by Judy Astley
Sebastian, older of the two by ten authority-giving minutes, groaned. ‘Oh Mum, I can’t wear those old bunny slippers! I’ll get my trainers out. I mean, suppose somebody comes?’
There was a smirk and a smutty snort from Marcus. Sebastian nudged him into silence and Carol looked at them, puzzled.
‘You can’t wear those,’ she said, with a dismissive little laugh. ‘Your tennis shoes must be kept for tennis, as usual! I’ve booked a lesson for you both tomorrow morning up at the Club. You’ll like that.’ It sounded like a command, so the boys didn’t feel they needed to reply. They changed, reluctantly and silently, into their despised furry animal slippers and then, collecting their bags, padded softly upstairs to reclaim their much-loved, but over-clean bedrooms.
‘By the way, boys,’ Carol called, breaking her own rule and shouting up the stairs to them, ‘Polly’s mummy says she will take you out tomorrow afternoon, with Polly and her little friend Harriet. Something called Laser Leisure, she said. Now don’t complain about it being educational on your weekend off. A bit of extra science will do you no harm at all!’
‘Laser Leisure! Grrr-eat!’ ‘Brrrill!’ the boys yelled as loud as they dared, in the safety of Sebastian’s room, bouncing high and delightedly on the bed, firing imaginary laser beams at each other in a manner that would have had Carol hauling them downstairs for an hour’s compulsory piano practice.
‘Hope Polly’s mum doesn’t tell her what Laser Leisure really is,’ Marcus said at last, looking worried.
‘’Course she won’t. She knows we’d never be allowed out with her again. And she needs us for playing with Polly in the holidays,’ Sebastian told him.
‘And we need Polly, too,’ Marcus said ruefully, only too aware that one of the worst things about being sent away to school was a lack of local friendships for casual weekend and holiday play. He sighed, and looked longingly out of his window towards the estate at the end of the road. How he envied those roaming gangs of kids, allowed out on the streets for football and fun, all strolling daily to the nearest school and with a vast choice of partners in crime (sometimes literally) only a block away. ‘You’re so lucky, you’ve got each other,’ Carol was always saying to the twins. But they weren’t convinced. They knew they were missing out. They’d give up all the dubious privileges of their smart and isolated school to be able to wander along in a shambling gang to the local comprehensive, their shirts hanging out of their trousers, breakfasting on chocolate bars, an illicit Coke and experimental cigarette in their hands. They dreamed of joshing and pushing at bus stops (annoying old ladies), lounging against shop windows (annoying shopkeepers), and play-fighting all over the dusty pavements (annoying pedestrians). At their disciplined, over-organized boarding school there was very little opportunity, apart from covert and cowardly attempts at bullying, to be anything other than depressingly Good.
Saturday mornings usually followed a comfortable pattern for Alan. He got up early, showered, had a quick but futile glance at the crossword, enticed by the once-a-week chance to win a decent bottle of whisky, and then took to the shops. Saturdays were for cooking, for stock-brewing, squid-disembowelling, meat-marinading, lobster-murdering – whatever took his fancy with which to delight Jenny and frequently a collection of dinner guests.
This Saturday, Alan was going out, but not to the thrillingly-scented food shops of his choice. Small neighbourly comments along the lines of how long it took to rebuild Coventry after the war made it quite clear that it was time to mend his bombed wall, and he was heading with enormous reluctance towards a vast branch of B&Q, hoping that, amongst its huge range of stock, he would recognize the right ingredients with which to salvage his only attempt at building.
He posted a Rolling Stones tape into the car player and turned the volume up loud. The sun was shining and he tried but failed to capture a mood of optimism to go with the exalting music. He would far rather be in his beloved fish shop, poking at the scallops or weighing up the possibilities for a bouillabaisse, or perhaps considering a simple, barbecued fennel-stuffed, Pernod-drenched sea bass. The fishmonger was among a row of small, friendly, specialist shops, prettily painted in a tree-lined road near the station. On Saturday mornings, Alan looked forward to meeting like-minded men, unashamedly carrying vast French shopping baskets full of clumps of fresh coriander and discussing exotic cheeses and the advantages of Xeres vinegar over balsamic. Instead, he miserably turned the BMW off the dismal dual carriageway somewhere beneath the M4 flyover, and joined the DIY brigade collecting the components for a constructive weekend.
