The Lives of Women (30 page)

My name is Elaine Nichols and I am sixteen years old. My friend is a year older. My friend is pregnant. My friend is pregnant and blind and asks for help. My friend says: ‘I don't want to end up like June Caudwell, left in the hands of angry nuns, not even able to see the child when they pull it out of my arms.'

My friend is afraid. She begs for help. She sobs.

 

A plan is made. A stupid, adolescent plan that seems completely feasible so long as everyone sticks to it and nobody blabs to anyone outside the circle. Everyone is in this circle. Except Jonathan.

I am never quite sure why Jonathan is left out; at first I think it's because he is an outsider, but then Patty is an outsider too, and
she practically runs the whole show until she suddenly decides to back out of it.

Paul makes the decision to leave Jonathan out. After Patty, Paul is the one in charge; without his help there would be no plan. He says Jonathan is a stoner now and going away soon anyhow; away to Germany and France and Holland. Jonathan is not to be trusted to take the secret away with him and hitchhike it all over Europe.

In the years to come, I will sometimes wonder how Jonathan felt when he discovered all that had happened – relieved, of course, to be free from blame, but maybe hurt too, not to have been trusted. Because that had been such a big part of it: trusting each other, while Agatha in turn trusted us.

There are meetings. The meetings are held in different places: in Serena's kitchen when she is out. A few times, in Agatha's glass room when the Hanleys are out. Once Agatha suggests it might be more comfortable to meet in the shed in the Hanleys' back garden and I hear myself shout, ‘No!'

I don't want to go back to that place and remember all that I saw there: his trousers, his keys, his underpants. And Agatha's naked body, her blank eyes not able to see the ugly, twisted face he was making while he pushed himself up and into her.

The later meetings take place in Agatha's absence and always in the gap between the Shillmans' house and the Caudwells' – the safest place in the neighbourhood. These are the meetings where the main decisions are reached. Agatha finds the wall too difficult to climb and the discussions too upsetting to listen to. She says she only wants to know what she needs to know and that I can be the messenger.

*

We are like Indians in a teepee, knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder, pow-wowing away. We are like children playing a game

Everyone talks over each other, firing suggestions around, arguing, shouting. The simplest solution seems to be the gin-and-hot-bath treatment. But the slightest whiff of alcohol has Agatha vomiting her guts up for hours and Brenda tells us that's how Junie was found out – drunk and sobbing in her friend's bathroom (and still bloody pregnant), so we decide to disregard it.

Then I remember the medical books in Dr Townsend's surgery. And so I say it – out loud. ‘What about those medical books, Paul? Wasn't there something in one of them about women who… well, you know…?'

Karl and Paul sneak into the surgery. They find a book and put it into Karl's haversack. ‘It's never off his back anyway,' Paul says. ‘My parents won't think twice if he happens to have it on him when he calls in to see me.'

The book will be the first thing they steal from his father's surgery.

 

We have four days to prepare. Four days before Serena's art exhibition party. An ideal opportunity: every adult in the neighbourhood will be distracted; every adult that matters, anyhow.

And so the book is studied and passed around between Patty, Paul, Karl and even Brenda, who has somehow become part of the circle. As Patty explains it, she was present when Agatha first broke the news and so knows as much as there is to know. ‘The more involved she is, anyhow, the less likely she is to squeal.'

*

In the medical book, there are several case histories which are intended as warnings but which we take as instructions. There are diagrams and even some photographs that I pretend to look at whenever the book is put into my hands.

The case histories are considered – Mrs X from Ohio, mother of eight. Mrs Y from Bhopal, mother of fifteen. Miss A from Kentucky, thirteen years old, raped by her father – something that shocks everyone into silence, even Patty and Paul.

The Mrs X from Ohio case involves a bar of soap and a bottle of Dettol. I can hardly understand the logistics, but at least it lacks the violence of other methods such as wire clothes hangers and knitting needles or even punches in the stomach.

