July 1954
She makes a point of meeting Cosima's train, of course Cosima must spend the night in a hotel, but at least they'll have time together. Time to do whatever they can. The station isn't terribly busy, but she cannot contain her nervousness.
"Delphine!" Cosima greets her cheerily. Waving her over, as if this fiction is reality. As if they are really just old friends, here to catch up and have lunch or dinner, to talk over glasses of wine and discuss their homes and husbands.
"I am so glad to see you." Delphine embraces Cosima quickly, leading her from the station. It's mid afternoon and all she can think of is Cosima.
"I… I was worried you wouldn't want me to come." Cosima tells her softly as Delphine leads her through the station, a small bag carried in one hand.
"Of course I wanted you to come here… I just don't know if I can give you what you want." Delphine gives Cosima's hand a brief squeeze. Afraid to linger too long.
"Don't worry about that." Cosima assures her. "Can we get some lunch? I am starving."
"Of course, ma chérie." Delphine assures her beloved. She takes Cosima to a café, quickly ordering food for both of them in rapid French.
"I.. I missed you so." Cosima admits slowly, stirring her coffee absentmindedly with a spoon. She picks at her food quietly. Maybe she is feeling uncertain too. Understandably.
"I missed you too." Delphine tries not to tear up, tries to make she and Cosima look as normal, as respectable, as possible in public.
But when she looks at Cosima, her love sits heavily on her heart. This trying to be normal, or at least appear normal is extra torturous in Cosima's presence.
"Take me home, Delphine." Cosima begs in a whisper when they're done.
They catch a taxi cab back to Delphine's home. And she leads Cosima inside, pretending that she's any other guest. That drinks, dinner, and dull conversation will follow.
Cosima's hand squeezes hers again and her heart jumps. It's never enough.
They leave Cosima's bag in the front hall, knowing that she'll need it later. That this time, will be so brief. Cosima must leave before 6 pm. And it's already past 3.
"It's alright, Delphine." Cosima whispers softly even as she follows her wordlessly up the stairs.
The bedding is clean, Cosima looks at the bed and has the sense to at least look downwards.
"Is there another room?" Cosima asks.
"This is the spare room." Delphine assures her. "He is never in here with me."
Cosima leans in for a slow kiss, it makes her feel uneasy, she feels Cosima's tears before she sees them. It makes her want to cry too.
"I'm going to make love to you." Cosima promises, breaking the kiss.
"You know what this will make us?" Delphine asks Cosima softly, hovering in the spare bedroom.
"I know." Cosima tells her without fear. "I love you… I love you…" Cosima approaches her slowly, before reaching out to hold her.
"I need you…" Delphine cries, clutching at Cosima. She undoes the buttons of Cosima's dress, lifting it off as soon as she can. Cosima is the same, looks the same, feels the same.
"You are my beloved." Cosima tells her. She strips off her clothes, unfastening undergarments without hesitation. "You are my love. You are everything that matters."
She sighs, letting Cosima's words soothe her, letting Cosima undress her. But Cosima says nothing about her belly or swollen breasts. Cosima merely continues kissing and loving her as if she doesn't notice. Cosima's hands neither avoids nor fixate, she dips briefly to kiss her there, drawing a sensitive nipple into her mouth.
She hisses and gasps, sitting on the bed, scooting her body backwards.
"How can you? How can you still do this?"
"Because I love you." Cosima answers her softly, guiding her back onto the bed.
"Tu m'aimes." Delphine repeats, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Knowing she will plunge herself deeper into sin for this. She will ruin herself for this. Cosima's fingers find her, stroking her sex before slipping in easily. Her abundant arousal making it so easy.
"You're inside me." Delphine sighs once Cosima's fingers have slipped inside. How this can feel so wonderful she cannot understand. She craves more, begging and rocking her hips.
"You feel the same." Cosima speaks without thinking. "I wasn't sure if you would."
"I am the same. I love you the same."
"You are." Cosima agrees, working gently inside her. And it's easy, easy to kiss her and moan, to move and crest under Cosima's perfect fingers.
She pulls Cosima up when they're through, kissing her soundly before urging her up further, guiding hands to the headboard as she moves to slip underneath her. To give herself to Cosima in a way she'll never let him have.
She takes Cosima in her mouth, sucking and kissing, playing with her with her tongue. It's enough, enough to taste Cosima, to love her. She wishes to melt here, to dissolve into her lover, to be joined. Cosima's arousal covers her face, the taste and smell is everywhere and for a few blissful moments she barely has to exist at all.
"Delphine! Delphine!" Cosima cries out above her, clinging to the headboard as she rocks her hips down. Cosima possesses no hesitance, no guilt, no reluctance for their love, for their pleasure.
Cosima's release makes them both cry, in pleasure and anguish. Cosima settles down in her arms, only briefly looking at the clock.
"Je t'aime." Delphine sighs, gathering her lover in her arms. She cannot stop wanting this, whether or not she ever lets herself have it again changes nothing of what she wants. Of what she is. Or how much she loves Cosima.
"I need you. I need this…. oh Delphine, please!" Cosima begins to cry in her arms. And it makes her tear up too.
"You have me." Delphine finally smiles through her tears. Even if this is the last time, she was with Cosima. She got to hold her. To pleasure her. To know that she is loved.
