Lace (87 page)

She wished she didn’t feel so alone.

It was
so unfair
that she should feel guilty. But she was guilty, wasn’t she? After all, she had trotted after the stranger into his suite. She simply hadn’t thought about it
at the time, had felt no reason for alarm. It had never entered her head. He was a guest in the hotel and she hadn’t entered his bedroom. But then, before the seductive warmth of that fire,
she had to admit that, at that moment, she
had
been guilty, hadn’t she? Oh, dear, it had all happened so fast there had been no time to think.

Eventually Judy decided she would ask the girls to help her, but she swore to herself that she would never say anything about the person who was responsible for her condition, the man that Pagan
loved. But she needed advice, she needed money, she needed moral support, and the girls seemed her only source of help.

Over the red-checked tablecloth, three pairs of eyes widened with astonishment and awe, three mouths fell open, speechless. It was what every girl dreaded.

“Who
was
he?”

“Was it Nick?”

“Look. I’m not going to tell you who he was, so please don’t ask me. There’s a very good reason why I’m not going to tell you, but I’m not even going to tell
you what it is. All I can say is, there’s no hope of any money from him or any help of any sort.”

“Does Nick know?”

“No, and you’re not going to tell him. In fact I’ll kill you if you tell anybody.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I want to get an abortion.”

There was another silence. Hot bath and gin, all four of them immediately thought, but Maxine was the one who suggested it. They decided that the following Saturday afternoon, Maxine would sit
by Judy as she drank a bottle of gin in the hotel bathtub.

Judy gasped and spluttered. With difficulty, she had eventually drunk the whole bottle of gin and now she was going to be sick.

“Please don’t throw up,” pleaded Maxine, “
please
don’t. That gin was so expensive, and we’ll only have to buy another bottle. Please don’t waste
it.
Please
try not to vomit”

Neither of them had expected Judy to throw up. Without mentioning it to each other, the girls had expected Judy suddenly to go berserk. She might start smashing things or run amok, naked, down
the hotel corridor, hollering raucous soldiers’ songs. It was Maxine’s duty to prevent that sort of thing: in fact, she had an extra scarf in her handbag with which to gag Judy and stop
the drunken singing.

Instead, Judy fell asleep in the bath. Maxine reluctantly prodded Judy’s shoulder. She had never seen another woman entirely naked and certainly never touched one. This uncovered flesh was
embarrassing for both of them. She prodded a bit harder, then shook the shoulder. Alarmed, she gripped both shoulders and shook hard.

Judy’s head lolled sideways, she gave a little grunting snore and started to slip downward into the water. Quickly Maxine pulled out the plug and kept Judy’s head above the water
until it had all been swirled around and sucked down by the drain.

“Judy, get out,” Maxine hissed in her ear, trying to heave the wet, floppy body out of the tub.
Mon Dieu
, how did murderers manage? She remembered that man who drowned six
brides in turn, having thoughtfully insured their lives. Who would have thought little Judy could be so heavy? Maxine hoped she wouldn’t have to call Nick. She’d sworn not to tell
him.

Eventually Maxine removed her shoes, stockings and skirt, climbed into the tub herself, pushed Judy’s head over the side, pushed each wet arm over the rim, then heaved Judy up around her
middle so that her shoulders fell over the side of the tub, then heaved on her waist again until Judy slithered unconscious over the side of the bath and lay beaming on the wet green linoleum.
Maxine wrapped her dressing gown around Judy’s floppy body and half-carried, half-dragged her back to her room and onto the iron bedstead. Maxine covered her with a quilt, towelled her hair
dry, sat with her until seven o’clock and then quietly left.

But nothing happened.

“I think there are some pills you can take,” Kate said. It was the first day of May. “My cousin Tessa’s a student nurse. She’s a bloody smug prig
and I’m not sure she’ll help, but I’ll write to her and say it’s urgent.”

She wrote off to her cousin, who immediately assumed that Kate was pregnant and airmailed her a box of Black Magic chocolates. The second layer contained a phial of little pink capsules,
stilbestrol, the cousin explained in her letter. She didn’t know if they would work, but one should try taking them over two days.

