“No,” said Simon. “I think you’re wrong. You wouldn’t want to go back to the days when no one was supposed to let on and girls were supposed to keep their knickers locked up; it was worse. Hey, you’ve enjoyed the revolution, much as any woman I know. When I think of you and Spence, that summer… Hahaha!”
Affluence suited him. He had the presence, in this conventionally well-furnished room, that comes from regular work at the gym, and his conservative casuals sat easily on his older but better-tended body. Though there were already touches of grey in the nappy curls and lines around his eyes, Simon had become good-looking, which she didn’t remember him to have been in those old days. But not altogether happy, she thought—
“Good as the telly, eh?” She grinned. “Yeah, I remember girl power. It was bloody good fun. I couldn’t resist the energy of it. It was really, really important that you didn’t have to be the one saying no. You could stuff being the banker, being in charge of sexual access, rationing it so’s not to be called a slag… But did it get us anywhere? Looking back, I feel like what we post-women’s-lib girls were expressing, with all that license, was our anger, at the deals you have to make when you declare peace with an old enemy. You have to give up the privileges of the oppressed, and we didn’t want to do that, not just when we had the muscle to hit back… There was a point when we saw that we had to let bygones be bygones, or go for vengeance. We went for the wonderbra option, twin turrets blazing: and la lutte continue.”
“I don’t believe you’ve ever worn a wonderbra.”
“Mm, nah. Underwiring is nasty, I’d rather work out. But I’ve used my sex as a weapon, I’ve learned to do that. We all do it, women in science, for all the good it does us. You can use sex, and make men suffer, wearing the full chador. I’ve seen that too.”
“Tell me…” said Simon, ruefully, and changed the topic. “How’s Spence, anyway? You and him still okay, in this battleground?”
“Oh, fine. Still poor as church mice… That’s another thing I wish, another wrong turn. Elective poverty was great at the time, but failing to make ends meet at our age is not cool.”
Simon checked the bottle, fetched a fourth, and opened it. “Don’t worry. You and Spence will always be cool. You know, ever since you came down to Beevey Island that time, or maybe it was at your wedding, you two have reminded me of that Fred Pohl story, I think it’s called ‘The Midas Touch’? Where the production-consumption pump has gone wild, so that if you’re disgustingly poor you have to slave at consuming all kinds of stuff, and you can tell the privileged rich few, because they’re dressed shabby and drive a miserable little old car—”
He broke off, pop-eyed in consternation—
“Not that! I mean, not that—!”
Anna burst out laughing, and they both collapsed in helpless giggles.
“In vino veritas,” said Anna gravely, when they could laugh no more.
“Okay, okay. D’you want a meal by the way? It’s late, but we could dial a takeaway?”
“Nah. I think I ought to go to bed, sorry. Got to be up early in the morning.”
Cara was at her Italian class, which was traditionally followed by a non-alcoholic pub session with girl friends. She’d be back soon, and Anna felt too drunk to be sociable. They cleared bottles, glasses, and snack food residue out into the kitchen.
“D’you ever hear from Ramone these days?”
Anna shook her head. “Nope. That connection’s pretty well broken.”
“She’s living in the States now, isn’t she? With that artist and his wife? Seems weird.”
The small room, with the gaunt high ceiling, remnant of its life as some Victorian scullery or housemaid’s closet, was full of gleaming doors. She didn’t know which would be the dishwasher and which would eject her into outer space. “Weird? Nothing’s weird now. Horses getting sodomized in the senate, every day of the week.”
“I mean, it doesn’t sound very feminist. Two women sharing a guy, lesbian sex as male entertainment—”
“You don’t know how it works.” But she was willing to bitch. “Maybe it’s like Daz and the modeling: she’s made her fortune on female stuff-strutting, and retired. Next opus she’ll be back into violent porn. Where am I sleeping? On the couch?”
“I’ve made up Tabitha’s bed in the kids’ room, that way Cara won’t disturb you when she comes in.”
“Oh… Okay.”
The flat had three bedrooms, one of which was heavily occupied by an industry-standard server and other office stuff. Anna had seen Tabitha, the seven-year-old, and Jemelle, the three-year-old, snuggling down in their parents’ big bed at story time. She realized that they had not been removed at any point.
