Read Online The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer - Free Book Online

at the moment, we need to think in terms of treatment of any sort. Your immediate need, I feel, is for someone to talk to. Say twice a week. Shall we see how we get on?” He was wearing a different suit today, sombre tweed and a heather-mixture tie.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “So long as I can think of something to talk about.”
    â€œOh, I don’t think that will be too difficult.” He slyly uncapped his pen. “How’s the weeping?”
    I didn’t want to disappoint him. “Better, I think.”
    â€œWe’ll give you some tablets to pep you up a little. Children all well?”
    â€œDinah’s got ’flu or something.”
    â€œDinah. Let me see, Dinah is the …” Again he raked, worried, down the list. “She’s sixteen,” I said.
    â€œAh, yes.” He was almost cosy today. “You must have difficulty finding names for them all.”
    â€œThat’s what everybody says. It’s stupid. There are hundreds of names. My grandmother had fifteen children and each one of them had at least three names. That makes forty-five names if you work it out, but she didn’t find it difficult.”
    â€œYour father’s mother?”
    â€œNo, my mother’s mother. Of course a lot of them died.”
    â€œYou could hardly hope to keep fifteen children in those days.”
    â€œBut you could now.”
    â€œYes …” he said slowly; then, darting up at me, “How’s Jake?”
    â€œHe’s gone to North Africa.”
    â€œIndeed? On location, I suppose.”
    If he was trying to be a father to me, he was dreadfully succeeding.
    â€œYes,” I said. “On location.”
    â€œNow why didn’t you go too?”
    â€œWell, they’re living in tents … you know … he didn’t think I would … Anyway, I can’t leave the children.”
    â€œBut you have plenty of staff?”
    â€œYes, but … Anyway, I can’t leave them.”
    â€œI see.”
    He sat back and looked at me gravely. Then, with a short sigh, he glanced down at my file. “You have had no illnesses? Miscarriages, difficult confinements?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou have never … terminated a pregnancy?”
    â€œOf course not. Why should I?”
    â€œBut you weren’t exactly … well off before you married Jake? One would have thought that the financial burden …”
    â€œLook,” I said, “it was easy. We always lived in the country, and most of the time it was the war. We ate cornflakes and eggs and carrots, things like that, because I didn’t know how to cook anything else, so we were vegetarians. I don’t mean we were vegetarians because we didn’t believe in eating meat, I just didn’t know how to
cook
meat. Well, we didn’t need any clothes. My mother used to knit things for the children, but the boys and the girls all wore the same clothes because it was easy, and so did I. My second husband, that’s Dinah’s father, bought dozens of sheets and white cups when we were married, so we were still using those when I married Jake.
What
financial burden?”
    â€œWell, the school fees alone …”
    â€œThere weren’t any school fees. They went to the village school. We got free milk and free orange juice — that gummy stuff, we used to drink it with gin when some friend or someone brought some gin — and we never went out, except sometimes to the pictures. That cost ninepence. After the beginning we never had to buy cots or prams or nappies, anything like that. It’s complete nonsense about this financial burden. It costs a good deal less to keep a child for two years, three years, than it does to have an abortion. Why? — Do you think I should have had abortions?”
    He blinked several times, picked up his pen and put it down again. “Of course not,” he muttered valiantly. “Of course