That’s what Judy did, but nothing happened—except that she felt sick for two whole days instead of only in the morning.

Pagan had privately decided that if nothing had happened by June 1, then she would ask Paul for help. Surely he, the headmaster’s driver, must have encountered this problem before?
Naturally, he would think that it was
she
who had the difficulty. Pagan had the sinking feeling that if she asked Paul for a small favour, he would ask her for a big one in return. But she
would try playing that card if all else failed.

In the meantime, Maxine had suggested that they simply do the obvious thing and ask a pharmacist.

As the only fluent French speaker, Maxine hung around the doorway of the pharmacy for an hour before she dared enter. She gazed with feigned absorption at the window, lined with white-china,
gold-lettered apothecary jars, until the shop was empty of customers. Then she went inside and, blushing so hard that she looked as if she were suffering from a bad case of sunburn, she asked the
pharmacist if he could give her some medicine to bring on a period.

How long overdue?

“Four months.”

The pharmacist’s face was immediately wiped of expression. It was like speaking to an automaton, thought Maxine. He said, “You mustn’t consult me, you must ask a doctor. Try
Doctor Geneste, he’s a gynecologist. A very sympathetic man. I regret that I can sell you nothing.” He wrote down an address and handed it to Maxine, who couldn’t get out of the
shop fast enough.

Once outside and around the corner she leaned against a stone wall until she regained her self-possession. Then she asked the way to the gynecologist.

It was an old-fashioned house in a quiet street. Maxine looked for a long time at the worn brass plate on the olive-green front door, then slowly lifted her hand to the doorbell.

A nurse with low-heeled white shoes, a white uniform and an empty face opened the door. Maxine asked to make an appointment with the doctor. “Speak up,” said the nurse, “I
can’t hear you. What’s your name?”

But Maxine found it impossible to raise her voice above a whisper. “It’s not for me,” she said. “It’s for a friend.” Hurriedly, she gave the false name that
Judy had suggested.

The following Saturday Judy stood outside the olive-green door accompanied by Maxine. The girls sat silently in the reception room until they were beckoned into the consulting room by the
impassive nurse. The consulting room was a cream cubicle with two metal chairs in front of a pine desk. On the desk stood a telephone, an old-fashioned brass dinner bell, a large diary, a
scribbling pad and a small green-glass jar of cornflowers. In one corner of the room stood a green cotton screen, and in another was a white porcelain sink over which the doctor bent, his back to
them.

The girls could smell the faint, reassuring odour of antiseptic as he turned around to face them. He wasn’t a cross, fat French doctor, as they had both feared. He was tall, thin,
relatively young and handsome—rather like Gary Cooper, Maxine thought.

He treated them like adults. They agreed that the weather was wonderful. Then, in a kind voice, he asked, “How long has it been since your last period?”

“I think the third week in January,” said Judy, “I mean, I never took much notice.”

There was a silence. “Better check whether or not there is real cause for alarm,” he said. “I would like to examine you, so perhaps your friend won’t mind waiting
outside.”

Judy took her clothes off behind the screen and stood shivering, not wanting to leave its protection. Then she put on the sleeveless gown that was folded over the screen and sat with her legs
dangling over the side of the high examination couch, at the end of which were fixed two unnerving stainless-steel stirrups.

“You must remember that I am here to help you. There is no need to be frightened. I have to make an examination. But I am a doctor and you must regard me as your confidant, not as a man,
and my nurse will be here. Now, have I your permission to examine you?” Judy nodded. He rang the brass bell for the nurse. “Now please just lie back and rest your legs on the
stirrups.” Shutting her eyes and feeling unbearably humiliated, Judy lay on her back and allowed her legs to be pulled apart and propped into the impersonal steel stirrups. She felt a probing
of rubber-gloved fingers. She heard sticky, greasy sounds. Then he helped her down. The nurse left the room and Judy went behind the screen again to dress. Maxine returned.

The doctor sat behind his desk looking gravely at the girls. “Of course, I will do tests. But I don’t need tests to know that this miss is almost certainly four months
pregnant.”

