Lying Together

by Gaynor Arnold

  Not everybody felt the same, mind. Some people from the slums had been moved right out to Chelmsley Wood and they was all moaning for the Housing to let them come back to the old terraces. But there was nowhere for them to come back to. We’d knocked nearly everything down, and what’d been left standing had been taken over. Whole families of Asians had been moving in. They were running all the old corner shops, selling everything under the sun including curry and rice, and nattering away in their own lingo.

  The house I was working on when Kimberley was born belonged to one of these Asians. Ali – something or another. Never saw him, though. Mr Doody just told me what to do and left me to get on with it. He’d promise me a lad to give me a hand, but ten to one I was on me own most of the day. Mr Doody knew he could rely on me. Turn me hand to anything I could – and still can. I’m just the sort of bloke for a small job with a lot of different things to be done.

  Well, this particular day I was refitting the upstairs window. I’d pulled out the rotten old sash and was putting in a nice new louvre. I’d been having a sly look at the Indian women across the street with their bright veils and bits of gold and silver. Nice, they looked. I’d have liked to have give them a wave, be friendly; but I didn’t want no trouble from their husbands. So I just went along with what I was doing, transistor on the mantelpiece, listening to Dave Lee Travis, whistling to meself.

  Then I saw this blond woman getting out of her car. Really struggling, she was, her belly out like a balloon. She must have been a good eight months gone. In fact, she looked as if she might start off in labour any minute. I stopped with a handful of panel pins in me mouth, watching her. She was a little thing, much shorter than our Linda, and she was just wearing this loose cotton dress, no coat, in spite of the bitter cold. I couldn’t help wondering what she was up to. I’d never seen her in the street before. No one ever parked outside, except us builders – and Mr Doody when he came by in the Rover – so this woman’s car stood out a mile: bright canary yellow. Looked foreign, too; a French thing. Anyway, she made a beeline for the skip we’d got outside, and started to poke about in it.

  Now if she’d a been a bloke, I’d have tapped the window and yelled at her: ‘What the bloody hell d’yer think yer up to? Clear off!’ But being as she was a woman, and pregnant, I was more worried about her than anything else. That skip was too bloody full (I’d been telling Mr Doody about it all week, but he’d let things drift as usual), and some of the stuff was ready to take a flyer. I could just see her trapped under a purling or one of them heavy bits of cast we’d just ripped out. I thought about shouting out to warn her, but I was afraid I’d make her jump, and then God knows what might have happened. I knew I’d have to do things more gently.

  It took me a few minutes to get to ground level because we’d pulled out the stairs the week before, and I had to use a ladder. When I got down, the woman was already in the house, bold as brass, standing in the middle of the passageway between two split bags of browning. ‘Hey, watch yerself, bab,’ I said. ‘This is no place for a woman in your condition. One slip and I’ll be running you up to Marston Green.’ That was where Kimberley had been born.

  She laughed at that. ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m quite used to it. My house is a building site too. Probably worse.’

  I was a bit shocked by that. I couldn’t imagine our Linda living on a building site when Kimberley was practically ready to be born. She’d had everything decorated and ready months before – new bedroom, new cot, new quilted eiderdown, soft fluffy carpet – everything perfect. She was a really great organizer. And she used to budget down to the last halfpenny. In them days we didn’t have much left over, once we’d paid the rent and the bills. But I knew that with Linda in charge, Kimberley wouldn’t want for anything.

  Anyway, this woman started peering in at all the rooms. ‘I’m looking for a fireplace,’ she said. ‘You know, a grate. I saw some bits of cast iron in the skip, and I wondered if you were throwing out any old ones. I’m desperate to get one in before the baby’s due.’

  I must admit I felt sorry for her. A well-spoken woman she was – quite posh in fact – but she had no winter coat and she was having to scavenge around in skips to find a fireplace for herself. ‘Look, love,’ I said, ‘you don’t want to be messing about with all this dirty old stuff. I can tell you where you can get a really nice modern grate for next to cost price: Coventry Road, friend of mine. He supplies all the stuff for Doody’s. Tell him Mick Hanlon sent you. He’ll sort you out.’

