The Man Who Understood Women

by Rosemary Friedman

  As a grandmother Laura was redundant; a fact in which, to the horror of her various offspring who declared she had no inner resources, she inwardly rejoiced.

  ‘Enough is enough!’ she said firmly, wriggling her aching toes.

  ‘Wassat?’ The shaver was still buzzing.

  ‘I said “Enough is enough!”’ Laura yelled.

  Jack extracted the plug from the socket. ‘I’m not deaf, yet. What are you talking about anyway?’

  ‘Just thinking aloud.’

  She watched him dress, as she had for thirty years, sure that he was the only man in the world who fastened his cufflinks then made his hand very small in order to get it through the aperture. He brushed what was left of his hair, selected a tie and tied it with care, chose a matching spotted handkerchief for the pocket of his city suit and smiled at his reflection in the mirror.

  She hoped he would leave the bedroom with the affectionate peck on the cheek that had become so familiar, the warm reliable hand resting for a moment on her shoulder. She knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t. He sat on the bed. He was as bad as the rest of them.

  ‘They’ve all gone.’ It was a statement rather than a question. ‘Would you like me to stay at home?’

  ‘The Bank Rate would fall at once!’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Laura Prendergast said.

  She saw the hurt in his eyes and that he was about to repeat the question.

  ‘Mind your own business!’ she said firmly.

  ‘Would you like me to call Dr Littleton-Cooper?’

  ‘Why, Jack? Aren’t you feeling well?’

  ‘It’s you, you’re overwrought. The excitement of the wedding has been too much for you!’

  ‘I’m nothing of the sort,’ Laura said. ‘Now off you go and I’ll see you tonight.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Are you sure?’

  She laid a reassuring hand on his. ‘You’ll be late.’

  ‘You looked beautiful yesterday.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Laura said. ‘My swan song.’

  His hand was on the door. ‘What did you mean, “Enough is enough”?’

  ‘I was talking to myself,’ Laura said, ‘and it would take me all day to tell you.’

  ‘In that case I’ll be off. I’ll ring you at lunchtime.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Laura, ‘I shan’t be in.’

  ‘Lunching with Lydia?’

  ‘With Laura Prendergast.’

  ‘Dr Littleton-Cooper wouldn’t mind, I’m sure …’

  She twiddled two fingers at him. ‘Bye!’

  The door closed gently and opened again a moment later to admit Jack’s head.

  ‘What did you think I’d be doing,’ Laura said from her pillow. ‘Dancing The Firebird in my birthday suit?’

  Jack opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ Laura said, ‘I know all about Dr Littleton-Cooper. Have a good day.’ He closed the door. ‘And don’t forget to take the things back to Moss Bros!’ she shouted after him.

  She waited, as she had every day, except of course for the unmentionable period of the war, for the front door to slam, then lay back to allow herself one more retrospective and enjoyable glimpse of her baby, Elizabeth, walking up the aisle in the wedding dress which did not, Laura was ashamed almost to think, cover her knees.

  ‘Finished,’ she said to herself firmly, and then wondered how many days there were in thirty years. She was not going to work it out but confident that there must be several millions if not more, Laura put one aching foot (she should have ordered the satin shoes a size larger) out of bed when the telephone rang, and after that seemed unable to stop.

  First it was Anne to say at extraordinary lengths what a marvellous wedding it had been and that Laura was not to brood and must come to lunch; after Anne it was Clara to vow she had shed tears and that Laura must not let herself go to pieces; Muriel thought the mini-dress delightful (she had always told lies easily and transparently) and Laura must join them for bridge to take her mind off things; Poppy said what a charming couple (Laura noticed they all skated delicately round Nigel) and that Laura should go to evening classes, in the afternoons of course, and make pots or arrange flowers, just to keep herself occupied.

  When Poppy had finished organising her life for her, she left the handset next to the telephone where it burped rudely and again put a foot out of bed. This time it was a knock on the door. Doris, who had worked for Mrs Prendergast for twenty-five of the thirty years she had been married and whose second name she could never remember, wept tears in recollection of her ‘baby’s’ wedding down her nylon overall, and said that on Mr Prendergast’s instructions Laura was on no account to be left alone. She picked up the breakfast tray and said she would be up immediately with another cup of coffee.

