Living In Perhaps

by Julia Widdows

  I lay back on his pillow and Tom Rose stroked my hair. It was getting quite long; I hadn't let Bettina's scissors anywhere near it in the last two years, except to trim the split ends. Tom Rose's hand felt tender at first and then, because it kept going over and over the same place, irritating. I twitched out from under it.

  'What are we doing, Caro?' he said. 'I mean, for fuck's sake, Tom and everything?'

  So I told him. I thought he'd understand. I said it lightly. 'We are the Hennessys' toys, and when they stop playing, we're left alone in the toybox.'

  'Where d'you get that from?'

  'I worked it out.' And I was reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

  Tom Rose leaned up on one elbow and propped his head on his hand. There was a stripe of sunshine across his chest. 'You know, sometimes you're really quite clever, Caroline Clipper.' He rolled over and got up, pulling his jeans on quickly with his back turned. 'But it's all bollocks, what you said.'

  He'd taken to wearing fluffy checked lumberjack shirts, and he picked one off the floor, sniffed it and tugged it on, still buttoned, over his round rugby player's head.

  'You ought to do something with your life, Caro. Get another job, or save up some money and just get out of here.'

  He kicked a balled sock across the carpet, and sat down grumpily to pull his loafers on over bare feet.

  'What are you waiting for?'

  I lay there, trying to formulate an answer. A clever one, or a heartbreaking one, I wasn't sure which to go for. And then he added, 'Get a move on, for God's sake. My mum'll be home any minute.'

  Which showed me just how much Tom Rose wanted to know the inner secrets of my heart.

  45

  Love, Oh, Love

  I went round to Gloria's one evening after work to deliver her newly cleaned winter coat. Pillar-box red, it was, with crinkly gilt buttons just like little ginger biscuits. It didn't suit her, made her look washed-out. 'What on earth's she gone and got herself now?' my mother murmured, the first time Gloria appeared in it. But I loved the blaring, loud colour of it, and Gloria for being so bold as to choose it.

  I hooked the coat in its polythene shroud round the banister rail.

  'Cup of tea?' Gloria asked me, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Stella was in the front room, tying a flimsy scarf round her neck preparatory to going out. The doorbell rang. 'It's open!' she sang out.

  Warren stepped into the room.

  'Where's my dream girl?'

  He reminded me of late-period John Wayne, on a bigger scale than a normal human being, chest like a meat safe, and wearing high-belted, shapely, flowing trousers.

  'Here I am, lover boy.'

  Stella was munching her lipsticked lips in the mantelpiece mirror. She met my eye in the reflection and winked. 'Tell us, then, Carol,' she said, 'have you got a boyfriend yet?'

  Warren put his hands in his trouser pockets and politely feigned deafness, gazing at the ceiling. He let his eyes range intimately over the light fitting. I said nothing.

  'Well – have you?'

  'Give the girl a break, Stella,' Warren suggested.

  'She's seventeen. She ought to have a boyfriend by now. Go on, Carol, you can tell us.'

  'It's a sensitive age.'

  'No, she doesn't mind.'

  'Stella!'

  'You don't mind, do you, Carol?'

  I smiled and shrugged, a minute smile with clamped lips, a minute shrug, like an itchy twitch.

  'Carol?'

  What could I say?

  'Yes.'

  Why not?

  'Oooh! Is he nice?' She opened her mouth and touched the corners where upper and lower lips joined with the tip of her little finger, blotting up stray fuchsia-pink lines.

  'No, he's horrible,' said Warren. 'That's why she's going out with him.'

  'I'm only asking.'

  'Yes, and maybe Carol doesn't want to tell you,' he said, taking her by the upper arm, putting his lips to her ear, tucking his big nose into her shampoo-and-set. 'Maybe it's private, Stella.' And he whispered something else into her ear. Stella giggled. She nuzzled at his jacket. It was embarrassing to watch such behaviour between people of their age. They pulled apart.

  Stella was determined. 'What's his name?'

  'Take no notice of her, Carol. She's just being nosy.'

  What should I say? Not the truth, that wasn't my style.

  'Go on, Carol, tell us. Tell your auntie Stell.'

  'Dave.'