  She kind of smiled at that. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want a modern grate. It’s a Victorian one I want. Could I just see if there is anything else here?’ She started to poke round before I could stop her. ‘Oh look, here’s one!’ she said. She was looking at the one Terry and me had tried to get out the day before. Bloody great thing. ‘Oh, it’s broken!’ she said, pointing at the front bars where Terry’d put his crowbar. ‘What a shame!’ She looked up at me. ‘Are there any others?’

  ‘There might be one in the back room,’ I said. ‘It’s covered up, so I’m not sure what it’s like.’ We went into the back room, me holding on to her by the arm, afraid she’d slip. The electrician had had half the floorboards up, and hadn’t come back – typical. There was this old mantelpiece with a big sheet of rusted metal over the grate, and a broken gas fire sitting in front. I picked up me claw hammer. ‘Let’s see what’s behind here,’ I said.

  I got the stuff off easy enough; there wasn’t much holding it together. Underneath was this filthy old fireplace, the grate still with the ashes in it, and cobwebs full of thick brown dust. But the woman sort of knelt down in front of it. ‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ she said. ‘Just look at those beautiful tiles!’

  I couldn’t see anything in them meself. Real Olde Worlde stuff. Gave me the creeps. Get rid of it – that was my motto. But this woman was really thrilled. ‘Do you think the owners will want it?’

  ‘Bloody hell, no!’ I said. ‘We’re renovating. All this old stuff’s going out on the skip. This place is gonna be all nice and clean and new.’ (Poor kid, I thought. That’s what you could do with – something all comfortable and clean.)

  ‘Would you pull it out for me?’ she said. ‘I’d pay you.’ She took out her purse. ‘How much?’

  I could see then that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. That explained a lot. ‘I’ll do it for you free, bab,’ I said, ‘but how’ll you take it with yer?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll go in the car,’ she said. ‘The back comes right down. I can get loads of things in there. But I must pay you. Is this enough?’ She held out a pound note.

  ‘Yer on,’ I said, thinking it was an easy bit of work. But in the end, it took me best part of an hour to get the flaming thing out. The woman kept getting in me way every time I picked up the chisel, saying, ‘Please be careful,’ and, ‘Mind the tiles, won’t you?’ After a bit I said, ‘I’ll get it out for you, love, as long as you stay well away. Otherwise I won’t be responsible for that babby of yours.’ So she sat down on a bucket as best she could, and stayed quiet. I went round and round the frame, easing the whole thing out. She kept smiling at me as if she was really pleased the way I was doing it. She looked really pretty when she smiled, and I couldn’t help thinking about how she’d look tucked up in bed with her baby all nice and cosy, and the fire burning away in the grate.

  Getting the thing into the boot of her little car was what really buggered me up. She couldn’t help, of course, and it was really a two-man job.

  ‘You’re daft, you are, Mick,’ said Linda when I went home that night. ‘Fancy doing all that work for a quid!’ She was even more annoyed the next day when I couldn’t get out of bed and she had to ring Doody’s to say I’d done me back in.

  In the finish I was off work for six weeks, just getting me sick pay and no overtime – just when we needed the extra because of Linda giving up her job at the hairdresser’s. But I couldn’t say I minded, because suddenly I had all day with Kimberley.
I didn’t have to go out in the cold and leave her behind; I could nurse her as much as I liked. I looked after her every time Linda went out to the shops, and I gave her all her feeds because I was stuck in bed and Linda said I might as well make myself useful. I couldn’t have been happier. We built up a real relationship, Kimberley and me. I’d chat to her and she’d look at me, intelligent-like, and grab tight at me little finger. I hardly remembered about me back, and Linda started to joke that I’d put the whole thing on, just so I could skive off with me daughter. ‘I bet she’ll grow up to be a real daddy’s girl,’ she said. ‘I kin see it already.’

  Kimberley’s eight now. And I have to admit she’s a bit spoiled, being the only one. We’d have liked more, but somehow it didn’t happen. Linda pretends to be strict with her, but she isn’t really; buys her a whole load of Barbies and My Little Ponies and fancy things to put in her hair. And me – well I can’t say no to her, not when she looks up at me in that way, her eyes all clear and beautiful, just like when she was a babby them first six weeks. And I can’t help remembering what first brought us together: that little woman and her bloody two-ton grate.

