Four Bare Legs In a Bed

by Helen Simpson

  ‘You listen to this and you’ll learn a thing or two,’ said Vesta, looking at Ruth severely over her reading glasses.

  ‘Oh, no, please,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Don’t be so ignorant,’ said Vesta. ‘Now this is her chapter on Adolescence.’ She proceeded to read aloud the opinions of half a century ago on subjects as various as menstruation and the advisability of excess energy being channelled into a hobby.

  ‘You could try stamp collecting,’ chuckled Vesta.

  ‘I don’t need a hobby,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ve got reading. And as far as I can see everything’s just the same now I’m fifteen as when I was seven. I still go to school. I still come here every holiday.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ said Vesta. ‘You have your periods now, don’t you.’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ said Ruth.

  ‘The young adult, or adolescent, is particularly susceptible to unreasonable emotional swings,’ Vesta read aloud.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ said Ruth, ‘If you don’t shut up. And you can’t pronounce menstruation or comparable.’

  ‘When are you going to get a boyfriend,’ said Vesta.

  ‘When am I going to meet any boys,’ said Ruth.

  ‘It’s not natural,’ said Vesta. ‘Maybe it’s because of your weight. But don’t think you’re going to help matters by trying to wear lipstick. That cheap stuff you put on yesterday made your lips look like two pieces of liver.’

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ said Ruth, her voice higher this time.

  ‘Calming breathing exercises for adolescents,’ read Vesta. ‘Come on, now. Inhale deeply, filling the diaphragm with air.’

  ‘You don’t sound the g,’ snivelled Ruth.

  Fifteen years later Ruth was saying, ‘No. Leave me alone.’

  ‘Why?’ said Denzil, breathing hard. ‘It’s her, isn’t it.’

  ‘Oh, go to sleep,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s gone midnight. We’re both tired.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘Like what.’

  ‘Like I’m nothing.’

  ‘You’re not nothing,’ said Ruth. ‘Anyway, you can’t. I’ve started.’

  ‘I don’t mind, if you don’t,’ said Denzil.

  ‘I do mind,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Actually, I couldn’t give a toss whether you do or not,’ said Denzil, pushing his face into hers so that their teeth clashed.

  ‘You’re just selfish,’ she hissed as they wrestled around on the bed. ‘You come in at five o’clock, miles earlier than other men, and you sit around with your bits of paper while I’m up and down stairs with her bloody lemon barley water and rice pudding and pots of tea …’

  ‘She won’t let me go into her room,’ interrupted Denzil.

  ‘… And it’s all very comfortable for you but I have to do everything and now my agency will be late starting if it ever starts and we’ll never have enough money to carry on with the mortgage on this horrible house.’

  ‘It’s not a horrible house. You only say that because she said so.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know, I know.’

  Back in the past, Ruth and her mother had visited Mortlake every other Saturday during term-time. Vesta was always spoiling for a fight after a fortnight on her own.

  First, there was tea in the kitchen, the kettle smoking like the muzzle of a gun.

  ‘Heard from that husband of yours lately?’ said Vesta. This was her favourite opening gambit.

  ‘Not for a while, no,’ said Janet, bristling. ‘Why?’

  ‘Ha,’ grunted Vesta with a merry look.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Janet, humiliation transforming her features.

  ‘Don’t quarrel about Dad,’ said Ruth. ‘We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘And you can shut up,’ said Vesta equably, while Janet pulled out a crossword puzzle with a pitiable show of indifference.

  The talk trundled off down the same old tracks, stale grudges revived and gathering impetus with the freshening of vicious memories. Soon it was rocketing along. Vesta’s blood was up, her face was red. Janet was shouting hoarsely. Vesta was giving her best scornful laugh. Janet, panting, was in retreat, trying to recall her Mrs-Miniver-under-pressure face. Ruth was half way through the packet of Digestives, making a bet with herself about not grizzling before lunch.

  ‘What are you looking like that for?’ called her mother, with deflected bellicosity.

  ‘I wish you two wouldn’t fight,’ mumbled Ruth.

  There was a pause.

  ‘You ought to speak to that girl,’ said Vesta.

