Tell Me Where You Are

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘Have you spoken to Alec?’

  ‘How could I? House was full of people.’

  ‘Has she seen a doctor?’

  ‘What kind of doctor?’

  ‘Oh God, your doctor, you know what I mean.’

  ‘No.’

  Gillian fell silent and began chewing a ragnail on her thumb. After a moment, Frances said,

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, Gill.’

  ‘Of course not. Least said, eh?’

  Frances realised with a shock that everyone would think as Gillian did. Least said, soonest mended. Keep it quiet. Smooth it over.

  ‘I need to talk to Kate,’ she said. ‘I haven’t even been able to discuss it with her properly.’

  ‘Only one option though.’

  Frances did not want to utter a word which Gillian could construe as criticism, and yet, as the road fled steadily behind them and they were nearer to parting, she found herself saying,

  ‘Did I ever tell you I lost a baby?’

  Gillian took off the dark glasses. ‘Lost?’

  ‘Miscarried.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘Don’t be daft! No, years ago, when Susan was staying with us. I had to go into hospital, and I remember thinking thank God Susan’s there to look after the boys for me. Alec was so busy at work he couldn’t take time off. That must have been when it happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When he first slept with her.’

  ‘No wonder you don’t want her back in your life. As for him – what a bastard.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Gillian marvelled that Frances was so cool. Sympathy slipped from her like something smooth and shiny that would never adhere. Gillian longed to have someone at home she could go back to and say, ‘I tried, I really tried. But it’s too awful, you just feel inadequate.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘All over years ago. I just wanted you to know why I’m over-sensitive about miscarriage, abortion. It’s not anything to do with you.’

  Gillian thought about this. ‘But you wouldn’t want Kate to have a baby, would you?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s not up to me, though, is it?’

  ‘She’s only fifteen!’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  Gillian shook her head. ‘Remember Susan – ’

  ‘She was older.’

  ‘Mum and Dad are very down on single parents. I think Susan having Kate made them worse – or maybe that’s the reason.’

  Frances sighed. ‘Well, perhaps they need never know about this.’

  When they reached the station Gillian got out and heaved her bag off the back seat. There were no parking spaces and cars were coming in behind them in the tight turning area.

  ‘I’ll just go – you all right?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Sure. I’ll ring you.’

  Jack stayed at home a few days longer. When he went back to Aberdeen Andrew went with him to get a taste of student life. Kenny came home, and Frances said when he rang, ‘I’ll come over. But not just yet.’

  Now Kate was sick every morning and there were dark circles under her eyes. Frances realised she would have to tell Andrew as soon as he came home; even he would guess what was wrong now.

  ‘I’ve made an appointment with my doctor for you,’ Frances told Kate after the boys had left. ‘There’s a space at four o’clock this afternoon, so I said we’d take it.’

  Kate was slumped over a plate of cereal she had not touched. ‘I can’t even sleep in now,’ she complained. ‘I wake up at seven o’clock and this feeling comes over me, I’m sweating, and I know the minute I even move I’ll want to throw up.’

  ‘I know it’s horrible but it does pass.’ Why had she said that? It would come to an end soon enough.

  Kate suddenly took in what Frances had said about the doctor. ‘Why? I mean, why do we have to go to the doctor? They can’t give me anything to stop me being sick. I mean, the baby would be deformed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I take any drugs or that.’

  ‘For goodness sake.’ Frances sat down beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said, pushing the plate of cereal away. ‘I thought I could eat that but I can’t. I’ve got to eat though. I hope I feel better soon – the baby needs me to eat all the right stuff, protein and that.’

  ‘Kate, I don’t quite know how to put this, but you don’t have to go ahead.’

  Kate looked at her, blank. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t have to have the baby.’

  Panic flared in Kate’s grey eyes, then she turned away with a shrug. ‘I’m not having an abortion if that’s what you mean.’

  Oh God, Frances thought, now what? We’ve both got to see this through, if she does. Somewhere behind this sweep of dismay, relief flickered.

  ‘That’s why we have to see a doctor. So that you can make the right decision.’

  Kate faced her, fierce and determined for the first time.

  ‘I told you. I’m not getting rid of it. No way.’

  ‘But think about it, think, you’re so young, your body hasn’t finished growing yet, and even if your health is all right, what about afterwards?’

  ‘My Mum will help me.’ She folded her arms over her stomach, defiant. ‘She’ll know what to do.’

  Frances sat back, silenced.

  ‘You think she won’t come back don’t you, she won’t come and help me. Well, you’re wrong.’ Without waiting for an answer she did not want, she rushed on, ‘Anyway, it would be murder if I had an abortion. It’s killing a baby.’

  ‘Not really, Kate, honestly – ’ Frances heard Gillian’s indignant protest, it’s not a baby, it’s a collection of cells. ‘Anyway, first things first.’ She could not say anything about Susan, but she could deal with the physical facts. ‘When did you last have a period?’

  Kate flushed. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Before you came here?’

  A pause. ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Before Christmas. November, I suppose.’

