by Tessa Hadley
Uncle Dick came back out of the house with a bundle wrapped in brown paper under his arm. When he was halfway down the garden path, walking rather quickly, the front door flew open again behind him, and a young woman ran out after him on high heels, blond and slim. She was wearing lipstick and earrings and a pretty dress that seemed inappropriate for staying at home on an ordinary afternoon: beige, with a low-cut square neck and deep diagonal pleats across the skirt. She took Uncle Dick by the arms and remonstrated with him, seeming to want the parcel, but she wasn’t looking at him: her eyes from the very moment she flew through the door had sought out Joyce in the car, staring at her greedily and challengingly as if this contact between them was momentous. Helplessly, Joyce stared back.
Uncle Dick said something, not loudly (Joyce couldn’t hear it) but fiercely, so that the woman jerked back from him as if he had hit her. Afterward she always pictured the scene as if he had smacked her lightly and sharply across the side of the face, just as he sometimes smacked Peter when Peter was acting up, even though she knew he hadn’t actually struck this grown-up woman, not in front of her. He strode to the car and threw the parcel into the backseat. He turned the car round; the woman had stepped back into her doorway, stroking down her skirt and tidying her hair. Joyce saw she was defiantly aware, as she hadn’t been in the heat of the argument, of people watching: the children who’d stopped playing in the street and invisible others from behind the curtained windows of the inhabited houses. Joyce felt a pang of sympathy for how she was exposed.
—Oh, dear, said Uncle Dick in a wryly amused voice as they left her behind. Someone’s upset.
This tone of light comedy in relation to what had just happened was so unexpected that Joyce forgot to be afraid of him.
—Who was that? she asked.
Uncle Dick even turned his attention from the road and smiled at her inquiring eyes.—Never you mind, he said. Someone who’d better be our little secret.
—Is it her parcel?
—Oh, no. It’s just something she thinks she ought to have.
It was almost as though he was pleased that Joyce had been there to see. Perhaps he had taken her deliberately. On the way home he was expansive and genial with her as he’d never been before. When they had driven past the smelting works and left Farmouth and the docks behind, she was able to notice that it was a lovely evening. The grass was long and a tender green in the fields; the hedges were laden with pink and white May blossom.
—You’ve no idea what it’s like, Uncle Dick said. All the responsibilities of a wife and family to support. Especially after the war, which gave a man a taste for independence.
Uncle Dick had been in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves (the “wavy navy,” because they had wavy white lines around their cuffs). He was lieutenant commander of an aircraft carrier, an American lend-lease. While his ship was in New York for repairs, he had had apartments in the Barbizon Plaza Hotel; this name was always uttered with reverence in the family, as if it were the epitome of luxury. He had met Mrs. Rothschild, who organized Bundles for Britain for the sailors, and he had been given membership in the New York Athletic Club. Perhaps it was there he’d got his taste for independence.
—You get tangled up with a family, he said, before you know what opportunities are out there. Take my advice and don’t be in any hurry to be tied down with kids.
—I’m staying on at school, Joyce said, wondering if that was what he meant.
—Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Although I should think you’d want some fun too.
Uncle Dick looked assessingly sideways at Joyce for a moment.
—That’s the trouble with your aunt. She takes everything too seriously.
Joyce had never heard him say as much as this at home; she guessed it was the way he talked with his men friends. She could imagine why he’d rather sit in a bar with these friends than be at home amid all the steam of cooking and the smoke from the stove and the noisy children and wet washing draped everywhere (although she’d never seen inside a bar except in films). She felt shyly privileged that he shared his thoughts with her, as they sped through the fields in the summer evening.
—What was her name? Joyce asked him at the last minute, as he turned into the lane that led to the old gray house.
—Whose name?
—The lady you visited, in the beige dress.
—Betty Grable, he said.
Joyce protested; she wasn’t a child, to be fooled.
—If you don’t want to tell me, I don’t mind.
Uncle Dick laughed at her hurt face.
—No, it really is Betty. Not Betty Grable, just Betty. On my honor. But don’t tell. On yours?
She nodded.
Then, managing the bucking car with one hand down the rutted stony lane, he laid his other hand on her bare arm and said something strange.
—I told her you were my daughter. Just so she wouldn’t start imagining anything. You know what these women are like.
* * *
Joyce was sometimes allowed to hover on the edge of conversations Lil and Vera had in the kitchen when the other children weren’t around. This was presumably because she was the oldest and a girl; they thought it was time she began to pick up on such things, just as a year or so ago it had been time for the sanitary pads and belt that Lil had slipped without explanation into her drawer. After the dishes were washed up, the sisters sat at the table and drank milky instant coffee; when the light faded one of them would light the paraffin lamp and pump it up until the mantle glowed. The children would still be calling back and forth outside, their voices resonant and remote in the near-dark. Joyce squeezed herself inconspicuously with her book onto a little stool by the wall, picking at the black rubber flooring Uncle Dick had laid over the cold flagstones (it was made out of machine belts from some factory in the Docks that had closed down).
