Dennis received his piece of cake, face expressionless. ‘Ah, that Gwen,’ he said.
‘And Avis is a stenographer,’ Gwen said.
‘I can speak for myself, darling. Really!’ Avis raised her well-shaped eyebrows at no one in particular. Her face was viciously beautiful, though lined – she was older than she had at first appeared. Her perfume, mixed now with the smell of dog, rather ruined one’s appetite.
‘I’m gasping, if I may?’ she said, waving an absurdly long holder.
‘Of course.’ There was a relieved flurry of offering and lighting of Players.
Clem took one to steady herself.
‘Well, in any case’ – Gwen gave a Clem a curious look and puffed out a smoky breath – ‘she came up trumps out there. Not such a delicate flower as she looks.’
‘Whilst Dennis worked wonders at Middlesham Hall,’ said Clem. ‘He supervised the conversion to a hospital and worked himself to the bone there, as well as almost single-handedly keeping the surgery going here.’
Gwen said nothing, her silence eloquent.
‘Oh, let it go, Gwendolyn,’ Avis drawled, tipping back her head to allow a plume of smoke to unfurl from between her scarlet lips. ‘Anyone who didn’t sign up’s still a shirker in her eyes,’ she explained unnecessarily.
‘Dennis wasn’t a shirker,’ Clem said hotly. ‘We still needed doctors at home.’
‘Of course,’ said Gwen. ‘Avis does talk tommyrot. She likes to stir – don’t you, darling?’ She revolved a finger in the air.
Avis smiled lazily and waggled one foot in its pointed white brogue. Her ankle bone looked sharp enough for murder.
Dennis stood suddenly and Captain turned his head, curled back his lip and snarled.
‘Captain,’ Gwen said fondly. ‘Down. He means no harm.’
The dog loped back to the hearthrug, circled several times and collapsed, sighing, in a heap.
‘Well,’ said Dennis, ‘if you’ll excuse me. Jolly as this has been’ – he shot a look at Clem – ‘I’ve patients waiting.’
‘Enchanté,’ said Avis as he closed the door.
‘Really!’ Gwen glared at her.
Avis tilted back her chin, lips twitching with amusement.
‘He did his bit,’ Clem said.
‘No one denies it,’ said Avis.
Clem got up to poke the fire, edging round Captain who moved not a muscle except for his eyes.
‘Would you have married the Canadian?’ said Gwen. ‘Or were you planning all the time to return to this?’
Clem steadied herself on the mantelpiece, staring at the crazed old face of the clock between its pair of rearing bronze stallions.
‘You’re very well set up here, I must say,’ added Gwen. ‘Wouldn’t blame you in the least.’
Clem turned. ‘Cake?’ she offered, and when they declined, cut an entirely unwanted slice for herself.
Captain gazed meaningfully at the trolley.
‘Have we finished with the savoury?’ Gwen said, reaching for the plate. She began posting the anchovy toasts one by one into the dog’s jaws. ‘He likes a little something when we have our tea.’
‘Isn’t the weather simply heavenly?’ said Clem and saw Avis raise her eyebrows.
‘Divine,’ she said.
The mantel clock chimed its tuneless quarter and from the hall came the dreary echo of the grandfather.
‘Do you think much about it?’ asked Gwen, making Clem flinch.
‘Oh, yawn,’ said Avis.
‘Stuff your ears with cake, darling,’ Gwen said, ‘or go and do a piddle.’
Avis sniffed and lit herself another cigarette.
Clem sat with a morsel of cake in her mouth, feeling her tongue shrivel and dry. This was what she’d dreaded: dredging, Dennis called it. Don’t go dredging up the past. But still . . . there was a flicker of temptation, like that of poking a stick into an ants’ nest.
A crackle from the grate.
‘Naturally,’ she said, ‘from time to time, although I try not to . . . It doesn’t do one any good, does it?’
Gwen kept her pond-coloured eyes on Clem’s face as she continued, thrusting the sharp point of the stick right into her centre. ‘Do you think about Iris?’ she said.
Clem received the jab, keeping her expression pleasant though the effort was tremendous. ‘Of course.’ Stretching her lips into a smile, she injected lightness into her voice. ‘But we must let bygones be bygones.’
Gwen stretched out her legs and folded her arms. ‘If only that were possible,’ she said.
