The Children's Book (84 page)

“Here is the place,” said Herbert Methley. He stroked and stroked without removing her drawers. Within them, Florence began to feel like a fountain unsealed, like a geyser rising. When he saw this, he did remove her drawers, and said “I must come in. You must let me in.”

Florence’s head lay back on the cushions and the room went round and round like a waterwheel. He was much more in control of her body
than she was. She felt him push, with his own body, against her private place, and then push hard, like a mining machine. She tore open, and convulsed, and cried out, and he made a low deflated moan, and everywhere was wet, with blood, and semen, mixed.

“Damnation,” said Herbert Methley. “That was tight. You were a virgin.”

“What did you think I was?” said Florence, sickly.

“I didn’t think,” he said, having lost his self-assurance. “This is a terrible mess. I shall have to offer to pay for this—this bedcover thing. I suppose. I imagine they must expect this kind of thing from time to time. I wonder how much they will ask?”

“There is some money in my purse,” said Florence, tightly. She thought she was going to be sick, because of the cognac, and she wanted desperately not to be sick, she wanted control of one end at least of her body. She wanted to go home. She gulped. She tried to stand up, and fell back again. Methley pulled aside a little curtain and discovered a washstand, and a ewer of water. He began, rather uselessly, to wipe the coverlet with a wet handkerchief. Florence managed to stand up, stagger to the washbowl, and mop her reddened flesh. Back to back, and awkwardly, they replaced their clothes, all except Florence’s drawers, which were impossible. She rolled them up and put them in the ewer. She rebuttoned her dress, and repinned her hat.

She stood in the restaurant doorway so as not to have to see Methley negotiating payment for the damaged covers. She thought she might die, standing there, in public, waiting. She sensed that Methley did not know how to deal with the owners of the café to which he had so confidently brought her. He looked a fool, and she would never forgive him for that. She noted that he looked as though he had had to pay more than was comfortable for him.

Outside, he hailed a cab, and had to ask her if she had money to pay for it to take her home.

“Yes, I told you,” said Florence, in nausea and scorn. He ought to have offered to come with her, to see that she was all right, for she knew she was not, but by then she already hoped never to see or hear of him again.

The cab-driver took her, half-fainting, back to the Museum. She walked into the little house, and up the stairs. Imogen was in the drawing room and expressed mild surprise at seeing her there, in mid-term. Florence said that she had suddenly felt she must get away from Cambridge
for a couple of days. She did not feel very well. She would go to her room and rest. Imogen bent her head to her book, and Florence went, with difficulty, upstairs. The next day she went back to Newnham, and worked harder than usual.

When she came back for the summer vacation, she found that Imogen had put aside her silverwork and begun to embroider—pink rosebuds and blue forget-me-nots, on nuns’-veiling fine wool. Florence watched her for some time in silence. Imogen looked dreamy, and plumper than before—a contented Pre-Raphaelite madonna …

“What are you working on?”

“A coverlet.”

“It’s small.”

“It’s to cover a small bed. I am expecting a baby.” She pushed the needle in and out, resolutely, and did not look up.

“I am very happy for you,” said Florence, mechanically. “When are we to expect the happy event?”

“At the turn of the year. Maybe even Christmas, which is a hard time to be born.”

“How
strange
, “ said Florence.

“Is it not? I feel very strange. Everything is hazy and I am sick.”

Florence didn’t want to know. She had just understood that the child would be her half-sister, or brother. The idea was uncouth.

“Please—” said Imogen, and could not finish her sentence.

Florence said that she and Griselda had agreed to go back, more or less immediately, to Cambridge and keep the Long Vacation Term, which provided an opportunity for more intensive study. Imogen bent her head lower over her moving fingers.

Prosper Cain was much exercised in his mind by events in the Museum, where the battle was still in progress over how to arrange and exhibit the whole collection. The Director, Arthur Skinner, was being, in Prosper’s view, brutally harried by the Civil Servants. Cain was sitting in his office, writing a memorandum, when Florence found him. He looked up reluctantly, frowning.

“I am to congratulate you, I’m told,” said Florence.

