Four Bare Legs In a Bed

by Helen Simpson

  ‘It’s delicious,’ she replied in docile gratitude. They were attacking the broken coral ramparts of a salmon mousse.

  Mrs Leversage poured the last of a chilly bottle of Sancerre.

  ‘There is something so sad about eating left-overs on your own. Don’t you agree?’ she apostrophised in her habitual dinner-party manner.

  ‘I never seem to have much left over because of Jim’s appetite,’ said Jane seriously. ‘But I always throw out some bread for the birds.’

  ‘I’m not sure how well Beef Wellington stands repetition,’ said Mrs Leversage. ‘So I will content myself with a little of this deliciously ripe Brie. But help yourself, my dear, by all means.’ She hesitated, then opened a bottle of the bargain claret which her husband refused to drink.

  ‘What number of wedding anniversary was it, Mrs Leversage?’ asked Jane, tearing her eyes away from the rosy slices of beef on her plate.

  ‘Our fifth,’ said Mrs Leversage, with downcast eyes and a modest smile. Then she looked up dramatically from under her brows, transfixing Jane with a needle-sharp stare.

  ‘We have the perfect marriage,’ she said, with considerable simplicity.

  Jane gave a tentative smile, rapidly replacing this with what she hoped was a more appropriate expression of awe. She thought of the fat man she had met once or twice in the street, and of the pale brown eyes prominent behind their bifocals. Toad-coloured was how she had described them to Jim. She blushed.

  ‘I hope one day, Jane, that you will find happiness like this with a man,’ continued Mrs Leversage. ‘I think, if you will forgive me for saying so, that you are not critical or exacting enough. You must put a man on his mettle to find out just what he is worth.’

  Jane paused in mid-mouthful and considered this.

  ‘Whenever I have a five-pound note, I slide it into my purse so that the Duke of Wellington’s face looks over the flap. Because he has the same look about the eyes as Jim. Is that a good sign?’

  Mrs Leversage’s face became enigmatic to the point of sphinxdom.

  ‘I don’t think you have taken my point,’ she said coldly. She cut herself a long sliver of cheese, then pushed it aside. ‘Beware egocentricity, Jane,’ she said. Her eyes were very green as she stared at the girl. ‘You only talk of how you feel. You should surely be more aware of how he values you.’

  Jane looked troubled.

  ‘I don’t think he’s the type to show his feelings,’ she said. ‘I think it’s something to do with him coming from the North.’

  ‘I can see I shall have to show you what I mean,’ said Mrs Leversage. ‘Wait here.’

  Jane watched her stalk from the room, slightly unsteady in her high shoes. She tried to think why she felt so strange. When she pushed her chair back and stood up, the room span gracefully around her shoulders for a moment.

  Over by the mantelpiece, the afternoon sun spilled into the air like golden tea. Jane stood in its warmth and blinked at her reflection in the pier-glass. The wine soared in her head and she was impressed by her own beauty. She lifted her hand to touch the flame-coloured hair, watching the fair-skinned heroine in the mirror do the same.

  Her eye became distracted by the forest of precious objects between her and the flattering shadow. Pale cards engraved with a wealth of invitational gold were propped against the central clock and its ormolu cherubs, clustering beyond to bronze satyrs and bonbonnières milkily enamelled with lovers. A procession of parties, weddings and celebrations shimmered with the confident promise of happinesses which Jane would never see. It was like hearing familiar music from a long way off, and not being able quite to make out the tune. A tear stole pleasurably down her hot cheek. From the kitchen came the whirr of the grinder.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ she murmured. ‘Coffee.’

  The fragrance of the beans combined with the night-faded persistence of cigars. She wished she could take this lovely sophisticated combination back to her own flat, which smelt musty because of the damp, and of meals more prosaic by far than the ones consumed in this house.

  ‘No, stay by the looking-glass,’ said Mrs Leversage. She set down the tray, then took up the shallow box in front of the coffee pot.

  ‘I hope this will show you what I have been talking about,’ she said, advancing towards her, fiddling with the catch of the box. The lid flew open. Jane stared. Mrs Leversage smiled. The gems flashed their dazzling faces into the afternoon.

