Ursula was left to stare at the floral wallpaper. She had never noticed before that the flowers were wisteria, the same flower that grew on the arch over the back porch. This must be what in literature was referred to as ‘deflowering’, she thought. It had always sounded like a rather pretty word.
When she came back downstairs a half-hour later, a half-hour of thoughts and emotions considerably more intense than was usual for a Saturday morning, Sylvie and Hugh were on the doorstep waving a dutiful goodbye to the disappearing rear end of Howie’s car.
‘Thank goodness they weren’t staying,’ Sylvie said. ‘I don’t think I could have been bothered with Maurice’s bluster.’
‘Imbeciles,’ Hugh said cheerfully. ‘All right?’ he said, catching sight of Ursula in the hallway.
‘Yes,’ she said. Any other answer would have been too awful.
Ursula found it easier than she had expected to lock this occurrence away. After all, hadn’t Sylvie herself said that the definition of an indiscretion was that you didn’t speak of it afterwards? Ursula imagined a cupboard in her mind, a corner one, in simple pitch pine. Howie and the back stairs were put on a high shelf and the key was firmly turned in the lock.
A girl surely should know better than to be caught on those back stairs – or in the shrubbery – like the heroine in a gothic novel, the kind that Bridget was so fond of. But who would have suspected that the reality of it would be so sordid and bloody? He must have sensed something in her, something unchaste, that even she was unaware of. Before locking it away she had gone over the incident again and again, trying to see in what way she had been to blame. There must be something written on her skin, in her face, that some people could read and others couldn’t. Izzie had seen it. Something wicked this way comes. And the something was herself.
The summer unrolled. Pamela was given a place at Leeds University to read chemistry and said she was glad because people would be ‘more straightforward’ in the provinces and not as snobbish. She played a lot of tennis with Gertie and championship mixed doubles with Daniel Cole and his brother Simon, and often let Ursula borrow her bike so that she could go for long rides with Millie, both of them shrieking as they freewheeled down hills. Sometimes Ursula went for lazy walks through the lanes with Teddy and Jimmy, Jock running rings around them. Neither Teddy nor Jimmy seemed to need to keep their lives secret from their sisters in the way that Maurice had done.
Pamela and Ursula took Teddy and Jimmy up to London for day trips, to the Natural History Museum, to the British Museum, to Kew, but they never told Izzie when they were in town. She had moved yet again, to a large house in Holland Park (‘a rather artistic endroit’). One day as they wandered along Piccadilly they spied a pile of The Adventures of Augustus in a bookshop window, accompanied by ‘a photograph of the author – Miss Delphie Fox, taken by Mr Cecil Beaton’ in which Izzie looked like a film star or a society beauty. ‘Oh, God,’ Teddy said and Pamela, despite being in loco parentis, didn’t correct his language.
There was a fête once more in the grounds of Ettringham Hall. The Daunts had gone, after a thousand years, Lady Daunt never having recovered from the murder of little Angela, and the Hall was now owned by a rather mysterious man, a Mr Lambert who some said was Belgian, some Scottish, but no one had had a long enough conversation with him to discover his origins. Rumour said he had made his fortune during the war but everyone reported him shy and difficult to talk to. There were dances, too, in the village hall on Friday evenings and at one of these Fred Smith appeared, scrubbed clean of his daily soot, and asked, in turn, Pamela, Ursula and the three eldest Shawcrosses to dance. There was a gramophone, not a band, and they danced only old-fashioned dances, no Charleston or Black Bottom, and it was pleasant to be waltzed safely around the room, with surprising skill, by Fred Smith. Ursula thought it would be rather nice to have someone like Fred as a beau, although obviously Sylvie would never have tolerated such a thing. (‘A railwayman?’)
As soon as she thought about Fred in this way, the cupboard door sprang open and the whole appalling scene on the back stairs tumbled out.
‘Steady on,’ Fred Smith said, ‘you’ve gone a bit green round the gills, Miss Todd,’ and Ursula had to blame it on the heat and insist on taking some fresh air on her own. She had in fact been feeling quite queasy lately. Sylvie put it down to a summer cold.
