‘Whatski?’ came an answering bellow from above. ‘Whatski, my fine and feathered friend?’
I looked up at the squat bully glaring down at me from the semi-darkness. I thought that Macleod must be absolutely, certifiably mad. We stared at one another for a few seconds, then the dressing-gowned figure stomped away, and I heard a distant door close.
It wasn’t Macleod’s fists I was afraid of – not principally. It was his anger. We didn’t do anger in my family. We did ironic comment, snappy rejoinder, satirical elaboration; we did exact words forbidding a certain action, and more severe ones condemning what had already taken place. But for anything beyond this, we did the thing enjoined upon the English middle classes for generations. We internalised our rage, our anger, our contempt. We spoke words under our breath. We might have written some of those words down in private diaries if we kept them. But we also thought that we were the only ones reacting like this, and it was a little shameful, and so we internalised it all even further.
When I got to my room that night, I placed a chair at an angle, wedged under the door knob, as I’d seen done in films. I lay in bed thinking: Is this what the adult world is really like? Underneath it all? And how close beneath the surface does it – will it – lie?
I had no answers.
I didn’t tell Susan about either of these incidents. I internalised my anger and shame – well, I would, wouldn’t I?
And you’ll have to imagine long spells of happiness, of delight, of laughter. I’ve described them already. That’s the thing about memory, it’s… well, let me put it like this. Have you ever seen an electric log-splitter in action? They’re very impressive. You cut the log to a certain length, lay it on the bed of the machine, press the button with your foot, and the log is pushed on to a blade shaped like an axe-head. Whereupon the log splits pure and straight down the grain. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Life is a cross section, memory is a split down the grain, and memory follows it all the way to the end.
So I can’t not continue. Even if this is the hardest part to remember. No, not to remember – to describe. It was the moment when I lost some of my innocence. That may sound like a good thing. Isn’t growing up a necessary process of losing one’s innocence? Maybe, maybe not. But the trouble with life is, you rarely know when that loss is going to happen, do you? And how it will be, afterwards.
My parents were away on holiday, and my granny – my mother’s mother – had been drafted in to look after me. I was, of course, twenty – only twenty – so obviously couldn’t be left in the house by myself. What might I get up to, whom might I import, what might I organize – a bacchanalia of middle-aged women, perhaps – what might the neighbours think, and who might subsequently refuse to come for sherry? Grandma, widowed some five years, didn’t have anything better to do. I had naturally – innocently – loved her as a child. Now I was growing up and she seemed boring. But that was a loss of innocence I could handle.
At this time, I used to sleep quite late during the holidays. It could have been mere idleness, or a belated reaction to the stress of the university term; or, perhaps, some instinctive unwillingness to re-enter this world I still called home. I would sleep on until eleven without compunction. And my parents – to their credit – never came in and sat on my bed and complained that I was treating the place like a hotel; while Grandma was happy to cook me breakfast at lunchtime if that’s what I wanted.
So it was probably closer to eleven than ten when I stumbled downstairs.
‘There’s a very rude woman asking for you,’ said Grandma. ‘She’s rung three times. She told me to wake you up. Actually, the last time to “B” wake you up. I said I’m not interfering with his beauty sleep.’
‘Good for you, Grandma. Thanks.’
A very rude woman. But I didn’t know any. Someone from the tennis club, persecuting me further? The bank about my overdraft? Maybe Grandma was beginning to lose her marbles. At which point, the phone went again.
‘Joan,’ said the very rude voice of Joan. ‘It’s Susan. Get over there. She wants you, not me. You, now.’ And she put the phone down.
‘Aren’t you having your breakfast?’ asked Grandma as I rushed out.
At the Macleods’, the front door was open, and I walked around until I found her fully dressed, handbag beside her, on the sofa in the sitting room. She didn’t look up when I greeted her. I could only see the top of her head, or rather, the curve of her headscarf. I sat down beside her, but she immediately turned her face away.
‘I need you to drive me up to town.’
‘Of course, darling.’
‘And I need you not to ask me any questions. And absolutely not to look at me.’
‘Whatever you say. But you’ll need to tell me roughly where we’re going.’
‘Head for Selfridges.’
‘Are we in a hurry?’ I allowed myself that question.
‘Just drive safely, Paul, just drive safely.’
We got to near Selfridges and she directed me down Wigmore Street, then left up one of those streets where private doctors practise.
‘Park here.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘I’d rather not. Get yourself some lunch. This won’t be quick. Do you need some money?’
I had indeed come without my wallet. She gave me a ten-shilling note.
As I turned back into Wigmore Street, I saw ahead of me John Bell & Croyden, where she had gone for her Dutch cap. A terrible realization came upon me. That the system had failed, that she’d found herself pregnant, and was even now dealing with the consequences. The Abortion Law was still going through Parliament, but everyone knew there were doctors – and not just at the backstreet end – who would perform ‘procedures’ more or less on demand. I imagined the conversation: Susan explaining how she had got herself pregnant by her young lover, hadn’t had sex with her husband for two decades, and how a child would destroy her marriage and endanger her own mental health. That would be enough for any doctor, who would agree to what went down euphemistically in medical records as a D&C: dilatation and curettage. Just a little scraping away at the lining of the womb – which would also scrape away the embryo attached to its wall.
I was working all this out as I sat in an Italian café having my lunch. I didn’t know what I thought – or rather, I thought several incompatible things. The notion of being a father while still a student struck me as terrifying and crazy. But it also struck me as, well, kind of heroic. Subversive yet honourable, annoying yet life-affirming: noble. I didn’t think it would get me into the Guinness Book of Records – no doubt there were twelve-year-olds hard at work getting their grannies’ best friends pregnant, but it would certainly make me exceptional. And irritate the hell out of the Village.
Except that now it wasn’t going to happen. Because Susan was getting rid of our child at this very moment, just around the corner. I felt sudden rage. A woman’s right to choose – yes, I believed in that, theoretically and actually. Though I also believed in a man’s right to be consulted.
I went back to the car and waited. After an hour or so she turned the corner and came towards me, head lowered, scarf pulled around her cheeks. She averted her face from me as she got into the car.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s that for the moment.’ There was something slurry about her articulation. The anaesthetic, presumably – if they used any. ‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses.’
Normally I was charmed by her turns of phrase. Not this time.
‘First tell me where you’ve been.’
‘The dentist.’