Free The Hearts and Lives of Men by Fay Weldon Page B

respect. She knew that the handing over of a baby would be no easy matter. A baby draws love out of its mother, and the necessities occasioned by that love can change the mother’s life altogether, making her as desperate, savage and impulsive as any wild animal.
    “Please help me, Angie,” said Helen. “I can’t have the baby. Only I don’t know where to go and anyway abortions cost money and I don’t have any.”
    Nor had she, poor girl. Clifford was not the kind of man to put money in a woman’s bank account and not ask for proof of where every penny had gone, not even if that woman was his legitimate fiancée. Clifford might eat at the best restaurants, where it was useful to be seen, and might sleep between the finest, most expensive cotton sheets, because he liked to be comfortable, but he kept very careful accounts. So this had to be done without Clifford’s knowing. What a fix Helen was in! Just consider the times. Only twenty years ago, and a pregnant girl, unmarried, was very much on her own: no Pregnancy Advice Centers then; no payments from the State, just trouble whichever way she turned. Helen’s best friend, Lily, at seventeen, had an apparently successful abortion but after two days had been rushed to the hospital with septicemia. She’d hovered between life and death for some six hours, and Helen sat on one side of the bed and a policeman sat on the other, and he was waiting to charge Lily with procuring an illegal abortion operation. Lily died, and so was spared the punishment. Probably two years behind bars, the policeman said, and no more than she deserved. “Think of the poor baby!” he said. Poor little Lily, was all Helen could think. Now how frightened she found herself: frightened to have the baby, frightened not to.
    Angie thought fast. She was wearing fashionable hot-pants but did not (as we know) have the best legs in the world. They were pudgy around the knees, and gnarled about the ankles; and as for her face, well, the thick makeup the times required was unkind and the hot South African sun had toughened her skin, and somehow grayed it, and she had a thick, fleshy nose. Only her eyes were large, green and beautiful. Helen, curled up on the bed, tearful and unhappy, soft, pale, female, tugging at her brown silk nightie (suddenly too small) in the attempt to make it cover her properly, and altogether too beautiful, inspired in Angie a great desire for revenge. It is really not fair that some women should have the luck of looks, and others not. You must agree.
    “Darling Helen,” said Angie. “Of course I’ll help you! I know an address. An excellent clinic. Simply everyone goes there. Very safe, very quiet, very discreet. The de Waldo Clinic. I’ll lend you the money. It just has to be done. Clifford wouldn’t want you pregnant at his wedding. Everyone would think he’d married you because he had to! And it’s going to be a white wedding too, isn’t it, and simply everyone looks at waists.”
    Simply everyone, simply everyone! Enough to frighten anyone.
    Angie booked Helen into the de Waldo Clinic that very afternoon. Helen had the misfortune—rather expected by Angie—of being put into the care of a certain Dr. Runcorn, a small, plump, fiftyish doctor with thick glasses through which he stared at Helen’s most private parts, while his stubby fingers moved lingeringly (or so it seemed to Helen) over her defenseless breasts and body. What could the poor girl do about it? Nothing. For in handing herself over to the de Waldo Clinic it seemed that Helen had surrendered dignity, privacy and honor; she felt she had no right to brush Dr. Runcorn’s hand away. She deserved no better than its tacky assault. Was she not doing away with Clifford’s baby without his knowing? Was she not outside the law? Whichever way she looked, there was guilt, and Dr. Runcorn’s glinting eyes.
    “We don’t want to leave the little intruder in there any longer than we have to,” said Dr.