‘Tender?’ said the doctor. Ali wondered whether it was a condition of entry into medical school that the candidate first assimilate the terminology for undermining pain. ‘Tenderness’ and ‘discomfort’ were the words which Noah favoured for describing the ache accompanying bee-stings, or an abscess in the gum.
‘It actually hurts like hell,’ Ali said, fearing all the while that Noah would rise at any moment from his monastic pallet in the attic. The GP took a plastic glove from his medical case and drew it over his right hand before making a brief internal examination.
‘How long has the diaphragm been in position?’ he said.
‘Oh my God!’ Ali said. ‘Well over two weeks.’ The thing had been in since the Friday when she had met Thomas in London. The doctor winced and laughed at once. He gave her a small, friendly pat on the buttocks. Then he placed a sheet of paper towel under her haunches.
‘Allow me,’ he said. The thing came out like dead squid, reeking offensively of perishing rubber and stale secretion. It contained, in addition, a small pool of recent menstrual blood. The GP blotted her crotch with the paper towel before withdrawing it to wrap the pungent diaphragm and the used glove. He handed her the parcel.
‘Let the dustbin have it,’ he said. ‘If my memory serves me well, you’ve had some trouble with contraception in the past, Alison.’
‘Yes,’ Ali said. The doctor smiled.
‘Get Noah to have a vasectomy,’ he said, probably half in jest. The word fell as guiltily on Ali’s ears as if he had boomed ‘neuter the cuckold!’ through the house. It wracked her with a small involuntary shudder.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘We might want to have another baby.’ The GP chuckled knowingly. His practice was riddled with women of Ali’s age who were indulging in conception as a last pre-menopausal fling. He knew the breed. He wrote out a prescription for a new diaphragm and handed to her from his sample collection a four-day course of antibiotic capsules with effect specific to the uterine area.
‘That infection will clear up within two days,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Take the full course and give my regards to your husband.’ He shut his case with a brisk snap and walked out into a dawn chorus of strident bird twitter.
It was Daniel who had left the box of Tampax opened on the kitchen table. He had drawn it from a plastic carrier bag he found in the kitchen and had helped himself to ‘just one’. That was the rule he had negotiated with Ali, that out of each box he could have ‘just one’. They were intriguingly like white mice to him with their cottonwool bodies and nice string tails. And the cardboard casings, too, were so invitingly phallic; so silky smooth in the way they shuttled in and out of each other. Ali wondered sometimes whether Daniel was the only child in the world who had specially asked for a whole box of Tampax to himself in his Christmas stocking.
Noah, as he ate his granola, eyed the product with none of his son’s enchantment before taking off for his research unit.
‘Does one deduce from the presence of tampons on the breakfast table that you are, at least, not pregnant?’ he said. ‘Or do you buy them merely for your children to demolish?’
‘Get lost!’ Ali said, pricked at last into heated response. ‘You bloody pompous bore.’
‘Watch your language,’ Noah said. To ‘get lost’, in a manner of speaking, was Noah’s exact intention, since his schedule would not allow him to remain much longer at home in any case. He was booked within ten days to fly to Toronto for a week, prefaced by a four-day conference in Bologna. Within three weeks of completing his obligations in Toronto he was due at Princeton. Since he also had work to accomplish with Barbara in New York City he planned to forgo the early summer retreat with Ali in Cornwall and pass the interim in New York. Cornwall had always bored him and had been an annual concession to Ali. This year he was in no frame of mind to make concessions to her. He meant instead to work productively in New York and, in so doing, exorcise his anger and hurt. He had no doubt that he would return to her in the autumn, but right then he wanted what, to himself, he called ‘space’. He snatched up his jacket, and took care as he left the house to trace a judicious perimeter wide of the windows, fearing the sudden crash of falling flowerpots.
