The Hardie Inheritance by Anne Melville

two suggestions I’d like to make. The first one concerns money. You said you didn’t have any, but have you ever considered selling any of your carvings?’
    â€˜Who’d want to buy them?’
    â€˜I consider them very fine. Full of emotion, and most pleasing to the eye. Not to everyone’s taste, of course, but it would only need one person to admire a piece. There’s another woman – does the name of Barbara Hepworth mean anything to you?’
    Grace shook her head.
    â€˜She’s also experimenting with abstract sculpture, and selling some of it. There are others, as well. A group which calls itself the Seven and Five. And one or two of the London galleries are sympathetic to new ideas. If you would like me to, I could show some of my photographs to the Leicester Galleries and ask whether they’d include you in a show. And then, you see, if they sold something, you could afford to have your pregnancy terminated. Even if you decided not to, you would have had a choice.’
    â€˜I can’t believe …’ But it was stupid to challenge Ellis’s opinion when she had no personal knowledge of the London art world. She concentrated instead on the secondary point of what she might do with money if she had it.
    The answer was surprisingly clear. She was not like littleTrish, prepared to make something and then destroy it. The pleasure of creation had always lain in the knowledge that what she made would endure and outlive her. If she felt that so strongly about a lump of stone or wood, how much more must it be true of her own baby?
    â€˜I should be very grateful for any help of that sort you could give me,’ she said. ‘I shall need money. But to buy things for the baby, not to kill it.’
    â€˜So you’re determined to go through with it?’
    â€˜I shouldn’t be sorry if there were to be some kind of accident,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m not going to the sort of doctor you mentioned; no.’
    â€˜Good. Then I come to my second suggestion. Will you marry me?’
    â€˜What did you say?’ She could hardly believe her ears.
    â€˜It’s just as well, isn’t it, that I made you sit down before I asked you. But it’s a serious question. I would very much like to marry you.’
    â€˜You hardly know me, Mr Faraday.’
    â€˜Ellis, please. I agree that our acquaintance isn’t a long one. But everything that I know, I like. I’m not pretending that this would be a love match. A marriage of convenience, I suppose you’d say – but the convenience on both sides would be very great.’
    â€˜I can see that you’d be nobly doing me a favour. Making a respectable woman of me, as they say. But I couldn’t possibly allow –’
    â€˜Put yourself in my shoes for a moment,’ he said. ‘For you, marriage would have the one small convenience of giving your baby a name. But for me …! To start with, Trish needs a woman’s care, so straightaway, you see, I’d be asking for more than you’d be getting. And just as your reputation would be helped by a wedding, so would mine. It’s a problem I have to keep continually in mind. The society ladies who ask me to photograph their daughters would feel much happier dealing with a married man.’
    â€˜But you’re free, aren’t you, to marry someone you love. Not someone like me.’
    There was a long silence while Ellis chose his words carefully.
    â€˜This will shock you, I’m afraid. Something that I’ve never admitted to anyone. I’m putting myself in your power, because of course it’s against the law. I shall never be able to marry the person I love, because he’s a man. He acts as housekeeper for me in London. I would have to make it clear – I’m making it clear now – that although I think you and I could live very happily together as friends, I shouldn’t want to