  ‘My fifth wedding anniversary present from Adrian. Fifteen emeralds, and two hundred and fifty diamonds. See how thoughtfully he chose those variants on the number five. Emeralds for my eyes. Diamonds because they are my stone.’ She pointed to the variously faceted gems. ‘Brilliant cut. Marquise. Pear-shaped. Trilliant. See the straight square lines of the emeralds; except for that exquisite cabochon specimen on the clasp.’

  Their brilliance reminded Jane strongly of the wet garden.

  ‘Just like a tree after it’s been raining,’ she said reverently. ‘In fact, trees are diamonds, when you come to think of it. Trees turn into coal after a few thousand years, don’t they?’

  Mrs Leversage shot her a sharp look, taking in her heightened colour and vagueness.

  ‘And then coal turns into diamonds, although it takes a very long time,’ Jane rambled on.

  ‘We must see how they look on you,’ said Mrs Leversage curtly. ‘Face the looking glass. I’ll fasten it.’

  Jane turned obediently, staggering against the fender. She steadied herself and watched as Mrs Leversage drew the diamond collar around her neck, fumbling under the weight of auburn hair as she tried to snap the clasp shut. The necklace was cold against her collar-bone and she shuddered.

  ‘Keep still,’ said Mrs Leversage, ‘or you’ll make me drop it.’

  ‘Sorry. A goose walked over my grave.’ Jane giggled foolishly, then swept her hair up on top of her head in an attempt to help.

  ‘There. Stay like that, Jane. Stay quite still.’

  They faced the reflection in the mirror. Jane’s arms stretched long and white above her head, and her hands were invisible, buried in the hair they held aloft. Her gem-encircled neck looked not her own. She felt embarrassed at showing the soft marigold hair under her arms, and blushed.

  It was very quiet in the room. She saw Mrs Leversage’s face behind her in the mirror. Mrs Leversage was staring at her in such a hard bright way, with such an astonishingly unpleasant smile on her lips, that Jane blurted out, ‘Can’t I go now?’

  She felt a gliding movement at her side, a warm pressure beneath her armpit. At the same time she saw in the mirror a sallow jewelled hand snake to and squeeze at her breast.

  There was a moment of undiluted bafflement before her brain connected the image with the sensation.

  ‘No!’ she roared, only it came out as a mewing noise. She wrenched away, catching a glimpse of her own crimson face in the mirror, and, banging her ankles clumsily against the fender, lost her balance and fell headlong. The patterns of the Turkish carpet shot up towards her face and she clutched at the fire screen and irons which were in her immediate downward path. There was a racket of clattering brass and splintering wood as she hit the deck.

  Into the silence which followed Mrs Leversage’s words fell like solid objects, plangent and metallic.

  ‘You’re going to be very sorry if you’ve damaged that necklace. Very sorry indeed.’

  Zoë and the Pedagogues

  ‘MSM!’ SAID SHELAGH. ‘Mother of God, how many more times!’

  The Datsun Colette heaved itself forward just as the lights turned, then died halfway across the yellow box.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Zoë, turning hot inside her clothes. There was the usual fanfare of horns. Cars squeezed round them, then roared off like aeroplanes. In the mirror Zoë could see the face of the lorry driver trapped behind her, swearing like a goldfish.

  ‘Handbrake,’ said Shelagh. ‘Into neutral. Ignition. What a way to earn a living.’ She gave a bitter laugh.

  As they cre
pt away, Zoë reminded herself to breathe in and out. Relax, she told herself, but this made her forget about the clutch for a moment, and the car went into rabbit spasms. She felt as useless as she had done last night with Roger.

  ‘This is your seventh lesson,’ said Shelagh evenly, ‘and you’re still not out of third gear. That’s bloody slow going.’

  ‘How many lessons will it take me to learn?’ asked Zoë.

  ‘Usually I would say one for every year of your life, but in your case I’d add your grandma on too.’

  They reached a good long traffic jam and sat in comparative amity for a while, Shelagh puffing at her fourth cigarette of the hour. She was a fair fat woman with the milky blue eyes of a child.

