“The girl or woman probably didn’t get pregnant deliberately. She’ll suffer for it now anyhow,” his wife said.
“If you can tell where instinct ends and consciousness begins you’ll make all our fortunes. Here. Hold on to your seat belts,” he said as he set the carving knife whirring. “I’ll carve you a second helping of instinct any day of the week,” and he poured what was left of the Moselle.
“All this riding of hobby horses isn’t getting us anywhere,” she said calmly.
“Right,” he said. “She can have an abortion.”
“Not here,” she reminded.
“London’s only an hour away. There’s a good clinic in Woodford. She can be back at work in three days. It’s expensive. That’s all.”
“She’d never agree to it,” I said.
“You can’t force her to have an abortion,” his wife said. “It’s probably her last chance to have a child at her age. If she were to have an abortion it’s very unlikely she’d be able to conceive again afterwards.”
“Then, if she won’t agree to the abortion, she can have the child and put it up for adoption.”
“What if she didn’t want to have it adopted once she had it?”
“You’d have to cross that bridge when you reach it. She’d be pleasing herself then, wouldn’t she? She’d be on on her own after that point. But up to there, to my mind, you’ll have to give her all the help you can.”
“Dublin is too small a place for her to have the child, with her kind of family,” I probed.
“It probably is. London would probably be the easiest place all round, but again that’s for her to decide.”
“Is marriage completely out?” she asked.
“If abortion is out for her, marriage is out for him,” he said.
“It sounds horribly logical.” I didn’t care to see it so brutally.
“Life isn’t simply a logical business,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not logical, but it’d be a damned sight worse without some attempt to make sense of it.”
When we rose, she said that Kitty would clear the table in the morning. He and I had large brandies. She had nothing.
By the time I left I no longer felt the vulnerable single person that has to take on suffering and death. We upholster ourselves.
She looked at me when we met under Clery’s clock on the Sunday. “It’s bad news,” I said. “The test was positive. It’s almost certain that you’re pregnant.”
“Now we’re really in it,” she said without seeming to realize anything of the words, and stood silent, as if gathering the knowledge within her, the way I’d seen her stand as if to collect herself before getting into bed for the first time, the way I must have stood when I first heard the test was positive.
“The doctor and his wife were very good. They’ll give us all the help they can. They said the first thing to consider is an abortion. They can arrange it, perfectly legally.”
“Would you agree to that?” she asked indignantly.
“Of course I would but it’s not my decision. You have to decide that.”
“To take a small life, and have it killed. Of course we’d get off scot-free. But how could we live with ourselves again?”
“That wouldn’t bother me. It’s not my decision though.”
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.”
“Well then, if an abortion is out marriage is even more out.”
“Why?”
“I’d be only marrying you because you’re pregnant.”
“Those sort of marriages are often the happiest. I know at least three.”
“This couldn’t. I’d only marry to cover for you.”
“You’d change when you saw the child.”
“No. I wouldn’t change. I’d leave as soon as you had the child. We talked about it. They said that if I was certain the marriage had no chance — and I am certain it hasn’t — it’d only be a far bigger mess when it happened than if we never married.”
“Of course, they’re your friends,” she said bitterly.
“In a sense, they are, but I think they’d have said the same to any couple. It comes down to whether the marriage has a chance or not. The child makes no difference.”
“The child, of course, has no rights?”
“It will have, but that has nothing to do with it. The marriage is between you and me. If it’s not going to work without the child it won’t work with the child.”
“Do these people know our ages?”
“They do and they think that’s not important either, if everything else is all right.”
“I know those sort of people. They live in their comfortable houses. They have planned families. They have everything figured out; and yet they die.”
“We all die.”
“You have everything figured out too.”
“It may be bad enough with thinking but it’d be a damned sight worse just following your nose,” I heard my own voice echo Peter White’s.
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop it or I’ll scream.”
We’d crossed the bridge, and turned down Burgh Quay. Rows of people waited for buses the other side of the quay but the river path was empty. Below us the Liffey at low tide lay oily and still in the warm evening. I stood beside the granite wall and waited. Her distress was so great that it hid her beauty, as it would ugliness, had she been ugly. For a wild moment I wanted to say, “I was only testing you. Don’t worry. Well get married,” but the moment went.
“O boy,” she said without looking at me. “I sure picked a winner.”
“What do you want?”
“Stop it. I’m not ready for that. Not yet.”
“Will we go for a drink?”
We crossed to the Silver Swan. She went straight to the Ladies. I bought treble gins and brought them to the farthest corner of the bar. She seemed to be gone a long time but did not look any more composed when she came back. The lights of the Silver Swan were so blessedly low that it wasn’t possible to tell whether she’d been crying or not. She let me pour the tonic up to the rim of the glass. We sat for a long time in that silence.
“Why couldn’t we be married?” the calmness of the voice took me by surprise.
“I’d only marry you to cover up till the child was born. We’d be only getting deeper and deeper in. The marriage would have no chance of lasting. It’s better to face up to that now rather than go through a sort of charade.”
“You might change, especially when we’d have the child. I couldn’t see you walking out on the child.”
“No. I’d not change.”
“How do you know you wouldn’t? You’re not giving anything a chance.”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“If we get married, I’d at least get that gratuity out of the bank. I hate to think of them being able to hang on to all that money just because I walked out without getting married.”
“The divorce or separation would soon eat up the gratuity and it’d be a far worse mess.”
“You sound more like a lawyer than a person,” I felt the calm go. “At least if we got married I’d have the child.”
“You can have the child anyhow. No one can stop you. Since I am supposed to be a lawyer, why can’t there be an abortion?”
“How would you get an abortion?” she challenged.
“It’s very simple. You’d fly to London. There’s a first-class clinic in Woodford. The doctor can arrange it. It’s a simple, fairly painless operation. If you had to, or wanted to, you could be back at work in three days.”