The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online

go and get Dr. Brett to check the dates,” said David.
    Harriet said nothing, feeling it was beside the point: she did not know why she felt this.
    But she did go to Dr. Brett.
    He said, “Well, perhaps I was out by a month—but if so, you have really been very careless, Harriet.”
    This scolding was what she was getting from everyone, and she flashed out, “Anyone can make a mistake.”
    He frowned as he felt the emphatic movements in her stomach, and remarked, “Well, there’s nothing very much wrong with that , is there?” He looked dubious, however. He was a harassed, no longer young man, who, she had heard, had a difficult marriage. She had always felt rather superior to him. Now she felt at his mercy, and was looking up into that professionally reticent face as she lay there, under his hands, longing for him to say something else. What? An explanation .
    “You’ll have to take it easy,” he said, turning away.
    Behind his back, she muttered, “Take it easy yourself!” and chided herself, You bad-tempered cow .
    Everyone arriving for Christmas was told Harriet was pregnant—it was a mistake—but now they were pleased, really.… But “Speak for yourselves,” said Dorothy. People had to rally around, even more than they always did. Harriet was not to cook, do housework, do anything. She must be waited upon.
    Each new person looked startled on hearing this news, then made jokes. Harriet and David came into rooms full of family, talking, who fell silent knowing they were there. They had been exchanging condemnations. Dorothy’s role in keeping this household going was being given full credit. The pressure on David’s salary—not, after all, a large one—was mentioned. Jokes were made about James’s probable reception of the news. Then the teasing began. David and Harriet were commended for their fertility, and jokes were made about the influences of their bedroom. They responded to the jokes with relief. But all this jesting had an edge on it, and people were looking at the young Lovatts differently from the way they had done before. The quietly insistent patient quality that had brought them together, that had caused this house to come into being and had summoned all these unlikely people from various parts of England, and the world, too—James was coming from Bermuda, Deborah from the States, and even Jessica had promised to put in a brief appearance—this quality, whatever it was, this demand on life, which had been met in the past with respect (grudging or generous), was now showing its reverse side, in Harriet lying pale and unsociable on her bed, and then coming down determined to be one of the party but failing, and going upstairs again; in Dorothy’s grim patience, for she worked from dawn to dusk and often in the night, too; and in the children’s querulousness and demands for attention—particularly little Paul’s.
    Another girl came in from the village, found by Dr. Brett. She was, like the other three, pleasant, lazy, seeing nothing to be done unless her attention was directed to it, affronted by the amount of work needed by four children. She did, however, enjoy the people sitting around and talking, the sociable atmosphere, and in no time she was sharing meals and sitting around with them; she found it quite in order to be waited on by them. Everyone knew that she would find an excuse to leave when this delightful house party broke up.
    Which it did, rather earlier than usual. It was not only Jessica (in her bright summer clothes that made no concession to the English winter except for a slight cardigan) who remembered people elsewhere who had been promised visits. Jessica took herself off, and Deborah with her. James followed. Frederick had to finish a book. The enraptured schoolgirl, Bridget, found Harriet lying down, her hands pressed into her stomach, tears running down her face, moaning from some pain she would not specify—and was so shocked she, too, wept and said she had