Chapter 15

Friday 3rd January 1986

After such a momentous announcement she glanced at my face, then looked down. What she saw, I have no idea, but the shock to me must have been obvious.

“You’re sure?” I said, but my question was so manifestly stupid, I mentally kicked myself and went on without waiting for an answer, “Of course you’re sure. How long have you known?”

“Last week. Before Christmas, I had missed two periods so I got a pregnancy test yesterday. It was positive. I’ve also been feeling queasy in the mornings, and my tits are sensitive. I went to the doctor’s this morning and she confirmed it.”

She looked up intently at me again, this time she seemed to be trying to read my feelings from my expression. I think confusion adequately sums up my feelings at that point, and my thoughts were pretty chaotic, so there was an uncomfortable silence during which Helen looked increasingly distressed.

“David?” she queried, fear in her eyes.

“God Helen! I’m just trying to process what you’ve told me.” I told her with some agitation. Looking back on it I’m surprised I took it as calmly as I did. In fact I felt happy at the news: we were together and I was earning good money, and I was going to be a dad! Then I wondered how she felt about it.

“I suppose it’s a bit of a shock, but it’s wonderful news; we’re having a baby! How do you feel about it?”

“I was worried how you’d take it and I wouldn’t have planned for a family so soon, but I’ve always wanted children. Now I know you’re happy, we’ll cope. But there’s something–”

I wasn’t listening, now I knew she was happy about it, my mind was galloping. “I suppose the pill failed? Well, if you have sex, you have to accept there’s always a chance–”

“David listen to me.”

“River House is no place to bring up a family though, so we’ll need to find a house to buy. I’m making good money and I’m sure I can get a decent mortgage on a house fairly easily–”

“David!“

I was brought up short by her shout, and this was where Sod enacted his law. Our new path of life would have been straightforward but that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?

“David,” she said more calmly but still looking worried, “it’s not as easy as that. There’s something else.”

“Ugh?” Eloquence often departs at a time of crisis. Not as easy? I had started to feel good, nay excited about it. We would find a way. A family! I had begun to smile – until her next statement when Sod’s hammer fell.

“Darling, the thing is, I don’t know if you’re the father.” Tears began to fall in her distress. All the plans came crashing down.

“What? Not the ... I don’t understand. I ... I mean who?” Now I was thoroughly confused.

“Barry.” She sagged in her chair. “It could be Barry.”

“You’ve been seeing Barry?” I was astounded and leapt to the wrong conclusion. “During the week? And then coming to me at weekends? What–?”

“No!“ she shouted. “How could you even think that? Just listen!”

I was beginning to feel disappointment in her, sadness, and tendrils of angry resentment. “I think I’d better, and this had better be good, Helen.”

The tears were coming more freely now, but her look was aggrieved. She took a deep sobbing breath and continued. “The doctor reckoned I was just about into the third month of the pregnancy. If you count back, that puts conception towards the end of October.”

She stopped and gazed through her tears at me, her eyes begging me to make the connection. I did see it immediately: it was after all my great triumph, that last Thursday in October – getting her to see the truth that we were not related after all and could have been a couple all along.

“So around the time of the wedding?” I asked by way of checking.

“That’s right. You know with the pill I’m taking, I take it for three weeks and then there’s a week without pills?”

“Go on!”

“The weekend before you came was hectic with lots to prepare, and mother was panicking and there were too many things to do, and in addition I’d finished a cycle the Thursday before that weekend and was off pills.

“Well on Wednesday, the day before you came, Barry and I knew we wouldn’t be together on Thursday or Friday nights, and we’d not been together since the preceding Friday, so...”

“You had sex with Barry that Wednesday night,” I said bleakly, to save her from having to say it.

“Yes, and we made love again on Thursday morning.”

“But you were still protected even during that week.”

“Yes. Thursday was my last pill free day before a new pill cycle. The problem was that you arrived that evening.”

“I don’t see–”

“You will,” she said grimly, and set her face firmly. “After you made your intervention on Thursday evening there was utter chaos: everything was turned upside down.

“You had gone so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to talk to you, and I was distraught and panicking, and so was Mum for a different reason, there was a lot of shouting and arguing and screaming, the meal was cancelled and we went home.

“In the car Barry was asking about you and I was totally confused. I’d told him about our problems so he told me to go to bed then come and see you on the Friday morning, then to phone him and come back to talk. He was the only one with a clear head.

“I went to bed in tears of despair, and crashed out exhausted. I woke up on Friday morning at five, got in the car and came straight here.

“Then there was our argument, our journey to York to see Barry and my parents, and long talks with my parents after you’d gone, until I fell into bed early on Saturday morning. Then there was the reception and meal and my phone call to you on Saturday night.

