Fiercombe Manor (3 page)

Yet Dora would never have got herself into such a terrible mess. Impetuous she may have been, but she was never naive. When she told me some of the romantic nonsense men had whispered to her while sliding an arm around her shoulders at the Empire on a Saturday night, she always rolled her eyes. She knew what they were about, while I, for all my cleverness, was as innocent as a child. I cast my mind back to all that James had said to me and realised why I had never told Dora about it. Somewhere in me, I had known she would laugh at me for being so easily taken in.

On my way home, while I still felt some semblance of resolve, I decided to do what I knew had to be done. I wasn't sure the pregnancy counted yet; I was barely three months gone, and I hadn't felt a thing apart from the sickness. There were medicines you could take, but I didn't know exactly what, or how much to ask for. If I went into a chemist's and asked for quinine or pennyroyal—both of them sounding like relics of evidence from a Victorian poisoning—wouldn't they guess what it was for?

In the end I bought a small bottle of cheap gin, telling the disinterested girl who took the money that it was for my father, and that evening ran myself a scalding bath. I was terrified my mother would smell the alcohol fumes on the steam, so I stuffed the gap under the door with a towel. As the water slowly cooled and the gin swirled into my blood, I grew so dizzy and sleepy that I almost fainted. I couldn't even do that right, I thought, as I finally sat up and pulled out the plug; instead of finishing what had scarcely begun inside me, I'd nearly drowned myself. I woke up the next morning with a nauseous, clamping headache, a furred mouth, and a feeling of acute misery, but there was no blood.

I somehow endured a week at the office, but the long, empty hours of the next Saturday undid me. Saying I was going out for some fresh air, I made the familiar journey to Dora's house.

“I'm sorry I called you a fool,” she said, once we were safely in her bedroom.

“No, you were right,” I said. “I've been completely stupid.”

She sat up against her pillows. “Have you thought about what you're going to do?”

I swallowed. “I bought some gin, but it didn't work. All I managed to do was nearly faint.”

“You do look awful,” she said with her usual frankness. “I'll have to tell Mother you've got a cold.”

“I was going to go to the chemist's,” I continued desperately. “But I didn't know what to ask for. Then I thought of bumping myself down the stairs, but I can't very well do that when my mother and father are in, can I?”

Dora stifled a giggle of hysteria. “I'm sorry, Alice. I always laugh when I shouldn't, you know I do. The whole thing is just so awful. I can't really believe it yet.”

I sat down on the end of the bed and put my head in my hands.

“I've heard that Beecham's powders can work if you take enough of them,” she said. “And washing soda, though I can't think how anyone would be able to force that down.”

“I think it's too late for all that. Perhaps if I'd done that weeks ago, but now . . . I feel like it has taken hold, somehow. I don't think anything would work except for . . .”

Dora sighed and covered my hand with hers. “I think it's the only way. You can't possibly go ahead and have it.”

“No, I know.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes until Dora spoke quietly.

“I know where you might go—I've been thinking about it. I heard Mother talking about someone once, when she thought I was upstairs. Remember she was a nurse before she married Father? Well, there was a midwife she knew then. They weren't friends or anything, but she knew her. Anyway, it turns out that she does them in her kitchen. She lives in one of those streets the other side of the green, beyond the Empire. I know where it is because Mother said it was two doors up from the sweet shop on the corner. She said what a disgrace it was, all those innocent children walking past a house like that. We could easily go there one evening, and no one would ever know. She charges two guineas, I'm sure that's what Mother said.”

“What do they do to it, to get it out?” My voice was a whisper.

“I don't really know. I think they give you something to make it sort of come away, and then it's just like having your monthlies, only heavier.”

I nodded slowly. There was nothing else for it.

A few evenings later, Dora and I stood at a drab-coloured door. The woman who let us in was short and squat, her enormous, shelflike bust emphasised by a dark apron.

“Don't just stand on the step, then,” she said, ushering us into a dingy hallway that smelt of boiled vegetables and something sharper.

After closing the door briskly, the evening sun shut out with a bang, she gestured for us to follow her towards the back of the house. Once in the kitchen, she looked at us enquiringly. When I didn't say anything, Dora spoke up.

“We've come . . . well, we've come for my friend”—she gestured at me—“because she needs—”

“I can guess why you're here,” said the woman bluntly. “I like to take payment first.”

“We were told it would be two guineas.” I could hear the tremor in Dora's voice.

The woman nodded. “That's right.”

I took the money from my purse and put it in her outstretched hand. She transferred it deftly to the front pocket of her apron.

“Now then, lovey, how far gone are you?” she said, the endearment at odds with the situation.

“About three months,” I whispered.

“Not as late as some,” she replied. “What have you tried already?”

I stared at her blankly, and Dora broke in. “She had some gin and a hot bath.”

“When it's taken, a bit of drink and warm water won't shift it,” the woman said.

She pointed to a narrow table in the corner of the room.

“Take your underclothes off and get up on there. We'll soon have it done.”

I must have looked frightened, because her face softened a shade.

“I've been a midwife for thirty years,” she said. “I know what I'm about. You'll be right as rain in a few days. You've just got to think of it like we're bringing your monthlies on because they're late.”

I removed my shoes, stockings, and knickers and folded them neatly on top of my handbag. I clambered up onto the table awkwardly, with Dora helping me, but kept my skirt pulled down and my legs together. Dora's hand on my arm was clammy.

I looked around the room, noticing a tray of congealed dripping on the side. Once I had, I thought I could smell it, and it made my stomach turn. Through a smeary window I could see part of a yard, the door of an outhouse, and a sagging line of washing.

