Hush Hush 13
"Excuse me? I'm quite sure I have misunderstood completely what you're saying." Patsy shook her head as if clearing it.
"You heard me right Pats." Delia assured, perched on the arm of the sofa beside Patsy now, giving her just a little room to process.
"He's a girl, a woman?" Patsy checked, all astonishment.
"Yes." Keep it simple.
"And he's pregnant?!"
"Very." Delia agreed with a sharp nod.
"I don't...I don't know...how?"
"The usual way Pats. I know it's difficult to get your head around." Delia sympathised.
"But he and Shirley. They're together. They're a couple." Patsy pointed out.
"Well that part I didn't think you'd struggle with." Delia commented wryly.
"You mean…"
"They're like us." Delia supplied helpfuly.
"They are not like us!" Patsy protested with something of a guffaw.
"They're both women and they love each other. I thought that was us?" Delia frowned a little.
"But why? Why has she been pretending all this time?!"
Delia shrugged. "I don't know. I expect he has a lot of reasons. Safety? to protect Shirley? to keep them hidden... or maybe…" Delia had been thinking this over for the last 24 hours. Trying to find some understanding herself. "Maybe he just feels better that way."
"What do you mean by that?" Patsy asked quietly, moving from the sofa to retrieve her cigarettes and knowing that just this once Delia would not make her sit by the open window.
"You know. Like at Gateways, some of the girls in suits, well they look like they were born for it. If you put them in a dress it just wouldn't look right, they'd be wretched. Don't you feel so much more yourself in your slacks? You've always said..."
"That is hardly the same!" Patsy objected, hands quickly mounting her own hips. "This is a complete deception about a whole identity. I don't know why you insist on defending her."
"Think about it Pat's we are hardly the best people to judge when it comes to deceptions."
"What we do in private is nobody's business, but this… this is something else…" Patsy persisted. "You can't just choose to be a man to make life a little easier."
Delia said nothing, she wasn't about to argue the rights and wrongs right now it would be pointless.
"You said you found out because she was unwell?" Patsy recalled suddenly.
"Yes. She looks to have mastitis, but I've not seen it before the birth before."
"It can happen. Ironically even men can get mastitis. But she must be… she's far along? How has she been getting away with it? Going to work? If those men at the docks found out…" Patsy didn't finish, she didn't have to.
"She's been hiding it well. She isn't very big considering how far along she seems to be. She can hardly hide it now though, she's going to have to stay hidden until the baby comes.. She's been wearing bandages...around her chest…"
Patsy shot a look at Delia. "She can't do that!"
"I've warned them. Shirley is going to speak to him." Delia explained.
"I can't believe that Shirley would be complicit in this. Tony really has such a hold over her." Patsy said disapprovingly.
"No Pats. Shirley loves Tony, she really does. He didn't want to take her away from her family but she wouldn't let him go without her. I can see how much they love each other. If nothing else they've told us has been true… that is." Delia promised.
"If he's putting the health of the baby at risk then we shall be forced to tell someone." Patsy warned seriously.
"He isn't and of course we would." Delia agreed quickly. "Take a look yourself, I'm sure they would both be reassured by you examining him."
"I very much doubt that Delia." Patsy huffed as she exhaled a cloud of smoke and felt almost instantly calmer.
"Please. I'd like you to look at him. Check on the baby. But only if you feel you can, without…" Delia trailed off, looking uncomfortable, her hands twisted together, her eye's jerking away.
"Judging?" Patsy finished. "I've seen a lot since I came to Poplar Delia and I think maintaining professionalism is something I've just about got a handle on."
"Sorry. I know that." Delia assured. "You'll see him tomorrow then?"
"Of course." The redhead agreed finally.
Delia got up now too and wrapped her arms around her girlfriend with a relieved sigh. "Thank you Pats, I wanted to tell you the minute I found out."
"Then why didn't you?"
"I knew you'd be upset and I wanted to get my own head around it first." Delia explained.
"And have you? Are you telling me you understand it?" Patsy asked as she held her cigarette pointed away from the woman holding onto her.
"I'm trying to." Delia admitted wearily.
xXx
Patsy had swept into the room without batting an eyelid of course and begun taking her instruments from her bag as she greeted Shirley and Tony with the polite tone of any other patient.
"Your blood pressure seems normal and baby's heartbeat sounds good and strong." She informed the couple as they waited for her verdict.
Tony smiled a softer smile than she had ever seen on him and Patsy wondered if that was her imagination prompted by her new knowledge or if the fact that he was so obviously pregnant now had begun to soften him in a new way.
"You'll have to be seen regularly now and I could do with a urine sample." Patsy announced as she placed an empty pot on the dresser.
"Can you?" Shirley asked hopefully. "Can you come regularly?"
"I take it you don't mean to register with the doctor or come to the clinic?" Patsy asked Tony directly, her disapproval evident in her tone.