  ‘I’ll thank you not to interfere,’ said Janet to Ruth.

  ‘Why can’t you be nice to each other,’ whined Ruth.

  ‘Your mother and I are very close,’ said Vesta with dignity. ‘We just rub each other up the wrong way sometimes.’

  ‘Take no notice of her,’ said Janet. ‘She gets like this.’

  ‘Ginger, too. Shame she takes after her father,’ said Vesta, starting the ball rolling again.

  By the end of her second week on the sofa-bed, Vesta had improved enough to dress and come down for her evening meal.

  Janet had driven over after work and now crouched, flinching nervously like a horse attacked by flies, on a kitchen stool. Ruth, remorselessly silent, prepared the greens.

  ‘What a day I’ve had,’ said Janet brightly. ‘First a schoolgirl mum, trying to persuade her to go back to school. Then a ten-year-old who put his mother in hospital last week. And a really sad case this afternoon, a nice old boy who can’t cope on his own any more. A nasty fall he’d had this time, lying on his own there for two days. Incontinent too. We’ve done what we can but he’ll have to go into a home.’

  ‘Do shut up, mum,’ said Ruth.

  Looking wounded, Janet took out her cigarettes.

  ‘Oh yes, your daughter’s bossy all right,’ said Vesta with an angry smile. ‘You’re looking dreadful, Janet. Your face is all drawn and haggard, and your mouth looks sunk in. That haircut does nothing for you. As for the dye, it makes you look like an old prostitute.’

  ‘Well, thanks very much,’ said Janet, turning a gaze of dog-like appeal on her daughter.

  ‘It’s the menopause, of course,’ said Vesta with relish. ‘When you stop being able to have children, your body gives up. You’re no use any more. Your hair gets thin. Your skin goes dull. And then, you abuse your health, Janet, you always have. You live out of tins.’

  Ruth caught herself glancing appraisingly, almost assessingly, at her mother. She turned to Vesta and said, ‘You don’t look so hot yourself.’

  ‘What do you expect when you get to eighty-five,’ said Vesta. In the last week her skin had acquired a translucent mulberry-coloured glaze, and her hands and arms had begun to look pollarded.

  Ruth saw that her meal would be ready in a couple of minutes.

  ‘Mum, I think you’d better go soon,’ she said briskly. ‘You’re not doing much good here, and I’m just about to serve up.’

  Vesta’s eyes reddened and filled with tears. Janet stared at her daughter reproachfully.

  Ruth watched them in disbelief. She put the frying pan down and walked out of the kitchen. When she came back, Janet had left.

  ‘What was the matter then?’ she asked.

  ‘You were rude to your mother,’ said Vesta tremulously. ‘She thinks the world of you, and I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Phew,’ said Denzil, twisting Ruth’s left arm behind her back. ‘You’ve become very aggressive in the last couple of weeks.’

  They continued to grapple on the moonlit bed, growing increasingly hot and violent.

  ‘Call yourself a man,’ hissed Ruth. ‘When are you going to get round to fixing that bloody door-handle.’ She banged him on the ear. ‘Limp, that’s what you are,’ she continued. ‘University sapped you. Why don’t you get yourself a proper job.’

  ‘Right,’ said Denzil, ‘If you must.’ He kicked her lightly but stra
tegically, and they fell like trees onto the mattress.

  ‘Limp, am I,’ muttered Denzil.

  ‘Very funny,’ hissed Ruth.

  Some while afterwards, Ruth said, ‘Of course, you know what I forgot to do before we did that.’

  Denzil smirked, his hot face inches from hers.

  ‘Which do you think it’ll be?’ he muttered.

  ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not a girl,’ he continued. ‘You can have too much of a good thing.’

  Ruth pulled away from him. She knelt naked on the bed. The moon shone in.

  ‘That’s what I like,’ said Denzil. ‘Good child-bearing hips, too.’

  Hands clenched, knuckles silver against her belly, Ruth began to knead inwards and downwards.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. No. No.’

  The Bed

  LET ME TELL you how a piece of furniture changed my life. I had just moved into a flat with Tom, but things were not going so well. We were poor and over-tired, the flat was dark, dirty and sparsely furnished. I could not see how it might get any better.

