Janine turned to her. ‘You’re my flatmate, right?’
‘Right,’ said Ann.
‘And you’re certainly not married.’
Ann grinned. ‘Certainly not.’
Just then the phone rang. Ann answered it.
‘Hello, Viv.’ Her stomach tightened. ‘No, I can’t. I’m sorry, I’m just going out. What? Look, we’ll talk about it.’ When? Viv was asking. ‘Soon,’ said Ann. Her stomach hurt, her heart hurt. Viv spoke; she replied: ‘You want me to be frank? No, I can’t trust you. I can’t trust you and I can’t trust my own husband and I can’t trust anyone in my bloody lying family. Must go.’ She put down the receiver. Nobody else had heard; they were gathering their things together.
Janine came up to her. ‘Chin up.’
Ann obediently raised her chin. Janine got out her perfume spray and squirted Ann’s neck.
Ann’s head spun; the music thumped. Most of the Top Ten was unfamiliar to her, though she recognized some of the tunes from car radios in traffic jams. Lights flashed above her, and below too; there were bulbs beneath the dance-floor, sheathed in frosted glass. It made her unsteady, as if she were dancing under water.
Bodies bobbed around her. She was sweating and her stomach ache had gone. A man was dancing opposite her; he jiggled from side to side, pumping his arms like pistons. He leant towards her, she smelt his aftershave; he shouted over the music: ‘Where’re you from, then?’
She shouted back: ‘Nowhere.’ She had lost Trish and Janine in the crowd.
‘What?’ he shouted back. ‘What did you say?’
She paused, swaying. ‘Stockport!’ she yelled.
She thinks: I’m drunk. I’m sitting in a strange man’s car. The ashtray is full; there is an empty Benson and Hedges packet and two parking tickets on the floor. He turns her face to his; he breathes into her mouth.
The evening has been so long that by now his aftershave is familiar to her. His name is Ted, she knows that much. He looks younger than she is and he has a soft, dimpled face. A mother’s boy on the loose; he doesn’t really want to be here either.
They are parked near Leicester Square; people brush the car as they pass. She lays her hand on his stomach; beneath the shirt it’s surprisingly hard. Her head spins; she wills herself to be kissed so that they don’t have the obligation of speaking.
Her mouth opens against his, he tastes of cigarettes. His tongue darts behind her teeth. It probes like a dentist. She repeats to herself: I love you I love you, and suddenly she starts giggling, trapping his tongue.
He draws back, alarmed. If he weren’t sitting here, doing this, he would probably be a kind man. He asks: ‘What’s the joke?’
‘Nothing.’
She silences him with her mouth, and moves his hand to her breast. He grunts. Stupidly, her dumb body is aroused.
Even Viv sometimes changed the sheets. She was doing so, bending over the bed, when she heard the doorbell ring. The children answered it. She heard footsteps on the stairs and then her mother was in the room.
‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you,’ she said, shutting the door behind her. Her hair looked challengingly newly set. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this baby?’
Viv sat down on the bed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you keep it secret?’
Viv replied: ‘Keeping secrets is something we all seem good at. Except you kept yours for thirty-five years.’
‘Don’t be sarky with me.’ Irene stood at the basin. Abstractedly, she took out Viv’s earrings and Rosie’s trick pimple. She frowned at the small circle of plastic and put in in the soap-dish. ‘You told your father and his lady-friend. Know who I heard it from? Her. She comes into the salon this morning to measure me for a frock, for their blooming wedding, and she thinks I know. Never felt so humiliated in my life.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Viv. ‘I haven’t been able to tell anyone yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know what to tell.’ She put her head into her hands. ‘None of us seems to be speaking to each other.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ann’s terribly upset about . . . you know.’ She looked up. ‘And about Ken.’
‘Ken?’ asked her mother.
Viv gazed through her fingers at the woven matting of the floor. A hairclip and a piece of Lego were trodden into it. ‘He says he’s in love with me. It’s only because I’m having his baby.’
‘Oh no, I’ve noticed for years.’
Viv looked up. ‘Really.’
