London Observed. Doris Lessing

up from the floor. She stood shakily by the bloody mess and moved away a few paces with the baby held high up and close against her. At once the dog crawled forward, giving her a desperate look that said, Don’t get in my way. It ate up the afterbirth in quick gulps. It hopefully licked the bloody blanket, and briefly lifted its muzzle to look at her, wagging its long dirty tail. Then it went back to its place and sat with its back to the wall, watching. Meanwhile the baby let out short angry cries and kicked hard in its cocoon of towel. Julie thought, Should I just leave the baby here and run for it? No, the dog … But as she thought this, the baby stopped and lay quietly looking at her. Well, she wasn’t going to look back, she wasn’t going to love it.

      She had to leave here, and she was a swamp of blood, water, God only knew what.

      She took a cautious look. Blood trickled down her legs. And she had actually believed a tampon or two would be enough! She laid the baby down on a clean place on the blanket, keeping an eye on the dog. Its eyes gleamed in the torchlight. She put on a pair of clean knickers and packed in sanitary towels. She tried to tie the guest towels around her waist to make an extra pad, but they were too stiff. Now she picked up the baby, which was just like a papoose and looking around with its blurry little eyes. She took up the carrier bag and then the torch. She said to the dog, ‘Poor dog, I’m sorry,’ and went out, making sure the door was open for the dog. She switched off the torch, though the ground was rough and had bricks and bits of wood lying about. She could just see: there were lights in windows high up across the street. The sleet still blew down. She was already shivering. And the baby only had the towel around it … She put the bundle of baby under the flap of the now loose coat and went quickly across the uneven ground to the alley, and then through the bad-smelling place and then along the pavement to a telephone box she had made sure would be conveniently close when she was looking for the shed or somewhere safe. There was no one near the telephone box, no one anywhere around. She put the baby down on the floor and walked towards the brilliant lights of the pub at the corner. She did not look back. The pub was crammed and hot and noisy. Now what she was afraid of was that she might smell so strongly of blood someone would notice. She could hardly make her way to the toilet. There she removed her knickers with the pads of sanitary towels, which were already soaked. She used one of the guest towels to wash herself down. She went on soaking the towel in hot water and wringing it out, then wiping herself, watching how the blood at once began trickling on to the clean white skin of her inner thighs. But she could not stay there for ever, washing. She rubbed the same towel, wrung out in hot water, over her sticky head. She combed her hair flat. Well, it wouldn’t stay flat for long: being naturally curly it would spring back into its own shape soon. Debbie said it was sweet, like a little girl. She filled her knickers with new pads, put the bloody pads into the container, and went out into the pub. Now there was music from the jukebox, pounding away, and the beat went straight through her, vibrating and making her feel sick. She wanted badly to get away from the music, but she bought a shandy, reaching over the shoulders of men arguing about football to get it. Unremarked, she went to stand near a small window that overlooked the telephone box. She could see the bundle, a small pathetic thing, like folded newspapers or a dropped jersey, on the floor of the box. She had first found the shed, then looked for the telephone box, and then hoped there would be a window somewhere close by, and there was.

      She stood by the window for only five minutes or so. Then she saw a young man and a girl go into the telephone box. Through window glass streaked again with sleet, she saw the girl pick up the bundle from the floor, while the young man telephoned. She ought to leave … she ought not to stand here … but she stayed, watching, while the noise of the pub beat around her. The ambulance came in no time. Two ambulance men. The girl came out of the telephone box with the bundle, and the young man was behind her. The ambulance men took the bundle, first one, then the other, then handed it back to the girl, who got into the ambulance. The young man stood on the pavement, and the girl inside waved to him, and he got in to go with them. So the baby was safe. It was done. She had done it. As she went out into the sleety rain she saw the ambulance lights vanish, and her heart plunged into loss and became empty and bitter, in the way she had been determined would not happen. ‘Debbie,’ she whispered, the tears running. ‘Where are you, Debbie?’ Not necessarily New York. Or even the States. Canada … Mexico … the Costa Brava … South America … The people coming and going in Debbie’s flat were always off somewhere, or just back. Rio … San Francisco, you name it. And Debbie had said to her, ‘One day it will be your turn.’ But now it was Debbie’s turn. Why should she ever come back? She wanted to have ‘just one regular customer’. Once she had said, by mistake, ‘just one man’. Julie had heard this, but did not comment. Debbie could be as hard and as jokey as she liked, but she couldn’t fool Julie, who knew she was the only person who really understood Debbie.

      Now Julie was walking to the Underground, as fast as she could. Her legs were shaky, but she felt all right. All she wanted was to get home. It had been impossible to go home, or even think too much about home where her father (she was sure) would simply throw her out. But now, it was only a question of a few stops on the Underground, and then the train. At the most, an hour and a half.

      The Underground train was full of people. They had had a meal after work, or been in a pub. Like Julie! She kept looking at all those faces and thinking, What would you say if you knew? At Waterloo she sat on a bench near an old man with a drinker’s face, a tramp. She gave him a pound, but she was thinking of the dog. She did not have to wait long for a train. It was not full. Surely she ought to be tired, or sick or something? Most of all she was hungry. A great plate of steak and eggs, that was what she needed. And Debbie there too, eating opposite her.

      A plump fresh-faced girl in a damp sky-blue coat sat upright among the other home-goers, holding a carrier bag that had on it, written red on black, SUSIE’s STYLES! Her eyes shone. Her young fresh fair hair curled all over her head. She vibrated with confidence, with secrets.

      At the station she had to decide between a bus and walking home. Not the bus: on it there’d almost certainly be someone she knew, and perhaps even from her school. She didn’t want to be looked at yet. The sleet was now a chilly blowy rain, with the sting of ice in it, but it wasn’t bad, more of an occasional sharp pattering coming into her face and invigorating her. But she was going to arrive home all wet and pathetic, not at all as she had planned.

      When she turned into her street, lights showed behind the curtains in all the windows. No one was out. What was she going to do about that coat, wet through, and, worse, hanging on her? Her mother would notice all that space under the coat and wonder. Three doors from home she glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and stripped off the coat in one fast movement and dropped it into a dustbin. Even in this half dark, lit with dull gleams from a window, she could see blood-stains on the lining. And her dress? The yellow dress was limp and grubby, but the cardigan came down low and hid most of it. This was going to be the dangerous part, all right, and only luck would get her through it. She ran up the steps and rang the bell, smiling, while she clutched the carrier bag so it could hide her front, which was still squashy and fat where the baby had been.

      Heavy steps. Her father. The door opened slowly while he fumbled at locks, and she kept the smile going, and her heart beat, and then he stood in front of her large and black with the light behind him, so that her heart went small and weak … but then he turned so she could see his face and she thought, That can’t be him, that can’t be my father – for he had shrunk and become grey and ordinary, and … what on earth had she been afraid of? She could just hear what Debbie would say about him! Why, he was nothing at all. He called out in a sharp barking voice, ‘Anne, Anne, she’s here.’ He was a man waiting for his wife to take command, crying as he went stumbling down the hall. Julie’s mother came fast towards her. She was already crying, and that meant she could not see anything much. She put her arms around Julie and sobbed and said, ‘Oh, Julie, Julie, why didn’t you … ? But come in, why, you’re soaked.’ And she pushed and pulled Julie towards, and then into, the living room, where the old man (which is how Julie was seeing him with her new eyes) sat bowed in his chair, tears running down his face.

      ‘She’s all right, Len,’ said Anne, Julie’s mother. She let go of her daughter and sat upright in her chair, knees together, feet together, dabbing her cheeks under her eyes, and stared