Chapter 11
"Des, what would you say if I said I was going to have a baby?"
A silence followed Linda's words while Des slowly turned and looked at her. He had been looking away, ironically enough, at the children playing in their enclosed section of the park, the little tots, left there by their mothers. His mind had been concentrating on nothing except the half-conscious thought that it was really quite pleasant lazing here on the grass with Linda. And now that Betty had been to bed with him several times and he'd had a surfeit of her body, he'd actually come round to a way of thinking that Linda was more interesting to him, nicer. And he'd almost got her off horse. Surprising how he'd been able to do fairly easily what nobody else could have done. He'd wondered occasionally at her willingness to make love with him any time, any place. But it had never seriously entered his head to take precautions. He always assumed, vaguely, that she must know when it was all right. It was up to the women to be careful for their own sakes; they were the ones who suffered.
"What do you mean?"
"Des I think I'm pregnant."
He stared at her, eyes wide and startled.
"You're kidding!" There was fear and an attempt at dismissal in his voice.
"I'm three weeks overdue."
She said the words simply, unemotionally, not looking at him. The fear of having to tell him was overcome by her fear at having the knowledge alone. She had not even told Betty.
"Jeez!"
They both stared at the ground and suddenly Des said in a tone of bluster:
"What's it got to do with me? Why're you telling me?"
She looked at him. Annoyance was overtoned in her heart by a gripping sadness. She knew what he was going to say, what he meant.
"Because if I am, Des, then it's you. There hasn't been anyone else for a long time."
He looked at her searchingly, almost sneeringly, but the sneer slowly dissolved. He knew she was right. A number of thoughts chased one another rapidly through his head: could she pin it on him? could he deny it successfully?
But he would be dragged into it anyway; what would happen if she had the kid impossible; could they get rid of it? Here his mind stopped. Maybe they could get rid of it. Sam had told him about certain people he knew. There was a certain circle where abortions were fairly frequent almost routine, you might say. He could ask Sam. But maybe it wasn't so anyway. No point in rushing...
"Ever happened before...? "
"Never, Des."
"That you've been so long over I mean."
"Oh. No, I'm usually regular no more than a couple of days at the most."
He bit his lip. He couldn't really believe she was pregnant, though.
"P'raps we'd better wait a bit just to be sure."
"Well if I am, I am," she said. "So whether we wait or not doesn't make much difference 'cos that's all we can do."
"You don't want to have a kid do you?"
She looked at him in annoyance.
"Of course," she said, "I love kids. I want to have dozens all of them illegitimate, all of them while I'm still at school."
"Keep your 'air on. I'm just making sure of your attitude."
She stared at him as if he was mad.
" 'Cos maybe we can get rid of it."
"How? Her eyes lit up with hope and then clouded over with thoughts of the accidents she'd heard of which happened when women did things to themselves.
"Sam knows people. You could get it done properly no trouble. Only thing is the money."
They relapsed into silence. It was early October but the sun was shining warmly and the sky was blue above the moulting trees. Saturday no school was a pleasant day for Linda, and Des had no work with the five-day week. It should have been relaxing and wonderful.
"How much does it cost?" she said at last. "Don't know. I'll have to ask Sam all about it"
Linda told Betty about it some days later. She'd told her about it during break at school and it had put Betty off the lessons for the morning. During the afternoon, too, she kept comparing the unreality of that existence with this. The pot, horse, fucking like a prostitute with strange men, careering round town in cars, drinking, sometimes staying away the night and making excuses, and on the other side the mistress talking there, the airy classroom, the math and history, the order, the girls who were virgins wondering what it was like, the blue sky and the playing fields through the big windows.
She found herself wishing for her youth as if she were some old woman who, after a life given to pleasure, regrets what she considers to have been her mistakes, wishes she'd gone under the wing of the Church so much earlier.
Linda had no idea of what Betty had done for her. It would have ruined everything if she knew why Des had picked up with her again, that he'd been making love to Betty at odd times ever since. Betty had held on to her shameful secret, fighting down her guilty feelings every time she looked at Linda, automatically drawing a slight wedge of aloofness between them in the process. Not aloofness, really but their relationship had lost the everyday, all-telling closeness it had had. But now this.
She hardly heard anything that was said until the final bell sounded and she rushed Linda out of the school and began to question her mercilessly.