  I’ve often thought about that woman over the years, and wondered how things turned out for her in the end. Her own kid would be just Kimberley’s age, of course. A little girl, I liked to think, blonde like her mother. Every time I see a yellow car I think it might be her, but it never is. Our meeting in that house was a bit of a one-off. We only came together because she saw that skip, and I was looking out of the window.

  But she came into my head again last week. I was driving down the Moseley Road and it caught my eye: a shop practically bursting with fireplaces. There was loads of them, stacked up in the window and half over the pavement. Of course I’d realized that all these Victoriana type things was coming back into fashion since Mr Doody started asking us to take them out in one piece, and put them aside for the reclamation yards. But I didn’t think many people would go back to laying coals and lighting fires with sticks and paper, when they could have central heating at the flick of a switch. But from the look of this shop, it seemed that I was wrong. I decided to park the van and take a look, just to see what all the fuss was about, and maybe thinking, somewhere in my heart of hearts, that I might run into the woman and her kid.

  When I went inside, I was really knocked back. There was all sorts of fireplaces, some with mantels and mirrors and fenders, and a fair number with coloured tiles. They was all really bright and polished, quite attractive really. And in the middle of the shop there was the spitting image of the one I’d shifted.

  A lad with a plait and filthy jeans came out of a back room. ‘Can I help?’ he says, posher than I expected.

  ‘How much yer rushing us fer this one?’ I asked, pointing it out.

  ‘One-fifty,’ he said. ‘The tiles are especially nice.’

  ‘One-fifty? Is that all?’ I laughed. ‘I did well, then, flogging one off for a quid a few years back.’

  The bloke stared at me like I was daft. Then he said, ‘A hundred and fifty pounds. A good working grate like this costs a hundred and fifty.’

  I nearly had a fit, thinking of what I could do with that sort of money – but I nodded, pretending I’d known all along. Of course, looking at it again, I realized it’d cost more than a couple of quid, all that cast iron with patterns and scrolls, all those tiles with flowers on them, all that gleaming black polish.

  ‘Yes,’ I said to the bloke. ‘That’s what I meant. The way the value’s gone up, like. That’s the thing, isn’t it? You never know how much things are really worth at the time.’

  But I do know, of course. And if I met that little woman, I’d shake her by the hand and tell her that taking out that grate was the best couple of hours’ work I ever did.

  TAKING PEOPLE IN

  I sense it from the minute I wake up: I’m reaching the perfect pressure. I lie on the bed unclothed, feeling the warmth of my body evaporate into the air, and the warmth of the air seep back through the pores of my skin. There’s a complete osmosis, an exact equilibrium of heat. Days like this are rare, even in high summer, and the year has been disappointing until now. Grey, rainy, heavy. Lows on the chart and in the heart. I’ve stayed indoors.

  But now I will get up. I will wash and breakfast. And I will go to the park and walk among the flowerbeds, inhale the moistness of the glasshouses, and lie on the grass by the lake. Someone will come past. And stop. Things will repeat themselves.

  I prepare eggs, toast, marmalade. In the morning room, on the mahogany table, I set a cup and saucer, two kinds of plates, a toast rack, butter in a dish. I like the ritual of breakfast, the habit since childhood of starting the day properly. In this I am different from Rob. And from the others; the friends he brought to stay. They would get up at midday and stand at my windows half-dressed, squinting at the light, gulping at coffee and cigarettes. A little later they might bite at a biscuit, or crunch at an apple they would leave to brown on the sill.

  Don’t fuss, Rob would say if I cleaned up the crumbs or rinsed out a cup. Just relax, princess. Relax and be beautiful.

  I tried so hard. It seemed such a good thing not to care about the material things in life, to be free from the slavery of habit. I watched the others, trying to copy what they did. But I don’t smoke. And coffee makes me ill. And I am used to a tablecloth and cutlery. I am used to sitting down at eight o’clock sharp, clean and brushed and smelling of soap.

