Page 29 of Little Wing
Oh please, George, I said and oh how tiny my voice was. Please stay.
But it’s ladies’ matters, you see, he muffled.
But George—
I’ll be home later – that I promise you. You’ll be OK,a leanabh, you’ll be OK.
I love it when George says things in Garlic – which is how he pronounces Gaelic – orGàidhligas it is spelt. I don’t know what they mean but his tone of voice is everything.
So my mother and Marjorie arrived while I loitered at the bottom of the stairs. Wendy, the darling, rushed up to our sister and said look! look! I’m engaged to Jimmy! She said, love is in the air! She said, it’s good news it’s great news it’s the best news ever! She said, it’s to be celebrated, isn’t it! She said, come on, Marjorie! let’s have tea! let’s sit down! let’s go for a walk! let me tell you all about everything.
Marjorie, though, barely looked at her. She glanced at me and then away. My mother still couldn’t look at me.
‘In,’ Marjorie said to me, motioning at the sitting room. She and my mother sat and for some reason I believed I should stand. Wendy was by the window, in a daydream. I don’t really know Jimmy that well but how I wished that he’d walk up the path right then. And I wished for George’s darts and dominoes to be cancelled.
‘Florence,’ Marjorie said and when Marjorie says anything, you are compelled to stand to attention. ‘Sit down, for God’s sake.’
She turned to my mother. ‘Options,’ she said.
I thought to myself if we had a blackboard, she’d write them up like one of her academic sequences.
And then I felt you flutter. And I wanted to laugh. I wanted to rejoice.
‘The Act came into effect last April,’ Marjorie was saying.
My mother and I looked at her not knowing what she was going on about.
‘The grounds will be wide. Mother’s health – physical and mental. To prevent grave injury. If the child is at risk of severe abnormalities. And so on. And so on.’
Now I knew.
My mother knew too.
My mother went white.
‘Twenty-eight weeks,’ Marjorie said. ‘Up to twenty-eight weeks, it will be permissible and legal. How far gone are you, Florence?’
And I couldn’t think and I couldn’t count and I couldn’t remember and I didn’t know – and when I said I don’t know, my mother and my eldest sister looked at me with such disgust I felt their eyes rip into the flesh of my belly.
‘There are, of course, alternatives,’ Marjorie told my mother, though her steady steel gaze did not leave me. ‘How would you like a crochet needle fishing around inside you, Florence? That’ll set you back ten pounds. But for fifty pounds they can puncture the fetal membranes and squirt bleach into you through a rubber tube – that should do it. At best you’ll get an infection, most likely permanent infertility – at worst, you’ll die.’
My mother cried out – stop it stop it stop it!
‘Or there’s off Harley Street,’ said Marjorie, ‘legal – if you have the money.’
My mother roared. My mother stood and charged into the centre of the room. ‘I will not go against the Word of the Lord!’
And I thought to myself, what’s the Word of my mother’s Lord got to do with my body and my baby? But my mother appeared to be against Marjorie so I decided it best to say nothing.
And then George suddenly appeared. Darling George had forsaken dominoes and darts and the pub and the blokes for this maelstrom of female bile and fury and he very calmly said, thank you very much, Marjorie, but Thou Shalt Not Kill.
He had his back to me. My mother and my sister had been glowering and glaring at me with disgust and revulsion. George, though, had his back to me as if he didn’t know I was even there. I couldn’t see my sister or my mother because he was blocking them out.
He spoke to my mother and my sister, he spoke softly, his accent having its familiar calming effect. ‘We can send Florence away. She can have the bairn in secrecy and peace – and then. Well. And then.’
And I realized then that George did know I was there. His back was a mighty wall of protection and trust. And I thought to myself my dad would have stood like this too.
I glanced over to Wendy. She was fiddling with her engagement ring and giving tiny bounces from foot to foot. She caught my eye and showed me her ring with a grin.
