Flying Under Bridges

by Sandi Toksvig

  Strictly speaking this was true. One hundred and thirty-four men were listed on the War Memorial as having the excuse of death for staying in France after the great conflict of 1939—45, but the fact was that a hundred and thirty-nine Edenfordians had originally joined up. No one ever mentioned what happened to detain the other five.

  The town was perched on a large, cobbled hill above the banks of the River Eden. It boasted a decent theatre, a leisure centre, a celebrated golf course, the largest Conservative Association membership in the south-east and more estate agents than a brief glance at the population might suggest was sustainable.

  Inge’s parents had bought their house when they got married. It had cost £3,000 and was considered expensive. Built in the 1850s, it had a doll’s house look about it. Square front, door in the middle and high sash windows on either side on two floors. A white picket fence enclosed the front garden, which was a mass of country flowers. Lavender, hollyhocks and wild poppies vied for space and made any reckonings on the central sundial an impossibility. It was not a place to keep time but to let it flow gently past. Inge had been happy here as a child and she hoped to feel safe coming home.

  Inge parked in the gravel drive and led the way to the front door. Inside, the rather smart hall had a sweeping oak staircase with the large sitting room off to the right and dining room to the left. At the back was her father’s old study, the kitchen and a large conservatory. It was here that Inge seated Kate so that she could look out over the back garden with its neat lawn, the row of shaded apple trees and the small summer house at the far end. It was peaceful. The air was good. It was a good decision.

  The removal men had lost none of their fabulous humour on the road down. They arrived with jokes, demands for tea and a surprising amount of the furniture chipped or scratched. Inge went into organisation mode for the next few hours. She was just bringing down a box marked ‘kitchen’ from the bathroom when a woman appeared at her front door. Everything about her was fantastically fit apart from her vowels. She was Australian and she whined. She could have whined for her country.

  ‘Inge, good day, what a delight, what a complete delight. Pe Pe Cameron from the tennis club.’ Pe Pe stuck out her hand so that Inge had no choice but to put down the box and take it from her.

  They shook firmly as two fit people feel obliged to do.

  ‘I know you’re just settling but the nice boys you have helping you said you were in here and I wanted to be the first—’

  Inge let Pe Pe’s hand go and smiled. ‘You’re very kind.’

  Pe Pe frowned. ‘Kind?’

  ‘To welcome me.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that. No, really, I know everyone is going to swamp you with invitations, but I wanted to be the first. Now, this weekend my husband William and I… William Cameron? Cameron Builders? If you ever need anything doing …’ Pe Pe glanced around the hall with a look that suggested everything needed doing, and quickly,’… he’d be delighted. We are holding a little soirée at our home for the benefit of the tennis club kids’ programme and we would be just thrilled if you would come and draw the raffle. Now, it’s at seven on Saturday and—’

  ‘That is so kind,’ Inge interrupted and smiled. Pe Pe smiled. It was kind. They were two very smiley women. ‘But I’ve only just moved in and—’

  ‘It’s for the kids. For charity.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘At seven on Saturday. You can’t miss the house. Biggest one at the end of Church Hill Road.’

  ‘Right.’

  They both smiled again. Pe Pe gave her a look that showed a definite desire to be shown around. She smiled once more at her famous new neighbour and made one last enquiry. ‘Will you be bringing anyone?’

  ‘No. No. No.’

  Finally Pe Pe left with more smiling and firm handshaking. Inge shut the door and leant her head against it. Why didn’t she just say no? Oh God, this was just the beginning. People coming to her door, talking to her, not leaving her alone.

  ‘Giving the door a header, eh, Inge?’ The removal men wandered, seeming to go nowhere, carrying nothing. ‘On the head, to me, to me.’ They played mock football down the hall and disappeared into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Inge sighed and went Out to the conservatory to see if Kate was all right.

  Kate was more than all right. She was laughing. A young lad was sitting with her and they were both laughing. He was a handsome fellow. Maybe fifteen, with the nice, lean muscles of a young man to be. Kate looked up and held out her hand to beckon Inge in.

