Absolute Hush (16 page)

The next morning Mrs Lovage brought Sissy a handful of white tablets. ‘It'll make you feel sick as a cat and give you a tummyache as though you'd eaten a tree of green apples,' she said venomously, anticipating revenge for the greasy hands remark. ‘But you'll have to take them. There's no other way.'

‘What ever is it?' Sissy asked, staring blankly.

‘It's medicine to cure your little problem,' Mrs Lovage said. ‘Now swallow them down with water. They taste bitter but that can't be helped. You'll have to be brave.'

‘But I'm perfectly all right now, thank you,' said Sissy stiffly. ‘I don't feel a bit sick any more.

‘It's to get rid of the baby, you stupid girl,' cried Mrs Lovage, wishing to get this over fast before Elizabeth came in.

‘Baby?' said Sissy incredulously.

Mrs Lovage prodded a strong finger at Sissy's belly. ‘In there, you little fool. Don't you go telling me some man put it there while you were asleep.'

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,' said Sissy with dignity. ‘And please take your finger out of my tummy button.'

Mrs Lovage made a sudden snatch at Sissy's hand and thrusting the tablets into it cried, ‘Oh, come on. Don't try this play-acting with me,' then tried closing Sissy's fingers over the pills. ‘I know all about girls.'

‘You don't know a thing,' shouted Sissy rudely, and opening her fist, hurled the tablets to the ground. They rolled and bounced all over the floor as Sissy strode away.

‘Such a waste when they're so hard to get in war-time,' mourned Mrs Lovage, retrieving tablets out of the cracks in the floorboards.

Sissy, racing away from the tumble of tablets, felt less sure of herself than she allowed Mrs Lovage to see.

She hunted through the house and at last found George in the cellar sitting on an old deckchair, reading yesterday's newspaper and drinking whisky out of a spam tin.

He had stolen the whisky after the dinner party. Elizabeth had hunted widely for it, going through cupboards with shaking hands and tear-filled eyes.

‘I think I'm pregnant,' Sissy told him flatly.

‘Gracious!' George leapt up and his chair collapsed. He went diving after it saying, ‘I'll get the chair, then you can sit on it.'

Shaking coal dust from his hair he set up the chair and ushered Sissy into it.

Sissy sat carefully. For some reason her legs were trembling.

‘Wow, Sis, this is too exciting,' said George. ‘Have a little tot to celebrate or will that be bad for the baby?'

Sissy shook her head. ‘So you have understood that there will be a baby?'

‘Well, of course,' said George. ‘That's implied in the fact that you're pregnant.' He poured a finger of whisky and handed it to her.

Sissy shuddered as she sipped. At last she said, ‘Do you wonder who the father is?'

‘Of course not, it's mine,' said George joyfully.

‘Mrs Lovage gave me quinine tablets to get rid of it.'

‘Poison my baby before it's even born?' George almost screamed. ‘Sissy, you've got to swear you won't do anything like that. Swear, swear,' as though begging her not to throw away last year's conkers.

‘George, have you considered all the aspects of the matter?' Sissy asked, trying to be sensible and mature. ‘Where will it live, for instance?'

‘Here, of course,' said George. ‘Where else?'

‘Who will pay for its food?'

‘It won't cost a thing,' said George. It was as if he was begging to be allowed to keep a rabbit or a guinea pig. ‘It'll drink milk from your breasts, Sissy,' he let out a noisy laugh and began bounding round the cellar, flourishing his spam tin.

‘I always thought your breasts were pretty, but now they're going to be useful too.'

‘What will happen when we grow up and leave home?' persisted Sissy, but George's enthusiasm and cheerful solutions were making her feel better already.

George felt in charge and as if Sissy respected him.

‘We'll take it with us of course,' he assured her joyfully. ‘It will be quite little. Babies always are, so it won't be heavy. Oh, Sis, I can't imagine anything so much fun as sharing a baby with you.'

Every now and again during the weeks that followed Sissy would get another worry.

‘Shouldn't we be making preparations?'

‘Oh,' said George, interested. ‘What sort?' He was eager and ready for action.