  I had taken to wandering round department stores in my lunch hour, soothed by the acquisitive absorption of other women and by the somnambulistic glide of the escalators. One day I found myself in the bedding department, a hushed and unpopulated area. I stood surrounded by beds like Ruth waist-high amid the corn, and was filled with a longing more poignant even than homesickness. A rich meadow of sprigged brocade and velvet padding stretched as far as the eye could see. The beautiful mattresses absorbed all sound on this, the fifth floor, and so I did not hear the footsteps of the Bedding Manager.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’ said the voice at my ear. I turned and smiled. I did not need to think before I spoke. Consideration did not enter into it. It was an act of pure instinct.

  ‘Yes, please. I want the best bed money can buy.’

  Without worrying, which is unusual for me, I had taken the day off work to wait in for the bed. It was dark November, and the rain drummed tirelessly on the windows all day. I waited quietly, marvelling at how gloomy the light was in every room, without, however, minding about it. The colour of the air suited the portentous nature of this particular day. The bed arrived late in the afternoon, and I watched with jealous eyes as the men unloaded it, noticing immediately the wet corner frame where they had allowed its plastic covering to fall open. Rainwater does not stain, I told myself, and the mattress itself is dry as a bone, which is the important thing.

  I followed the men upstairs as they lugged the folded bed-frame, crackling in its plastic bag. We reached the low-ceilinged part at last, the crooked approach to the bedroom door. The older man heaved and juggled for a few seconds, then turned his rain-streaked face to me.

  ‘It won’t go,’ he said flatly.

  ‘No. I don’t believe you,’ I replied.

  ‘Nah, we’ll have to take it back,’ he persisted. ‘Unless you’ve got a saw?’

  I gaped at him, then realised this was his idea of a joke.

  Together we assembled the bed. It stood as high as a horse, in layers like a mille-feuille slice, an enormous square of magnificence covered in creamy flowered satin. The little room looked shame-faced around it, like a flimsy shoe box. Next door’s radio chattered on, clearly audible through the party wall.

  ‘Nice bed,’ commented the younger of the two, gazing at it, smiling with innocent pleasure.

  Tom was not so happy. He grew white-hot and enraged, unable to believe that I had done this, furious, incoherent, his tie crooked and his suit steaming damply as we stood by the gas fire. I kept quiet while he let rip and hurled himself around the room.

  ‘How the hell did you pay for it?’ he snarled.

  ‘Interest-free credit over ten months,’ I mumbled. He smacked his forehead and gave a howl.

  ‘£1,000!’ he shouted. ‘That’s £100 a month, you realise! I suppose you think I should chip in?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ll manage the money somehow.’

  ‘Sponging off me!’ he sneered. ‘That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? All your wonderful talk of independence.’

  ‘You’ll like sleeping in that bed too,’ I said. I started to cry.

  ‘You make me sick. It’s the most irresponsible thing I ever heard of,’ he said, and slammed the door behind him.

  The flat wasn’t really big enough for such scenes. If you left the sitting-room in this fine style, there was only the little bedroom or bathroom in which to cool down. Tom scorned these and stormed out into the rain, still in his suit. I thought of following him as he had had nothing to eat and was soaked through and tired out, but instead I went to have another look at the bed.

  We had been sleeping on one of those hard, cheap, Japanese-style mattresses called futons, stuffed with cotton wadding, claimed by the men who sold them to be good for your back. I hated it. It was so hard and ungiving that I felt bruised every morning when I woke up. The softer roundnesses of my body felt snubbed by it. Those futons might be all right for lean male athletes and ascetics, but I could never come to friendly sleeping terms with one of them.

