What was I like; where had I gone? I felt emptied, an empty vessel, drained by others’ needs. I wanted to be myself, like Lily.
Ewan said: ‘She should never have had me. She wasn’t a natural mother. You are.’
I said sharply: ‘How do you know?’
Mentally I added up the weeks – yes, weeks – since we had made love. And then how had it been? Functional, courteous.
Dull.
I thought: life’s passing me by. It never passed Lily by. She lived.
One hot June day, on impulse, I took the children up to London and rang Lily’s bell. Kissing her papery cheek, I realized how strongly I’d been missing her.
‘You say you like surprises.’
‘My dear girl,’ she said. ‘We shall go swimming.’
We took a taxi up to Hampstead Heath and walked along a grassy path, through a meadow. The grass and cow parsley were taller than Alex. Bees murmured, or was it the drone of cars? The city seemed far away as we walked along our enchanted path. Hendon dwindled. I hadn’t been to the Heath for years; I didn’t realize it was so wild. I felt drunk with the scent of flowers.
Finally we arrived at a hedge, fenced with railings. In front of us was an open gate.
‘I’ve been coming here for ever,’ said Lily. ‘First I’d swim, then I’d draw the bathers. It’s ladies only – the Ladies’ Lake.’
The Ladies’ Lake … even the name sounded mysterious. Behind the hedge I could hear faint laughter: I could see a glint of water. I never knew such a pond existed; the splashings through the hedge had the charmed inevitability of a dream.
We only had Lily’s costume – an odd, shiny, red garment – and besides, children weren’t allowed, so one of us had to wait in the meadow with them. Lily picked two grass-heads and I drew out the short one, so she disappeared first through the gate – a tall, striding figure, despite her age. She wore a straw hat and a faded orange dress. She looked so young from the back that it was a shock when she turned to wave.
She seemed to be gone for hours, but that afternoon time had no importance. Cassie had fallen asleep in the push-chair. I sat with Alex amongst the tall grasses, nibbling sorrel leaves and trying to persuade him to take off his T-shirt. Like his Dad, he preferred to be fully dressed.
‘We used to bathe naked,’ said Lily, sitting down beside me and passing me the swimming costume. ‘Or did I just imagine it?’ Her face looked damp and bare and old with the make-up washed off.
‘Will you be all right?’ I asked, looking at them as I left. ‘Try to take Alex’s clothes off.’
What followed was the most beautiful half-hour I think I’ve ever spent. Slipping into the water, warm and murky as soup, was like slipping into one of Lily’s paintings. The heavy horse-chestnuts cast a dappled shade, and on the banks lay sunbathing women, some bare-breasted. No cocksure, competitive men, no loud boys showing off, no children with their whines and needs … Just silence as women swam lazily to and fro, each alone, each free. It was hard to believe we were just a few miles from Leicester Square; it could have been the New Forest. I could be Lily, swimming twenty years before …
I swam slowly, gazing at my bare arms, blurred and yellowed in the water … The water weeds brushed my legs, like drowned women. Far above, a plane passed. It made no noise, it was irrelevant. I imagined it packed with businessmen. Ewan was taking the Glasgow shuttle that day – like his mother, Ewan is in paint; in his case, however, it’s the Marketing Division of ICI. I thought that of all the people I knew, only Lily would have brought me here.
I dried myself luxuriously, taking my time. Then I got dressed and walked barefoot down the cinder path towards the gate. I remember my exact sensations during that walk. My damp hair tickled my shoulders; my limbs felt refreshed and elastic, my body felt alive for the first time … oh, for years. I wondered how I’d feel if I had a lover whom I could tell these things, and who wouldn’t think I was being self-indulgent. No – who wouldn’t need telling – who would know.
Through the hedge I could see the orange blur of Lily’s dress. The last thing I remember thinking was: the children are quiet.
Lily was sitting still. It took me a moment to realize she had an open pad and she was drawing Cassie.
I walked nearer and looked down, over the henna’d streaks of Lily’s drying hair, at the delicate lines of my child’s face on the paper.
