by Nina Bawden
I said, “You’d better follow in the car. You’ll need it to get home.”
I was not thinking of his convenience. I did not want him with me. There was a bed slung to the side of the ambulance; I climbed on to it and one of the men covered me with a rough blanket that tickled my chin, tucking it round me like a mother putting her child to bed. The car was beautifully sprung so that we swooped, rather than jolted, over the ruts in the road. The glass in the sides of the ambulance was opaque; if I raised myself on my elbow I could see my reflection in it, transparently pale, as if I were looking into the dark water of a well.
At the hospital, they wheeled me on a trolley past green aseptic walls. They took me to the entrance of a dark ward, lined dimly with white beds, green shades covered the central lights. The pain was bad so that my body did not seem to belong to me; I regarded myself from a great distance with wonder and concern. Somebody asked me my name, my age and my religion; the process of sickness and dying could not, it seemed, proceed without the walls of a recognised spiritual institution.
They lifted me on to a bed and the ambulance man went away. Tears of acute distress rolled down my face at his going; I felt myself deserted by the last friendly face. There were nurses round my bed, faces as unconnected with my life as the people who sit opposite in a tube train. I was afraid of them. Cravenly, I tried to ingratiate myself with the prettiest nurse, a plump young creature with fat, freckled arms.
I said, “I’m sorry to be a nuisance. I have a pain.”
She smiled. Round her teeth she had the kind of metal band that children wear. “Don’t worry. We’re here to look after you.”
A little later the registrar came in; the young nurse put screens round my bed. He asked me more questions and said he must examine me. I wanted to tell him to go away and fetch my own doctor, but I was afraid of antagonising him.
“Have you hurt yourself recently?”
“I fell and hurt my back.” He grunted and prodded my tummy. “How did you do that? Does this hurt?”
“Yes. Must you do it?”
“I want to find out what’s wrong.” He had a slight lisp that sounded foreign. “You mustn’t make a fuss.”
“But you’re hurting me.”
“You’re not relaxing properly. I’m being very gentle.”
I closed my lips and turned my head away. After a little he stood up and said, “We’ll give you something to take the pain away.” He looked down at me. “Your husband is outside.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Oh?” He looked surprised. “Everything all right at home?”
I wanted to giggle. I wanted to see the expression on his face if I told him the truth.
“Yes,” I said. “Everything is all right.”
The little nurse gave me an injection and took my pulse. They went away and left me alone with the screens round my bed. I could hear the other people in the ward; some of them were whispering and there was an occasional snore. Someone coughed, water was poured into a glass. The light above my bed was very bright and hurt my eyes. I tried to find the switch but it was too much of an effort; I pulled the sheet over my eyes.
I think I slept for a little; when I woke the pain was much worse. I wanted a drink but the locker by my bed was empty.
There was a breathy whispering on the other side of the screen. I wondered if they were talking about me. This is Mrs. Random. His second wife. You know what happened to the first one, don’t you?
Then the young nurse came in with a sister. She was a thin woman with eyes that were bright and rather angry as if she had a perpetual grudge against the world.
“How are you, Mrs. Random?” She held my wrist with cold, bony fingers. “Your husband has asked if you could have a private room. We can’t manage that just now.”
“It doesn’t matter. Can you give me something for the pain.”
“We have.”
“It doesn’t work any more. Can’t you give me something else?” I would have gone on my knees to her. “Please give me something else.”
“Not just now. We can’t give you too much. It might kill you. You must control yourself.”
“Then will you fetch my doctor? Not the hospital one. Dr. Cole.”
“Not in the middle of the night. It’s ridiculous.”
“Doctors are used to being called out in the middle of the night, aren’t they?” I summoned all my energy as if for a battle between us.
“Not when there is no need. You are in no danger. It’s a straightforward abortion.”
“But I want him to come.”
Her neck was suffused with colour, the tendons stood out like strings.
“Dr. Cole is a busy man.”
