Work Text:
After leaving Sam's flat, Hilary continued with her errands in a mood of abstracted diligence, without serious thought as to where she should go next. In such a mood it seemed perfectly reasonable that, rather than making her way into the nearest Tube station, she should instead look into the chemist's shop across the road.
She wandered its narrow aisles half in a daze and only seemed to return to consciousness when she approached the counter and found herself asking the chemist for a Dutch cap in two different, likely sizes.
She had worn one before. David, just out of his rotation in gynaecology, had insisted upon doing the fitting himself. Hilary, privately, had made her own checks afterwards; in any event, in the interests of complete safety, they had used condoms as well.
"You wouldn't want to risk your career," he had said.
At the time she had chosen to be touched at his considerateness, avoiding the thought that David had his own interests in the question.
After it was over between them, Hilary had thrown the cap into the bin with a certain relish, telling herself what she had told her own patients when she was working in gynaecology, namely that the rubber perished eventually. It did, of course, but not as quickly as that. There was something telling in the fact that the relationship's expiry date had come sooner.
It was only when Hilary reached across the counter to take the small boxes from the chemist that she realised, with a purely social embarrassment, that the fingers on her left hand were conspicuously bare. But he seemed to take no notice.
Perhaps, thought Hilary, that was Bloomsbury for you.
Making such a purchase in Gloucestershire would certainly have risked inviting comment; there was not a chemist in Stroud who would not have been familiar with her and her business. This was another reason to congratulate herself on her foresight at having seen to the errand while in town.
After all, thought Hilary with a brisk cheerfulness, tucking her purchases securely into the bottom of her handbag, you never know when one might be useful. It's always best to be prepared.
The phrase made her think of the Boy Scouts; this, along with the sudden effort of suppressing her laughter, meant that by the time she left the store she was convinced that she had never been motivated by anything more than a vague and general sense of prudence, with no immediate object in view.
***
"These small rubber caps are quite simple, strong, easily fitted and should be procurable from any first-class chemist... Educated and intelligent women can generally fit themselves quite easily.... The great advantage of this cap is that once it is in and properly fitted it can be entirely forgotten, and neither the man nor the woman can detect its presence."
--Marie Stopes, Wise Parenthood (1918)