He poured boiling water into two cups and handed one to her.
‘If you like,’ he went on, putting two saccharine into his cup, ‘I’ll ring old Wallace now, and fix you up an appointment. The old bags on the switchboard give people they don’t know rather a hard time.’
The scalding coffee burnt her throat but seemed to give her strength.
‘Would you mind terribly if I kept it?’
‘Oh be realistic, angel. You of
Harriet sat in Dr Wallace’s waiting-room feeling sick, thumbing feverishly through the same magazine, watching girls go in and out. Some looked pale and terrified like herself, others obviously old timers, chatted together and might have been waiting for an appointment at the hairdresser’s. Two models embraced in the doorway.
‘Fanny darling!’
‘Maggie!’
‘Friday morning — see if you can get booked in at the same time, and we can go in together.’
Dr Wallace was smooth, very suntanned from skiing and showed a lot of white cuff.
‘You’re certain you don’t want to get married and have the child, Miss Poole? This is a big step you’re taking.’
‘He doesn’t want to marry me,’ whispered Harriet, unable to meet the doctor’s eyes. ‘But he’s perfectly happy to pay. I’ve got a letter from him here.’
Dr Wallace smiled as he looked at Simon’s royal blue writing paper.
‘Oh dear! Mr Villiers again; quite a lad, isn’t he? One of our best customers.’
Harriet went white. ‘Fond of him, were you? Shame, shame, boy’s got a lot of charm, but not ideal husband material, I wouldn’t say. You’re very young, plenty more fish in the sea. Not much fun bringing up a baby on your own, pity to ruin a promising academic career.’
‘I know,’ said Harriet listlessly.
‘Just got to get another doctor to sign the form. Will first thing Friday morning be all right for you? You’ll be out in the evening. There, there; don’t cry, it’ll be soon over.’
Her last hope was her parents. She caught a train down to the country. As she arrived one of her mother’s bridge parties was just breaking up. Middle-aged women, buoyed up by a couple of gin and tonics were yelling goodbye to each other, banging car doors and driving off.
Harriet noticed as she slunk up the path that the noisiest of all was Lady Neave, Susie’s mother-in-law.
‘Goodbye, Alison,’ she was saying, clashing her cheek against Harriet’s mother’s cheek with infinite condescension. ‘Great fun! We’re all meeting at Audrey’s next week, aren’t we, Audrey?
What a gauche child thought Lady Neave, as she drove the Humber off in a series of jerks, narrowly missing the blue gates at the bottom of the drive. One could hardly believe she came from the same family as Susie, who although not quite what the Neaves would have liked for their only son, knew her place and was shaping up as a nice little wife.
Mrs Poole, having made her farewells, found Harriet slumped in a chair in the kitchen, the cat purring on her knee. Why must the child look such a fright, she thought, that awful duffle coat with all the buttons missing, no make-up, hair unkempt. She was just like her father, always grubbing round in his silly old museum.
‘I wish you’d warned me,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got sausages for supper. Are you staying the night?’
‘Yes please,’ said Harriet.
‘That’ll be nice — just the two of us.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘Away; gone to one of his dreary ceramics conferences.’
Harriet’s heart sank. Her father was the only person she could talk to.
Her mother put some sausages on to fry, and started washing up.
‘These bridge fours have become a regular thing,’ she said, plunging glasses into soapy water. ‘Elizabeth Neave’s really a wonderful girl.’
How could anyone over forty be described as a girl? thought Harriet.
‘She’s really bullying me to get a washing-up machine; she says they’re such a boon when one’s entertaining.’
Harriet looked at the rubber gloves whisking round the hot suds — like surgeon’s hands, she thought in horror, sucking a baby out like a Hoover. The smell of frying sausages was making her sick. Out in the garden the wind was whirling pink almond blossom off the trees.
Look at her just mooning out of the window, thought Mrs Poole. Susie would have picked up a tea-towel and been drying up by now.
‘How’s the ’varsity?’ she said. ‘You look very peaky. Have you been working too hard?’
Harriet turned round:
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Pregnant.’
The rubber hands stopped, then suddenly started washing very fast.
‘How do you know?’
‘I had a test.’
‘It’s Geoffrey,’ said her mother in a shrill voice, ‘I never liked that boy.’
‘No it isn’t. It’s someone else.’
‘You little tart,’ hissed her mother.
Then it all came flooding out, the hysterics, the tears, the after all we’ve done for yous, the way we’ve scrimped and saved to send you to university.
‘I knew this would happen with all those Bohemians with their long hair and petitions, and free love,’ shouted her mother. ‘It’s all your father’s fault. He wanted you to go so badly. Where did we go wrong with you? What will the Neaves say?’
On and on, round and round, repeating the same arguments with relentless monotony.
Harriet sat down. The cat, no respecter of crisis, rubbed against her legs, and then jumped onto her knee purring like a kettle drum.
‘Could you please turn those sausages off?’ said Harriet, suddenly overwhelmed with nausea.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ said her mother. ‘I suppose the young man’s ditched you.’
‘He doesn’t want to marry me, if that’s what you mean.’
‘He may have to,’ said her mother ominously.
‘Oh, Mummy, it’s the twentieth century,’ said Harriet. ‘Look, it meant something to me, but it didn’t mean anything to him. He doesn’t love me, but at least he’s given me the money for an abortion.’
Her mother took the cheque. Her expression had the same truculent relief of people who have waited half an hour in the cold, and who at last see a bus rounding the corner.
‘Banks at Coutts, does he? Fancies himself I suppose. Isn’t it against the law?’
‘Not any more,’ said Harriet. ‘I went to a doctor this morning in London. It’s all above board; they’ll do it on Friday.’
‘It seems the best course,’ said her mother somewhat mollified. ‘The young man does seem to have his wits about him.’
Harriet took a deep breath.
‘Do you really want me to go ahead with it? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the baby?’
Her mother looked appalled, as though the bus had turned out to be ‘Private’ after all.
‘What ever for? Where could you keep it?’
It was as though she was talking about a pet elephant, thought Harriet.
‘You can’t have it here,’ her mother went on. ‘Think what people would say — the Neaves for example. It’s not fair on Susie and Peter. Where would you live? You haven’t got any money.’