  ‘No more coffee,’ Mrs Prendergast said firmly, this time putting both feet out of bed and replacing the handset on the telephone.

  ‘If anyone calls, I am not at home. I am going to take a bath and afterwards you can bring up a bottle of champagne if we have any over.’

  The tray rattled in Doris’s hands. Mrs Prendergast pretended not to notice and went into the bathroom. An hour later she was ready to go out.

  In the morning room, into which she peeped from habit to see everything was tidy and the flowers fresh, she found Dr Littleton-Cooper. Her face tightened.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Prendergast.’

  ‘Good morning, Dr Littleton-Cooper.’ She wondered, as she often did, where he had picked up that ridiculous name. He was no more than a youth and it added nothing to his stature. Dr Smith, whose practice he had inherited, was ten times the man of this one, for all his fancy waistcoat.

  ‘I suppose my husband sent for you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, it was the maid.’

  ‘Housekeeper. Maids went out with mob caps. Doris would be most insulted.’

  ‘She was worried about you.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’ Mrs Prendergast pressed the bell. ‘You’ll join me in a glass of champagne?’

  This one needs treating carefully, his eyes said. ‘No, thank you, really …’

  Doris came in with the tray and two glasses. Mrs Prendergast handed Dr Littleton-Cooper the bottle to open and sat in the easy chair. ‘Since you have come, you may as well earn the ridiculous and exorbitant fee Jack is fool enough to pay when we have a perfectly adequate National Health Service.’

  The cork hit the ceiling and the white bubbling foam of champagne trickled down Dr Littleton-Cooper’s immaculate trousers.

  ‘Perhaps I will …’

  ‘Of course you will.’ Mrs Prendergast filled the two glasses.

  ‘To Freedom!’ Mrs Prendergast said, raising hers.

  ‘As you wish.’ Dr Littleton-Cooper stopped mopping at his trousers and raised his. ‘I really shouldn’t, when I’m working.’

  ‘You’ll need it by the time I have finished with you,’ Mrs Prendergast said. ‘Now just sit there and listen. How old are you? Twenty-eight? Thirty?’ She answered her own question. ‘Practically since you were born I, Laura Prendergast, have been occupied with my family. I have endured six pregnancies, two with unpleasant complications, three with extended and painful labours, and the last resulting in the easy birth of a blond angel who survived for an hour.

  ‘While others have gone out into the world and achieved great things, I have been occupied for what seems eternity with nappies, bottles, prams, pushchairs, rented houses, buckets and spades and sandy swimsuits. I have staggered out of bed in the small hours more times than you have had birthdays, to soothe the pangs of mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, measles, both the German and the plain varieties, tonsillitis, and croup.

  ‘I have bathed a hundred grazed knees, applied simply countless sticking plasters, dried Niagaras of tears and nursed, at a quick reckoning, six broken limbs. And on Friday nights, when they were small, of course, I have cut a hundred nails, a hundred, Dr
Littleton-Cooper, including toes, of course, and shampooed five separate heads. I have watched more haircuts, bought more shoes (indoor and out) and sewed on more nametapes than you could imagine in your wildest dreams.

  ‘I have taken root, I swear, at the dentist’s, the piano, the dancing, and the skating sessions I have been called upon to endure; I have sat through unending successions of conjurers, pantomimes, ice shows, circuses, Donald Ducks, Mickey Mouses and Punch and Judys. If I had to watch the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”, no matter how exquisitely performed, just once more, I swear I would get the screaming abdabs.’

  Dr Littleton-Cooper rose from his seat, mumbling something about sick patients to visit, but Laura Prendergast pushed him back and refilled his glass. This time he did not protest.

