Implosion, p.10
Implosion, page 10
“John darling! How wildly extravagant!” She was delighted.
“Thought you might like it. Don’t go raving mad with it. I cheated slightly; I happened to know that French perfume, along with all foreign cosmetics, will be on George Farmer’s next list of banned imports.” He pushed her gently into a chair. “It’s home-built lily-of-the-valley from now on. Now stop telling me all your plans to reorganize the place, and tell me how you’ve got on.”
She did. She liked her doctor, and the ante-natal clinic nurse was an old fellow-student nurse. Matron was a “poppet” and most of the women she had met were friendly. Everyone knew she was the Minister’s wife, and many were not sure how to treat her. Some were inclined to be subservient, a few tended to be faintly aggressive.
Bart was a little worried, and it showed.
“Don’t fret, darling, I’m not made of porcelain—don’t forget my three years in a teaching hospital. I’ve seen it all before—and worse. Now; tell me all about yourself. Has Mrs. H been looking after you?”
She interrogated him minutely on the state of his laundry, his food and how he was sleeping. It was evident that there had been a good deal of telephonic contact with Mrs. H. Bart realized anew that one way and another, Julia had managed to be pretty busy since her arrival. Still in a practical mood, she asked her husband when he would like to eat, adding that she was so excited to have him home—the word slipped out unconsciously—she didn’t feel like eating a thing.
“Quite frankly, I’m not very hungry either, but I must put in an appearance.”
Julia saw this, and anyway she was longing to show him off—not as the Minister, but as her husband—and suggested seven forty-five would be a good time. The nightly bingo session would start then, and as all the addicts ate early, the dining hall would be relatively empty. Bart changed into a long-sleeved pullover, dark gray trousers and an open-necked shirt. All Marks & Spencer’s and therefore beyond criticism.
As Julia had predicted, the dining hall was not overcrowded. They lined up at the cafeteria, Bart stifling memories of legs of cold chicken eaten on a sofa … The clatter of cutlery mixed with the dehydrated tape music. Julia seemed impervious to it all; he marveled at her easy acceptance of the life, not knowing that she would have been equally pleased to eat at a soup kitchen—with him.
All food was free, but drinks could be bought at a separate counter. Bart got a half bottle of Hock, and was relieved to find he was not required to drink it out of plastic beakers.
“This is another thing we have to make the most of, my dear.” Julia nodded and smiled. As if she cared.
That night she broached the subject of their child. Bart had switched the light off, and was lying back relaxing, happy that his wife should have grappled so well with her problems.
“John darling, take my hand.”
He reached out in the darkness across the narrow space between their beds.
“Our child is due in a fortnight, and we’ve never really discussed it. I know this has been my fault, and you’ve been absolutely marvelous … In normal times I suppose I’d feel a bit guilty at showing so little interest.” She paused, then went on reflectively, “These are normal times now …” she dismissed that train of thought with an impatient shake of her hand. “Anyway, I want you to know that I’m only looking forward because the child is yours. Before all this, I’d thought that someday we’d have children—Oh, damn! I knew I’d make a muck of this!” She snatched her hand away. “I must sound so heartless, but I’m not, really. I’m not even quite sure what I want to say. I will love the child because it is yours. But I’m not an absolute fool, darling. I’ve seen some of the women cooing over their babies in the crèche, and I know your Ministry—the nation—cannot afford to let them go on playing mother in the old way. I realized this months ago. What is the upper age limit of children allowed in these camps—homes—now?”
“Six.” Bart could guess what was coming.
“There you are. It stands to reason that you’ve got to reduce that—and soon.”
Her husband stared into the darkness. “These are early days, we have to move carefully. You’re quite right, my dear. Soon, very soon, we will have to take the older ones away. At first there will be kindergartens for the three-to-six group, later, perhaps crèches for the one-to-three group.” He stopped. Not even Julia must know the full story.
“Not that I give a damn about all that,” said Julia. “All I’m interested in is your wishes for your child. It is one thing to accept your wife must be dedicated to the nation, but your only child—”
“No.” His voice was firm, decisive. “We are far more fortunate than most to have a child at all. All we can give him—or her—is our name. Any sort of family life or ties have gone for our generation—and perhaps the next two generations as well. All I would ask is that you try not to get too—er,” he fumbled for the word, “attached—for my sake, as well as yours.”
“Darling John!” Their hands reached out, touched. “Motherhood is a duty I owe to the nation, but first, last, always—I am yours.”
It was inevitable that one day should be much like another, but every effort was made to make the weekends different. The normal working routine of the home was suspended on Friday evening until Monday morning, there was an expectant air as the Mums waited for the influx of husbands and boyfriends. There were not as many of the latter as the authorities would have liked. A young man had to be very keen. There were plenty of girls outside who, free from the fear of pregnancy, were prepared to make the most of their condition. Still, there were some boys, faithful swains who stuck to their pre-PROLIX girls. Some even married in the camp.