The soap and Dettol method is discussed at length but the timing needs to be right. I find these discussions highly embarrassing and wish they didn't have to happen in front of the boys. Even the word ‘period' makes me go red. I know Rachel, Brenda and Karl feel the same – their hot, awkward faces and darting, evasive eyes. Patty and Paul have no such trouble; they bandy the word around while lightly frowning, as if they are some sort of doctors. I am sent around to Agatha to ask when she last had a period but she can't remember because she was never regular. The only thing she knows for certain is that she is pregnant. And so, after all that, the Dettol and soap plan is dismissed.

 

For the next two days the haversack stays in the gap wrapped in plastic. In my head it becomes a sacred animal waiting to be fed.
Everyone has to bring something to it. Paul and Karl bring an instrument they find in Dr Townsend's surgery that most resembles the picture in the medical book. They wrap it in a pink flannel pillow case. The flannel, Paul says, will be useful later, when she starts to bleed. They steal pills. ‘Tranquillisers,' Paul explains, rattling the box, ‘two to be taken an hour before the event. One every few hours after that.'

The instrument in its pillowcase, the pills in their little box are put into the haversack.

I take a big cotton sheet from my mother's hot press – the whitest one I can find because I think it will be the most sterile. And then I worry myself sick all day that it's so white because it's never been used and that my fussy house-proud mother is bound to miss it. The sheet, of course, will be the least of my worries.

Rachel brings four packets of sanitary towels and a few of Danny's old terry-cloth nappies. Brenda Caudwell also brings a sheet, an old sheet. ‘Flannel!' she proudly announces and looks shyly over at Paul, who gives her a restrained nod of approval. She has cut her sheet into careful strips and folded them into a plastic bag. Patty brings her army sleeping bag. Except she doesn't actually bring it. She tells Karl she will leave it on the back lawn and he can jump over Paul's wall and take it. I will remember this fact later on, when I hear my father say, ‘And what about you, Patty? What did you bring to this sorry business?'

‘Oh, I brought nothing, sir,' Patty will say without lying.

Just as Paul, when asked, ‘And who came up with the idea, Paul? Who first suggested it?', will truthfully be able to say, ‘Elaine. It was her idea to look in the medical books.'

*

The plan is this: on Thursday evening, when everything is ready and packed into the haversack, it will be hauled over the wall into my back garden where I will hide it behind the bushes. On Thursday night, when I see my chance, I will carry it over to Agatha's and put it under her bed.

On Friday night, the night of Serena's art exhibition party, we will ‘stop Agatha from being pregnant' – as Brenda Caudwell likes to put it. Karl and Paul will sit on the Hanleys' front wall, pretending to be just hanging around and having a smoke, but really they will be keeping watch. They will also be on standby should anything go wrong. Later they will move in, take away all the evidence and help the girls make the room right again, so that on Saturday morning when Mrs Hanley looks in on her niece, it will seem as if Agatha has been innocently sleeping all night long. The Hanleys have recently been spending Saturdays at Ted's mother's house so Agatha will be able to stay in bed all day. Rachel and I can spend the day with her and make sure that she's all right.

At the party, Patty, Rachel and I will wait till everyone starts to get drunk then we will slip out and say we are going to keep Agatha company – Agatha will already have said she doesn't want to go to the party.

Brenda will remain at the party, pretending to help Serena out, but really keeping an eye on the Hanleys and ready to raise the alarm if needs be. ‘It will also,' Patty says, ‘keep her out of the picture and stop her blundering around with her two big left feet.'

Agatha has already said that she only wants the girls to be present – unless something goes wrong, in which case, she will
agree to allow Paul Townsend in, because he seems to know more about it than anyone else – or because he is the doctor's son, I can't help thinking.

 

We go over it, and over it.

At eight o'clock, Agatha will take the tranquillisers. The girls will arrive an hour later and make the necessary preparations. We will take everything out of the haversack, lay the army sleeping bag on the bed, put the clean sheet over it then make a sort of nest out of the torn pieces of sheet where Agatha will sit.

‘Elaine, you will scald the instruments and then – look, I've drawn you a diagram,' Paul says, ‘you need to hold it like this, and only to go this far and then you just – look – are you looking?'

