The Fruit of the Tree Read online

  The doctor, a pleasant, good-looking young man, arrived soon. I appreciated his directness when he told me that I would have a ‘D. & C.’ very shortly. I had had little hope that the baby would be saved, and I felt a certain amount of relief that I was receiving hospital care and not allowed to miscarry at home, as one of my neighbours had only recently.

  Anaesthetics had improved greatly since I had last had a minor operation ten years before. I still remembered the mask that smelled of rubber being placed on my face and the nausea afterwards. I was relieved to find now that a small injection made me quite relaxed and hazy. I was wheeled off somewhere where a lot of people were standing around in green overalls with masks over their mouths.

  ‘Have you any children?’ said one of the figures.

  ‘Yes, a little boy of eighteen months,’ I answered.

  They asked me to count and I started, but I couldn’t finish.

  * * *

  A hospital is a strange little world on its own, where perspectives are changed quite drastically. I spent only a few days there, but my feelings were distorted by the conditions of that particular world. On the one hand, by virtue of that unwritten law that says your husband shall visit you at 7.30 p.m., I felt desperately deprived, for Michael was conspicuous by his absence.

  On the other hand, in a ward where women had parted with large sections of their female organs and walked around appearing to hold together what was left of their stomachs, I could not but regard my three-month miscarriage as rather trivial.

  I awoke on the first day after the ‘scrape’ to realise with dismay that I had left at home, amongst other things, my contact lenses, my glasses, pants, dressing gown and purse. Without these things I was quite desperate. The person in the opposite bed was a blur and it is impossible to talk to a blur. I was wearing a hospital gynaecological ward nightie, which flapped open at the back like an apron, revealing a bare behind, so that I couldn’t walk around the ward without a dressing gown; and without money, I could make no contact with the outside world. I was completely imprisoned. In vain did I try to telephone Michael, reversing the charges. He was not there, and the automatic answering machine could not make the decision to accept my call.

  Finally, I reached Joan, by reversing the charges to her home, and entreated her to get Michael to deliver these essentials to me without delay. But in the end, it was kind-hearted Joan, herself, who brought them, for Michael once again had had to rush off somewhere. He didn’t visit me at all whilst I was in hospital and my feeling of humiliation was enormous.

  Thinking back, I suppose it didn’t seem awfully important to Michael, for I was only in hospital for two or three days, but to me it seemed I had been abandoned. Without money and with only female visitors, I wondered how many of my fellow occupants thought I was a potential unmarried mother who had deliberately caused her own abortion. At any rate, I saw myself as I assumed they saw me; as a woman whose man did not love her.

  Logic told me that Michael was particularly busy. He had to make a hundred mile trip to Colchester, which had already been planned. A drive to Brighton to deliver Robert into the care of my parents had been an added burden. But other thoughts refused to be driven from my head—he had rejected me because I had failed him. I had failed as a woman. I had failed to carry his child! I couldn’t manage to get on with the simple job of producing a baby without causing general inconvenience all round. To this day, I could not say how much those thoughts were irrational nonsense; wasn’t there a grain of truth contained in them?

  But Michael was not an analytical person. He was not aware of such thoughts revolving round my own head and doubted the need for my reassurance during such a short period of time.

  On the last day of my stay, I was partially mollified by the arrival of a bouquet of flowers from Michael, but as this was rather out of character, I assumed he had been given a little push in the right direction by Joan.

  When the time came to depart, I hoped to show off my muscular husband, just to prove he really existed, but even then I was thwarted. He had to go away for the day and he asked Joan and Reg to pick me up.

  The Sister in charge briskly sent me packing.

  ‘Look after yourself, dear; finish off your iron tablets and come to Out-patients in six weeks’ time.’

  Once released from hospital, the problems changed like a kaleidoscope.

  First, we had to collect Robert from Brighton, and initially I was rejected by him, for he could not understand why I had deserted him. It was two hours before he would come to me.

  I longed to stay with my parents and be coddled again as when I was a child, but Michael said, ‘I need you at home; you’ve been away long enough.’

  Only now, in my own home, away from the brave bunch of women recovering from major surgery, did my worries about Michael become scaled down to size, whilst at the same time, I recognised the extent of my own loss. I was angry and disappointed at the waste of time and waste of love and care that, in my way, I had given to the being within me from the moment I was aware of its presence, and I couldn’t wait to become pregnant again. My second pregnancy had been the consequence of planning. My third pregnancy would be the result of deep longing.

  We had returned to the mixture as before, but our house was now even less congenial than it had been. During the past few months, Michael had acted impulsively on a suggestion by our market garden lady and carried out a small conversion of our kitchen. Only when the work had been completed, halving the size of my kitchen, did we discover dismally that it was unlikely that our prospective purchaser would ever get access to the money she needed to buy our house.

  So the house remained unsold. At the bungalow our electrical wrangles continued; and we didn’t even have a new baby to look forward to. We both needed a break from this pattern of general inability to advance. It seemed a good moment to scrape up all available money and take a holiday.

