Mortimer Penelope - The Pumpkin Eater

I still say nothing. He is right. I believe him. But I can’t say so. I feel myself like a torrent being dammed, being forced back, turned into new channels. I am a dead weight, like water.

He asks me if I love him. I nod, stupidly, a mute. He waits, stroking my hair again. In a little while I shall tell him that I shall do what he wants, that is more important to me than the child. But not yet. For a few minutes we will sit here, wondering.

This morning I got a letter. It was forwarded from a magazine that printed a picture of us last month, and a story about Jake taking up script-writing to keep the wolf from the door. It is written on blue paper and came in what I think they call a Manila envelope, such as they use for bills.

Dear Madam , it says,

I saw your picture in a book at the drs with all your wonderful children and read about your good luck in life. That is when I thought of writing in case you have something you can say to help me as I need some help badly and your face looks kind, I hope you do not mind this. I feel so terribly alone and so wrongly full of self pity that I had to write to you if only to get things off my chest, perhaps my letter will not reach you, I may not post it, but my life is so hard to live and such an empty place I feel I’d like to end it now. I am married with three children, all wonderful babies who I love dearly. Four months ago I had an Hysterectomy operation, I get up at 6 a.m. and go to bed about 9. My weekly wash for us all including a young boy who lives in I do in a copper boiler, the sort with fire beneath. I clean ten rooms a week, two toilets, cook dinner every day for the six of us as well as keeping my little ones happy, so I never get out for a night or get holidays. I’m behind in HP payments and get paid Saturday morning, broke Saturday night. Perhaps I’m lucky compared to some but I feel so unhappy, tears fall so easy. My husband doesn’t make love to me any more to make it seem worth while. Please write to me before I do something I’ll regret because my love for the babies won’t hold me here if things don’t change.

Yours faithfully ,

Meg Evans ( Mrs. )

P.S. I am sorry for the trouble but you didn’t always have things easy so I was hoping you might know.

What should I say to Mrs. Evans?

“Dear Mrs. Evans, I enclose a cheque for £10. This, of course, is tax free and therefore worth double …” “Dear Mrs. Evans, I am about to have an abortion and wonder if you could give me some advice …” “Dear Mrs. Evans, We have a fine tower in the country, bring all the children and live in it …” “Dear Mrs. Evans, We all get what we deserve. I myself am not going to have another baby. Why not learn Italian or take up some useful…”

Dear Mrs. Evans, my friend. Dear Mrs. Evans, for God’s sake come and teach me how to live. It’s not that I’ve forgotten. It’s that I never knew. A womb isn’t all that important. It’s only the seat of life, something that drags the moon down from the sky like a kite and draws the sea in and out, in and out, the world’s breathing. At school the word “womb” used to make them snigger. Women aren’t important.

You have a vote, Mrs. Evans. Now why don’t you take advantage of it? I have a vote. Really, anyone would think that the emancipation of women had never happened. Dear Mrs. Evans, let us march together to our local headquarters and protest in no uncertain terms. Let us put forward our proposals, compile our facts, present our case, demand our rights. The men — they are logical, brave, humanitarian, creative, heroic — the men are sneering at us. How the insults fly. You hear what they are saying, as we run the gauntlet between womb and tomb? “Stop trying to be a man! Stop being such a bloody woman! You’re too strong! You’re too weak! Get out! Come back! …” When we were young, we said the hell with it and used our breasts as shields. But the tears fall so easy when they take away love. Be a man, Mrs. Evans. It’s all that’s left for you.

“What’s this?” Jake said. He glanced at the letter, taking it from me. “Oh, one of those.” It drifted into the wastepaper basket. He put his arm round me. “Not crying again?”

“No.”

“I saw the doctor. He thinks you’re perfectly right.”

“Oh. Good.”

“He says there’s no need for you to go and see him unless you want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“He’ll write to this … gynaecologist. I’ve made an appointment for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re so brave. So splendid. It’ll soon be over.”

“I don’t mind.” I held him tightly. “So long as you’re happy.”

“I’m very happy.”

While he held me, rather formally, in his arms I kept my eye on the wastepaper basket; it contained the only evidence I had in the world that I was not alone.

They not only terminated, as they called it, my pregnancy. They sterilized me, so that I should never again have to worry about having children. I consented to everything. Not only did I believe in Jake; I began, very tentatively, to believe in myself. It was as though I were feeling my own face with my fingertips in the dark.

At first I lay for hours staring at the murky oblong of window to the left of my bed. I imagined all the other patients in the nursing home lying in the same attitude, their windows magnets for eyes set in barely moving heads. The wound didn’t hurt, but for the first time in my life I could not move my body freely. To be cut open and sewn up makes one realize how much is contained inside skin and muscle: we’re only stuffed with life, and can easily burst open. Jake was careful not to touch me, or to enquire too much. He came every evening on his way back from the studio, and stayed until they brought my hot milk and pills. He usually ate my dinner, since he was missing his own, and I wasn’t hungry. He held my hand and we talked rather desultorily about his work, the tower, the children. We didn’t talk about the future. He seemed to have exhausted himself. I was rather shy with him, as you are with someone with whom you have made love once, for a single time.

After a few days the nurses said I was more lively. Every morning Jake’s florist sent flowers. The room was crowded with flowers. There was a pale pink azalea from the Conways — with love from Bob and Beth — and a Japanese garden from John Hurst, complete with bridges. Flowers were cabled from Hollywood, New York and Rome: they all said with love, with fondest love, with much love, even those from people I had never met. I had the impression that Jake’s world was wide open, longing to take me in, while mine was already disposed of, burnt up along with the garbage.

Every morning Jake’s secretary came with magazines, books, letters. I was allowed to send her out shopping, if I needed anything. I had never really known her before, but now I began to realize that she, too, lived with Jake. “Oh, Mr. Armitage would snap my head off if I did that! … Oh, Mr. Armitage — you can never tell what he’s going to do next … Well, Mr. Armitage doesn’t know what it’s like getting up from Croydon every morning …” She was a pale, anaemic girl with a great beehive of yellow hair and a boy friend in Insurance. Her mother suffered from dizzy spells, she never knew when they were coming on, sometimes she had to go racing back to Croydon in the lunch hour just to cope with one of her mother’s dizzy spells. “There’s no one else to look after her, you see. It’s the worry of thinking she can’t get hold of me, that’s the real thing. She may be ringing the office now, or she may be ringing your home, or Elstree. One of these days I think I may get back and find her dead. You’d understand, of course, but don’t tell Mr. Armitage. I’ve got to hold my job down, but I never know from one day to the next whether she’ll ring and ask me to come back, or whether she won’t be able to get me and I’ll go home and find her dead.”