You Must Be Sisters

by Deborah Moggach

  She was enjoying this. Inspecting her list, comparing prices – how dreary all that seemed now! As dreary as the other people here with their empty faces and heavy baskets.

  And to hell with money, she thought, standing at the checkout and watching the paper strip of mauve numerals lengthen. I don’t care what Marron Purée costs. Anyway, there’s lots of grant left. ‘Five pounds, eighty-five pence,’ said the girl at the machine, uninterested whether guavas came from Malaysia, uninterested whether they came from Mars.

  Laura put the things into her carrier bag while he stood, hands in pockets, and still looking somehow as if he shouldn’t be there. His muddy plimsolls had left marks on the floor. As she put in the Weetabix (for she’d added things too) she felt the bond between them thicken; thicken with something domestic, a suggestion of breakfast. Now he knew she ate Weetabix in the morning, could they any longer be strangers?

  They stood outside for a moment. Somewhere a clock struck twelve. ‘How about a quick one, then?’ he asked.

  At the doorway of the pub she summoned up her courage. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mac.’

  They went inside; she sat down, he went up to the bar. No longer nameless, his ensuing Mac-ness filled her with pleasure; the way he fumbled for money in the frayed back pocket of his jeans, the way he said something to the man behind the bar and the man chuckled, the way he came back with the brimming glasses, raising those eyebrows at a girlie calendar on the wall and then raising them at her. She liked that. She smiled; they shared the nude; the bond thickened. There was something easy and natural about him; by comparison she felt fussy, the way she thought about how much things cost, the way her carrier bag kept spilling its contents when she moved in her seat.

  ‘What’s yours, then?’

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘That’s nice. Know what? You’re the first fanciable bird I’ve ever seen in that blood place.’

  ‘Am I?’ She didn’t know what to say to that. Gladdened by being fanciable yet taken aback by its simplistic sort of solving, she gazed into the timeless amber of her cider. The pub was empty and dimly lit. She was thankful about that, for words could trail off into the semi-darkness, they could even be left unsaid, yet suggested by the shadows.

  ‘Fancy a cigarette?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t roll them.’ She liked watching him do the rolling; his hunched shoulders, his whole concentration, when she’d seen it in the clinic, had been the first thing about him to move her.

  ‘I’ll show you.’ He put his tobacco tin on his knee and took her hand in his. One by one he laid out her fingers and in her palm placed a paper; into its crease he fed a slim roll of tobacco. She looked with distaste at her hands, clumsy and red compared with his calm beige fingers which worked despite her own stubborn ones springing back and getting in the way. Finally it was finished and lay, a simple offering, in her palm.

  ‘We’ll share it,’ he said. ‘It’s the last of me baccy.’ He lit it, hand cupped, cradling the flame the way men on street corners cradle the flame. He is different, she realized with a small thud. What sort of thud? Excitement?

  They sat back in silence, an easy natural one on his part, she was sure, but even with this lighting she couldn’t quite relax. Such an unfathomable silence, that was why. A silence as yet with no complexion, for knowing him but an hour she had no clue how it would finish, and it is the words around a silence that create its complexion. Had he broken it with ‘Do you go to university here?’ it would have been confirmed as an enquiring, nervous silence; had it been ‘How about seeing “Oedipus Rex” with me tonight?’ it would have been confirmed as a constructive one. How analytical and selfconscious I am! thought Laura. Can I never shake it off? He’s probably just enjoying his Guinness.

  When what he actually said was: ‘I planted twenty-four fir trees this morning,’ she was pleased. What a relief; it had been an easy, companionable one.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On a grassy bank. It looks quite Norwegian now, if I’d ever been to Norway, that is. Each one I put in I prayed to Thor that it would grow.’

  ‘Who’s Thor?’

  ‘Some Scandinavian almighty. I read about him somewhere. Remarkable bloke, Thor.’ He relapsed into reverie. Laura, though, was curious.

  ‘Are they for you?’

  ‘No, I’m a gardener. Work for the university. Up at Addison Hall.’

