Victoria Line, Central Line

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Three or four hours, at least,’ he said.

  It just wasn’t possible, that in the whole of London, one tube line should have a mechanical failure, and she should be on it. It was simply beyond belief that this should happen on this one day out of the thousand or so days she had been married to Ed. It was quite inconceivable that Bella, the big black shadow over all their lives, was going to become like a mushroom cloud of menace and disappointment ever more. Ed would never recover from it. The evening would be a shambles, he would run out into the street looking for her. He might believe that she had left him as some kind of protest about Bella. Amy felt a wave of nausea at the horror of her situation, her face whitened and she looked as if she was going to fall.

  ‘Steady,’ said Gerald. ‘You mustn’t rush that wine, it’s very good, full bodied, rich. Here. Sit on this corner.’ He moved her to the corner of someone’s seat. A London mateyness had now begun to develop and people who would have travelled unspeaking for years became animated and friendly through shared disaster.

  Amy told Gerald all about Bella: she told him about opening the letter, she told him that Bella had strong-armed all her brothers into a forced, humble, gratitude. As she told him, it became even clearer to her just how destructive Bella had been; and how in Vancouver, San José and Mexico City, as well as London, four normal men were working like nervous beavers to thank this woman for giving up her youth to rear them. While in fact, Amy realised suddenly, all that Bella had done was give full vent to normal maternal instincts, and got in return praise from authorities and social services. From four brothers she had got a slavish devotion.

  Amy and Gerald finished the bottle of wine. Gerald muttered an occasional word of encouragement, and, whenever Amy began to panic at the thought of the ruined evening, he offered reassurance.

  ‘Nonsense, of course he’ll know where you are. They’ll have it on the local news.’

  ‘Heavens, girl, relax, he’ll ring the station, they’ll tell him.’

  ‘Good God, woman, Bella doesn’t expect you to get a pickaxe and hack your way out!’

  He told her that his wife thought he drank too much, and that he did. He had once had an affair with his secretary, which his wife had never discovered, or he thought she’d never discovered; but he hadn’t enjoyed the intrigue side of it, so he ended it, and his secretary called him a chauvinist bastard in front of three senior partners in the firm. It had been very distressing.

  Coffee and sandwiches were brought in from the next station and a real party atmosphere began to develop. There was even a sing-song and by the time they did get out at ten p.m. to the flashing of photographers’ light-bulbs and the attention of waiting crowds, Amy was quite unconcerned about Bella and the whole, ruined evening.

  It was with a shock that she recognized Bella’s features on the platform. Peering into the crowds emerging from the train she looked worried, and anxious for Amy’s safety. Behind her were a worried Ed and a worried Blair.

  ‘There she is,’ cried Bella running forward, arms out. ‘Amy, my little sister, are you all right? Are you hurt? Have you been looked after? My poor Amy, what an ordeal, what a catastrophe, for you!’ She released her to let Ed hug her, and Blair hold her in a manful, silent grip.

  Gerald watched the scene, and raised his hat before going on his way with a quizzical laugh.

  Together the four of them went out of the station. Bella didn’t look severe or plain, she looked aglow with interest and concern. She had telephoned the police four times, she had made sure that the train had been in no danger, she had taken first aid things to the station just in case. But now how wonderful, it had all ended happily and they were on the way back to Ed and Amy’s lovely home. It had looked so really beautiful when she had arrived, those really cute window boxes, and my, how nice Amy sure kept everything, when she had to telephone she noticed just how fresh and dainty the whole house was. Well now, they could all go back and have that really delicious-looking dinner that she knew was there.

  Blair smiled a great stalwart and supportive smile. And Ed looked like a child who got the candy; and Amy wondered why she could have resented Bella coming, she was so pleased that she was here. And even more pleased that she liked everything. Now, Amy would really go out of her way to give her a good shopping trip on the Saturday morning. After all, the only important thing was to please Bella.