Irene put the earrings on the chest of drawers. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, like a blooming spaniel. Why do you think he bought a house four streets away?’ In the mirror her eyes caught Viv’s. Viv looked down at the matted matting. ‘You may think I’m stupid but not much escapes old Reenie.’ There was a silence. Then she asked: ‘What about Ollie?’
‘He thought he could take it but he seems to be cracking up too. We had a terrible fight last week.’
‘Blimey.’ Irene came over and sat beside her on the mattress. Viv thought: it’s years since she’s been up here.
Her matrimonial bed looked suddenly exposed. Near the head of it, the mattress was stained. Dried whitish round the edges, the stains were from milk that, years before, had leaked from her own breasts. She looked away and spoke to her mother’s red high-heeled sandals. ‘So I haven’t told anyone, not even you.’
‘What a bunch of ninnies. Four grown people, with a better education than I ever had, and look what a mess you’re in.’
‘You see, we said we wouldn’t make plans until I was pregnant, and now I am –’
‘– all hell’s let loose.’
Viv leant limply against her mother’s shoulder. It felt plump and scented. She had forgotten how small her mother was; she herself felt big and bony and helpless.
‘Well,’ said Irene. ‘At least it’s brought you back to your old mum.’ She leant forward and searched in her bag for a handkerchief. Neither of them had one.
Viv, half laughing, rubbed her eyes. ‘Is this stupid?’
‘Uh-huh. But you’ll be all right. You’re tough, like me. It’s your sister I’m worried about.’
‘Really?’
‘She’s mad to get saddled with a baby and that boring husband anyway. She ought to get out and live a bit.’
‘You think so?’
‘I went through it too, remember. Stifling marriage to a stifling bloke. Look at me now. Never been happier.’ She stood up. ‘You’re not the only women’s libber around here, you know.’
Viv stood up too, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
‘Come on,’ said her mother, picking up the clean sheet. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’
‘Talking, that is, of women’s lib.’
Her mother grinned. They billowed the sheet out; it rose and then sank, gently, around the bed. Sheeted, the bed looked wider, and empty. They tucked in the edges.
Ken sat in his office, trembling. He had just snapped at Archie, the store foreman, for the simple reason that Archie had told him a mildly disgusting joke about two prostitutes and a corkscrew. The poor man had been startled by his response.
He thought: I’m not myself. But those weren’t the right words; he knew that as he thought them. In fact he felt more himself than he had ever been in his life. He felt peeled; stripped and bare and shivering. Loud noises startled him; traffic confused him. He went into shops and couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to buy – he, Kenneth. Then there was music. He had always loved it; at home he had a large record collection. But now music sank into his heart, spreading warm as honey and then suddenly filling him with the most insupportable pain. That morning he had turned on his car radio and the sound of a violin had pricked the back of his eyes with needles.
Everything moved him. Across the yard, sunlight glinted on the stacked pipes. He had sat here for years and he had never noticed how, when the wind blew, the poplar tree behind the dep
ot shook into silvered fragments. It was a beautiful tree, waiting there to be watched. Yet below it – how could they? – they guffawed about corkscrews.
He thought: I’m not myself. I’m going mad. He must be going mad, because he was dialling Viv’s number. It was the middle of a working day and nobody would be there. He was mad because he just wanted to hear the phone ringing in her home. In some imbecilic way he felt closer to her if he caused the phone to sound in her living room.
He laid the receiver on his desk. He could hear the faint ringing. He could picture her room, her scattered mess. Perhaps her empty coffee mug would be nearby.
He lit yet another cigarette and, the receiver lying near him, dear to him, he attempted to get on with his paperwork.
‘My mouth feels like a lizard’s latrine,’ said Janine, drinking her coffee. She had been out again, to the nightclub they had all visited the week before. Ann was now her confidante – about the inadequate performances of the men she met, about her daughter Simone’s tantrums and her mother’s hypochondria. Three months ago in this office, the voices had stilled when Ann had come into the room and nobody had told any jokes. How much had changed since that time, they had no idea. They probably put it down to a new haircut and an unknown man who caressed her bottom on the dance floor.