  ‘Inge, this is Patrick. Patrick is now in our employ so you must both be nice to each other. He is going to mow our lawn for us. Patrick, this is Inge.’

  Patrick had been leaning against a small bookcase but he got up and stood stiffly to a kind of attention as Inge approached. Inge put out her hand. He carefully wiped his on his shorts and then they shook hands gravely as new business colleagues ought to.

  ‘I heard you were moving in and I thought maybe you could do with someone. We’ve got the house at the back. There’s a hole in the fence and … We’ve just moved here ourselves and Dad says good help is hard to find when you’re new, so I thought…’

  So it was decided. Patrick would come once a week to do the lawn and once a week to help Kate with any other odd jobs she might think of. Patrick went back through the fence and Inge and Kate sat and looked at their new garden. While they sat watching the back, someone else was watching the front. Beyond their white gate a silver Volkswagen Golf sat idling.

  Chapter Nine

  The biggest thing happening in Edenford that summer (apart from the much anticipated Edenford Players Production of Fiddler on the Roof) was the building of the town bypass. It had caused quite a controversy in the town. There were other things happening that could have roused the blood of the town — 44 million people in Africa with Aids, Romanian refugees no one wanted, children’s hospices closing due to lack of funding, the oldest golf club’s absolutely desperate need for new mats on the driving range — but the bypass was the big news. Adam had led the campaign and took personal pride in every inch of road as it was laid. Eve was less thrilled. They did need somewhere for all the traffic, but the route chosen was through the Bluebell Wood at the back of the town.

  If she had been asked, Eve, of course, would have said that she didn’t want the four-lane highway to go through the woods. What she might not have said was that she quite wanted it to go right through the town. Through the town and right down the middle of her house. Then she and Adam would have had to move, do something new, but Adam had never asked her what she thought so she had never said. The construction workers began clearing the fields in early spring, cutting great swathes of space through the grass and woodlands. Eve used to go every day to watch. Watch the destruction.

  The bypass was what had brought Tom home. Adam and Eve’s son Tom was now twenty-one. He was Eve’s pride and Adam’s disappointment. Tom’s favourite childhood haunt had always been Bluebell Wood up in the hills behind the town. The hours he and Eve had walked there, built bivouacs and sat munching picnics. Then he had grown up and gone off to save the world. Never the academic, Tom preferred the outdoor life in one endangered site after another. He was a warrior for the world. When Edenford town council passed plans for the road, Tom had returned. He had come home and set up his tent. Now he lived in the middle of what should have been a dual carriageway. Work had come to a halt and the town was divided about what was happening. All Adam knew was that his son and his friends were stopping progress and Adam, local councillor and horrified father, was appalled.

  Eve visited her son every day. She brought him and his friends food and clean clothes. She told Adam she did it because she was Tom’s mother. She told him it was nothing to do with the bypass. Eve stayed out of the politics.

  Apart from visiting Tom in the woods and her mother at the hospital, life proceeded as normal for Eve. It was her silver wedding anniversary the week Inge and her mother arrived back in her life. A
dam and Eve, the couple Mrs Cameron had never wanted to see united, had lasted twenty-five years. Eve made a special meal with candles and matching napkins. She thought it looked lovely. She thought it would be what she would have every day if she were rich. She also bought a special perfume called Zen — a scent which expresses the quiet, purity and tradition of Japanese beauty.

  It made Adam cough and they didn’t last long — the candles. Eve had made Mexican fajitas and Adam said if he had to have food that needed rolling up then they would have to put the main light back on. Adam was very excited, which was unusual.

  ‘Imagine, Eve, several thousand acres of shopping space.’ Cameron Builders was building a new shopping mall just outside town. It was going to be a huge development. ‘Imagine the possibilities for insurance in a building like that. There is no end to the things that might go wrong.’ Adam sucked on his teeth and removed a small piece of grilled red pepper with his fingers. He wiped it on one of Eve’s nice blue napkins. ‘Mark my words. This will put Edenford on the map and look at this.’ He whipped out a pure white invitation with a gold border. It read:

  To Mr and Mrs Adam Marshall.

