The Hidden Years

That was until one of the other girls heard her one morning and accidentally enlightened her, assuming that she must already know the reason for her sickness.

A baby… No, not just a baby, but Kit’s baby. Hard on the heels of her first thrill of appalled recognition of the fact that in her great-aunt’s eyes she had now joined that unmentionable band of her sex who had ‘got themselves into trouble’, and was therefore now a social and moral outcast, came a tiny pang of pleasure. Kit’s baby. She was having Kit’s baby.

Alone in the dormitory, she sank down on to her bed, trembling slightly, clasping her hands protectively over her stomach. She felt dizzy but not sick any longer. Rather the dizziness sprang from elation and joy.

Kit’s child… A sudden urgency to share her news with him, to be able to marvel with him over the new life they had created together, overwhelmed her. Kit! How much she longed to see him.

She sat staring into space, lost in a wonderful daydream in which Kit suddenly appeared, sweeping her off her feet and announcing that they must get married immediately…that he loved her to distraction.

He would take her away with him in his shiny little green car, and they would be married secretly and excitingly. She would live in a tiny rose-smothered cottage hidden away from the world, but close enough to where he was based for her to see him whenever he was off duty.

She would wait there for the birth of their child…a son, she knew it would be a son, and they would be so blissfully happy…

It took one of the older and far, far more worldly-wise girls in the dormitory to shatter her daydreams with brutal reality.

Donna had been nominated by the others to talk to her. Kind girls in the main, they found Lizzie’s attitude baffling. Had they found themselves in her condition, they wouldn’t be sitting around waiting for Mr Wonderful to turn up and make things right. Didn’t the poor sap realise what had happened? Didn’t she know what would happen to her when the hospital authorities found out about her condition?

Donna Roberts was the eldest of a family of eight, five of them girls; she had seen her mother pregnant far too often to have any illusions about the male attitude to the careless and unwanted fathering of a child, but even she quailed a little when faced with the childish luminosity of Lizzie’s unwavering belief that he, whoever he was, was going to come back and marry her.

‘Look, kid,’ she began awkwardly. She was dating an American airman and had picked up not just his habit of chewing gum, but something of his accent as well. ‘We all know about the fix you’ve got yourself in… I know it isn’t easy, but you’ve got to face up to it… You don’t want to end up like Susan Philpott, do you?’

‘Susan Philpott.’ Lizzie stared at her. ‘But she went home.’

‘Like hell she did,’ Donna told her inelegantly. ‘God knows where she is right now, but she hasn’t gone home. Told me that herself—said her dad would kill her for getting herself in trouble. Of course when the dragon found out it was the end for her here. Probably on the street somewhere now,’ Donna added, explaining explicitly what she meant when Lizzie looked uncomprehendingly at her.

‘He isn’t going to come back. They never do,’ she told her with brutal honesty. ‘And you’re going to have to do something about that…’ she added, gesturing towards Lizzie’s still flat stomach.

‘Do something?’ Lizzie questioned, puzzled, focusing on her, ignoring her comments about Kit. Donna didn’t know Kit… Donna didn’t realise how she and Kit felt about one another, how much in love they were. She had known it the moment they met, had seen it in Kit’s eyes, had felt it, she remembered almost maternally, in the roughness of his possession, his inability to control his passion, his desire for her.

‘What do you mean “do something”?’ she questioned softly.

She could see the pity in Donna’s eyes, feel it in the waiting silence of the others in the dormitory. She could feel their rough sympathy enveloping her, sense their affinity with her, and yet she felt outside their concern, untouched by it, in no need of it. She knew they meant to be kind, and she herself was too gentle, too sensitive to rebuff them directly.

