Justice Is a Woman (8 page)

and assaults too. I’ve told you about the ugly scenes in the town, all because they didn’t come out in

sympathy in the beginning. They’ve forgotten that some of the men gave up a day’s pay to them for

weeks.”

“But you’ve got a manager and staff to see to things.”

“Yes, they’re all very well in their place, but it’s my responsibility, and I must be here.”

“And I must be here too?” Now she was sitting bolt upright in the bed, and she tossed her head so

sharply that her cap of short, shining hair seemed to spring away from her scalp for a moment.

“I’m fed up,” she said.

“Do you hear me? I’m fed up! I haven’t a soul to talk to.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Don’t tell me I’m silly. You tell me one intelligent person with whom I can converse.”

He stopped by the dressing-table and, bending down, picked up a comb and ran it through his hair, and

he looked at her reflection in the mirror as he said, “My father mightn’t have the kind of accent you’re

used to, but you’ll go a long way before you’ll find a more intelligent man. What you don’t seem to have

discovered is that he’s widely read.”

“All right! All right! All right! But you are missing the point. Your father is an old man, I want someone

of my own age and class. ...” He straightened himself up, turned slowly and looked at her; then, as

slowly, he walked towards the bed and gazed down on her bent head.

She was apparently examining her painted nails and she was no doubt expecting him to

come back with

a tirade on class, but he brought her head upwards and her eyes wide as he said, “Then why don’t you

invite one of your friends to stay with you for a time?”

“You mean that?”

Her face was moving into a slow smile.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”

“But... but your father, wouldn’t he mind?”

“Not in the least; he’d enjoy seeing a new face. What about your uncle?”

“Oh, Uncle Turnbull.” She shook her head, then laughed as she added, “Don’t forget it’s someone I

want for company;

Uncle can be a bore. “

“What about Lady Kathryn?”

“Oh, I don’t know. She’s good company when you can keep her in one place, but if I

know Kathryn

she’d want to spend all her time in the garden.”

“Your school friends?”

“Oh’ she shrugged now ‘most of them are married. My best friend Anna got herself

married to an

American rancher last year and she’s only written once and that seemed to be from the back of a

horse.” He began to laugh and she laughed with him, then said, “Of course, there’s

Betty.”

“Oh yes, Betty. I forgot about Betty. But she’s working somewhere, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but she would come if she thought I needed her. Betty is the type of person who loves to be

needed. I told her once she was born to be an old lady’s companion, cheerful, willing and wanted. She

used to make me feel frightfully inferior at one time, until I recognised that all her good points had been

given her in compensation for her face.”

“That’s cruel. I think she has a nice face. She seemed to be a nice person altogether.”

“She is, she is, but you can’t get over the fact that she’s a great lumbering lump of a woman.”

“Compared with you she may be, but she didn’t seem extraordinarily large to me.”

“Oh, it isn’t her build. Anyway, Joe, you haven’t lived with her, you don’t know: she’s clumsy, she has

a habit of breaking things.” 74 “Oh, well, if that’s her only drawback she won’t do much damage here:

we’ve only got two valuable pieces of porcelain in the house, and the Sunderland glass we can put in the

cabinet, and then give her her head. “

They were laughing again and he said, “Go on, why don’t you write to her?”

She sank back now into her pillows and looked up at him as she said, “Oh, I don’t know.

She can be

heavy going. I’ll wait; I’ll put up with you for a while longer. But I’m going to tell you something.”

She grabbed again at his hand.

“If you don’t take a break in the autumn I’ll go up to London on my own, because I just couldn’t stand

the sameness of a whole winter here. I’m telling you.”

“All right, all right.” He nodded at her.

“Do that; go up and enjoy yourself.”

She dropped his hand and gazed at him; then she watched him grin at her before turning away and

leaving the room. She lay back in her pillows, and immediately stretched her eyes wide, pursed her lips,

turned her head first to the right and then to the left and exclaimed aloud, “Well! Well!”

When the nausea occurred again on the Monday morning, Elaine groaned, “No, no; it

can’t be. It can’t

be. Impossible. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.”

But after an early visit to the bathroom on the Tuesday morning as well, she returned to the bedroom

and stood by the bed and waited for Joe to come from the small dressing-room that

adjoined the

bedroom, and when he did, such was the expression on her face that he stopped in the act of buttoning

his waistcoat and asked quietly, “What’s the matter?”

“You’re a swine.” The words were low, scarcely audible.

“What did you say?” He was approaching her slowly now.

“You heard what I said. You know what you’ve done, you do. You do. And you

promised.” The

effort to speak was so great that her chin came forward on to her bare chest and she

gulped twice before

bringing her head up again and accusing him, but still softly, “You did it on purpose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, you know very well what I’m talking about. You have made me pregnant.”

She watched his face crinkle into a smile as he whispered, “Pregnant?” Then his whole expression

changing, he waved his hand in front of his face as if brushing off a fly, and said, “Don’t be silly.”

“I hope I am being silly, but I know I’m not. I wouldn’t mind so much, but you promised on your oath

you ...”

“And I kept my promise; you know I did.” He turned from her now and walked across the room.

“I... I don’t know when it could have happened, unless it was that night we came back from the Leveys;

we’d both had more than enough that night ...”

“Yes, yes, I remember; we both had more than enough’ she was hissing at his back now

‘but I wasn’t

so tight that I don’t remember you going into the bathroom. You! you’ve tricked me, and I hate you.

Do you hear? I hate you. And what’s more, I won’t have it; I’ll have it taken away.”

