“I wasn’t aware that you did bother. You’ve always been more concerned with the welfare of other people’s children than your own.”
“Oh, teachers’ children are always worse than others. Their parents know from experience that there’s nothing to be done with young people, and when they get home, they’re not even being paid to try.”
Suzanne said, “I’ll talk to you. I won’t talk to Mum. I don’t want to be treated like a counselling session down the Bishop Tutu Centre. She’s too good at making up other people’s minds for them.”
“She only wants what’s best for you.”
“I bet Hitler used to say that.”
“She can’t understand your saying you don’t want an abortion. Myself, I wonder…I mean, it’s difficult to see how an intelligent girl like you becomes pregnant by accident.”
Colin’s tone was moderate, discursive. He had always said that young people should have the largest possible measure of moral freedom. He had said it in the sixties, and had gone on saying it through the seventies; the sentiment was now in its third decade. He found it a little difficult, at times, to distinguish his own children’s faces from those of the hundreds of juveniles who passed through his office in the course of the academic year, and he sometimes wondered if he would readily put a name to them if he met them on the street. Perhaps it was just as well. It was the first thing that Sylvia had learned on her social sciences course; the individual is always an exception, and the individual never matters.
“Has it not occurred to you,” Suzanne said, “that I might want the baby?”
“Do you mean you got pregnant on purpose?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly, eh?” Like her mother, Colin thought. Contraception had never been an exact science with Sylvia. Perm any six pills out of twenty-one. None of the children had been planned, but not quite unplanned, either.
“I don’t want to push you on the point,” he said, “but as you have chosen to come home and involve us, I think you might take us into your confidence about the father. Is it somebody on your course?”
“No.”
“Well, are you—fond of him?”
“He’s married,” Suzanne said. “A married man.”
“How could you?” Colin said. He took a moment to digest it. “At your age, and with all those bright young men to choose from?” Suzanne shrugged. “I don’t know what to say, Suzanne, I don’t understand you.” He sighed. “You haven’t been the same since you came back from that peace camp.”
Sylvia—who said “life must go on”—had gone out to do the weekend shopping. Colin thought it an astonishing proposition, considering her views, but he was glad to see her out of the house, and Claire with her. Karen was upstairs doing her homework; Alistair had not for some years been in the habit of accounting for his movements. For a weekend, the house was very quiet. The long stretch of the summer holidays lay ahead. It was another fine day, and the sun poured into the living room, hot and dazzling through the french windows. Suzanne sat in an armchair, her legs curled under her, her expression remote. No doubt she was thinking straight through the summer to the months when she would be quite changed by her decision, when the consequences of her choice would come home to her.
“If I have the child,” she said, “he might marry me.”
“Marry you?”
“He’s always wanted a child. They’ve been married for years but they’ve never had one.”
“Do you mean that you’re trying to break up this man’s marriage?”
“If that’s how you want to put it.” She stretched and yawned. She felt torpid, too lazy and warm to answer questions. She had been through it already in her head. She would have the baby for him, and he would marry her. In her life so far, she had never wanted anything very much; but what she had wanted, she’d usually got. There seemed no reason why this should alter.
“Have you discussed it with him?”
She leaned her head against the back of the chair. “Not as such.”
“Not as such? You mean you’ve discussed it under the guise of something else?”
“That’s what people do, isn’t it?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “They discuss things, find out what each other’s attitudes are. That’s how they get to know each other. They talk generalities, don’t they?”
“So that it may look to the outside world like a silly girl trying to break up a marriage, but it is really more like one of Plato’s symposia?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, yawning. Perhaps she really did not. There is an entrance fee to the museum of our culture, and for this generation no one had paid it. “Do you want my advice?” Colin asked.
“No.”
“Why did you come home then?”
Suzanne reached out to get a cushion from the sofa, and shook it gently to make it comfortable. “I’ve given up my room at the hall of residence, and I need a permanent address so that I can claim benefit. Ask Florence. She’ll tell you.”
“I see.” Colin’s tone was grim; he meant to sound like a man who was mastering his temper only with effort. In fact, there seemed a leaden familiarity about the situation; as if he were an old man, with many many daughters. He looked at his watch. Sylvia would be back soon, and she would expect him to have some answers.
“Am I keeping you from your badminton?” his daughter enquired.
“Squash,” he said bleakly. “No, that’s all right. So that’s what you see for yourself, is it, living at home and