  'Oooh, Dave.'

  'Stell-a!' said Warren, half laughing.

  'Where did you meet him?'

  'She's an interfering old bag, Carol. You don't have to tell her anything you don't want to. Just tell her to mind her own business.' He picked up Stella's handbag from the chair and pushed it at her.

  'I'm only taking an interest in my niece, Warren. I'm only wanting to know how she's getting on.'

  Taking an interest. These weren't the sort of questions my mother ever asked me. Though presumably she ought to have hoped for a boyfriend, a nice steady boy, and then marriage, a white church wedding, for me. The famous settling down she set so much store by. And children, one day. Grandchildren. Unless because I wasn't hers, not really hers – and lately proving it with a vengeance – she didn't care any more. My putative children wouldn't be her grandchildren. Not really hers at all. They could be anybody's.

  'We're on our way, Carol. Don't you worry. Come on, Stell, old girl.'

  'Less of the old girl, if you don't mind. I was your dream girl a minute ago.'

  He patted her bottom and stepped over to the door.

  'Just tell us where you met him,' said Stella.

  'At a friend's house,' I said.

  'Oh, not very romantic,' she said, face all tragedy, eyebrows awry.

  'Where we met wasn't very romantic,' Warren told her.

  'It'll always be romantic to me,' she replied, pummelling his back as she pushed him out of the door.

  Sometimes I wonder if the Hennessys ever knew I was Tom's girlfriend. I wonder if they ever saw me in that light.

  For so long I thought they were the most delightful, intelligent, lively beings, whole humans where the rest of us were half-humans, sprightly gods where we were heavy-limbed, blinkered mortals. I really believed that they offered me something, extended a hand, out of sheer generosity, because they had so much and because they saw I deserved it. I thought they were a household of pure, unconditional love. But, to tell the truth, they were very good at not seeing, not really feeling, at staying each within his or her own column of glass. And refusing to look out.

  To tell the truth: something I find quite hard to do. Even to myself, at times. The truth's not very palatable – easier to look away, curl your lip, push it aside, like a plate of something you really don't fancy. Hanny might have been on the right track, after all.

  That last year I spent less and less time at the Hennessys'. But I still used to visit Tillie when I could. Sometimes I'd find one of the younger boys there, sometimes even Isolde on another of her trips home. But in a way I liked it more if it was just Tillie, all on her own.

  I was in the kitchen on one of my afternoons off, making a pot of tea. I hadn't asked if I could, and I wasn't asked to do it. It was just something I felt like doing. There was nowhere else that I would behave so free and easy, not at any of my relatives'. At Gloria's or Bettina's I felt like a guest, and at home making the tea was a chore which I left to my mother unless I was actually made to do it. But in Tillie's kitchen there were no rules, it was come and go as you please.

  I rinsed out the teapot with hot water, swilling it round and round in circles, and tipping it into the sink.

  Tillie was standing by the ironing board. There was a pile of clean clothes, folded as she'd taken them down from the line but still crumpled, in the basket at her feet. Mrs Van Hoog had had a spell in hospital and while she was there Mr Van Hoog had withdrawn to his chair on the veranda, catatonic, apart from the drift of smoke from hi
s pipe. Now Tillie was washing and ironing their clothes and cooking all their meals.

  She gestured at the basket. 'I thought I'd have more time, now everyone's so grown. But it's never-ending. I was hoping to get back to painting again.' And then she shrugged. In the quiet we could hear birds singing.

  'What is it you're doing?' she said to me, a frown in her voice.

  I held out the teapot to show her.

  'I mean, these days? What do you do with your time? Are you studying?'

  'No. I left school ages ago. I've got a job.'

  'Oh. Where?'

  How could she not know? She was Tillie, who cared about me. She must know.

  'In a shop.'

  I didn't want to say the words – dry cleaner's sounded so dull, so humiliating.

  'Which shop?'

  She gave me a look, as if to say, 'Do I know it?'

  'It doesn't matter,' I replied.

  There was a long pause, in which I lifted the lid of the teapot and stirred the water round. I didn't want tea any more. My hand felt heavy and slack.

