A Winter's Child (46 page)

Silence. And then Nola's throaty chuckle attempting with the courage of desperation to retain the character of laughter but deteriorating rapidly, painfully, into a cackle of hysteria which seemed to fill the room.

‘Isn't that just – I wonder what Doctor Marie bloody Stopes would have to say about that. What do
you
think, Claire?'

She had thought, all afternoon, of terminal disease, a lingering, wasting death or an abrupt cessation of the heart; she had thought of melancholia, chronic nervous collapse, even suicide. She had not, incredibly as it seemed now, thought of this. But she had nursed men. It struck her now how little she knew of the ills of women.

‘Whose child?' she asked because she had to say something, had to remain calm, and it seemed a logical question.

‘Well, not my husband's, that's for certain, which wouldn't matter a damn except that I can't convince him otherwise, can I? I haven't slept with him for years, you know that. And I can't jump back into bed with him now and hope he won't notice when the baby comes two months early – because he wouldn't have me.'

‘Nola!'
And all the pity, the sadness, the understanding Claire felt was in her voice, so strongly and deeply expressed that tears suddenly poured out of Nola's eyes like the switching on of a tap.

‘Oh God, Claire – don't do that to me. Don't be kind. Just tell me I'm a stupid bitch who deserves every foul thing that's got to happen – a whore and not even a good one. Call me names. Everybody else will. And then I can shout back at you.'

‘What good will that do? Nola, you're shivering – and sweating. You're in pain, aren't you?'

‘No – no. Me? Never. Just give me a cigarette.'

And as she leaned forward to take a light Claire saw that her hands were clammy, her forehead beaded with moisture that was dripping now into the mixture of tears and vaseline and kohl oozing from her eyes. The face of a tragic clown emerging from underneath the paint and the furs and the clever remarks that had been Nola. But when she reached out her hand and touched her arm Nola shied away.

‘Nola-'

‘No. Don't sympathize. You'll make me cry again. I'll tell you something now to make you laugh. New Year's Eve this happened to me. Would you believe it? While I'm lying there making up my mind it's all over with Roland, what is Roland doing? Impregnating me. Now isn't
that
a hoot.'

Once again her voice cracked with raucous laughter and swallowing hard she closed her eyes for a moment and clenched her fists, the muscles and veins of her throat knotting with the effort of control.

‘I know it was New Year's Eve, you see, because I was out of action the week before Christmas. I spent Christmas at home. And apart from the one time there's been nothing since. There's no doubt.'

‘Have you told him?'

‘Of course I haven't told him.' She sounded hard suddenly and scornful. ‘It's none of his bloody business is it.'

‘Isn't it?'

She swallowed again. ‘No. But the real reason I haven't told him is because he wouldn't want to know. He'd bolt like a scared rabbit – I know that. I don't want to watch it. Do you understand?'

‘Yes. What
are
you going to do?'

Once again Nola lay back in the chair and closed her eyes, her body stretched out in a posture that was stiff and awkward, another clenching of muscles that were released abruptly on a long, hollow sigh.

‘Yes – what to do? I know how caged mice feel now on a wheel – you know – round and round and round – and ending up in exactly the same place. There's a doctor, Claire – in Faxby – who says he can put things right-'

‘No.' She was so horrified that it became, for just a moment, a pain in her own abdomen, a spasm of revulsion that probed her very deep. For she had heard of these doctors before. And she had a woman's body too.

‘No, Nola. You mean there's an old woman in a back street with a knitting needle-'

But Nola, her eyes closing again, smiled and shook her head.

‘No, Claire. I went to see the old woman first and, desperate as I was – well, I could think of a more comfortable way of committing suicide. Although she can't kill everybody she touches, since her business is pretty brisk.'

‘They don't die on her premises, I suppose, and not always straight away.'

‘I suppose not. But there is a doctor – or so he says. One could hardly ask to see his qualifications. Not with the risk he's taking. He'd go to prison, wouldn't he, if he was caught?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would I?' She opened her eyes wide and it seemed to Claire that she could see straight through them to the naked fear, the panic.