‘Well, in the books I've read about such things they always had to boil water and bake newspapers,' said Sissy.

‘How extraordinary,' cried George, looking bemused. But he promised to save newspapers from now on. ‘But what will they be needed for?'

‘I don't know,' said Sissy. ‘I suppose when the time comes it will become obvious.'

‘Not long now I shouldn't think, Sis,' crowed George.

‘It's agony from what Mother said,' muttered Sissy, feeling resentful. ‘You don't seem to have remembered that.' Then a new worry struck. ‘How are we going to conceal the birth from her?'

‘She never found out about the cat having kittens.'

‘I should think even you would see that that was rather different,' snapped Sissy.

Elizabeth had said she was going to get Mr Lovage to drown the kittens as soon as they were born, and George and Sissy had succeeded in hiding the cat in the Apostle Bedroom wardrobe on the day of her delivery. They even managed to hide the ten kittens from Elizabeth for a week.

‘I wonder if she'll be as upset about the baby as she was about that.'

Elizabeth had been most terribly broken over the matter of the kittens.

A week later Sissy said, ‘Where are we going to get its clothes from?'

‘Officers' Families, of course,' George nowadays had an answer for everything.

‘Do you think Officers' Families does nappies, George?'

Penned in the little amniotic pool of my mother's womb throughout the winter I felt myself go from strength to strength. It was a nasty near brush with the quinine, but when that scare was over I began to revel in existence. I am developing in all the areas that are necessary for the world's future. My brain, even at this early stage, is of such a high calibre that there cannot be any in the cosmos to match it. I am confident of fulfilling my mission.

*

Huddled under her huge Officers' Families coat, Sissy's tummy swelled all winter. Mrs Lovage, unable to take any action, watched with suspicious dismay and could see no way in which to tell Elizabeth who, because her mind was on other things, seemed not to notice.

Barney had become Elizabeth's lover and they went cycling together through the cold lanes. As they pedalled, Elizabeth would sometimes wonder why she did not feel more delight, and think it must be because the freedom the war had given her had caused her to grow out of the domination of men.

‘How wide and red the back of his neck is,' she would reflect as she trundled in the padre's wake.

‘Your tummy's getting huge,' said George on Christmas day.

Sissy told him, ‘Well, of course. There's another person in it.'

‘The baby will have to have a stocking next year, too,' said George, poking among the nuts and apples and paper tooters. ‘Do you think Mother will buy the presents or will we have to, out of our pocket money?'

‘When did we ever get pocket money?' sniffed Sissy.

‘We could do errands,' said George.

It grew very cold in January and Sissy's skirts became so tight they wouldn't do up. Elizabeth caught sight of her once, bundled against the wind, and for a second time a chill of fear touched her. There was something about the girl's body … but no, it must be gas. She over-ate. Elizabeth shook the silly fear from her mind. A thirteen-year-old child? Anyway, there was no man.

Sparkling frosts laced the willows and Sissy, sitting on a legless kitchen chair, was skated by a string-harnessed George over the frozen moat.

‘Don't I get a turn?' gasped George, panting, scarlet, and Sissy reminded him sternly, ‘I am a pregnant woman.'

‘You're getting heavier and heavier,' groaned George, while Sissy, sitting fat and limpid like a snow queen, tight belly resting on her knees, leant back, blanket-wrapped, because her outdoor coat wouldn't button up any more.

‘You have to remember my condition,' she beamed.

‘I never forget,' moaned George.

Ever since the dinner party Billy, James, and Robert had been coming regularly to the Plague House to help Elizabeth. Watching George haul Sissy round the lake, they became reminded of their own childhoods and, going out, offered to pull Sissy themselves.

George saw them coming and tried to escape but Sissy caught him by the wrist saying, ‘You'd better stay. Lurking is a sign of guilt,' so George, longing to be pulled himself, worn out from hauling Sissy, cringingly awaited the approach of the suspicious airmen.

‘We might trap George into admitting he set us on fire on purpose,' whispered James as they scrunched across the frosty lawn towards the moat and the shivering George.

‘My God, I'll give the little fiend a thrashing if I find out,' said Rob.