In the car park, Alan sat for a while in the car, listening to the end of Satisfaction and drumming rhythmically on the steering wheel. He could see whole families visiting the warehouse, which was as huge as a Heathrow hangar, in search of mysterious (to Alan) slabs of pine-cladding, brass-effect door knobs, pastel-coloured lavatory seats, Georgian-style window frames and flat-pack wardrobes. Some customers, he thought, awestruck, were probably buying entire fitted bedrooms or kitchens, which they, unlike Alan, could probably actually fit all by themselves. Overcome by the enormity of the task ahead, he wondered if he should simply finish the job the police had so carelessly started and destroy the rest of the wall, getting a man in from the garden centre to replace it with a pretty little white picket fence like the one the Benstone’s had, or some good, solid larch-lap that would stop the litter being blown in.
Eventually, no longer able to put off the moment, Alan collected a trolley that was easily big enough to accommodate the raw material for half a house, and launched himself into the store. He had to ask the way to the bricks and when he found them realized he should not have expected to find the same old, carefully reclaimed Edwardian-stock bricks he had originally used. Should have gone to the architectural salvage place, he thought, too late and frankly not interested enough, choosing something spanking new and having an approximate guess at the right colour. Perhaps no-one would notice the difference.
The back of the car now felt strangely heavy, reminding him of summer holidays, lumbering towards a French gîte, overloaded with luggage, sundry heaps of sports gear, Polly’s surf-board and Jenny’s usual box of holiday books. Could do with a break, he thought, absent-mindedly driving on to the M4 and then missing his turning back towards home. He joined the flow of cars heading towards Hammersmith, and when he got there, instead of going back across the bridge towards home, drove on towards Kensington, thinking at first vaguely, then more positively, about Serena. He now knew where she lived. After an evening of Joe Walsh’s seductive, relaxed, country rock on Thursday night she had allowed Alan to drive her home instead of striding off in her usual independent fashion towards the nearest tube. He’d spent the evening sweatily preparing to persuade her, too, as she lived only a few miles from him and there they both were, miles out in north London. In the end, though, she’d been quite happy to jump into his car, the fringes on her leather jacket swinging as Alan nervously lurched round corners, desperately trying to keep his hand from stroking her slim, lycra thigh.
It was no longer possible to pretend his interest in her was less than carnal. He’d put Sympathy for the Devil on the cassette player and managed, for once, to keep himself from singing along with it. Outside Serena’s flat, he had switched off the car engine, waiting without breathing, to be invited in for coffee and whatever else the night and Serena might offer. He’d felt weak with longing for her supple body as she turned to open the car door, and the leather of the jacket had squeaked faintly. Just at the moment when she turned to smile a sweet goodbye at him, Alan had noticed a basement door open and a dumpy, blonde, spike-haired figure ran up the steps and stood silhouetted against the light. She looked, he had thought at the time, like an irate wife, arms folded firmly into the ‘where-have-you-been-till-this-time’ position. Guiltily he had thought of Jenny, who had never been that sort of wife and had never failed to trust him, and reluctantly he’d surrendered Serena to her fuming flatmate. Another opportunity los
t, he thought, feeling old and that time and chances were both expiring fast.
The car swung heavily into Serena’s street and Alan could hear a clunk as the bag of ready-mix cement fell over onto the bricks in the car boot. He stopped the car opposite Serena’s flat, switched off the engine and then wished he hadn’t chosen a spot so close. He also wondered if he ought to get out and check that the cement bag hadn’t split. He knew that there were also a couple of old bottles of mineral water rolling around in the boot, and had a vision of the bricks and cement and water building themselves into a haphazard wall of their own. A woman, not Serena, emerged from the basement of the building opposite and terrified him into restarting the engine. Was that the small, cross woman from the other night, he wondered, risking a quick glance. Attracted by the sound of the car, she glared across at him and Alan, panic-stricken, pulled away sharply, finding that his hands on the wheel were trembling as he turned back towards the centre of Hammersmith and the bridge across the Thames, to home and safety.