‘Oh, don’t be such an old bore,’ Avis said. ‘In any case’ – she made a show of consulting her wristwatch though the clock had plainly chimed out the time – ‘aren’t we meeting those people for drinks?’
Those people. It sounded like a code. It sounded like, ‘Darling, this is too ghastly for words – rescue me.’
‘And I must go up and see to Edgar,’ Clem said. ‘I hope he won’t be scared of dogs for life!’
Gwen stood, Captain by her side, and Avis unfolded herself from the sofa. They managed a few awkward pleasantries before Clem was able to usher them into the hall.
‘Delighted to meet you,’ Avis said, holding out her hand, clad now in milky chamois. Rather to Clem’s surprise, Gwen caught her in a hug, rough with tweed and smoke. ‘Glad you’ve found peace,’ she muttered into her ear, ‘and that you’ve had a child after . . .’
Clem pulled away and they looked into each other’s eyes.
Once they’d gone Clem curled up on the sofa, knees to her chest. Against the door in her mind came a battering, and from beneath it, onto cracked white tiles, seeped watery blood. Deep in her belly dragged the cramping pain of loss; she pressed her fist there and groaned.
But here came Linda, blushing through her freckles, to clear away the things and she must sit up, pull herself together, hold herself together, seal the doors.
13
THE WATER, SILKILY scummed with soap and Epsom salts, sloshed as she settled back in the bath and regarded her body: belly hollow but crumpled, scored with silver – not from the first, from Edgar. Calm now, yes. After a glass of Wincarnis in warm milk to settle her nerves she’d slept, waking befuddled for a lone dinner. Dennis was dining at the golf club, angry no doubt, and she could hardly blame him. The impertinence and revolting beauty of Avis, Gwen’s increased mannishness – there had even been a few whiskers on her chin. Surely she could at least employ some tweezers!
Lord knows what Dennis thought, but she would find out soon enough. And, of course, there would be the inevitable topic of her ‘running off to war’. How that made it sound like a fanciful spree, like running off to join the circus. Well, she’d simply have to put up with it. Tonight she was resolved to broach the question of the money, which she’d deliver personally to Mr Fortune. Surely that must be better, safer, than the post?
Distantly she heard the door as Dennis came in, his footsteps on the stairs. She lay until her fingers and toes were white prunes and the water so cool she was goose-pimpled and shivery. Slowly, she dried and powdered her body, put on her most forbidding nightdress, a stronghold of complicated ties and buttons.
As soon as she entered the bedroom, Dennis – already in his pyjamas, hair brushed back, that sickly Bay Rum smell that made her heart sink with the opposite of anticipation – said, ‘You do know what they are, I suppose?
Clem regarded him wearily. ‘What what are?’
‘Your friends.’
‘Of course.’ Sitting at the dressing table, she began to brush her dampened hair.
‘And you didn’t think to warn me?’
She put down the brush. ‘Warn you?’
‘By God, Clem!’ In the mirror she watched his hands fly out in a pantomime of bewilderment.
Detached, she watched amusement twist her own reflection. How Harri would snigger if she were here.
‘A man likes to be prepared for what he’s about to face in his own sitting room.’
‘Heavens, Dennis!’
‘Speaking to one like that, in one’s own home!’ he said. ‘I ask you!’
‘Yes,’ she turned and met his eye. ‘That was unfair and unfortunate. I’m sorry.’
‘And you might have said that it was that Gwen you’d invited, the one who dragged you off—’
‘She rather invited herself. And no one “dragged me off” anywhere.’
‘I dare say she put the idea into your head.’
‘It was my idea. And you know why.’
She picked up her brush again, hair damp and snarled, fingers trembling. Oh, how fed up with it she was; thousands of filaments of history growing from her scalp. How old was it? Had it been at the Front? Had Powell washed and brushed, had he touched, any of these same strands? She grasped a hank in her hand, tugged till it hurt.
‘How long does a single hair last?’ she said.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘From emerging from its follicle to dropping naturally.’
‘That will depend on countless factors. You did go against my express will, Clementine, and just after we were engaged too.’
‘You ask me not to go dredging—’
‘And then you bring those inverted creatures into our home to mock me!’
