“You think then I won’t have to marry her?” it was like grasping for pure joy.
“Unless you want to get yourself into a far greater mess.”
I was set free. The wild inner hope had been given solid sanction from outside. All things are relative. I could not have known such happiness if I had not lived for days with the nightmare. I was so happy that I was careless that my rich prize was won from her ruin.
“We’ll have another drink.”
“What do you do now? Are you still with that agency?” he asked.
“No. I gave that up. I write pornography.”
“You write pornography?” his clean-cut features, boyish still beneath the straight black hair, mirrored all the shades between incredulity and amazement.
“That way I don’t have to go into the agency. I don’t get all that much money but I get paid enough.”
“This is too rich. You’re getting elderly girls pregnant and writing pornography. It’s too much,” his bellow of helpless laughter attracted attention all around the bar. “What is the pornography like?”
“It’s heartless and it’s mindless and it’s a lie. I’m stuck with it and I’m sick of it, a cold anvil that has to be beaten,” I began.
“Anyhow we’ll see you for dinner Saturday, though we may well have to fumigate the place afterwards,” he said as we parted.
“What did you do for the evening?” I asked her when we met.
“I just moped,” she answered. “There was a time when everything was certain. I knew exactly where I was going, everything I was doing. Everything had a purpose then, but since I met you everything gets more and more mixed-up.”
“I gave the doctor the sample. We should know for certain by Saturday.”
“What’ll we know for certain?”
“Whether you’re pregnant or not.”
“I know I am.”
“If you’re not,” I said determinedly, “we’ll go out and celebrate. We’ll have the biggest, most expensive, drunkennest meal in Dublin,” and, I thought silently, we’ll get to hell out of one another’s lives for ever.
“What’ll we do then?”
“We’ll both be free.”
“And what if the test is positive?”
“There’s no use thinking about that now. We’ll know soon enough.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with getting married. I know we’d be happy.”
What was her meat was my poison. The trouble with the old clichés was that they were all true and turned up for their renewal.
“We’ll have to face into that in two days’ time.”
“But will we be married?”
“If we have to,” I said quickly. “I won’t be able to see you tomorrow evening. I have to have dinner with this doctor and his wife tomorrow evening.”
“I’ll go to dinner with Betty and Janey then. They rang today to see if I’d have dinner at their place. I told them I’d wait till I saw you. I think they must know that something’s wrong.”
“Did you tell them anything?”
“No. I was going to but I didn’t. Will we go back tonight?”
“We’ll wait till Sunday. We’ll know for certain what we’ve let ourselves in for.”
“I can do with Sunday coming. I find my hands all the time stretching out for you. I could do with holding your body for the whole of a whole week.”
I brought champagne and whiskey and a sheaf of yellow roses to the dinner.
“What did you want to bring all this for?” Peter White asked sharply in the hallway.
“I feel it’s the least I could bring. Turning up on such an errand after all these years.”
“To pay your way?” he said sarcastically.
“Something like that.”
“Well, thanks, but it’s too much. I’m afraid it has no influence on your news though. The test was positive.”
I waited, empty, feeling it sink like a stone to the bottom of the emptiness, come up again like mud.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“That means she’s pregnant?”
“The test has a two per cent margin of error, but if I were you I’d take it that she is pregnant.”
“Somehow I never had much hope that it’d turn out any other way.”
His wife came in. She had on a white apron with a recipe for steak au poivre in black print across the front. She seemed prettier than when they’d married. We shook hands and she praised the roses.
“Did you tell?” she asked Peter.
“The news is bad,” I answered for him. “It’s a mess.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s going to be a problem.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to go into it at dinner. What’ll we have to drink?”
She had a dry sherry. He and I had whiskey. A log fire blazed behind the wire screen over the white marble fireplace. Persian rugs were scattered about the polished wood of the floor. Three places were set at the head of the long table, silver candlesticks down its centre. The heavy velvet curtains drawn the whole length of one wall gave a feeling that all the unpleasantness of the world lay arctic wastes away outside.
“It’s quite lovely,” I said. “It speaks of comfort and money.”
“Is it that vulgar?” he fenced.
“It’s not vulgar at all. It’s lovely, as money is. It gives me the feeling of luxury and protection.”
“Peter is still defensive,” she smiled. “He feels like that about everything in life, that he shouldn’t have it, but I’m quite used to it.”
She withdrew and came back ten minutes later with three bowls of mushroom soup, on which sprigs of parsley floated. When the bowls were gathered away she carried in a roast chicken on a platter.
“It was a lot of work,” I said to her.
“A girl comes in. Kitty. I let her home early this evening.”
“Don’t laugh,” Peter said, switching on an electric carving knife. “I feel ridiculous with this thing but it works.”
“What do you think it’s best to do?” I began as soon as we’d started to eat. I was anxious not to put it off for any longer. It was as if I knew that my fate in the sad business would be decided here most favourably. She looked towards him but he kept his eyes on his plate. “You have to think of the woman and more especially the child,” she said.
“I’m prepared to marry her if there’s no other way out.”
“That’s not on,” he said, “since you’re only prepared to marry her and then leave her. You’d only be walking out on a far greater mess.”
“Why would he leave her?”
“Because I couldn’t stand living with her. I’d marry her only so that I’d be seen to take the blame for the whole business.”
“But you must have been fond of her in order for what has happened to happen?”
“No. I wanted to sleep with her.”
“To do that you must have given her something to go on?”
“I never told her that I loved her or promised her anything. I suppose it’s the only saving feature now.”
“For God’s sake,” he said. “You don’t have to love someone or even to be fond of them to want to fuck with them!”
Her very silence was a rebuke as she rearranged her knife and fork.
“What does she want?” she pursued.
“She wants to marry me.”
“Does she know that you don’t love her?”
“She doesn’t mind that. She says she has enough love for the both of us.”
He groaned but she ignored it. “Why weren’t contraceptives used?”
“She said they weren’t natural, that they turned the whole thing into a farce. Every time she said it was safe according to the calendar. It didn’t turn out that way.”
“She was using the Boles Method, no doubt. There’s a fool of a gynaecologist in the hospital, a staunch Catholic, and a great Boles man. In this last experiment more women got pregnant using the Boles Method than no method at all. The woman obviously wanted to get pregnant. I see it every day in the hospital. Time running out? Get pregnant, and it’ll be taken care of. Bored with life? Get pregnant, and it’ll stir things up. Not getting enough attention? Get pregnant, and it’ll bring an overdose of attention. Hit me now with the child in my arms,” he laughed jeeringly.