Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [122]
‘There’s plenty of men that are asking their girls to do it, scaring them half to death by saying that they might not come back, and there’s plenty of girls too that wish they hadn’t let them,’ Hannah told her warningly.
‘Yes I know.’
‘Are you in love with him after all, then?’ Hannah asked.
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s not like that. It’s just that I keep thinking that if I don’t then he’ll never know what it feels like, will he? And that makes me feel guilty.’
‘How do you know that he hasn’t already with someone else?’ asked Hannah practically.
She didn’t, of course, Grace admitted.
‘And what would happen if you were to get caught and fall for a baby?’ Hannah pressed on ruthlessly. ‘That would be a fine thing, wouldn’t, it? Him dead; you carrying and not wed.’
Grace felt sick at the thought of the shame of such a situation.
‘And then even if you weren’t, what would happen if you were to meet someone else who you did fall in love with? What would you tell him? There’s not many chaps who’d take kindly to their girl saying that she’d done it with someone else.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed, ‘but I just can’t help thinking—’
‘Well, don’t go thinking, and yes, I am right. If you want to know what’s really what, then you should go down to the women’s ward where they have the woman that have been brought in because they’ve tried to get rid of a baby they don’t want. We had one in theatre last week. Mr Anslow did his best to save her but she was in that much of a mess inside with septicaemia from what she’d had done that he couldn’t. Nurse Perry that’s a full year ahead of me went in to a dead faint just with the stink from her.’
Grace’s own stomach heaved, not so much with sickness as fear and horror. Everyone had heard the stories of the horrible deaths suffered by those women who had broken the law and gone to a backstreet abortionist in a desperate attempt to avoid having an unwanted child.
‘Mind you, if she’d survived she’d have ended up in prison,’ said Hannah matter-of-factly. ‘Not that there aren’t those with the money and the connections who can get themselves sorted out properly with no questions asked, of course, but it’s different for the likes of us.’
‘I thought it was supposed to be all right if a man used … something,’ said Grace selfconsciously.
‘Aye, supposed to be,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but there’s many a couple thought themselves safe and then found out that they were no such thing. If you want my advice, Grace, you’ll leave things as they are. And if Teddy does start hinting about you doing it with him, then make sure you say no.’ Her expression softened slightly and she reached out and touched Grace’s arm. ‘Look, I’m not saying that I don’t understand. I dare say I’d feel just the same meself in your shoes.’
‘I just keep thinking how I’d feel if I was Teddy and I knew I was going to die without ever having known what it’s like. I know we’re supposed to wait until we fall in love and get married, but what if you don’t have time for that? What if all the time you’ve got is now, Hannah? What would we do then?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah admitted quietly.
* * *
It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. After all she’d done, putting up with Alan and ‘it’, there wasn’t going to be a baby after all. Her monthlies had started two days ago and even though they’d been mercifully short-lived this time, they’d been really bad and had left her feeling pulled down and tired. So tired, in fact, that her mother had insisted that she ought to see the doctor, and had