  ‘Heavens! That’s my Hall – or it was until last week. I wonder if I ever saw you.’ She was almost certain now that she’d seen him working in the flowerbeds. He didn’t look like a student, now she thought of it. He didn’t have that cultivated scruffiness; he looked as if he’d been born with his.

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ she said. She passed him the cigarette. ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘Since last summer. It was good in the summer.’ He fell silent. Was he reminiscing about the girls; seducing classy birds in the rhubarb patch? She could imagine him doing that.

  ‘What do you like doing best?’ she asked.

  ‘Shit-shovelling. That and mowing. No hassles, nobody bothering you. Practically breaks your back, though. But I like that once in a while; makes my body feel good.’

  Laura thought of his body and surprised herself by blushing. Was it slender and graceful, beige as his hands were? Today, anyway, it was linked with hers with its missing pint and now its added one. He passed her the cigarette; it was intimate, their sharing it like this. She felt so drawn to him; why?

  ‘You a student, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, psychology. But I’ve moved out of Hall. I live in a room on my own now.’ She liked saying this, it made her sound different from the others. ‘I’ve got a garden too, but it’s a bit messed up at the moment, full of rubbish and stuff. The family upstairs have about twenty children and I’m sure they chuck stuff out of the window.’ She passed him the cigarette. ‘I want to dig it up and plant it and make it really lovely.’

  ‘If you like, I can borrow a spade from the works. You know, dig it for you.’

  Laura sat back. The faded roses wallpaper, the girlie calendar, the back view of the barman who was polishing glasses, all were irradiated with the most surprising joy. She felt dizzy; she couldn’t look at him. Suddenly it seemed as if everything today had been leading up to this; she was amazed.

  ‘Oh yes, please do.’

  ‘What’s better than today, then? After work.’

  He stood up and finished his glass. She stood up beside him. He gave her the cigarette. ‘The rest is yours,’ he said.

  ‘Strange, that draught cider. It makes me feel all loose round the edges.’

  ‘Good protein. Puts hairs on your chest.’ He smiled at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her, he was so near. But he said. ‘Must be pushing along. They only give me time off for doing me blood.’

  They went out into the street with its dazzling sun. She told him her address.

  ‘Be seeing you, then,’ he said. He went.

  She leant against the wall. Quite apart from the cider, she felt intoxicated. Almost glad, she was, that he had gone, so that she could recollect everything that had just happened in detail.

  The sunlight flashed on the windows of the buses as they turned up the hill; even the spittle-gobs on the pavement winked.

  eleven

  ON THE EVENING of that same day, Dan was painting. He was painting in Laura and Claire’s bedroom. He liked it up there; since his solitary visit on Christmas Eve he’d found himself drawn to his daughters’ rooms, still redolent, as they were, of the girls – Holly’s with its mantelpiece menagerie of glass animals and its poignant pencil notice on the cupboard door MUSEUM – OPEN that she’d forgotten to change to CLOSED; Claire and Laura’s with those childhood shoes.

  He looked round. Laura in particular he felt he was experiencing in theory rather than in her often exasperating practice; perhaps that was why he liked it there. The pictures and the books declared she was a girl wi
th interests. Nothing was spoilt by the clothes all over the floor and the unmade bed that, once she herself was in occupation, reminded him that she could be also an irritating or a disappointing one.

  He was painting a still-life. It consisted of a shawl-draped table with various objects on it. The objects were all right; it was the shawl that was giving the problems. A crocheted thing of Laura’s, he’d said it was terrible the first time she’d come downstairs in it, swathed like a granny. Tonight, on further inspection, it had turned out to be rather prettily intricate. Infuriating, though.

  The thing was, how could he suggest lots of little holes without covering it with dots; and how could he cover it with dots without it seeming to be just that – covered with dots? A spotty shawl, in other words. How on earth did one turn a dot into a hole? Damn shawl; he dabbed jerkily on, but the shawl just got spottier. Even the folds didn’t look right and he thought he’d got the hang of folds. But the spots inside the folds were too bright, so it looked not so much full of shadows as full of stains. Stained and spotty, not shadowed and holey. And getting worse every minute!