She pressed her lips together, felt the breath rise and fall in her diaphragm. Abruptly he removed the brush from her hand and she flinched, but, ‘Here let me,’ was all he said. Standing behind her, he untangled the snarls with his deft, doctorly fingers and brushed smoothly. No, no, no. Her mind flailed against memory – oh, the battering, the battering against the door. Stay here, stay here, stay here now. In the glass she could not see his face, only his pyjama’d middle. Navy blue paisley, a neatly knotted white cord.
Suddenly he guffawed. ‘But I mean, honestly, darling! Lesbians for tea!’
She took the brush back from him and began plaiting her hair. She caught his eye in the mirror and smiled. ‘By the way, I could do with a little money. I—’
‘Got your eye on a hat?’
She opened her mouth to tell him about the bill – and closed it again. Simpler this way.
At the foot of the stairs, the grandfather began wheezily working itself up to strike midnight.
‘Just bits and bobs,’ she said. ‘Little treats for Eddie and the twins and so on.’ She finished her plait and threw the long tail over her shoulder, patted Ponds cold cream over her cheeks and chin, smoothed it into her neck.
‘Of course, old thing,’ Dennis said. He was sitting on the bed now and had commenced clipping his toenails. Snip, snip, snip as the clippers went through the thin horn that would scatter on the carpet, no doubt. ‘You shall have your bits and bobs,’ he said, ‘but no need to go spending it on the twins. Harri has a reasonable settlement from Daddy – and the less we give her, the more she might consider her position.’
He got up to put the scissors on the dressing table, and as Clem stood, he caught her to him, spoke into her hair. ‘Listen, darling.’ His voice was husky with sudden emotion. ‘I realise I don’t know the worst of it. I’ve never asked you about your war – not good for you to remember, eh? Best foot forward and all that. That’s the spirit, yes?’ He held her away from him by the tops of her arms. ‘Eh?’
‘Of course,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you.’
Oh, she did feel fond of him for his generosity, his clumsy attempt to communicate, even if it was only to open the door a chink, then slam it shut and lock it. He was right to lock it.
They climbed into bed, and she reached for her book, The Old Wife’s Tale, found her page, but: ‘So, what do you suppose they do?’ he said.
She blinked at him.
‘Your Sapphic friends?’
‘Haven’t the slightest inkling,’ she said.
He took away her book and slapped it shut, then pushed back the bedclothes and stretched himself out beside her.
‘It’s cold,’ she said, pulling back the covers.
‘Do you suppose they rub themselves together down there?’ His hand went to her groin.
‘Dennis!’ She pushed him off. ‘Really!’
‘And bring themselves off like that?’
‘I’m not listening to this.’ She put her hands over her ears, noticing an alarming tenting in his pyjamas. Of course the question had crossed her own mind, but for a man to think of it was sleazy, prurient even? Either way she was in for it, she could see.
‘Disgusting . . . unnatural,’ he breathed, reaching for her, ‘and four breasts squashed together, imagine that!’
‘Fetch a thing then.’ She sighed. Better to get it over with than to object. But this time with those thoughts, his thoughts in her head now, prurient, yes, and unworthy, and a confusion of other faces in her mind, an ease came to her, a naturalness she’d never felt before with Dennis, and with her eyes tight shut against him, an onrush of intensity, of achy wantonness, that caused him to draw back when it was over and regard her. ‘Oh, Clementine,’ he said hoarsely, cupping her sex and squeezing. ‘My own, my darling little harlot.’
14
VINCE WATCHES DOLL shoo out the last few drinkers; a devil of a job to shift them today – madness in the air, spring madness brought on by the heat.
‘Thank heavens above.’ At last she’s able to slam the door, draw the bolt across with a satisfying clunk. She turns and gives an extravagant yawn, stretching her arms so that her bosoms lift. ‘Rightio then,’ she says, surveying the bar.
‘Stop a minute, Dolly, put your trotters up,’ says Vince.
She stands with her hands on her hips, gazing at him with her big, heavy-lidded eyes, and it could tip either way; he can see she’s got things on her mind, but then she puffs and shrugs. ‘Just a tick then.’ Plumping down on one of the leather seats, she eases off her shoes.
He shifts a stool so she can put her feet up, pours them both a gin and lime, then sits down, taking a foot in its thick, darned stocking into his lap. Breathing in the smell of sweaty rayon, he squeezes and kneads the sole, pulls the toes, until she groans with pleasure. Her skirt is caught up in her lap, and surely, even with her eyes shut, she must know he can see up to where her stockings end, the tops of solid white thighs and the rubbery pink suspender nubbins.