“You’ll what?” He had swung round and moved towards her so quickly that she flopped

back on the

bed in not a little fear at the sight he presented, for his lower jaw was thrust out and his whole attitude

overall was aggressive.

“Don’t you ever say that again!” She hitched herself along the bed away from him, and now her chin

went up as she said, “I will say it, and I mean it; I’m not going to be tied down at this stage. I ... I told

you before we were married, we talked it all out, and what did you say? All you wanted was me.”

“I know what I said, but this has happened and now it stays. The child will be part of you.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Listen.” He was bending over her now, where she lay half on the bed, her feet still on the floor, and as

if the words pained him, he said, “I don’t want to lose my temper with you, not at this moment when we

should be all in all to each other, but if you attempt to carry out your threat you’ll never get back into this

house again. And I mean that. I’ll throw you off even if I have to take you to court.

You’ll have the

child. Whether you like it or not, you’ll have it. My God!”

He pulled himself up straight and, gazing down at her, he shook his head slowly as he added, “I wouldn’t

have believed it. Now, since I know how you feel, I’ll tell you how I feel. Yes, I tricked you; I wanted a

child so badly I tricked you. But I wasn’t thinking only of myself when I did it, I was thinking of you,

hoping it might make a woman of you, alter your outlook, your silly, selfish, middle-class outlook. I

thought, in my ignorance, that after a small protest you would throw your arms about me and say, “ Isn’t

it wonderful! “ But not you. Well, we both know where we stand: you said you hated me; well, at this

moment I can return the compliment, and I only hope for your sake it’s a passing phase.”

He now turned away from her and his step, as he walked towards the dressing-room

again, was slow

and heavy. It had lost its spring; he walked like a man well on in years and heavily

burdened.

Beatrice Hughes-Burton joined the Remington household at the beginning of November.

Elaine was

now four months pregnant and apparently had accepted her condition, if not joyfully,

then at least without

any outward show of hostility.

From that particular Tuesday morning when Joe had frightened her and she had admitted to herself that

she had been frightened, not so much by what he might do to her person, but by his threat that he would

throw her off; she knew him well enough by now to realise that he had an aggressive side to him and

against all his personal feelings he would have carried out his threat if she’d had an abortion from that

morning she had done a lot of thinking, and all centring around herself and her needs. She knew the one

thing she couldn’t face was life without certain of its comforts, and the thought of being on the open

market again, with the stigma of separation attached to her this time, was not to be borne; that particular

market was flooded with a great many women of her class, young widows and

disappointed brides, the

residue of dead young officers. Those men who had escaped had nothing to offer in

marriage except

love, and as she had witnessed, that love brought little comfort in a third-floor flat in Bloomsbury. So she

had allowed Joe to bring her round to accepting the disaster that had befallen her.

And she also deemed it expedient to change her tactics insofar as expressing her opinion of the people in

whose midst she had found herself, for she was being forced to recognise that her

husband was the son

of his father and that they both stemmed from the working class; in fact, they had never left—it, and in a

way this was a matter of pride with them both. Even Joe’s education, she was finding, was but a thin

veneer, and there were times when he took no pains to hide it, when he seemed to take pride in stripping

it off by resorting to the idiom of the area. What it all amounted to, in his case, she had concluded, was a

deep feeling of inferiority; you had to be born of the middle class, or the upper class, you couldn’t be

born into it. Even though his mother had been a lady, so she had been given to

understand, he himself in

no way showed evidence of it; on the contrary, he seemed to take a delight in hobnobbing with menials.

That objectionable being who lived in The Cottage, for instance. Oh, how she disliked that man; it put

her teeth on edge every time she saw him with Joe. If the man had been white, Joe’s

attitude towards

him would still not have been natural, ordinary, for he seemed to go out of his way to placate the fellow.

It wasn’t as if he was afraid of him, no, not that, but as if he held him in high esteem, as one would a very

close and well loved friend.

And then there was the man’s wife. That creature, Egan’s daughter.

She was much too familiar with Joe, and Joe with her. Yesterday she had seen him put a hand on her

shoulder.

She had walked down the drive to meet the car. She was finding she had to do such

ordinary mundane

things to fill in her time and stem the feeling of utter boredom. She had just turned the bend in the drive

when she saw the car inside the gate, and there was Joe going into the cottage with the girl, and they

were laughing together, quite loudly. The girl was in her outdoor clothes and it was

apparent that she had

ridden with Joe in the car.

She had turned on her heel and marched back to the house, determined she would have

something to

say to him when he came in. Yet before reaching the front door she had asked herself

what she would

say, and how she would say it; after all, he had probably merely given the girl a lift back from the town.

Yes, but why had he to escort her into the cottage? Well, his answer could be: “Why not?

I couldn’t

leave her to find her way in alone, could I?” Such a flippant attitude on his part had shown itself of late; it

was his idea of humour.

Before she heard him come whistling into the house she had decided to adopt the adage regarding

discretion being the better part of valour .

But today she gave no thought to the girl or her coloured husband.

Today she was feeling happy, even excited, for today Betty would be here; and oh, how she longed to

see her and to have someone of her own class to talk to.

It was strange, but until now she had never really thought of her sister as being of her own class, nor

even of her generation; there was six years between them, and Betty’s war service had seemed to

coarsen her and make her more voluble. Nevertheless, she was her sister and her

volubility was spoken

with a recognisable accent; and they both knew the same kind of people. Moreover, Betty was

wonderful at nursing and so sympathetic. Oh, she was glad she was coming.

Suddenly she put her hands on the dressing-table, bowed her head and laughed softly to herself as she