Donna sighed and lifted her eyes to heaven. This was going to be worse than she had thought. Why was it always these idiotic naïve ones who got themselves into this kind of trouble? she wondered. Hadn’t they got the sense…? But she already knew the answer to that question, had heard it often enough in her mother’s slow Dorset voice, as she repeated over and over again warningly to her eldest child, showing her, by the example of her own life, just what happened to girls foolish enough to believe in the lies told by men. She had been sixteen when she had conceived her first child, and at thirty-five, when Donna had left home, she had looked and moved like a woman of twice her age, worn down by too many pregnancies, too much hardship and poverty.

The war had come as a welcome escape for Donna, releasing her from having to follow in her mother’s footsteps, from early marriage and too many children, and she had been glad to go. Glad to leave the damp, insanitary farm worker’s cottage where she had shared a bedroom and a bed with her sisters, glad to escape from the bad temper of her father and the rough manners of her brothers. Glad to cut herself free of too many pairs of clinging hands and too many demanding voices.

‘You’re going to have to get rid of it, aren’t you? Look, I know what you think but he isn’t going to marry you. They never do,’ she said bluntly. Her own life had not given her tact or sensitivity. As far as she was concerned the best thing she could do for the silly little fool was to make her see sense and then, if it wasn’t already too late, to sit her in a bath of near-boiling hot water, and pour as much gin into her as they could get their hands on in the hope that it would bring on a spontaneous abortion.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t… There were other methods, but they were too risky, and anyway, by the looks of it, they were going to have a hard time persuading her to do what had to be done.

She looked so pale and raw, so childlike almost, but Donna wasn’t deceived. That type could have the will of a donkey…and the stupidity.

Lizzie stared at her in shocked disbelief. Get rid of Kit’s child… She recoiled from Donna as though she thought the other girl was going to physically attack her, her arms crossing protectively over her belly.

‘Look, you little fool,’ Donna repeated grimly, ‘he isn’t going to come back for you. They never do, no matter what they tell you. Did he give you his address? Did he tell you anything about himself other than his name? Do you even know that that’s real? You know what’s going to happen to you when it gets out that you’re carrying, don’t you? You’ll lose your job and you’ll be sent back home…’

Sent back home… To her aunt… For the first time fear chilled Lizzie’s heart. She gave a deep shudder, totally unable to accept what Donna was saying to her, and yet at the same time terrified by the mental pictures Donna was drawing for her. Just for a moment she tried to imagine what her life would be like if she did have to return to her aunt, pregnant and unmarried. Her aunt would never have her back—she would turn her from her door, and disown her. She started to shiver, suddenly cold and shocked. But why was she afraid? Nothing like that was going to happen to her. Kit was going to marry her—she knew it. There was nothing for her to fear. All she had to do was to hold on to that truth, to have faith and courage, to remember that Kit loved her.

‘Come on, kid—be sensible. You can’t be that far along…with any luck, we could get rid of it.’

‘No,’ Lizzie told her firmly, and then added with quiet dignity, ‘Even if you are right about Kit not loving me—and I know you aren’t—I still could not destroy my child.’

Donna knew when she was defeated. Muttering under her breath about the folly of her own sex, she withdrew.

Let the little fool learn, then—and she would… It was all right now claiming that she wanted the brat, but let her wait until she was homeless, penniless, disgraced, without a job, without anyone to help her… Then she would sing a different tune. She, Donna, had seen it happen so many times, and to so many girls.

Just for a moment she thought savagely and angrily of the burdens carried by her own sex, and hungered for a time when things would be different, when women would have the right and ability to govern their own lives. But to do that they would have to cast off the emotional shackles they seemed to be born with, to cease loving and depending on men… She herself had no illusions about the male sex. She never intended to marry and she certainly never intended to burden herself with the responsibility and pain of children.

It was many weeks since she had heard from Kit… Weeks during which she had slowly grown accustomed to the fact that she was carrying his child. The end of the war in Europe caused nationwide celebration, but for Lizzie what was happening within her was more important. Kit had not been in touch and she had no way of knowing if victory in Europe had brought him safely home or if he was still in danger somewhere. Until she knew, there could be no celebration for her. Her eighteenth birthday, too, passed without any celebration apart from a card and small present sent by her aunt.