Janine shifted in her seat and inspected the computer printout. This was because Derek was in sight; he had popped his head around his office door.
‘Er, Annie.’ He beckoned. ‘Would you like to step in here a moment?’
Ann went in. Mr Fowler, the Managing Director, had been closeted with Derek all morning. He was a gloomy man with a military moustache.
Derek closed the door behind Ann and showed her to a chair. ‘You know, Ann, that I mentioned a while ago that I might have some news for you?’ There were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘Well, Mr Fowler has just confirmed it.’
Ann gazed at Mr Fowler. He said: ‘Mrs Fletcher, I’d just like to sound you out . . .’ He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. ‘We’ve kept it under wraps till now, but you should be the first to know.’
For a confused moment Ann thought: which of my secrets have they heard.
Mr Fowler stuffed tobacco into his pipe. Whether or not a man is managing director, with a pipe he can make everybody listen. He can pace his routine until they fidget with insecurity. Finally he said: ‘Derek is being transferred to Head Office, and that leaves his post vacant.’
Ann stared at Derek. ‘You’re leaving?’
Derek cleared his throat. ‘It’s for, well, personal reasons.’
Mr Fowler said: ‘We’d like you to know, Ann – may I call you Ann? – that our estimation of you and your abilities is very high, and Derek has of course confirmed this. You’ve a steady head on your shoulders, but also that something special, that certain flair –’
‘Tony, you’re making her blush,’ said Derek.
‘We’re always on the lookout for good women managers,’ he went on, ‘and in fact our record hasn’t been bad in that respect. Last year we promoted two women . . .’ He stopped and struck a match.
Derek let out a yelp of laughter. ‘Actually, they’re both on maternity leave.’
Through dense smoke Mr Fowler said: ‘We have hopes they’ll return. However, in your case –’ He stopped, suddenly frowning, and looked down at his dead match. ‘Anyway, Derek and I have had a chat and I’ve popped over today to, well . . . To put it plainly, we’d like you to consider taking over this branch.’
Ken sat in his car. He had to drive to Ridgeway Avenue to check on how the lads were progressing with the damp-proofing. That was what the old Ken told him. The old, un-whole, un-alive one.
He must do his job, he knew that, but he would make a detour, first, past those school gates. Just to slow down, just to look.
As he drove, the word hit him: adultery. That sound was so ugly; he pushed it down, out of sight. Besides, it was hideously inaccurate. Nobody had felt like this. If they had, how could they bear it?
The sun blazed on the school windows. It hurt his eyes to look. The dull modern building was aflame with her.
‘It’s a big commitment,’ said Derek.
Ann nodded. The pipe smoke made her feel sick. Through the haze she heard Mr Fowler speaking.
‘If you’d like to go away and think it over . . .’
She shook her head. She felt, rising within her, the familiar reckless despair. Why not take the job? There was no hope in anything else. Stupid of her to have ever believed there was.
She turned to Mr Fowler, or Tony. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘Really?’ asked Derek. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded. They all stood up and shook hands.
_____Seventeen_____
IT WAS THE hottest June for years. On the roads the tarmac blistered; children wrinkled it up, pushing it with their sandals. In fumy high streets women sought refuge in the beige chill of Marks and Spencers. Plants drooped in cracked flowerbeds; policeman perspired in shirt-sleeves. People, as always, complained. At Viv’s school, bosomy sixth-form girls lay on the grass like porpoises and came into classes reddened.