Encouraged, he lifts the other foot, circles his thumbs in the arches, parting the legs a little for a better look. Been a while since he’s been in her bed, she’s so busy and taken up with Kenny, who always comes first, such a soft touch she is, but does he complain? No, he knows which side his bread is buttered. A cosy gaff, this. He can see himself as landlord on a sunny afternoon like this, shooing out the last few customers with a ‘Haven’t you got homes to go to?’, and then settling down with Doll in the bar for a quiet drink and a foot rub – oh, how she loves it – before a bit of afternoon delight. She’ll be Mrs Fortune by then and he’ll be prouder than any punch to have this big soft creature for his own, the warmth, the comfort of her, the luxury. More he thinks about it, the more sheer bloody common sense it makes.
Funny he’s never thought of it before, being a landlord; just his line after all, with his interest in drink – and it puts a roof over your head, a congenial roof too. You’re never lacking for a bit of company. You have to have a line of banter, but he’s got that from selling brooms and linctus and kiddies’ books and, lastly, mustard door to door. Used to get a bonus every Christmas for exceptional sales – ice to Eskimos they said. The way he could flog that mustard! But that memory is like the sting of it in a wound. No, not that, not now.
‘Got to pay a visit,’ Doll says, removing her feet, hauling herself up and smoothing down her skirt. He lights up a cheroot, leans back on his chair, stretches out his legs. Mostyn’s Mustard. Every time he sees a van it riles him up good and proper. That livid yellow. Pep up Your Ham, Chops and Sausages with Mostyn’s Mustards. He’d been in on that. There was a long wrangle about the final ‘s’ as Mostyn’s did different strengths, mild to blazing hot. He convinced them of the �
�s’, proving the influence he had. It’s a chief selling point, he’d said at a sales meeting, speaking up for the first time. ‘See, when people think mustard they think hot. I tell them our mildest is suitable for the most delicate palate.’ He had his spiel off pat: ‘Mild enough for a suckling babe. But if you want your socks blown off, you go for the top of the range, see? Not just one taste but a whole spectrum.’ Oh, he was persuasive to housewives, and branching into restaurants too, that was his speciality. He’d had Lyons Tea Rooms in his sights. Before the war he was Mostyn’s Number One Salesman – not once but twice, beating all records.
Then came the war and off he went to do his bit – with Sir Mostyn’s personal blessing and a promise that he’d be hired as soon as he was back in Blighty. And so, once he was out of hospital, once he’d got rid of the shakes and the stutter, got used to facing the world with his tin plate, he’d gone to get his old job back. Invited into the inner sanctum, Sir Mostyn’s office, no less. He was shown in by a girl he’d never seen before, baby sweet with rolls of strawberry blonde hair, who, to give her credit, never batted an eyelid at his face, which was better than Sir Mostyn managed.
‘Come in, Fortune. Sorry to have kept you waiting, old chap.’
There was that split second as he extended his hand, that flinch, and his eyes skidded off the mask quick sharp before he braced himself to look straight into Vince’s face. ‘Can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to see you back safe and well . . . The lady wife must be . . .’
Vince allowed his hand to be wrung, and sat in the proffered chair. He’d only been in Sir Mostyn’s office once or twice before, the last time when he set off for the Front. Framed photographs of Mostyn’s Mustards, the fleet of vans, the sales force and the factory workers lined the walls. The carpet was thick, red-and-blue pattern, Turkish most like, and the desk gleamed, smelled of pipe smoke and beeswax. Money.
‘Wife no more,’ Vince said. A year since Ethel left him, good riddance. She’d never come to terms with his face and there was someone else; of course there was. The minute his back was turned, Irish navvy he’d heard. But she never said that. ‘Differences’ is what she came up with. ‘We never really loved each other, did we, Vince?’ And to her credit she was right. It’d been a hasty wedding, babes in the wood they were. On his side it’d been based on lust but he soon discovered he’d been sold a pup – the way she winced her way through the act. Oh, she usually let him, but made it clear it was a bother and a chore, something on a par with beating carpets. She never made a bloody sound except for ouch and mind. In the end he gave it up as a bad job. Travelling in mustard the length and breadth of Britain, he’d had his dalliances. He’d like to put a map on the wall, stick a pin in all the places he’d had his end away. That’d be a sight to behold!
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