  Cameron Developments invites you to the

  Annual Eden ford Tennis Club Night For Kids

  June 2. Cocktails: 6—8 pm

  It was lovely stationery. Adam got up and leant the invitation carefully against the soup tureen on the Welsh dresser.

  ‘We’re a shoe in. Your brother is in charge of the whole project. I will casually bring it up at the tennis club do and he will, casually, say to me — “Adam, this project will founder if we don’t have the right kind of underwriting.” We are talking thousands, hundreds of thousands.’

  Adam sat mentally counting the money he was going to make. Shirley had gone up to the hospital to see her grandmother so that the anniversary couple could go out after supper. They didn’t go far. Just up to the driving range where Eve had a tonic water and watched Adam hit a bucket of balls. It was not what she had imagined when they were young. Adam was having trouble with his swing. It was his little ‘injury’ that was the problem. They didn’t really discuss it. He had taken to walking around with his hand permanently cupped in front of his genitals. Eve said if it was that bad he probably needed to see a specialist but he didn’t want to talk about it.

  What with her mother’s night things, which the hospital seemed disinclined to wash, Tom’s clothes from his outdoor life, Adam’s white shirts and her own ‘problem’, Eve now found she had a lot more laundry than before. It was boring sitting watching it go round at home so she took to going to the Laundromat to have a little break. Of course she had her own machine but more and more, for no reason, she felt she couldn’t breathe in the house. Her nice house with the mushroom tiles.

  Sometimes she would take a book with her. Mr Wilton, from the second-hand bookshop, gave her boxes of books for the charity shop. They could never sell any of them. It was all odds and sods with pages torn out. Things he couldn’t sell and couldn’t be bothered to get rid of — The Female Eunuch, the Bible with the first bit missing. Eve would take the cardboard box with her and sit reading while the wash went round. It didn’t matter what the book was. She was constantly amazed by how much she didn’t know about everything. She would sit there reading and whenever she looked up she could see herself in the window — a rather plain woman with two loads of whites and one of coloureds.

  Eve knew she had never been good-looking. That the nearest she had ever got to being a femme fatale was being involved in a really serious car crash. She felt a female failure. She had never stopped a heart beating with her beauty. She doubted she could stop an egg beating and it wasn’t just the new hairs on-her chin. It was a sad fact for a woman to face that she would never inspire a single love poem.

  Her one adventure with romance had been Adam and then they got married and that was the end of the story. Now the rules were clear. He didn’t need to romance her but she had to work to keep him. All the magazines said so. Every wife was a devil for having cellulite, she must not ‘let herself go’, she must think of witty and appropriate conversation to have over well-prepared meals, and he might smell of sweat and labour but she might not. Not ever. She must succumb to perfumes, balms and bath oils, colours for her hair, her lips, her cheeks and her eyes. Above all, she must not look down in the bath and find that her stomach refused to sink below the water.

  Eve never told Adam she was going to the launderette. It would have disturbed him. She knew he liked to think he knew where she was at any given moment. He liked to think of her at home, waiting, preparing, so Eve went to the launderette at weekends when he played golf. Adam needed his golf. He worked so hard all week and it gave Eve time to catch up on the jobs she hadn’t had time for. And then there was the money. The launderette was a waste of money. She had a perfectly good washing-machine. Eve had to secrete the launderette money from the Omnipotent Administrator who kept all household accounts. Adam was a stickler for accounts. He knew what he had spent on bath sealant in 1976.