  Frances did the calculation rapidly, heart sinking. Kate was at least four months pregnant. With a shock, not realising this had even been in her mind, she told herself at least it did not happen here. She had come to them pregnant.

  ‘It was a boyfriend in Newcastle then? Do you want to get in touch with him?’

  Kate recoiled. ‘No!’

  ‘You’re not still in touch?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care if he fell into a whole tank full of piranhas.’

  No point in pursuing that. They were spared the complication of the boyfriend. It did seem merely a complication; there were more than enough people already who would be drawn into this.

  ‘What about Alec?’ Frances asked. ‘You’ll have to tell him soon if … if you’re going ahead. Let’s speak to the doctor first.’

  ‘You can’t make me have an abortion,’ Kate said. ‘Nobody can.’

  ‘Good Heavens, child!’ Frances stopped herself. Keep calm, she thought, Kate must be terrified, she can’t think straight, she’s nowhere near understanding the implications. ‘I’m not trying to make you do anything,’ she said. ‘All I’m asking is that you see a doctor. You can speak to her on your own, if you’d rather.’

  ‘I don’t want to! Will you come in with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Frances went into the living-room to lay the fire and tidy away newspapers and coffee cups from last night. Morning sunshine lay over the carpet in an arc of light. When she looked out of the window she saw the garden had suddenly filled with colour from crocuses and daffodils, the stirring of a new season. She opened a window and the air that came in was soft and fresh. New life, she thought, breathing in the summer to come, the promise of something she could not imagine yet.

  Kate had followed her.

  ‘Don’t tell Andrew,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell anyb
ody else.’

  Frances put the window on the latch, leaving it open a little, and turned.

  ‘We have to tell the family if you’re going ahead. It’s not the sort of secret you can keep for ever. The baby will show soon, it’s only because you’re so young and thin it doesn’t already.’ Looking at Kate, her long legged girlishness, she thought perhaps there was some change already. How could she have missed it so long?

  Kate put her hands over her stomach. ‘I’m a bit kind of fat already,’ she said. Again, that gleam of panic, and yet behind it pride, astonishment, that this magic should happen to her.

  Frances began to tremble. What on earth are we going to do? She took a deep breath. ‘We have to tell Andrew and we have to tell Alec. At the very least.’

  ‘You tell them.’

  Frances wanted to say, if you insist on having this baby you must do your own dirty work. What would be the good? She was barely more than a child and could not be made adult and responsible just because of sex. Frances did not want to speculate on the conception of this unlooked for child. Baby. A collection of cells. All at once she understood Gillian’s abortion. It was the clean way to end it. Otherwise it did not end, but went on getting worse, much worse, the implications staggering.

  ‘Is it all right to stay here?’ Kate asked, following Frances to the fireside, where she was kneeling down and pulling on a pair of old gloves to rake out the ashes. ‘Till my Mum gets back.’

  Frances sat back on her heels and looked up at her, but before she could speak, Kate said,

  ‘Do you want a hand with anything?’

  ‘Well … you could strip Andrew’s bed for me. Time I changed the sheets. Just put them straight in the machine.’

  I’m a coward, she thought, when Kate had gone. That was the moment to say to her, your mother might never come back. Perhaps Kate had some grounds for thinking she would, perhaps Susan had been in touch. The mobile phone – that would be how she would do it. And yet Kate’s look had been one of defiance rather than secrecy. Should she ask? No, she decided, we’re all right for now, she’s confiding in me, trusting me.

  She had never been so aware of Kate in the house as she was that day. The girl pursued her, hovering. Perhaps all she wanted was some kind of reassurance, but what reassurance could anyone offer, now?

  All day Frances found herself wondering how she could have missed the truth so long. The absence of periods, Kate’s heavy breasts, her dreamy look, Frances had attributed to the uneven path to womanhood, and had half envied her seductive, long-legged beauty. Had she and her sisters ever looked like that?

  With a jolt, she thought of Susan pregnant, as she had seen her on a visit she and Alec had made to Aberdeen. Susan was staying with her parents, taken care of, if not quite forgiven. The person they were blaming most, openly encouraged by Susan, was Adam. He had abandoned her. Did he know about the baby, Frances asked her mother. Grace did not know. They were living as man and wife. Your Dad says he should have accepted his responsibilities. But Susan had cajoled her father into a far greater tolerance than he was ever inclined to show anyone else.

  Susan had been like Kate in those days, with long legs and slender wrists and ankles, fragile in appearance for all the great bulk of her pregnancy. She had carried it before her with grace like a ship in full sail, the long dresses she wore billowing as she moved. The only time in her life she ever sat still and didn’t fidget, restless to be somewhere else. Perhaps that was why her parents were able to accommodate her in their house again. They must have felt protective, as if they were guarding her. As I do with Kate, Frances admitted. As I do, now.

  Just as they were leaving the house to drive to the Health Centre, Kenny telephoned.

  ‘Hi,’ Frances said, ‘we’re just on our way out. Can I ring you back later?’

