Second Skin

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Listen, I’ve got an idea,’ said Nicky. ‘Why don’t you invite Will here for a special meal? Stuff him with aphrodisiacs and make it madly romantic – lights low, soft music – and then, bingo, he’ll sweep you upstairs!’

  Catherine settled William on her lap. ‘Well, even if he did, I think I’d be too embarrassed with everybody here. Anyway, it’s not likely to be romantic with Jo washing her smalls in the sink and Darren crashing around. Oh lord!’ she said. ‘They’re not in yet, are they? I’d hate them to have heard me.’

  ‘No, Darren’s doing a gig. And Jo’s gone to see a friend. Anyway, they couldn’t hear us three floors up. In fact, it’s a pity Will wasn’t free, then you could have asked him back this evening and had a bit of peace. But, you know, the other two are out again this Saturday. They’re going down to Hampshire for the weekend to see their families. I heard them discussing train times. So why not invite Will then? And I’ll make sure I’m out as well.’

  ‘Oh, Nicky, don’t be silly. You don’t have to …’

  ‘That’s all right. I was planning on going windsurfing anyway. The reservoir’s quite fun, but I want to get out in the waves. I’ll toddle off to Shoreham and leave you the run of the place. You can give Will a leisurely dinner, then shag till you’re pop-eyed.’

  Catherine ran her hand along William’s back. Would she and Will ever shag, she wondered, ever get that far? ‘It sounds fantastic, Nicky, but I have my doubts, I’m afraid. I mean, even the leisurely meal may be a bit of a problem. I’m at the market all day Saturday, so there won’t be much time for cooking. Mind you, I suppose we could eat late. Will’s running a poetry workshop, so he won’t be back till eightish, in any case.’

  ‘Great – invite him for nine. And if you want to borrow my room after dinner, do feel free. He is quite a big chap after all, and this bed looks as if it was made for a dwarf.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Nicky.’

  ‘Why not? I shan’t be there. Come to think of it, it’s an awful waste of a double bed – no one ever using it.’

  ‘Oh, Nicky, I am sorry about Jonathan.’

  Nicky shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. It serves me right for aiming too high. A famous actor, for God’s sake! Why ever should he stick around with me when he must have the pick of every luscious bimbo in the business? Mind you, he was quite civilized the few times we did go out. Which makes a pleasant change. Most blokes I meet turn out to be shits or creeps. Did I ever tell you about Craig?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Christ, he was a bastard! Every time I saw him, he had to prove …’

  Catherine tried to keep her mind on Craig, but it would keep returning to Will. The light was beginning to fade; a murky dusk pushing at the balcony window, blurring the view of Camden’s chimneytops. She longed to stop night in its tracks; haul back the dazzling weather of the kiss; preserve the whole day as a trophy: gala day, red letter day. She even felt differently about Berkshire. A rather tame and stolid county had now become the most exciting place in England. Yet it was a crazy way to react. She wasn’t in love with Will, for heaven’s sake – on the contrary, she was all too aware of his faults. But that kiss had somehow impaired her powers of judgement.

  She continued to stroke the cat, turning him into Will, ruffling his dark hair, running her hands down his back. She imagined him responding as William was doing, nuzzling his head against her body, purring rapturously.

  ‘Well, finally, I’d had enough, so I decided to have it out with him. “Craig,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take all this crap.” And d’you know what he did, Catherine? He walked out – just like that. He wouldn’t even discuss it. Which was typical, of course.’

  Catherine made vague sympathetic noises, having missed most of what Nicky had said. And William’s ecstatic purr only increased her sense of guilt – it seemed so tactless in the circumstances. ‘It’s, er, funny,’ she said at last, in an attempt to break the awkward silence. ‘We’re always moaning about men, but when we were driving back this afternoon, Will was complaining about women.’

  ‘Not you, I hope?’

  ‘No, just generally. He thinks women today actually want men who behave like bastards, and run a mile from the caring sort, because they see them as weak.’

