Turn Us Again (18 page)

That night the pains began. At first they came so rapidly one had scarcely passed before the next one was upon me. I began to get hysterical; it was eleven at night and everyone in the house had gone to bed — the place was like a tomb. I prayed that the plump one would come to wish me good night but she didn't come. So I broke out in a cold fear and twice I banged my door open and stumbled across the passage with the pains trailing behind — I had no idea where she slept in this large dusty house, but I staggered from the top floor to the bottom, dragging myself up and down the stairs, sobbing while I opened all the doors and switched the lights on. I got no answer yet I could hear her snoring!

At last I located her boy, who looked at my weeping face and told me his Mother was downstairs. I asked him to get her and threw myself on my bed, weeping, and still the pains came. She appeared, smiling, in a spotted dressing gown. She switched on my light and lit a fire, telling me “Nothing will happen during the night, but we will see.” Then she left. I lay from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m.; every four minutes there was a pain. Sometimes I seemed to fall asleep between the pains, jerking into consciousness four minutes later, wondering where the dream had gone.

At nine in the morning the plump one came and laughed down on my exhausted face. “It is life,” she said, and I thought, no, it is death. Then she plumped up my pillows and said “How is the appetite?” and I began to laugh too.

At midday I was almost shrieking with the pain and had picked up my lamp to hurl on the floor when she walked in and sat me on a bed pan and told me to push. I pushed and pushed and out it came– my goblin fetus — sweet relief. The plump one disappeared again, leaving me on the pan. I began to get cramps, sitting there feeling the blood slithering away from me. It seemed like a long time but she came back and pressed my abdomen and the placenta came out and I was off the pan and the worst was over. The doctor felt my pulse and said, “She has lost a lot of blood. Everything will be all right now.” Then Sam was sitting there and he averted his face as the plump one covered me up. “Happy?” she asked, and I tried to appear joyful. She left us and we were alone and Sam kept kissing me, delirious that it was over. He ate my supper.

My breasts are beginning to swell and pain me and I am taking something to stop the secretion. The whole affair seems so complicated. I wish I had the beautiful philosophy of the plump one.

Two days later and it is time to go ‘home' — Sam's place in the meantime. An emotional goodbye with the plump one who wished us a merry Christmas. I crawled into bed as soon as we got home and Sam brought some ham sandwiches, leaving afterwards to go to the law courts. I have been here ever since. Of course I love him at the moment. He has played his part with such tenderness and he is the only human being I have talked to, but it will wear off. In moments of clarity I torture myself by pretending to understand why Sam must marry one of his own. In my heart I think that if any man were filled with love they would be indifferent of creed and colour. I am afraid that my love for him has grown, while his for me — that was so great he would swagger around Cambridge telling everyone about my beauty — has shrunk.

I stayed with Sam for a few days, until I felt well again. He was solicitous and tender till the end, but there were no promises made. We just said good-bye, and held each other for a long time.

I stopped in Cambridge on my way home for Christmas and had a lovely few days seeing everybody, drinking and dancing. Louise was in great shape, working hard and living with two very nice girls, one of whom I half remembered from our nursing days. It seems like another life, now.

I received an unexpected letter from Sam during my second week, asking if he could pop down for my last few days in Cambridge. I more or less wrote that I could not stop him from coming to Cambridge if he wanted to. He responded as though we were still in the first flush of our romance.

My beloved darling,

Your letter has arrived and filled me with delight — to think that I will see you on Thursday. But Thursday and Friday (minus what you feel you have to spend with other people) is not a fraction of the time that I demand to spend with you.

These last two weeks have been a Prologue to these two days; I dare not think of the days after when you are gone. The whole of my time is divided between two things, thinking and fantasizing about you, and trying to fill the infinite void before I see you. My desire is fanned by London (with its enormous power, so unlike Cambridge) with a flame that literally consumes me. As I lie down upon my pillow at night, I smell the warmth and fragrance of your breath, and press my lips against yours. In my imagination, I crush your body against mine with infinite desire. My darling, it is a pain which I endure gladly because it implies the unimaginable pleasure that you can bless me with. Let me be the Prince who awakens you from a hundred years of sleep, my adored Sleeping Princess.

If my train is supposed to arrive earlier or later (God forbid) than I supposed, I will phone you. This is an imaginary precaution, and does not mean you are free not to meet my train.

Goodnight, my dearest.

I was hesitant about how to greet him, but he crushed me to his breast and told me he loved me more than any other human being in the world. This did much towards reconciling me to the restrictions of his presence. We had tea with Philip who told me I was beginning to look ‘beautiful and mature.'