“After that call I decided that since I had a fortnight’s holiday for the honeymoon that wasn’t going to happen any more, I’d come over. I just couldn’t wait a week! (Barry went on our honeymoon holiday with a mate of his! – I told him to – silly to waste it).

“I came back here on that Sunday as you will remember, I certainly do!” She grinned wanly at me. “Then I went back to York.

“It was Monday morning when I went into the bathroom that I realised I’d missed three days’ pills. I phoned the surgery and they said start taking the pills again and I should use condoms for the next week. I told them about Barry and they said the morning after pill was unlikely to work so late.

“I really intended to tell you, but by Friday and all the excitement in the House it slipped my mind until we were on the holiday.

“Anyway, I was back on the pill so I thought I was pretty safe. I phoned the surgery when I got back and they said there was a good chance everything would be fine since I was back on the pill, and it was too late anyway to take any further action other than a termination, should I be pregnant.

“When I started to feel sick in the mornings and my tits felt tender, I began to worry.”

She stopped and sighed. “A stupid mistake. It’s all my fault. So...”

I thought over what she had told me. No matter how it happened, she was pregnant, but from what she said, I could just as easily be the father. Indeed, Barry had had sex twice, but I’d had it twice on Sunday as well, and then much more often when we were on holiday, so the odds were in my favour, if favour were the correct term to use in this case!

Helen had slumped back into her chair and seemed content to let me think things out. In fact she read my mind. (What was new?)

“Yes,” she said desolately. “Think it through. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, and mentally began to get back to the issues on hand. Then I decided against that plan.

“On second thoughts, I think it’s better if we talk, and i think out loud” I said. “First of all, and I think you’re well aware of this, I could just as easily be the father as Barry, in fact more probably. He made love to you on Wednesday and Thursday, when you hadn’t missed any pills, whereas for us it was twice on Sunday when you had missed them, then again from Friday onwards.”

“No matter who’s the father, David, I’m keeping the baby. No termination. No adoption. You and me, we’re both results of chaotic so-called family lives, and I’m not going to allow any child of mine to travel the road that was forced on us. I don’t want any invasive tests on the baby either; if we need to know which of you is the father, we can wait until the baby is born.”

“I completely agree,” I concurred. “There are quite accurate paternity tests nowadays, so there’s a good chance we can find out for certain once the baby is born.”

“Do we need to?” she asked. Then looked horrified. “You’re telling me that if the baby’s Barry’s, you won’t accept it? We would have no future?”

I didn’t need to think, I was already shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Helen, we are together come what may. Nothing is going to separate us any more. So anything we decide takes that for granted: we decide together and we stay together – unless you want different?”

“No! That’s what I want as well.”

“So we have decisions to make.”

“You mean ... I mean, are you set on knowing if you’re the father?”

“If I don’t know for certain, if we don’t find out, I suppose I’ll always wonder. I think it may subtly affect my attitude to the baby. There would always be that niggling doubt, which I think is worse than knowing. I will love our baby no matter what, but I don’t want to be always wondering. I can’t just pretend; I can’t block it out.

“Then there is the question of whether Barry has any rights in this. We are sticking together, so we are going to bring up the child no matter who’s the father. Is it better that Barry knows if the child is his? Or do we keep it from him? Do we put the possibility that the child is his to him, or do we wait until after the birth and find out. Then what do we do?

“If I’m the father, it’s pretty straightforward, you can continue to work until your contract ends and your training’s finished, but this house is unsuitable for bringing up children, so we’d have to buy a house, furnish it and get married, though not necessarily in that order. In fact, we’ll have to get a house regardless, since we’re going to bring the child up.”

“But what if you know the baby is Barry’s? Where would that leave you? Won’t you have a different attitude to him or her from our own children? And if you act as the child’s father and Barry is the real father, surely he’d have right of access?

“On the face of it, it would be easier if he didn’t know, but I don’t know whether I could do that to him.”

I had not got round to thinking about that dilemma; what I was sure of was that I would bring the child up as my own: even if the baby were not mine, it was Helen’s, and it would be easy to love whom she loved. She was right, the child was entitled to a secure and loving family around it and I resolved he or she would have that.

I reasoned that if we had discovered I was infertile and she had IVF from a donor, would I treat the child as my own? Of course I would. Knowing Barry was the father really should make no difference, except the knowledge that the child was conceived in love. I immediately felt better, at least for a time.

But whether to tell Barry... ? It then came clear to me: first we needed to know who was the father, and that would not be until after the birth. Only then, and only if Barry was the father would we need to face the other dilemma. Cross bridges when you come to them.