Eighteen
Noah had already departed for Bologna when Camilla returned for a weekend early in June. Being accustomed to her stepfather’s movements, his absence did not surprise her. It merely deprived her of the pleasure which she always took in his company. Since she had brought a new boyfriend with her, it deprived her especially of the pleasure he gave her with his caustic appraisals of her male companions. That these pleased her as constant evidence that Noah really cared about her was perhaps surprising, but Camilla had always relished Noah’s scrupulous pastoral care as much as her small half-sister defiantly resented it. Hattie was not placed as Camilla was to perceive anything uncommonly benign in a man who brought one hot chocolate in French railway cups and told one to watch one’s language. Since she had not served a prior sentence of infancy under the guardianship of Mervyn Bobrow, there was nothing in it to surprise her. There was now nothing to surprise Camilla in Noah’s current absence; only in that he meant to be away so continuously through the summer and that – when she had idly commented upon the Italian Linguaphone tape in the cassette recorder – Ali had replied, not with her usual affectionate irony upon Noah’s self-improvement projects, but with an unguarded whiff of animosity.
‘He might have got on faster had he tried learning Norwegian,’ she said. ‘He might have found it more in conformity with his own moral rectitude.’ Camilla chose to object.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘All that northern puritanism,’ Ali said airily. ‘All that carping about nicotine and white sugar. I reckon the Italians wouldn’t find it simpatico.’
‘Rubbish!’ Camilla said. ‘The Italians will love him.’
‘If I talk rubbish,’ Ali said irritably, ‘why do you come here and waste your time in talking to me?’
‘I came because I need your help,’ Camilla said candidly. ‘I need you to help me make a ball-gown.’
Camilla’s attendant boyfriend was called Matthew Carpenter. Ali had at first mistaken him for a casual fairground attendant, but he was, like her daughter, an undergraduate. He wore his hair close-cropped and had bleached his weekending Levi’s in violent, random blotches to a leprous mottling which was echoed in the mottling of his recent acne scars. Under a pair of striped braces he wore a T-shirt which said, ‘Go on, admit it – you’re after my body;’ an assertion which, with its high-handed imputation of motive, had from the first left Ali speechless with annoyance. Moreover, he had spent the first mealtime playing film buff over the propagation of a Spanish film director whom he had relentlessly called ‘Bun-well’, while poor Daniel had tried in vain to introduce his trick banana.
‘Not “Bun-well” “Boon-you-ell”, you idiot!’ Camilla had said heartlessly, while Ali marvelled at her daughter’s newly acquired snobbery, but Matthew Carpenter had remained untouched by it.
‘That’s right, Camilla,’ he had replied, as if commending her from the heights of his dais. ‘Bun-well. Franco Bun-well.’
‘Luis,’ Camilla said. But Ali could not feel sorry for the boy. There was something in his irrepressible striving after effect that reminded Ali of Eva Bobrow, whom she had met that morning in the coffee shop. She had gone there in a last-ditch attempt to reach Noah’s heart through his palate, but all in vain. He would not listen to her. He had gone off in a huff to Bologna, announcing that he would not return until August. Ali had once given money to a beggar man on the Embankment who had said to her, ‘Don’t just give me money, Missus. Listen to my story.’ Ali felt similarly cheapened now that Noah’s bank account was readily available to her while his ear was not available to listen to her story.
‘I met Eva Bobrow in the coffee shop, Camilla,’ Ali said. ‘She was pressing two posters on the proprietor for his pinboard. One was for the Monteverdi Vespers in
the college chapel and the other was for a “Working-class Lesbian get-together for Inner Peace” in Leamington Spa. I kid you not.’ Camilla refused to smile.
‘Is some predictably backward political point being made here?’ she said – she who allowed her stepfather to get away with using words like ‘dyke’. ‘Are you saying that a person who likes Monteverdi can’t also support gay lib or Inner Peace?’ It was one of those moments for Ali when she missed Noah almost beyond bearing. Noah would have understood exactly why it was funny. He would have known without explanations that it was not the causes in themselves, but the rolling of cause and allegiance into so composite a ball; the whole package. Besides, who else was there in life with whom one could pool one’s lurking bigotries, if not with one’s dear husband who was now regrettably absent?
‘I’m sorry, Camilla,’ she said humbly. ‘Let’s get on with our sewing.’
Ali was glad to take over Camilla’s dress-making because it diverted her from the oranges, which continued powerfully to glow and hum like goblin fruits. She contemplated defusing the picture by scrawling ‘Outspan’ over the orange globes or by painting out the background and replacing it with a static interior arrangement of drapes and vases, but as it was she left the painting to shine out uncompleted in its excellence while she turned gratefully to Camilla’s dress. There was something so much tamer in the satin moire and the tailor’s tacks; and such a rich material gratification to be got from adorning an object so worthy, even for the arm of Matthew Carpenter. Ali wondered sadly whether it was still appropriate to hope that one’s daughters would find happiness in men and marry suitably. To hear the nightly turn of the key in the door of Camilla’s bedroom which she shared with Matthew Carpenter made Ali itch to bite her nails.