  'They've all rather left you behind, haven't they?' she said, looking at me with such opaque blue eyes that I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I waited for her to ask, 'Are you lonely?' or 'What is it that you want?' I waited, teetering on the edge, waited for a real conversation. I thought we might bare our hearts to each other. But when she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment longer, her eyes were still opals, blue and obscure; and then she glanced down and went on with what she was doing. Which was ironing a shirt.

  Tom came back in June, after his exams, and immediately resumed his old life as if he had not ignored me for six months. We met up two or three times a week. He'd catch me as I was leaving work, or drop in during the day, or send a message through Tom Rose. It was all quite casual, as if I was rather far down his list, but it was something solid, too. Something to grab hold of.

  After an evening out Tom never escorted me to my door, seldom accompanied me home down our street. He was always badgering Tom Rose to find some even later-opening place to go to, and I had to get up for work in the morning. So I'd walk home alone. It wasn't ideal, but I was used to the empty streets and the shadows, with just the occasional dog walker out and about, or a despondent figure loitering at a bus stop. I clutched my keys in my pocket and held to the vague plan that if anyone ever grabbed me I'd be ready to knuckle their eyeballs, quick as a flash. Oh, and knee them in the groin for good measure, too.

  One night we were sitting at a table in a pub (we were always sitting at a table in a pub) and Tom leaned across and touched me, softly, on the cheek, fitting the long fingers of his hand across my neck and moving his thumb along my jawline from hinge to chin as if he were measuring me for something. He did it with one eye on Tom Rose's expression. I don't know, I have never known, what it was that lay between them. Rivalry, complicity.

  I don't know that he ever touched me so tenderly before or after. I died of love that moment.

  But it reminded me of Patrick's hand, his caressing thumb, that time. That first time.

  We only did it once, Patrick and me. Just the once. Maybe it was his way of initiating his models, putting his stamp on them all. Welcome to the club: here's your badge, and here's your secret sign.

  After he let his thumb rest on my jaw that time, and I asked the fateful question about sleeping with his models, I knew the game was up. Well, they were all irresistible to me, Hennessys, and they knew it. It was only a matter of how soon.

  Up close, his dark eye gleamed, and the little fine lines, the hail-fellow-well-met crinkles of laughter around the corners of his eye, were coloured with a thousand glittering pigments. I thought perhaps he was impregnated with the materials of his craft. His art. I should say art. But he was crafty. His hands were dry and warm, negotiating with such clever, intimate knowledge all the planes and angles he had studied so well. We were in the attic. The day was hot and the breeze came and went like a lovely current, tangling over my skin, now warm, now cool, as Patrick moulded me to the shapes he wanted and I complied, as a good model should.

  And then I knew. I knew that all those lolloping nudes, century after century, had done just the same. Marked with the artist's stamp: 'I had her. She was mine.' Perhaps that was half the allure for the audiences, not just the naked flesh but the knowledge that this woman was available, not only to look at, had been available to the artist and might, even if only in the world of imagination, be available again.

  Or, in some cases, this man.

  Oh, Lorna, do not let me catch you reading my thoughts. Or you will certainly mark me down as troubled, sexually troubled, confused, mixed up. When in fact I have worked it out as plain as day.

  We were in the attic and I could hear, on the breeze that filtered through, the usual sounds of the Hennessys' house. Doors slamming, Sebastian's music – he had inherited Tom's old record player – someone running urgently down the stairs. Somewhere Tillie called a name, and somewhere else Mattie, chanting something, jumped repetitively on and off a wooden step.

  It was always in the house, they did their wicked deeds even in the house. And afterwards, when I had pulled my clothes on again, I wondered if Tillie hadn't called out my name.

  So when Tom took me gently by the jaw and looked at me with love, for Tom Rose to see, I melted again. I felt my soft insides dropping away. I was foolish. Maybe he was the Machiavelli. But I was reminded of Patrick's thumb, and how I had lain down with Patrick on the old green sofa, knowing how many times it must have been used, and I had heard Tillie singing in the kitchen below. And I smiled at Tom, such a smile as would break his heart if he knew what I was thinking about.