  SEVEN SISTERS

  It was very odd that they should live in Seven Sisters, Pat thought for the hundredth time. It seemed too much of a coincidence that anyone who was giving a wife-swapping party, with uninhibited fun and carefree swinging for sophisticated couples, should just happen to live in a place with the group name of Seven Sisters. She had said so to Stuart as well.

  ‘They have to live somewhere,’ he said unhelpfully.

  Pat had studied the A to Z.

  ‘I don’t really see why they call it Seven Sisters, it’s more Hornsey really,’ she complained.

  ‘If they’d called it Hornsey you’d probably say that that was even more suggestive,’ said Stuart mildly.

  For two weeks before the party, Pat lived on a high level of anxiety. She examined her new set of underwear with a worried frown. It was red and black, the black bits were lace and, in one instance, a rosette. Again and again she tried them on in the bathroom and examined herself critically in the mirror. She looked so very white, and the dark colours made her look almost dead. She wondered whether this would fire all the men with lust, whether they would be driven insane by the combination of dead white skin, red silk and black lace, or whether one of the women would take her aside and advise her to use a fake tan lotion. The awful thing was that there was no one to ask. Even if she were to write to this appalling magazine where Stuart had first seen the article about wife-swapping and had replied to one of the box numbers, she still wouldn’t get a reply in time.

  Over and over she rehearsed what she would say: ‘Hallo, lovely of you to ask us . . . what a super house.’ No, she couldn’t tell this terrifying harlot who owned the house in Seven Sisters that it was lovely of her to have invited Pat and Stuart, since Pat and Stuart had in their corrupt and pleasure-seeking way told the Seven Sisters lot that they wanted to come and take off their clothes to go to bed with a load of strangers. The more she reminded herself that this is what they had arranged to do, the more faint and foolish she felt.

  Even though she tried to put it from her mind, she wondered if there would be time for any conversation before they got down to action. Would she find herself stark naked in a corner talking to some other naked housewife about the children’s drama group or the new supermarket? Would Stuart stand naked laughing with new people about the tomatoes they grew in their allotment?

  That was the kind of thing that happened at the ordinary parties they went to . . . tame little evenings where people kept their clothes on, and didn’t mate with each other, and discussed how expensive the season tickets on the train had become, and how hard it was to find a doctor who could spend two minutes listening to you. Tame evenings, dull evenings. Getting in a rut, becoming old before their time, suburban even though they hadn’t yet reached their middle-class suburbia, no excitement, nothing very different, nothing that made them gasp.

  Two children, the national average, Stuart working in a bank . . .

  God Almighty! – Suppose some of the bank’s clients were at the party! It wasn’t so ridiculous. People don’t live beside their banks, some of them could easily live off the Seven Sisters Road. Had Stuart thought of that? She had better tell him, they could call it all off. It would be foolish to imperil his whole career. . . No. He must have thought of it. He was utterly set on going to this party now. He would only think she was groping around for some excuse.

  . . . nice little flat, no garden unfortunately, but then they went to the allotment at weekends. Children very strong and happy, love their school. Debbie in the school play again this term, and Danny hoping to be picked for the third team. Lots of
friends at school always running in and out of the neighbours’ houses too and playing in the adventure playground at the end of the road. Not an earth-shaking life, but a happy one . . . even the school Principal had said the other day . . .

  Sweet God! – Suppose the school ever got to hear of this! How utterly shaming for Debbie and Danny to be branded the children of perverts, sexual freaks. They might even be asked to leave lest their family shame might taint the other children. Relax. How could the school hear of it, unless other parents, or indeed some of the staff, were there being uninhibited and swinging in sophisticated adult fun? . . . Yes, of course, if anyone was there, a conspiracy of silence would have to be maintained.

  . . . anyway the school Principal had said that he had enormous admiration for the parents of today, since they made so many sacrifices for their children and were so supportive and aware of all their needs. But he felt sure that this effort was repaid in a thousand ways by the fact that they lived in a peaceful community, far away from the wars and tensions and differences that rend other countries.