“Oh, yes. It is a very happy—” He couldn’t find a word.

“You might have told me.”

“I left it to Imogen. Woman to woman.”

“You
are my father,” said Florence. “She isn’t.”

“Oh, my dear, please don’t be difficult. Please be happy.”

“I shall try. I’m going to Cambridge tomorrow.”

“Isn’t it the Long Vacation?”

“Yes it is. I want to study. We are allowed to stay in College and study for some weeks. Griselda is coming.”

Later, this conversation haunted Prosper Cain. He should have paid attention. Damn Robert Morant, and his browbeaten staff, and his lack of imagination and his interfering ways. Damn him. It was hard for him to imagine the unborn child. And now he had failed to imagine the grown child.

In Cambridge, Florence said nothing to anyone, not even Griselda. She found it hard to work. She imagined the baby, fat and smiling, and she felt a kind of disgust, mixed for some reason with shame.

She was tight-lipped and worked hard. She told Griselda, expressionless, about Imogen’s expectations, and Griselda said, enthusiastically, “Wonderful,” and reddened in the heavy silence that ensued. Florence felt sick, all the time. She worked through waves of nausea, which she accepted as a punishment for what she thought of as “that mess.” She read about battles and diplomacy, and her stomach lumped and lurched. One day, Griselda came into her room and found her vomiting into the wash basin.

“Florence,” she said, “tell me what’s wrong. I think you should see a doctor.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve been like this for some time, now.”

Florence sat down on the bed, retching a little. Her handsome face was white and silvered with sweat.

“I think I may be—I may be—”

Griselda’s imagination supplied the word. She said

“We should write to Geraint. He ought to know. He could arrange things …”

“It wasn’t Geraint. It was once only, and it was
dreadful
. It made me long for a quiet monkish life in this place, talking to books. Instead of
which, if we are right, I shall be turned out of here, out of Cambridge …”

“You should be looked at. You should see a doctor.”

“Who? Not the College doctor. Not my father’s regimental doctor. I wish I was dead.”

“Dorothy,” said Griselda. “She’s done all her midwifery and obstetrics, I know. She would look at you. She might know how to stop you being so sick. She might know—”

She might know how to stop the pregnancy, they both thought, and didn’t say. How to get rid of it. They wrote a letter to Dorothy saying they urgently needed her advice, and went down to dinner, their hair smoothly knotted and shining behind their heads, one dark, one glistening gold and silver. They joined a spirited discussion of employment for women, of what work, if any, they should be excluded from.

Dorothy came to visit. During the days the letter took to reach her, and her answer took to reach them, whatever was inside Florence went on growing, cell by dividing cell, on a string, in the dark.

Dorothy came, and was given a guest room. Late at night, when even the most determined cocoa-drinker had turned in to sleep, the three young women gathered in Florence’s pretty room, with its “Lily and Pomegranate” curtains and bedspread. The light of the fire and the lamps flickered on the Venetian glass Florence collected, advised by her father. They had enjoyed shopping together, comparing vases and dishes, testing their eyes. Florence sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in her lap. She was mute. Dorothy turned to Griselda, who said, hesitantly, “Florence thinks she is pregnant. We wanted you to—to tell her—if she’s right.”

Dorothy had done her midwifery. She had probed other women with diagnostic fingers. She had seen a dead child finally ejected from an exhausted body. She had held a howling newborn in her two hands and looked—the first thing he saw—into his opening eyes. She was socially embarrassed by the idea of poking into the elegant Florence Cain.

“You do know how to tell, Dorothy?” said Griselda.

“Yes, I know. I’m a little embarrassed.”

“We all are,” said Florence. “But since the situation is
worse
than embarrassment I think we should forget that bit of it. There’s only you I can trust to help me.”

Dorothy took a deep breath.

“Right. Questions first. And can Griselda get some boiled water, and if you have antiseptic to sterilise my hands …

“How long, Florence, since you last had the Curse.”

“Just after Easter… I don’t recall exactly. Well before …”

“Yes.” She asked about the nausea. She asked about sleep. And weight. She asked Florence to lie back, with a towel under her, on the pretty bedspread, and she felt her belly, with confident, firm, gentle fingertips, inside and out. Florence shivered. She said

“It bleeds. But it is only the—the periphery, so to speak.”

