“She’s a wonder. Is there anything she hasn’t thought of?”
His laughter was spontaneous. “Not a thing! She even says we ought to have a baby on the way to vindicate our years of pain and struggle.”
Millie’s eyes glazed, as if the brain behind was so swamped with new ideas that it couldn’t cope with more shocks. When Jim mentioned the baby her lashes fluttered, moisture dewed them, and she swallowed convulsively. “A baby?” she asked.
“Yes. Is a baby okay with you?”
The dew became rain; Millie wept soundlessly, tears pouring down her face. “A baby is the only answer,” she said clearly.
He leaned back to stare at her, brow furrowed. “I never realized …” he said, trailing off.
“Why would you until an outsider pointed the way?” She got up and began to clear the table. “You don’t see beyond your work, I’ve always known that. I guess even Davina noticed.”
“Where do you think we ought to live?” he asked as he took down his coat, squeezed his huge feet into rope-soled boots.
“East Holloman, near my parents.”
“Can I leave it to you to look?”
“How much rent can we afford?”
“Whatever the market says, sweetheart. Davina says we’ll get whatever we need from C.U.P. For clothes and things too.”
And he was out the door, leaving a dazed Millie to shower, put on some clothes, and head for the bus stop. Oh, typical Jim! Things sorted out to his satisfaction, he hadn’t paused to wonder if she was going to the Burke Biology Tower too. A ten-minute wait, and he could have driven her. As it was, the bus. He didn’t mean it, and under normal circumstances she would have hung onto his jacket and told him to wait for her. Today had been such a huge shock, she was completely off-balance.
Her growing anger roared to the surface as she was trudging to the bus stop and stopped her in her tracks. The next moment she had turned on her heel and walked in the direction of the tired little park the city had put adjacent to Caterby Street. Shaking with rage, more tears pouring down her face. Not that there was anyone to see. At eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, the district was still recovering from the night before.
She found a bench and her handkerchief — they couldn’t afford tissues, so she still washed handkerchiefs — had her cry, then mopped up.
It was, she thought, exactly like awakening from a very long and not unpleasant dream. Before this morning, she was Millie Hunter, adoring companion and wife of eighteen years; now she was Millie Nobody, citizen of a world she didn’t know, could not yet begin to assess.
A glamorous, selfish, sophisticated old acquaintance of Jim’s had sat him down and told him what was wrong with the life he was living, then given him explicit instructions how to fix it — before April second, if you please! A really nice apartment or house, nice things in it, nice food on the table, and a baby on the way. If they were presented with that background, the media sharks would glide off to other feeding grounds.
And Jim had listened. Listened with respect and obedience. Just who was Davina Tunbull? What slot did she fill in Jim’s frantically busy life? Was she just a professional acquaintance, or was she something more? Wonderful Jim, for whom Millie would have died, whose integrity was infinitely above all other men’s, had listened, seen the logic, decided to obey. The big question was, if it had been she, Millie, to issue these ultimatums, would Jim have listened, understood, obeyed? In the aftermath of this morning, Millie had to ask herself why she hadn’t got in first.
The next spasm of rage was directed at herself, at all those lost chances. This time she didn’t cry, she simply endured it, felt it burn out, sat empty, hollow, vacant. The baby she had been planning for the moment prosperity arrived was now implanted in Jim’s mind as the concept of Davina Tunbull. Whenever Jim looked at their first-born child, he would thank Davina for its existence. Millie’s moment had gone, snatched from her grasp, and she could never get it back. When Jim thought of Millie and motherhood, he would first have to think of all those childless years together, and how she had agreed they couldn’t possibly have children. No matter that it would be Millie carried the baby; it was Davina’s idea.
She knew too that she wasn’t being reasonable, that what really lay at the base of her anger was the intrusion of another — and particularly offensive — woman into matters that were no one’s business save hers and Jim’s. But how dared Davina? How dared she! Just when I’d taken myself off the Pill and was dreaming of telling Jim that there would be a baby at last, Davina — how did he put it?— sticks her oar in. He can’t have liked her interference, despite which, he took her advice. Oh, it wasn’t fair! While she, Millie, waited for the perfect moment to speak, Davina Tunbull, having no perfect moment, spoke anyway. Not fair, not fair!