Ken Follett - Fall of Giants

“Oh, God forgive me,” she said aloud.

Her friend Dilys Pugh had fallen for a baby. Dilys was the same age as Ethel. She had been working as a housemaid for Perceval Jones’s wife and walking out with Johnny Bevan. Ethel recalled how Dilys’s breasts had got larger around the time she realized that you could, in fact, get pregnant from doing it standing up. They were married now.

What was going to happen to Ethel? She could not marry the father of her child. Apart from anything else, he was already married.

It was time to go and meet him. There would be no rolling on the bed today. They would have to talk about the future. She put on her housekeeper’s black silk dress.

What would he say? He had no children: would he be pleased, or horrified? Would he cherish his love child, or be embarrassed by it? Would he love Ethel more for conceiving, or would he hate her?

She left her attic room and went along the narrow corridor and down the back stairs to the west wing. The familiar wallpaper with its pattern of gardenias quickened her desire, in the same way that the sight of her knickers aroused Fitz.

He was already there, standing by the window, looking over the sunlit garden, smoking a cigar; and when she saw him she was struck again by how beautiful he was. She threw her arms around his neck. His brown tweed suit was soft to the touch because, she had discovered, it was made of cashmere. “Oh, Teddy, my lovely, I’m so happy to see you,” she said. She liked being the only person who called him Teddy.

“And I to see you,” he said, but he did not immediately stroke her breasts.

She kissed his ear. “I got something to say to you,” she said solemnly.

“And I have something to tell you! May I go first?”

She was about to say no, but he detached himself from her embrace and took a step back, and suddenly her heart filled with foreboding. “What?” she said. “What is it?”

“Bea is expecting a baby.” He drew on his cigar and blew out smoke like a sigh.

At first she could make no sense of his words. “What?” she said in a bewildered tone.

“The princess Bea, my wife, is pregnant. She is going to have a baby.”

“You mean you’ve been at it with her at the same time as with me?” Ethel said angrily.

He looked startled. It seemed he had not expected her to resent that. “I must!” he protested. “I need an heir.”

“But you said you loved me!”

“I do, and in a way I always will.”

“No, Teddy!” she cried. “Don’t say it like that-please don’t!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“Keep my voice down? You’re throwing me over! What is it to me now if people know?”

“It’s everything to me.”

Ethel was distraught. “Teddy, please, I love you.”

“But it’s over now. I have to be a good husband and a father to my child. You must understand.”

“Understand, hell!” she raged. “How can you say it so easily? I’ve seen you show more emotion over a dog that had to be shot!”

“It’s not true,” he said, and there was a catch in his voice.

“I gave myself to you, in this room, on that bed by there.”

“And I shan’t-” He stopped. His face, frozen until now in an expression of rigid self-control, suddenly showed anguish. He turned away, hiding from her gaze. “I shan’t ever forget that,” he whispered.

She moved closer to him, and saw tears on his cheeks, and her anger evaporated. “Oh, Teddy, I’m so sorry,” she said.

He tried to pull himself together. “I care for you very much, but I must do my duty,” he said. The words were cold, but his voice was tormented.

“Oh, God.” She tried to stop crying. She had not told him her news yet. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, sniffed, and swallowed. “Duty?” she said. “You don’t know the half.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m pregnant, too.”

“Oh, my good God.” He put his cigar to his lips, mechanically, then lowered it again without puffing on it. “But I always withdrew!”

“Not soon enough, then.”

“How long have you known?”

“I just realized. I looked in my drawer and saw my clean rags.” He winced. Evidently he did not like talk of menstruation. Well, he would have to put up with it. “I worked out that I haven’t had the curse since I moved into Mrs. Jevons’s old room, and that’s ten weeks ago.”

“Two cycles. That makes it definite. That’s what Bea said. Oh, hell.” He touched the cigar to his lips, found that it had gone out, and dropped it on the floor with a grunt of irritation.

A wry thought occurred to her. “You might have two heirs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said sharply. “A bastard doesn’t inherit.”

“Oh,” she said. She had not seriously intended to make a claim for her child. On the other hand, she had not until now thought of it as a bastard. “Poor little thing,” she said. “My baby, the bastard.”

He looked guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. Forgive me.”

She could see that his better nature was at war with his selfish instincts. She touched his arm. “Poor Fitz.”

“God forbid that Bea should find out about this,” he said.

She felt mortally wounded. Why should his main concern be the other woman? Bea would be all right: she was rich and married, and carrying the loved and honored child of the Fitzherbert clan.

Fitz went on: “The shock might be too much for her.”

Ethel recalled a rumor that Bea had suffered a miscarriage last year. All the female servants had discussed it. According to Nina, the Russian maid, the princess blamed the miscarriage on Fitz, who had upset her by canceling a planned trip to Russia.

Ethel felt terribly rejected. “So your main concern is that the news of our baby might upset your wife.”

He stared at her. “I don’t want her to miscarry-it’s important!”

He had no idea how callous he was being. “Damn you,” Ethel said.

“What do you expect? The child Bea is carrying is one I have been hoping and praying for. Yours is not wanted by you, me, or anyone else.”

“That’s not how I see it,” she said in a small voice, and she began to cry again.

“I’ve got to think about this,” he said. “I need to be alone.” He took her by the shoulders. “We’ll talk again tomorrow. In the meantime, tell no one. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good girl,” he said, and he left the room.

Ethel bent down and picked up the dead cigar.

She told no one, but she was unable to pretend that everything was all right, so she feigned illness and went to bed. As she lay alone, hour after hour, grief slowly gave way to anxiety. How would she and her baby live?

She would lose her job here at Tŷ Gwyn-that was automatic, even if her baby had not been the earl’s. That alone hurt. She had been so proud of herself when she was made housekeeper. Gramper was fond of saying that pride comes before a fall. He was right in this case.

She was not sure she could return to her parents’ house: the disgrace would kill her father. She was almost as upset about that as she was about her own shame. It would wound him more than her, in a way; he was so rigid about this sort of thing.

Anyway, she did not want to live as an unmarried mother in Aberowen. There were two already: Maisie Owen and Gladys Pritchard. They were sad figures with no proper place in the town’s social order. They were single, but no man was interested in them; they were mothers, but they lived with their parents as if they were still children; they were not welcome in any church, pub, shop, or club. How could she, Ethel Williams, who had always considered herself a cut above the rest, sink to the lowest level of all?