“You got torn,” said Dorothy, whose experience did not stretch to the defloration of young women. Florence, accepting Dorothy’s authority, said “It was only once, in fact, just the once. There was so much—mess—it didn’t occur to me that I might—”

“I think you are past the early stage when women often miscarry. I think there is no doubt about this. I think you should tell Geraint.”

“It wasn’t Geraint. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Griselda and Dorothy looked at each other across the recumbent Florence. They were both thinking that Geraint, nevertheless—who loved Florence … They felt queasy. Florence rearranged her clothes and sat up. She said grimly

“I shall have to go away from here. Immediately, I think. You are saying—there isn’t any way of—of
losing
this.”

Dorothy hesitated. She said, half-way between agitated friend and calm doctor, “There’s nothing you could do that wouldn’t be horribly dangerous. I think you should go through with it. And then decide what to do…”

“I shall have to go and see Papa. I am horribly afraid of what will happen then. I had better start packing,
now.”

Griselda said “No, don’t do that, don’t. I can pack, with the bedders, later, when you know where … I can happily do that. I’ll make us all some cocoa. Settle your stomach with pasteurised milk and sugar.”

They sat, companionably, and put more coal, and some wood Florence had collected, on the fire.

“I was always in two minds about this place,” said Florence. “I thought it was a fortress of irredeemable innocence—and experience
was outside, and was all shiny and tempting. Now I’d give anything to be able to stay here, and learn to think clearly. Which I obviously don’t. I followed my feelings and they were bad, and worse, they were
silly
. So the angel will close the gates and wave me goodbye with her sword. I think it’s a female angel, in a women’s college.

“Griselda, I have a huge favour to ask of you.”

“Ask,” said Griselda.

“Will you come with me to face Papa? I am afraid of someone—Papa, me—saying something unforgivable, or doing something silly … mad…”

“Are you
sure?”
said Griselda.

“I think so. Would you anyway come to London, and see how I feel there?”

The two young women stood in Prosper Cain’s study, amongst the fake Palissys and under a fake Lorenzo Lotto Annunciation. Prosper sat behind his desk and said it was a pleasant surprise to see them. He could see that whatever it was was
not
pleasant. He thought Florence must be in money trouble. He asked them to sit down. The room was small—he had to stay behind his desk, like a judge.

Florence said “I asked Griselda to come because I need—I need this talk to stay—to stay
formal
—I need you to
think.”

“It sounds very dreadful,” said Prosper, lightly.

“It is,” said Florence. “I’m afraid I’m pregnant.” Prosper’s face tightened into a mask. Florence had never seen it like this, though his soldiers had, once or twice. He said “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Not exactly. I dared not. I asked Dorothy. She’s passed all her exams … in that area…”

“Well,” said Prosper Cain. “He must marry you. Now, immediately. If he’s worried about money, I must help.”

“It’s not Geraint,” said Florence. She added, miserably, “I must send his ring back. I should have done that already. I feel—I feel—”

“In that case,” said Prosper, “who?”

He was a soldier. He knew how to kill people, and he wanted to kill. Florence saw yet another face she had never seen. Her own face tightened into a mask, not unlike his.

“I don’t want you to know. It was only once. I don’t want… the
person
… to know. I was very silly.” She flinched. Her father, who had never done so, looked as though he was about to hit her. She watched him decide not to. Griselda, watching both of them, thought their hard faces were like masks in a Greek tragedy. Prosper gave a kind of gasp.

“I need to think. Let me think.”

Things raced through his mind like hunted animals in a dark wood. He would stand by Florence. For most of his life she was the creature he had most loved and delighted in. This caused him to think of Imogen, and the expected child. He knew, without putting it into words, that the inconvenient child was there in some way because of the loved and welcomed child. He could not, therefore,
think
of—yes, of killing—this child who was, or would be, the grandchild of his Giulia. He thought: I must take her in, and face—expect her, expect
them
to face—the opprobrium, and worse. He thought, and then, almost in a whisper, said