"Run away with me. Get on the train with me tomorrow." Cosima begs her as soon as they're done. They cuddle close together and she knows the baby is kicking, knows that Cosima can feel it. Knows that it is a reminder of how brief this time is. How she can never truly be Cosima's again. Maybe they have tainted it.
"But… I am having a baby." Delphine cries, tearing up. She sobs audibly, crying into Cosima's hair.
"You could still have the baby." Cosima tells her softly. "We'll...we'll get a pram and we'll raise it. You and me. I will help you. We can get away with it. We'll tell everyone the father is dead. I'll leave John… I need to leave anyway."
She shakes her head. Cosima cannot possibly be that naive. "Cosima, we couldn't."
"Just run away with me." Cosima pleads. "You can have the baby in Toronto. Or anywhere. I'll be with you. We'll find a little town and hideout. Open a bakery. Anything."
"I don't even want the baby! I want you." Delphine exclaims finally before clasping her hand over her mouth.
"Not even a little?" Cosima regards her curiously. "Delphine this baby will be at least half as wonderful as you are. It's yours. It's ok to love it."
"But I don't! I don't even know if I can."
"Then we'll give it away." Cosima tells her just as calmly. "Someone will want it."
"I can't do that either."
"You can." Cosima urges her. "We'll go away together and after the baby comes, you can decide if you want it or not."
"I will spend the night with you." Delphine decides on a whim. "I'll pack up a back and go to the hotel with you. You check in, and I will join you."
"You will?" Cosima's eyes widen, but the look on her face is a surprised delight. "But what about…"
"I can deal with him." Delphine decides suddenly. This… this will be worth it. Even if only for one night.
Once Cosima has gone, she doesn't go home. Instead she makes her way to her family's home church. There is something else she needs to do. Something she will do every year.
She enters the church, and heads past the wooden pews directly into the confessional. She waits a moment for the priest to speak. Ensuring that it is the same one.
"Je suis encore homosexuelle." Delphine speaks when asked to list her sins. She wants this fool to know what he's done. What he has turned her into. What a sham her marriage is. "Je suis adultère et homosexuelle."
"Delphine Cormier?" The priest recognizes her voice, and begins to chide her. He suggests penance, appropriate penance for her sins. Prayers upon prayers. He knows too, that she is pregnant. Believing that that will fix her. Make her want something else.
But she wants him to know, wants him to know that he has not fixed a thing. That he's done nothing more than construct a prison for a woman who once wanted solitude more than love. Wanted to simply live in peace with her beloved.
When she returns home she finds Thomas waiting for her.
"Where have you been?"
"Out." Delphine answers simply. He has no right to demand this of her. He's done no different.
"Where were you?"
"With a friend. I slept over." Delphine tries again.
Thomas angrily shakes his head. "You need to be here. What kind of wife stays out all night? And you're pregnant."
"I know that." Delphine refuses to answer the first question.
"You have an aunt in Trois-Rivieres?"
"Yes, Matante Marguerite." Delphine responds puzzled for a moment. She thinks they'd met at the wedding and maybe she had told him about spending time there when she was young.
"Pack your bags. You're going to Trois-Rivieres. See your family. Come back before the baby comes."
Delphine's jaw drops. "You're sending me away? Why not to my own parents'?"
"Because I don't know what you've been doing Delphine. So I will send you away. Today." Thomas sighs into his hands. "Go. Get packed."
Delphine walks off surprised, she must get word to Cosima quickly. Must at least mail her a letter telling her not to write again until she's heard from Delphine first. Must find a way to protect Cosima. And herself.
"No…" Cosima breathes looking at the calendar again. How could she be five weeks late? How could this have happened. She'd refused to pay attention when her cycle had failed to appear, too busy trying to avoid John's advances and try to figure a way out of her marriage. A way to convince Delphine that the best course of action was just to run away together. No matter what she wrote, she couldn't find anything good enough to send. Good enough to convince Delphine that they must run away together.
"What is it?" John asks, looking up from his breakfast of toast and jam.
"I… I …" Cosima panics. She doesn't want a baby. Definitely not. She doesn't want to be stuck here a moment longer. She wants to leave.
"Cosima?"
"I think I need to see the doctor." Cosima says finally.
"Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it." Cosima responds as if this closes the issue. She certainly doesn't want to be right about this. There has to be some other explanation. It had only happened twice. That couldn't be enough.
John regards her quizzically, a piece of toast still in his mouth. "What do you mean you don't want to talk about it? I'm your husband. I have a right to know these things."
Cosima shakes her head. Surely, surely John couldn't have guessed.
"Are you pregnant, Cosima?" He asks finally. "Is that what all this is about? Why you don't feel well? Why you cry?"
"I… don't know?" She responds weakly.
"We are married after all. It's absolutely fine if you are." John takes this in stride and continues munching on his toast as a horrible terror fills her body.
She too, will be trapped. By a baby. Cosima cannot entertain her fantasies if both she and Delphine are with child. There would be no one who could work, could support them. No shield of respectability. No spinster school teacher helping her widowed friend in some nowhere town.
No nothing. Cosima is suddenly entirely certain, she can picture her unwanted future too clearly. Teaching only until Christmas and then stuck in this house growing ever rounder until her child is born.
At least her parents would be pleased when she presented them with their grandchild.