  Dan threw down his brush. It was a mess; he had to admit it. How it irritated him. He scrumpled up the paper and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Bloody shawl.

  He got up and put his painting things away. Tonight he was very conscious of it being a hobby. Terrible word, hobby. Vacant hours that had to be filled. With the girls there, he’d never had time for a hobby. To his surprise he remembered complaining about it. Endless interruptions, packed hours through which one fought for a moment’s peace. Nowadays there was nothing to have a moment’s peace from.

  Downstairs Rosemary looked up from Good Housekeeping.

  ‘All right?’ she asked.

  ‘Bloody awful.’ Dan poured himself a whisky; he’d feel better after that. ‘Never mind. Time for the dog.’

  Every night before they went to bed they took Badger round the block. It could hail, it could thunder, but they always did. Whisky then dog. And whatever the weather they always wore the same shoes, Dan his brown gardening ones, Rosemary her old boots. Dan opened the hall cupboard and fished them out. Together they bent down and put them on.

  Outside the air was sharp and Rosemary put her hand through his arm. ‘Chilly, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘I do hope Laura’s got lots of blankets.’

  ‘Hmm. Wonder what she’s doing now.’ Dan looked up at the sky. At least he shared that with his girls. Perhaps one of them was glancing up at it now.

  ‘Tucked up in bed, I hope.’

  Down the familiar street they walked, Rosemary’s arm nice and warm in his. Badger, purposeful, trotted on ahead. Dan loved these nightly strolls, Badger’s tail a jaunty plume ahead of them, other people’s evenings in the windows.

  They had a comfortable rhythm, those three. It was just that, occasionally, he could welcome those old interruptions.

  twelve

  LAURA HAD INDEED been tucked up in bed. In fact, she still was. When she woke the next morning Mac’s arms were still around her. She lay still, not daring to move, not wanting to wake him; not quite yet. Nor did she dare look at him.

  Instead she looked out of the window. The bed was close to it and from where she lay she had a view down into the garden. Amongst the matted grass and thistles she could see the small brown square of earth he’d dug yesterday. His fork still stuck out in the middle of it.

  Proof, then. Solid fork; real mud. Real skin too, next to hers. It had happened, and outside she could see the sun shining on the newly turned soil.

  She still didn’t like to look at him; easier to look around the room. Their clothes lay scattered on the floor; his underpants and jeans near the bed, her skirt abandoned in front of the fireplace. They’d found some wood and built a fire last night; later he’d undressed her beside the flames.

  On each side of the bed, altar-like, a candle stub stood in its saucer of wax. The candles had been his idea. And in each saucer lay the cigarette ends from when, long after the fire had died down, they had lain back on the pillows. How damp, how marvellously mutual they’d been, lying there, blowing into the darkness their twin plumes of smoke!

  He stirred. She stiffened. He grunted and stirred again. She lay rigid.

  She didn’t dare look at him. She stared up at the ceiling. How very much easier to kiss someone, to do anything with their bodies, in the thankful dark! Much, much easier than to meet their eyes so close and in such very glaring sun. With one’s greasy face and smudged mascara.

  He must be disappointed. He’d be polite and have a cup of tea and then say he’d better push off now. Heavens, she couldn’t have been much good compared with all those girls who’d had it a lot, or even had it a little. She thought of those heavings on the cinema screen; it looked so accomplished when those sort of girls did it.

  Just then she felt her hand being taken by his. He grunted and turned his face towards her. ‘Hello, my sonner.’ He blinked through his tangled hair. Then he smiled. ‘You look really rosy.’

  She buried herself in his arms.

  ‘My nice, rosy, morning girl,’ he said.

  With her face in his hair she asked: ‘What’s my sonner?’

  ‘Old affectionate Bristol talk. My friend, it means.’

  She ran her fingers along his straight eyebrows to feel what they were like. She was his slave.

  ‘Hey, you were laughing last night,’ he said. ‘I was amazed.’

