A Woman of Our Times. Rosie Thomas

There was no answer, but she had not expected any.

      In their bedroom she undressed and lay down under the double quilt. After a moment she sat up again, took the telephone extension off the table on Leo’s side of the bed and brought it round to her own. She lay down once more and closed her eyes. She wondered if Leo would come to bed. They couldn’t both stay here after tonight. Then she remembered that Leo was going away for three days from tomorrow, on an assignment. Before he came back, she would have to find somewhere to go. She didn’t mind very much that she would be the one who would have to leave. The idea of staying here, alone in this house of strangers, was less appealing still.

      She was awake when Leo came to bed. They lay back to back, without speaking. Later Harriet fell into a heavy unrefreshing sleep.

      In the morning, very early, Charlie rang to say that Jenny had woken up properly. She was in pain, but she was only concerned for her baby. The baby’s condition was stable. The next few days would be critical, and if he survived them his long-term chances would be good. They would not be able to tell for some time yet how severely his brain had been damaged, if it had been damaged at all.

      ‘That’s good,’ Harriet said warmly. ‘That’s better than it seemed, isn’t it?’

      ‘I suppose so,’ Charlie said. He was normally an ebullient man, but there was none of it in his voice that morning.

      ‘Can I come in and see her?’

      ‘Tomorrow, Harriet, perhaps.’

      ‘All right. Give her all my love.’

      Harriet dialled Jane’s number. Jane was a teacher, at a huge comprehensive school in east London. It was impossible to reach her during the day, and it was still early enough to catch her before she left.

      ‘Jane? Have you heard what’s happened?’

      ‘Charlie just rang.’

      ‘What do you think?’

      ‘It doesn’t sound very promising.’

      They murmured their concern together. Jane was a forthright, single woman, a feminist and espouser of causes. Sometimes she exasperated Harriet, but she also loved her for her warmth and honesty.’

      ‘I wish I could go over there and just hold her,’ Jane said.

      ‘I’m sure Charlie will do that.’

      ‘Hm.’ Jane took a less positive view of the relationships between men and women, never having achieved a satisfactory one herself.

      ‘We’ll go tomorrow.’

      ‘Yes. God, I wish this hadn’t happened. If anyone deserves a normal healthy baby Jenny does. I can’t think of anyone who would make a better mother. How are you this morning, Harriet?’

      ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow, when I see you,’ Harriet said, without emphasis. ‘Bye, now.’

      While they talked Leo had been putting shirts and socks into a canvas grip. Now he tossed a sponge bag and a camera body in on top and zipped up the bag.

      ‘I’d better go. I’ve got a couple of things to organise at the studio before I leave for the airport.’

      ‘Yes. Well, you wouldn’t have had time for that last night, what with everything else, would you?’

      He straightened up, with his bag in his hand. ‘I’ve said I was sorry, Harriet.’

      ‘No you haven’t, actually. You said you were sorry I had to see what I did. That’s something quite different, isn’t it?’

      Leo hesitated, somewhere between contrition and petulance. Then he sighed. ‘There just isn’t time for another bloody great row this morning. I’m going to Amsterdam, and that’s it. I’ll be back on Sunday. We’ll talk then.’

      Harriet lifted her face to him. ‘It’s too late.’

      He stared at her. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he repeated. Harriet knew that inside himself, within all the layers of bullishness and sentimentality, Leo also knew that it was too late.

      He went, closing the door between them, without saying anything more.

      Harriet went to work, came home again, and spent the evening alone. The news from the hospital was that Jenny was recovering well, and the baby continued to hold his own. Charlie seemed encouraged by the doctors’ predictions.

      The next day Harriet left the shop early, to go and see Jenny. She stopped on the way to try to buy her something, but every magazine she picked up seemed to have a picture of a rosy baby on the cover, and every book the word mother or child in the title. In the end she settled for flowers, late-summer blooms that seemed touched with weariness.

      As she walked up the street towards the dull, red-brick bulk of the hospital she saw Jane hurrying in the same direction ahead of her. She was easily recognisable by her everyday ensemble of loose trousers with numerous pockets and flaps, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and her pale hair pulled into a thick plait down her back. ‘Combat gear,’ Jane called it, saying, ‘I need it in that place.’ Harriet had never visited the school, but she had heard the stories about it.

      She had asked Jane more than once, ‘If it’s so bad, why don’t you leave? Get a job teaching nice, bright, motivated children in a private school somewhere?’

      And Jane had looked at her from under her thick, blonde eyelashes. ‘One, you know that I am not a supporter of private education. Two, to leave the school would be to diminish it further. Don’t you think I should stay and continue to do my best for it?’

      Harriet could only answer, ‘If you say so,’ knowing that it would be useless to embark on an argument about it.

      She smiled, now, at the sight of her and ran to catch her up. Jane turned in response to Harriet’s shout. In one hand she was carrying an old-fashioned battered leather briefcase, probably stuffed with sixth-form essays on Wuthering Heights, and in the other a bunch of flowers more or less identical to Harriet’s. The two women hugged each other, awkward with their separate armsful.

      ‘What else can one bring?’ Jane said wryly, nodding at the flowers. ‘Everything I thought of seemed too celebratory or too funereal.’

      ‘I know. Jenny won’t care, anyway.’

      They went into the hospital, following signs, and climbed some stairs. At the end of a long corridor they came to the maternity ward. There was the sound of new-born crying and a glimpse of cots at the ends of beds. Harriet and Jane looked at each other, but said nothing. They found Jenny alone in a sideward. She was propped up against pillows, with arms outstretched, palms up, on the smoothed covers. She looked as if she might have been dozing, but she opened her eyes when they came in.

      ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she said, which was Jenny’s familiar greeting. It was a facet of her appeal that she made it invariably convincing, but today Harriet thought she might have preferred to be left alone. Her smooth Madonna-face was white and drawn, and there were shadows like bruises under her eyes.

      ‘We won’t stay for long,’ Harriet promised. ‘Only a minute or two.’

      ‘I’m tired because my mother’s been here most of the afternoon. She needs more looking after than I do. She’s gone now to do some shopping and some tidying-up at home for Charlie. I told her he didn’t need shopping for or tidying-up after, but she wouldn’t have it.’ She put her hand out to touch the flowers. ‘Thank you for these. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’

      ‘This is all right,’ Jane said, looking round the little room.

      ‘Tactful,’ Jenny said. Her mouth gave an uncharacteristic twist. She had been put in here away from all the perfect babies in their cots in the big ward, of course. They all knew it, there was a strong enough bond between them for anxiety and sympathy to be unspoken. Harriet and Jane sat down on either side of the bed, their hands touching Jenny’s.