‘I don't know. If he got caught you'd probably be dead anyway.'

‘Oh – thanks. That cheers me up no end. Is abortion so dangerous then-?'

A long time ago, in Upper Heaton, there had been a fourteen-year-old scullery maid, Claire remembered, who had bled to death in a coal-shed. In France, a nurse she knew slightly had poisoned herself in her efforts to procure a miscarriage. Through long generations she knew that desperate women who, for whatever reason, did not wish to bear a child, would not do so, no matter how great the risk of pain or punishment, deformity or death. She knew that a great many of the unregistered midwives still practising among the labouring classes continued to offer abortion as they had always done, as the only contraceptive available in the mean streets and overcrowded hovels of any city, where penniless, under-nourished, ill-informed women conceived annually like cattle. And when one, or several of those women died, who cared to ask too many questions? She knew that mill-girls and shop-girls, refusing, like Nola, to beg from an unwilling lover, would submit themselves to this furtive, often fatal surgery for the simple reason that they had been told by generations of fathers and mothers ‘Don't ever bring trouble home to me'; not for moral reasons alone but because the family could not bear the burden of another mouth to feed. And so they bled to death in coal-sheds, sometimes, at fourteen. Or they sat, laughing and trembling and talking of death and prison at thirty-eight, like Nola. At Upper Heaton, all those years ago, no one had shown the slightest interest in discovering the identity of the dead girl's lover. Nola herself, in this case, did not wish to involve Roland.

‘Don't do it, Nola,' she said.

‘Darling –' And, again, she unveiled those transparent, terrified eyes. ‘What else? Let's be sensible. What else is there – except the river? Naturally I've considered that. And what it comes down to is this. Drowning is certain death. My doctor friend may kill me or he may not. So I'll just have to take my chance …'

They faced each other in silence and then, quietly and slowly, Claire said.

‘You don't want to consider having the child?'

‘Are you mad?'

And Nola's voice was equally quiet and slow.

‘It could be arranged.'

‘Yes. I could go abroad for my health, and come back in nine months'time looking much better – leaving a little bundle behind me in a convent or somewhere to be adopted. I know. But I'd need help for that. And money.'

‘Yes.'

‘And who has money? Cousin Arnold, of course. He might even lend me some. But he'd talk about it in the Tangerine Suite, to his flappers, to prove how generous he is and how safe they are with him. Cousin Bernard? Nanette wouldn't let him. She's a good woman, you see, which means she doesn't help people in trouble. She finds it too shocking. And my mother –. Could you go to your mother, Claire, with something like this?'

‘No. I couldn't.'

‘Exactly. You'd get a warmer welcome from the river. So would I.'

‘But you could get money, Nola.'

‘I dare say. But what I can't do, my sweet, innocent child, is get away from Benedict. What do I say to him? I'm just off to Cannes for a few months, darling. He's no fool. He'd know.'

‘Yes.'

And once again they looked at each other long and levelly, eye holding eye.

‘You're not suggesting I should tell Benedict?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd prefer to die.' It was a statement of fact, delivered coolly, without drama. Claire believed it and, shaking off the silence, the false calm, she threw herself suddenly forward and took hold of Nola's hands, holding them fast, propelled to make this contact by a rush of compassion, the desperate need to prevent Nola's life, and the life it contained, from being thrown away.

‘Tell him, Nola. Yes – you can tell him.' Suddenly, almost joyfully, she was sure of it. ‘And whatever he does – whatever he says – oh good Lord – what
can
he do to you?'

The panic which had been simmering, waiting its moment, broke free with the force of an underground torrent spluttering through Nola's pores, pushing her over the brink of herself into raucous hysteria.

‘Tell him? I'd jump in the river
now
before I'd do that. I've made a fool of him for years – years – you know that. He'd – oh God knows – he'd crucify me, one way or another.'