"No." Tony replied guiltily, not meeting her pointed stare.
"Then I shall come as often as I can but I don't mind telling you that once again you have put Delia and I in rather a predicament. Neither one of us can take the responsibility for your baby's care if you won't see a doctor." The redhead folded her arms across her chest.
"We're not asking for a midwife." Tony spoke up suddenly. It was the most Delia had heard him say in the last two days. "We're asking for a friend."
Delia noticed the tiniest flicker in Patsy's composure, a twitch at the corner of her mouth before she stretched out her jaw.
"We're here for now." Delia stepped in, pushing off from her place on the wall. "But we leave for Wales in a few days time."
Shirley shot a look of panic at the bed and then back to Delia. "You're going home." She shook her head as she remembered something Delia had mentioned days ago. "How long will you be gone?"
"Until after Christmas." Delia replied. "We'll be gone for just over a week."
Xxx
"Do you think the baby will come before Christmas?"
"You know I can't say Deels. Baby's head isn't engaged. Birth isn't imminent. But she certainly hasn't long to go. Still if the child is anywhere near as pig headed and stubborn as it's mother..."
"It could be a while. Perhaps we'd be back in time." Delia suggested.
"It's very possible." Patsy shrugged.
"We could ask Trixie to…"
"They aren't going to want to involve anyone else and to be honest Delia neither do I, it wouldn't be fair…"
"You're right." Delia nodded, mind made up. "That decides it then."
"What? Delia what are you planning?!"
"They're coming with us." Delia announced.
"Deels?! You must be out of your mind!" Patsy exclaimed. ""She can't travel all that way in her state."
"Of course he can, we're not going via donkey. It's a few hours by train and my dad is picking us up from the station." The Welsh nurse reasoned.
"That will be cosy if she gives birth in your father's Ford Anglia."
"At least he'd have someone there, both of us, if something went wrong Pat's, If there were complications and we were away..." Delia fretted.
"What would your mother make of it? The four of us for Christmas?" The thought almost cheered her as she imagined Mrs Busby trying to deal with sullen Tony, it might after all take some of the heat off her.
"She'd be the perfect hostess and nothing less. It's Christmas Pats, she wouldn't turn anyone away and beside she always cooks for a few too many. I'll let her know before we get there."
"She'll have to travel as a woman." Patsy pointed out.
"He won't like that." Delia stated.
"She doesn't have a choice. It's too risky otherwise Deels."
"I'll talk to him." Delia promised. "They may not even come."
"Honestly, I don't know how I let you talk me into things, I doubt that they will fair any better." Patsy remarked with a sigh.
Xxx
They lay side by side in the darkness, each aware that neither was asleep.
"Do you think we could do it? Carry it off I mean? Being a man."
"I shouldn't say so. You are certainly all woman Deels. I know. I've checked, more than once in fact." Patsy's head turned to grin at Delia through the darkness.
"Cheeky." Delia giggled as Patsy moved her hand to Delia's chest just to double check and Delia playfully slapped it away. "Really though. What do you think it would be like? How do you think people would treat you?"
"I suppose it would allow one certain freedoms, liberation even." Patsy admitted.
"I think you'd make a swell gent Pats. You'd be very dapper." Delia sounded excited at her fantasy and curled up on her side her legs tangling with Patsy's longer limbs.
"Yes. Well. Even if that were so… you wouldn't want me if I were a man would you? Isn't that rather the point?" Patsy checked.
"But you wouldn't be, not really, it would be pretend, a sort of acting I suppose." Delia moved into the crook of Patsy's arm, her head on her love's shoulder.
"You think you'd like that?" Patsy asked uncertain.
"I don't know." Delia shrugged. "There might be something quite thrilling about being out and about arm in arm, everyone knowing we were a couple and not minding in the least."
"Well, I'm sure I wouldn't have the stomach for it Delia, I'd be terrified of being discovered." Patsy declared with a very furrowed brow.
"Maybe being a man would give you more confidence, you could just hit someone on the nose if they looked at us the wrong way." Delia delivered a kiss to the edge of Patsy's mouth as she teased her. " I used to love to run around with the boys in the village and when I got to 6 or 7 that started to be the wrong thing to do, I had to play nicely with the other girls and learn how to be a lady. I longed to be off with the boys."
"I can imagine, a boisterous little Delia with grazed knees and sand in her hair." Patsy ran her finger through Delia's locks almost as if she could see traces even now.
"I think if I could do it, even just for a day, I would. I'd walk in a man's shoes." Delia decided suddenly.
"Well at least they'd be comfortable shoes, no heels. But if you're trying to get me to understand Tony, I'll confess I find it difficult, still... I will try. If they are going to come with us on this trip then I shall make the best of it." Patsy assured.
Delia held Patsy tightly and nuzzled into her neck. "Thank you Pats."
Xxx
A/N- Thanks for reading. Reviews always welcome. xx