"Des is borrowing the twenty pounds from Sam," Linda said in answer. "Yes he's a doctor. That's why it costs so much. He'd be struck off if anyone found out not that it is really expensive; some of them charge much more but this one's a friend of Sam's."
But Betty was horror-struck. Abortion! God she'd be careful in the future.
"Where is it going to happen?"
"At Sam's place on Saturday."
"But aren't you scared Lindy?"
"Yes." Linda smiled to keep back the tears. If she allowed herself to think about it she was very scared.
Betty sensed the hidden tears and took her friend's hand.
"I'd like to be there if you'll let me. I couldn't bear to think of you not having another woman with you."
"I was hoping you'd come. Des will be there and Sam, but it wouldn't be the same without you, Betty."
Linda and Des went into the bedroom with the young doctor. Sam and Betty stayed in the other room. Sam was quietly high.
"All right if I come in?" Des asked.
"Certainly," the doctor said. "Any time you want to go, though, do it quietly."
He smiled at Linda. He was blonde and had a trace of freckles. She wondered in determination to take her mind off the ordeal why he was willing to risk everything for the sake of twenty pounds. Perhaps he really felt sorry for women who got themselves this way.
"Don't worry," he assured her. "In no time at all you'll be rid of all this worrying."
She smiled back at him. She trusted him.
He began to open his bag and his voice became formal.
"Right, just take off your clothes and lie back on the bed, will you?"
Linda closed her eyes as she lay back. She heard his voice, obeyed his orders..."Open your legs, will you? ... A little more ... Don't move now ... Does that hurt? ... Right, it's only a cold liquid." She felt his fingers professionally fingering her vagina, felt instruments traveling up into her, scraping, an occasional prick, surprisingly little sensation. Everything seemed to go on in another world beyond her closed eyes. She was aware of things only piecemeal, not as a concocted whole. Something cold was pressed against her vagina, she started and lay still, cold liquid rushed up into her, another start and then relaxation.
After a while in which she no longer even vaguely followed what was going on she heard his voice, the doctor's, saying:
"Okay young lady you'll do."
She sat up suddenly aware of her nakedness and pulled a coverlet around herself.
"Is it done? Am I all right?"
"Well it's done. You should start bleeding any time."
She smiled happily and looked at Des who was standing at the foot of the bed grinning.
"Why, there was nothing to it," she said, with a laugh of nervous relief.
"All right if you get it early," the doctor said. He put his instruments back into his case and looked at Des.
"Well, it should be all right now," he said. "If there's any complications you'd better get Sam to get in touch with me. But there won't be any complication."
After he'd left they rejoined Sam and Betty. Betty'd had some pot too. She was unable to stand the suspense.
"All our troubles are over," Linda announced. She had seldom felt so happy with relief.
"Oh thank God, Lindy," Betty breathed. She slumped back onto the floor. "I must have been more scared than you. Was it all right? What happened?"
"I hardly felt a thing but you'd better get Des to tell you about it. I kept my eyes shut all the time."
Des slapped Sam on the back. His relief was as great as Linda's. No fuss, no scandal.
"Let's have a bit of pot, Sam," he said with a grin. "And no horse for Linda,"
It was several hours later that the pains started somewhere in Linda's womb. At first she thought they were menstrual pains, but they went on and on and there was no blood and, after all, she'd never had pains before.
They had all got fairly high and were coming out of it a bit. She began to pale and eventually stood up.
"I feel sick," she said. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Everyone watched her leave in silence; nobody said anything for a few minutes after the door closed behind her.
"She looked pretty sick." Sam broke the silence reluctantly.
Betty got to her feet
"I'll go and see," she said.
Alone in the bathroom, Linda was doubled up against the washbasin. She clung to Betty as Betty caught hold of her. Her face was contorted with pain.
"What's the matter, Lindy?" Betty cried in alarm. Nobody had suspected this turn of events.
"Oh God, oh God! It's my stomach, Betty lower down. Ooooh!" Linda could hardly speak; she just hung, white and crumpled, to Betty.
"Maybe it pains because you're going to bleed," Betty said desperately anything to avoid alarm, to keep Linda calm and give her courage. And perhaps that's what it was.
Linda simply groaned. Her grip tightened on Betty's shoulders.
"Sam Des!" Betty called at the top of her voice and they both came running in as if they'd been waiting for the signal.
