‘So did we all.’
‘Joanna Langley’s dead. Wow. I used to be so jealous of her.’ I could see that the news had made her stop in her tracks. For anyone, hearing of the death of a person you had thought alive and well is a little like killing them because suddenly they’re dead in your brain instead of living. But with the Sixties generation it is more than this. They preached the value of youth so loudly and so long that they cannot believe an unkind God has let them grow old. Still less can they accept they too must die. As if their determination to adopt clothes and prejudices more suited to people thirty, forty, fifty years younger than themselves would act as an elixir to keep them forever from the clutches of the Grim Reaper. You see television interviews and articles in papers expressing shocked amazement whenever an old rocker pops his clogs. What did they think would happen?
At last, with a philosophical nod, Terry resumed her story. ‘I slept with Damian two or three times before we finished. There were no hard feelings.’ She paused to check that this squared with my information.
‘I’m sure there weren’t. But nothing happened?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing happened. Then Greg went to Poland and I followed him, and I slept with him, but still nothing happened and nothing happened, and finally I went to see a doctor while I was out there and guess what?’
‘It wasn’t him, it was you.’
She smiled, like a teacher pleased with my attention. ‘It was me. All the time it was me. Some tubes were missing or something…’ She raised her eyebrows, trying to control her delivery. ‘You know the first thing that occurred to me? Why the hell had I wasted so much time worrying about getting pregnant? My late teens should have been a ball.’
‘You didn’t do badly,’ I said.
Which made her laugh. ‘Anyway, I knew that once Greg learned I could never have a child, once his mother heard about it, the whole thing would be over and it’d be back to square one. So I bought a baby.’
It seems strange now, but this sentence took me completely by surprise. Why? I cannot tell you. There was no such thing as surrogacy in those days, or if there was we knew nothing of it. She’d admitted she’d had a baby to get Greg to marry her and she’d told me she couldn’t have children. What did I imagine she had done? Even so, I was flabbergasted. What I came up with was: ‘How?’
She smiled. ‘Are you planning it?’ But she was far too deep in to telling the story to back out now. ‘I was doing some social work then, with a group sponsored by the embassy. This was 1971, long before the end of Communism or anything else. There was no Solidarity. There was no hope. Poland was an occupied country and the people were desperate. It wasn’t hard. I found a young mother who already had four children and she’d just discovered she was pregnant. I offered to take the baby, whatever it was, whether or not there was anything wrong with it.’
‘Would you have?’
She thought for a moment. ‘I hope so,’ she said, which I liked her for.
‘But how did you manage the whole thing?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. I found a doctor who could be bribed.’ I must have looked shocked at this because she became quite incensed. ‘Jesus, most of the time he was prescribing drugs to teenagers. Was this worse?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I didn’t “show” until I was about five months “gone.” I told Greg I didn’t feel comfortable with sex, and with his puritan background he didn’t either. Then I asked if he’d mind not being at the birth, as the thought made me uncomfortable. Boy, you should have seen the relief on his face. These days, if the father isn’t there peering up your flue as the head appears, he’s a bad person, but in 1971 it wasn’t compulsory.’
‘How did you manage the birth itself?’
‘I had a stroke of luck when he was called to New York just before the baby came. The dates I’d given him were three weeks behind the true ones, to leave some room for manoeuvre. I did have a plan of checking into a different room. I think it would have worked but in the end I didn’t need it. She went into labour and I took the mother to the nursing home where, thanks to the doctor, she just gave my name. The baby was delivered and the registration was perfectly routine. When Greg got back, I was waiting for him at home with little Susie. We cried a river. Everyone was happy.’
‘And nobody ever found out?’
‘Why would they? I told him I loved him, but I couldn’t have sex until I got my figure back. He suspected nothing. Nobody was worse off. Including Susie. I mean that.’ Clearly, she did mean it and I would say it was probably true, although one can never be quite sure about these things. Even if I do not endorse the present fashion for leaving babies with mothers who are clearly quite incapable of caring for them, rather than finding them decent homes. Terry was nearly finished. ‘For a while I thought the doctor might blackmail me, but he didn’t, so that was that. Maybe he was scared I’d blackmail him.’
‘And there were never any tests that gave it away?’
‘What tests? They’re both blood group O, which was kind of a relief actually. But who runs a DNA test on their own daughter?’
‘Did Greg have any more children?’
‘None of his own. Two steps. He adores Susie and she adores him.’ She sighed a little wearily. ‘She much prefers him to me.’
I nodded. ‘So he’ll take care of her.’ For some reason I was rather glad of this. Susie had missed a larger fortune which, in my fevered mind, she had possessed for maybe two or even three minutes. It was good to feel she would never know want.
‘Oh yes. She’s safer than I’ll ever be.’
I had to ask. ‘Would you have gone on with it if I hadn’t mentioned the test?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Probably. The temptation was too great. But of course there would have been some hurdle by the end of it, so I’m glad you did. Before I got too excited.’
It was once more the hour to depart and this time I knew for certain we would not meet again. Since, even if I were back in the town, I wouldn’t look her up. But something in the story she had told had won me round a bit. I was reminded of the haunting words of Lady Caroline Lamb: ‘With all that has been said about life’s brevity, for most of us it is very, very long.’ Terry’s life had already been very long and very frustrating, with scant reward to show for it. That this had largely been her fault was no consolation, as I knew well. She had thrown away her only chance of a decent future with Greg and never replaced him with anything like an equal opportunity. Now she had lost even the child she’d invented to be with him. We kissed at the door. ‘Please don’t mention this to anyone.’ She shook her head. I had something more to say. ‘And please don’t ever tell them.’
‘Would I?’
‘I don’t know. If you got too drunk and too angry you might.’
She did not resent this, which was commendable, but she was confident in her denial. ‘I have been drunk and angry many times since we last met and I haven’t told them yet.’ This, I am sure, was true. All of it.
‘Good.’ Now I really was going. But I had a last wish before we parted. ‘Be kind to Donnie,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t sound a bad chap.’
The evening had made me sentimental in my estimation of her. I should have been more clear-sighted. The truth was, with the sole exception of her feeling towards her not-daughter, the old Terry Vitkov was quite unchanged. ‘He’s a bastard,’ she replied and shut the door.
Candida
THIRTEEN
Which only left Candida Finch.
I stayed on a few days in Los Angeles, in Beverly Hills to be precise, at the very comfortable Peninsular Hotel – a haven for the English, since it is the only one where you can actually walk out to the post office or get something to eat without having to stand and wait every time for a crisply suited ‘valet’ to fetch your car. I’d enjoyed meeting my agent who turned out to be charming, and if I did not quite follow Damian’s instructions to the letter, still we got on very well and he sent me round the town to meet a few people while I was still out there. Since I was allowed the untold luxury of first class travel back to London, I felt quite relaxed and invigorated when I got home. How strange it is, the way enough sleep and the resulting physical energy can make one feel as if one’s whole life is going well, while the lack of them has the opposite effect.