February came in. Decimalization of the currency was about to occur, and shopkeepers all over the city were in a panic; old ladies interviewed in bus queues said there’d never be honest money again. We were still occupied with the matter of Sue and what she carried inside; still the anguished, unproductive evenings over grey coffee. Julia refused to be drawn into it, saying that the solution was perfectly simple. Sue went home for the weekend again, taking the risk that her parents would guess. Her lack of appetite, she explained by saying that she had a tummy bug; ‘It’s going round at Tonbridge Hall.’ Her parents believed her. After all, she didn’t look pregnant. Her shoulders hunched protectively over her midriff, and her face was long and drawn. When she came back on Sunday evening, she must have met up with Roger and had it out with him, because she said she’d never trust any man again, as long as she lived. She was going to be a nun, she said. She locked herself into C2 and wouldn’t let anybody in.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Claire moaned. ‘Shall I tell the warden? I could just say she was upset, that we’d had a bit of a tiff, that she needs someone to talk sense into her. I don’t want to cause trouble, but I can’t sleep in the corridor.’
‘No?’ I said.
Claire blushed hotly. ‘Well, if it came to it, I suppose I could.’
‘Have my bed,’ Julia said. ‘I can take myself elsewhere for the night.’
‘But my essay! My essay’s locked in there with her, and it’s due tomorrow.’
Julia rolled her eyes.
I went downstairs to the pigeonholes where our letters were kept. It was Sunday evening, and of course they were empty. But I had begun to believe all sorts of things. That the postman would come at strange times. That some other girl was taking my letters and hoarding them in her room, but that she would have a change of heart and give them back to me. It was as if I had forgotten the content of my telephone conversation with Niall, or not understood it. A clean break, he had said. As people speak of a sporting injury: ‘a clean break, it could have been worse’. The lie seemed written into my body; I felt pieces of my own bones, jagged and splintered and trying to work their way out through my skin. Although I could see there was nothing in the pigeonhole, I used to put my hand in and feel about: as if the essence of a letter might be there, a kind of braille that would blossom into meaning as my fingertips sought it out.
Since the morning I had breakfasted with Karina, I could no longer eat up my toast. It had disgusted me, to see her cram the bread into her mouth. I imagined I had seen a doughy mass churning on her tongue, a mess of crumbs and saliva. There was a quivering inside me, a low-level but constant nausea. Whenever I saw that the pigeonhole was empty, something seemed to turn over in my belly, something that felt alive.
I went back up to C Floor. Lynette and I crouched in the corridor outside Sue’s door and negotiated with her. At first she wouldn’t speak, but we were conciliatory, kind, gentle; in time, we talked out Claire’s essay. We could hear Sue’s snuffling sobs as she fed it under the door, a sheet at a time. Claire was delighted: but then she wanted us to talk out her toothbrush. We said, we’re not trained negotiators; we’re tired, we’ve had enough.
That night I was conscious of the stranger, Claire, tossing and muttering in the bed that was foot to foot with mine. I lay awake, listening to her, and thinking of her dirty teeth. About three o’clock, the hour at which even London is quiet, I became aware that she was saying her prayers.
It was Lynette who lent Sue the money to have a private termination; ‘The easiest way, at this stage,’ she said. She sat for a long time brooding over her chequebook, pen in hand. ‘I’d rather not have to do it,’ she said. ‘Claire always seemed to think we were on opposite sides. Whereas in fact, Carmel, my position is more complicated.’
The operation cost one hundred guineas. There was an elegance about the sum which suited Lynette. It is a depressing fact about the women of my generation: name them a year, ask them the fee for an abortion, and they’ll be able to tell you. They know the price of expectation, and how expectation dies. And if they don’t know, it’s because they repress and refuse the memory; you may be sure that they knew at the time.
Lynette, sitting at her desk, propped her chin on her hand. ‘It is overblown, I know,’ she said, ‘portentous, rather a general observation than anything one might apply to the individual . . . but sometimes I think . . . when one looks back to the war . . . one should just breed. Because you never know when . . .’
‘Have you ever talked to Karina about the war?’
She smiled sadly. ‘She seems to know nothing about her family history. Which is perhaps just as well, really. Either it will be tragic, or discreditable.’