Bart witnessed one of these ceremonies on his first Saturday. The Matron asked him to attend; it would be, she said, Good for Morale. Anything that offered hope, however faint, for the future of the girls had to be encouraged. Bart went alone.
The bride was a simpering girl of sixteen, her young body thick with a five-month pregnancy, the handiwork—if that was the word—of her young groom. He was smartly dressed in the height of big city fashion. Black leather coat and trousers and a flaming orange cravat. His pink face, tow hair plastered down, and large red hands belied his sartorial sophistication, and Bart was not surprised to learn that they were a couple from rural Norfolk.
The bride, defiantly dressed in white, was simpering, not because of her condition—in rural communities by no means uncommon—but because Bart was there. Secretly she thought him smashing—and he was a real live TV personality. Everyone knew his face, and there he was, at her wedding! Big pot in the Government as well, they said …
Bart listened with near-cynical amusement at the priest’s fractional hesitation over the “gift of children” passage in the service. He made a mental note to find out how the Church had progressed on a revised service. The Bishops were hardly geared to the pace of Farmer’s Cabinet, but the old service, used “outside,” could hardly fail to arouse, at best, derision. At worst, it might damage morale. And that was very much the Government’s business.
Afterwards there were the inevitable photographs. The bride got Bart to pose with her and the groom, permanent proof of her moment of contact with the fab world of TV. Then the reception. Bart joined in as well as he could, but was held back by his natural reticence and a curious mixture of humility and contempt. Yet contempt was too strong a word; annoyance, he decided, was nearer. Humble, in that these people were behaving so normally, accepting with an inner dignity, a fantastic situation. Annoyance that they should all be such damned fools as to accept … What else? countered Bart’s other self. He gave it up.
There were endless toasts; Bart said a few words. What they were he had no remembrance, but they went down well. He kissed the bride, and in a moment of sudden abandon, kissed her mother as well. There were shrieks of laughter. Brown ale in hand, Bart eased to the edge of the crush.
Watching the flushed faces, hearing the earthy jokes that went far beyond mere suggestiveness, he suddenly saw, quite sharply … The bride, now full of life and vitality, the down of youth fair upon her, in ten years’ time … coarsened, fat, sweating and heaving in her eighth or ninth confinement. He saw the expression in her eyes as a voice said, “Come on, dear, there’s just one more …” He felt sick. Julia …
“Wassamarrer, ole man?” the bride’s father breathed gustily in his ear. “Look as if you’ve seen a ghos’, ole man—a bloody ghos’!”
Julia’s baby was due in the latter part of May, and her husband tried to keep within striking distance of Clacton. This was not always possible. The Chelsea scheme was working; the response for older children had been very good, but the under-ten group was much less easy to bring in. It had been anticipated that a few parents might try to get out of the country with their families, and a close watch was kept.
One unlucky couple with three children managed to get to sea in their small yacht, but were beaten back by a sudden gale. The father pretended it was just a cruise, but the way the boat was stored made that look highly improbable. The police discovered that they had recently sold their house, and that clinched matters. Farmer, deeply angry, ordered prosecution under the Traitorous Activities Act. The parents got two years each in the newly-formed penal camps—Farmer had put a stop to wasted manpower in prisons—and the children, made wards of the state, were sent to the second school to open, Longleat.
Farmer dwelt at length on this case in his next TV address.
“I’m asking Parliament to amend this Act; the penalties aren’t stiff enough. And anyone with the same ideas may as well know right now; they won’t be welcome abroad. We’re the outcasts of the world! They all fear the taint of sterility. Even our embassies are shunned—recently in Moscow our ambassador gave a party to launch an export drive. Two hundred were invited. That means about a hundred women. Three women turned up. Three!” There was much more in this vein.
Bart was touring the country inspecting progress in the new schools and exhorting parents to let their children go. The Minister of Education took some of the load, but no one commanded as much attention—except the Premier—as Bart. The Cabinet were agreed that compulsion must not be used until a good proportion of the children were already taken over voluntarily. It was not a repetition of the fertile-woman operation. There, the vast majority of women were sterile, knew it, and had little sympathy with those affected. Men, less emotionally involved—apart from those with fertile wives—generally saw the need, and if married to a sterile woman, it would have been matrimonial suicide to side with “the others.” Children were different.
As luck would have it, Bart was in Manchester when his child arrived. Matron herself rang him. A girl, she said, a fine child—seven pounds and two ounces, she added with unprofessional pleasure. Bart went on with his tour. If his aide guessed, when the Minister ordered him to wire flowers to Mrs. Bart, he did not say so. Bart was not volunteering information, and the aide was well aware of his increasingly spiky frame of mind.
Two days later Bart saw his wife in the Home maternity ward. He entered unannounced, and the fact that some of the occupants of the ten-bed ward were in various states of undress hardly registered in his doctor’s mind. What he did notice was that Julia was exchanging female witticisms with another young woman, also bedridden, at the other end of the ward. She was overjoyed at his sudden arrival, but he had the feeling that in some way he had intruded on another, private world. Not that the existence of the small intense world of a ward was a new phenomenon to him; what surprised him was to find Julia caught up in it. He was indeed surprised—and glad.
