Viv gave it. He made a note of it, and seemed to frown.
'Any children?' he asked her then. 'Miscarriages? You know what a miscarriage is? Of course… And have you ever before been obliged to receive the, er, treatment that you've come to receive from me?'
She said 'No' to it all; but told him, after a little hesitation, about the pills, in case they made some sort of difference.
He shook his head, dismissively, as she described them. 'It's never worth bothering, if you'll take my advice,' he said, 'with that sort of thing. Probably gave you a tummy upset, did they? Yes, I thought they would have.' He drew down his spectacles; and was left with a phantom pair, marked out in lines of red, on the flesh of his brow.
He produced a case of instruments, and Viv flinched, growing frightened. He wanted only, however, to test her blood-pressure and listen to her chest; and he made her stand and loosen her skirt, and felt her stomach-felt all about it, pressing hard with his fingers and palms.
Then he straightened, and wiped his hands. 'Well,' he said gravely, 'you're a little further along than I should have liked.' He was dating it, of course, from her last period. 'I usually recommend this treatment for pregnancies of up to ten weeks, and yours is rather past that.'
The extra weeks made a difference, apparently. He went to the door and called for Reggie and explained to them both that, because of the added element of risk, he would have to charge them more than the standard fee. 'A further ten pounds, I'm afraid.'
'Ten pounds?' said Reggie, appalled.
Mr Imrie spread his hands. 'You'll understand, with the law as it is… The risk I'm running is very grave.'
'My friend said seventy-five. Seventy-five's all I've brought.'
'Seventy-five would have seen to it, a month ago. I dare say seventy-five would see to it even now, were you to go to another sort of man. I'm not that sort of man, however… I'm thinking of your wife's health. I'm thinking of my own wife… I am sorry.'
Reggie shook his head. 'This is a rum kind of way to do business,' he said bitterly, 'if you don't mind my saying so. One price one month, and another the next. What difference does it make to you, it being in there'-he nodded in the general direction of Viv's stomach-'two or three weeks longer?'
Mr Imrie smiled, as if with tremendous patience. 'It makes a great deal of difference, I'm afraid.'
'Well, that's what you say. You'd say the same thing, I suppose, to a chap who'd come to you with a case of-of an ingrowing tooth?'
'I very well might.'
'You would, would you-?'
The argument ran on. Viv stood and said nothing, hating it all, hating Reggie, gazing at the floor. At last Mr Imrie agreed to take the extra ten pounds in the form of clothing coupons: Reggie turned his back and brought out a little stash of them, pressed them into the envelope in which he'd already put the money, and handed them over. He made a snorting noise as he did it.
'Thank you,' said Mr Imrie, with exaggerated politeness. He stowed the envelope away in a pocket of his own. 'Now, if you wouldn't mind making yourself comfortable here, just for twenty minutes or so, I'll take your wife next door.'
'Keep my coat and hat, will you?' said Viv to Reggie, coldly. He took them, and reached after her fingers.
'It'll be all right,' he said, trying to catch her eye. 'It'll be OK.'
She pulled her fingers away. A clock on the wall showed five past eight. Mr Imrie led her back across the hall and into his surgery.
She thought at first he meant to take her through this room into another. She thought he would have some quite different place set up. But he closed the door behind her and went to a counter, looking busy; and for an awful moment, then, she imagined he meant to do the operation with her sitting in his dentist's chair… Then she saw, beyond the chair, a couch, on trestle legs, covered over with a wax-paper sheet, and with a little zinc pail beside it. It looked horrible with the great steel light shining on it, and the trays of instruments all around, the queer machines, the drills, the bottles of gas. She felt the suffocated rising of tears in her chest and throat, and thought, for the first time, I can't!
'Now then, Mrs Harrison,' said Mr Imrie, perhaps seeing her hesitate. 'Just slip off your skirt, your shoes and underthings, and hop up onto the couch, and we'll make a start. All right? There's nothing to worry about. A very straightforward procedure indeed.'
He turned away, took off his jacket and washed his hands; began to fold back his sleeves. There was an electric fire burning, and she stood in front of it to undress; she put her clothes on a chair, and got quickly onto the crackling wax-paper before he should turn-for she felt more exposed and embarassed, somehow, with only her bottom half bare, than she would have felt if she had stripped completely. It was like something a tart would do… But when she lay on the hard flat couch, she felt foolish in another way-like a fish, with gaping gills and mouth, on a fishmonger's slab.
'Let me give you a pillow,' said Mr Imrie, coming over and carefully not looking at her naked hips. 'And now, if you'd care to raise yourself?' He slid a folded towel under her bottom-moving her blouse, as he did it, a little higher up her back, and saying, 'We don't want this to spoil, do we?'
She realised he was tucking it out of the way of any blood that might come; and grew frightened again. She had no idea how much blood would come-had only, in fact, the haziest notion of what he was about to do to her. He had not explained it; and it seemed too late, now, to ask. She didn't want to speak at all, with her lower half all exposed to his gaze like this; she was too embarassed. She closed her eyes.
When she felt him lift and try to part her knees, she grew more self-conscious than ever. 'Lie a little less rigidly, if you can, Mrs Harrison,' he said. And then: 'Mrs Harrison? A little less rigid?' She opened her legs, and after a second felt something warm and dry come between them and begin to probe. It was his finger. He pushed firmly into her, and with his other hand pressed again at her stomach, harder than before. She gave a little gasp. He pushed and pressed on, until she couldn't help but draw her hips away. He moved back, and wiped his hands on a towel.
'You must expect, of course,' he said, in a mild and matter-of-fact kind of way, 'a certain amount of discomfort. That can't be helped, I'm afraid.'
He turned away, then brought back a sponge, or a cloth, with some sharp-smelling liquid on it, with which he began to dab at her. She lifted her head and tried to see. She could only see his face: he had put up his spectacles again, and again they looked like goggles-like a welder's goggles, or a stonemason's… On a shelf, near his head, was a toy: a bear or a rabbit in a flowered dress and a hat. She imagined him waving it before frightened boys and girls. A notice, pinned to the wall behind him, gave Information for Patients Regarding Stoppings and Extractions.
When he placed the mask over her mouth, it was so like an ordinary respirator-so much less unpleasant, in fact, than a regular gas-mask-that she almost didn't mind it. Then she was aware of a sensation of slipping, and made a grab at the edge of the couch, to keep herself from tumbling off it… It seemed to her then that she must have fallen anyway, but had inexplicably landed on her feet; for she was suddenly standing in darkness in a crowd of people, being jostled on every side. She didn't know if she was in a street, some public place like that, or where she was. A siren was sounding, but it was strange to her, it meant nothing. She didn't know the person she was with, but she clutched at their arm. 'What's that?' she asked. 'That noise? What is it?' 'Don't you know?' the person answered. 'That's the Warning for the Bull.' 'The Bull?' she asked. 'The German Bull,' said the voice. At once, then, she understood that the Bull was a new and very terrifying kind of weapon. She turned, in fright; but she turned in the wrong direction, or not in the proper way. 'Here it is!' cried the voice in terror-and she tried to turn again, but was struck in the stomach and knew she'd been caught, in the darkness, by the horn of the terrible German Bull. She put out her hands and felt the shaft of it, smooth and hard and cold; she felt the place, even, where it entered her stomach; and she knew, too, that if she were to reach around to her back she would be able to feel the tip of it jutting out there, because the horn had run right through her…