Maurice had gained his expected first (‘How?’ Pamela puzzled) and came home for a few weeks to lounge around before taking up a place in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, to train as a barrister. Howie, apparently, had returned to ‘his people’ at their summer home on Long Island Sound. Maurice seemed a little miffed that he had not been invited to join them.
‘What happened to you?’ Maurice said to Ursula one afternoon as he sprawled on a deckchair on the lawn reading Punch, cramming nearly an entire slice of Mrs Glover’s marmalade cake into his mouth at once.
‘What do you mean what happened to me?’
‘You’ve turned into a heifer.’
‘A heifer?’ It was true she was filling out her summer frocks rather alarmingly, even her hands and feet seemed to have plumped up. ‘Puppy fat, dear,’ Sylvie said, ‘even I had it. Less cake and more tennis, that’s the remedy.’
‘You look hellish,’ Pamela said to her, ‘what’s wrong with you?’
‘I have no idea,’ Ursula said.
And then something truly terrible dawned on her, so awful, so shameful, so irretrievable, that she felt something catch fire and burn inside her at the very thought. She hunted down Sylvie’s copy of The Teaching of Young Children and Girls as to Reproduction by Dr Beatrice Webb, which, theoretically, Sylvie kept under lock and key in a chest in her bedroom, but the chest was never locked because Sylvie had long ago lost the key. Reproduction seemed to be the last thing on the author’s mind. She advised distracting young girls by giving them plenty of ‘home-made bread, cake, porridge, puddings and cold water splashed regularly on to the parts’. It was clearly no help. Ursula shuddered at the memory of Howie’s ‘parts’ and how they had come together with hers in one vile conjugation. Was this what Sylvie and Hugh did? She couldn’t imagine her mother putting up with such a thing.
She sneaked a look at Mrs Shawcross’s medical encyclopaedia. The Shawcrosses were on holiday in Norfolk but their maid thought nothing of it when Ursula appeared at the back door saying she had come to look at a book.
The encyclopaedia explained the mechanics of ‘the sexual act’, something which appeared to take place only within the ‘loving confines of the marital bed’ rather than on the back stairs when you were on your way to fetch a handkerchief, a book. The encyclopaedia also detailed the consequences of failing to retrieve that handkerchief, that book – the missed monthlies, the sickness, the weight gain. It took nine months apparently. And now they were already well into July. Before long she would be squeezing herself back into her navy-blue gymslip and catching the bus to school every morning with Millie.
Ursula began to take long solitary walks. There was no Millie to confide in (and would she have anyway?) and Pamela had decamped to Devon with her Girl Guide patrol. Ursula had never taken to the Guides, now she rather regretted that – they might have given her the gumption to deal with Howie. A Guide would have retrieved that handkerchief, that book, without being hindered on the journey.
‘Is there anything the matter, dear?’ Sylvie asked as they darned stockings together. Sylvie’s children only really came into focus for her when in isolation. Together they were an unwieldy flock, singly they had character.
Ursula imagined what she could say. You remember Maurice’s friend Howie? I appear to be the mother of his child. She glanced at Sylvie, serenely wefting and warping her little woollen patch on the hole in the toe of one of Teddy’s socks. She did not look like a woman who had had her parts breached. (A ‘vagina’, apparently, according to Mrs Shawcross’s encyclopaedia – not a word that had ever been uttered in the Todds’ household.)
‘No, n
othing at all,’ Ursula said. ‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’
That afternoon she walked to the station and sat on a bench on the platform and contemplated throwing herself under the express when it came hurtling through, but the next train turned out to be for London, huffing slowly to a halt in front of her in a way that seemed so familiar that it made her want to cry. She spotted Fred Smith climbing down from the cab, oily overalls and face smutty with coal dust. Spotting her, he came over and said, ‘Here’s a coincidence, are you catching our train?’
‘I haven’t got a ticket,’ Ursula said.
‘That’s all right,’ Fred said, ‘nod and a wink from me and the ticket inspector’ll see a friend of mine all right.’ Was she a friend of Fred Smith? It was comforting to think so. Of course, if he knew about her condition he would no longer be a friend. No one would.