I remembered the gentle face, charming over the sherry glass, the humane hands.
I said foolishly, “He’s not busy at night. He’s asleep, He’d come if he knew I wanted him.”
She played her winning card. “We have already spoken to Dr. Cole. He will look in to-morrow morning. You must go to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“You must control yourself.”
“It’s so pointless.” I whimpered like a puppy into the pillow. She went away, her starched gown rustling like dry grass. The little nurse came back. I told her I was thirsty. She said, doubtfully, that she didn’t know whether I was allowed to drink because I might be going to have an anæsthetic. I think she was too afraid of the sister to find out. In the end she fetched a glass; she held it to my lips and let me swallow a little. Then she hid the glass in the locker in case the sister should come back. She glanced continually over her shoulder as she talked to me, wary of authority. She was very young, eighteen, and in her first nursing year. She didn’t know that she would finish her training because her boy-friend had just got a good job and wanted to marry her. She was simple and kind, she reminded me of Janet, and I felt very safe with her. My name meant nothing to her; she was new to the district and was too absorbed in herself and her boy-friend to be interested in scandal. She had soft, red hair of which she was very proud; she was upset because the matron had told her she must have it cut short. She left me, just before morning, to go and wash the other patients before she went off duty.
The morning came with a rattle of bowls and the rolling of wheels on the polished floor. People stirred and talked; in the bed beyond the screen a woman laughed. New nurses came in with scrubbed faces still hazy with sleep, looked at me and went away. I resigned myself to pain and to impotent anger. I did not see a doctor, no one cared what happened to me. And beyond the pain, waiting in the shadows, there was steady, growing fear. Someone had written me filthy, evil letters, someone had pushed me down the stairs, in the dark. Someone hated me.…
When it was all over they lifted me on to a trolley and took me to the private room that had been got ready for me. As we went up the ward it looked cheerful and bright with flowers; a fat woman, her head glinting with steel curlers, waved to me from her bed. She looked like something out of a child’s comic, a Martian woman, helmeted with steel. She smiled, nodded her macabre head. “How d’you feel, dearie?” At the entrance to the ward, by the sister’s office, there was a woman lying flat under the bedclothes, her tiny, shrunken face propped up at a disjointed angle. Her face was waxen; only round her mouth was there the faint, purple flush of life. It seemed monstrous that she should be dying there, alone among the loud, laughing voices, the clatter of the living.
My room was clean and quiet and still, shaded by a blind. My dressing-gown hung on the back of the door. There was a stone hot-water bottle between the sheets; I shuffled it gratefully between my feet. The hard mattress was luxury; nothing was important, for the moment, beside the positive physical pleasure of being without pain. The sun filtered through the slats in the blind, stretching pale columns of winter light across the purple shadowed floor. I narrowed my eyes at the bright cracks so that red and yellow moons danced along the fringes of my eyelashes. I slept.
“
Harriet, are you quite sure you’re all right?”
“Yes.” I was dully conscious that he expected a more complete response of me.
He was sitting on a chair a little way away from the bed. He had not kissed me.
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry Cole didn’t turn up.”
Memory of betrayal came back to me. “I asked them to fetch him. They said he knew about me. They said he was a busy man.”
He stirred uncomfortably. “I don’t expect there was anything he could have done.”
Anger worked in me like yeast. I beat my fist weakly on the bed-cover. “Did they know that? It was so unkind, so cruel. They left me alone so long.”
“You mustn’t upset yourself. There was nothing they could have done. Except the impossible.”
“They didn’t try. I was so helpless.”
“One always is. You mustn’t expect too much of other people.”
“I don’t. But I expect kindness.” The space between us seemed infinite. I said childishly, “Why didn’t you stop them being unkind to me?”
His sandy face was colourless. “I can’t defend you against life, my darling. Hospitals aren’t very human. They can’t afford to be. They do their best.”
I said cruelly, “So does the law. But didn’t you hate it when it treated you badly? Didn’t you want to get your own back?”