‘Can’t get that waxiness,’ murmured Lily. ‘Not with a pencil.’ She paused. ‘Such exquisite little objects … I’ve always preferred them asleep, don’t you?’
I smiled, then I looked around. ‘Where’s Alex?’
Silence. Lily was just shading in the mouth.
‘Hmm?’ she said. ‘He was here a minute ago.’
‘Where is he?’ The sharp note in my voice frightened me.
‘Oh, I know. He said he was looking for bottle tops.’
‘Was it just a minute?’
I straightened up and looked around. To one side was the hedge. On all the other sides stretched the meadow, full of tall grass. Far away stood some trees, with people walking and picnicking.
‘Alex?’ I called.
I waited. Silence, except for a splash in the lake.
‘Alex!’
Nothing moved except the breeze, which blew gently over the meadow, silvering the grasses. Swathes of them rippled, and then were still. I waited. The breeze blew again, chilling me. The grass moved, the cow parsley swayed, its white heads bobbing and bouncing, and then was still.
‘Alex!’
I swung round. ‘Lily, you go that way.’ I pointed in one direction, then I tried to unbuckle Cassie. She woke with a yell. My hands wouldn’t work; I fumbled with the push-chair buckle. Finally I wrenched it open and grabbed her. I bundled her under one arm and plunged into the grass, in the opposite direction to Lily.
The meadow was so huge; I’d never realized Hampstead Heath was this size. It was bumpy, too; it was difficult to run, stumbling over the hidden potholes with Cassie bouncing and shrieking.
‘Alex!’
The sun had slid behind a cloud and the Heath looked sinister. How could I have believed in the happy freedom of my swim? How could I have been so foolish? Why had I left an old, vague, self-absorbed lady in charge of my most precious possessions? How could I?
Tears blurred my eyes as I struggled through the weeds – they were weeds, wicked weeds, trying to trip me up. As I neared them, the trees looked loomingly black and heavy.
People stopped to stare. ‘Have you seen a little boy?’ I screeched. They shook their heads and I hated them for being in the wrong place; but I hated myself more.
Far away I could see the orange blur of Lily. I thought: you stupid old woman.
If this has ever happened to you, then you know those pictures that crowd your head and that you’d never allowed yourself to see. You’ll know how time literally ceases.
How long it took I’ll never remember. But when I saw that small, blue and white figure, he was standing beside the gate, right back at the place we’d left. He was standing waiting for us, my lost boy, and his face was red.
Lost boys. I pictured Ewan, a little boy in his school blazer, waiting at the school gates for a mother who never arrived.
Ewan once said: ‘I never had a childhood. Know why? Because she was the child.’
I never told Ewan what had happened, though Alex in his usual matter-of-fact way said that he’d only found two bottle tops. But after that, for the first time in his life, he slept for fourteen hours solid.
Eight years have passed since that day. Lily’s dead now. But I remember it because this morning Alex, now twelve years old, asked me about the drawing of Cassie we have in the lounge, above my desk. (I run my own small business now, oh yes I’ve done something.) It’s a beautiful drawing and I like looking at it when I’m working out my VAT … That sleeping, waxen face from a past era, years that were suffocating, and often painful, but which I’ll never forget.
Alex aske
d me, and I told him about that day and what happened. He couldn’t remember anything about it. And for the first time I tried to tell him exactly what Lily was like. I said that in fact she was not such a famous painter, just an artistic woman who had some doting patrons. That she wasn’t a living legend at the art school, but that they’d kept her on out of kindness. That when I first met her I resented my parents and compared them to her in a way that did justice to neither. That idolizing her hurt my husband, because he knew the truth. (I doubt if Alex took this in, but I went on in a rush.) That people sometimes giggled at her in the street, but that I was sure others saw the ruined, striking beauty of her face.
That she was utterly herself, a true original; that she had time for me when nobody else noticed I needed it. And that there was nobody I would rather see walking through the door at this moment.