  ‘I have not finished. In addition to the aforementioned trials of the early days, there are further delights of which you men of the world, of the mighty professions, know nothing … nothing. There is at all times an endless river of garments to be taken in or out, let down or up, put away for the spring, retrieved for winter, to be ferried to the cleaners and be collected therefrom. Acres of cupboards to be tidied, hockey-sticks – you see we are older now – to be disentangled from ball gowns, football boots from clean tennis shorts.

  ‘Often I have wanted to count the number of Speech Days, Parents’ Days, End-of-Term Performances, Prize-givings, Sales of Work and Carol Concerts through which I have sat, but I have been too busy catering for seven ravenous mouths, and double and treble the number when Molly and Polly and Dolly, and Harry and Larry have come for a week and stayed for a fortnight.

  ‘I have listened, Dr Littleton-Cooper, over the years to more fables than La Fontaine ever thought of, to more verbs, regular and irregular, than you would ever have guessed existed, and to my dying day I shall not forget the past participle of se battre’.

  ‘They say that as you grow older life becomes easier. Dr Littleton-Cooper, they lie! They grow hysterical with examinations, bewildered by choice of careers and entangled in the most bizarre relationships from which one is frequently required to disentangle them.

  ‘When they finally decide upon their life partner, the fun, as they say, has only just begun. One becomes embroiled with living accommodations and wearing apparel, hysterical over whom to offend least over the wedding invitations, frustrated by landlords, builders, caterers, florists, plumbers, electricians and little men and women of every description. This, of course, is when they have finally made their choice.

  ‘Dr Littleton-Cooper, if you had seen some of the sights that have walked during the past years through my front door you would not believe your eyes. Apart from the difficulties, to which I have become accustomed, of distinguishing the boys from the girls, I have said goodnight to creatures with unsavoury beards whom I have tripped over in the corridor next morning, emptied a Vesuvius of ashtrays and thrown out, I swear, about a million beer cans.

  ‘I have seen romances broken and mended, listened in the small hours for keys turning in the door, waited in terror for imaginary policemen on the doorstep to tell me my son or daughter had wrapped the car round a lamp-post. I have lost one child to California (it always makes me think of figs), the others are despatched to Lowndes Square, Cambridge, Chislehurst and the Fulham Road.’

  ‘Mrs Prendergast,’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said, tilting his third glass, ‘you are a wonderful woman …’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Mrs Prendergast protested in horror. ‘I am a mother.’

  ‘You have had a hard life.’

  ‘Please don’t be ridiculous. I have enjoyed every moment of it and would do exactly the same were there a second time round. I am neither out of my mind, going to pieces, nor “on the turn”. It is not mysterious, and I really think you’ve had sufficient champagne! You haven’t, of course, understood a word I’ve been saying, despite your fancy waistcoat and your fancy name. Dr Smith would have caught on at once but has, of course, been kicking up the daisies now for a long time. I’ll say goodbye and Doris will show you out.’

  She left the room but a moment later was back.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t suggest to Jack that I now have “too much time on my hands”, nor need “something to occupy my mind’. The children have tried. Simply because I have no urge to work for the Council for Moral Welfare, the Family Planning Association, or the League for Penal Reform.

  ‘I will not be a prison visitor, house a foreign student nor address envelopes for the International Friendship League. I shall not take up basketball, badminton nor book-keeping, mathematics, modern ballet, nor music, and haven’t the slightest wish to learn Russian.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said.

  ‘I am going to the park. The primroses and daffodils are in bloom now. I shall buy some sandwiches and throw the crumbs to the birds. I may come back before dark if it gets chilly, otherwise I shall not. I shall talk to no one and no one will talk to me. I shall not read a book and I am not taking my tapestry or my knitting.

  ‘Should you want me you will find me on one of the benches every day until I’m an old, old woman. I shall think of my grandchildren occasionally, and when it is their birthdays I shall telephone my favourite stores. Are you sure you’re all right?’

  Dr Littleton-Cooper was distinctly glassy-eyed.

  The telephone on the bureau rang.

  ‘Don’t take it,’ Laura ordered, putting on her gloves.

  ‘It may be for me,’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said. ‘I left your number with my secretary.’