Helen had been sitting patiently waiting for some response from me.

I think I had my ducks in row.

“So,” I began. “One, The baby will be born and brought up by us regardless. Two, we are together whether or not the baby is mine. Three, we do not know whose the baby is, and won’t until after the birth, and only if Barry is the father do we then need to face the question of what we do about that. Four, now we know you’re pregnant, we need to find a place to live.”

This got a wide smile from her and she came and sat next to me on the bed, hugging herself to my side.

“Helen,” I said. “I am going to assume I am the father until proved otherwise. In any case, it will be our baby.”

“Do we need to get married?” she asked, rather timidly, I thought.

“No one worries about about illegitimacy any more,” I said. “It might affect what surname goes on the birth certificate – it would be yours if we aren’t married, but it could be yours in any case. If you want to marry before the birth, we will have to get going right away. You would be marrying with a baby bump!”

Helen thought for a while. “I was thinking about this before I knew I was pregnant. My parents would expect me to take the surname of my husband, which in my case is my birth name as well. I even think I could return my name to Evans even before we marry, and the baby’s surname will then be Evans in any case. I don’t care if Barry is the father, your name goes down as the father on the birth certificate. We do that before we find out who the father is.”

“Well.” I said with a laugh, “we seem to have settled into parenthood remarkably quickly! Is your mind at rest now?”

She climbed onto me, straddling my thighs and leaning in for a kiss. “There’s nothing we can do about the baby, we just have to adjust to the fact that we won’t have any married time to ourselves before having children, so we’ll have to adjust to that future. We had that year here together; that will have to suffice for our alone time as a couple. As long as we’re together I don’t really care what happens. We can have our family while we’re young enough to enjoy them.”

“So about getting married?” I asked her. It had to be her choice.

“I want to be married. We could do it in April,” she said with conviction.

“We can do it this very minute!” I quipped.

She scowled, then grinned. “Good idea! But regarding the wedding, I have one week’s holiday left owing. The office are pretty flexible about my time off since I’m a trainee. I have a wedding dress already.

“Easter is early this year, end of March, so we could look for the first Saturday in April and book a holiday the following week. I shouldn’t be showing too much by then. Training finishes in June, so I’ll have a month before the birth.”

I laughed and tickled her ribs making her squirm and giggle.

“You worked it all out before, didn’t you?” I accused her.

“It depended on how you reacted,” she said blithely. “I trusted you would react exactly as you have, so, yes, that was plan A. What I trusted would then happen would be that you’d take me to bed and roger me senseless, which you have already implied. I didn’t have a plan B!”

“Rogering can be arranged,” I said, pushing her off my lap, and holding her up as she gained her feet. Then I pushed off my trousers and underpants and slipped off my shirt. Then sat and removed trousers from ankles, shoes off feet and socks off same. Then stood naked.

“I’m ready!” I said.

She was staring at me with a wondering expression, then, looking down pointedly at my penis.

“You’re not!” she rejoined. “You need to stiffen up!”

“You need to strip, and I can assure you that stiffening will then occur without a doubt.”

Of course I was right. She slipped her sweater over her head and unclipped her bra, allowing both garments to fall to the floor while she cupped her breasts in each hand, running her thumbs over her nipples, which obligingly stood out firmly, as did my cock at the sight.

She came into my arms, rubbing herself against me, her nips pricking chest. Her hand going to my cock.

“I think you need to take off my jeans,” she said suggestively, “and slip down my little knickers. Then you can finger my clit and push your fingers into my twat while I give your cock a little wank to keep him hard.”

“If I’m stripping your body to make you naked,” I growled, “he’ll stay hard all on his own.”

“Shall I stop then?” she asked coquettishly, arching her eyebrows, and prodding me with those sharp tits.

“No,” I groaned. “You may continue as I remove your clothing.”

“Thank you sir,” she giggled, as I pushed down her jeans, which she kicked off, then I slipped my hands inside her bikini panties and stroked her rounded bottom and thighs downward before the flimsy wisps fell of their own accord. I held her hips, bent my knees and she spread her legs, pushing my cock between the petals of her sex, a half sigh, half grunt expressing her pleasure at the pressure on her ready furrow.

“I think the bed would be a good place to be now,” she suggested. I nodded and we walked, fondling each other’s bottoms as we went.

She sat on the side, then lay flat, widening her legs to display herself to me. “I would very much like you to stuff your prick up my pussy, if you don’t mind and it would please you,” she said with mock seriousness.

“I think that would please me greatly,” I replied, though a grin forced its way onto my face.

“Go on then!” she urged, my own grin allowing hers. “I think my hole is wide open for it. Would you do me from a standing position please. That would really set me on my path to pleasure, I am sure.”