I said all this, and more, because I wanted him to know her. To idolize anyone is the worst thing one can do, because then they are lost to us.
Then I said that for the price of that drawing of Cassie I might have lost him. But he pushed me away. He’s like his father; he hates soppy stuff.
• Stiff Competition •
I KNEW I shouldn’t have gone to the Fathers’ class. Well, would you? Perhaps you’re the pseudy participating type. Perhaps you’re one of those gonad-less Guardian readers who talks about growing with your wife. There’s plenty moved in round our way; they never close their blinds so you can see what sharing lives they’re leading, him at the sink, her working on her gender grievances. There’s always those corduroy sag-bags on the floor, where they talk things through.
I don’t. When they’re exposed to the frank air, all those little mysteries wither away, don’t they? Well, in this class we’d learn how to breathe them through. Breathe her, the wife, through childbirth, that is. Angie said it was all about facing one’s emotions. I’d faced mine; they told me I didn’t want to go. But I wasn’t allowed to face that particular one. Illogical eh?
We’d all have to lie down on cushions; that’s what she said. I’d feel a right berk.
But I had to go. She didn’t tell me to, of course. She just exerted that familiar old pressure, like a thin iron band slowly tightening round my skull. We’ve had it about my smoking and the way it’s always her who phones her parents (well they’re her parents aren’t they?), and the way she always has to phone mine (well?). And how I hadn’t opened the Mothercare catalogue she’d left on my desk. It’s got worse since she’s been expecting.
So we went. We were going to go up in the lift but it said MAXIMUM 8 PERSONS and there were already eight women in it, all massively pregnant.
‘Tut tut,’ I told them, pointing to the sign. ‘Tut tut, ladies.’
Their heads turned slowly, like a herd of cows. They didn’t get it.
As we climbed the stairs Angie sighed. ‘I wish you wouldn’t get facetious,’ she said. ‘Just because you’re nervous.’
‘I wasn’t facetious. Just accurate.’
She was starting to pant. ‘You find it a threat, don’t you,’ she puffed. ‘This sort of thing.’
I didn’t answer because by now I was puffed too. Must be all those fags.
Upstairs Angie disappeared on her hundredth daily visit to the loo. I went into the room. There were rows of chairs facing a screen, and a giant, unpleasant-looking plastic object on a plinth. Amongst the vast women sat their small men; they wore that smug look people have when doing their duty, you see it on drivers when they pull in to let a fire-engine pass, or voters emerging from a polling-booth. What a load of wets. I’d seen a promising-looking pub opposite the hospital. I wondered how many of these blokes wished they were sitting there with a pint of Fullers in front of them. I wondered how many of them admitted it.
I sat down next to an inoffensive, bespectacled chap.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This seat’s taken.’
I sat one seat further away. There was something familiar about that voice. I looked at him again.
‘Bugger me,’ I said. ‘It’s Condom.’
He stared at me. Then he said: ‘Nobody’s called me that for fifteen years.’
‘Who’m I then?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You look awfully familiar …’
‘Go on. Guess.’
It took him ages. Finally he said slowly: ‘It’s not … Slatterly?’
I nodded.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t recognize you.’
‘You’re looking at my gut? Married, aren’t I? That’s a Married gut.’
There was one of those pauses. What the hell could we say?
So I volunteered. ‘Here we are then, back in school.’
He paused, and his Adam’s apple moved up and down: ‘Older, wiser, but still with a lot to learn.’
What a prig! He’d always been one, of course. Edward Codron … Condom. His nickname had been laughably unsuitable. Once we’d been in the cloakroom, four of us, engaged in what we called Stiff Competition. I won’t go into details but the general gist was that first one to fill a matchbox won. Anyway, creepy Condom came in and would you believe he reported us to the Head? You didn’t do that sort of thing.
Still, he and I had been kind of friends – not mates, friends – because we lived in the same street. Anglepoise Mansions, I called his house, both his parents being professors.
‘Lots to catch up on,’ I said. ‘Bet you went to university.’
He nodded. ‘Jesus.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Jesus, Cambridge. And you?’