At that moment, Serena was talking to Jenny on the telephone. ‘Sorry, Alan is out at the moment,’ Jenny was saying, icy cool and almost secretarial. From the conservatory she could hear eleven-year-old Georgina Smythe and her flute murdering Glück’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits, and wondered why it wasn’t pupils as hopeless as this one who chose to give up learning the instrument.
‘Awful of me to bother you I know, only I think I left my scarf in Alan’s car the other night. I’d hate to lose it, you see it’s a super Chanel one I borrowed from Mummy.’ Serena’s silky, rather child-like voice continued. Jenny promised to look for the scarf, privately thinking what an appropriate weapon it would be for strangling her husband. Was this, she thought, returning to supervise Georgina’s lesson, a heavy hint from Serena that an affair was definitely going on? Or was it a double bluff, as in – the affair was on but Serena was pretending everything was innocent by being so up-front about it? Either way it got Jenny hopping mad. She picked up her own flute to show Georgina how the piece should be played, but with shaking, furious fingers managed to play almost as badly as the child. ‘We’ll both practise it for next week,’ she said, giving up the attempt and trying to make a joke of it. ‘Perhaps one of us will get it right by then.’
‘Have you ever been before?’ Polly was asking Sebastian and Marcus in the car on the way to Laser Leisure.
‘No, but just about everyone at school has. We’ve been dying to,’ Sebastian told her eagerly.
Polly gave a lordly grin to the boys and Harriet, relishing her superior status as an experienced Laser-shooter. She looked forward to leading the ensuing battle, and to being the overall winner at the end of the afternoon. The twins looked a bit nervous, thought Jenny, smiling in the driving mirror at them. And well they might, she realized, knowing that it wasn’t fear of the game that worried them, but the fear of what Carol would say if she knew where they were really going. Unbeknown to their mother, the only scientific enlightenment the boys were going to get was from the flash of the ultra-violet as teams of hyper-excited children zapped each other with laser beams, recording the hit-score on responders strapped to their bodies. Good exercise was the only possible redeeming feature she would be able to find to appease Carol, Jenny decided, even though Carol thought exercise could only be done under conditions of rule-bound sport outside, in good fresh air. At least Carol believed firmly in competition, she thought, turning into the Laser Leisure car park, and perhaps one of the twins would win.
Alan was well into rebuilding the wall by the time Jenny and the children got home. As she turned into the driveway, Jenny’s car wheels whizzed up dust and grit which fell, irritatingly, into Alan’s mortar, as carefully mixed and prepared as a delicate Hollandaise. In the blast of air from the car, the Reader’s Digest DIY guide fell from its propped-up position on the heap of bricks and landed in Alan’s bucket of water, rendering him furious and dripping. Marcus, who was interested in anything that looked messy, clambered out of the car and came to inspect Alan’s progress and see if he could join in. ‘The bricks are a different colour,’ he pointed out.
‘I’m hoping no-one will notice,’ Alan replied, slapping another trowel full of mortar on the wall.
‘Well Marcus noticed,’ Polly said smartly, watching her father turn interestingly brick-coloured himself.
Alan gritted his teeth. ‘Why don’t you kids go into the house and get something to eat?’ he said, his eye on Harriet, who was inspecting her shoes after walking into a cementy puddle.
‘We had lunch. We had McDonald’s,’ Sebastian said with great pride. Poor kids, thought Alan suddenly, Carol and Paul probably make the twins avert their eyes from hamburger bars. Probably think they’ll catch something nasty in there, like an undesirable accent.
Jenny called the children in and then, seeing the state of their shoes from treading in the wall debris, promptly sent them outside again, round to the back of the house to play in the garden. She stood in the doorway watching Alan stirring the cement and decided that, from her point of view, it was not the ideal moment to mention Serena’s phone call. When she did tell him, she wanted him to have nowhere to look but straight at her, no possibility of shifty guilt being diverted into concentrating on lining up the next brick.