  ‘You pay ten pounds for a lesson, right?’ she said. ‘Well, I only get two pound fifty of that. What about the workers, eh?’

  Zoë tut-tutted sadly.

  ‘Into first. Clutch up slowly. You know that Wisconsin diet I told you about, it’s bloody murder I can tell you. A pound of broccoli and two crispbreads is all I’ve had today.’

  They reached the disused sewage works at last, and drove around searching for a cul-de-sac of their own. Wherever she looked, Zoë met the bulbous eyes of other learner drivers.

  ‘The main thing to remember is your PSL and your MSM,’ said Shelagh. These mnemonics infused Zoë with an unshakeable belief in her own incompetence. The letters entered her ears and sat inside her head, but she could not link them to her hands and feet at all. Mirror, she thought laboriously. Signal. (Roger, I don’t think I want to see that Russian film at the Poly.) Manoeuvre. (So I’ve asked my sister over for the evening.) No, it would never work; she lacked coordination.

  ‘Ten to two!’ bellowed Shelagh, ‘Feed the wheel! Feed it!’

  On the way back Zoë did something clumsy which caused the driver of a laundry van to jab a stiff-fingered gesture at her before howling off in a spume of exhaust.

  ‘Men,’ said Shelagh passionlessly. ‘They drive like fucking rockets.’

  Back at the flat, Zoë poured herself a couple of inches of Roger’s precious yellow vodka and drank them straight off. She sat down with a second glass and her Manual for Driving, which fell open at the section on steering.

  If you are turning left, the left hand should be moved to a higher position (but not past twelve o’clock) and the wheel pulled downwards, she read aloud, while the right hand is slid down the wheel. You can then push up with the right hand while the left hand, in turn, is slid up the wheel. If you are turning right the movements are reversed.

  All that o’clock stuff was bad enough but not quite so bad as driving past parked cars without scraping them. This inability to judge space was like her father, tanked up, moving along the hall passage when she was a little girl, hand out to touch what wasn’t there. Here’s the beer monster, his cronies called through the letter box, dumping him on the step. Thank goodness Roger didn’t drink; although a couple of times in the last month he had rung late on in the evening to say he would be staying on someone’s sofa because he was over the limit.

  I must be slow at learning, she thought. She was finding her work at the Poly increasingly difficult, even though Roger was one of the tutors. She knew she was not happy but whenever she tried to think why, her mind stalled. It was to do with Roger, even though she could not work out what; perhaps the fact that she was so much younger and stupider than him meant that it would never be all right.

  They told me I was bright at school, she thought, and turned back to the section on hill starts. When she heard Roger at the door she slid her glass behind the sofa.

  ‘My God, what a bunch of morons,’ he said, frowning, pushing his hair off his forehead, removing his gloves and adjusting the Joán Miró print above the mantelpiece. Zoë hovered around him while he did his whirlwind impersonation. He moved with conscious effectiveness, swift and forceful, drawing the curtains exactly so, squeezing her breast and flicking on the stereo for a calmative blast of Radio 3. In all their five months together she had never said anything which pleased him more than when she had likened him to Baryshnikov.

  Roger’s tiny bachelor flat was as unlike her mother’s house as possible, most notably because it had a place for everything and everything in its place. He always saw if you put a book back in its wrong stripe of air, and he was bound to spot the vodka glass before long. He was on the short side, although you hardly noticed that when he was behind a podium; in lectures and at seminars his eyes were like coals in that lean intellectual dial, and he managed his voice with an actor’s expertise.

  ‘Some people are coming over tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Zoë. ‘I need to finish my essay for Mr Proctor.’

  ‘Ben will be here this evening. He’ll let you off, particularly if you stop calling him Mr Proctor. But why the hell didn’t you finish it today? You’re wasting too much time over that bloody car.’ He locked the bathroom door behind him as a sign of displeasure.

  Zoë wondered when he would find out about her lunchtime shifts at Casey Jones. A well-preserved forty-two-year-old, Roger found such food as cheeseburgers morally shocking. He had already noticed the smell of onions on her hair. But that was the only way she could pay for the driving lessons with Shelagh. She wished she could plan her own time rather than fit round him at the drop of a hat, like this party tonight, but that only made the sort of trouble that didn’t get anywhere. She thought of her parents arguing themselves into stalemate time and again, and the waste of energy. Her father went when she was twelve.