  ‘It was so funny.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. After all that thinking about it, I suppose. All those huddles in the cloakroom at school. Such a relief.’ She laughed, pressed her face into his hair and kissed his warm, buried ear. She ran her hand over his shoulder and down his hard beautiful back. Goodness, what a relief. He wasn’t being polite and cool. Nor, though he was kissing her, was he trying to do it again, because she didn’t think she could manage that in full daylight. Not quite yet. Not looking down and seeing her limbs and his and everything. He was kissing her though, slowly, oh so slowly, sleepy mouth against sleepy mouth. She twined the sheets around them; they lay there, their hair mixed. Could anything be more satisfactory? she asked him. No, he said, nothing.

  ‘I’ve got you and the view out of my window,’ she said. ‘Do I ever have to get out of bed?’

  ‘Never.’

  They lay in the nicest of shared silences, the sort of settled silence which before today had been possible only with her sisters. Better than the lonely silence that had filled this room before he’d come into it. For she had been lonely, of course; twined cosily in her sheets, she could admit it now. Frightened too; not by anything solid, but by something intangible from which all her life she’d been sheltered. The poverty upstairs had something to do with it, so had the emptiness in the rooms below, and herself trapped in the middle, glimpsing desolation.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea.’

  ‘Nor, I must say, would I.’

  She disentangled herself and walked all white and bare across the room. She was very nearly unselfconscious; he made it natural to be bare. How different from those episodes with John and Mike, the one so phoney and the other so muddled. Mac accepted her nicely, without fuss. Was that why she’d found it somehow silly to stop him last night? One of the reasons, anyway; he’d just presumed they would. Another was that great big bed being there and no one to stop them.

  ‘To think,’ she said, putting on the kettle, ‘that I haven’t known you twenty-four hours yet.’ She cleared away the empty tin of guavas. They’d had a curious meal last night: guavas and sausages – that way round, too.

  Down in the street she could hear children shouting and the far plaintive tinkling of an ice-cream van. She had no idea what time it was. Mid-morning? Lunchtime? Odd to think of a humdrum day going on down there, people slamming doors, clocks chiming.

  She took the teacups over to the bed. He propped his head up and lay there on the rumpled sheets, si
pping. Lacking brothers, she had never looked unabashed at a full-grown, calm male. And she still couldn’t. Not really; not all over. She might have come a long way since yesterday, but not that far. In a film, if she’d been one of those heaving girls with their mascara still intact, she would be gazing into his eyes now and caressing him. In real life she lay down, careful not to slop her tea. He hooked her foot round his. ‘Let’s do it sixty times a day,’ he said. ‘Again and again, everywhere, all round the room, all round Bristol.’

  ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘It’d be nice, though.’

  There was more talk of this kind when they were interrupted by a chime from the university tower. One o’clock.

  ‘Oho,’ he said, unhooking his foot. ‘Long past opening time.’

  It was the strangest feeling to walk down the street with him and realize that nobody who looked at them knew. Could no one tell? Her tingling skin, her smile? In the pub they sat close together, his knee against hers under the table. His fingers, which had been everywhere, clasped his glass. She worshipped his hands. They sat side by side saying nothing, silent with their large secret.

  ‘How’s the Cortina running, then?’ boomed a voice behind them.

  ‘So-so, Alec,’ boomed another. ‘Bit sticky these cold mornings, you know.’

  Two bulky men holding pints. They stood inches from them. The jacket of one of them almost touched Laura’s hair.

  ‘And Dot? Bearing up, is she?’

  ‘Bearing up, yes. Touch of flu last week, Alec, nothing much. Lucky the twins were away at their grandma’s.’

  Laura gazed at the split seam down Mac’s jeans. She knew the skin in there. She felt warm.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She jumped. An arm stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray, brutally near.

  ‘Quite frankly, Alec, I advised her to let them stay away a bit longer. Never know with the flu, especially with the youngsters.’

  ‘You’re right there. Doesn’t do to take chances, does it?’

  She gazed at Mac’s fingers, calm round the handle of his glass. She longed to touch them.