Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

Author:Barbara Comyns
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781590178973
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

20

Charles kept asking people’s advice on how to get rid of babies, and everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who knew someone who did something which sounded quite crazy, like walking six miles carrying a heavy weight, or taking a dose of Epsom salts and swimming out to sea, or skipping for an hour. Someone’s charwoman told him she used to drink a bottle of port mixed with quinine, and it never failed. I did try this, but it only made me sick for three days and the port was quite expensive, too.

Charles was getting desperate. I felt dreadfully sorry for him, but angry, too. Then the woman who lived at the top of the house, who already had two children, told me she had had an operation when she found she was going to have another. She said it had cost five pounds and the baby had gone away, but she was ill for three months after. She was a good woman and a very kind mother, but her husband had been out of work for a long time. It rather comforted me that even good women got rid of their babies, but I didn’t like the idea of being ill for three months. I told Charles, in case he thought I should have that kind of operation, but I was very glad to hear that he didn’t like the idea either.

Then he heard about a doctor who did illegal operations for twenty-five pounds. He said he had heard of several people who had been to him, and they hadn’t died or been very ill or anything like that, so I agreed to visit this doctor if Charles would find the twenty-five pounds. I rather hoped he would be unable to raise such a large sum of money, but he went to five of our richer friends and told them we were behind with the rent and would be turned out if we didn’t pay at once, and they all gave him five pounds; I did hope they didn’t compare notes afterwards. Ann was one of the people he borrowed five pounds from, but she didn’t know what it was for. We had kept this wretched baby a secret from her. She was the only person who we paid back. To throw away twenty-five pounds on this sordid operation seemed such a dreadful waste to me. I thought of all the lovely things we could have bought for the flat, or we could have had a holiday by the sea and some new clothes as well.

I don’t feel much like writing about the actual operation. It was horrible and did not work at all as it should. I couldn’t go to hospital, because we would have all gone to prison if I had. Even the doctor did his best to help me recover, although he was scared stiff to come near me when he saw it had all gone wrong, but eventually I became better. But my mind didn’t recover at all.

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