  During the school holidays he sometimes called her in his slack spells at work, just to chat. She enjoyed those conversations, caught as she often was in the middle of some domestic task, but she did not want to linger now.

  ‘Sure. Just wondered where you’d got to – have you abandoned me altogether, me and my pooch, in our lonely cottage?’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve just been busy with family stuff. I’ll call you later.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  She almost stopped at that, something new in his voice, not just humour, but this was not the time to bother with it.

  ‘It was just Kenny,’ she said to Kate, as she got into the car. She had never explained Kenny, seeing no reason to do so. Her grown up private life was not shared even with her sons. Not that they minded Kenny. He talked football with them, but kept out of the way on the whole, or Frances kept him out of the way, so that he did not impinge on her family life.

  ‘He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?’ Kate asked, as they drove down the lane.

  ‘Boyfriend doesn’t seem quite the right word,’ Frances smiled. ‘A friend, I suppose. A good friend.’

  Kate looked sceptical. After a moment, Frances asked, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  ‘We might have to wait a while,’ Frances said as they went into the surgery.

  Now they had arrived Kate seemed more at ease than Frances, and sat flicking through magazines. They were full of glossy photographs of celebrities in wedding dresses or beside swimming pools, or acres of leather sofa, or holding babies dressed in miniature sportswear. Kate immersed herself in glamour, while Frances studied the equally unattainable houses in Homes and Gardens, then gave them up and stared out of the window at the flat stretch of grass behind the Health Centre, and the trees beyond the fence. She realised that the strange sensation in her stomach was what they used to call ‘butterflies’ when they were young, waiting for a boy to turn up or someone to ask them to dance. Why did she have this feeling, and not Kate?

  Kate had stopped turning pages and instead was watching a small child of around eighteen months, walking a little unsteadily, trotting from his mother to the toy box, bringing her back a wooden dog on wheels. His mother showed him how to pull the dog along. He tugged at the string then sat down with a bump in surprise when the toy rolled up to him fast. He laughed, and his mother laughed. Kate turned to Frances and it was as if she had not seen any of this, but was terrified, her eyes dark, her mouth pinched. Frances leaned towards her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly. Kate nodded, biting her lip, and looked away, but not at the child this time.

  They went on waiting.

  2

  The doctor looked over her spectacles, took them off, and asked Kate,

  ‘Why do you want to have the baby?’

  ‘I just do, that’s all,’ Kate said, not looking up.

  The truth was, she did not. What she wanted was the baby not to exist. For weeks she had convinced herself it did not even though she knew this was crazy, the way to make things worse. She would have told her mother if her mother had been here. It was all their fault. Away from home, there was no-one for her to confide in, she was alone. Who they were, she could not specify, or would not. Alec, Frances, her teachers in Newcastle, anyone but her mother.

  Susan couldn’t help it, everyone knew that, couldn’t help her dark moods, any more than she could control her mad shrieking days, frantic with activity, laughing, presents and treats. It was just the way she was. Years ago, when she was little, Alec had told her that when he had found her sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying, Susan nowhere in sight, a pan boiling dry in the kitchen and the back door open, a cold wind blowing through the empty house.

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was angry with me because I was the last one out of school.’

  He sat beside her, disentangling what had happened, until the smell of burning hissed through the kitchen doorway and he leapt up to turn off the gas. With a whoosh of steam he sank the pan in a basin of water then came back to sit beside
Kate again.

  ‘What happened to your knee?’ he asked, putting a white folded handkerchief on the graze oozing drops of blood in a criss-cross pattern.

  ‘I fell on the way home. I couldn’t keep up with Mummy, she was in a big hurry.’

  Alec’s face gave nothing away. He said,

  ‘She can’t help it, pet. It’s not your fault, being late out of school or not keeping up. That wasn’t why she was angry. She can’t help it – that’s just the way she is. You and me,’ he went on, lifting off the handkerchief and inspecting the graze, ‘we have to understand Mummy. Because no-one else will.’

  So it wasn’t Susan’s fault she had to go, and though Kate had often wished she were different, she had never wanted a different mother. Just to have Susan back, Susan when she was all right was what she wanted, as if by wishing it could happen. That would make it easy to decide about the baby. She wasn’t going to let anybody decide anything, before her mother came back.

  So whose fault was it that she had left it too late to do anything but have the baby? She was about twenty weeks pregnant, the doctor estimated after examining her. This was a shock to Frances but going home, Kate was the more shaken. As they drove away from the surgery, she muttered between gritted teeth: ‘That was disgusting.’

  ‘What?’ Frances asked, though she could guess.

  ‘The doctor doing that. I never thought you had to do that. Not till the baby was being born.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s one of the things about having babies,’ Frances told her. ‘Your body’s not your own any more.’

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘It is necessary. They don’t do an internal examination more often than they can help.’ She was conscious of Kate stiff with distaste and misery beside her. ‘It’s such a pity you didn’t – we didn’t – know sooner. You could still have a termination though.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say that!’ Kate flashed out. ‘She showed us those pictures – like what size the baby is and that, and how it’s got arms and legs. I just don’t know how you can say that.’