  ‘But how on earth can he generalize like that?’

  ‘Oh, he always does. About everything. It’s part of his charm.’

  ‘You must have got it bad, Catherine! Sweeping generalizations always piss me off. They’re so arrogant.’

  ‘Well, Will is arrogant in some ways. And frightfully unsure in others.’

  ‘And I suppose that’s part of his charm as well?’

  Catherine grinned. ‘Oh yes. Anyway, enough of Will. It must be a frightful bore for you. Tell me, how did Sunday go?’

  ‘Sheer heaven!’ Nicky stretched luxuriously. ‘Give me windsurfing any day, rather than shits like Craig. And I much prefer that reservoir to the Ashford one. It’s bigger, for one thing, so there’s more room to blast about! And I’m definitely improving now I’m getting more time on the water. I can cope with almost any conditions, even the strongest winds. And the weather was damn near perfect. I stayed out a good three hours, and afterwards I felt like new – elated yet wonderfully relaxed.’ She gave a sigh of frustration. ‘But when I’m back at work, I’m forever looking at the tree outside the office, trying to gauge the wind. And if there’s a good old blow, it’s all I can do to sit still. I want to jump straight in the car and drive over to the reservoir again, or down to the coast, even better. But I can’t live solely for windsurfing.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s something you truly like. I envy you that, having one real passion.’

  ‘You’ve got Will!’

  ‘Don’t speak too soon. Knowing my luck, he’ll gobble the meal, then say he has to rush back for something.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh hell,’ she frowned. ‘I promised to phone Kate.’

  ‘Well, it’s not too late, is it?’

  ‘It’ll be after midnight there by now. Mind you, she never seems to go to bed till some unearthly hour. Anyway, she’s probably hanging around waiting for me to ring.’

  ‘Well go on, then – quick! I’ll watch the telly in my room and you can have the phone to yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Catherine turfed the cat off her lap and hurtled down the stairs. At the bottom she noticed Will’s stripy scarf draped across the banisters. He must have left it when he came in for coffee last night. She put it round her neck, holding one end against her face and inhaling his elusive smell; reliving the kiss again.

  Stop it, she told herself. Kate would be appalled if she could see her once chaste mother mooning around like an animal on heat, forgetting Gerry in this obsession with a stranger. She went into the sitting-room and sat down by the phone. Even before Gerry’s death she had sometimes feared Kate’s scorn, for failing to espouse high ideals or campaign against human rights abuses, but being content to simply jog along, typing sales reports and pruning roses. Yet ironically, it was the children who had cramped her style: solemn Andrew and high-minded Kate. Without them, she might have run wild – had passionate affairs, sailed round the world in a catamaran, crossed the Gobi Desert on a camel. Or was she just deluding herself, blaming them for her own in-built unadventurousness?

  She dialled the Gurgaon number, annoyed with herself for forgetting the call – Will’s fault again, of course. There were the usual problems getting through – delays and interference – and then more delays while someone went to find Kate. She looked anxiously at her watch, tick-ticking away the pounds. These calls were a drain on her still sporadic income.

  ‘Mum, hello! What happened?’

  ‘Sorry, darling. I hope I haven’t kept you up. I got a bit … delayed. I’ve been out all day, you see, and then I …’

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘You sound different.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’<
br />
  ‘Sort of high. Have you been drinking?’

  ‘Of course not. But how are things with you?’

  Kate launched into an account of her newest project: teaching a course on hygiene at the centre – elementary matters such as sweeping floors and keeping flies off food. Kate’s work always sounded dauntingly primitive, and her living conditions positively medieval. The pig-loos, for example, which she had described in her first letter home: rough holes cut into planks, where you squatted over pig-pens, so the pigs could gobble up the faeces. Or the almost daily power cuts when you ate in the dark, feeling your food Braille-fashion and swatting at the mosquitoes. Yet Kate seemed happy there – far happier than in all-mod-cons Carshalton. She was even making good progress in Hindi, though that only seemed to cut her off still further from a mother who’d barely scraped an O-level in French.

