Free The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

clearly pass A Level with ease, being much better read than most schoolboys, but his essays were not very well organized as he was out of practice, and knew little of critical vocabulary. Since he was only doing the course for pleasure and would get through the exams anyway, I just did not know whether I should press him about his weaknesses or not. I did not want to confuse his pleasure with
technicalities, though that perhaps was precisely what he was paying me to do. So my corrections were always very tentative, as tentative as his references to God, which were bound to creep in on any discussion of Milton.
    When the third month of my pregnancy drew to an end. I began to worry myself to death about these four dependants. My instinct was to tell them all I was ill and unable to continue the course, but I felt some guilt about doing this midway to the exams, when they would find it very difficult to get a replacement, and certainly not a replacement with anything like my cheapness or qualifications. One minute I would tell myself that it was none of their business if I had a baby or not, and the next I would be driven to tears by the sheer embarrassment and absurdity of the situation, which I did not think I had the stamina to bear. I knew that I would have to come to some decision, through the pressure of time and the growth of my belly; I had heard of people who had disguised their condition till six months or later, but I did not fancy such evasion. On the other hand, how could I possibly put the thing into words?
    In the end the only one that I told was Spiro. I let the others draw their own conclusions. My schoolgirl, Sally Hitchins, certainly noticed, but did not dare to ask: she seemed rather admiring, and had indeed no right to be otherwise, in view of what she had let drop about her own stormy record and the reasons for her expulsion. The Indian did not see. He just did not notice or, if he did, it meant nothing to him. But for my Methodist minister I took to wearing a wedding ring; not a real wedding ring, needless to say, but the identical curtain ring which I had flashed round that disreputable hotel for Hamish so many years before. He was the only person for whom I ever stooped to such measures, and I tell myself that I did it for his sake and not for my own. I don't know what he thought of it: I suppose he must have concluded that I had
contracted a hasty shotgun wedding as the wedding ring appeared so late in the proceedings, but perhaps he was too kind and Christian for such conjecture. A situation like mine certainly makes clear how little we know of each other's ignorances and illuminations.
    I told Spiro, or rather one might say that Spiro told me. It was about a fortnight after my last evening with Roger. I was wearing a large grey man's sweater that I had had for years, over a skirt that I had let out with a piece of string; I did not look too bad, though obvious enough to the discerning eye, and Spiro was discerning enough. He had just arrived and I went into the kitchen to make us both a cup of coffee: I returned with the tray, which I put down on top of the bookcase while I went to pick up the little coffee table, intending to place it in a convenient position between our two seats, but Spiro dashed forward and wrenched the table from my grasp, saying, "No, no, no, you mustn't go carrying heavy things any more, allow me, allow me."
    "Whatever do you mean?" I said, pulling the table firmly back from him: it weighed nothing anyway, being about two feet high and two feet square, and made of ugly canework, like a garden chair. I put the thing down where I had originally intended, then looked back at Spiro. But he was laughing. I knew that he knew and I was annoyed with him for laughing at me.
    "There's nothing funny about it," I said crossly, and he pulled a ridiculous mock-serious face and said:
    "No, no, I quite agree, I quite agree."
    "Sit down," I said, "and read me your essay on Donne. If you ever