The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [209]
“She weighed nineteen stone,” said Miles. “I know because Dr. Beamish mentioned it. He has strong professional objections to the Klugmann operation.”
“I’m going to see the Director of Medicine. There’s a new one now.”
When she returned from her appointment, Miles, still left idle by the strikers, was waiting for her among her pictures and china. She sat beside him on the bed.
“Let’s have a drink,” she said.
They had taken to drinking wine together, very rarely because of the expense. The State chose and named the vintage. This month the issue was “Progress Port.” Clara kept it in a crimson, white-cut, Bohemian flagon. The glasses were modern, unbreakable and unsightly.
“What did the doctor say?”
“He’s very sweet.”
“Well?”
“Much cleverer than the one before.”
“Did he say it was anything to do with your operation?”
“Oh, yes. Everything to do with it.”
“Can he put you right?”
“Yes, he thinks so.”
“Good.”
They drank their wine.
“That first doctor did make a mess of the operation, didn’t he?”
“Such a mess. The new doctor says I’m a unique case. You see, I’m pregnant.”
“Clara.”
“Yes, it is a surprise, isn’t it?”
“This needs thinking about,” said Miles.
He thought.
He refilled their glasses.
He said: “It’s hard luck on the poor little beast not being an Orphan. Not much opportunity for it. If he’s a boy we must try and get him registered as a worker. Of course it might be a girl. Then,” brightly, “we could make her a dancer.”
“Oh, don’t mention dancing,” cried Clara, and suddenly began weeping. “Don’t speak to me of dancing.”
Her tears fell fast. No tantrum this, but deep uncontrolled inconsolable sorrow.
And next day she disappeared.
IV
Santa-Claus-tide was near. Shops were full of shoddy little dolls. Children in the schools sang old ditties about peace and goodwill. Strikers went back to work in order to qualify for their seasonal bonus. Electric bulbs were hung in the conifers and the furnaces in the Dome of Security roared again. Miles had been promoted. He now sat beside the assistant registrar and helped stamp and file the documents of the dead. It was harder work than he was used to and Miles was hungry for Clara’s company. The lights were going out in the Dome and on the Goodwill Tree in the car park. He walked the half-mile of hutments to Clara’s quarters. Other girls were waiting for their consorts or setting out to find them in the Recreatorium, but Clara’s door was locked. A note, pinned to it, read: Miles, Going away for a bit. C. Angry and puzzled he returned to his hostel.
Clara, unlike himself, had uncles and cousins scattered about the country. Since her operation she had been shy of visiting them. Now, Miles supposed, she was taking cover among them. It was the manner of her flight, so unlike her gentle ways, that tortured him. For a busy week he thought of nothing else. His reproaches sang in his head as the undertone to all the activities of the day and at night he lay sleepless, repeating in his mind every word spoken between them and every act of intimacy.
After a week the thought of her became spasmodic and regular. The subject bored him unendurably. He strove to keep it out of his mind as a man might strive to control an attack of hiccups, and as impotently. Spasmodically, mechanically, the thought of Clara returned. He timed it and found that it came every seven and one-half minutes. He went to sleep thinking of her, he woke up thinking of her. But between times he slept. He consulted the departmental psychiatrist who told him that he was burdened by the responsibility of parentage. But it was not Clara the mother who haunted him, but Clara the betrayer.
Next week he thought of her every twenty minutes. The week after that he thought of her irregularly, though often; only when something outside himself reminded him of her. He began to look at other girls and considered himself