Julia must have broken or lost something belonging to one of her friends. Julia leant forward and hugged Lydia again.
‘Someone has got me into trouble,’ she sobbed. The words were almost inaudible.
Like everything else about the scene that was taking place, Lydia found this statement very unexpected. Nor did she immediately grasp what it signified. But before she had a chance to enquire, Julia continued.
‘He took advantage of me and now …’
‘Julia dearest, do you mean …?’ said Lydia.
‘Yes,’ said Julia, ‘a baby …’
‘Oh! Julia,’ said Lydia, ‘I had no inkling that you had met someone wonderful and that you were in love and doing a line. You never mentioned him. Who is he and what’s he like?’
‘I’m not in love, Lydia, and I’m not doing a line and the rat whose child I am now going to have is not going to stand by me. He denies he has anything to do with it and I’m so, so frightened.’
The two stayed talking for hours as Julia went over and over what had happened and Lydia tried to provide comfort and offer advice. The father, as Lydia – to Julia’s annoyance – inadvertently referred to him, was a law student, English, and only in his second year, and Julia had met him when some of her friends had asked her to make up a table for the Law Society Ball in the Shelbourne Hotel.
‘He hadn’t even paid for my ticket,’ said Julia, ‘but that didn’t stop him insisting on leaving me home. I thought he was dashing, very dashing in fact, and then before I knew what, it was all over.’
‘He had his way with you?’ asked Lydia.
It was a phrase she had picked up from her recent reading.
‘But how did you bring him back to your flat without the other girls knowing?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Julia. ‘We did it on the floor of the doctor’s waiting room downstairs.’
When she first discovered her predicament Julia, by her own account, was very ashamed at what she had done but then, as she thought about it and without telling a soul, she became almost proud that she had such a secret and that she had been so modern and naughty. Although she had not cared for the experience very much, she thought she might like it more if she tried it again. She had hoped to see more of Tarquin but, to her astonishment, when she ran into him in Front Square, he barely acknowledged her. When she noticed the first sign that something might be amiss, she gave it little thought and it was only the following month that she became alarmed. She went to a doctor in Harold’s Cross. When the doctor explained her condition, she became very scared and did not know where to turn but after a few days decided that she had better tell Tarquin. She dropped him a note asking him to meet her in Slattery’s pub.
By the time he arrived, she had already had two gin and tonics and then she just told him straight out.
‘What’s that to do with me?’ he said. ‘From what I know, it’s not here that you should be drinking gin, but in a hot bath.’
At that he walked out and there was the end of it.
‘It’s a love child,’ said Lydia. ‘That’s what it is.’
‘I want to sleep now,’ said Julia. ‘I’m very, very weary. Can I stay here for tonight?’
Lydia tucked her up, climbed into bed beside her, and turned out the light.
‘I’m going to be an aunt,’ she thought. ‘“Aunt Lydia” or will it be “Auntie Lydia”? Both sound nice.’
9
Silence to the Grave
‘JULIA SAYS IT happens with girls,’ Lydia said to her father in the hope that he would not probe further into the cause of his elder daughter’s indisposition.
It was after all true, Lydia reasoned with herself, it did only happen to girls although that was not what she meant when she said it. Wise beyond her sixteen years, she recognised that the episode was an occasion which called for her to dissemble.
‘She’s just exhausted,’ she added when she saw the look of concern on her Pappy’s face. ‘Exhausted,’ she repeated, ‘a good rest is all that she needs.’
Willis decided to be satisfied.
‘Some “women’s business”,’ he thought, and he did not enquire any further. Nor did he insist that Dr Knox should be called. He went up and sat beside Julia during the morning and tried to chat to her about the plans for the dance; but when she did not respond much and appeared to be drowsy, he left the room.
‘It’s just some “fly in the ointment”,’ he said to himself, ‘she’ll soon be back on form.’ But ‘the ointment’ in which Julia found herself was considerably more unguent than such preparations normally are and, as for extracting herself from it, that was to demand a delicacy of effort and degree of ingenuity that went well beyond the ordinary.
Julia knew, she told Lydia, from rumours in Trinity that there were some places even in Dublin where girls in her condition might go and have things cleared up; but the rumours left no doubt that this option was very dangerous. Some students, finding themselves in a similar predicament, had been known to brazen it out and mortify their parents by getting married in the Registry Office in Kildare Street; but even if this had been a possibility for Julia, and owing to Tarquin’s attitude it was not, she would never have been courageous enough to pursue it. The possibility of going to England and, unknown to anyone, sitting it out until the baby was born in some care home for what Lydia carelessly referred to as ‘fallen women’ until the baby was born and then having the infant adopted, was another alternative. As the sisters circled the various choices hour after hour, day after day, until Lydia was thoroughly worn out, both girls always came back to a consensus that this was the best solution and all that remained in question was how the news would be broken to their father, if at all.
Lydia felt that the shame of what had befallen his daughter would greatly affect and upset their father and she did not want him to be told but Julia was insistent that there was no alternative.
‘I’ll need money,’ she said, ‘Pappy will have to know.’
But, as it transpired, Pappy did not ‘have to know’.
Julia, without sharing her thoughts with Lydia or even consulting her sister about her idea, came up with a scheme – as dramatic and brazen as anything even she had ever contrived – which would alleviate her situation, satisfy her self-esteem, and solve her quandary conclusively.
It was dinnertime on the Thursday following her woebegone arrival at Knockfane the previous Saturday when Julia came downstairs for the first time. Lydia and her father were already seated in the dining room and, when Julia walked in, they were astounded. Not only did she appear quite well, but she was also fully restored. That is to say, her makeup was all in place and she was dressed in what she called her ‘country informals’: riding breeches (although she did not ride), a shirt and tie, and a well-cut tweed jacket. She looked quite splendid.
‘It’s great to have you back among us, Miss Julia,’ Rose said when she came in with a shepherd’s pie. ‘But Lord knows you’ve been a proper little soldier all week and God in his mercy was at