In the two households the windows were opened to catch the breeze, sunlight flooded the front rooms in the mornings and the back rooms in the afternoon, work was done and strawberries eaten but nobody spoke. Nobody spoke because they feared the answers. It is always easier to be distracted by other things, and there were plenty of them. Ann’s new job began, within two weeks of the meeting with Mr Fowler, and she started bringing home work in the evenings. Zenith, the firm that employed Ken, became even more damaged by the recession and crises kept him busy; besides which, he disappeared for lengthy lunch-hours nobody knew where, and then there was his Youth Club, for which his wife had questioned his fitness. He seemed much preoccupied and, startling Ann, shaved off his moustache. His bald face looked vulnerable. Viv, still slowed by nausea, was involved with school exams and her thirsty allotment and caring for Rosie, who suffered not only from asthma but hay fever too, worse than ever this summer, as if infected by something troubling in the air besides pollen. Each of the four was subdued by guilt, as if a lid had been lifted, revealing, within, unwelcome mirrors they preferred not to inspect. And all the time a child grew remorselessly, innocent of the tumult it was causing. It lay, suspended in rosy silence.
Perhaps, who knows, Ollie felt the most guilty. One day, coming home from work, his children rat-tatted him with invisible machine guns. He escaped upstairs.
Instead of hanging cherries round his own girls’ ears he hooked them around Ellie’s. As the two of them came in from their lunch-hour he took them off and popped them into his mouth.
Diz met him and remarked: ‘You look all flushed and replete.’
‘It’s just the sun,’ said Ollie. ‘Look.’ He unbuttoned his shirt to show his sunburn. ‘I’ve got a red V.’
Diz said: ‘How Blackpool.’
‘Watch it,’ said Ellie. She left for the cloakroom.
Diz said: I’ve never seen such a sexual glow.’
‘Will you stop making snide remarks?’
Diz paused, then said: ‘Only when you stop coming in late, my son, and taking two-hour lunches, and spending a fortune on phone-calls to your wife. You do have a job here, this isn’t just a telephone exchange, even if you are shagging the switchboard operator.’
‘Ssh!’ said Ollie, looking round.
‘And you’d better pull a finger out with the theatre section. It’s late.’
Diz was right. Ollie’s work was suffering. He had lost that chancy precision with words upon which he had built his career. Troubled at home, he no longer had the confidence to write, and expect ears to listen. When he himself was behaving so badly, how could his words be worth even the paper upon which they were typed? Words, words! he had shouted at Viv. What did they possibly mean? They were just a sleight of hand, a trick of the wrist. Viv stood there, carrying within her an alien growth, and he flin
ched from looking into her eyes.
It was worse, of course, with his marriage. He could tell himself it was going through a bad patch. The words were such clichés that they might have sounded reassuring, but they didn’t convince him. On the other hand, to admit, even silently, that his marriage was breaking up would be too painful, and besides, then something must be done. The old door would close and he would be in a new room, there would be no turning back. Until then, like a TB sufferer who tells himself he simply has a slight cough, until the day comes when he starts spitting blood and can no longer avoid naming his own disease – until then Ollie spent more time with Ellie, lying on her bed during those stuffy evenings while she rubbed cream into his sunburn and soothed his heart. He knew he deserved to be machine-gunned by his daughters.
It was not until the beginning of July that Ann walked past Viv’s house. Until then she had taken a detour home from work to avoid the street. She hadn’t told Viv about her promotion, though no doubt Ken had done so during one of the long tête-à-têtes that kept him so frequently out of the house – these trysts being described, for Ann’s benefit, as ‘troubles with the Hornsey Road site’ or the all-purpose ‘crisis at work’. When he spoke of his day, she froze. Nobody knows, until it happens to them, how terrible it is to find your husband is capable of lying.
But she could bear it no longer and one evening walked past. Quite apart from anything else, she had been painfully missing her nieces.
As she had expected, they were playing in the street. Her heart quickened. They detached themselves from their friends and ran up.
‘Auntie Ann!’ cried Rosie. She took her hand and started pulling her into the house. ‘I’ve got a newt.’
‘Is your mum here?’ asked Ann.
‘She’s gone to the shops.’
Ann paused in the living room. She felt weak, both from relief and disappointment. She was led to the newt. The room was in even more of a mess than usual. On the pegboard was pinned a chart, with tasks to be done: Washing Up, Feeding Rabbits, and the names of Rosie, Daisy and Mum.
She pointed to it. ‘Why’s your dad not there?’ she asked ‘Isn’t that sexist?’
To Have and to Hold Page 19
