The Four of Us (26 page)

She was at work when she made the decision, and within seconds of making it her telephone rang.

‘Sorry to ring you at work, petal,' her dad said, sounding most unlike his usual cheery self. ‘But your mum's bin taken badly. She's'ad an'eart attack. Could you get down to St Thomas'as quick as possible?'

She'd got there in twenty minutes and the instant she'd seen her father's terrified face and realized just how ill her mother was, she'd known that she wouldn't be telling them her news. It was distress they didn't need, and if and when her mother recovered it was obvious she wouldn't be fit enough to look after a baby.

For the next few weeks, between work and hospital visits, she flat hunted, without success. Several times she thought she had found a flat she could afford, only to be told by its landlord that it wouldn't be suitable for her if she was having a baby. ‘No dogs, no children'was the refrain, and she met with it time and time again.

By the beginning of September it was so obvious that she was pregnant that Howard called her into his office to ask her about it. ‘Will you be staying on here, after the baby is born?' he asked, struggling not to look at the very naked third finger of her left hand.

When she had told him she would, he had looked even more uncomfortable, pointing out to her that, though he would like to make exceptions for her, he wouldn't be able to, and that there was no way he could allow her time off work if the baby were sick.

‘If the baby is sick, I'll make arrangements,' she had heard herself say in a voice far more confident than she felt.

Later, in her own office, she had stared blankly at the wall, wondering just what those arrangements would be. So far, because she couldn't do so until she knew where she would be living after the baby was born, she hadn't even found herself a registered childminder.

‘Are you OK, Primmie?' someone from Creative asked as he popped his head round her open door.

‘Yes,' she had lied, looking wan, knowing very well just how much gossip was flying round now that her condition was so obvious.

In mid-September there was no avoiding the fact that Kiki and Francis were back in London. With a new record out, Kiki was on
Top of the Pops
and posters advertising her record were everywhere. She didn't get in touch, though, and Primmie couldn't bring herself to telephone Cedar Court, to get in touch with her. After all, if she did, what could she say to her? It would be impossible to talk to her as if her running off with Francis had never happened, and equally impossible to talk to her about it.

At the end of September she discovered that the general gossip at BBDO was that her baby was due in the new year, and that she would be having it adopted and returning to work.

‘But I'm not going to have it adopted,' she had said explosively to one of the secretaries when they passed the gossip on to her.

‘Aren't you?' The secretary had looked perplexed. ‘But don't you think it would be better for the baby if you did? Bringing up a baby on your own isn't easy, you know. My father was killed in the war and all I remember about my childhood is that there was never enough money for anything. No nice clothes, no ballet lessons, no music lessons, nothing.'

She had breezed on her way, but it had been an encounter Primmie could have well done without.

At the beginning of October Artemis's father informed Primmie that he had sold the flat and that he would be obliged if she could vacate it by the end of the month. Hastily she had moved into a top-floor flat in Catford.

‘Catford?
Catford?
‘ Artemis said in disbelief when she came to help her move her things. ‘But it isn't on a tube line! It will take you
ages
to get to work in the morning. And a top-floor flat? How will you manage getting a pram up and down the steps? It will be a nightmare, Primmie. An absolute nightmare.'

‘It will be affordable,' she had said grimly. ‘Besides, I'm used to living south of the river. I'd have looked for a flat in Rotherhithe if it weren't that it would be too close to my mum and dad.'

‘They still don't know?'

‘No. Mum's had a second heart attack and whenever I visit St Thomas'I always wear a coat. They'll have to know eventually, of course. But I don't want them knowing now, when they have so many other worries.'

Artemis had tightly clasped together hands that were becoming plump again. ‘They needn't know at all, Primmie. Not if you let me adopt the baby. Rupert says if it's a boy he will put his name down at Eton and if it's a girl she can go to Benenden.'

‘No.' Adamantly Primmie shook her head. ‘No, Artemis. No, I couldn't. I'd never be able to live with myself.'