‘Yes, all right, thank you,’ she said. Not having a ticket seemed such a little problem.
She watched Fred climb back into the cab of his locomotive. The stationmaster stalked along the platform, slamming the carriage doors with a finality that suggested they would never be opened again. Steam flared from the funnel and Fred Smith stuck his head out of the cab and shouted, ‘Look smart there, Miss Todd, or you’ll be left behind,’ and she stepped obediently on board.
The stationmaster’s whistle chirped, short at first and then a longer call, and the train shuffled out of the station. Ursula sat on the warm plush of the seats and contemplated the future. She supposed she could get lost among the other fallen women crying woe on the streets of London. Curl up on a park bench and freeze to death overnight, except that it was the height of summer and she was unlikely to freeze. Or wade into the Thames and drift gently on the tide, past Wapping and Rotherhithe and Greenwich and on to Tilbury and out to sea. How puzzled her family would be if her drowned body was hooked from the deep. She imagined Sylvie, frowning over her darning, But she only went for a walk, she said she was going to pick the wild raspberries in the lane. Ursula thought guiltily of the white china pudding basin she had abandoned in the hedgerow, intending to collect it on her return. It was half full of the sour little berries and her fingers were still stained red.
She spent the afternoon walking through the great parks of London, through St James’s and Green Park, past the Palace and into Hyde Park and on to Kensington Gardens. It was extraordinary how far you could go in London and barely touch a pavement or cross a road. She had no money on her, of course – a ridiculous mistake, she realized now – and couldn’t even buy a cup of tea in Kensington. There was no Fred Smith here to ‘see her all right’. She was hot and tired and dusty and felt as parched as the grass in Hyde Park.
Could you drink the water in the Serpentine? Shelley’s first wife had drowned herself here but Ursula supposed that on a day like this – crowds of people enjoying the sunshine – it would be almost impossible to avoid another Mr Winton jumping in and rescuing her.
She knew where she was going, of course. It was inevitable somehow.
‘Good God, what happened to you?’ Izzie said, throwing her front door wide dramatically as if she had been expecting someone more interesting. ‘You look a fright.’
‘I’ve been walking all afternoon,’ Ursula said. ‘I have no money,’ she added. ‘And I think I’m going to have a baby.’
‘You’d better come in then,’ Izzie said.
And now here she was, sitting on an uncomfortable chair in a large house in Belgravia in what must have once been the dining room. Now, devoid of any purpose except waiting, it was nondescript. The Dutch still life above the fireplace and the bowl of dusty-looking chrysanthemums on a Pembroke table provided no clue as to what might happen elsewhere in the house. It was hard to connect any of this to the odious rendezvous with Howie on the back stairs. Who would have thought it could be so easy to slip from one life to another. Ursula wondered what Dr Kellet would have made of her predicament.
After her unexpected arrival in Melbury Road, Izzie had put her to bed in her spare bedroom and Ursula had lain sobbing beneath the shiny satin cover, trying not to listen to Izzie’s unlikely lies on the phone in the hallway – I know! She just turned up on the doorstep, the lamb … wanted to see me … pay a visit, museums and so on, the theatre, nothing risqué … now don’t be a termagant, Hugh … It was just as well that Izzie hadn’t spoken to Sylvie, she would have been given short shrift there. The upshot was that she was to be allowed to stay for a few days for museums and so on.
Phone call finished, Izzie came into the bedroom carrying a tray.
‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘And buttered toast. All I could rustle up at short notice, I’m afraid. You are such a fool,’ she sighed. ‘There are ways, you know, things that one can do, prevention better than cure and so on.’ Ursula had no idea what Izzie was talking about.
‘And you must get rid of it,’ Izzie continued. ‘We are agreed on that, aren’t we?’ A question which produced a heartfelt ‘yes’ from Ursula.
A woman in a nurse’s uniform opened the door of the Belgravia waiting room and looked in. Her uniform was so starched it would have stood up quite well without her inside it.
‘This way,’ she said stiffly, without addressing Ursula by name. Ursula followed as meek as a lamb to the slaughter.
