Girls

by Bill James

  * Naked at the Window.

  Chapter Eight

  Denise and Harpur never went to bed together in the afternoons at 126 Arthur Street if the children were at home. It would seem wrong, indelicate. Denise and he agreed on this. They had not actually discussed it, but their behaviour showed they both recognized a sort of embargo. Obviously, this did not mean they pretended to the girls there was no sex in their relationship. That would be idiotic. Didn’t Hazel and Jill bring them tea in the double bed before breakfast every time Denise stayed? The girls enjoyed seeing Denise and him there, and enjoyed having a chat with them before they got up, like normality. This overnight closeness of Denise and Harpur on the premises seemed to prove love, stability, contentment to the children and gave a happy feeling of family. Harpur knew his daughters found it amazing that a girl as young, beautiful and bright as Denise should want to sleep with their father, and sleep with him regularly, regardless, but these early visits with the tea must reassure them it was true.

  The children’s reaction might not be the same if Denise and Harpur disappeared upstairs in the afternoon. Hazel and Jill would probably regard that as juvenile and rabbity, not part of a family pattern. Some Saturday afternoons could be all right, though. The girls would go out soon after lunch and not return until evening. They might visit friends’ houses. Or, the judo club opened on Saturdays, and often they went there. Most likely, the bus station meet-up was available as well. Occasionally, Harpur had to work a weekend, negativing Saturday. And Denise played lacrosse for the university, the fixtures sometimes Saturdays, but mostly Wednesdays, luckily. Harpur reckoned he and Denise averaged one in three. This Saturday, fine – no lacrosse, and the city as far as he could tell lay quiet for now.

  Always, Harpur tried not to admire Denise’s body too much. Of course, he did admire it, but he wanted to keep his response reasonably controlled. Two reasons. First, he considered that to get outrageously ecstatic about her back, legs, breasts, face, hair, arse and carriage would be a kind of gloating: I’m nearly twenty years older but look what I can pull. Pathetic. And simply unwise: he aimed to avoid anything that might emphasize his age, and this would include drooling over Denise’s back, legs, breasts, face, hair, arse and carriage because he felt so fortunate. It was Iles who had first pointed out to Harpur the loveliness and sexual zing in some women’s backs, as distinct from the more usually reckoned parts. And this would be the back as back – that is, the back only – not the back treated as a unit with, or upper storey of, the behind. For a while, Iles had been tremendously moved by the back of a daughter of one of his favourite informants, though nothing much came of this.* Iles had all sorts of perceptions. He certainly amounted to more than continuous mad malice and rage. This girl was a great swimmer and Iles would grow breathless and quivery thinking of her back sluiced feelingly by the water of a pool when she did lengths. For a while, he’d been keen to see her butterfly, especially.

  And so, although Harpur did get ecstatic about the total construction of Denise, her back and the tattoo very much included, he schooled himself against getting outrageously ecstatic – or, at least, not obviously outrageously ecstatic. His second reason for attempting to keep things moderate was that he would catch himself sometimes storing memories of Denise brilliantly naked, as if he might lose her any day and should make sure he amassed these recollections as fill-in for her absence. Plainly, the more brilliant she looked naked the more he felt he should hang on to the picture, so that if she did go to someone else eventually he could console himself that he had her when she was at her most perfect. This sad urgency, also, arose from age. It meant he knew he could not rely on a future with her and should therefore file these images away in his brain, the way explorers left pemmican and ship’s biscuits in igloos for subsequent journeys. But he did not want to be reminded that he could not rely on a future with her by behaving now as though he knew he could not rely on a future with her.

  This Saturday afternoon he gave her some good, moderate admiration. She lay alongside him face down on top of the bedclothes so that he could spend quite a while observing her back. As was usual with Denise, she had lit a cigarette soon after they made love and now and then she took some heavy pulls on that while she got her mind back to work again. There was a kind of ritual to the way she smoked. He approved of rituals when they involved Denise. Rituals equalled continuance and continuity. Harpur himself had never smoked, but he read somewhere lately that nicotine could stave off Alzheimer’s and he liked to see Denise inhaling plenty because he dreaded getting forgotten by her and having to live on his memories until he got Alzheimer’s.

  He said: ‘I want to consult you. This is important. People’s lives, possibly.’

  ‘Right.’ She turned over and sat up. She took one more big drag at the cigarette and then stubbed it out in the dressing-table ashtray the children had bought her. ‘I don’t regret that coccyx tattoo, you know, Col.’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘You think it’s silly and crude, do you? That’s why I’ll keep it out of sight now, if you’ve got something heavy to say. What, real danger?’

  ‘Honestly, I like the tattoo,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Sometimes, I do feel a need to be mature, Col.’

  ‘I know mature people with tattoos.’

  ‘Are they tattoos where I’ve got a tattoo – to flash above low-cuts?’

  ‘Well, I don’t go about looking for tattoos on women there.’

  ‘I hope not, but I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  ‘I was thinking of men’s forearms,’ he replied. ‘Snakes. Or the words MOTHER ALWAYS in vermilion.’