Louise had a little party just before I left. It wasn't explicitly in my honour, but I felt very pleased. I drank a little too much, and felt myself again the centre of admiring eyes, yet so different inside. Sam and I sat on the couch and discussed my new maturity. Sam warned me not to make everything more important than it is, creating romance out of the usual trite situations — darling Sam.

At one point I found myself standing in the kitchen with Philip, whispering “I love you, I love you,” into his shirt front, into the pan in the pantry, everywhere. Am I crazy? If Sam had seen me he would tell me I was a whore, he has said it in the past. Is not every woman?

Sometimes I am ashamed at my own weakness. Before I left for Newcastle, I told Sam that if he wasn't going to marry me that was it. No more visits, no more letters. He didn't say a word, just gazed at me with his huge, furrowed brow.

FOURTEEN

M
adelyn popped in to visit her old place of work a few days after she arrived home, and they offered her her old job back. She slid back into the dreary routine of nighttime shifts, sleeping most of the day and walking Pippa in the late afternoons. Her parents were glad she was under their wing again, and her slim appearance put whatever worries her mother had been harbouring to rest. She might have been ashamed at her unwarranted suspicions. The truth wouldn't have entered her mind. Madelyn felt much older and wiser than her mother, dismissing the trials of her mother's life as ongoing and niggly, not the sort of tragedy that would make one wise at all.

It was when Cathie phoned and pressed Madelyn to meet her at the pub and ‘reveal all' that Madelyn began to think about what had happened in real terms. She found she didn't want to see Cathie and spent a good deal of time pondering over the best slant to put on the affair. Was it a tragedy? Should she play the wounded heroine against her evil Jewish lover? Or was it better to preserve the enviable façade of strings of lovers and pooh pooh to that silly episode?

They met, as usual, in their favourite bar. Madelyn chose a time when she could use her nighttime shift as an excuse to leave after an hour or so.

Cathie led the way to a sheltered corner, pulling Madelyn away from their usual spot close to the bartender, where you could expect to receive the greatest amount of attention from male beer-buyers. She wanted to talk, and this was irritating to Madelyn, who determined at once to thwart her.

“Oh, I lost the baby,” she giggled, waving her hand about in a ‘pooh pooh' fashion, “and thank goodness for that. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to marry that fellow.”

“You mean, you had a natural abortion? How lucky!”

Madelyn fanned the smoke away from her face and looked smug, wishing that Louise was sitting opposite her so she could have a real talk.

“And now you've broken off with Sam? I must say, I am relieved to hear that. It was hard to understand your real feelings, last time I saw you.”

Madelyn felt a savage urge to protect Sam, so much greater than anybody this silly girl had ever encountered, but such a reaction would not go with the carefree persona she wished to present.

Cathie leaned forward confidentially. “I've had a spot of trouble myself, since I last saw you. Mum's sick. They think that it's cancer or something.”

“Oh no! I'm so very sorry!” Madelyn squeezed Cathie's hand, feeling her doubts melt away and her heart constrict with compassion. Cathie's eyes filled with tears.

“There's nothing much I can tell you. The whole thing has been so sudden. I hope she doesn't die — she holds the whole family together. If she left we'd fall apart.”

“I'm sure you wouldn't. There's a lot of love in your family. You could keep it together, Cathie.”

“God forbid that I should have that responsibility. Can you imagine trying to reproduce the jollity of the holidays, everybody looking to you to make sure Christmas pudding turns out just the way Mum's used to? Oh God, I'd rather never set eyes on any of them again.” Cathie laid her head in her arms and her shoulders shook. Madelyn was quite shocked. Cathie was not given to displays of emotion. She felt guilty for her childish games, her assumption that Cathie was on the lookout for salacious details, as opposed to genuinely concerned for her. Cathie did not harbour such evil thoughts. When she was upset she turned to her friend for comfort. Madelyn felt ashamed. She stroked Cathie's head, and when the sobs subsided she bent and whispered into her ear. “I lied to you just now. I had a clinical abortion, not a natural one. There was something so wrong about it, and I feel so ashamed that I try not to think about it. I just want to get on with my life as though it never happened. Above all, I don't want to feel sad because it will worry my mother. It's important to protect her. She would be so shocked.”

Cathie lifted her head and looked at Madelyn. “Does it shock you?”

“Sam's attitude shocked me. He assumed that the abortion was the only option we had. Murder, the only recourse. My first child, a little boy!”

“Not murder, Madelyn. You mustn't think of it like that.”