Judy felt black despair. No hope. She was caught. Trapped. She wanted to scream and stamp. She would refuse. She would demand a replay. It could
not
happen. Not to
her.
Why, why,
why?

The doctor said that abortions were illegal. In any case, miss might be twenty weeks pregnant, so it was too late. If they did not mind his saying so, the question was not whether miss was
pregnant, not how to get rid of this baby, but rather to consider where and when it would be born. There was another silence, then casually the doctor asked if the father was likely to be
supportive.

“No.”

“Ah.”

Another long silence. Then the doctor added that he understood Judy’s situation and he would like to assure her that it was not nearly so rare as she supposed. He had attended other young
ladies in similar situations and was used to exercising discretion in these matters. It would almost certainly be possible to keep the matter secret, but the problem was Judy’s age, her
parents would have to be told.

“That’s not possible, both my parents are dead,” Judy heard herself say.

The gynecologist looked skeptical. “Then who are your guardians?”

“My elder sister, who’s married,” she said. Then, with a flash of inspiration, “My sister, Judy—Judy Jordan.” Innocent navy-blue eyes stared at him.

“Then I must write to your sister and inform her of these matters and ask her permission to care for you. There is also the matter of payment. Where you have your baby depends quite
frankly on what you can afford.”

“There will be no problem about payment,” said Maxine swiftly. Judy opened her mouth, then shut it again. They were talking as if having a baby were no more of a problem than buying
a pair of skis.

But already, sitting in this neat consulting room and talking to an adult, she felt calmer. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so terrible, provided her parents never found out. Perhaps, after all, it
wasn’t the end of the world. And she didn’t know quite how to describe the sensation, but her feelings had altered in the last month in a very strange way. It was as if the rest of the
world didn’t really matter. What mattered was that under her rotund little stomach (now hard as a tennis ball) she had felt a sort of flutter, a butterfly-wing touch.

In fact she thought it
might
have moved.

Suddenly she had realised that
this was a real baby.
It was
her
baby. To Judy’s surprise, she had dwelt on this private thought with catlike complacency, and after those
first moments of panic, when she faced the doctor, this feeling of smug unreality had returned to her.

The gynecologist was saying, “After the baby is born you will have three choices. You can keep the baby; the baby can be adopted; or it can be cared for by foster parents until your life
is more settled.”

He carefully rearranged the little blue flowers in the green jar. “If you have the baby adopted, then you will have to say good-bye to your child forever, but the advantage would be that
you will never have to pay anything. On the other hand, if you find foster parents for the baby, then you would have to pay for its keep, because the child would still be yours.”

He looked up at Judy gently and said, “Naturally, you can’t decide such things immediately. You will no doubt wish to consult your sister.”

“Look, I can tell you right away what I’d
like
to do,” said Judy. Suddenly she felt that her baby was not rubbish to be dumped in a bin, not an unwanted pet to be handed
over to somebody else. Her baby was lying there under her heart, curled up in her body. Already it had a little nose and mouth and minuscule fingers. It
was
her flesh and blood. She
couldn’t hand that to somebody else, like a parcel over a post office counter.

Without much logical thought, but with already developed maternal instincts, Judy suddenly heard herself say, “I want to keep it. I don’t want to give my baby away. I would like to
find my baby foster parents until I’m old enough to have a home of my own for him.”

“Well, that is something to be thought over carefully,” Doctor Geneste said. “We can discuss it on your next visit.”

Afterward the two girls went to a quiet tearoom. “Why did you say there would be no problem about money?” Judy wanted to know.

“Because there won’t be. I’ll talk to the others tonight. Between the three of us we should surely be able to raise the money for your medical bills.”

It was after midnight. The white lace curtains had not been drawn over the window. In front of the silver rectangle, three dark figures sat whispering on Maxine’s bed.
“Doctor Geneste said that the hospital fees would be about one thousand Swiss francs. Between us we can almost certainly raise that amount. He said that to put a child in a foster home costs
five hundred francs a month. That’s six thousand francs a year.”