A virgin birth

The author of the following personal reminiscence is one of The Spectator's regular letter-writers who, on this occasion, is allowed a discreet anonymity.

This is a cautionary tale; unusual, if perhaps not unique. I hope it is

interesting but at all events it is true; everything except (for obvious reasons) names. It all happened a generation ago, when a lot of things were different, social attitudes in particular. I was in the RAF during the war and posted to the Middle East. On a

beach near my station, I almost immediately met a local young lady on holiday with her family. This

was particularly lucky as I was a very lowly airman and by no means an Adonis. The girl was undoub tedly the belle of the beach and my friends were even more surprised than I that she should spit on the likes of me when officers alone outnumbered European girls by ten

to one. (Or perhaps they were

surprised that she did not spit on me.) Well, my luck held and I spent every leave of my three-year stint abroad at the family flat and I was almost sorry when the war ended and I was posted back to England.

When that time came, we arranged that I would return the

hospitality and Eva .would come

and spend a long holiday with me at my parents' home. Travel was very difficult in those early post

war days but some six months after I was demobbed, the girl-friend

arrived. I was building up my in terrupted business career but that still left time to take her all over the country and a delightful time it

was, needless to say. (It goes without saying, though I suppose I

should have mentioned it, that we were much in love.) After some six months or so, it was time for Eva to go back home. The parting was terribly sad and tearful but although we both vowed eternal love and no doubt meant it, I think in both our hearts we knew that it was unlikely we should meet again. There were a number of reasons for this, but mainly the snag about our getting married was that the lady was very closely attached to her family (and they to her) and for her to be 3,000 miles away from them (and from her sunny and bright native land — the English summer of '46 was more than normally awful) was likely to lead to her pining and being generally miserable. So no plans were made. After her return, we corresponded affectionately and I am not sure what would have transpired, but after a couple of months I got a phone call at my work from my mother saying a cable had come for me which she had taken the liberty of opening. Eva was expecting a baby. And fairly soon too. My parents were pretty upset, of course, partly because of the drawbacks to our getting married which I have mentioned, and partly because they expected their son to be a good type and not to have taken advantage of this young girl who was their guest as well as mine. When I told them I was as upset and surprised as they were, as I had never seduced the lady, their reaction was a mixture of amazement and relief — it must be someone else's baby.

But I did not need to try to assure them that this was out of the question. Not only was Eva the chaste and non-promiscuous type, but if another man had come into her life, she was certainly not going to saddle me with his child. So here I was, three thousand miles away from the girl, no possibility of phone calls in those days, and with delays of months before one could hope to get on a plane in those still chaotic times. It took nearly a fortnight, indeed, before I got a letter telling me what had happened. On her return home she found she was missing her period. It was, of course, in the days before instant pregnancy tests and both her family and the doctor accepted without reservation Eva's assurance that although she had been away for some months with a young man she loved there had never been any intercourse. All this may seem not only hard to credit in these days, but chastity and virginity were rather more prized attributes then than now and, naive as it now sounds, nobody, not even a doctor, had difficulty in believing that a decent girl and a decent young man would not sleep together. And in fairness to the doctor, who, with hindsight, appears to have been incredibly naiVe, there was also the little fact that Eva was still a virgin. Which I suppose could have fooled most doctors.

But not for much longer, of course. Virgin or not, the chaste young lady's figure in due course showed unmistakeable signs of changing shape and it was at this late stage that the cable was sent to me. To which I, of course, replied that I would marry the girl as soon as possible. But the delays were pretty well insurmountable and added to the months that had elapsed before the truth dawned on the doctor, what this meant was that nature was going to win the race. And so the marriage had to take place by proxy.

Well, it was all a long time ago. Eva duly came to live here with her husband and with the little boy who is now a splendid young man and would be accounted handsome were it not for the fact that everyone says he is the spitting image of his father. (Oh, yes; they mean me. Very few people know the story.) Eva did miss her family and did pine rather a lot for her sunny homeland but I believe we still love each other and the marriage has, I fancy, been as successful as most.

You are entitled to some explanation of the mystery. It seems it was all rather simple, actually. Two young people in love and in each other's company for so many months are not likely, even in the comparatively non-permissive world of those days, to restrain their affections and merely look into each other's eyes. As far as I was concerned, I would have regarded myself as a villain if I had betrayed my trust by sending Eva home less of a virgin than when she had left. It would have been a betrayal. (I suppose younger readers are rolling with laughter at this notion; but it was serious enough then. And perhaps still is with many people today.) But apart from actually going to bed, other things ('heavy petting' was the term, I believe) were allowed. And in this one case in a million, this petting actually had the effect of rendering the girl pregnant. The ironic thing is that although Eva was so pure and nattre, I myself was not quite sexually inexperienced although I suppose my score would be regarded as pitifully small by the Don Juans of today. Therefore, I was perfectly aware of the existence of preventive measures and I had never had the misfortune to put another girl in the family way. So that if I had decided to be a cad (which is what I would have been called — and called myself) and seduce my ladylove she would no longer have been a virgin but she would certainly not have been pregnant. The former she would no doubt have got over. The latter is rather a remorseless process.

The story is of course rather different from the better known virgin birth. In that case there was no human father. In this case, paternity is quite clear. Another difference is that I am prepared to swear an affidavit that the facts are precisely as I have recounted them.