—It happened with Peter, and then again down here when I fell for Kay, said Vera. Not that you want them near you when you’re off-color. But you expect some consideration: not having the blame for it thrown up in your face.
—Men don’t like it, said Lil. Ivor didn’t want anything to do with it. “Let me know what we’ve had when you’re all tidied up,” he said, when things got started. Though he was always as good as gold afterward; he loved the children.
—Dick hated the sight of me. If I ever came out of the bath in my dressing gown when I was in that way he’d make a face as if I’d shown him something nasty. I knew he didn’t like to touch me, those times, even accidentally. He doesn’t even like to be near me when I’m coming unwell.
—I suppose it’s natural. We get used to it, don’t we? It must seem strange to the men.
—I’m sure he used to talk with her about what would happen, if I died having Kay, said Vera. There was something he said once, he didn’t mean it to come out, something like “if there are any complications.” And when I looked at him I just knew. And he knew I knew.
—You showed them, then.
—Oh, I wasn’t going to remove myself for anybody’s convenience. I’m not now. Whatever she may think.
It was always difficult for Joyce to take in that only four years ago Aunt Vera must have been pregnant. She tried to imagine her wearing the sort of coyly pretty maternity frocks over discreet bumps that you saw in the magazines or smiling over tiny garments for her layette. But Aunt Vera didn’t seem to have the necessary feminine attributes: she was too tall, too decided, too old; her body had entered into the phase of those lumpy stolidities that didn’t suggest the things that had to do with making babies. The pregnancy had happened after the Trowers moved down from the North. Joyce had heard Lil and the other sisters talk about this baby as Dick’s “little peace offering.”
Joyce noticed that when Lil and Vera talked about men, even Ivor, they often used this language of mock conflict, as if there had to be a war between men and women. Listening, soaking it up, Joyce thought how differently she would do things. She thought
how much better she would handle Uncle Dick, if she were them. “If he were mine,” she thought to herself, her face heating up at the illicit form of words. If she had been Aunt Vera, she would have made an effort to make the place nice when he came home, instead of complaining to him about the children or the smoking stove or the stinking privy the moment he walked through the door. She would have talked about things he might be interested in, rather than going on about “your beloved Churchill” or making sarcastic remarks about the Masons if she knew he was going to a Lodge meeting.
Even Lil somehow managed better than Vera. You could see she was in awe of Dick’s authority in the wide world, granting him absolute superiority in all the mysteries she was defeated by. She was furious if ever her children were disrespectful to him; she reminded them how they were dependent on their uncle for a roof over their heads. But she also called him “His Lordship” and commented tartly at tea if he “deigned to honor them with his presence.” He meekly brought her his buttons to be sewn on and stood tamed and obedient while she tugged and stitched away at his collar or the waist of his trousers, scolding him because Peter needed new vests and socks and they hadn’t enough money, biting off her thread with a fierce twist of her head. Once Joyce overheard her speak sharply of his “carryings-on.”
He didn’t mind Lil; he laughed and tolerated her remarks and sometimes forked out money from his wallet for something she said they needed. Or there might be a companionable moment when they sat out on the wall in the sunshine in the garden after tea and smoked together, Dick bending with disarming gallantry to light Lil’s cigarette. But Joyce could also see how he discounted her because she was shapeless under her print dresses and wouldn’t even go to the girls’ prize-givings because she “wouldn’t know what to say to anyone.”
* * *
—Present for you, Vera, Uncle Dick said, dropping the brown paper parcel down on the table, which was laid for tea. Knives and forks clattered onto the floor.
Aunt Vera had only just come in from school; she still had her jacket on and she was taking off her gloves. She stopped short and stared at the parcel with suspicion.
—Oh, well, if you don’t want it, he said genially, I’ll take it back.
—What is it? She frowned as if this might be a trick at her expense.
—Open it and see.
Warily, she tore the paper open. Lil came from the stove with a spoon in her hand to look; the children gathered round. Sometimes Uncle Dick brought thrilling things from the docks: sweets, a wireless, pineapples, picture books, and once three hand-sewn American quilts, part of American support for the war effort that had sat forgotten in a shed somewhere.
Inside the paper were two bolts of cloth: a deep chestnut velvet and a slightly lighter brown satin. Lil reached out a finger to stroke.
—Real velvet. Don’t any of you touch, she said, in a half whisper.
—D’you reckon you can turn her out in something halfway decent, Lillie?
—Me? Oh, I’d be afraid to cut into that. It’s too good.
—What’s this all about? said Vera. Do you want something?
—Only for you to get out and have a good time for once.
—You could use the velvet to make a matching jacket, Lil said. A bolero.
—My idea of a good time is rather different to yours.
—Ladies’ Night in July. I thought you might like a night out, something new to wear.
—Oh, I see, said Vera, trouble at the lodge. You need to present the respectable husband and father all of a sudden.
—Something like that.
—Suddenly I’m wanted.
—Too much to expect, I suppose, that my lady wife might make the effort for once?
—And suddenly no one else will do.
—Not for the moment, no.
Vera flashed out in extravagant triumph.
—Oh, they won’t have you there if you divorce. You can forget about ever being elected to Warden’s Office if once you embark upon that little scheme of yours.