I left it. Left the topic. Said, ‘You’ll not get the money back, will you?’
‘Probably not,’ Lynette said. ‘But where else will she get it? I can do a favour for a friend.’
‘Will she think it’s a favour ten years from now?’
Lynette shrugged. ‘I’m not an astrologer. Perhaps we can arrange to meet. We’ll all meet up, shall we, and then we’ll see.’ She reached out for her diary, and circled the date. ‘Tea at the Ritz? Dinner at the Dorchester? Look, we may as well aspire; I don’t see you, ten years from now, digging into chips in a transport caff.’ She smiled again, less sadly. ‘But I bet Sue won’t make it. She’ll not be able to get a baby-sitter.’
Later, I was glad I’d heard her say that. It seemed to limit the damage: just to say, just to believe, that life goes on.
When Sue came back from the nursing home, she was tottering and white. With a sober tap on the door and a mutter of ‘She’s back’, Claire summoned us into C2. Sue, still with her coat on, sank on to her bed. Her mini-elephant rolled under her, and with a bleat of irritation she punched it feebly, knocking it to the floor.
‘Come on,’ Julia said. ‘Let’s have your coat, my love.’ She leant over Sue and began to undo her buttons. I thought, she’s changed; it must be part of her training.
Sue did not move: only looked at her dully. ‘Let me help you,’ Julia said patiently. She took hold of Sue and levered her into a sitting position, then began to ease the coat from her shoulders.
Sue cooperated, slow and baffled, drawing out her arms inch by inch. Julia was thwarted by her clenched fists; Sue nodded blearily towards them, left then right, as if she’d seen them somewhere before. Julia eased open her hands, finger by finger, and drew the cuffs over them. Sue’s eyes were closed. Julia lifted her by her elbows and in the half-second she was vertical swept the coat from under her. She tossed it on to Claire’s bed. I glanced at Claire. Her face was full of pain. ‘Will she be all right?’ I said. I was frightened.
‘Of course,’ Julia said shortly. ‘They wouldn’t have discharged her if she wasn’t going to be all right.’
Professional solidarity, I thought. Sue flopped back on the bed. ‘You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down the right way up, Sue.’ She grasped Sue by the ankles and gently up-ended her, to induce her to follow this advice. Then she began to take off her shoes. They were brown lace-up shoes, like school shoes. The laces were very badly knotted. Julia picked at them. Her occupation made her look humble, like someone in the New Testament.
Sue mouthed something. ‘I think she says just pull,’ Claire said.
Julia pulled. The stockinged heels jerked out. ‘Oh, I see, you never untie them,’ Julia said. I thought I heard the voice of Mother Benedict, talking on her frequent topic of shoe-abuse: ‘a sluttish habit, and sure ruination to the shape of the leather’.
Julia slotted a hand under Sue’s head. She jerked it up and flapped a pillow under it. Sue’s head fell back as if half-severed. Her pale hair was dark with sweat. Her skull seemed to have taken on bony contours that I had not seen before. She is quite ugly, I thought: ashamed of myself for thinking it. However did we persuade ourselves that she didn’t look pregnant? That was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? I could see now, as she lay breathing through h
er mouth, a scooped hollow beneath her ribs.
‘Unpack her case,’ Julia said. Claire moved to obey. She brought out a scruffy washbag, blue sprigs of flowers on dusty pink: a packet of aspirin, and a huge rubbery pack of heavy-duty sanitary towels. She stood with them in her hand, turning her head slowly, her expression unreadable. ‘Well, what do you expect her to do?’ Julia said. ‘Stick a Tampax up?’ She straightened up from the bed. Her cheeks were pink, with the effort of wrestling with the shoes and in shock at her own crudity. ‘Put them where she can find them, Claire.’
I looked down at Sue on the bed. ‘She’s as white as a sheet,’ I said. I was struck that a simile could come true.
‘I know it looks dramatic.’ Julia was breathing heavily. ‘But twenty-four hours from now she’ll be fine, honestly. Claire, are you going to be around tonight? See she gets plenty of fluid. She might throw up. Get a bowl or something. Can you do that? Only myself, I’m going out.’