“You’ll have the room to yourself, don’t worry. They sleep with us,” said Simon, reaching to replace an unused glass on its proper shelf. There was a grimness in his expression, which should have warned her to shut up.
“What, all the time?”
“Yeah. It’s the…family bed idea. Makes them very secure. It’s more natural.”
“Wow, Simon—” She rearranged her tone, feeling a complete heel. “That must be nice.”
“You get used to it. Jemelle doesn’t half kick though.”
For a moment their eyes met: and…and nothing. No way would Anna and Simon change the good thing they had. Especially not when Cara was due home any minute.
She woke in the night and lay awake in a sad state of alcohol-related alertness, crowded out by a heap of immaculate soft toys, wondering pruriently when did Cara and Simon have sex? Once every four years? Or did they just do it, quickly and quietly, when the little girls were asleep? Maybe they hired a hotel room, in the Japanese way, maybe they used the living room couch. She was ashamed of herself, but that brief, bitter downtrodden look that had escaped Simon’s guard… Poor Simon, what malign force had driven her to talk non-stop about over-sexed sex scientists? Pity he couldn’t have stayed with Yesha. It must be hateful to change partners, to have whole sections of your own history sealed-off behind you, memories you can no longer treasure. But Yesh was a performer, an artist, she had to go on tour, this week in Amsterdam, next month in Rome. Simon had wanted a good old-fashioned family life, and now he had one.
Between new, mean girl-power in the workplace and old, virtuous woman-power at home, the blokes have a hard time these days.
On her way home from Sheffield she went to visit Marnie Choy in hospital and then to Rosey McCarthy’s house in Norwood, where Rosey lived with the two adopted Tim children, the two young children of her second marriage, and a live-in nanny. And with Wol, unofficially: who was back in favor, the one-night-stand toyboys who had followed the fertile but obnoxious second Mr Rosey having vanished.
Marnie had ovarian cancer. Her treatment wasn’t going very well.
For years Anna and Rosey had met very rarely, no more frequently than either of them had seen Marnie. But already the sick woman seemed far away, and Anna and Rosey close companions—as if they had spent their lives like this, elbows on Rosey’s kitchen table, among the bunches of opening leaves in pottery jars, the sleeping cats, the piles of newspaper, the fragments of legos and sheaves of kiddie art.
“I thought cancer was curable these days. What happened to all those miracle drugs?”
“Ah. Ovarian cancer’s manageable, not curable; and there are always exceptions.”
“God, you sound like your mother. That ah… sound. I phoned her, you know, when Marnie’s results came through, and I couldn’t get hold of you.”
“They’re going to try good old chemotherapy.”
“Chemotherapy is a challenging hobby they give you to occupy you while you’re dying.”
“Did my mum say that?”
“No! She’s too kind. It’s what my Dad said when he was on his chemo, in the dark ages: for the lung and liver tumors. Before the brain tumor that got the speech centers. Oh, God, poor Marnie. I keep remembering her in the Union Bar, screaming I want a Man! and laughing like
a maniac…” Rosey’s eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away with a firm hand. “Hey, tell Spence thanks for the Shere Khan books. That was sweet of him. Italia’s terrified of them, but Robbie’s a big fan: he’s a proper little bruiser, revels in all the ultra violence. Could he sign them by the way?”
Spence disliked signing books. “I’m sure he will if you ask. It’s not really ultra violence, Rosey. There’s gory details, but it’s only in fun.”
“Whatever. I used to think Steven and Joe were aggressive because of the childhood they had before they came to us. But boys will be boys. I was so relieved to have a girl.”
If you put a child into frilly ankle socks at birth, thought Anna, by the time she’s three no one will ever know whether genetic predisposition or nurture made her turn out wet as a haddock’s bathing suit. She was still frightened of Rosey, so she held her tongue.
Rosey sighed. “I can’t imagine having only one child. Don’t you get broody?”
I have had two children, thought Anna. Ah, Lily Rose. Fleetingly, she contemplated explaining that they’d decided to stop at one because of environmental issues, but dismissed the idea. Rosey was one of those middle-class people who bitched about the monster size of the water bill and the annoying demise of cheap air travel, but if you talked about why this kind of thing was happening, or what the REAL problems were like, she thought you were insane.
