The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [297]
She was tight-lipped and worked hard. She told Griselda, expressionless, about Imogen’s expectations, and Griselda said, enthusiastically, “Wonderful,” and reddened in the heavy silence that ensued. Florence felt sick, all the time. She worked through waves of nausea, which she accepted as a punishment for what she thought of as “that mess.” She read about battles and diplomacy, and her stomach lumped and lurched. One day, Griselda came into her room and found her vomiting into the wash basin.
“Florence,” she said, “tell me what’s wrong. I think you should see a doctor.”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve been like this for some time, now.”
Florence sat down on the bed, retching a little. Her handsome face was white and silvered with sweat.
“I think I may be—I may be—”
Griselda’s imagination supplied the word. She said
“We should write to Geraint. He ought to know. He could arrange things …”
“It wasn’t Geraint. It was once only, and it was dreadful. It made me long for a quiet monkish life in this place, talking to books. Instead of which, if we are right, I shall be turned out of here, out of Cambridge …”
“You should be looked at. You should see a doctor.”
“Who? Not the College doctor. Not my father’s regimental doctor. I wish I was dead.”
“Dorothy,” said Griselda. “She’s done all her midwifery and obstetrics, I know. She would look at you. She might know how to stop you being so sick. She might know—”
She might know how to stop the pregnancy, they both thought, and didn’t say. How to get rid of it. They wrote a letter to Dorothy saying they urgently needed her advice, and went down to dinner, their hair smoothly knotted and shining behind their heads, one dark, one glistening gold and silver. They joined a spirited discussion of employment for women, of what work, if any, they should be excluded from.
Dorothy came to visit. During the days the letter took to reach her, and her answer took to reach them, whatever was inside Florence went on growing, cell by dividing cell, on a string, in the dark.
Dorothy came, and was given a guest room. Late at night, when even the most determined cocoa-drinker had turned in to sleep, the three young women gathered in Florence’s pretty room, with its “Lily and Pomegranate” curtains and bedspread. The light of the fire and the lamps flickered on the Venetian glass Florence collected, advised by her father. They had enjoyed shopping together, comparing vases and dishes, testing their eyes. Florence sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in her lap. She was mute. Dorothy turned to Griselda, who said, hesitantly, “Florence thinks she is pregnant. We wanted you to—to tell her—if she’s right.”
Dorothy had done her midwifery. She had probed other women with diagnostic fingers. She had seen a dead child finally ejected from an exhausted body. She had held a howling newborn in her two hands and looked—the first thing he saw—into his opening eyes. She was socially embarrassed by the idea of poking into the elegant Florence Cain.
“You do know how to tell, Dorothy?” said Griselda.
“Yes, I know. I’m a little embarrassed.”
“We all are,” said Florence. “But since the situation is worse than embarrassment I think we should forget that bit of it. There’s only you I can trust to help me.”
Dorothy took a deep breath.
“Right. Questions first. And can Griselda get some boiled water, and if you have antiseptic to sterilise my hands …
“How long, Florence, since you last had the Curse.”
“Just after Easter… I don’t recall exactly. Well before …”
“Yes.” She asked about the nausea. She asked about sleep. And weight. She asked Florence to lie back, with a towel under her, on the pretty bedspread, and she felt her belly, with confident, firm, gentle fingertips, inside and out. Florence shivered. She said
“It bleeds. But it is only the—the periphery, so to speak.”
“You got torn,” said Dorothy, whose experience did