‘Of course, Julia,’ Claire said. ‘Just tell me what to do.’ Her mind was relieved; she was ready to be commanded, ready to fuss.
‘I just did,’ Julia said.
I thought, they do not teach this to first-year medical students. She is not some bedside nurse; she is busy making A Promising Start in Anatomy. She knows bones, not flesh: not flinching feet, jelly legs, dry mouth. As she passed me, speeding to the door, my hand brushed her arm. She gave me a half-glance and a half-smile. Her eyes seemed more deeply blue than ever before, as if someone had punched the blueness into them. Her fringe bounced fatly against her forehead. I remembered that she, too, had sometimes been away for the weekend. And that once she had brought back no news and no cakes: nothing back but herself.
A cold beading of sweat broke out on my forehead: it was another cliché forced into life. We should not be so careless with these images, phrases; they enact themselves. I followed Julia into the corridor, but she had already slammed into C3, and I didn’t want to be alone with her, in case I had to ask questions and she had to supply answers.
Claire followed me out. She held the door ajar, speaking in a bedside undertone, as if Sue were unaware of her own situation. And if she bleeds too much? How much is too much? It’s her body, I said, she’ll know. But if and if? Call a doctor. I couldn’t, she said, what about the warden, Jacqueline on the desk . . . Then come for me, I said tiredly, I will do it. I felt past caring, to be honest. I could always employ dumb insolence. I just didn’t want anybody to die.
The following day, Sue was up and about: uncertain, looking drained and ill, but no worse than people do look in the course of a London winter. There was an unspoken agreement that we would never again refer to what had taken place. Her child must vanish into the blank badlands of never-was: very different, of course, from the glittering realm of might-have-been.
That evening Lynette came to our room with a bottle of whisky. ‘Not one of my more elegant offerings,’ she said. ‘But now the crisis is over, I think we all need a proper drink.’
Julia slapped her book shut, and so did I. Claire was with us; she had brought her evening’s work in, because Sue had been ready for bed and wanted the lights out by eight o’clock. When Claire saw the bottle she excused herself, and said she would go downstairs and sit in the room off the hall that was called the Quiet Room; quiet was what she needed, she said. ‘Oh, Claire, come on, loosen up, have a drink . . .’ we said; but our pleas tailed off, we weren’t convincing. She went, we breathed a sigh, we smiled.
We brought our tooth-glasses; but Lynette had a cut-glass tumbler in her hand, heavy-based and glinting. Julia leant forward and flicked her nail against its rim. A thin melodious note shivered in the air. Julia and I both tried out our tumblers; there was nothing but a dull clink. ‘So,’ Julia said, ‘you are a serious spirits drinker. I knew your vices could not remain hidden for ever.’
Lynette’s blackberry eyes sharpened. ‘I wouldn’t have said they were hidden at all.’
‘What do you do for sex?’ Julia asked.
‘Oh, I get it in Harrow,’ Lynette said. ‘We go on, you know, pretty much as the rest of the world, but I do have a person back there, and I really don’t want to get him mixed up in all this.’
All this: the atmosphere of bath water and parsnips, talc and blood. Some hideous girls used to shave their legs and leave the hairs in the bath. Is it surprising that Tonbridge Hall saw the death of love?
The three of us grew cynical, and perhaps a little drunk. ‘The question is, who’s next?’ Lynette said. ‘Would you like to place a bet on my room-mate?’
For a moment the two of us spluttered out our whisky down our noses. Julia said, ‘Lynette, I know she’s put on weight, but you must understand that she’s naturally gross. I mean, imagine, who would look twice – she doesn’t bring anyone back, does she?’
‘Not that I know. Of course, I’ve had weekends away.’
‘You’ve never seen her with anybody, have you, Carmel?’
‘No.’ I fell silent, cherishing my whisky, trying to imagine Karina and her beau – any possible beau – running the gauntlet of the signing-in system. Karina just wouldn’t go for it, I felt. If she wanted to bring a boy in, and anybody tried to stop her, she’d square up and curl her lip and then – BIFF!!! – that would be the warden laid out, blood springing from her nose in fountains. I said faintly, ‘I suppose she could have met someone outside.’