Their meeting was a little constrained. Both were aware of the effect of his entrance on the rest of the ward. One or two women got quickly back into bed, the staff nurse tried unobtrusively to tidy the ward, horrified as only a staff nurse can be at the unexpected arrival of the Big Man.
“Hello,” said Bart stiffly, conscious of the silence.
“Hello to you, too,” answered his wife, more easily. She patted the bed. “Sit down.”
Bart sat down. The staff nurse crackled starchily past to a group of women, there was a hum of subdued conversation that grew. Someone giggled and Bart relaxed. He took his wife’s hand.
“How are you, darling?”
“Wonderful. Couldn’t be better. It was all frightfully easy, no trouble at all. My doctor says I can go back to the chalet in a couple of days.” There was no doubt she was in good spirits.
“What is it like in here, from the customer’s angle?”
“Absolutely super! Out of this world! All of us—not just me—are treated like royalty. ‘Staff’ is a dear; can be strict, of course. Thing I can’t get over is the vast number of people we have to look after us.”
This was no great surprise to her husband. All maternity services had naturally shut down “outside,” and with the appalling drop in the birthrate, there were, for the first time in medical history, more than enough staff. Bart knew that the Clacton Home, for example, had the cream of the maternity services of Guy’s, Bart’s and St. Thomas’. In addition, Mums who were under four months pregnant were invited to volunteer as wardmaids.
“Good. I’m so glad.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she was happy, but he thought better of it.
“Darling, have you seen your daughter yet?”
“Good Lord, no! D’you imagine I’d see her before you?”
Julia sighed with satisfaction. “Darling, it’s simply wonderful to see you. It seems so long.” Some of the excitement faded from her face. “I’m sorry it was not a boy, John.”
He had expected that one. “If this was back in the old days you might have had reason—although I doubt it. Now … it must be self-evident to you that this is a matter of no importance. Really.”
Later, looking at his daughter, Bart did experience a pang of regret; a little for his loss, a good deal more for the future a daughter must have.
And no one knew that future better than Bart.
12
August 1973. John Bart yawned and stretched in the sun and contemplated his pallid legs. Julia, lying beside him, made him look even paler. In spite of her new job she had much more opportunity to sunbathe. She had rapidly recovered from the birth of her child, and although it was true that she only really came alive when her husband was with her, somehow the long lonely hours had to be filled, and nursing was the obvious choice.
June and July had been, for the Barts, their long-delayed honeymoon. Pressure of work had eased slightly—it was not regarded as politic to try to induce parents to part with their children in what was, by tradition, the height of the summer holidays—so Bart had a few days off, and this was it. He peered through half-shut eyes at the glittering sea, and yawned again.
“Bored?” Julia spoke without opening her eyes.
“Me? Good Lord, no!” Bart was startled and even a little indignant. “No, it’s this unaccustomed sunshine—plus the inordinate demands made upon me by my wife.”
A finger jabbed him in the ribs. “Careful there, Bart. Remember where you are—and who you are.”
He grabbed his wife’s wrist, he scooped up a handful of sand. “Cheek! It’s high time you showed a bit more respect, my girl!”
Julia spotted the sand, her free hand caught his arm. “No, John! My hair—anyway, remember my condition!”
He was unlikely to forget it. At the end of July she had been passed fit and ready for insemination. Bart had been inclined to exercise his power to have the event postponed, although he was well aware that there was no excuse on medical grounds. Julia made the decision. She said simply, “That’s what I’m here for, John. You know I’m fit; I know I’m fit—so let’s get on with it.” And that was that.
Her attitude amazed Bart. To him, she was just the same; warm, loving … but in other respects, she was a different woman. In the first month at Clacton she had shown a pathetic interest in the world outside, in her friends, events, but as her first pregnancy advanced, the interest lessened, she became more concerned with her immediate life. Never a great letter-writer, she had very soon ceased altogether. Her only constant links with outside were the daily calls to or from her husband and a biweekly chat with Mrs. H about his domestic well-being. For the rest—
Bart had become a regular weekly diner at his brother-in-law’s. At first he had told Julia, but he detected a certain coolness at the mention of her sister, a coolness that grew. He sounded Mary on her correspondence with her sister, and learned that although Mary wrote fairly often, Julia’s letters got fewer, and by the middle of July had ceased. Their telephone conversations were stilted and uneasy, and Julia had not originated a call for months. Thereafter Bart did not mention his dinners at Harley Street, and Julia did not inquire.
Both parents kept themselves very much in check in relation to their daughter, Diana. After the first ten days she had been transferred to bottle feeding, and neither John nor Julia saw their daughter except in the crèche with dozens of other babies. Covertly watching his wife’s face as she looked at her daughter, he wondered what thoughts were passing through Julia’s mind. He never did know.
And now it was August, and for a change the sun shone. Bart dropped his handful of sand, Julia stretched out once more. He looked at her slim figure, the flat abdomen. Yet at this very moment, he thought, there are possibly three or four human embryos …