  ‘Mine is a generational tattoo,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right. I’m in favour of your generation.’

  ‘Oh? Do you know a lot from my generation?’

  ‘Obviously, I meant you as a product of your generation,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Why are you in favour?’

  ‘Not just the tattoo. I think there’s more to you as a product of your generation than a tattoo.’

  ‘What more? And don’t give me all that stuff about my body.’

  ‘Your body does come into it.’

  ‘Your body comes into it. Just did.’

  ‘Word-play is definitely one of your strengths, often vulgar,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Intelligence. It’s why I’m after your advice now.’

  ‘Well, yes. But intelligence is not generational. There are stupid people in my generation.’

  ‘This proves your intelligence.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘That you can see the difference.’

  ‘You’re saying I must be intelligent because I know some people are not?’ she asked.

  ‘And your ability to keep on with an argument. This shows youthful energy, tenacity, commitment.’

  ‘You’re fed up with it, are you? I can’t be shut up? Sorry, Col.’

  ‘I don’t want you to shut up. I need guidance.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. She picked up the wreckage of the earlier cigarette and eventually got the blackened, squashed-out end to light again.

  ‘Hazel and Jill,’ he said.

  ‘You want guidance on them because you think I’m young enough to understand them more easily than you do?’ she said.

  ‘Because you’re young enough to understand them more easily than I do, and yet mature enough to give a measured view, coccyx tattoo or not,’ Harpur replied.

  ‘Right. Do you want me to cover up so you can concentrate?’

  ‘You have covered up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The coccyx tattoo. By turning over.’

  ‘I meant put on a top,’ she replied. ‘You know what you’re like about breasts.’

  ‘No, what am I like?’

  ‘Interested.’

  ‘In yours.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘But I can detach myself.’

  ‘Oh?’
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br />   ‘For the moment, I mean. Don’t feel hurt.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I think they have secrets,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Hazel and Jill? Of course they have secrets. They’re kids, you’re a parent.’

  ‘That’s what I mean, you see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Insights. You go to it direct. That’s probably generational.’

  ‘Right. But you think these are worrying secrets, dangerous secrets?’ Denise said.

  ‘Hazel’s been followed.’

  ‘That happens. Men follow girls, even underage girls. In fact, some follow underage girls especially.’

  ‘By car, on her bike.’

  ‘It happens, Col.’

  ‘She and her friends treat it like that. Or, at least, her friends do. I’m not sure Hazel does. They come back here and rehearse a play for school, as though everything’s fine.’

  ‘What play?’

  ‘About a chap finding true selfhood by shouting at his wife in the 1950s.’

  ‘Look Back in Anger.’

  ‘That kind of thing.’

  ‘Kenneth Tynan said he couldn’t love anyone who didn’t like Look Back in Anger.’

  ‘Kenneth Tynan?’

  ‘A critic.’

  ‘Is he the sort I’d want to be loved by?’

  ‘He’s dead. Do you think these are people looking for Scott?’ Denise replied.

  ‘It’s possible. She might know it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Not sure of that, either. She could have spotted people watching the house, as start point. Or Jill could have and told her.’

  ‘But doesn’t it seem roundabout to tail Hazel if they want Scott? It wouldn’t be hard to find where he lives, would it?’

  ‘They might think that too obvious. There’s a big police contingent around the streets up there, Morton Cross, Inton, the Park. A vehicle in waiting would be noticed.’

  She nodded a bit. ‘You don’t even know Scott was involved.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, you broke in, yes? Did you find anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s imagination, Col.’

  ‘Possibly. I suspect it could all start up again. These wars start, stop, start again. And a new factor: I get a tip about some big local dealers seen at Morton Cross, right out of their terrain.’

  ‘Really big?’

  ‘Really big.’

  ‘Not Milord Monty?’

  ‘Where did you come across that name?’

  ‘Some students get into his club now and then. He deals big and biggest, doesn’t he?’

  ‘You ought to join the police fast promotion scheme when you finish university,’ Harpur replied. It was half joke, half real wish. Denise as cop: that would bring her closer, wouldn’t it? ‘I considered talking to Ember and one of his pals, but maybe not.’

  ‘Advice?’ she said. ‘I don’t see how I can advise.’

  ‘It’s the girls and their reactions.’

  ‘You believe I can read them?’

  ‘Better than I can. That’s my problem. Look, then, do you think I can reasonably put restrictions on Hazel and Jill, but especially Hazel?’

  ‘Restrictions?’

  ‘They’re out and about, I don’t know where. Is that-sensible? Will they understand if I clamp down? I don’t want them to despise me – see me as alarmist, oppressive. It matters to me what they think. I imagine them looking back on their lives when they’re adult. I want to come out of that kind of examination all right, Denise. How would you feel if you were, say, Hazel, and I started to fuss and put limits on where she can go?’

  ‘Col, you have to do what –’

  Someone rang the front door bell, two short, one long pushes. ‘It’s Iles,’ Harpur said. He kept his voice low. ‘He calls in occasionally if he’s got something confidential to say or wants to show off new clothes, especially if he thinks Hazel will be here or around later. He’ll calculate, Saturday, no school, so she could be at home. Perhaps he’s been out buying summer wear.’ The bell rang again, same pattern. Denise and Harpur lay silent.

