A Kind of Loving (43 page)

'Hello ... I'm inquiring about a Mrs Brown. She was brought in this afternoon. She had an accident, a miscarriage, early this afternoon... What? This is Mr Brown. My name's Victor Brown, hers is Ingrid ... Yes, all right.'

I look round but Mr Oliphant's gone. I stand there with the receiver to my ear and wait. There's a kid's pedal-car and a tricycle behind the front door and a rubber ball at the bottom of the stairs. I like the way the hall's decorated, with a light fawn paper on the walls and a dark blue with like little stars on the ceiling. I believe Mr O. does it all himself. I don't exactly know what he does for a living but they seem comfortable. They're nice people. Nice and steady and quiet and happy ...

'Hello?'

'Yes?'

'I'm afraid we've no news at the moment, Mr Brown. Mrs Brown is still hi the labour ward.'

'When will you know?'

'You could ring in about an hour. Or you could come up and wait. We'd tell you then as soon as there's anything to report.'

'All right, I'll come up. Thank you.'

Probably wondering why I'm not there already, I think as I go
back into the dining-room and tell Mr and Mrs Oliphant.

'I'm sure she'll be all right,' Mrs O. says. 'I had a miscarriage once and I didn't even go away. I've had both my children since then, so you can see it didn't do me any harm. And Ingrid wasn't ' very far gone, was she?'

I wonder if she knows Ingrid was three months on the way when

we got married and I say, 'No, not far,' and leave it at that. 'She'll be all right,' Mrs Oliphant says. 'You'll see.'
'Are you going up there now?' Mr O. says, and I nod. 'Yes, I

thought I would.'

He gets up. 'I'll run you up in the car,' he says. "That's very good of you.' 'It won't take five minutes,' he says. 'You don't want to be

hanging about waiting for buses at a time like this.' 'No. Thanks very much.' 'What about your tea?' Mrs Oliphant says. 'Have you had
anything to eat? You can't go running off on an empty stomach.

You might have to wait a while.'
'I don't want anything to eat, thanks.'
'I can make you some sandwiches in just a minute.' ' Thanks all the same, but I don't think I could face anything.'
Mr Oliphant finishes fastening his tie and puts his jacket on.

'Come on, then,' he says. 'I'll run you up.'

The woman in the office isn't the one who was on the phone.
Her voice was nice and clear but this one talks as if she's got a
mouthful of toffee and she twists her words about it till you can
hardly tell what she's saying.

I tell her who I am and what I'm here for and she asks me to sit down round in the hall. I go round the corner into this big
high waiting-room with windows in the roof and long benches
covered with blue leather and sit down. I seem to remember coming here when I was a kid. I look round at the brass plates
with the names of all the local big-wigs who gave money to build
this wing and at the double doors with 'Casualty Department'
written over them. It must have been when I cut my head open
on the railings and I probably sat here in front of these same doors, shivering from stem to stem, scared stiff at what they
might be cooking up for me behind the porthole windows. There's
a light on in there now, but nobody else waiting. I suppose they're ready to deal with anything that crops up. Always at it, somebody
needing help.

Is she going to die? I wonder again. Is this the way it's all
going to work out, with her dying and taking the baby with her? And they say there's a pattern to life. A plan. What plan? For me to fall in love with her and then fall out of love with her but still want her enough to give her the baby, so that we-have to get married when I don't love her and she can fall downstairs and kill herself and the kid and leave me free again? What sort of a plan's that, except maybe a plan to have me spending the rest of my life telling myself I killed her and if I'd held out that night ' in the park she'd be still alive?

I don't want her to die. I don't love her, but I don't want her
to die.

The hospital smell's beginning to make me feel sick. I
haven't
got rid of the headache yet: the aspirins didn't do a bit of good.
I don't like hospitals. I'm like thousands of others, I reckon -
scared of the people who're here to help, scared of the pain that
makes you better. I sit sideways on the seat and pull one knee up and rest my arm on the back so's I can put my forehead in
my hand.

'Mr Brown?'

I jump, she's come up so quiet on rubber soles. I look at her, a little dark woman with glasses and a white coat unbuttoned,
showing a dark frock underneath.

'Yes.'

'I'm Doctor Parker. I've just left your wife.'

'How is she?'

'As well as can be expected. She's had a very uncomfortable
afternoon and lost a lot of blood, but we've given her a transfusion and she's going to be all right. I'm Sony about the baby,
but I'm afraid we couldn't do anything to save it.'

'No.' I look at the floor.

"How long have you been married?'

'Three months.'

'I see ... you ...'

' She was having the baby before,'

'I see. Well, you'll have other children, all being well. This
won't be the end of it for you.' ,

'Can I see her?' I say this without hardly thinking, as though
it's something I think she's expecting me to say. But I'm not so
sure I want to see her and it's a kind of relief when she says, 'I'd rather you didn't tonight.' I don't know how I'd feel to see
Ingrid poorly. I might hate her and it show.

