Pamela was staring at her too. She was unwinding a thread of blue wool from her thumb.
‘What’s the matter?’ Ann asked. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
She couldn’t help being nasty. She went to the window and looked down into the shadowy garden. Last month Mrs Kershaw had cut off the heads of the roses; she’d taken down the badminton net, and nobody went on to the grass. There was a model living on the ground floor in the flat behind Mrs Kershaw. In the summer she had come out among the rose bushes to be photographed by the press – drawing in her breath and striking poses, head back, chin tilted upward to the branches of the sycamore tree. Ann had been jealous of her – of the abundance of her black hair and of the attention she received. But she wasn’t jealous now. She had William.
The lights were on in the houses down Frognal, square after square: six flats to a house, each with a kitchen and a table laid for two.
How long was very soon?
‘Who is he?’ asked Pamela. She sounded terribly tired.
‘I’ve told you. He’s a writer.’
‘How many times have you met him?’
Ann didn’t answer. She was wondering what a pinkie was. ‘What did he mean,’ she said, ‘when he called it a pinkie?’ She held up her hand.
‘It’s slang,’ Pamela said. ‘It means a little finger. Queers put rings on them.’
It’s not true, thought Ann. How would she know something like that?
‘I’m worried,’ said Pamela. ‘It’s not like you. Your mother would have a fit.’
But Ann didn’t care. All that had happened to her before, in the past, when she had been like herself, had been a mistake. The assistant bank manager, the married man at the BBC, the painter she met on the Heath, even Gerald. Her mother had had a fit about all of them, with the exception of Douglas, the married man, who she hadn’t known existed. It wasn’t any use choosing someone for her mother to like; that was impossible. This time no one was going to interfere or spoil anything, or make her behave in any way that wasn’t real.
Pamela didn’t go to Clapham. She made a telephone call and came back upstairs with her mascara smeared, as if she had been weeping. She ran the bath and was in there for over an hour. She kept lifting the plug out and re-filling the bath, and there was a clinking noise at one point, as though she had knocked something from the glass shelf.
‘Have you broken anything?’ shouted Ann, but Pamela didn’t reply. Selfishly she turned the tap full on and ran the hot water cylinder cold.
Ann sat in the kitchen and looked at the silver ring. She thought about all the things people said to each other, the words they were in the habit of repeating and the words they always left out. He hadn’t talked to her at great length … he’d only stared at her. He had said, ‘if you were my woman’. Now that she had his ring, did it mean that she was? Why hadn’t he said something important, memorable, when he dropped it into her cup? She fretted at the table, unsure now that he was out of her sight. She thought about babies in prams, the mowing of lawns, the preserving of houses. What opportunities everyone had to be happy: the time spent together, the golf clubs in the hall, the man’s razor in the cupboard. She couldn’t see William in a peaked cap walking across the green at home, but anything was possible now. Would he want to marry her? Would there be a wedding, after he got divorced, and would her father wear his dress uniform and his medals? Her parents didn’t know anybody who had even separated, let alone divorced, so it wasn’t going to be easy. Her mother would be furious at being outdone by Mrs Munro: the west coast of Scotland could hardly be compared with California.
Mrs Kershaw came up to thank her for looking after the children.
‘Pamela did that,’ Ann said.
‘They mentioned Pamela,’ said Mrs Kershaw. She sat down heavily on a chair, and Pamela came out from the bathroom in her dressing-gown, the ends of her hair all wet and her face perspiring. She was so tired she could hardly walk straight. She flopped onto the sofa, her eyes glittering.
‘I wouldn’t have thought,’ said Ann, ‘you needed a bath after all that swimming.’
Pamela shrugged. For a moment she resembled Mrs Walton. She looked put out, offended by something. A memory came into Ann’s head of a station platform at Lewes. Her mother and father had been to a luncheon – something to do with Captain Walton’s regiment – and she had been staying with Pamela. Her father was unusually talkative and his face was mottled. He complained of the heat and took off his army jacket. Mrs Walton told him to pull himself together and she boarded the train and sat down in the compartment. When the whistle blew Father was still attending to his coat, staggering round and round trying to catch the end of his broad brown belt. The train drew out leaving him on the platform. Ann started to say something – she had the absurd notion they might never see him again – but her mother was sitting with her lips pressed together, staring at the flying trees and the fields. Then she shrugged, and the fur collar of her coat quivered about her indignant mouth. It was as if it had been she who had been left behind.
‘Ann dear,’ said Mrs Kershaw, and stopped. Roddy was calling from downstairs. He was shouting that Ann was wanted on the telephone.
‘You’re wanted on the telephone,’ repeated Pamela, because Ann didn’t move.
Roddy shouted louder. Even as Ann walked to the door, Mrs Kershaw was rising from her chair to sit beside Pamela on the sofa. They had never met before.
Ann picked up the telephone receiver. ‘Hullo,’ she said.
‘I’ve got things to attend to,’ said William.
‘Aye, I know.’
‘I’ve got to go away.’
‘I see.’
‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked. ‘Is there something bothering you?’
‘I’m not bothered about anything,’ Ann said.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘You are.’