‘Let’s go out on to the Common!’ Polly yelled, dashing off and making for the back gate. Sebastian and Marcus hesitated, looked at each other and at the sprinting bodies of Harriet and Polly far down the garden, and followed.
‘She’d better not find out,’ Sebastian warned, thinking of his tyrannical mother, as he and Marcus jogged nervously down the path after the two girls towards the open gate and the forbidden Common.
‘She won’t find out from me,’ Marcus retorted. ‘But she won’t like my shoes.’ As he ran he looked down at his feet, where a thin crust of cement was dulling the highly polished leather.
‘It’s her own fault, she should have let us wear our trainers. Anyway, she won’t blame you, she’ll blame Polly’s dad for making such a mess. He’s got that stuff all over the pavement. It’s worse than dog.’
Out of the garden on to the Common the boys stopped, and, like puppies, stood sniffing the unfamiliar air. There were smells of bracken and blossom, and damp, oozy grass. Padding after some unsuspecting prey, one of the Mathiesons’ Siamese cats, enviably free from parental rules, stalked through clumps of early bluebells.
‘We’re over here!’ called Polly’s voice from behind a hawthorn bush.
‘Come and find us!’ added Harriet in a taunting sing-song.
Sebastian and Marcus took a swift look round to make sure there wasn’t a marauding parent in sight, and leapt into the dense shrubbery.
Harriet pounced out from behind the hawthorn and grabbed Marcus, twisting his arm. ‘You’re Marcus. I can tell because you’re wearing the red sweatshirt. What happens when you haven’t got any clothes on? How do people tell the difference between you then?’ Marcus, unused to fending off girls and somehow sure he’d heard that you shouldn’t have to, stayed passive as Harriet wrestled him to the floor and sat on his chest.
‘That’s the whole point, stupid. We’re identical,’ Sebastian told her smugly. ‘You can’t tell.’ He kept a wary distance from Polly and grinned at Harriet, sitting down and pulling at dandelion heads.
‘Seb’s hair is a bit longer,’ Harriet judged, inspecting them both closely. ‘And I think he might have more freckles.’
‘I’m a roundhead. Seb’s not,’ Marcus, in a slightly strangled voice gasped from his position as Harriet’s cushion. She had her legs apart and across him, crushing him solidly, the rivets on the back of her jeans digging into an exposed piece of flesh under his sweatshirt. His back would be all grass-stained, he thought, desperate to be allowed to his feet.
‘What’s a roundhead?’ Polly asked. ‘Do you meanlike Cavaliers and Oliver Cromwell and history?’
‘Being a roundhead doesn’t make you look different,’ Harriet said scornfully. ‘Not i
n this century anyway,’ she added grandly with all the authority of a recent school project.
‘Oh yes it does!’ Marcus protested, suddenly catching sight, too late, of warning signals from his brother.
Sebastian groaned. ‘Shut it Marc!’ he yelled, as he felt Polly watching him blush. Her inevitable next remark was, as he knew it would be, ‘OK show us then! Which bit of you is it that is a roundhead?’
The two boys were silent. It hadn’t occurred to Marcus that there were people on the planet who didn’t know his school’s terms for circumcised and uncircumcised cocks. He and Sebastian looked at each other, and the two little girls waited. Their silence told Polly exactly which bit she needed to see. She was perfectly used to seeing Alan casually and uninterestingly naked around the house, though not Ben these days, who scuttled rapidly from bedroom to bathroom, with his bathrobe belt tightly knotted, just in case. Polly’s curiosity was on full alert. She knew what a penis looked like, and was haughtily scornful of girls at school who dared admit they didn’t but she had never come across the possibility that some penises were different from others. In the interests of research she knew it was crucial to find out how. Suddenly Polly leapt on Marcus and started tugging at his tracksuit bottoms.
‘Gerrofff!’ roared Marcus, wriggling desperately under the bulk of Harriet.
Sebastian hurled himself on top of the heap and the four of them fought intensely for a moment in a tangle.
‘If you show us, we’ll show you something interesting, really, truly interesting,’ Polly coaxed, sitting up and pulling dandelion seeds from her hair. ‘So interesting you’ll be able to show off to all the boys at your school about it.’