In the silence that followed, I wondered if he was afraid of me. Was he aware of what I suspected now: that he had been, perhaps, not unjustly accused? There was doubt in my mind, but it was only partial; there was no one else who could have killed her. And in the eyes of all his friends, our neighbours, he was condemned. He belonged to a different world from theirs, he was a man apart. Because I was ill, I saw with a deceptive, drunken clarity. Mrs. Evans was wrong. His wife had been a bitch and a slut. She had come straight from her lover, wearing her prettiest dress. She had smiled at him with Maggie’s eyes and he had shot her.
“Darling, I shouldn’t have said that. It was tactless.”
“Why not?” I watched him cunningly through my eyelashes and saw that he was pretending to be surprised. He said, “Of course I wanted to get my own back. For a little while. But it was a quite pointless waste of emotion.”
I thought: if I were stronger I could say to him, don’t pretend to me any longer. I couldn’t love a murderer, but I love you. Tell me the truth, give me a little time and nothing will make any difference except, perhaps, that I shall always be afraid of you. But only a little afraid. Not as afraid as I shall be if you lie to me.
Pity for my own weakness made me cry a little.
I said, “Tell me the truth.”
He sounded startled. “What about?” He peered at me nervously. “You look so tired. Oughtn’t you to sleep?”
“I’ve been asleep all day.”
He hesitated. “Do you mind very much about the baby?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Not as much as I mind about you. Last night I was afraid you were going to die. I didn’t think about the baby. Only about you.”
“Would you put out the light? It worries me.”
He got up and switched it off. A yellow glow came in through the fanlight above the door. The faint gloom in the room was not so much light as an absence of darkness. Outside in the corridor, a bell clanged.
“I’ll have to go.” He stood at the head of the bed uncertainly, looking down at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He bent quickly and kissed me on the forehead. “Don’t worry about the baby. Just get well.”
I called out to him as he opened the door. He turned, silhouetted against the light. His shoulders were stooping as if he were very weary. I felt an intense pity for him.
“Yes?” He sounded eager as if he had wanted me to call him back. But the weak tears trembled against my lashes; I did not know what to say to him.
“It’s nothing.” The right words were too difficult to find. Perhaps they didn’t exist. He waited for a moment and then he closed the door.
I thought: one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. I cried into my pillow.
James came every day and I learned to dread his visits. Sometimes, when he was there, I would pretend that everything was safe and ordinary, and for a little while the pretence would become reality. Nothing had happened that could not be easily explained. Ann had written me anonymous letters but that was a small and unimportant matter. I had been tired and over-wrought, imagining danger where none existed: no one had pushed me on the stair. And as for James, all that the past held was sad mischance. He had been wrongfully accused and rightly acquitted. All that remained was to forget that it had ever happened.
But all the time I pretended to myself, I was afraid. Fear grew sharp by the side of undiminished love. It was irrational, I told myself. He would never harm me, why should I be afraid, admitting, by my argument, that I had reason for fear. To deceive myself was to build a fortress against the truth. Because we belonged, James and I, to a world where people did not murder each other, it was false logic to say that he had not, therefore, killed his wife.
We grew apart. Our lives touched only briefly in the daily hour we were allowed together. It was difficult to talk because there was so much we could not say.
On the day before I was due to leave the hospital, he came, holding a bunch of daffodils. He laid them on the bed, rustling in their tissue wrapping.
“Thank you. They’re lovely.”
“Yes. But not from me. Sister asked me to give them to you. There may be a card inside.”
It was wedged between the sappy stalks. The flowers were from William Ross. His handwriting was tiny, meticulously neat. “I am sorrier than I can say. I was grateful for our talk. I promise you it will go no further.”
James said, “Who are they from?”
Guiltily, I replaced the card among the flowers.
“Colonel Langley.” He had already sent me flowers, pale narcissi from his greenhouse.