  At the end of May, I revisited the hospital. By that time, the urgent desire to be pregnant again had abated a little, despite the recent birth of a son to my sister-in-law, Philippa. Nevertheless, I was disappointed to be told to wait a while before trying again for a baby.

  We tried to put our problems behind us and a few days later, we departed for our holiday. Romania had been recommended to us by our travel agent as being an economical place to go, in view of our usual impecuniousness. The weather could be expected to be good at this time of year.

  In the event, it was just like an English seaside resort in the height of summer. Some days it poured, some days it drizzled and other days a thin sunshine broke through the overcast sky and we sat watching Robert make mud pies on the damp and chilly beach.

  It was not an enjoyable holiday, though we made the best of it. There was a closed-in atmosphere that I didn’t like; whispered hints of secret police and bugging of telephones; grim-faced officials in dark glasses occasionally to be seen speeding down the length of the beach in black Mercedes cars, and propaganda mixed with music, broadcast to the beach through loudspeakers.

  There was a lack of freedom of choice which we found noticeably different from other holidays—an insistence on the guests sitting four to a table at the restaurant, rather like a regimented school party, and the presentation for two or three days of the same meat, so that we assumed we must eat the whole animal, before starting on a different one. There were ridiculous irritations, like having to sign a form confessing we had broken an ashtray in our room.

  We were unregretful when the time came to leave the country, though we were twice held up at passport checkpoints because of trivial misunderstandings. At one point, left without a boarding card through no fault of my own, I really thought I would be stranded in this claustrophobic country, while the plane took off for England.

  However, England welcomed us to her shores eventually with traditional fog, and since we were diverted unexpectedly to Gatwick Airport, we sought refuge with my parents in Brighton to recover from the ill-fated holiday.
r />   6. Out of the Frying Pan

  Nothing had changed! Nothing had changed fundamentally after the miscarriage; and still nothing had changed, and suddenly it was impossible to live like that any longer.

  I can’t remember who said it first; I only know that in the course of one evening, we came to a sudden conclusion. We couldn’t wait any longer for other people to make decisions that affected our lives. We would move into our bungalow—with or without electricity!

  The next three weeks would be fairly busy. An inspection of the bungalow reminded us that there were many things to buy and do.

  Dogmatically, I stated, ‘I am not bringing an eighteen month old child to live on bare concrete floors.’ There had been no point in fitting wood flooring to the concrete screed, as we had always intended to fit carpets. So carpets were a priority on our list of purchases. Furniture and furnishings, too, were required. There was no possibility of adapting our present curtains (machined by my own fair hands) to the large picture windows in the bungalow, thank goodness; and the thought of transferring our second-hand armchairs to this brand new home was too awful to consider.

  Surprisingly, there was a lot of cleaning to do; dust lay everywhere in the new house—concrete dust which built up day by day and had to be damped down frequently, and sawdust caused by the carpentry work in the bedrooms and kitchen.

  It was agreed that I would spend two weeks at my parents’ house in Hove, during which time I would shop in Brighton and commute to the bungalow periodically to clean and prepare it. Robert would then be able to enjoy the benefits of the seaside, without my company. I was careful to explain this to him, however, as I did not want him to feel rejected as he had during my miscarriage.

  First, however, I had to take my driving test—so much more important now, in view of the impending move.

  I had more confidence now; no worries any longer about the mechanics of gear-changing—and there was certainly no chance of my going through a red light, as I had done on my first, or was it my second test, when I was eighteen. Nevertheless, I was horribly nervous, as certain people always are when faced with an examiner in the flesh. If only I could have done a written paper on the subject!

  My examiner was a tall, pleasant looking man—the chief examiner, or so Mr. Oliver told me afterwards.

  ‘He’s always scrupulously fair.’ he said, when I sadly told him the result of my test.

  ‘You’re not quite up to test standard.’ the examiner had stated. I had not disgraced myself and Mr. Oliver was not displeased with me, but I was bitterly disappointed. I had so hoped to pass, and now I would be marooned in the country, totally reliant on the hourly bus service—or my feet—at least until I could take the test again.

  For a fortnight, however, I became a busy commuter, travelling to and fro—from our old home and new home to London and Brighton. I explored all the shops. In a Brighton store with Robert squalling with boredom in the background, I chose a beautiful green brocade curtain material which would blend with the pale green walls in the lounge. At the bungalow, I swept the rooms over and over again and patiently lined cupboards and drawers with brightly coloured paper. At the end of a day in London, I found myself marooned at Victoria Station by a train strike and was inspired to ring my mother-in-law for a night’s lodging; only to find that Michael too was in London that night and together we drove home in the van.

  Together in Guildford for the first time in days, we took the opportunity on the following day to go to choose a traditional three-piece suite.

  Then back I went once again to Hove to reassure my son that I had not after all deserted him again.

  Naturally, the weather was at its tempting best, but, with all these other necessary activities summoning me, I only dared spend one or two afternoons at the seafront with Robert and my family.