Izzie, efficient rather than sympathetic, had dropped her off in the car (‘Good luck’) with a promise that she would return ‘later’. Ursula had no idea what was to happen in the interim between Izzie’s ‘Good luck’ and her ‘later’ but she presumed it would be unpleasant. A foul-tasting syrup or a kidney dish full of large pills perhaps. And undoubtedly a good talking-to about her morals and her character. She hardly cared, as long as in the end the clock could be put back. How big was the baby, she wondered? Her brief research in the Shawcrosses’ encyclopaedia had given few clues. She supposed it would come out with a certain amount of difficulty and be wrapped in a shawl before being placed in a cradle and tended carefully until it was ready to be given to a nice couple who longed to have a baby as much as Ursula longed not to have one. And then she would be able to catch the train home, walk along Church Lane and retrieve the white china bowl with its harvest of raspberries, before entering Fox Corner as if nothing had happened beyond museums and so on.
It was a room like any other really. There were curtains, swagged and tasselled, at the tall windows. The curtains looked as though they were left over from the previous life of the house, as did the marble fireplace that now held a gas fire and, on the mantelpiece, a plain-faced clock with large numbers. The green linoleum underfoot and the operating table in the middle of the room were equally incongruous. The room smelt like the science laboratory at school. Ursula wondered about the brutish array of shining metal instruments that were laid out on a linen cloth on a trolley. They seemed to have more to do with butchery than babies. There was no sign of a cradle waiting anywhere. Her heart began to flutter.
A man, older than Hugh, in a long white doctor’s smock hurried into the room as if he were on his way somewhere else and ordered Ursula up on to the operating table with her feet ‘in the stirrups’.
‘Stirrups?’ Ursula repeated. Surely horses were not involved. The request was baffling until the starched nurse pushed her down and hooked her feet up. ‘I’m having an operation?’ Ursula protested. ‘But I’m not ill.’ The nurse placed a mask over her face. ‘Count from ten down to one,’ she said. ‘Why?’ Ursula tried to ask, but the word had barely formed in her brain before the room and everything in it disappeared.
The next thing she knew she was in the passenger seat of Izzie’s Austin, gazing woozily through the windscreen.
‘You’ll be right as rain in no time,’ Izzie said. ‘Don’t worry, they’ve doped you up. You’ll feel queer for a bit.’ How did Izzie know so much about this appalling process?
Back in Melbury Road, Izzie helped her into bed and she slept deeply beneath the shiny satin cover in the spare bedroom. It was dark outside when Izzie came in with
a tray. ‘Oxtail soup,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I got it from a tin.’ Izzie smelt of alcohol, something sweet and cloying, and underneath her make-up and her bright demeanour she looked exhausted. Ursula supposed she must be a terrible burden to her. She struggled to sit up. The smell of the alcohol and the oxtail was too much and she vomited all over the shiny satin.
‘Oh, God,’ Izzie said, holding her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m really not cut out for this kind of thing.’
‘What happened to the baby?’ Ursula asked.
‘What?’
‘What happened to the baby?’ Ursula repeated. ‘Did they give it to someone nice?’
She woke in the night and vomited again and fell back to sleep without either cleaning it up or calling out to Izzie. When she woke in the morning she was too hot. Far too hot. Her heart was knocking in her chest and each breath was hard to come by. She tried to get out of bed but her head was swimming and her legs wouldn’t hold her. After that everything was a blur. Izzie must have called Hugh because she felt a cool hand on her clammy forehead and when she opened her eyes he was smiling reassuringly at her. He was sitting on the bed, still in his overcoat. She was sick all over it.
‘We’ll get you to a hospital,’ he said, unperturbed by the mess. ‘You’ve got a bit of an infection.’ Somewhere in the background Izzie was putting up a fierce protest. ‘I’ll be prosecuted,’ she hissed at Hugh and Hugh said, ‘Good, I hope they put you in jail and throw away the key.’ He lifted Ursula up in his arms and said, ‘Quicker to take the Bentley, I think.’ Ursula felt weightless, as if she was going to float away. The next thing she knew she was on a cavernous hospital ward and Sylvie was there, her face tight and awful. ‘How could you?’ she said. She was glad when evening came and Sylvie changed places with Hugh.