“Nice of him.” James was smiling, he looked as if he were pleased about something. He was wearing a canary yellow waistcoat and his best suit as if he had dressed himself for some special occasion. His face was eager and excited.
“Darling, I’ve got a surprise for you.” He paused, he watched me with delight. “You’re going on holiday.”
He had booked a hotel near the Place de la Concorde. If the weather held to its promise, it should be beautiful, everyone should see Paris in the spring. It was too early for the chestnuts to be in flower but the rhododendrons would be out and the magnolias. He gave me a rather dry little lecture on the best things to see and do at this time of the year. When he arranged anything, he became completely absorbed in the tiniest details; now, as he warmed to his subject, he expanded prosily on the timing of the journey, the price of the hotel.
He waited expectantly. I said, in a small voice, “Are you coming with me?”
I was utterly dismayed. As I felt at the moment, a holiday together could only be a mockery. He had taken me completely by surprise and the fear that I had hoped to control overwhelmed me.
“Would you rather be alone, then?” I saw the pleasure slowly fade, the eyes grow wary, the mouth harden with disappointment and understanding.
It was unbearable. “Oh, no. I only meant—I wondered if you would be able to leave the farm. At this time of year …”
It sounded lame and he was not deceived. He picked up the pamphlets from the bed and stuffed them in his pocket. He eyed me sadly, biting at his thumb nail.
Then he said, with sudden savagery, “I destroy everything I touch, don’t I?” Momentarily, his face softened. “No, don’t cry. You’re probably right, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. You ought to get away on your own. I upset you, don’t I?”
“Don’t. Please don’t blame yourself. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.”
He said nothing. He stood at the end of the bed and watched me. I put out my hand to him but he turned away and groped, like a
blind man, for the door.
Chapter Nine
Maggie said, “We’ll have to leave the car at the bottom of the track. If we go any farther, it’ll stick in the bog.”
We got out of the car and pushed open the gate on to the moor. The sheep bolted in alarm, their feet making a soft, scattering sound on the cropped turf. At a safe distance they turned and stared at us inquiringly; their faces, turned towards us, looked mild and stupid and almost human.
The track led through a patch of sodden ground, tufted with reeds, on to the smooth, hard grass above. Below us, the friendly hills fell away in gentle folds, brown and blue and lemon green, patched with shifting sunlight. In the green valleys, sheep crawled like white maggots; the few farms huddled in the shelter of the hills looked like a child’s forgotten toys.
Maggie said, “I like it up here. It’s my favourite place.” It was rare for her to express pleasure in anything; her responses were usually automatic and without emotion. Now, although she smiled at me, her voice was light and apathetic. The soft wind whipped her hair across her cheeks. Her face looked small and delicate and bloodless above the thick, tweed collar.
“The lake is about half a mile away. Is it too far for you?”
“No. You wanted to show it to me, didn’t you?”
“I wanted you to come. But Daddy said I wasn’t to make you walk too far.”
“Did he?” I grasped at this casual token of his solicitude, weighing it against his silence on everything that mattered, against our estrangement from each other.
“When did he say that?”
She sounded surprised. “Last night, perhaps this morning. I forget.”
Since I came out of hospital he had been busy on the farm during the day; I had been lonely and yet glad to be alone. His presence was something I both feared and longed for; in the evenings I waited with a beating heart for his step on the stair. He left his boots in the dairy and came quietly, in stockinged feet, to the top of the stairs. There he would pause for a moment as if he expected me to come and meet him; before my miscarriage I had always done so. But I sat still in my chair, the library book on my knees, the cigarette burning in the ash-tray, watching the door. The soft thud of his footsteps would continue into the bedroom and I waited, counting the minutes before he would appear, calculating the time it took him to wash and change and brush his hair. And always, while I waited and listened, there was a mounting hope: this evening it will be different, everything will be miraculously resolved. And, every evening, the fire cosily bright, the television switched to the programme James wanted (he turned off the sound so that we could talk), we played the same pointless farce.