Dora gave my arm a hesitant pat and then went to stand by the door. I knew how much she wanted to run back to her pretty bedroom, where she could lose herself in her magazines about Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo, the new vanishing cream and the latest permanent wave. I would have given anything to do that myself.

The woman unscrewed a jar, the contents of which she poked at with a spoon.

“What's in there?” said Dora.

“Slippery elm and a bit of pennyroyal,” she replied without looking up.

“Do I drink it?” I said stupidly.

She laughed mirthlessly. “You're an innocent one, that's for sure. Why would I have you undress for that? No, we put this up there to bring it on.”

I glanced over at Dora, but her gaze was fixed on the jar.

“Does it always work?” I said.

“It opens you up so I can have a proper look.”

She unwrapped a metal knitting needle from a piece of cloth.

“You've nothing to worry about. I'll heat this up so it's sterilised.”

The needle was identical to those my mother had at home; I could picture a pair of them stuck in a ball of wool next to the wireless.

I scrambled down from the table and began dressing before I had consciously decided to. Dora didn't move to stop me. The
woman pulled out the needle she'd laid in the grate and clattered it down next to the dripping tray.

“Now then, don't get yourself all worked up. It'll be over before you know it. You don't want this baby, do you?”

I shook my head. “But I don't want this either,” I said breathlessly. I felt as if I would collapse if I didn't leave that kitchen.

“Please yourself,” said the woman, crossing her arms across her chest as she watched me fumble with my shoes.

“Alice, are you sure?” said Dora. “You can't afford anything else. A private doctor would be twenty times as much.”

“Let's go. Please, Dora.”

“Here,” said the woman, her hand in her apron pocket. “I'll keep a guinea for my trouble, but you can have the rest back. God knows you're going to need it more than me in six months' time.”

The truth of the matter was not that I couldn't bear to have an abortion; it was that in the moment, I was more viscerally afraid of letting that woman put a dirty knitting needle inside me than I was of having a baby. However hard I tried, I simply couldn't imagine that at all; the notion was as ungraspable as wet soap on porcelain.

When I got back home, I caught sight of my face in the hall mirror. It was the colour of chalk. My mother was alone in the kitchen, washing the best china. She looked up when I came in, studying me for a moment before turning to the sink.

“Are you going to tell me what's wrong with you?” she said as she began to wash up the plates, the water steaming hot, her hands already puce from it. The clean china squeaked as she lifted each plate out of the bowl and placed it in the rack.

I leant against the cupboards that hadn't altered since I was a baby myself, toddling around and getting under her feet. I got the biscuit barrel out for something to do, and the action of easing off the stiff metal lid was so familiar that I nearly cried.

“What do you mean?” I said feebly.

Always sharp, she looked over her shoulder at me.

“Tell me the truth, Alice. I'm your mother. You've been acting peculiar for weeks now.”

The tears came then, and I couldn't stop them, though I was at least silent about it, biting the inside of my cheek so that I didn't sob. They ran down my cheeks and began to soak into the collar of my blouse.

Without moving from the sink, she sighed. “It's a man, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I managed to get out. “But it's ended now.”

“So you've had your heart broken. Well, men will disappoint. Doesn't he want to marry you?”

“He can't.”

She turned at that. “What do you mean, he can't? I hope he doesn't think he's too good for you. Where does he live?”

I shook my head, and she stared at me for a long moment.

“What then?” she said, but as she did, I saw the possibility enter her mind. I watched her features seem to harden and narrow.

“Oh, so it's like that, then, is it?”

I looked down at the lino that was always sticky underfoot, however hard it was scrubbed.

“Answer me! Is he married?”

“Yes, but he said—”

“He said what? That she was mad? That she had run away to sea? What nonsense did he have you believe?”

My voice was barely more than a whisper. “He said that they had never been happy, that they would get a divorce.”

My mother shook her head in disgust.

“And it never occurred to you that he would say that? I thought you were supposed to be the clever one.”

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

“I did not bring you up to gad about with other people's husbands. You've never shown any interest in a man before; I was convinced you'd be a spinster all your life. And now this. The only thing to be thankful for is that he's thrown you over now, before things could get any worse.”

She dried her hands and leant back against the sink, arms crossed.

“I hope you've at least had the sense to keep this to yourself,” she continued after a pause. “That Dora's flighty enough to tell her mother. I can see
her
face now, pretending sympathy, when I next see her on the high street.”

“Dora won't say anything.”

My mother sniffed. “We'll see.”

I took a breath. “Mother, I won't be seeing him again, but—”

“There should be no buts about it. You've had a narrow escape, by the sound of it. It's her I feel sorry for, the wife. Someone should tell her.”

My legs were trembling with the effort of not running from the room.

“Mother, please listen. It was only once, but I think . . . I feel awful every morning. My waistbands are tighter, though I haven't been eating much, and—”

She went white with shock and put her hand back, blindly clutching at the sink's edge for support. “You're not . . .”

I looked down, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

“Alice!” Her voice was jagged. “Tell me. Are you pregnant?”

I swallowed and then forced myself to look up. “I don't know.” I paused. “Yes, I'm almost certain of it.”

“How long?” She was too horrified to shout.

“I—well, I . . .”

“Have you felt the quickening yet?”

I looked at her, confused.

“The quickening. That's when you know. You feel it inside, I can't explain it. You might be too early for it yet. It comes around three months.”

“I haven't felt anything like that. Just the sickness.”

“Some people think it doesn't count until you feel it. You must know how long it's been, unless you're lying about it only happening the once.” She looked me straight in the eye.

“I'm not lying about that. It's three months,” I said quietly.

“Well, that's that then. At three months it's taken. You can't do away with it that late, and besides, I've always thought that was a wicked thing to do. No, you'll go through with it now. And when it's born, you'll give it up.”