A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns

Author:Barbara Comyns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Daunt Books
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

WHEN I WAS ABOUT six months pregnant things began to go wrong, not with me, but with Gene. Our marriage was such a happy one, perhaps partly due to the fact that Gene always had his own way over everything because whatever he wanted, I wanted too, even the stark wood furniture without a shred of paint on it. When he got worked up about things being ugly or fussy, I knew he was right. Often he went out of his way to torture himself by looking at things that would upset him – furniture shops and windows filled with plaster little girls lifting up their skirts and gnomes and monks or demons twisted up in agony. These things were frightful but one could always look the other way. Gene would return home quivering with the horrors he had seen as if it had been cruelty to children or animals. I could tell by the way he walked upstairs if things were wrong. Sometimes I thought I must be insensitive that I did not worry enough about ugliness, unemployment and all the things that upset Gene; but life would have been frightful if we had both suffered so much.

I heard from Blanche and she seemed to be in some trouble too. She said she would tell me about it when she saw me and that she was returning immediately. She wanted me to take a small furnished flat for about twelve or sixteen pounds a month in Kensington or Chelsea. ‘Nowhere near Charlotte Street’, underlined. Somewhere she could move into as soon as she arrived because she did not want to stay in a hotel on her own. I guessed her marriage had broken up and, although I did not care for Rollo, I was sorry. I found her a small flat in a converted house in Queen’s Gate Terrace and the back windows overlooked Epstein’s house, which I thought amusing. At first the house agent did not want to show me over the flat, muttering something about no children allowed, and it took me some time to convince him that the flat was for my childless sister. I realised then how obvious it must be that I was about to have a child; I’d imagined that it hardly noticed and had hoped that no one at work knew. The following day I told the head animator in a loud voice that I was due to have a baby in three months and would it be all right if I stayed on as long as possible? The girls all started to laugh and said, ‘We wondered when you were going to mention it and were beginning to think you didn’t know yourself.’ They produced a beautiful cobwebby shawl that they had bought between them, saying that they had had it for over a month but had not liked to give it to me. No one seemed to expect me to leave. This was a great relief, not only from the point of money, but because I liked the safety of the studio.

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