  Well, it would if I had my way. But I think his heart was whole, it was impregnable – unlike mine – and I don't know if suspecting Patrick and me would have made the slightest dent. A bit of hurt pride, maybe, a bit of peevishness at the loss of a possession. Like when Sebastian accidentally stepped on one of his favourite records and broke it. But not horror, desolation, enraged jealousy.

  I wondered what it would take to dent his tinny heart? Crack it open, really hurt him? I would have liked to know. Suddenly I wanted very much to find that one thing.

  46

  Monopoly

  Today it is raining as if it will never stop. And it's St Swithin's Day. I heard Trudy telling one of the ones in uniform. The guards, Hanny used to call them. 'That's it, there goes the rest of the summer,' Trudy said. 'Just my blinking luck.' As if the foul weather were a personal insult to her, and that was all she had in the world to worry about.

  No chance of getting outside today, but no one to go outside with.

  The guards. I always think of Hanny in the past tense. I don't suppose our paths will cross again.

  Last year on this day it was beautiful, clear skies and stunningly hot. A good omen. And it was my afternoon off. Tom borrowed the Van Hoogs' little car and drove us out to a field by a stream. Just a nondescript field with some trees and a stream, and black and white cows across the bend in the river. I brought the food, and Tom brought the dope and a transistor radio, and Tom Rose brought a bottle of wine which he stood in the stream to keep it cool. We felt like connoisseurs. We lay back in the grass and sunbathed and listened to the grasshoppers. Tom tried to find a music station with good reception on the radio but it was hopeless, and in the end we just tuned in to the grasshoppers, to their wheezy rhythms. The sky up above was forget-me-not blue, criss-crossed with puffy vapour trails, and tiny, winking aeroplanes spinning new trails just for us.

  I thought that even though I had waited a whole year for a day like this, it was worth it. I was blissfully, wordlessly happy. My arms were above my head, resting in the dry spikes of the grass, and I could feel Tom's thumb and fingers loosely circling one of my wrists.

  Tom said sleepily, 'What shall we do now? I know, let's play Monopoly.' Nobody stirred. 'First to throw a six starts. Amazing! I threw a six, very first go.'

  Then Tom
Rose murmured from behind closed eyes, 'So did I. Wouldn't you know it?'

  I stared up into the blue. 'Me too,' I said.

  'No, you didn't.'

  'You couldn't have. Three sixes in a row, too much of a coincidence.'

  'Yeah, you can't start. You'll just have to wait till your next turn.'

  'Jump jump jump. Park Lane. I'll buy it,' said Tom.

  'Waterloo Station, I'll buy it,' said Tom Rose.

  'Waterloo's not on there,' I complained. 'Marylebone, King's Cross, Fenchurch Street and ...' I couldn't remember.

  'Waterloo. Sure is. Is that my change? Why, that's very handsome of you. Thank you, I will.'

  'Jump jump jump. Mayfair. That's for me,' said Tom.

  'What about me?' I said, forcing myself to laugh. 'When's it my turn?' I scrambled to my feet. They still lay on their backs, arms over their faces, shielding themselves from the sun.

  'Community Chest. Just my luck,' said Tom. 'Wait – look at this! You have come first in a beauty contest.'

  'In a beauty contest!' Tom Rose chorused. 'Win ten thousand pounds.'

  'It's not ten thousand. It's never ten thousand,' I protested. I kicked Tom lightly in the side with the tip of my shoe. He was shaking with laughter, Tom Rose too.

  'Come on, Caro, have your go.'

  'Have your go or we'll have to go for you.'

  'Oh, too late! Jump jump jump. Goddammit – Go to Jail.'

  'Go to jail, Caroline Clipper,' said Tom, extending his arm and raising a harsh pointing finger at me.

  And that's the way it was, that's the way it always was, Tom pulling the strings and Tom Rose cheating to keep up with him. It seemed like we were having fun, but I'm not sure that we were.

  I walked into the Hennessys' kitchen, looking for Tom.

  Tillie had to think for a minute. 'He's gone to a music thing in London. With Tom Rose. Back tomorrow, though.'

  It was like a punch in the stomach. I lowered myself on to a chair, and did what I always did with Hennessy information, claimed prior knowledge. 'Oh, was that today?'

  I existed on scraps.