copy of the Ohserver magazine that she had pretended to read on her first visit. There were only two other patients in the surgery, sitting side by side and flicking well thumbed copies of Woman's Own and Mustrated London Unconsciously, but with deliberation, Cathy cemented their nervous communication of a desire for non-communication by sitting apart from them. Glancing up from the Observer magazine, she realised that she was sitting in exactly the same place as on her first visit three months previously.
The waiting room held an atmosphere of timelessness. Unaltered but all-knowing, the mirror still hung listlessly to one side and the anti-smoking poster continued to gradually free itself from the wall. Even the magazines, those instruments of privatisation, remained unchanged. Returning her eyes to the Observer, Cathy wondered how many others had hidden their anxieties or temporarily anaesthetised their fears in those hope creating articles and you-too-can-be-like-this advertisements. What other, unwritten, stories could the magazines have told!
Cathy was two months overdue before she went for her pregnancy test, Feeling pregnant in a way, she found difficult to articulate accurately, the positive result came as no rea surprise. What did surprise her was the pervading sense of fear that engulfed her when it was confirmed — a fear of the abortion to come, itself overshadowed by a deep and lurking questioning of why she had let herself become pregnant at all.
Abortion Always cautious, her unthinking and unspoken decision to stop taking the pill frightened her. What kind of inadequacy if inadequacy it was) could make a person refute ail rationality by such an act? Disturbed by thoughts of a bizarre and desperate need to draw attention to herself, Peter's understandAS THOUGHTS CASCADE Is over.... the doctor took her sudden appearance almost as a matter of course, as though it had somehow been anticipated. Both evidently found this meeting il anything more pleasurable than those of the past and both were disappounted when Cathy's friend arrived after only minutes, so ending for the time being the стиле внай caancc nad des lneI But Cathy had discovered where the doct ICEL drinking. and her changed accordingly The more Cathy travelled cross town to meet the doctor the their relationship developed, despite (or perhaps because of) its secrecy. Peter seemed to accept Cathy's various explanations for the increasing amount of time she spent away from him as stoically as he accepted everything, never showing a hint of disbeliel:
Pledge She knew why he was so confident: she never lied to him. They'd agreed that at the beginning no lies. And they'd always carried it through, hiding things perhaps, but never actually lying, How naive and idealistic they bad been! It was easy to have truth as an ideal when theis relatonship itself represent the epitome of all ideals. So long as the apparent harmony remained, so too did the freedom from any desire to lie. Hence the ideal of truthfulness bad neither need not occasion to he tested. It had seemed to Cathy at that time that the pledge to truth had hardly been pledge at ull, more of an aspect of something greater, beyond pledges, contracts and guarantees. No longer. Now that the ideal had ceased to exist so had the neaning of the pledge.
Cathy needed to talk to someone, preferably another woman. She tried to explain to a friend at work, but the disparging response she met sent her scurrying to the canteen. She almosi spoke to a friend of Peter's, but drew back at the last moment.
Perhaps it didn't marter, she would have to tell Peter 5000 anyway, Practical and emotional pressures forbade any alternative. Knowing the suffering it would cause him, and the awesome possibility that he for oncE wouldn't, perhaps couldn't, understand, sh determined to teil him. But how to explain, hos to cushion the blow? As gently as she knes how, she told him that it wasn't bis fault, that she didn't dislike him, didn't regret their time together, didn't even know if she wanted them to live apart. And then, uncasily, to try and convey that this other was somehow different. qualitatively different, with different feelings. different understandings, ditterent levels But she could see it didn't really work. Peter was visibly hurt. He was even more visibly batfled. A week later he moved out. Card Altbough the abruptness of Peler's departure shocked her, Cathy bad anticipated his leaving. As a last concession and show of friendship she bad decided to discontinue her journeys across town until be had grown to accept the new situation. It was her way of casing him an acceptarice of the consequences of what she had cold him. It had not heen an easy time for either of them, but it seemed the least she could do. On the day of his departure Cathy spent the hours before sleep contemplating the week just passed, being sad for Peter in his sadness bur happy at having