  One call in particular had to be made in Brighton, and that was to the head offices of the Electricity Board. Perhaps, meeting me face to face, they would be persuaded to expedite the provision of our electricity supplies. As an added incentive, I took Robert in his push-chair, but got so tangled up with their revolving doors on my first abortive trip there, that I opted for a less pathetic approach on my second visit.

  However, although I received sympathetic treatment from the gentleman concerned with our case, my visit made little difference. In view of the refusal of our neighbour to grant permission to the Electricity Board to cross his piece of land, certain prescribed paths would have to be followed, and as you can imagine, those paths would wend their way through skeins of red tape before arriving at a satisfactory conclusion.

  We spent the weekend of the 19th July in Hove, relaxing for a change, before the impending move. We were to wake up early on Monday morning. Michael wanted to be in Guildford by eight a.m. to open the office, before driving me to the bungalow. We were ready to leave before seven o’clock and we switched on the television to see the first two men on the moon (Armstrong and Aldrin), eerily bouncing their way over its dusty surface.

  Somehow, that historic event made our day seem all the more momentous and adventurous.

  Coincidentally, Joan and Reg were moving too, to a house high up in the North Downs. Joan had three boys of school age, and ten years or so of her married life had been spent in that street. She was weeping as they drove away.

  As for me, I shed not a tear as we drove off in the opposite direction. The house had served its purpose. It had acted as a sort of home for two and a half years, but I had sunk no roots there.

  We arrived at the bungalow with the bulk of our furniture—our bed—on top of the van, and Michael immediately began work on the most important job of the day—the connecting of our gas-stove, an elderly model, with only three legs. The important thing about it was that it was able to be connected to a bottle of gas. There was no gas laid on, so the cooker was something of a survival kit. Even the iron was to be heated upon it. Old-fashioned or not, together with packets of candles, boxes of matches and torch batteries, our three-legged friend was our sole means of providing heat, hot water and light (as well as cooking facilities) for quite a long time to come.

  With hindsight, we know there were things we could have done to make life a little easier. For example, we should have purchased a simple device which allows you to be connected to two bottles of gas and transfer from an empty one to a full one when necessary.

  Without this facility, I lived constantly with the thrill—or fear—of running out of gas; and although we usually had spare bottles, I could neither lift them nor manoeuvre the spanner to connect them to the cooker.

  It became a ritual to start the day, as we always had, by bathing. This involved heating three saucepans and a very large kettle on the cooker, and as soon as he had emptied his own water into the bath, Michael would fill up the receptacles for Robert or me. Sometimes I would bath Robert first, and then add a second helping of cooked water for myself. The little extra depth this provided gave me a feeling of luxury, though sometimes it had cooled so much, it was only equivalent to the cold water I would have added anyway. I was rather envious of Michael, as his large frame displaced so much water that he was actually covered by it, whilst I, at a little over half his thirteen stone, could never achieve that and had to be satisfied with sitting in a fairly deep puddle.

  We continued this practice right through into the winter, when to start the day with a percentage of one’s body preheated seemed like a good idea.

  The main problem in July, however, was not a lack of heat, but too much of it. We had no fridge, and the butter, the milk and the meat had to be bought in the smallest possible quantities. Ice cream, yoghurt and even frozen peas were a forgotten luxury, and the daily walk to the shops, carrying as much as possible on Robert’s sturdy pushchair, became another ritual.

  I have never been much of a walker and in my mind I marked off the route into quarters. I had a choice between taking a narrow footpath which led away from the bungalow to the right towards the village and ran b
ehind half a dozen houses on the main road, or walking to the left along a pathway which connected with another wider lane and then to the main road. I was resentful of any extra steps, so I initially took the route to the right, since the footpath took perhaps five minutes off the journey time. Thick holly bushes grew up high on either side of the pathway, giving it a mysterious atmosphere that was not pleasant. As summer wore on, I felt rather like the Sleeping Beauty’s prince fighting my way through the bushes. However, when they were trimmed, the sharp prickles covered the ground and made walking in open sandals almost an impossibility. I then took the alternative route, which eventually passed the houses whose gardens backed on to the footpath. I really preferred this route, as it meant that I occasionally saw human life and it was also easier for me to negotiate with the push-chair. The shortcut joined the other road at an old fashioned ‘kissing gate’, and the end of the first quarter of my journey was marked by a brick wall on the outside of which was a rambling rose and a border of salvias. I thought it was very kind of the person who lived there to attend to these plants, when he couldn’t see them himself from the inside of the wall.

  The second stretch was the most boring, having only fields to observe, and this ended at the junction with another main road. A few houses appeared at this point, the main attraction of these being masses of rhododendron bushes that filled their gardens. I used to feast my eyes on the rich colours—the reds and purples and pinks—and hope that one day I might be able to offer these sights to a person passing my home.

  Towards the end of the third leg of the journey was the petrol station, which seemed to me to mark the beginning of civilisation, and shortly after that came the whole range of shops, (all six of them) selling newspapers, groceries, hardware and meat, two public houses—and that was the beginning and end of the village.

  Before we moved in, we had occasionally taken a Sunday afternoon stroll to the village just to get the ‘feel’ of the place, and it always seemed entirely deserted.