Julia began to laugh. She fell back on her bed and kicked her legs; this was extravagance, I felt. ‘Carmel, you’re a riot,’ she said. ‘Outside? In a park, you mean? You think she did it in a shelter, or under a bush?’
‘Not that sort of outside,’ I said severely. ‘I mean out of here, somebody else, not even a student. Honestly, Jule, this is no laughing matter.’
I felt a thrill of fear.
Julia wiped her eyes. ‘I find it so.’
That was a long night. I had to catch up on what I’d missed, but the whisky had flown straight to my head and it was hard to keep awake. I read the case of Thomas v. Bradbury (1906) in which an author sued a malicious book reviewer, and won. I rubbed my eyes and adjusted the desk lamp to cast a better light. Julia snored discreetly behind me, the covers flung back and one arm flopping out of bed.
Next I read the case of Carlill v. Carbolic Smokeball Co. (1883). This was a case of a quack remedy, backed up by ritzy claims: the smoke ball claimed to prevent influenza and to cure coughs, colds, asthma, croup, neuralgia and a mysterious condition called throat deafness. ‘Oh, and snoring,’ I said out loud. ‘Cures snoring, within a week.’ It occurred to me that I hadn’t been down to dinner that evening. No particular reason, I’d just been immersed in my work; when Julia said, ‘Are you coming?’ I’d waved her to go on ahead.
The heating was off; I rubbed my upper arms, and groped for my cardigan. The travelling alarm showed three o’clock. Thoughts of Karina kept sliding into my head. How pathetic if we’d all been so absorbed in Sue – and let’s face it, if I’d been so self-absorbed – that we had missed, or simply misinterpreted, the fact that Karina was swelling before our eyes . . . But no. Don’t be frightened, I said to myself, it’s just the macaroni, just the macaroni and the powdered soup and gristle pies and ogres’ penises. It’s the sheer quantity of food ingested that makes her get bigger and bigger.
I tried to imagine Karina in a man’s arms: a romantic encounter, a lace pillow, an orchid. I could imagine only the Victoria bus station. It was engraved on my mind, the day long ago when I’d seen her on the way home from school, smoking with a crowd of boys. I knew – I’d known for years – that Karina had another life, one hidden from me. I just didn’t understand the nature of it, and she didn’t mean me to.
Now: I ran my fingers through my short hair, I tugged it hard to make myself concentrate. The Smoke Ball Co. offered a reward of one hundred pounds to anyone who contracted influenza after using their product. It claimed that one smoke ball would last a family for months; it produced testimonials. The Bishop of London said
the invention had benefited him greatly. The Duke of Portland wrote that he found it most efficacious. Lady Mostyn said she would have pleasure in recommending it to her friends.
I was hungry; it could not be ignored. I had to wait a moment to place the sensation, it was so unfamiliar. When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember eating a meal since the day of Niall and the roast-lamb dinner; not positively. I must have done, of course; consumed toast, the odd yoghurt, an egg here and there, a bar of chocolate. But if you asked me what I ate yesterday, or the day before – I had no idea. I thought, I could go downstairs and read the menu by the warden’s office; that would give me a clue.
I groped in my bedside cupboard, to see if by chance there was a forgotten half-packet of biscuits. Nothing: there were crumbs, that’s all, grit under my fingers. I tiptoed across the room to look in Julia’s cupboard. There was an orange, a luminous disc in the darkness. She would not mind my taking this, I thought. After all, she knows I have to sit up and work all night. I dug my fingers into its skin, and the pulp gave beneath them, and the juice ran; I licked it from my fingertips. Mrs Carlill used the smoke ball, but went down with flu just the same. She sued the company for the hundred pounds.
I noticed that my heart was beating very fast: a skipping rhythm. My chest felt tight: perhaps because I was trying to imagine the smoke ball, work out what kind of thing it could be. Some juice dripped on to my file paper. I will talk to Karina tomorrow, I thought. I will go to her room and be friendly, we will sit down and chat, I will have the opportunity to look at her closely and if there’s anything she wants to tell me she’ll have the chance. After all, I am her oldest friend.