When he shows me the diagram and begins gesturing with the instrument, I start to cry. Up to that point, somewhere in the back of my mind, I had thought that it was all a game, a game that could be stopped at any moment, or that, in any case, circumstances would somehow intervene and save us from actually having to go through with it.

I cover my face with my hands. ‘I can't do it,' I say. ‘I can't do it, I just can't.'

Patty says, ‘Okay, I'll do it then.'

Paul says, ‘Look, if it comes to it, I can do it. She'll be zonked out anyway and won't care.'

Rachel says, ‘No, no, she would hate that – if Patty can't bring herself to do it, then I will.'

*

But on Thursday morning Patty backs out. They are all there when she breaks it to them, standing at Arlows' orchard wall. She says, ‘Listen, I've been thinking things over: I'm the oldest one here and the only one over eighteen – this goes wrong and well, basically, I'm fucked. I'm sorry but count me out. And I think we should tell them, Agatha, I really do.'

When she says this, Agatha's face turns white. She says, ‘Do you not think my life is handicapped enough?'

‘I think we could at least tell my mom,' Patty says.

‘And what, Patty? You think she's going to help
me
, that she's not going to tell
them
? Is that what you think?'

‘I don't know. I don't fucking know. For Christ sake, you won't even tell us who the father is! It's his responsibility – not ours.'

‘What does it matter who it is?' Agatha says. ‘It's not going to make any difference.'

‘We need to tell
someone
,' Patty says.

Then Agatha goes hysterical. She has a sort of breakdown; she dunts her head off the wall and begins to pull at her stomach. ‘I don't want it in here,' she sobs. ‘I hate it, I want it out of me, out of me. Do you hear me?
Out
.'

In the end, Patty promises she won't say a word to anyone. ‘But, I want to make it clear, now, that I am no longer any part of this.'

Patty turns and walks away. I watch her face as she passes me by. Our eyes catch and I think, ‘She is going to tell.'

I half-expect Paul to back out too. But he chews his lip and says nothing.

*

On Thursday evening I am helping Serena get everything ready for tomorrow night's party. Ted Hanley is also in the house, advising Serena on how best to arrange her paintings for the exhibition. Serena standing in the door – of what she now calls her studio – biting her thumbnail. Ted Hanley trying to respond to her request for his ‘Complete honesty now, Ted, I mean it. I really do.'

‘Ahhha, I see what you've done there. Yes, interesting, hmm. Ah, I see. Of course, yes. That's the…? The moon – is it? Ah, yes, I see that now. Very good, yes.'

A knock at the door and then Mrs Hanley is standing there, looking for Ted. ‘Your mother, Ted, I'm afraid there's been a call – she's been taken to hospital.'

Mrs Hanley now looking at me.

‘I can stay with Agatha,' I say, ‘until bed time anyhow.'

‘Thank you, Elaine. If you're sure you won't mind.'

‘I just need to get something from my house first. You go ahead, I won't be long.'

My mother in her sitting room, watching her television. My father in his dining room working on his papers. I wait until Ted Hanley's car leaves the estate. I sneak down to the end of the garden, lift the haversack up in my arms and take it over to Agatha's house and shove it under her bed. And so I have carried out my first part in the plan.

 

That night, I am asleep when I hear the sound of stones on my window. I look down and there is Michael Shillman on his bike, scooping his hand over his head and then pointing over to the
Hanley house. I look across at the driveway and see Ted Hanley's car is still absent. My bedside clock says half-one in the morning. When I left, a couple of hours before, Agatha was already in bed. I throw on some clothes and go out to Michael.

‘Rachel told me to get you,' he says. ‘I think something awful must have happened.'

I go around to the side of Hanleys' house and find Rachel coming out, chalk-faced and shaking all over.

Half-shouting, half-whispering, she says: ‘She's done it herself, she's only gone and done it herself. She's fucking gone and done it herself.'

I push past Rachel and find Agatha lying on the bed, a large spread of blood beneath her, the shape of a tree. Her legs are smeared, her arms, even her face and her hair. There are hand-prints of blood everywhere, on the floor, on the wall, on the bedside locker.