‘Your wife,’ she said. ‘The flesh of your flesh.’
‘Did I not tell you?’ he said. ‘I’m divorced from her.’
Mrs Kershaw’s Roddy came out into the hall and made gestures at the ceiling. She stared at him. He jerked his thumb towards the stairs and mouthed at her. After a moment he went back into the flat and slammed the door.
‘Are you still there?’ asked William.
‘Yes.’
‘When I see you, it’ll be for good. You know what I mean?’
‘I do,’ she said.
Going upstairs she thought of Gerald: how unlike William he was. Even on the telephone. Gerald could never be like William, not in a thousand years. He wouldn’t have understood the question, let alone been able to give an answer. He was so cautious about everything. He hadn’t the money for a ticket for her to go to America, and he wouldn’t allow her to pay for herself. He couldn’t marry her because he couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t want her to go out to work. He would send for her when it suited him. When next she saw William it would be for ever.
Mrs Kershaw and Pamela had been discussing her, Ann could tell. They watched her as she came through the door.
‘Was it him?’ asked Pamela.
Ann nodded.
‘I’ve got the most dreadful feeling,’ Pamela said, hugging her knees on the sofa. She didn’t say what the feeling was.
‘I know what you think,’ said Ann. She was grinning so much the words sounded strangled. ‘I admit it’s odd.’
‘He’s … he’s …?’ Pamela was having difficulty articulating.
‘Yes,’ said Ann. ‘He’s beautiful.’
‘Oh, he is,’ Pamela agreed. She sounded surprised. She looked at Mrs Kershaw. ‘He really is.’
‘Does he go into the Nag’s Head?’ said Mrs Kershaw.
‘Does he?’ prompted Pamela.
Ann looked at them.
‘There’s a man,’ said Mrs Kershaw. ‘A poet. He’s well known in Hampstead. He goes into pubs and he talks to women.’
‘It’s possible,’ Ann said carefully, ‘that he writes poems.’
&nb
sp; ‘Are you sure?’ asked Mrs Kershaw, ‘that you know the sort of man he is?’
‘Aye,’ said Ann. ‘He’s my man.’ It sounded a little melodramatic, and she hoped Pamela wouldn’t remember the musical that they had both seen in Brighton. There had been a heroine who, on hearing her lover singing in the distances – something about the morning mist being on the heather – had cried aloud ‘My Man’ and bounded like a deer into the wings.
Self-consciously she went into the bathroom to wash, leaving Mrs Kershaw and Pamela together, and found beside the lavatory bowl a cup and half-bottle of gin, practically empty.
2
William returned two days later, when Ann was sleeping. Pamela came into her bedroom and shook her by the shoulder.
‘It’s him,’ she said. ‘He’s in the sitting room.’ She fled into the bathroom and locked the door.
Ann couldn’t find her dressing-gown. While she was wrapping the coverlet about her, she heard the music. He had put a record on the turntable and was standing by the window in his tennis pumps, wearing a discoloured raincoat.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, and he put a finger to his lips and made a sshhing sound. She stood there, nervously pushing her hair back from her face and wishing she had a comb.
It was an endlessly long record that began with the plucking of strings. It reminded her of a cartoon film she had seen about a rabbit with buck teeth jumping along a field. She could hear a violin, sad and whining, and a piano in the background; there was no tune to it at all. Every now and then it would reach some kind of climax. She would clear her throat in readiness to speak – and it would begin all over again, tum te tum tum tum tum te, loud in the sitting room, as if they were there in actuality, the men in black ties holding their instruments. It would never do to interrupt. Her own heart beat to the mournful throb of the violin.
William looked different: his hair was straighter, the colour had faded. He tapped his plimsoll on the carpet and when he bent his head it was ash-grey and clipped all over. She had thought, after their last meeting, that when next she saw him he would take her in his arms, kneel at her feet. But he stayed detached, watching the black disc circling round and round. When the music finally ended, she was trembling all over. She was going to say how lovely it had been. She took a step towards him. He was turning the record on to the other side.
‘You’ll like this,’ he said.
Down went the stylus. Tenderly he let go of the arm and off went the plucking again, the leaping rabbit, the violins and the copy-cat piano. She was struggling not to laugh; she kept thinking of Pamela imprisoned in the bathroom. She studied the leg of a chair, conscious that he was watching her. This time, some instrument, deeper in tone than the rest, repeated a series of notes that the violin had played earlier. She began to catch the melody, jerking her head in time to the music.
‘No, no,’ he said harshly. ‘Listen.’
It wasn’t fair – he had tapped his foot on the carpet: even now he was moving his hand in the air like a maestro. She was sorry he had stopped her; she lost concentration almost immediately. All she could hear now was a melancholy voice singing ‘O dearie, O dearie,’ over and over. She shook with suppressed laughter and covered her face with her hands. When the music came to a conclusion, years later, he took hold of her wrists in the silent room and pulled her fingers away from her eyes. Her teeth were chattering.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Where do you lie down?’
She pointed in the direction of the bedroom and he went ahead of her. She followed with one hand held curiously behind her, fluttering like a shirt tail, as if she was signalling to someone for help.
