I'm going to die, she thought. She wanted her father, suddenly. If only her dad were here! But then she imagined him walking in and seeing all the blood… She started to cry again. She sat up and leaned her head against the wall-weeping, but weeping so feebly her sobs were like little snorts of pain.
She was still sitting crying like this when Reggie came back. He had the old lady with him. She was wearing a nightdress and a dressing-gown, but had slipped a coat on top and had put on a hat and rubber galoshes. It was probably the outfit she kept ready for when the Warning went. She was breathing hard, from climbing all the stairs, and had no teeth in. She had got out a hankie to wipe her face. When she saw the state of Viv, however, she let the hankie fall. She came straight to her, and felt her forehead, then pulled apart her thighs to peer at the mess between them.
Then she turned back to Reggie. 'Good heavens, boy!' she said-speaking sloppily, because of her missing teeth. 'What was you thinking of, calling a doctor? A bloody ambulance is what she needs!'
'An ambulance?' said Reggie, in horror. 'Are you sure?' He was hanging back, now that she was here.
'You heard me,' said the woman. 'Look at the colour of her! She's lost half the blood in her body. A doctor ain't going to be able to put that back in, is he?' She felt Viv's forehead again. 'Good lord… Go on! What you waiting for? You'll get one now, if you call before the sirens start up. Tell them to be quick. Tell them it's a matter of life and death!'
Reggie turned and ran.
'Now,' said the woman, shrugging off her coat. 'Do you think you ought to be sitting there, dear, letting it all come tumbling out of you like that?' She put her hand on Viv's shoulder. The hand was trembling. 'Don't you think you ought to lie down?'
Viv shook her head. 'I want to stay here.'
'All right, then. But let's just lift you up a bit and- That's it, you got the idea.'
The bathroom had a single towel in it-milk-coloured, like the carpet. Viv hadn't liked to use it. But the woman had plucked it from the rail at once and folded it up; she made Viv stand, and she lowered the lid of the lavatory and put the towel on it. 'You sit on that, my dear,' she said, helping Viv back down. 'That's right. And let's take these old drawers off you, too, shall we?' She stooped, and fumbled about Viv's knees; lifted up her feet… 'That's better. Not nice, is it, having your old man see you with your drawers around your ankles? I should say it ain't. There we are: when I was your age we hardly bothered with drawers at all. We had our skirts, do you see, to keep us decent. Long great skirts like you'd never believe… There. Never mind. Soon have you sorted out and looking like a queen again. Why, what handsome hair you've got, haven't you-?'
She went chatting sloppily on, lots of nonsense; she let Viv lean against her, and smoothed and patted her head with hard, blunt fingers. But Viv could tell, too, that she was frightened.
'Still coming, is it?' she'd say, from time to time, looking into the towel between Viv's legs. 'Well, young 'uns like you, you've got it to spare. That's what they say, don't they?'
Viv had closed her eyes. She was aware of the old lady's murmurs, but had begun to hold herself rigid: she was concentrating on the blood that was escaping from her-trying to slow it, to keep hold of it, to will it back into herself. Her fear rose and sank, in great dark plunging waves. For what felt like minutes at a time the blood seemed to still, and she would grow almost calm; but there would come another little gush between her legs, that sent her back into a panic-she'd be made frightened too, then, by the very galloping of her own heart, that was making the blood, she knew, run even faster…
Then she heard Reggie come back.
'Did you send for 'em?' called the old lady.
'Yes,' said Reggie, breathlessly. 'Yes, they're coming.'
He stood in the bathroom doorway, as pale as ash: biting his fingernails, too awed by the old lady to come in. If only he'd come and hold my hand, Viv thought. If only he'd put his arm around me… But all he did was meet her gaze and make a helpless sort of gesture: spread his hands, shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he mouthed. 'I'm sorry.' And then he moved away. She heard him light up a cigarette. There was the rattle of curtain-hooks, and she knew he must be standing at the bedroom window, looking out.
Then the blood seeped again, and the pain inside her shut tight, like a fist around a blade; she closed her eyes and was plunged back into panic. The pain and the panic were utterly black, and timeless: it was like going under the gas at Mr Imrie's again, slipping out of the world while the world scuttled forwards… She felt the old lady's hard hands on her shoulders and in the small of her back, rubbing and rubbing, in little circles. She heard Reggie call out, 'Here it is!' But she couldn't imagine, at that moment, what he meant. She thought it must be something to do with the fact that he had drawn back the curtain from the window… When, after another minute or two, she opened her eyes and saw the ambulance people, in their trousers and jackets and tin hats, she supposed them an ARP man and a boy, come to complain about the black-out.
But the boy was laughing. The laugh was throaty, but light, like a girl's. He said, 'I like your tiger-skin rug. Doesn't it ever give you a scare, though, in the middle of the night? I should be afraid of it having a go at my ankles as I went by…' He examined the towel that Viv was sitting on, and his laugh faded, but his face stayed kind. The towel was utterly scarlet and sodden. He put his hand across her brow. He said to the man, quietly, 'Skin's pretty clammy.'
'I couldn't make it stop,' mumbled Viv.
The man had squatted before her. He had bared her arm and was strapping a band around it; now he quickly pumped at a rubber bladder and frowned at a dial. He touched her thigh and looked, as the boy had, at the towel beneath her bottom. She was past embarassment. 'How long,' he asked, 'has it been coming from you like this?'
'I don't know,' she answered weakly. She thought, Where's Reggie? Reggie would know. 'About an hour, I think.'
The man nodded. 'You've lost an awful lot of blood by the looks of it. We'll have to take you to a hospital, as quickly as we can. All right?' He spoke calmly, comfortingly. She wanted to give herself up to his arms. He still squatted before her,
putting the strap and the bladder away in his bag. He worked very swiftly. But he looked into her face again before he rose, and, 'What's your name?' he asked her gently.
'Pearce,' she answered, without thinking. 'Vivien Pearce.'
'And how far on was your baby, Mrs Pearce?'
But now she realised what she had done. She had said Vivien Pearce, when she should have said Margaret Harrison… She started looking about for Reggie again. The man touched her knee.
'I'm sorry,' he was saying. 'It's rotten luck. But for now, we must make you better. My friend Miss Carmichael and I are going to carry you downstairs.'
She was still looking for Reggie, and couldn't concentrate on his words. She thought that when he said 'Miss Carmichael' he must mean the old lady. Then he and the boy said other things-spoke to each other, calling each other 'Kay' and 'Mickey'-and she understood, with a rush of dismay, that they were not men at all, but simply short-haired women… All the confidence she'd had in them, the sense of care and safety, disappeared. She began to shake. They seemed to think that she was cold, and put a blanket around her. They had brought a folding canvas chair, into which they strapped her; and they began to manoeuvre her out of the bathroom and across the tiger-skin rug, through the sitting-room, past the bar and the pictures of Paris, and down the unlit stairs. She thought she would fall, at every turning. 'I'm sorry,' she kept saying weakly. 'I'm sorry.'