' Her mother's just left,' the doctor says. 'I'm afraid she wasn't very good for her. A rather emotional person. She's trying to get
some sleep now. If you'd come earlier ...'

'I didn't know.'

'But it happened quite early this afternoon.'

'I was at work. I didn't get to know till I came home.'

'You mean your wife's mother didn't let you know?'

"The neighbours told me. I'd be the last one
she'd
think of
telling.'

She looks at me without saying anything and I stand up.

' You can ring up first thing in the morning and visit tomorrow
night at seven.'

' If
she
doesn't come.'

'Oh, you'll have priority for visiting.'

She walks me out to the door. 'Will you tell her I've been, and I came up as soon as I knew?'

' Yes. Anything else you'd like me to tell her?'

I shake my head. 'I don't think so. You can tell her not to
worry; about the kid, I mean. I couldn't get used to the idea of
being a father anyway.'

There's a bus coming down the hill as I go out of the hospital drive and I run and jump on as it stops. I go upstairs. Somehow
I can't care about the kid because it never really was a kid. It
wasn't really anything except an egg growing in Ingrid; some
thing that made us have to get married. It wasn't a person so
I can't feel bad about losing it. It's rotten to think it .would have
been a person, though, sometime, and now it's finished like this,
all mangled and dead from being bounced down the stairs. 'A
very uncomfortable afternoon,' the doctor said. I shut my eyes
and I can see her there on her back with her legs open and them
pulling this bloody mess out of her.

The bus stinks of petrol and stale tobacco smoke and because it's practically empty it jolts and jumps about the road all down the hill, shaking my tripes about till I break out in a cold sweat of sickness. I run down the steps and jump off as it slows at the
corner and make straight for a Gents across the road. I find a
penny and go into one of the bogs and the bolt echoes about the
place as it shoots home behind me. It all seems to hit me at once:
being married, not loving Ingrid, Ma Rothwell, the niggling and
nagging, now the miscarriage, and me not feeling well, and I lean over the lavatory and retch and retch fit to bring my boot soles up till finally I throw up. And then I'm saying out loud,
'Oh, bugger it, bugger, damn, and blast it all,' till there's nothing
else to come up and nothing else to say and I'm just standing
there trembling and empty and cold.

I must have made some noise because when I come out the
attendant's standing their waiting for me.

^'
You don't want to take it if you can't hold it,' he says, the
interfering little bastard, the bossy little shithouse cleaner like the
world's full of.

I just walk past him and say, 'Go f— yourself,' as I go out. He shouts something after me but I take no notice.

I can't make my mind up whether to go to Rothwells' or go
home. I've a good mind at first not to go to Rothwells' ever again
after this lot but then I think what a rough time Ingrid's had
and I can't add to her troubles. Let her get out of hospital first
and then see what happens.
I wander round town for a bit, know
ing I ought to go up home and tell them what's happened and knowing I've only got a second-hand tale and they'll want to
know more than I can tell them and then it'll bring it all out and I
can't be bothered going over all that tonight. Anyway, in the
end I go up there and reckon I'm in a hurry and I'll call tomorrow
when I've been up to the hospital. Then I push off over to Roth-
wells' and walk in and find Ingrid's mother sitting with Mrs
Oliphant, telling her all the tale - or her side of it. They've got the
teapot going and Ma Rothwell's face is shocking to look at, all
puffed up and ugly from crying.

Ma Rothwell won't look at me, but Mrs Oliphant says, 'Here's
Victor now. How did you find her, Victor?'

'I haven't seen her,' I say, shooting a look at Ma Rothwell that's plain for Mrs O. to see. 'I was too late. She was going to
sleep.'

All at once Ma Rothwell starts to cry out loud and it's horrible
to hear her and watch the way her face kind of goes to pieces. 'I
wish Ingrid had never laid eyes on him,' she says in a strangled sort of voice through this crying, and Mrs Oliphant says, 'Come
now, Esther, you know it can't be Vic's fault. This sort of thing
can happen to anybody.'

I'm standing at the back of the room and I feel myself going
white and beginning to tremble with rage. It's only Mrs O.
looking up and giving me a signal with her eyes that stops me
from going for Ingrid's mother there and then. I go out and up to the bedroom and walk about there, still trembling and swearing
out loud, calling Ma Rothwell every filthy name I can think of.

II

Late that night I hear a car pull up outside and when I get up
in the morning Mr Rothwell's home. It seems she'd time to let him know even if she couldn't ring me. As it is I think it's only him coming stops me from having it out with her and packing up and leaving. He seems to calm her down and make her see
sense. I don't know how much poison she drops in his mind about me but it doesn't seem to make any difference; he's the same with
me as he always is when he comes home, quiet and friendly and
decent. You kind of get the feeling with him that he respects you
as a person like and not for the first time I think it's a pity he's not at home all the time.