‘You can sit with your sister,' Robert told George, thinking to lull the boy into a false sense of security.

Skimming easily, skates spewing up cold fumes, and breathing warm, white smoke, James, Rob and Billy peeped to judge if George's expression was guilty, and murmured, ‘He'll give himself away sooner or later.'

‘Well, little chap, put out any more fires with paraffin lately?' asked Charles as they swirled over the ice.

But George, exulting at being served by men he had tried to fire, had grown confident now and was not to be caught out so easily.

‘Fire?' he said innocently, as though he could hardly remember the event.

As they raced round, George leant against his heavy sister and pressed his cheek against her belly, hoping to hear the baby
breathing. A bump on the ear made him jerk up spluttering. ‘I felt its foot kicking, Sis.'

The moat monster,' Sissy mysteriously and grandly informed the bewildered airmen.

‘Have you had any news of Beattie, Sissy?' asked Billy, when his turn to pull came. He had heard that she had been captured by the Nazis while trying to help Jewish children escape from Germany.

‘No,' said Sissy, suddenly sad.

During the next two months Sissy's belly swelled and the ice melted, so, even if she could have fitted into the chair, there was nothing for the airmen or George to drag her over.

Sissy was eight months pregnant now and bursting out of everything, and Mrs Lovage said to her husband, ‘My lady doesn't see what's before her very nose.'

Mr Lovage observed philosophically, ‘Folk only see what they expect or want to.'

‘You ought to tell her,' said Myrtle. ‘She'll get ever such a shock otherwise.'

But still Mrs Lovage didn't dare.

Being accompanied by a man left Elizabeth in a seesaw state of turmoil. Sometimes, between episodes of pub lunches after a spin across the winter countryside, she would look up from her cider, see Barney scrutinising her with an expression she thought was proprietory and wonder, ‘Why?' But at other times, soothed by chocolates, silk stockings, scent, and tender embraces in the evening, she would know the answer.

There was, however, something she could not answer.

‘There's something awfully wrong with Sissy,' said Barney. ‘She sits around when at her age she should be full of energy. Do you think she's not getting proper food? All this Potato Pete stuff. When I was a boy it wasn't a meal without steak and kidney pudding.'

Elizabeth, who hated to feel criticised, snapped, ‘She's going through a stage. Girls do.'

‘She's getting dreadfully fat, too,' said Barney, who as a modern vicar felt it was his duty to interfere in all sorts of things.

‘Puppy fat!' snapped Elizabeth, the original old fear starting to surge again. ‘All girls go through it. I was very fat myself at her age.'

‘I can't imagine you anything but the most slimmest, gracefullest, beautifullest …' cuddled Barney. Then, in a sterner tone, ‘Don't you think you ought to put her on a diet, though? She looks pregnant at the moment.'

Shaking off his hands, trembling like a yacht in a hurricane, Elizabeth rushed away, Barney watching her flee and wondering what he'd said.

‘It can't … it isn't … it mustn't …'jabbered Elizabeth's mind as she tried to soothe herself with a cigarette. There were no men. The airmen? The base was just across the road and several times during the winter airmen had been seen in the garden. One night, airmen stole the children's rabbits. Or at least that was the assumption when the cages were found open and empty in the morning.

‘They're probably tucking into rabbit pie in the mess at this very moment,' Mrs Lovage had said, sagely while the children howled.

Elizabeth had even seen the airmen playing with the children. She had been pleased, for it kept them out of her hair, though Mrs L had expressed concern, but only because the airmen had encouraged the children to play messy games that got their clothes torn and dirty. But they were nice boys. They would never do that sort of thing to a child who probably didn't know from which part of a woman's body a baby emerged. Or into which it was conceived. They would never do ‘that' to Elizabeth's child.

Bruno? But Elizabeth knew Mrs L and was sure that if there had been the slightest possibility of the girl actually having been raped they would never have heard the last of it.

*

February. The weather was bad. Sudden snowstorms swept the countryside.

Elizabeth thought Sissy seemed more lively, and even looked a little less fat. She began to feel reassured, to think she had panicked for nothing, that the girl just had a bad figure and a lazy nature.