I shook my head. ‘Insurance.’
He wore a cord jacket, Hush Puppies and a badge saying PROTEST AND SURVIVE.
I said: ‘Bet you teach in a poly.’
‘How did you guess?’
‘I can tell.’ Another pause. Then I said: ‘One thing I needn’t ask you …’ I gestured at the other couples. ‘If you got married.’
He coughed. I remembered his little cough. ‘Actually we’re not. We’re living together.’
Now what the hell can you reply to that? I glared at him. Weedy old Condom, eh? By A-levels he was the only one in the history group who hadn’t got his leg over. Well, who’d admitted it. After all, Bayliss used to frequently show us a different pack-of-threes, but I’d always suspected he’d just rotated them. Devious bastard. He ended up a barrister.
The hall was filling. I gazed furtively at Condom. He’d not only impregnated, but illegally. There’s something irritatingly highly sexed, isn’t there, about unmarried couples. Compared to married ones.
As if on cue, Angie came in. She sat down, lowering her weight with a sigh.
‘Meet the wife,’ I said.
‘I have a name.’
‘This is Angie,’ I said. ‘And this is Condom.’
‘Edward Codron.’ He leaned over to shake her hand.
They had one of those conversations about where are you living now? Condom, thank God, lived miles from us. How was he going to introduce his what’s-her-name, when she arrived? If he didn’t, how would I? Lover? Partner? Life-Comrade? I resented him having to make me decide, just because he wanted to make some social bloody statement.
Come to think of it, he’d always done things thoroughly; doggedly carrying them through. He’d been a terrible swot. Nobody admitted they crammed for exams, except him. He didn’t even drink. And there was I, numbed with hangover in assembly, ‘Oh Come, Emmanuel’ hitting my head like a gong. The wickedest thing he played was chess. I thought: bet he drives one of those neutered little Citroëns, putter-putter, that I’m always getting stuck behind.
‘What was he like at school?’ asked Angie, indicating me.
‘Terry? He wore winklepickers. He was a real tearaway.’
‘No!’ Angie gazed at me.
‘Don’t look so surprised,’ I said.
‘He smoked Players Untipped,’ said Condom. ‘Quite a Jack the Lad.’
‘Really?’
Her look annoyed me. I said: ‘I w
ent out with the birds from the art school. Twiggy eyelashes … thick white lipstick … long thighs …’
‘I painted on my lashes with charcoal,’ said Angie. ‘I remember now.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘You didn’t know me then,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what I was like. You’ve never asked.’
‘Course I have.’
‘You haven’t.’ She paused, then smiled. ‘And just look at us now.’
‘This is what you did it for,’ I said.
‘What?’ asked Condom.
‘This,’ I said, gesturing round. ‘Reproduction.’
Then a woman came into the room. She was a gigantic creature in one of those Indian tents that liberated, fat women wear. She started to chat to us, and introduced the plastic thing which she called, with a simper, Pauline the Pelvis. Everyone sat in solemn silence. I remembered our Biology classes, fifteen years before … The raucous giggles, our teacher stuttering. But we were older now; we’d put our matchboxes behind us. Today nobody laughed.
In fact Angie was holding my hand – there, in front of everybody. She had called this an important moment for us both. I watched Pauline the Pelvis being tilted back and forward and thought of all the pelvises, or pelvi, I must have known, unbeknownst to me.
By now the tent was burbling on about relationships, and how the birth process was about bonding, and opening up to each other. I thought: they’ve opened. I pictured, with longing, a pint. A bag of dry-roasted peanuts. Nobody talks about relationships in pubs.
‘Your hand’s clammy,’ Angie whispered.
‘S’not mine, it’s yours.’
‘Terry, don’t be tense.’
It was then that they opened the cupboards and started taking out the cushions.
‘They’re not for us as well?’ I hissed. ‘The blokes?’
‘Of course. That’s the point.’
‘Can’t we just watch?’
It was at that moment, when my mouth had opened for the next sentence, that the door opened and Sue walked in.
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