  Stuart had said that people who went to these parties were normal, ordinary, good, respectable citizens like everyone else. He said that all they were doing was trying to push forward the frontiers of pleasure. They were trying to add to the delights of normal sexual love between a married couple . . . and be less selfish about it . . . by offering to share that love with other married couples. He had read, and he believed that there was a lot of truth in it, that this kind of generosity, this giving of your rights in your partner to other friends, was an act of love in itself. And, even more important in these treacherous days, it completely by-passed the need to be ‘unfaithful’ to the other partner – there would be no forbidden lovers, or illicit affairs. It would all be out in the open. It would be healthy and good.

  Stuart talked about it with the enthusiasm he had when he first talked about his allotment. His eyes had that gleam that they once had when he had planned a life of self-sufficiency. The rest of London might starve, might poison itself with nuclear fallout, but Stuart and Pat and Debbie and Danny would grow what they needed for survival on their little allotment, and, aha, who’d laugh then? Pat had asked mildly how Stuart would protect his runner beans and cabbages against twelve million starving Londoners, if they were the only family which had managed to be self-sufficient. Stuart had said it was a technicality.

  The Saturday and Sunday gardening continued, it had lost its first flush of real excitement, but nowadays it brought them a gentle pleasure. Perhaps this would happen with wife-swapping too, Pat thought. Soon the heady excitement and flush of enthusiasm would pass, and they would settle into a weekly wife-swap happily and resignedly travelling to Seven Sisters, or Barking, or Rickmansworth, or Biggin Hill.

  Stuart seemed so alarmingly calm about it all. This as much as anything disturbed Pat. She had asked him, did he think he should get new jockey-shorts.

  ‘No, love, I’ve plenty up in the wardrobe,’ he had said mystified.

  ‘For the party,’ she had hissed.

  ‘Why should I need new jockey-shorts?’ he had asked, as puzzled as if she had said he should buy a new transistor radio. ‘I have nine pairs upstairs. I tell you, I have plenty.’

  As the event drew nearer, Pat worried more about Stuart. Did he have no nerves, no feelings, that he could take it all so calmly . . . the fact that he had written to a box number and a woman with a voice like a circular saw had telephoned?

  She had never given too much thought to their sex life. It had always seemed very pleasant and adequate, and she certainly didn’t regard herself as frigid, not in the sense of the women’s magazine articles on the topic. She couldn’t remember saying that she had a headache, or that she didn’t feel like it. There was, she supposed, a sort of sameness about it. But then, for heaven’s sake, some things are the same. The taste of a bar of chocolate or a gin and lime is always the same. The sound of Beethoven’s Fifth or Johnny Mathis is always the same. Why this great urge for something different?

  Pat was hurt and puzzled. She had read about women who discovered that their meek and conventional husbands actually liked bondage or violent pornography. . . so perhaps she should feel relieved that Stuart had suggested only nice old middle-class wife-swapping. Still, Pat felt aggrieved. If she were prepared to live for the rest of their days with their life as it was now, saving for the house, going on a caravan holiday once a year, and making love comfortably in the darkness and privacy of their own room twice a week, then it was somehow ungrateful of Stuart not to feel the same about it.

  Pat had an appointment with the hairdresser on the afternoon of the Terrible Day.

  ‘Going somewhere nice?’ asked the hairdresser in her bright, routine way.

  ‘Eer . . . yes,’ said Pat.

  ‘Oh, to a function is it?’ asked the hairdresser.

  ‘Um. No, no. Not a function. Private house. Old friends, and new friends. A party. An ordinary party,’ Pat screamed defensively.

  The hairdresser shrugged.

  ‘Very nice, I’m sure,’ she said huffily.

  The baby-sitter arrived on time. Pat had hoped that she might ring and say she couldn’t come. That would mean the end of this ludicrous outing across London to copulate with strangers. The only tingles of excitement she felt were the ones which ran through her brain asking her if she were certifiably insane.

  Debbie and Danny barely looked up from the television.

  ‘Goodnight, Mum. Goodnight, Dad. Come in and see us when you get back.’

  Pat’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Stuart love . . .’ she began.

  ‘Goodnight, you lot,’ Stuart said firmly.

