An Experiment in Love: A Novel

‘Want another coffee?’ she said. Her voice was blurred, thickened with mucus. All morning she had been walking up and down to the kitchen at the end of the corridor, just for something to do: the grey thin liquid overflowing the beakers, slopping over oblivious hands. She did not drink it, I did not drink it; it sat beside us and went cold, until Sue suggested more.

‘I couldn’t,’ I said. ‘You get yourself one.’

‘No, I couldn’t, I feel bloated.’ Sitting on Julia’s bed, she leant back against the wall, her hands resting above her navel.

‘So what did he say then? What did he really say?’

‘Well, he seemed – pleased. Not exactly. Pleased in a way, as if, you know, he hadn’t expected it, but – well, he didn’t say much, really.’

‘So he wants you to have it?’

‘We didn’t talk – I mean, I think it was pretty much of a shock – ’

‘Are you going to have it?’

‘God, I don’t know. My parents will be livid. They’ll chuck me out.’

In that year, parents still did. For Catholic girls there were small hospitals run by nuns, in discreet rural areas. Parents paid the train fare, and gave a donation; their daughter returned home when her stomach was flat, and the baby was never seen again. Folklore insisted that the experience was penitential: schoolgirls screaming in a twenty-four-hour agony, while Sister pottered serenely in another room.

Head still bent, I considered Sue’s phraseology. ‘Livid’ – that was a word she’d got from Claire. ‘Chuck me out’ – could be natural to her, or could be one of those pseudo-robust phrases that boarding-school girls employ. It seemed not surprising to me that, out of all of us, this fate had chosen Sue. She had a partial, permeable quality. Words penetrated her; bits of other people’s experience intruded themselves into her, like needles picking up the skin. As she talked I heard all the dislocations in her speech, the strange gaps between word and word, the shift from her lurching southern consonants to Claire’s posh rounded vowels. She is a thing of shreds and patches, I thought. A stem grew under my hands. I heard the tiny rasp of wool against wool, as I slid my needle through; the silver beads under my fingertips felt like ball-bearings.

‘So . . . it doesn’t look as if you’re setting up house with Roger, then?’

Sue put up her knuckles and pressed them against her mouth. For a moment I thought that she was going to vomit, then I saw that she was thinking. Her eyes moved, once, in their sockets. ‘What would you do?’ she mumbled through her fists.

I wouldn’t be in your situation, I thought. You must be one of those nice girls, that my mother told me about; the nice girls who don’t know what’s what. ‘I’d probably get rid of it,’ I said.

She took her hands away. ‘Is that your advice?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you give advice?’

‘No.’

‘What do I do?’

‘You go to the Student Health Service.’

‘Would it cost anything?’

‘No.’

‘Roger hasn’t got any money.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ve only got my grant.’

‘Were you on the Pill?’

‘At first.’

‘And then?’

‘I wanted to know if I could have one.’

I looked up, from the delicate terminal frill of a petal extravagantly curled. ‘You wanted what?’

Sue’s face had the tint and dullness of well-boiled cauliflower. It couldn’t be said that pregnancy suited her. ‘Help me, Carmel,’ she said. ‘Don’t blame me. Why should anybody blame me? I just wanted to know, you see, to be sure. It’s natural. It’s natural to want to know. Natural.’

‘Natural,’ I repeated. I reached for my scissors. I had inserted my final stitch. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art.

Lynette had an easy day on Mondays, and was always home by mid-afternoon. ‘Zsa-Zsa!’ she said. She had bought a toaster, too; out of habit, she leapt to it.

‘No, no toast! By Guest Night I want to be perfectly triangular.’ I whipped out my sweater from under my arm. ‘That belt that you said perhaps – ’

Lynette was already reaching for it. It was a wide belt, crushing and severe, made of stiff leather in an interesting shade of glossy deep green. ‘Can’t think why I bought it,’ Lynette had said earlier. ‘The colour, it seemed special. I suppose it was foresight.’

We stretched out my flowerpot sweater on the bed and laid the belt against it. ‘Yes! Now try on,’ Lynette said. I eased my creation over my head. Lynette took the sleeves and helped the cuffs over my hands. She slid the belt around my waist, drawing it in until the silver tongue snagged in the last hole. ‘Mirror,’ she said.

I had to jump to see myself in it. ‘Tell me,’ I said.