‘But
why
?' Artemis's voice was again thick with tears. ‘You'd always know what was happening to the baby, you'd know that it was happy and loved. It's the
right
thing to do Primmie, can't you see that?'

All through November, in the most miserable late-autumn weather possible, she toiled cumbersomely backwards and forwards from Catford to Kensington, taking a train up to Charing Cross Station from Catford Bridge, and a tube from Charing Cross. At seven and a half months pregnant she was already enormous and on her return home the three flights of stairs to her flat seemed as steep as a mountain.

Exhausted, she would lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing that she had to find a more suitable home – a home in which she could bring up a child.

She was lonely, too. So lonely that it was a physical burden. Shattered as she was by Kiki's heartless behaviour, she missed her fizzing vitality and mercurial changes of mood. Not being cross at Kiki, or irritated by her, or laughing helplessly with her left a gap in her life that stunned her by its enormity.

She missed Geraldine, too. Geraldine had always been such a calming, relaxing influence. If Geraldine had still been living at the flat when Artemis's father had given notice that he was selling it, then their finding another flat – a flat suitable for a baby as well as themselves – would not have been a problem. Geraldine wouldn't have minded the noise and mayhem of a baby. Geraldine would have been supportive and practical and upbeat about the situation. But Geraldine wasn't with her, to assure her that she was doing the right thing in not giving her baby up for adoption. Geraldine was in Paris and, totally out of character, had hardly been in touch since leaving London.

There was Artemis, of course, and she valued Artemis's friendship just as much as she had always valued Geraldine's. The problem was that in all their meetings and phone calls – and Artemis made the journey from the Cotswolds on an almost weekly basis in order to have a ‘girlie'lunch with her, and telephoned her nightly – the word ‘adoption' lay, spoken or unspoken, like a heavy weight between them.

Night after night, unable to sleep despite bone-tiredness, she would think of all that Artemis and Rupert could offer her baby, questioning herself as to whether her longing to bring up her baby herself was nothing but selfishness on her part and not in her baby's best interest.

When December came, and there were only a few weeks before the baby was due, Artemis invited her to spend Christmas with Rupert and herself.

‘I can't, Artemis,' she said as the baby kicked with such force it completely winded her. ‘Mum is still in hospital and I'll be spending Christmas Day with her. And with Dad, of course.'

‘And in your coat?' Artemis asked mildly.

Primmie bit her lip, well aware that her coat was no longer capacious enough to disguise her condition.

‘Course I don't mind yer'opping off dahn to Artemis's fer Christmas,' her dad said when she tentatively broached the idea to him. ‘Tell yer the truth, gel, it'll be a bit of relief knowing you're somewhere 'aving a proper Christmas. I reckon me and your Mum are just goin'ter forget abaht it this year. Next year, though, we'll'ave a real old knees-up!'

Christmas with Artemis and Rupert in their Cotswold home had been super-traditional. The house had once been a vicarage and, with a beribboned holly wreath on the front door, was chocolate-box pretty. There was a ceiling-high tree festooned with glittering baubles in the large square entrance hall, and their Labrador, a puppy the last time she had seen it, rushed to greet her, a scarlet bow tied jauntily round its neck.

On Christmas Eve they tore themselves away from a roaring log fire to go to a local carol service, returning from it with several of Artemis and Rupert's neighbours, and their neighbours'children, for a fork supper at the house. The conversation had revolved around local matters: the problems being caused by hunt saboteurs, a rehashing of the year's polo victories, the chance one of Rupert's friends stood of winning a parliamentary seat for the conservatives at the next election.

It wasn't her kind of milieu, but she enjoyed herself more than she had done for ages and ages, and what was extra nice was seeing Artemis so happy in the home that she and Rupert had created for themselves.

The next morning they all three exchanged presents and then, after Artemis had put the turkey in the oven, they went to morning service in a little Norman church, festive with candles and crib. On their return home she helped Artemis set the lunch table and, to a huge storm of barking from the dog, Rupert's parents arrived. ‘Where is your mother this Christmas?' she asked Artemis a little later as Artemis laid chipolatas on an oiled baking sheet and rolled rashers of bacon and threaded them on long flat skewers.

