The Millstone. Margaret Drabble

used to seeing on my home ground were a mixed enough lot, but they were a smart, expensive mixed lot, apart from the occasional freak, beggar or road worker: but here, gathered in this room, were representatives of a population whose existence I had hardly noticed. There were a few foreigners; a West Indian, a Pakistani, two Greeks. There were several old people, most of them respectably shabby, though one old woman was worse than shabby. She was grossly fat and her clothes were held around her by safety pins: a grotesquely old and mangy fur coat fell open to reveal layers of fraying, loose-stitched, hand-knitted cardigans in shades of maroon, dark blue and khaki. Her legs, covered in thick lisle stockings, were painfully swollen, and overflowed at the ankles over her soft cracked flat black shoes. She was talking to herself all the time, a low pitiable monologue of petty persecution. Nobody listened. Then there were a couple of young secretaries or waitresses, who were sitting together and looking at pictures in a magazine and giggling: my eyes kept going back to them as they were the only people in the room who did not look depressed and oppressed. Those who looked worst of all were, ominously enough, the mothers: there were four mothers there with young children, and they looked uniformly worn out. One held a small baby on her knee, at which she smiled from time to time with tired affection and anxiety. The others had larger children, two of which were romping around the room; they were doing no harm, apart from disturbing the magazines, and nobody minded them except their mothers, who kept grabbing them and slapping them and shouting at them in a vain and indeed provoking effort to make them sit down and keep quiet. It was a saddening sight. I wondered where all the others had gone: the bright young women in emerald green coats with fur collars, the young men in leather jackets, the middle-aged women with dogs on leads, the gay mothers with their Christopher Robin children, the men with umbrellas against the rain. Sitting in Harley Street, no doubt, just along the road.

      By the time my turn to see the doctor came, my complaint seemed so trivial in comparison with the ills of age and worry and penury that I had doubts about presenting it at all. Reason told me, however, that I must do so, and I did. The woman in white showed me into the surgery: Dr Moffat was a harassed, keen-looking young man, with pale ginger receding hair. I felt sorry for him: he must have had a more unpleasant hour and a quarter than I had had. He told me to sit down and asked me what he could do for me, and I said that I thought I was pregnant, and he said how long had I been married, and I said that I was not married. It was quite simple. He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger, and said did my parents know. I said yes, thinking it would be easier to say yes, and not wishing to embark on explaining about their being in Africa. He said were they sympathetic, and I smiled my bright, meaningless smile and said Fairly. Then we worked out dates and he said it would be due in March. Then he said he would try to get me a hospital bed, though I must understand there was a great shortage, and this and that, and had he got my address. I gave it, and he said was I living with my family and I said No, alone. He said did I know about the Unmarried Mothers people in Kentish Town, and I said Yes. They were very nice and very helpful about adoption and things, he said. Then he said that he would let me know about the hospital bed, and would I come back in a fortnight. And that was that.

      I walked out into the cold evening air and wandered aimlessly up towards Marylebone Road, worrying not because it seemed that I was really going to have this baby, but because I had been so surprised and annoyed that I had to wait so long. Everyone else there had looked resigned; they had expected to wait, they had known they would have to wait. I was the only one who had not known. I wondered on how many other serious scores I would find myself ignorant. There were things that I had not needed to know, and now I did need to know them. I emerged upon Marylebone Road and walked towards the lovely coloured gleaming spire of Castrol House. I felt threatened. I felt my independence threatened: I did not see how I was going to get by on my own.

      Once I had thus decided to have the baby – or rather failed to decide not to have it – I had to face the problem of publicity. It was not the kind of event one can conceal forever, and I was already over three months gone. The absence of my parents was certainly handy from that point of view: there was nobody else in the family that I saw at all regularly. My brother in Dorking I saw dutifully about once every four months, but he would be easy enough to evade. My sister, on the other hand, I thought I might tell at some point as she had three children of her own and I thought she might be sympathetic. We got on quite well together, as sisters go. Nevertheless, I delayed writing; I could not bear the idea of the fuss. I hate to cause trouble.

      My own friends were another matter. I simply could not make my mind up about Joe and Roger; I did not much fancy going around with them while expecting somebody else’s child, nor did I think they would much fancy it themselves, though one can never tell. On the other hand, I did not relish the thought of all the spare evenings I would be left with if I disposed of them both. It was difficult enough to keep myself from getting depressed as it was, without having even more solitary time on my hands. Also, I did not know quite how to set about imparting the news: should I leave it till it became evident to the naked eye? Surely not. Therefore I would have to tell them before it became evident, which did not leave me much time. Already I could not fasten my skirts or get into my brassières. I rehearsed each scene a hundred times in my head, but could never even in my imagination manipulate the data with anything like grace, skill, tact or credit to myself. I thought Joe would be the easier proposition, being more familiar, and I plunged into the subject one night almost unintentionally, prompted by a chance remark of his made as we were walking along Park Lane.

      ‘Did you ever see,’ he said, ‘that Bergman film about a maternity ward? The one where all the wrong people kept having miscarriages?’

      ‘Don’t talk to me about maternity wards,’ I said, almost without thinking.

      ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Does it upset you? You don’t like all that kind of thing, do you? A very unwomanly woman, that’s what you are.’

      ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Just don’t talk about maternity wards, that’s all. All too soon I’m going to find myself in one.’

      ‘What?’ said Joe.

      ‘I’m pregnant,’ I said crossly.

      ‘Oh,’ said Joe, and kept on walking. After a few yards he said, ‘You’re not going to have it, are you?’

      ‘Yes, I am,’ I said.

      ‘Whatever for?’

      ‘Why not? I don’t see why I shouldn’t, do you?’

      ‘I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn’t. I think it’s an utterly ridiculous romantic stupid nonsensical idea. I think you’re out of your mind.’

      ‘I don’t see why,’ I stubbornly repeated.

      ‘What does he say, anyway?’ continued Joe. ‘It’s his fault, it’s his job to get you out of it. He’s rich enough, isn’t he? Why don’t you make him pay and go off and have it done in comfort?’

      ‘Roger, you mean,’ I said faintly.

      ‘Well, yes, Roger. Why don’t you get married? No, for God’s sake, don’t bother to tell me. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to marry a selfish well-dressed lump of mediocrity like him. Still, if you don’t marry him, you might as well do something about it.’

      ‘I don’t want to do anything about it.’

      ‘Don’t tell me you want to have a baby.’

      ‘I don’t mind,’ I said.

      ‘What does he think about it, anyway? If he does think.’

      ‘I haven’t told him yet,’ I said truthfully.

      ‘You haven’t told him? You really must be out of your mind. Whyever not?’

      ‘I just haven’t got round to it.’

      ‘Oh Christ. I give up. What have you done about it?’

      ‘I went to the doctor,’ I said with some pride, ‘and he’s booking me a hospital bed.’

      ‘God,’ he said to himself, staring up at the black sky through the neon-lit trees, ‘she means it, she’s