  She put in the odd remark, feeling ignorant, as always, about the complexities of Indian life, and even about the geography of the country when Kate mentioned unheard-of places with unpronounceable names.

  ‘So that’s me, Mum, for what it’s worth. And what have you been up to?’

  Catherine hesitated. Her own life seemed so trivial in comparison. ‘Well, I’m, er, running my own stall now. At least, I share it with a … a friend. We’re selling bric-à-brac and junky things.’

  You know, it amazes me, Mum, to think of you working in a market.’

  ‘Thanks very much!’

  ‘No, I’m not knocking it I admire you. It must take real guts to do something like that. I mean, before, you always had Dad, sort of cushioning you and making the decisions. So after he … he died, I thought … well – to put it bluntly, I thought you’d go to pieces. But you’ve been absolutely great.’

  Catherine twined the coils of the phone-flex round her fingers. She hadn’t realized how important Kate’s approval was; how absurdly much it meant. Those words of praise were her medal of honour.

  ‘And listen, Mum, I … I want to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t much help when I came home for the funeral, was I? In fact, I probably made things worse.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Look, let’s be … real, for once, okay? You see … someone died over here. Just a few days ago. You know Nasreen, who works at the centre – well, her husband had a stroke. They were devoted to each other and incredibly kind to me. I’ve been to their home quite a bit and they always shower me with food and drink, even though they’re living on the breadline. The first time I went, Nasreen made me a rice pudding. It had just one raisin in it, rather like we’d put a sixpence in a Christmas pudding. Needless to say, they made sure I got the raisin. In fact, they pretended they weren’t hungry and gave me half the pudding! And they always pile sugar in my tea. “The more sugar the more we love you,” Venu used to say. And he was so interested in my life, Mum. He’d ask me about England and about you and Andrew and everything. But … but last Tuesday he just keeled over and … that was it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling. How terrible. Did he … ?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. Forgive me – I didn’t mean to be rude, Mum. But I’m trying to make a point. Venu’s death was a ghastly shock, of course it was, and quite dreadful for poor Nasreen. But what’s important was that it made me think about what you must have been through. I suppose at the time I didn’t want to think about your feelings. I was angry with you and …

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘Mm. Oh, it probably wasn’t your fault. I was angry about a lot of stuff then. It’s different now – I’m different. You can’t help changing when you live here. There’s so much more to be angry about – poverty, disease, all the big issues – so you forget the personal crap.’

  Catherine continued fiddling with the phone lead. She hadn’t even known that Kate was angry. Had she ever understood her – the new Kate or the old? Even as a child, her daughter had been a rebel, questioning everything, challenging authority, determined to experiment. Gerry had found it a terrible trial and had sometimes exploded in fury, while she would try to mediate, for the sake of a quiet life. Kate had probably despised their attempts to make her conform. Perhaps she had gone to India not, as they’d assumed, to see the world and salve her conscience, but to escape a restricting home. Only now could she sympathize, and only because she was experimenting with her own life, even rebelling in a sense, though in a smaller and more selfish way than Kate. She had become the teenager: rootless, restive, strapped for cash, in a tizz about a boyfriend.

  ‘It’s funny, though,’ Kate was saying. ‘When I first came out here, I used to get frightfully worked up about seeing tiny kids scrabbling around the rubbish tips for scraps of mouldy food, or beggars with no legs pushing themselves on skateboards. I wanted to change the whole system, sweep away the horrors, single-handed, if necessary. God, was I arrogant!’ Kate gave a mocking laugh. ‘But I’m much more accepting these days. The Indians have taught me that. However dirt-poor they are, they don’t complain or even seem to want to change their lives. It’s a sort of … spiritual thing, I suppose, and it’s had a huge effect on me. I’ve learned to be calmer and more balanced, and now I’m content to do just small things, instead of taking on the world. Shit – I’m sorry, Mum, you don’t want to hear all this.’

