know what the future held for her.
She remembered the cherry stone game she’d used to play as a child, the one that told you what class of man you might marry. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Her mother had expected her to bag a rich man – what other kind
were
there, after all? – but she knew she’d never get any kind of a man now, a married woman, abandoned, and with a baby on the way.
A baby! The idea that she would be responsible soon for a living, breathing human infant made her nauseous with apprehension. If she hadn’t been required to stay quite still, she’d have curled up in a foetal position the way she did every night now, wishing she could hibernate like some uncomplicated hedgerow creature and make real life with its anxieties and awful obstacles go away. She wasn’t going to give birth, she wasn’t going to give the ‘gift’ of life: sad bereft Jessie was going to inflict existence on another human being.
She’d spent many midnight hours recently lying awake, trying to garner a degree of comfort by praying to a God she no longer believed in. Mostly she prayed silently, but sometimes she murmured the words in a mantra. She’d have loved to shout them, on the really bad nights, but the walls of the boarding house were so thin they might have been rice paper and her neighbour was a grouchy fellow, a mad Serb who muttered endlessly to himself.
Oh, God
, went her prayer,
make it a boy, please! It’s got to be a boy, a healthy boy, a bully boy, a little ox. Don’t let it be a girl! Don’t let me bring a daughter into a world where men can pick girls up and play with them like dolls and then throw them away when a prettier popsy takes their fancy. Oh, God – please, please make my baby a boy!
What a sucker she’d been. What a mug! She remembered how she’d felt the day after Scotch had left her as she’d sat by herself on the beach at Finistère with her arms wrapped round her shins and her face on her knees, and how, when she’d finally got up, the cotton of her skirt had been stiff with salt. The wind had been as cold as a mother’s reprimand, and the sea and sky had been cracked pewter: so grey that it was hard to believe that only the day before the sun had been splitting the bright blue heavens, and she’d had to take to the shade to finish writing her letter.
When she’d first arrived in Paris a week ago, Jessie had hoped that one of Scotch’s artist friends, a girl with whom they’d stayed earlier that summer, might still be in residence in the rue du Sommerard: but no. She had headed north to Saint-Omer, where her architect fiancé was working on the War Graves Commission. There had been nothing for it but to find cheap lodgings elsewhere: and, of course, the only legitimate work available to a single woman fallen on hard times was as an artist’s model. That was how Jessie had ended up joining the other hopeful destitutes on the carrefour Vavin, where the models’ fair was held every Monday morning. She had hoped perhaps that she might run into a chum of Scotch, someone who could provide her with a clue as to where he might be, someone who might say: ‘Jessie! There you are! Thank God we’ve found you – Scotch has been searching everywhere for you . . .’
But no-one had come looking for her, and she wasn’t surprised: because every time she recalled the autocratic allure of the Italian girl, the oblique smiles she had shared with her husband, and the disdain with which her expressive sloe-black eyes had regarded his shabby little bride, Jessie knew how thoroughly she’d been duped. How long might she continue to fool herself, to live this lie? How long might she continue to deceive her parents, letting on that everything was tickety-boo, that she and Scotch were still basking in the warm glow of newly-wedded bliss and living
la vie en rose
in Montparnasse? How long might she continue to cling to the hope that he would come to
She remembered the cherry stone game she’d used to play as a child, the one that told you what class of man you might marry. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Her mother had expected her to bag a rich man – what other kind
were
there, after all? – but she knew she’d never get any kind of a man now, a married woman, abandoned, and with a baby on the way.
A baby! The idea that she would be responsible soon for a living, breathing human infant made her nauseous with apprehension. If she hadn’t been required to stay quite still, she’d have curled up in a foetal position the way she did every night now, wishing she could hibernate like some uncomplicated hedgerow creature and make real life with its anxieties and awful obstacles go away. She wasn’t going to give birth, she wasn’t going to give the ‘gift’ of life: sad bereft Jessie was going to inflict existence on another human being.
She’d spent many midnight hours recently lying awake, trying to garner a degree of comfort by praying to a God she no longer believed in. Mostly she prayed silently, but sometimes she murmured the words in a mantra. She’d have loved to shout them, on the really bad nights, but the walls of the boarding house were so thin they might have been rice paper and her neighbour was a grouchy fellow, a mad Serb who muttered endlessly to himself.
Oh, God
, went her prayer,
make it a boy, please! It’s got to be a boy, a healthy boy, a bully boy, a little ox. Don’t let it be a girl! Don’t let me bring a daughter into a world where men can pick girls up and play with them like dolls and then throw them away when a prettier popsy takes their fancy. Oh, God – please, please make my baby a boy!
What a sucker she’d been. What a mug! She remembered how she’d felt the day after Scotch had left her as she’d sat by herself on the beach at Finistère with her arms wrapped round her shins and her face on her knees, and how, when she’d finally got up, the cotton of her skirt had been stiff with salt. The wind had been as cold as a mother’s reprimand, and the sea and sky had been cracked pewter: so grey that it was hard to believe that only the day before the sun had been splitting the bright blue heavens, and she’d had to take to the shade to finish writing her letter.
When she’d first arrived in Paris a week ago, Jessie had hoped that one of Scotch’s artist friends, a girl with whom they’d stayed earlier that summer, might still be in residence in the rue du Sommerard: but no. She had headed north to Saint-Omer, where her architect fiancé was working on the War Graves Commission. There had been nothing for it but to find cheap lodgings elsewhere: and, of course, the only legitimate work available to a single woman fallen on hard times was as an artist’s model. That was how Jessie had ended up joining the other hopeful destitutes on the carrefour Vavin, where the models’ fair was held every Monday morning. She had hoped perhaps that she might run into a chum of Scotch, someone who could provide her with a clue as to where he might be, someone who might say: ‘Jessie! There you are! Thank God we’ve found you – Scotch has been searching everywhere for you . . .’
But no-one had come looking for her, and she wasn’t surprised: because every time she recalled the autocratic allure of the Italian girl, the oblique smiles she had shared with her husband, and the disdain with which her expressive sloe-black eyes had regarded his shabby little bride, Jessie knew how thoroughly she’d been duped. How long might she continue to fool herself, to live this lie? How long might she continue to deceive her parents, letting on that everything was tickety-boo, that she and Scotch were still basking in the warm glow of newly-wedded bliss and living
la vie en rose
in Montparnasse? How long might she continue to cling to the hope that he would come to
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