Camilla took leave of her mother with the ball-gown over her arm in a dry-cleaner’s bag.
‘Thanks, Mummy,’ she said. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘Just a competent needlewoman,’ Ali said. ‘Enjoy yourself, my darling.’
‘Say,’ Camilla said, as a parting afterthought, ‘is there a Byron in the house? I need one, to write an essay.’ Finding it hard to deny her daughter anything, Ali sought out the vellum-covered book with an unexpressed reluctance. Having it once more in the hand, she envisaged Julie Horowitz at forty, now stridently lecturing her pupils from the prescribed OUP edition. Did she remember either the book or its recipient? It was more than two decades since that high-minded theft, but Ali was resolved within a moment. For Julie Horowitz she would stand up the Cornish coast that summer and fly to Johannesburg! For Julie Horowitz she would board all the aeroplanes it took. This year she and the children would have a really adventurous summer holiday. She would venture far, far afield and be back to impress Noah with her newfound boldness upon his return. If the loathsome Bo-brows could take wing for Johannesburg when they had no business there but consciousness-raising, why could not she? And if Noah himself could constantly bestride the world from Bologna to Mexico, why not? An impatience seized her for Camilla to be gone. When Camilla had gone she would dial International Directory Enquiries and telephone Julie.
Camilla blew dust from the nap of the cover and examined the fly-leaf with interest.
‘My God!’ she said. ‘Barmitzvah? What’s this? Is this Noah’s by any chance, or is it a relic from Mr Bobrow’s ethnic past?’ ‘Mr Bobrow’ was a piece of distancing terminology which Camilla had adopted in her teens and, having found it served effectively, she had ever since retained it.
‘There’s no necessary crime in ethnic allegiance, Camilla. Nor in ritual,’ Ali said. ‘Some of us like religion and some of us like Inner Peace. There you have it. It belonged to a nice old man who now has Parkinson’s disease. Look after it for me.’
‘Is it catching?’ Camilla said smartly. Ali, knowing how much she and Camilla meant to each other, wished that love would not so often get in the way.
‘His daughter was my friend Julie Horowitz,’ she said. ‘She stole it for me once. I value it.’
‘Stole it?’ Camilla said with mock horror. ‘God, I thought Mr Bobrow was the one who lifted books.’ She turned to Matthew Carpenter who had that morning replaced the black T-shirt with a sunny yellow string vest. ‘My family are all bibliophile klep-toes,’ she said with inverted pride.
‘Mine are all librarians,’ Matthew said, wishing to air the skeleton in his own family cupboard.
Over the telephone Julie barked out her extension number, sounding abrupt and commanding. Every inch a Horror Witch.
‘Hello, Julie,’ Ali said. ‘It’s Alison.’
‘Now listen here,’ Julie said aggressively, ‘I don’t know any Alison. Would you state your business please, I’m busy.’ Ali controlled an impulse to laugh out loud. It was intriguing to her to hear Julie’s childhood forcefulness transformed into prickly middle age.
‘Julie,’ she said firmly, ‘It’s Alison. Alison who ate all those marshmallow fish by the swimming pool once. Remember?’ There was a moment’s pause before Julie’s manner cracked.
‘Alison?’ she said. ‘But my dearest angel Ali-pie, where have you been all my life? You never bloody wrote to me. You got bloody married and you bloody vanished into the night.’
‘Sorry,’ Ali said. ‘It was dreadful of me. But I have thought of you so often.’
‘Christmas card?’ Julie said. ‘Couldn’t you have sent me a Christmas card, stating name and address once in twenty years? How do you plead?’
‘Guilty,’ Ali said. ‘How are you?’
‘Terrible,’ Julie said, with gusto. ‘Just beginning to realise what “long in the tooth” means. I’ve got receding gums.’
‘I’ve got my teeth all wired together,’ Ali said eagerly. ‘Capped, crowned, bridged and cantilevered. Do let’s compare tooth rot.’
‘I’m forty,’ Julie said.
‘I’m forty next month,’ Ali said.