  ‘But I do, darling. I love to know how you feel and what’s happening in your life. It makes me feel much closer to you.’

  ‘But this call’s costing you a bomb.’

  ‘Don’t worry. If you were here, I’d be spending money on you in one way or another, so at least let me give you the odd phone call.’

  ‘Well, thanks, Mum. But I’ve gone miles off the point. I was trying to … apologize. About the funeral.’

  ‘But you have – you did. And actually, I want to apologize myself. I don’t think I ever really understood how … how …’ She made herself go on, determined to be ‘real’, as Kate had put it; to broach subjects previously out of bounds; even acknowledge she’d been in the wrong. Yes, the phone bill would be ruinous, but at last they were managing to communicate.

  They talked for several minutes before there was a pause in the conversation. Then Kate blurted out almost sheepishly, ‘Mum, I miss you.’

  Catherine was taken by surprise, and also touched. In all the time Kate had been away, she had never admitted that before.

  ‘I know I’ve just been going on about acceptance, but some days are really shitty. I mean, the chaos in the streets can suddenly seem menacing rather than picturesque, and for no reason at all. And the heat can be awfully wearing. It’s just beginning to build up again. Mind you, I’m lucky to be in the north. It’s thirty degrees in Madras. And the way the men stare – I suppose I should be used to it by now, but sometimes it feels like mental rape. It’s then I wish you were nearer, or that I was still at home with Mummy!’

  ‘Oh, darling …’

  ‘But then other days you feel fantastically alive. The colours are so bright out here and everything’s ripe and sort of bursting. All your senses are sharper and it’s – well real again, you might say.’ Kate broke off, tutting to herself. ‘Sorry to keep using that word, but I’m into that stuff at the moment – trying to figure out what’s fake and what’s worthwhile.’

  Me too, thought Catherine. Though ironically, as her daughter learned acceptance she was increasingly kicking against the pricks.

  ‘You know, another thing I miss, Mum, is hot buttered toast and Marmite.’ Kate had changed the subject disconcertingly. ‘Sometimes I think I could kill for a jar of Marmite.’

  Catherine laughed. ‘Well, I’d better send you some right away. I don’t want you had up for murder!’

  ‘Oh, would you, Mum? That’d be great. I love getting things from home. But it’s about time I shut up and let you get a word in. How are things? How’s Camden?’

  ‘Fine. Well, actually, there is … something I’m a bit worried about. I’m seeing another man.’ The words were out
before she could stop them. She hadn’t intended to mention Will – not yet, at any rate. She cleared her throat, embarrassed. ‘I … didn’t know how to tell you. Or whether you’d mind, or …’

  Silence.

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You do mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t, Mum. Well, I suppose I might have done a year ago. It would be like a betrayal of Dad. But not now.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes, honestly. Who is he?’

  ‘A poet. He’s called Will. Oh, it may not come to anything. It’s only early days.’

  ‘A poet – I say!’ Kate was evidently impressed. ‘Well, I hope it does work out, for your sake. It’s pretty lonely on your own. I know. When things broke up with Paul, I …’

  Catherine felt another pang of guilt. She had no idea that things had broken up with Paul. He was still little more than a name. There were whole acres of Kate’s life she knew next to nothing about. But at least they had made a start.

  ‘Mum, I’ll have to go now, I’m afraid. Someone’s waiting for me.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, I’m worried about your bank balance!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, darling. It’s been lovely to have a nice long chat, for once. And next time I win the lottery, we’ll talk for a whole day.’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘I’ll phone again in a couple of weeks, okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine. And listen, Mum – good luck with Will. I mean that.’ Catherine walked slowly back upstairs. She could hear the newsreader’s voice echoing from Nicky’s room. Bad news, most likely – it invariably was. But she was still on a high. She closed the bedroom door and stood looking at Kate’s photograph. She didn’t even know what her hair was like these days, or what sort of clothes she wore, or how tanned she was from the sun. She would ask her to send a recent photo, and replace the old, sanctimonious Kate with a new, approving daughter.