Des took one look at Linda, yellow-in-the-face, limp.
"I'm going to get that doctor!" he said.
"P'raps it's just pains, ordinary pains," Sam said.
"Just as well to know," Des snapped. "What's his number?"
Sam gave him the number and Des stayed only to tell Linda that the doctor would be back in no time before rushing off.
"Help me get her on the bed, Sam. She's not going to be sick," Betty said.
Linda was still lying on the bed in a crumpled heap which occasionally twitched when Des got back to the flat.
Sam saw the look on his face.
"All right?" he asked.
"No, he's not in. They don't know when he'll be in. Some emergency case."
Sam stroked his chin. Linda looked in a bad way. He didn't want any trouble in his flat.
"How do you feel, Lindy."
"It's killing me, Des..." Her voice sounded weak, hopeless. "Well fuck that I'm going to get another doctor."
Faced with what looked like a serious situation, Des was coming out with colors flying. He didn't want serious trouble either.
"Yeah, but another doctor'll probably know something's up."
"So what?" Des turned on Sam. "We don't have to tell him more than that she's got stomach pains. Let him do the rest."
"For Chris' sake don't say anything about the doc."
"I wasn't born yesterday!"
Des left the house at a run. When he got to the telephone booth he searched at random for a nearby doctor.
They stared at the doctor aghast. He was middle-aged with strong, unyielding eyes. And his manner was that he was in charge and wasn't taking nonsense from anyone and he'd just said that Linda had to go to the hospital straightaway. He'd also asked them who'd been fooling about with her, had got quietly furious at their bluster, told them that this sort of thing could be recognized immediately and finally accepted with a look of scornful doubt Desmond's declaration that he'd used a knitting needle.
"But if she goes to the hospital ... will she have to ... how long will it take?"
The doctor fixed Desmond with a disapproving eye. When he spoke it was in the frigid tones of a puritan talking to a degenerate seducer.
"Perhaps there'll be nothing we can do," he said clearly and concisely. "Perhaps due to this ill-intended tomfoolery it will be too late. But perhaps she'll stay in the hospital until the baby is born."
"You mean she won't be able to come out later tonight or tomorrow?"
"Out of the question. You realize that this messing about can have fatal results?"
Betty stood, weak and white-faced. Sam watched sullenly while Des questioned the doctor and Linda lay apparently indifferent to everything on the bed.
"Will somebody go immediately and telephone for an ambulance?" the doctor snapped. "There's no time to lose."
The next hour was a nightmare for the four of them except that Linda was hardly conscious. The ambulance, men in white smocks coming in, stretcher, looks, words, questions, answers.
When all was over they sank into chairs and Sam went over and turned on the record player as if he expected some relief from it.
Betty sat and stared blankly at the revolving disc from which the quiet storm of music rose. She could hardly believe it all. Now the cat was really out of the bag. Everyone would know Linda's parents, her parents, everyone at school, all the neighbors. They would all know she was Linda's close friend and suspect her of carrying on in the same way perhaps other things would be found out the pot and horse, her own promiscuity. But why should it? Anyway, poor Linda. She was the one who was in it to the neck. Compared with her everyone else had nothing to worry about.
If only these things could be foreseen. Always the thought: that couldn't happen to me. She thought with a sudden thrill of fear of her own period, due in about a week. Suppose...
She brought herself back to the room with a jerk.
"I can't understand how it happened?" Des was saying. "That doctor looked as if he knew just what he was doing and he seemed sure everything would be all right."
"Things go wrong," Sam muttered. "You can't be absolutely sure with those things unless you have it done in the right place."
A silence settled on them again while a trumpet soared out from the record player.
Betty looked at Des and wondered if it was his fault or theirs. It was so difficult to apportion blame. It began with curiosity and it needn't have ended in this.
Poor Linda. What sort of pain was she going through now? They would get in touch with her parents. Perhaps she should see them first. But she shrank from the thought. Perhaps she could pretend she had nothing to do with it. Perhaps they wouldn't ask any questions about her.
My God! she thought. Next time I go to bed with a man I'm going to be married to him or, at least we're going to be careful.
She got up in the silence.
"I'll be going."
"Don't go yet, Betty. Let's go and have a cup of coffee. Christ, this has knocked me back."
"All right Des. Let's go."