‘I’ll bet you’ve got fewer fucking wrinkles than I have,’ Julie said with feeling. ‘But we’ll let that pass. Are you visiting the Homeland at long last? When are you going to see me?’
‘I’m telephoning from Oxford,’ Ali said.
‘Oxford England?’Julie said.
‘What do you think?’ Ali said. ‘Oxford Blauwildebeestfontein?’
‘You must be a bloody millionaire if you can afford to make early morning calls abroad,’ Julie said. ‘Are you acquainted with the charge rates?’ Ali laughed. Tight-fistedness had always seemed to her a characteristic of the rich. Julie’s forthright lack of ceremony had helped to close the gap.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Marking shitty student essays,’ Julie said. ‘How about you?’
‘Nothing,’ Ali said. ‘Julie, can I come and see you?’
‘What’s the catch?’ Julie said suspiciously. ‘You dump me for twenty years and then you want lodging rights. You’re not having a nervous breakdown, are you? Nurturing isn’t in my nature. I do enough of it with my parents. They have entered into a state of geriatric decline.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ali said. ‘I’m not having a nervous breakdown; not to the best of my knowledge.’
‘Terminal illness?’ Julie said. ‘Tell me the catch.’
‘I have two young children. That’s all,’ Ali said. ‘My husband is working abroad right now.’
‘How old?’ Julie said.
‘He’s nearly sixty,’ Ali said.
‘Jesus, I mean the kids, honey-child,’ Julie said with some impatience.
‘Oh,’ Ali said. ‘They’re nearly nine and nearly five.’
‘So they’re eight and four,’ Julie said. ‘Okay. If they don’t put a ball through my French windows. Or break the china. They can come too. I really don’t see why not.’
Nineteen
Julie horowitz met ali and her two younger children at Jan Smuts Airport, where she materialised as an elegantly under-dressed and rather glossy middle-aged woman with an impressive sun-tan and discreetly hennaed, well-bobbed
hair. She offered her cheek to Ali for a kiss, smelling of French perfume and breathing mouthwash.
‘I told you you’d have fewer wrinkles,’ she said. ‘And these are your gorgeous babies. Hello kids. Get your bags off the conveyor belt and look sharp, Ali-pie. Now is not the time to act like the Lady of Shalott. Are you as dreamy as ever?’ Ali laughed.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.
‘The car’s just outside,’ Julie said. ‘Come on.’
On route, from the wheel of the car Julie turned to the children.
‘How far can you lot swim?’ she said. Hattie blinked back at her, screwing up her eyes in the unfamiliar, un-English brightness.
‘Ten metres,’ she said. ‘Twenty-five with a float.’
‘Me too,’ Daniel said.
‘Liar!’ Hattie said. ‘He can only swim five.’
‘I meant five,’ Daniel said. ‘I forgot.’
‘In armbands,’ Hattie said ferociously. ‘He has to have armbands or he sinks.’
‘I forgot,’ Daniel said.
‘In my garden is something you won’t forget in a hurry,’ Julie said fiercely. ‘In my garden is an unfenced swimming pool.’ ‘Oh goody!’ Hattie said.
‘Oh goody, my foot,’ Julie said.
‘It’s the winter. You will both be kept tied to the jacaranda tree if you venture near it without a grown-up. Just once. Understood?’
‘Yes,’ Hattie said.
‘How about you, Daniel?’ Julie said. ‘Don’t you talk?’
‘Yes,’ Daniel said in a whisper from under Ali’s large straw hat.
‘In this town the major cause of infant death is drowning in suburban swimming pools,’Julie said. ‘I speak of white infants of course. Lucky little pinkoes like you. Black infants die most often of malnutrition. Harriet, why does your brother wear that hat? Is he hiding from me?’ Hattie giggled.
‘He pretends to be Huckleberry Finn,’ she volunteered eagerly. ‘He’s always talking to himself.’
‘He looks more like Mary Pickford,’ Julie said. As the youngest and dreamiest of three children herself, Ali identified strongly with Daniel. Yet her heart went out to Hattie who suffered so terribly at times from jealousy. Sibling displacement was an experience which neither she nor Daniel had ever had to live through. She thought now of a clapping rhyme which Hattie and Rebecca chanted in the kitchen some days, and hoped that it had no prophetic implication for the case in hand.
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