flicker of triumph in her faint smile as she picked up the hat she had but recently discarded. It was lo
ng since she had known that positive domination which made her, a short woman, spiritually look down upon the tall Kay as she rose to her feet. “All right, Katie. I’m going to look after this.” I’ve been afraid of her for years — no, not afraid, she corrected herself. It was just the silly sort of deference I had for Harry in the beginning: because she’s got all the education and manners and accomplishments I don’t know much about. The things I gave her — in place of what she needed! Poor Katie. Under all that style and make-up she’s only a gawky kid. I’ve failed with Katie ...

  “Are you going to try and fetch her home, Mummy? Because I doubt if you’ll succeed. She’s so ashamed. You see — it’s begun to show.”

  “What of it? Good God, if a woman’s got to be ashamed of carrying a child —” She broke off, aghast at the implication of her own words.

  She was confusedly aware of Kay’s accompanying her to the door, of pressing the lift button, of sinking in the dim, blue-lit little cage and emerging into the even dimmer hall. Mechanically she felt for her torch and switched it on the flight of steps that led to the street.

  “It’s utterly black! Would you like me to come with you?”