“The silk dress will probably be all right. She’ll be able to turn it into something fabulous.”
“She will be too busy making strudels.”
“Likewise.” They had insisted she take one of the crates of apples, enough to last all winter. “Although the English equivalent in my case. Turnovers, perhaps.”
There were still hours of daylight left and yet there was a melancholy sense of approaching dusk and the fading of a perfect day, which brought tears to Jean’s eyes. Tomorrow she would be back at her desk, writing Pam’s Piece and Household Hints and The Garden Week by Week. There was no possibility that circumstances would align themselves in just this way again to allow her another similar outing with Howard. It would survive only in memory; to be taken out and turned over now and then, like one of the treasures from her dressing-table drawer.
They had reached Shoreham now; even after so many hours the children were still playing in the stream. One of the girls—no more than eight or nine herself—was carrying a huge baby on her hip, staggering under the weight of him. They looked just like the sort of scruffy, neglected children Jean would have been forbidden to play with or even approach when she was young, and even now they exerted a powerful fascination. She took a deep breath, which emerged as a sigh, and Howard glanced at her.
“Are you all right, Jean?” he asked. “Have I said something to upset you?”
“Oh no, of course not. I was just giving in to introspection.” She forced her face into a smile, but it was effortful and rigid and would have fooled no one, least of all Howard.
After a moment or two he said, “My wife has a theory. Everyone has a secret sorrow.”
“Really?” She managed a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “What’s yours?”
“I’ve already told you mine.”
“Oh. I see. Then what is Gretchen’s?”
She recalled now that occasion in their garden—her stricken face when she believed herself to be unobserved.
“I don’t know. Perhaps the counterpoint of mine. But it’s you I am interested in. You never told me yours.”
“I have had it drummed into me not to dwell on my disappointments.”
“Who is this stern drummer?”
“My mother, I suppose.”
“Does she live by this creed herself?”
“She certainly never talks about things in that way. But you could hardly call it a success.” She gave a brief, bitter laugh.
“Well then?”
“You might think badly of me.”
“Jean, I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would alter my opinion of you.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told,” she said, blushing from both the warmth of his compliment and the enormity of what she was about to do. It violated every code that she had been brought up to live by, but the urge to tell him was unstoppable. Decorum, secrecy, self-control were all blown away by the force of this need to confide. “It’s a funny coincidence really, but around the same time Gretchen discovered she was expecting Margaret, I found out I was pregnant, too. Only in my case it was more of a disaster than a miracle.”
Howard said nothing, his eyes on the road.
“So I did that terrible thing that unmarried women do when they can’t keep the baby.”
“Did you do it yourself or go to an abortionist?” There was no disapproval in his voice, only curiosity and sympathy.
“I went to this woman in Stockwell. She made me lie on an old door resting on a couple of trestles. It had blankets over it but I could tell it was a door because it still had a handle—digging into my side.”
Even at a distance of over a decade she could still remember every detail about that day. The street was called Southville, in a part of London that was unfamiliar to her and that she had never since visited.
He had drawn her a map with a casual efficiency that suggested previous experience. Union Grove, Paradise Road; even the street names had mocked her. The left-hand side of the road was a bomb site—a pair of surviving shops stood out from the rubble like old teeth; containers from an old factory spilled out onto the pavement.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” said Howard.
“I remember there was a dead fly on the mantelpiece—it seemed like a terrible omen. But the woman was so matter-of-fact about everything. She said, ‘I’ve done this many times and it’ll soon be over and you can get on with your life. I’ve never lost a girl yet.’