  Two months ago, on her twenty-first birthday, she had visited her mother in Essex. There was a card with a key: ‘A bit battered but it still goes. Cheers. Dad.’ In the road outside was an orange Vauxhall Viva.

  ‘It’s only because he’s got a job in that used-car emporium outside Chigwell,’ said her mother as Zoë tried the ignition.

  Roger’s friends from the Poly started to drift in from about eight, and stayed until the small hours. In fact they were colleagues rather than friends, and the talk was mainly gossip about absent academic acquaintances.

  ‘Ah, the lovely Zoë,’ said Mr Proctor when he arrived. ‘As nubile as ever.’ He cuddled her heavily. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Roger.’

  Most of the time she didn’t have to talk, they did more than enough of that themselves. Occasionally one of them presented her with a question as though it were a lollipop.

  ‘So you’re learning to drive then,’ said a lecturer in economics. ‘Has Roger taken you out for any practice?’

  ‘I’ve sworn I’ll never teach another female to drive,’ said Roger quickly. ‘It wrecks the relationship every time.’

  ‘Not to mention your vintage E-type Jag,’ said the economist.

  Mr Proctor tried to pass Zoë a sodden roll-up but she refused.

  ‘What a puritanical lot the youth of today are turning out to be,’ he observed savagely. ‘It’s all bloody Save the Whale now.’ He turned on her. ‘You think we’re just a bunch of old hippies, don’t you.’

  Zoë drank a lot of wine and thought about what it would be like when she had passed her test. She imagined the abandonment of parties and the balm of a sodium-lit road in the rain.

  It grew late. Roger, who had ignored her all evening, now wore her like a medallion, although he still did not look at her, continuing to talk and laugh and frown his famous frown at the others while playing a painful game of cat’s cradle with her fingers. Mr Proctor averted his eyes on the way out. The economist gave a sneer. Zoë thought how wizened they all looked.

  Once in bed, she observed with relief that he was in a good mood this time, pleased with himself, his voice chiding with blarney rather than the scarcely disguised querulousness which had taken over recently. Even so, she tried too hard and then seized up altogether just as he was attempting one of his more complicated manoeuvres.

  ‘I’ve told you before about your elbows,’ he snapped from the other end of the bed, while she apologised w
itlessly and asked him to let them try again.

  ‘All right then,’ he said ungraciously, and this time it must have been all right because he loosed a smug groan from on high and fell asleep. Zoë rolled off the bed onto the floor and lay unable to do anything while her skin burned and her mouth shook.

  The next time she went for a driving lesson, Shelagh was off sick.

  ‘She passed out at the wheel,’ explained the receptionist. ‘Lack of food, apparently. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you. Big as a house. That’ll be ten pounds, please.’

  The new instructor had a soft Dublin voice that smelt of peppermints.

  ‘M.S.M.,’ she said, before he got the chance.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to be doing with all that alphabet nonsense,’ he assured her comfortably. ‘All you have to remember now is to take a little look in the mirror whenever you think of it. That way you’ll know what’s going on, see.’

  Zoë started the car and they set off down the road.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ said the man, crunching a glacier mint. He started to hum tunelessly to himself.

  Zoë’s spine unfurled. Her breathing softened and her jaw lost its rigidity. She changed up into fourth gear without any trouble.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ repeated the man. ‘You’ll make a driver yet.’ Zoë gleamed, and her eyes flicked expertly to the mirror every few seconds. She saw what was behind her and in front of her, and found she was steering perfectly without trying.

  ‘Since I gave up the cigarettes,’ said the man as he passed her his bag of mints at the lights, ‘my lungs have benefited but my teeth are falling out. That’s right, gently up with the clutch and away we go. There’s no need to be putting it into neutral every time; no point in making this life harder than it is.’

  Every word he spoke enchanted her, and she felt the luxury of trust. Even when they reached the incline where she had so often perched on the edge of tears with Shelagh, she did not mind.

  ‘Let’s try a little hill start, then, shall we,’ he suggested mildly.