‘Pamela’s in the bathroom,’ she told him.
‘It’s as good a place as any,’ he said, and she sat down on the side of the double bed still shrouded in the coverlet. He was taking off his raincoat, pulling his sweater up over his head. He was broad-shouldered, with a short full neck and small pale ears.
‘Aren’t you stopping?’ he asked, and smiled.
She shuffled beneath the sheets and pushed the coverlet away from her, looking at his chest and the nipples like two brown raisins embedded in his pale skin. There were no preliminaries. Nor did he take any precautions. He didn’t have a clean handkerchief ready under the pillow; there was no chemical apparatus such as she had often used with Gerald. He kissed her on the mouth and rolled on top of her. It was unreal for a time, before any words were said: the smell of him, the texture of his back, the roughness of his arms above the elbow, not knowing where to put her knees. It was such an intimate situation to be in and yet so infantile – nuzzling against the unfamiliar body, sucking mouths and squirming. She kept catching his ankle bone with her toe-nail. Must cut them, she thought.
‘I’m so sorry … I’m sorry.’
He stuck his fingers in her ears and there was a roaring sound. She shook him away.
‘Don’t,’ she cried, as if he had perpetrated an outrage.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I love you,’ she repeated, and tears squeezed out of her eyes.
Afterwards he cradled her in his arms and patted her back like a child that needed comforting.
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s what your mammy did to you when you were a babby.’
‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, though it almost hurt.
‘What did you think,’ he asked, ‘when I first met you?’
‘I thought I had the flu,’ she said.
She was trying to imagine her mother looking after her when she was little. She’d seen a photograph of herself in a fluffy bonnet and white leggings – her cheek pressed to her mother’s, a toothless placating smile, one fat fist doubled at her neck.
‘Why do mothers do it,’ she wanted to know, ‘the patting on the back?’
‘It’s continuity,’ he said. ‘We were grown under the heart.’
The bedroom was painted pink: the window sills, the walls. Mrs Walton had donated a small pink rug to match. She had made it herself during the war – woven a ship on it with pink woolly sails and clouds floating. There was a basket chair with a satin cushion set beside the wardrobe. It was like a nursery, she thought, lying in his arms in the warm bed, with the ceiling washed blue, the plaster flaking above the light bulb. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t jump into bed with everyone, but she couldn’t think how to say it. It would sound as if she was apologising, as if she feared that already he despised her. But what did men think in their heads, the very first time, when it was over? She looked with creased face at the pink wall and heard Pamela unlock the door of the bathroom. William’s arm lay beside hers on the top blanket. His was round and muscular, hers bony at elbow and wrist. Did he find her too thin and gawky? Or did he need that – seeing he was so sturdy and compact? Would it not be better if she were dimpled and curved like a woman in a painting? Her sense of inadequacy made her resentful. She stayed quite still, but inside she drew away. She frowned above the line of his bunched shoulder and stared at the wall steadfastly. Right from that first moment in the school hall, when he had beckoned her to the vacant seat beside his own, she had disliked him. She thought she still did, underneath it all; he was so sure of himself. She had been happier when he had indicated love, not practised it. He was stroking her tangled hair. He was thinking his private thoughts that didn’t include her. His mind had gone on manoeuvres – why couldn’t it be like the time in the swimming baths or in the café?
‘Did you know we’d do this?’ she asked. ‘I mean, so quickly.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ he said.
His words filled her with panic. He was refusing to be committed. He was taking everything back – himself, the certainty in the taxi, the ring in her cup.
‘I’m wearing it,’ she said, stretching her hand out to remind him. ‘Pamela says that queers wear them on their little fingers.’
‘She’s off her head,’ he said scornfully. ‘I got it from Gus.’
‘I
think it’s beautiful.’
‘I’ve had it for five years,’ he said.
‘Who’s Gus?’ She heard the critical inflection in her voice, similar to her mother’s when she imagined she’d been slighted.
‘A mate of mine. I came down from Scotland with him. We bought each other rings. I wanted you to have mine.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. But she didn’t want the ring any more. She didn’t want anything belonging to this Gus. What were two grown men doing handing each other silver rings for their fingers?
‘It’s not only the public schools,’ he said, ‘who specialise in friendship between men. Do you like cowboy films?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, though she didn’t. It was always the same horse going round the same bend with the same stretch of desert ahead.
‘That’s where friendship began. Mates,’ William said. ‘In the West, when they didn’t have any women.’
She didn’t think he meant it the way it sounded. He was being poetic, she felt, like when he said ‘Michaelmas daisies’, over and over.
‘You’ll meet Gus. He’s a likeable man. He lives with his girlfriend in Kentish Town.’
‘I’d love to meet him,’ she said politely, though it was the last thing she wanted and she didn’t intend to feel affection for him.
‘We used to sit in the wardrobe at home, when I was married. Sheila didn’t like that. We used to squat among her dresses and sing folk songs. He’s got a great voice.’
He was filling her head with so many images, she couldn’t sort them out: the name of his past wife, his house, the clothes on the hangers, him and Gus inside a cupboard singing together. It was an odd place to sit, surely.
Sweet William Page 4