We couldn’t keep the pretence up any longer and dissolved into giggles.

“Fuck me, my lover,” she said gutturally, laughing, “Ram it in, pound me, slam it into my helpless kitty.”

“Oh, yeah!” I shouted as I lined my cock with her hole and pushed hard. “Here it comes!”

“That’s it!” she agreed. “Right in! Now shag me you stud!”

All the time we were laughing, smiling, grinning, smirking as I did as I had been bid and ‘pounded’, our bodies slamming together again and again.

Helen’s smile slipped away from her as a look of concentration took its place, her eyes half lidded as she exhaled loudly with each crashing thrust. Her hands clenched on the bed sheet as her body became rigid.

“Ugh! Yes! Ugh! Here it is! Ugh! I’m coming! Oh my Lord! Oh, Fuck! Too much! Come you bastard! Come now!” All this accompanying a convulsive thrashing beneath me, her face in a rictus borne of the intensity wracking her.

I came as well, pushing as deep as I could, holding still my breath and my body, delaying the delicious moment of gushing into her until I could resist no longer, and let go.

“I feel you!” she cried. “I feel you throbbing, OH! Here I go again!” She screamed out a long wail as her eyes rolled into her head and she collapsed limp on the bed. I fell forward onto her bending at the waist, feet still on the ground, my mouth on a tit which I languidly sucked, and her hand randomly caressed my hair.

It was an odd position for us both in which to fall asleep, but we did for a short time.

We were awoken by a tapping at the door.

Nuala. “Eating in quarter of an hour,” she shouted through through the door.

“Thanks!” we shouted in unison and giggled. I stood and pulled her up off the bed.

We showered (separately) briefly, and dressed.

“Do we tell them?” Helen asked.

“D’you want to?” I parried.

“Yes, let’s!” she grinned. “It’s such a relief to have got everything sorted out – at least everything that can be sorted out.”

Dinner, in this case a nut roast from the veg side, was one of Imogen’s specialities. I noticed Helen picked at it a little then took a mouthful, and that seemed to get her going, for she finished her slice, and asked for more.

I wondered if she were having second thoughts about the announcement. Conversation flowed freely and everyone – except Helen – were relaxed after the week’s work. Helen was definitely tense.

Nuala was getting up to clear the table when Helen asked her to wait a moment, and everyone else stopped what they were doing, wondering what was going on.

Helen began, “We’ve two things to tell you all, we hope to get married in April, and I’m pregnant. The pregnancy is accidental – I missed some pills when David came and proved we’re not related. His intervention caused chaos and I missed some pills. So the baby’s due sometime in July and we decided to get married before then.”

There was a babble of delighted chatter and congratulations, so I decided to put in my two penn’th while excitement was high.

“So we’ll be looking for a house to buy as soon as possible.”

There was a sudden lull in the babble of conversation.

“You’re moving out?” gasped Imogen.

“But ... why?” asked Kim with an air of desperation.

“You sure?” asked Chris. “I mean, you run the place.”

“I can continue to ‘run the place’, as you put it, Chris,” I said. “I hope we won’t be moving far.”

“I don’t understand,” Kim repeated. “Why do you need to...”

“We have one room,” I said. “It’s not a self contained flat, Kim. It’s upstairs, the bathroom is tiny, it’s a long way from the kitchen, laundry, etc. You can’t bring up a baby here in those conditions. Babies cry – loudly, you don’t need that keeping you awake at night.”

It cast somewhat of a damper on the festivities, and we began to move to do the washing up. I noted that Nuala said nothing and looked thoughtful and upset. She had got herself engaged the previous year, and I wondered whether she was wondering if her own days in the house were numbered.

We finished the washing up and putting away, and with congratulations from them we bade everyone good night.

We planned our strategy for the weekend and then, needless to say, there was an affectionate romp with Helen before we settled to sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms.

So after breakfast we toured every estate agent we could find and collected fact sheets on a wide selection of properties which we took home and went through in detail, discarding those either beyond our financial capability or needing too much attention, in the wrong place or simply that we didn’t like the look of it.

This left us with a handful ready for Sunday, when we toured around viewing the properties from the outside, and again discarding some where the estate agent’s estimation of their attractiveness did not coincide with ours. It left six of which I would attempt to book a viewing the following weekend.

Meanwhile, Helen searched for possible venues for wedding ‘breakfasts’, and I, who seemingly had been Christened in the Church of England by my teenage mother, found a Parish Church a walking distance from the House. We agreed that we would be married where we would live. She didn’t want to be married where her previous attempt at a wedding had fallen through.