  Eve nearly ran into Pe Pe on her way to do the wash and had to duck into the Post Office while she went past. She felt like a spy clutching her bag of evidence, and then Mrs Hoddle from the charity shop was in there so Eve had to buy some airmail paper. She didn’t need it. She didn’t know anyone abroad to write to. Pe Pe might not have said anything but she’d definitely have told William and William would have told Adam and then Eve knew she would never hear the end of it. It was Adam who had chosen the washing-machine for Eve. Adam knew about these things. He had a lifetime’s subscription to that consumer magazine Which, so Eve was always kept in the know about what was a ‘good buy’. It was a ‘sensible piece of insurance’ never to buy anything large without checking with Adam’s back issues first. Eve sometimes longed to buy something and make a hideous mistake, but she didn’t have the nerve.

  On the radio Pasty Cline was singing a song about feeling blue. They played country-and-western music very loudly in the Laundromat. Mrs Ede, who had been working there for ever and could sort the entire town by sheets and pillowcases, was rather deaf now but she still liked her music. Eve quite liked it too. It was partly why she went. She never had it that loud at home and Adam didn’t like country-and-western. Eve liked all those songs about unrequited love for women, cars or dogs. All that passion. So unlike Edenford. Eve didn’t know if she would die for love. She wouldn’t die for Adam because he wouldn’t notice.

  Eve sat and listened and thought, I’d like to sing but I haven’t the talent. Why did I not get given that? I’ll be forty-six next birthday. It’s odd to think that when Patsy Cline was my age she’d been dead for twenty years.

  Eve picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. There was a girl on the front wearing a leotard that suggested she had no genitalia of any kind. She certainly had never had an unwanted hair in her life. Eve’s feet hurt. She looked down at them. They were wearing sensible heels. Heels. Why the hell was she wearing heels to the launderette? They didn’t look like her feet at all. Her body seemed to start as herself and then finish as somebody else. She was wearing stockings.

  ‘But I don’t like stockings. I’ve never liked stockings,’ Eve mumbled to her own feet. Eve looked at the woman in the magazine and she looked at her own feet and she realised she had become a sort of female impersonator.

  The June issue of Cosmopolitan had much the same articles as the one Eve had read at Pe Pe’s house before Christmas. There was a general presumption that single women in their twenties were whiling away a lot of solitary hours in-the gym, which was good because the office was no longer exciting for women but rather a place of sexual harassment and the cause of exhaustion and distress for working mothers. Anyone who wasn’t already a working mother was obviously aiming to be one, so there were articles about how to catch a man (including a pull-out map showing cities where men outnumber women. Top Tip of the Month — move to a city on the map and then spill a drink on the man of your choice); several
articles on how to keep your man once caught, with follow-up advice on the signs of impending date rape and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

  A woman sitting opposite was reading She magazine.

  ‘Did you know that American women spend more than ten billion dollars a year on make-up and beauty aids?’ She flicked on through her article and sighed. ‘It says in here that women buy eighty per cent of everything that is sold anywhere in the world.’

  Eve nodded. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Men don’t even buy their own underpants.’

  The woman held up a photograph for her to see. ‘There’s that Claudia Schiffer. Lovely looking girl. My Bert really fancies her.’ She tutted and put the magazine back in her ample lap. ‘Imagine him making love to that. Claudia would be horrified.’

  Old Mrs Ede boomed into the conversation like Concorde riding roughshod over the air waves. ‘I like watching the clothes go round in the wash. You don’t know whose clothes have just whipped around in there before yours. Maybe a murderer getting rid of evidence or a wife spinning away lipstick from her lover. Don’t you think?’

  Eve didn’t know what she thought. ‘Adam’s got a bad egg stain on his beige golf jumper,’ she said.

  Mrs Ede nodded sympathetically. Stains were a lifetime’s devotion to her. She had a cigarette stuck to her bottom lip and ash dribbled down her front as she spoke. At least she was making more work for herself.

  The woman with the She magazine was unmoved. ‘It says here that 1 in every 2.3 marriages in the UK ends in divorce,’ she said.

  The women all tutted together. It had been a difficult day for Eve. She had had one of those smart-arse cashiers at the supermarket who race you with the scanner while you’re trying to sort fresh from frozen into separate bags. She looked so smug when she slapped down the bill and Eve was still panting her way through bagging the household essentials.