Marriage Make-Up

Pregnant…a baby…Sam’s baby. She was the luckiest, luckiest girl in the whole wide world.

Suddenly she’d felt ravenously hungry. Sardines…sardines on toast; that was what she wanted—yes, and then an enormous sticky bar of chocolate fudge.

She would, of course, have to start eating very carefully. She had the baby to think of now, she’d warned herself sternly, but for now…for today she could afford to be a little self-indulgent…just as she probably had been when this baby had been conceived. She’d given a small chuckle. When the doctor had asked her if she had any idea when conception had taken place she had furrowed her forehead and frowned.

‘When did you last have sex?’ he had asked her patiently.

‘This morning,’ she had answered promptly, and had then flushed a brilliant shade of pink as she’d realised what he was getting at.

‘Er…I’m not sure. It could have been…I missed my first period three weeks ago…’

She had been taking the pill, but she had been so busy that for two consecutive nights she had forgotten to take it. This baby was obviously meant to be…just like the way she and Sam had met—just like their love. Oh, God, she’d been so happy…so very, very happy…

‘I mean that it’s impossible for you to be pregnant—at least not with my child,’ Sam told her now, harshly.

Abbie looked at him in mute disbelief. Where her face had originally been flushed with excitement and happiness it was now bone-white. Sam’s, on the other hand, bore the tell-tale signs of male anger in the dark colour staining his cheekbones and the clenched tightness of his jaw.

‘What do you mean, not with your child? Is this some kind of joke?’ Abbie whispered in confusion.

She didn’t know what Sam meant; she couldn’t understand what he was saying. How could her baby, their baby, not be his? Of course it was his—theirs. What on earth was he trying to do to her? If this was his idea of some kind of teasing game…

Anxiously she searched his face, but there was no sign of any good humour or amusement in it. Just the opposite.

‘A joke? My God, I wish it was,’ Sam told her harshly. ‘You cannot be carrying my child, Abbie, because I cannot give you a child. I’ve had a vasectomy.’

‘You’ve what? You can’t have done. Not without telling me. Not without…’

‘I had it done several years ago, when I was in India with VSO. I was working in a small village; a young man I met there, a young man of my own age, the son of the head man, who had taken me under his wing, told me that he intended to have a vasectomy. I was shocked at first, wondering how on earth he could contemplate such a thing, but then he took me on a tour of Bombay and pointed out to me the number of children who had been abandoned because their parents could not afford to feed them. He told me the basic economics of what happened in a world when there were too many mouths to feed, when the land itself could not support them.

‘“What is best?” he asked me. “That I prevent conception now or that I wait until my children are one, four…seven, and watch them die slowly of malnutrition?”

‘What he said, what he showed me, shocked me, made me realise that to father a child when there were already so many, many children in the world in need was an act of selfishness which would simply push those children even further down the poverty scale.

‘I decided to have a vasectomy myself.’

Abbie stared at him.

‘You’re lying,’ she told him flatly.

‘No,’ Sam denied. ‘You are the one who is doing that, Abbie, when you claim that you are carrying my child.’

Abbie licked her lips nervously. She couldn’t believe this was happening. How could it be happening? How could she possibly be carrying Sam’s child in her womb when he…? Tears filled her eyes, a mixture of anguish, anger and panic exploding inside her.

‘You must have known I would want children, and yet you married me without telling me that you couldn’t give me any. Why? Why…?’

‘Would you believe me if I told you that I was so much in love with you…wanted you so desperately that the thought of children or anything else other than our love simply never occurred to me? And for your information I did not know you would want children. I thought you possibly shared my feelings about the world not being able to support the children it already has. It hasn’t ever been something we’ve discussed.’

‘Because there hasn’t been any time…any need. But you must have known…must have realised…’

‘Why?’ Sam demanded more harshly. ‘Because it’s what everybody does…what everyone wants?’

‘You lied to me…you deceived me,’ Abbie wept.

The look he gave her was full of bitter contempt.

‘And you haven’t done the same to me? Tell me something, Abbie,’ he demanded savagely. ‘How long exactly was it after I had had you that you went crawling into his bed? A month, a week…less…?’

‘What…what do you mean? I haven’t…’ Abbie protested hotly, her face flushing as she realised what he was saying.

How dared he accuse her of sleeping with someone else? How dared he accuse her of anything?

‘Oh, come on; don’t play the innocent. It’s hardly an appropriate role for you now, is it? You might have fancied passing yourself off to me and the rest of the world as an innocent young madonna, but what you actually are is little better than a whore, passing off her bastard child on someone else—or, rather, trying to. Unfortunately for you it’s just not going to work.

‘It’s his, I imagine? Dear, wonderful Lloyd? I saw him driving away the other evening just before I got home. Does he know you’re carrying his child yet? Does he…?’

‘I’m not carrying Lloyd’s child,’ Abbie denied, shocked. What was Sam trying to imply? She and Lloyd had never been lovers. The very thought of having a sexual relationship with him filled her with the same kind of horror she would have felt had he actually been her brother. She and Lloyd were close, yes, but not in any sexual way. Lloyd had simply called round to see her to talk to her about some problems he was having with his university course.

He had stayed longer than he had intended and had then had to dash off without waiting to say hello to Sam.

That Sam or anyone else should even remotely consider that she and Lloyd would have an affair and that, even worse, she would try to foist his child off on her husband was so totally and utterly ridiculous an idea that she instantly, once again, wondered if Sam was trying to play some kind of bizarre joke on her.

He did like to tease her occasionally, she knew, because—or so he said—he loved watching the pink colour flood her face when he did. But so far he had certainly shown no inclination to play the kind of elaborate and cruel practical joke on her which would give rise to his denial of their child. To do so would have been totally out of character for him, she was sure. But then she had not really known him so very long, had she? And, like her assumption that they would have children together, she had taken his gentleness and lack of any cruel or malicious streak on trust.

But surely she would have known, sensed, guessed if…

But she hadn’t known that he had had a vasectomy, had she? And, if he hadn’t thought it necessary to pass such a vital fact about himself on to her, what other vital information might he also be concealing?

‘Y-you can’t possibly believe that Lloyd and I are anything other than friends,’ she stammered chokily. ‘I’ve told you…’

‘Why not? Someone has to be the father of this child you thought you’d pass off as mine…’

‘But you’re the only man I’ve ever slept with…the only man I’ve ever loved,’ she could have added. But for some reason she held the words back. To talk of love in the present circumstances would be not just acutely painful but almost an act of sacrilege.

‘I know how hot in bed you are—after all, I’ve had more than enough proof of it,’ he added cruelly. ‘But if I wasn’t satisfying you you should have said—’