“It took so long to get rid of it, as though it was clinging on to its right of existence with all its strength. But we were so determined, we just kept on and on at it, trying to kill it, for months. I feel stunned when I think about it. I suppose I was brought up to expect a man to protect me, if something like this happened. So I allowed him the authority of that role, and all the time he was looking after his own interests according to the dictates of his mother, and not looking after me at all!”

“His mother knew?”

“It was his mother's doing, his mother's money. I even believe she listened in on the phone when Sam phoned me. I have to go, Cathie, I have to get to work.”

“But we're just getting to the interesting part!” Cathie's tears had dried, and she was looking at Madelyn with the old spark in her eyes. Despite herself, Madelyn felt repulsed by her, almost annoyed that she had given in to her impulse to ‘confess.'

“No, I have to go. I hope your mother gets better, keep me up to date.”

“Well, of course. Let's meet again soon. Next week?”

“We'll see.”

Madelyn was dressing old Mr. Simpson's sores and keeping up a steady stream of conversation, when she felt a presence behind her. She turned her head and there was Sam, standing there like a huge grizzly bear with a rucksack on his back. He had the most ridiculous expression on his face, a cross between the look he was striving for (devoted love, presumably) and a look produced by the sight of poor Mr. Simpson's bed sores (definitely revulsion).

“Oh Mr. Simpson, an acquaintance of mine has dropped in for some reason. I will be right back.”

“Would you like a chocolate biscuit?” Mr. Simpson wavered in the direction of the newcomer. “I always save them for Madelyn's shifts. They are her favourite.”

“That's very kind of you,” Sam answered, and took two. “Now these are from Marks and Spencer's. You can't get better chocolate biscuits anywhere.”

Mr. Simpson beamed, and Madelyn ushered Sam away before he could start a lengthy analysis of biscuit merits, and Marks and Sparks merits in particular (he would be sure to mention that it was a Jewish company — a fact Madelyn found difficult to believe — and even hint, by some obscure leap of logic, that that was the reason for its excellence in chocolate biscuits).

“How did you get here,” she hissed, as soon as she had got him into the safety of the nurses' room.

“I realized I couldn't live without you.”

“How did you know where I was working?”

“Your mother told me. I went there first.”

“It's the middle of the night! You just marched up to my mother's front door at one in the morning and demanded to see me? Did she know who you were? What inexplicable reason could she have for telling you where I work?”

“I think the force of my will and love overwhelmed her. Of course she knew who I was. I am your beloved, who changed your name to Madelyn.”

“A massive man appearing at her door like that, my father no doubt incapacitated. She was terrified into telling you where I was! And I assure you my mother does not call me Madelyn, so don't get too puffed up about Mr. Simpson's usage of it. I happen to like the name. It has very little to do with you.”

Sam threw himself onto his knees in the most alarming fashion. “You must come back to London with me; we belong together.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it is the honourable thing to do.”

Was this an offer of marriage? “It would have been more honourable six months ago.”

“I cannot convey to you how important you are to me. It is essential for my growth as a human being to have you by my side. To reject me would be to condemn me to a life of poverty.” He caught her look of scepticism and added, “in a spiritual sense.”

This must be an offer of marriage. But why didn't he just come out and say it?

“I don't know Sam. I have suffered…”

“No more! No more!” he cried, seizing her hand and covering it with kisses.

“I'm not sure I understand what you are asking me. You know what I want.”

“I do, I do! We are a modern couple. Let us live together as man and wife, and see if it works out. I'm sure it will. We love each other so much.”

Madelyn looked at his pleading face. She wanted to scream and whoop down the hallways, but she wasn't going to let Sam know that. “I have to get back to work. What shall you do?”

“I shall lie on this comfortable couch and pray that you produce something stronger than tea.”

“There's Matron's brandy,” said Madelyn, feeling uncomfortable.

“Then Matron shall donate her brandy to a good cause, since you will never see Matron again.”

Why do I feel so happy? This wicked, wicked man, who forced me to have an abortion
…. I have won! He has struggled, but cannot live without me. It is my choice now. Do I accept him back, or do I send him away? I have to imagine my life with Sam. I cannot imagine my life with anybody else. This is a big decision, I must think about it seriously.

There! Three more pros than cons. Doesn't that prove I should marry him? He is overpowering, but isn't that better than a boring mate? He is judgmental, but better to be with a clever judge than an accepting fool. And anyway, we are just living together for now. We both need to see how that works out. I would not feel so happy at the prospect if it were not the right thing to do
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