  The bedroom was in the front of the house, curtains closed. After a while a pebble or coin hit the window. Iles yelled: ‘Col, are you in there, being conjugal?’ A minute later something heavier struck the glass, perhaps a fifty pence piece as against an earlier ten. There could be breakages if he threw stronger, and he would. Iles shouted: ‘Did I see the undergrad old Panda parked discreetly down the road? Oh, dear, what’ll the neighbours?’

  ‘It might be something worthwhile,’ Harpur said. ‘I’d better let him in.’ He rolled from the bed.

  ‘Shall I come down in a minute?’

  ‘Of course. He knows you’re here, and he’ll smell the tobacco smoke.’

  ‘Should you put something on, Col?’

  But Harpur was already on the stairs. He’d dress later. He didn’t want any more street theatre from Iles. What’ll the neighbours? There was one along the street who did maximum vigilance. Harpur opened the front door. Iles wore a magnificent beige, two-button, lightweight jacket, obviously made for him, possibly alpaca. Harpur had not seen it before. The shirt was pale blue, perhaps silk, and again almost certainly crafted for him personally and new. He had two buttons open at the neck, but no pendant medallion. It wasn’t scarf weather. Iles liked scarves, worn loose and with emphatic tassels. ‘I thought I’d just give a ring while passing, in case you were about and idling, Col.’

  ‘That’s friendly, sir.’ Iles came in and Harpur closed the front door.

  ‘The Panda is relevant to why I’m here.’

  ‘In what way, sir.’

  ‘I always enjoy coming to this kind of area, Col,’ Iles replied. ‘An eye-opener.’

  ‘Which kind is that, sir?’

  ‘It’s got . . . it’s got what I’d call . . . what I’d call a realness to it, after Rougemont Place.’

  ‘Well, yes, it is quite real,’ Harpur said. ‘You can feel it under your feet when walking the pavement – the realness – the pavements are made of something real, so one doesn’t go through them, or if you touch brickwork on the houses it feels like real br – well, like real brickwork and very real.’ He took an overcoat from the hall cupboard and put it on. They went into the sitting room.

  ‘People watch this house, Col. That’s what I mean about where the Panda stands now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve seen other vehicles out there.’

  ‘Yes, well people have to park somewhere and –’

  ‘Lurking cars,’ Iles replied.

  ‘Who?’

  Iles stared around the sitting room: ‘The point is, surely, Col, that although this used to be a very bookish kind of area, with the shelves and volumes and so on, you, personally, are not a bookish person, not in the least,’ Iles replied.

  ‘I’ve read Scoop and most of the Bible, plus Treasure Island and Portnoy’s Complaint.’

  ‘And I don’t think you should blame yourself in any way for chucking out a very fine, perhaps unique, library built up over the years by Megan. That library was not you, Col.’

  ‘What is me, sir?’

  ‘It’s still a good room, Harpur,’ Iles replied.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We had a complaint a while back from someone living opposite about fairly flagrant humping here or hereabouts, curtains defiantly open.’ Iles pointed to one of the high-backed settees.

  ‘Is that what you meant about the house being watched? How is the Panda involved?’

  ‘I thought it shouldn’t go any further.’

  ‘What shouldn’t, sir?’

  ‘Complaints like that – vindictive. Such a bleat makes too much of what I’d regard as a one-off situation with Denise. Look at the decorous, even prim, way you’ve put that overcoat on before appearing in front of the windows.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’r />
  ‘I see the furniture as being at fault in that earlier incident. It’s high-backed yes, but not sufficiently high-backed properly to conceal the rise movement pre thrust. I expect it’s a symbolic thing, is it, Col, getting around the various rooms, a kind of assertion of the new nature of rapport between you and her?’ His voice began to take on again the volume he’d given it when shouting up to the window from the street. ‘And when you were disgustingly in my property, Idylls, in Rougemont Place with my wife were you also trying to assert the nature of a rapport between you and her and –’

  ‘The Panda, sir. It’s significant somehow?’

  ‘Significant in that it brings the girl here, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But beyond that?’

  Iles paced a bit, the alpaca jacket open, but its beautiful tailoring still evident. He said: ‘I was going to drop in the other evening, Col – something entirely social, believe me – I didn’t even know whether Haze – whether the children would be here – just a casual call, as today’s.’

  ‘It’s thoughtful, sir. We all appreciate it.’

  ‘I’m a believer in these amities, Col. Part of a pleasant old way of things.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I’m about to park but notice a Ford Focus near where the Panda is now with someone alone in the back, keeping down, doing the rear-window stuff à la Hitchcock, and probably targeting your house. Whoever’s in there is not bad at it and only an eye trained in these ploys would have noticed.’

  ‘You always see a lot, sir.’

  ‘I do, Harpur, I do. For instance when you and my wife –’

  ‘Could you get an identity on the watcher in the Focus, sir?’

  ‘It would be dismally slack to spot surveillance of that sort and not take it further, Col.’