‘On a cruise ship somewhere in the West Indies.' Artemis laid the finished skewers of bacon next to the sausages. ‘Daddy's insisting on a divorce in order to marry the little fortune-hunter he's living with in Portugal and Mummy is trying to line herself up a new husband as quickly as possible.'

At the bleakness in her voice, Primmie said awkwardly, ‘I'm sorry, Artemis.'

‘So am I, Primmie darling, but it's no use being glum about it, especially not on Christmas Day. Have you ever made bread sauce? And if not would you like to learn how?'

As they continued working companionably together in a kitchen larger than her Catford flat, Rupert's parents occasionally drifted in for a few words, glasses of sherry in hand.

Rupert, who in the past had never been chatty towards her, was charm itself and it was obvious that Artemis was still head over heels in love with him. Though Geraldine's private life, and her own, had crashed into smithereens and Kiki's future love life was clearly destined for disaster after disaster, Artemis's seemed idyllic – the only thing lacking in it children.

It was a subject that was carefully never mentioned directly, but that was ever present obliquely. On Boxing Day morning the sun had shone and, leaving Rupert's parents indoors, they all three went for a short walk in nearby woods.

In a kingfisher-blue coat, her gold hair falling loosely to her shoulders, Artemis slid her arm through Primmie's and, as they returned towards the house via a paddock and a stables, said, ‘I want to introduce you to Ben, Primmie. He's one of Rupert's Christmas presents to me and he's absolutely gorgeous.'

In the end stall of the stables stood a stocky Shetland pony.

‘Isn't he just too lovable for words?' Artemis cooed ecstatically.

Primmie nodded, knowing full well why Ben had been bought; why Artemis and Rupert had gone out of their way to show him to her.

He was a pony any child would fall in love with. A pony simply waiting for a small owner.

Later, back in her dingy flat in Catford, the contrast between the type of home she could offer her child and the type of home Artemis could offer it was so stark her heart hurt. For hour after hour she lay in bed, staring into the darkness, struggling with a decision that was the hardest she'd ever had, or hopefully ever would have, to make. Then, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, she got out of bed and telephoned Artemis.

‘You're right, Artemis,' she said quietly when Artemis, still half asleep, came on the line. ‘You can give my baby far more than I can and I want Rupert and you to adopt it.'

There was a gasp and then Artemis burst into tears of relief and gratitude. At last, when she could finally speak, she said thickly, ‘You've made me so happy, Primmie – and the baby will be happy, too. It will always be happy – I promise you that on my life.'

From that moment, things moved fast. Within days a social worker from her local authority had visited her.

‘You'll have to be counselled about your decision,' she had said, poo-pooing her reaction that counselling was unnecessary, ‘and the prospective adoptive couple will have to undergo the same type of a home study they'd have to under-go if they were adopting in the usual manner.'

‘Our assigned social worker wants to assess our motivation for wanting to adopt,' Artemis said over the telephone, comparing notes. ‘And she doesn't like the fact that we are friends and that it's a private adoption. I spent all day yesterday being questioned about my background and what she called my “relationship history”. That covered my relationships with my parents, with boyfriends before I married, and my relationship with Rupert.'

‘Now they want to know all about my lifestyle,' she said on a flying visit to the flat, a few days later. ‘Rupert has to make a statement of all our finances, past, present and projected, and we both have to be checked out by the police and the NSPCC.'

Artemis wasn't the only one suffering lengthy questioning.

‘And are you happy, Miss Surtees, as to the religion Mr and Mrs Gower propose bringing your child up in?' Primmie's social worker asked, reading from a list a yard long.

‘Church of England?' Primmie nodded, hating the whole ghastly procedure. ‘Yes. Perfectly happy.'

Artemis's next telephone call to her was one of near-hysterical distress. ‘We've just been told that it's going to take
four to six months
to get approval and that even when we do get approval our dossier has to be sent to the Department of Health and that it could be another few months wait before the adoption can be finalized!'