  She had assumed that they would take the car and was startled when Stuart said that it was much simpler than driving to take the tube.

  ‘Only one change,’ he said. And to Pat the words seemed sinister and fraught with meaning. She wondered if he was saying that they would only swap with one couple when they got there. She felt nausea rise in her throat. Suppose it were like a dance in the tennis club years ago, when nobody asked you to dance and you ended up grateful for some awful person who eventually did suggest a shuffle around the floor. Could this happen tonight? Suppose some appalling, foul couple rejected by everyone else nodded encouragingly at them? Would they have to say yes? Did the house rules say that there was no opting out?

  ‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be nice to have the car coming home?’ she asked.

  ‘Mightn’t feel like driving on the way back,’ said Stuart succinctly.

  Worn out with pleasure? Exhausted? Asleep on some strange other wife’s bosom? Going home with someone else? Staying with the awful woman in Seven Sisters? What could he mean, he mightn’t feel like driving? The whole nightmare was now quite frightening. Why had she ever agreed to this wicked, and silly thing? Why had Stuart ever suggested it?

  The tube came immediately, as trains always do when you are going to the dentist or a wife-swapping party. The stations flashed by. Stuart read the back of someone else’s evening paper. Pat examined her face three times in her compact mirror.

  ‘You look fine,’ Stuart said to her when she got the compact out a fourth time.

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Anyway, it’s not my face they’ll be looking at,’ she said resignedly.

  ‘What? Oh. Oh yes,’ said Stuart smiling supportively, and going back to reading the late football results.

  ‘Do you think we’ll take off our clothes immediately?’ Pat asked wretchedly as they walked out of the station and towards the house.

  ‘I don’t know, I expect it depends on whether they have central heating,’ Stuart said matter of factly.

  Pat looked at him as if he were a total stranger.

  ‘Did she give you any indication of how many people were going to be there?’ Pat asked shrilly after another minute of walking. ‘I mean, they’re not very big houses. They can hardly have dozens.’

  ‘No, she said just a few
friends,’ said Stuart. ‘A few friends, she didn’t say how many.’

  ‘But we’re not friends, we’re sort of intruding on them in a way aren’t we?’ she begged. There were tears in her eyes. They were only one corner away from the house now. Right-turn that and they were in the road and there was no going back.

  Stuart looked at her, moved by the tears he could hear in her voice.

  ‘It’ll be lovely, Pat dear. You’ll love it. You’re always a bit nervous at times like this.’

  She looked at him, her eyes flashing.

  ‘What do you mean at times like this? What “times like this” have there been before? When have we done anything remotely like this. It’s the only time like this . . .’ To her horror, she burst into tears.

  Stuart looked very distressed. He tried to touch her, to put his arm around her, but Pat pushed him away.

  ‘No, stop saying it’s all right, and that I’ll love it. I’ll hate it. I’m not going. That’s final.’

  ‘Well why didn’t you say this before? Why did you wait until we’re nearly there?’ Stuart asked, his innocent, round face looking both foolish and puzzled at the same time. ‘I can’t understand why you didn’t say to me that you thought it wasn’t on, then we’d never have set it all up. I thought you wanted to come too.’

  Pat gave a snort into her tissues.

  ‘You said it sounded an adventurous thing . . .’ he said.

  Pat coughed loudly.

  ‘You said we’d try it once and if we didn’t like it we’d have got it out of our system,’ he went on.

  Pat blew her nose.

  ‘Why, love? Why have you changed your mind now? Just tell me. We’ll do whatever you want to. We won’t go if you really hate the idea. Just tell me.’

  Pat looked at him through her red eyes. His face was indeed very round and innocent. She wondered that she had never noticed that before. He was simply another disappointed young bank clerk. Another man in a deadend job, with an average wife, a few drinks on a Saturday, two nice, but time-consuming and money-swallowing children, a car that needed a lot of money spent on it, or else needed to be replaced. They had a loan of a caravan each year, but he would never feel the sands of the West Indies or the Seychelles between his toes.