Saturday Lunch with the Brownings by Penelope Mortimer

Author:Penelope Mortimer [Mortimer, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Daunt Books
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

I don’t know how long little Mrs Perkins continued this silent and relentless marathon. Possibly it went on for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. I knew, after the first moments of confusion, what she was trying to do, and it appalled me. But she did not know that I knew, and somehow this made it impossible for me to do or say anything to prevent her. I have thought about this frequently since then, wondering whether I should have spoken, called the nurses. I could have made a telephone call, wakened the baby; I could – and there is no other true basis for guilt and regret – have done something. It leads into all those long, inconclusive arguments about responsibility, which my husband enjoys so much: am I my brother’s keeper, or do I just keep quiet? But this is not what I felt at the time. I simply felt that she did not know that I knew, and that it was impossible to tell her. The blue curtain was a fixed, insurmountable barrier dividing our two lives. I did, I said, nothing.

When the night nurses came down the hall, Mrs Perkins scrambled hastily back under the covers and lay still.

One of them came in.

‘I’m much better, thank you,’ I heard Mrs Perkins murmur.

‘So we’ll see you again in March, then? I’ll put you down for twins, dear.’

‘Oh, I do hope it won’t be twins.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl you’re after?’

‘I think girls are cosier …’

‘Now, now, you just keep still. You can jump about as much as you like next time you come in.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Mrs Perkins said meekly. ‘I really must try to remember.’

I fed my daughter and asked the nurse to take her away. The room was quiet. I waited. I suppose we were both waiting. There were no more gymnastics, but something that I can only describe as a steady flow of will-power. A woman waiting to have a child (although in Mrs Perkins’s case it was a little different) can do this curious thing of filling an entire room, universe, with steady and indefatigable purpose. Perhaps men can do it, too – I have no experience of that. I only know it, or recognise it, as an audible beat, an intense effort for self-destruction, out of which, by some extraordinary inconsistency, something is created.

The beat stopped, the red light buzzed, around eight-thirty. A nurse came immediately.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Mrs Perkins murmured – and I could have sworn she was smiling. ‘But I’ve got a little bit of a pain.’

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