  I sat on the edge of my new, hand-upholstered, foot-deep, sprung-edge mattress, and realised how tired I was too. I rolled my head gently, easing the neck muscles, hearing the interior crunch of vertebrae. We had had another quarrel the night before. Tom had humped his back into a foetal arch and prepared, breathing slow and stertorous, to fall asleep with his usual ease. My mind had been alight and leaping with grievances. I could not rest. All issues of grief were sharp-edged and clamorous, jumping up in turn like rows of jack-in-the-boxes. I had wanted him to browse the pastures of insomnia with me, and was pleased when my restlessness prevented him from sleeping. The intensity of my sadness had been out of all proportion to its causes, which after all had only had their nourishment from everyday behaviour in its less attractive aspect. I had been forced up by a spasm of sleeplessness, running through the dark to the door, thudding in bare feet along the black alley to the front room. There I had fallen on the carpet and wept the sort of tears which leave the eyelids speckled with red to the brow next morning. Some time in the early hours I had returned to his side, thoroughly defeated, for some warm touch to banish the energetic mental banshees. And when the morning came, four hours later, every contentious issue was there clear as daylight as soon as I opened my eyes, not ameliorated but no longer appalling.

  When Tom returned, I did not rush out from the bedroom for the further effort involved in any sort of exchange between us. I tucked some clean sheets where I could on the bed – they seemed ridiculously small suddenly against the glossy acreage of the mattress – and curled naked there under an eiderdown. I could hear Tom moving angrily from room to room, but tonight it was I who was the indifferent slumbering monarch. I sank gratefully into an unbounded cradle of sleep. He did not join me but I did not know that until eleven the next morning, when I woke, fresh and sound and dreamless, after an unbroken dozen hours of oblivion.

  I glimpsed the clock and saw the broad light of late morning, but felt none of the panic I would normally experience on oversleeping on so grand a scale. I stretched slowly until I tingled to the tips of my fingers and toes. I felt well and strong and placid. I padded to the kitchen and made a jug of coffee before ringing the office to say that I was ill and would not be in. I took my coffee back to bed with me, and lay there all day, smiling and drowsing, stretching and smiling, without a practical thought in my head. Tom was right, the bed and I were in a happy alliance of irresponsibility.

  He returned at seven that evening with some late anemones and a bottle of wine.

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking so well and cheerful,’ he said, standing at the foot of the bed, grinning in spite of himself, shrugging himself out of his suit.

  ‘Come and get warm in here,’ I said, and held out my new sleep-strong arms to him. Legs wound together, arms straining tight, we made love with violent eas
e. Our bed bore us up like boats on water, buoyant, pliant and entirely silent.

  Hot and happy, he turned his sly-smiling face to me.

  ‘Well, it’s a damn good bed for one thing, anyway,’ he said.

  We had slept in a fair number of beds during the two years we had been together, and each had presented its own unique difficulties. The one in Camberwell had been a worn-out shadow of a bed, rolling us down every night like rain water into a gutter. It had also been mounted on spitefully efficient castors, which meant that any movement more vigorous than turning one’s head on the pillow would send it careering towards the wardrobe with prudish vehemence. In the house in Wood Green our room had had two single iron bedsteads which clanked in desolation. The landlady was an ex-matron, and these were ex-hospital beds. We lay side by side at night holding hands across the divide like characters in some terrible play by Samuel Beckett.

  Beds are no fit matter for ridicule, no more than sleep or love. I have always liked the fairy-tale about the princess who proves the blueness of her blood by displaying the most exquisite sensitivity in her sleep.

  ‘I trust you slept well, my dear?’ enquires the cunning old Queen, laughing up her sleeve; under the twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdown quilts she has planted a pea.

  ‘Oh, miserably!’ replies the exhausted princess. ‘I scarcely closed my eyes all night long. I lay upon something hard, so that I am black and blue all over.’

  What can the sleep-depriving Queen do but allow her son to marry this girl who has shown such entirely proper delicacy over sleep?

  Within a month of the bed’s arrival Tom acknowledged its worth and apologised for his initial hostility. Our quarrels dwindled away. Tom showed signs of new energy, left early for work, and looked marvellously well. I felt better, too, but found the opposite about work.

  Large doses of sleep had made me invulnerable to worry. From being one of the most conscientious secretaries at the firm of accountants which employed me, always reliable, hard-working and careful, I soon became the laziest and most slapdash. I reasoned with myself as I picked up the phone to report yet another chimerical stomach upset that I had given the firm a year’s tense good behaviour and they now owed me some leniency. Besides, it was difficult to sack people these days, and anyway it was nearly Christmas.