  I sit down now. I pour myself tea from the big silver pot, milk from the silver jug. It is satisfying and civilized. I enjoy watching the clear liquid arc into my cup, the milk mingling it to opaque. It’s really no more trouble, I would tell Rob, than a tea bag in a mug. And a lot less wasteful. But more ostentatious he thought. And infinitely more bourgeois. ‘Bourgeois’ was his favourite word of condemnation as he lay on the Persian carpet, propped up with tasselled cushions, watching my colour TV.

  He’s gone now, of course. They’ve all gone. The whole thing was an aberration, a kind of hiatus in the pattern. They moved in, and then moved on. It’s now quite a while since they were here. But I dare say they remember me fondly enough, look back with a smile at my old-fashioned and solitary life. Quaint Octavia – that’s how they saw me. A girl with a big house and a lot of money. A girl who was good to look at. A girl who always said yes.

  ‘You’re like a little kitten.’ Rob would stroke my long blond hair while he read a book or talked to the others. They all did it, stroking, patting, as if they couldn’t keep their hands off me. But they didn’t seem to hear me when I spoke. They’d smile in my face, saying, ‘You don’t mind, do you? If we have the meeting here? If we have the party here? If we move in for a while? If we invite our friends?’ It was understood without question that they could all come to Octavia’s house. That they could all eat Octavia’s food. Drink Octavia’s drink. Sleep in Octavia’s bed. They thought I didn’t mind; that I took sex like I took tea – calmly and with good manners. They didn’t notice how stiff I was, how quietly I cried.

  It was not what I’d been brought up to. It was not what Mummy and Daddy would have expected, at all. But they were gone years ago and the big house had become so very lonely. The neighbours had carefully minded their business and I had carefully minded mine. But one blazing midsummer day by the lake, Rob had smiled and said I was beautiful. And I had taken him home.

  He’d been kind at first. He said he respected my quaint way of life. ‘Don’t ever change, princess.’ But then he brought the others, with their easy laughter and their easy ways – and I felt out of step.

  I watched them carefully – how they moved, how they talked, what they said. I believed that if I tried hard enough it would happen; that I would mirror them unthinkingly until eventually there would be no difference between us. I was twenty-one – just like they were. It couldn’t be too hard. I rode with them on buses and the backs of motorbikes. I ate with them in greasy cafeterias. I sat with them on draughty walls outside corner pubs a
nd drank beer in thick glass mugs. But it didn’t work.

  ‘Just keep quiet,’ Rob would whisper whenever I tried to give an opinion. ‘I think your lot have had enough to say for the last few hundred years. Give the proletariat a chance.’

  Jeni would put her heavy arms around me and tell him not to be so cruel: ‘It’s not her fault. Octavia’s not like the rest of them, are you? Anyway, it’s her house, isn’t it? And I think it’s fantastic. Millions of times better than the last place we were in.’

  Jeni liked my kitchen especially. She’d sit there, devouring handfuls of cornflakes straight from the packet, and concocting tumblers of thick pink slimming drinks: ‘Oh God, Octavia, something’s got to work!’

  The rest of them scattered through the house, the bedrooms, the library, Daddy’s study – but mainly they occupied the drawing-room floor. They liked the Indian rugs, the cushions and embroideries, and the long curtains they could draw against the light. It had atmosphere, they said. Karen would sit cross-legged for hours, singing quietly to the Bob Dylan records Carl had told me I must buy, while Rob and Steve lay with their tangled hair against the sofa, smoking something strong and scenty and writing angry things on pieces of crumpled paper. They’d brood and chuckle together for hours. Often, Beverley would pull my head onto her flower-patterned lap and plait my hair the way she did hers – lots of little strands woven with coloured beads. Then we’d go into my room to look at ourselves in the tall cheval glass, my pale arm linked in her olive-skinned one.

  ‘You have such lovely things,’ she’d whisper, plunging her whole body into my wardrobe, caressing silk caftans, cashmere jumpers, chiffon cocktail frocks I’d never worn. She’d look at the labels and say, ‘Zandra Rhodes! Oh, fabulous!’ And I’d let her have things, although she was a size bigger than me and split the zips in places where she couldn’t see. And she’d kiss me and say, ‘Don’t let Rob know.’ And she’d wear them when he wasn’t around, twirling on the polished floors, catching her reflection in the window glass. ‘You’re really kind, Octavia.’