“Maybe,” Bee said. “But maybe not, you’ve been stretched slowly over a long time when we’ve made love.”
“This is just so weird! It’s the strangest thing I have ever done,” Michael said. “It’s very nice of you to ask me, but I want you to remember that I find this extremely peculiar.”
Michael’s hands were rougher than Bee’s hands, but Bee was there as well. Michael’s penis felt strange, and she would have liked to have examined it better—she hadn’t seen one since she had been a small child on the beach and bathing with her brother. It felt like a little animal, damp-nosed and snub. The sensation of having it inside her was peculiar but not unpleasant, but quite different from fingers. Michael’s weight on top of her as he rocked to and fro was the least familiar thing. She was so glad that Bee was there too.
She felt wet and sticky afterwards, and did not wash immediately because she was afraid of washing out all the sperm. There was no blood.
The next day Michael went back to London. They had an arrangement for him to come and visit them in Cambridge for a weekend at the end of October.
Within a couple of weeks Pat was feeling queasy in the mornings and feeling a bloating in her breasts. “Some people really do get pregnant the very first time,” she said to Bee. She worked hard on the revisions to her books but felt almost breathless with excitement. She counted months in her head. The baby would be born in May, and Easter was late, so she should arrange to stop teaching at Christmas. She ate fresh fruit and vegetables and fish, which she found more digestible than meat. She went down to Naples and did the research for a new guide book which she planned to write in the spring after she stopped teaching but before the baby was born.
On their last day in Florence before returning to England for the new academic year, Pat again went alone to the Duomo and gave thanks. Most of the church was open to visitors, with just one small section reserved for prayer. As she got up from her knees she noticed a memorial on the wall nearby with a familiar sculpted head. It was the tomb of Marsilio Ficino, the translator of Plato, the librarian of the Laurentian Library, the tutor of Lorenzo di Medici, one of the central figures of Renaissance Florence. “If the child is a boy, I will call him after Ficino,” she vowed.
They went back to England for the new academic year. Bee had a heavy research and teaching load and was kept busy in her spare time writing papers for journals. Pat saw her doctor, an elderly man, who confirmed her pregnancy. “Do you have plans to marry, Miss Cowan?” he asked.
“No.” It took a lot of effort for Pat not to soften that negative, but she did not.
“Are you happy about the pregnancy?” the doctor went on.
Abortion was illegal, but possible, she had always known that. “Yes, I am very happy about it. This was a planned baby.”
The doctor looked at her sharply and shook his head. “Then we’ll be wanting to make monthly appointments with the midwife and to decide on a hospital for the birth. I recommend the Mill Road Maternity Hospital. May, you say? I’ll also give you a diet sheet. And you’ll want to start ante-natal classes in a month or so. Meanwhile, try to get enough exercise—swimming is good.”
She saw the headmistress and gave her notice for after Christmas. “If you ever want to come back we’d be happy to have you,” the headmistress said. “We’d have strongly encouraged you to apply for the Head of Department post next year when Miss Martin retires.”
At the end of October, Michael came down as arranged. “I told my mother I was going to photograph Cambridge in the hope of a newspaper assignment, so I’ve brought my cameras,” he said.
“Not the best time of year for the garden,” Bee said. There was an icy wind blowing, stripping the leaves from the silver birch and the willow that stood at the sides of their gate.
“Nor politically,” he said.
“Politically?” Pat asked. She hadn’t been paying any attention to the news. What was going on inside her seemed so absorbing it was the most she could do to keep up with marking. Besides, the copyedits on the new editions had arrived the week before, and she had been swamped.
“The Americans and the Russians, over Cuba,” Michael explained, when he saw that she really didn’t know what he meant. “I thought the whole world was on the edge of their seats about that.”
“It’s just saber-rattling,” Bee said. “They’ll back down, surely.”
“It’s a dangerous world to be having a baby in,” Pat said, hugging her stomach.
Michael looked at her. “You really are having a baby then?”