  Laura lifted the receiver. Dr Littleton-Cooper gazed out of the window on to the well-kept garden and wished his head would clear. When he looked round, Laura had put down the receiver and was taking off her gloves as though each finger was of the utmost importance.

  ‘It was Richard from Cambridge,’ she said. ‘Olivia has toxaemia of pregnancy. She’s going into hospital.’

  Dr Littleton-Cooper pulled himself together and put a professional arm round her drooping shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, that’s nothing these days. Bed, rest and perhaps a surgical induction when the time comes …’

  ‘That’s not really the point,’ Mrs Prendergast said. ‘There is no one to look after the children.’

  All my Love

  1967

  It was the telegram in the Post Office that threw Iris off balance – not that it took very much to do that these days – the telegram that led her into the piped-music-washed womb of the coffee bar.

  It was a very ordinary telegram clipped to the top of a pile of them on the clerk’s side of the counter. It was upside down and she read it through the glass partition. The coding at the top and the time of despatch were of no interest. It was the message that sent her into the valley of despair, hurrying to the solace of coffee and cheesecake and the acquisition of goodness knew how many undesirable calories. ‘All my love, Roy’. Four words.

  She turned from the counter without buying her stamps, walked agitatedly down the street, sat down at the nearest table in the nearest coffee bar.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  The waitress, no more than nineteen, had black-ringed eyes with lashes so heavy it was a wonder to Iris she could see.

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  ‘Anythinktereat?’

  Iris followed her gaze to the trolley laden with over-creamy cakes in papers, chocolate layer cake, humpbacked shiny éclairs, cartwheels of Danish pastry.

  ‘I’ll have some cheesecake.’

  The girl scribbled on her pad, tore off the sheet, folded it and slipped it under the glass of paper serviettes. As she did so the man came in. They both saw him together, became linked, the nubile girl and the middle-aged woman, with a common bond of desire.

  He walked like a panther, light and boneless, carrying his six feet like a feather, broad chest narrowing to slim hips, elegant suit following his every move. An actor, Iris thought, or could have been, more probably, an executive: authority radiated from him. He wore a
red carnation in his buttonhole as if by right.

  The waitress, rooted to the spot, sighed. ‘They always sit at Jean’s table. There’s no justice.’

  ‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ Iris said. She was used to dealing with daydreaming juniors.

  ‘Not one of our regulars. Wouldn’t mind taking him home.’

  ‘I am in rather a rush,’ Iris said.

  He had sat down and was studying the menu while the sharp-nosed Jean waited patiently by his side.

  ‘I’ll have a Welsh rarebit, and coffee.’ He smiled dazzlingly at Jean, then, to her utter amazement, he smiled at Iris.

  All my love, Roy. All her life, more often of late, she had longed to receive and, even more, to send so simple a message, so few words in which were implicit so infinite a meaning. All my love. She had so much to give, so very much. Sometimes it overflowed and engulfed her, reducing her to tears. She’d look in the mirror then, to dry her eyes and see what they all saw, a stout woman of middle age whom love had passed by.

  It seemed incredible to Iris, incredible and indescribably painful, that no one realised that inside the fat and ugly body were thoughts, deeds, hopes and fears identical with those beneath the bosoms of the slim and beautiful. There was so much love within her unprepossessing exterior that sometimes Iris feared it would break its bonds and flow in a glorious river of beauty to swamp the nearest stranger. So much gentleness, so much compassion, she sometimes willed it to wither and die so that she might be left in peace.

  The girl was right. There was no justice. She knew how to treat a man, had more love to give than the hard-faced bitches working through their second and third marriages, pitilessly reducing their mates to size; more than the pretty dollies who took and took; more than the moaners, the naggers, and the succulents who grew fat on the lifeblood of their men.

  She knew they were weak and that she was strong, that they needed the comfort of her arms, the tranquillity of her bosom. She would be quiet, unshakable, always ready to give. She knew the secret, the strength, the ability to give and to give and to give … He was still looking at her, more gravely now. She was undeceived by his air of authority. She knew he was tense, nervous, angry, demanding, thoughtless, selfish; that he was weak….