‘First, would you like to tell me exactly what you told Mrs Jenkins? It will help me to help you.’
‘I don’t know now what I told her,’ she returned in a flat tone, almost as if she didn’t care.
‘You do realize your condition, don’t you?’ he went on.
She nodded and shrugged offhandedly.
‘You told Mrs Jenkins whom you suspected.’ Again she nodded, this time without the shrug. ‘And is that the truth?’
Her gaze fell away and she lowered her head, but there came a faint nod, so brief as to be hardly discernible. There seemed to be no lie in the movement. A liar would surely have stared him out, but this gave the appearance of genuine shame. It was cruel. This girl had no cause to feel shame – a child at the mercy of a brutish, selfish father: what could she have done to defend herself. She had been wronged.
He leaned back, the movement making her glance up. What he saw in her eyes took the breath out of him: an arid gleam of utter loathing. It lasted for only a second and he knew it wasn’t there for him but for another.
His mind conjured up the face, pugnacious, flushed – with drink maybe – its owner heavily built. What hope had this girl before such a man? The impression might be wrong, but even if he were a mere weasel of a man, his power over a girl like this was just as vile. But, having seen her hulking brother, his first impression struck him as probably more correct.
On an impulse, he stood up and came round the desk towards her. Seeing her lean away ever so slightly from his approach, he stopped himself just in time from catching her up in his arms and holding her close. Instead, he moved past her to pace the room, the only thing he could think to do.
Feeling a little more composed, he turned back to her. ‘Listen to me, my dear. I need to explain certain things to you.’ He spoke as kindly as he could, but serious matters needed to be dealt with.
‘You are aware now that you are carrying a child inside you?’
Ellie nodded.
‘And that it is… I am sorry to be saying this… that it is the child of your own father.’
This time she did not nod but, as before, stared at him with that arid, almost blank gaze. Again it was unnerving, but he forced himself to continue, clinically, with no trace of emotion – a doctor advising a patient.
‘I need to explain to you the possible implications attaching to such a situation. Certain things could affect the child’s chance of a normal life. At the best it would abort… You could lose it quite suddenly, early on in this pregnancy. On the other hand, it could go to full term; but what its condition might be is the problem. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Ellie?’
She was looking confused. A child of sixteen – what could she know?
‘There are certain unions between man and woman nature abhors. Between brother and sister, between uncle and niece, between mother and son and between father and daughter. It is in the Bible. Any such union can cause irrevocable damage to the issue that may come of it.’
Still she stared as if uncomprehending what he was saying. He began again, in simpler terms for her. ‘If the child ever goes to full term, it is almost a certainty it will be either stillborn or will come into the world an imbecile, or deformed, or both. I dread to think to what degree. Do you understand now?’
At last realization of what he’d been trying to say had stolen over her. Her eyes had grown wide, filled with fear. He hurried to assuage that fear.
‘Listen to me, Ellie; I can help you there. I can stop it if you wish.’
‘Oh, yes please!’
‘But you have to put yourself in my hands, and not a word can be breathed to anyone. And I mean anyone! – not even your sister. I will explain. And if you are in agreement at the end of it, you will abide by your word.’
‘I promise.’
‘Now, why you must never breathe a word of this is because what I shall do for you is illegal. If discovered, I’d be struck off the medical register, banned from the medical profession, never allowed to practise medicine.’
He had tried to say it in the simplest terms for her benefit, but there was no response. She merely sat listening to him.
‘I shall need to perform a small operation on you, child – very simple and quick – and will relieve you of that which you are carrying inside you.’
It had been the only way to explain without becoming technical; being used to dealing with dull, uneducated patients, he had thought her brighter and quicker to grasp what he had been saying. Then he realized that she had been in shock; she had understood what he had been saying but hadn’t been able to respond. He felt almost relief. But he needed confirmation.
‘You know what I’m saying, child?’ he said slowly.
‘You’re going to do something inside me and that will make me all right again, won’t it?’
Good God! She had known all along. In her world she would have heard of back-street abortions. But if she knew all that, with the dregs of society all about her, why hadn’t she realized her own condition?
He knew the answer to that. Even in such a world as she came from, mothers were too embarrassed to explain to their daughters the facts of life, many of which they themselves didn’t know. Though even they knew how to prevent pregnancy, breast feeding for as long as possible – things like that.
The facts of life were usually learned from friends and then mostly from conjecture – babies