And because she knew how much Nola had enjoyed believing that, had somehow needed it as an essential spice to all her untidy, often pointless adventures, Claire hesitated and then, in her determination to keep Nola safe from that unkempt, unsterilized surgery, she took a deep breath and went on, ‘Nola – I feel quite sure that he knows – about you and Roland, I mean – and the others …'

‘Knows!'
Nola was so shocked, so scornful, so completely aghast that it could, in less potentially fatal circumstances, have been comic. ‘Of course he doesn't know. Come on, Claire, let's not be naive. It's all right to talk modern – look modern – but in the end – well – rules are rules. And when you're a woman the rule is not to get caught. My mother taught me that. And when you are caught – like I am now – then the thing is to cover your own tracks, clear up your own mess, have the good taste not to be a nuisance or an embarrassment to one's kith and kin.'

‘I suppose your mother taught you that, too.'

‘Yes – didn't yours?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well then –?'

‘All right.' And she was treading very warily on egg-shells now. ‘Nola – I think –' and she was conscious of weighing every word separately on her tongue, ‘now – for this – you can trust Benedict.'

‘Do you really?' She might have been in a dream, her voice coming through a haze of distance.

‘Yes, I do. You don't have to go to that doctor, Nola – really you don't.'

‘Fancy that.'

‘Nola – I mean it.'

‘Yes, I know you do. I'm sorry.'

‘For what?'

Taking another enormous swallow, her throat contracting again, Nola sat rigid and very still for a moment, allowing the quietness to return before she said, ‘Because the bastard cheated me – oh God, Claire-!'

Her body reared backward and upward in a fierce contraction of pain, her teeth sinking into her lower lip, her eyes staring.

‘Claire!'

‘Yes. Hang on to me.' There was no point now in recriminations. She saw that the damage had been done. And what mattered was giving aid to whatever remained.

‘The bastard said-'

‘Never mind, Nola.'

It was too late for that.

‘I believed him. I thought he could
do
it, then and there, and it would be over. That's what I paid him for.'

‘This afternoon?' Of course. She understood it all now, the jaunty swing of furs, the talk of Miriam's slow poison, the sudden throwing of her arms around Kit, the story of rushing off to meet the love of her life – again. Of course.

‘And then, when he'd put me through the hell of it –. Dear God! I thought it was over and it was just beginning. He said “Go home and in a few hours you'll have a miscarriage. If the pain gets too bad or the bleeding won't stop call your doctor”. He said
that.
“Go home to your husband and call your doctor” – oh – the bastard! I can't do that, Claire. It's one thing I can't do. That's what I paid him for. And now – look at me, Claire – look –'

‘Yes, I know-'

She had seen, moments ago, that Nola was sitting in blood.

She had never nursed women. But, throughout the ages, one woman had always helped another in childbirth with no greater skills than the example her own body had taught her, and enough instinct remained for Claire to get Nola to bed, to prop up her legs, to calm her with false reassurances ‘It's going to be all right. Yes – yes – of course I know what to do, and, so far as possible, to keep her warm, and clean.

Blood in itself did not trouble her. Men's blood, that is. But this blood, containing the particles of an unborn life, was different. Very different. So far removed, in fact, from her previous experience that she felt compelled to treat it with tenderness, to remove each gore-soaked towel with care, to fold it gently instead of bundling it hurriedly away.

She had seen so many men in pain that even her compassion, at certain times, had blunted. Female agony was new to her and because it was
this
agony, this deliberate turning of birth into death, it entered her own body, the muscles of her own abdomen contracting with Nola's, her own womb forced open, straining and labouring to deliver these gouts of blood which had been – which were – a human child.

She understood wounds inflicted by guns and shells and gas. She did not understand wounds like these. She did not know how to stop the bleeding nor how long, without fatal results, it might be expected to continue. She did not know whether Nola was dying or not.

And Nola did not care.

No doctor must be called. She was adamant, hysterical about that, crying out and choking, her throat full of tears, making herself worse. A doctor would admit her to hospital. Questions would be asked and even if the police were not informed, then her husband certainly would be. This was not London or some other big city where she could give a false name. This was Faxby. Two years ago she had herself officiated, with Miriam, at the opening of the new General Infirmary, wearing an oyster satin turban with an ostrich feather pinned to the front of it, a yard long. And somebody there would be sure to remember her. Which meant, of course, that by tomorrow morning everybody would know.