Lil clapped her hands and flapped her apron at the children.
—Go and do your homework, she said. Tea in ten minutes.
Uncle Dick shrugged.
—That’s up to them. I’ve got my letter of resignation written out in my pocket, if anyone makes difficulties. And I’ll take the cloth back with me if you don’t want it.
—I’ve done faggots and roly-poly, Lil said. Aren’t you staying for tea?
Uncle Dick’s refusals were always more like rebuffs than apologies: impatient indications of the more important business he had elsewhere.
—I’ve got to be back at the docks.
Lil picked up the knives and forks from the floor when he had left and wiped them on her apron; then she carried the fabrics out of the way of tea into the front room.
—You ought to go to this Ladies’ Night affair, she said.
Vera’s face was closed.
—Why shouldn’t you go? Why shouldn’t you have something nice to wear? You’re his rightful wife.
—I don’t want to spend my evening listening to that mumbo-jumbo.
Lil swept her sewing table clear from all the bits left over from Ann’s Mary Queen of Scots costume. Then she shook the satin and velvet out from their folds until they were heaped up in sumptuous excess in the dim light. The curtains in this room were always half drawn across; they didn’t use it much.
Vera stood passively while Lil draped the brown satin over her gray pleated skirt and cream blouse, her usual things for school.
—It suits you! said Lil. It goes with your dark hair. See how it hangs. It’s such good quality, so heavy. Look how it takes the light. The dress wants a classic line, very fitting; then a velvet bolero with a three-quarter-length sleeve. You could bind the edge of the bolero with the satin. Wear it with those earrings Mam gave you. You could wear it for the pageant, too.
Vera looked down at herself, hesitating. She leaned forward onto one hip to make the fabric swing and swirl.
—I certainly don’t want anyone else flaunting about in it, she said.
Lil tucked an end of the velvet around Vera’s shoulders and under her arms; then she and Joyce stood squinting their eyes at her, trying to blur the draped fabrics into looking like the finished outfit. She submitted to their attention with unaccustomed meekness.
—It could look very elegant, said Lil.
Lil and Joyce both set about persuading her, as if they knew something she didn’t know about what this dress could do for her, something she was incapable of managing for herself. Now that Joyce had seen the blond woman, she was afraid her aunt didn’t know what she was up against.
* * *
—I might go to art school, Joyce said to her art teacher.
Miss Leonard was tiny, ancient-looking, with a face as lined and vivid as a monkey’s; she walked with an odd sliding motion, lifting her knees and carrying her head very high and far back as if she were keeping her face above the dull muddy water of the rest of school. Girls who wanted to get on with some drawing or painting were allowed to be up in the art room at lunchtime. Joyce was making fussy tiny changes to a drawing of an extravagant tropical shell gorgeously lined with pink, although she was sure that her fussing wasn’t going to make the timorous drawing any better. She didn’t know what art school was, really, anymore than she had a clear idea of university, although she knew her aunt wanted her to go there. She hadn’t thought about going to art school until the very moment she said it.
Miss Leonard was working in pastels on a still life she had arranged on a table for one of her classes: two jugs glazed in thick yellow against a scrap of oriental rug with a couple of lemons. She gave her a rapid unimpressed bird glance.
—I thought you were one of the brainy ones?
—Oh no, not really. Joyce blushed.
—So why on earth do you want to go to art school? Apart from being too stupid to do anything else?
—Well, I love art, of course.
One skeptical eyebrow went up: the eyes flickered rapidly, assessingly, between the lemons and her paper.
—Oh, don’t love art. That’s sounds frightfully high-minded. You’ll never make a living at it, you know.
Joyce was shocked.
—I never dreamed I could make a living!
—You have to teach, or else you do illustrating, if you can get it. Unless of course you’re one of the lucky few. The ones who’ve really got it. Whatever it is. Talent, genius, originality, the right friends in the right places.
—What it is, really, said Joyce, is that I love these things. I’ve never seen things like these before.
Miss Leonard looked at her blankly. Then, as if she had forgotten it existed, she cast a surprised glance round the room full of the treasures that had pleased her eye.
—Oh. I see.
She put down her crayon and went over to shelves piled with a miscellany of crockery, topped with pieces of driftwood and a couple of ostrich feathers.
—Come and feel these, she said.
Anxiously, Joyce took one of the big flat dishes from her. Miss Leonard brushed off the dust with the side of her hand.
—Do you like them?
The dish was heavy, the clay half an inch thick; the uneven green glaze was decorated with swirls of brown so freely drawn you could see the marks of the brush hairs. Joyce could hardly understand a way of making things that was so opposite to the one she had been brought up to admire: her mother’s best tea set, for example, where precision and delicate finish were everything and the making process was tidied secretively out of sight.
—I love them, she said.
—They come from Portugal. In Portugal the sun is hot, the people live out of doors so much more, they drink wine and eat fish cooked with olive oil and tomatoes and spices and garlic, off dishes like these. Their houses are often crumbling and untidy, but inside and even outside they are covered with locally made tiles.
