The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [177]
29 August 1942. Don’t want to remember but, with the ache in my back, can’t help it.
When I woke at six, there was already a steamy feel to the day, though the bedroom window had been wide all night. I lay for a bit, trying to will myself out of bed, hearing morning sounds, milk cart, cat moaning on next door’s porch, my landlady moving about downstairs, her man scraping the razor over his chin in the bathroom. Usual thing was to eat breakfast with the pair of them, but this morning when the call came, I shouted back I wasn’t feeling so good.
At last the front door slammed as they left for the aircraft factory and the railway yards. I dragged my body out of bed. This morning it didn’t feel like it was mine. I’d been transplanted into someone else’s clumsy lump of flesh. There was a low, griping pain in the small of my back, as if I’d lain awkward in the night, and my feet were puffy again. I hobbled into the bathroom and tried to wake up.
Tiredness sandbagged me in the kitchen. The smell of singed toast hung in the air; I’d no appetite, but I was thirsty. There was lukewarm tea in the pot and I poured a cup and swallowed it, then had to make another dash for the loo. That was nothing new. Last week or so, it’d felt like tiny hands wringing my kidneys all the time. Near seven months, now, but still my belly hardly showed.
The oak-cased clock in the hall chimed: eight flat bongs. In response my belly vibrated eight times. Could it hear in there? Lie quiet, I told it. A shiver went through me. That was the first time I’d spoken aloud to it.
Had to get a wiggle on or I would be late for work. I hauled on a cardigan, then took it off again and tied it round my waist. My ankles were bulging over the tops of my white socks. Catching a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror, I looked a fright, hair sticking out at all angles because I’d forgotten to pincurl it last night. Too late to sort it, too tired to care. I opened the front door and stepped out into the sweltering heat.
The sky was blue, but yellowish white round the edges, like a sickly eyeball. Sullen clouds with dark bellies had puffed up on the southern horizon, loitering with intent on the edge of the Downs, but there was no wind to carry them closer. My legs were two heavy logs as I started the walk to work at the hospital. I was late. Drove Road was deserted, apart from two little girls playing hopscotch on the pavement. Where did they find the energy?
Today I’d look for Cabbage at the hospital. I’d ask him for the address of that place in Liverpool. Then I’d go to the almoner and tell her my dad was ill, and the cousins couldn’t cope, so I had to go north to nurse him. A lie, of course: he was settled comfortably with them now.
When the baby was born, I’d have it adopted. There, I said under my breath, that’s made you lie still, you little kicker. Maybe it was as exhausted as I felt. I pictured it rolling gently in the waves made by my walking, a sea creature on a stalk, opening and closing its tiny mouth in warm water. Were its eyes open in there? No. Tried to stop thinking about it as a live being. It was the devil’s tadpole.
The leaves hung limp on the pollarded trees that laced over the churchyard path where Mr Cromley had dragged me, near seven month ago. I counted back. Cabbage had worked out my due date for me, but I’d pushed it out of mind, hadn’t wanted to believe it would ever come. I’d no appetite since Mam died, but I kept growing fatter. How big was it? Did it have hair and toes and fingernails?
Overhead, the thunder of a plane shook the jelly air. I couldn’t help flinching, though the siren hadn’t sounded. A long way off, over the Downs, I thought I saw a trail of smoke, maybe a crippled night-fighter limping back to the nearest base. When I looked down again, I found my hands clasped protectively over my belly.
It grew hotter and stickier as the morning passed, the day tightening and whitening like the head of a boil. There seemed to be no end of forms to fill in. The typing