“Well, maybe. A little.”
“You’re incredibly lucky, Anna. Spence is so lovely. I hear his publishers are pleased with him too. Or rather Wol hears; he goes to those parties.” Wol was something in publishing. Rosey was something in webcast tv, a designer of some kind. Anna had no idea of the details, these arts-degree things all looked the same to her…“Weird that his books ended up being illustrated by Charles Craft’s wife,” mused Rosey. “And I hear Charles is practically a billionaire. Ironic, when you think how you and he used to be the king and queen of Biols, long ago. How d’you get on with Meret?”
“She seems nice,” said Anna, reticently. “It must be tough, trying to work at home with three small children. I get the impression her live-in parents aren’t much help.”
“And she’s married to the world’s prize sexist pig, yeah… I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her, if I were you. I’m not defending Charles. It was a typical male trick: ditches his dull boffin girlfriend after she’s helped him to build the business, snags himself a foxy young trophy-wife. But I heard it was Meret who made the running: took out poor old Ilse like with a chainsaw. You must remember Ilse, Charles’s girlfriend back when you and him were quite close?”
Anna nodded, taking Rosey’s arch look with a straight face.
“Apparently she—Meret—went for work experience at Charles’s company, while she was at art college, designing GM seed packets or something. He fancied her, and they started dating. When he wouldn’t chuck Ilse, Meret went bananas. Got pregnant: he paid for an abortion. So she got pregnant again, practically before the bill for the first scrape came in, threw terrible scenes, threatened to kill herself, and poor old Charles surrendered. She chucked her course, he dumped Ilse, and gave Meret everything she wanted: the frock, the white Rolls, the whole vulgar works. She’s not such a helpless kitten.”
“I’m amazed the way you keep up,” said Anna, diplomatically. “I know nothing.”
Rosey heaved another sigh and gazed dreamily at a pot of sycamore leaves. “Don’t you sometimes wish you’d gone for the big frock and white Rolls, Anna? With Wol it was a registry office quickie. I hadn’t the heart for anything more, when it was because we had to, to get on the A list for adopting. With Enrico the whole thing was a fucking disaster—” Her lip curled, in savage scorn… A door banged. They heard Wol’s familiar, absurdly plummy voice: a diffident, precariously controlled yodel. “Hi Rosey? Upstairs or downstairs?” The snarl vanished. The matriarch’s whole demeanor became warm and relaxed and bright. “We’re down here, love!”
The train home was slow, plagued by mysterious halts and lame excuses. She had papers to read but found it impossible to concentrate. Swathes of new housing rolled by, sparsely interrupted by patches of fields and woods. A generation of little girls like Maggie Senoz had grown up and were living in the country, the way they’d always dreamed, with the natural consequence that there was not much countryside left. But it didn’t stop them. All the light-green families, like Anna and Spence and Jake, were digging their allotments, doctoring the cars they couldn’t bear to give up, under-occupying their big old houses. They knew they were making sod-all difference. But it didn’t stop them.
She thought of Marnie Choy in hospital: sitting by her bed, brightly smiling, a little over-made-up, saying cheerfully, “At least I won’t outlive Pongo and Bastie.” They were her cats. “I hated the thought of that.” They’d laughed and joked, the way you must, and then Marnie had said, suddenly, “Anna, I don’t know whether to face up to death now, or then, I mean, when it really starts happening.”
“I’d go for then,” said Anna, wondering if Marnie knew how close “then” was, and cravenly not daring to ask.
Marnie wasn’t going to be one of the many doomed victims whose survival had worried Lavinia Kent years ago. She had been karyotyped, and the results had been the worst possible: no gene-tinkering immunotherapy treatment was going to work. Nothing left to try but the harsh, ineffectual armory of the twentieth century… Marnie Choy would die, in months, maybe within weeks, the first of them to leave. It was a foretaste of the future. The dreaded phone calls that must come, one by one. This would be Anna’s role, to greet bad news with her mother’s voice, to visit the sick, to wonder when it was decent to give up the hopeful lying. This was the beginning of the down slope, when youth and strength must fail. Here is the turning point, and what have I achieved?
She thought of her father—foot soldier in the Volunteer Army, backbone of the nation—her father who had never known the luxury of a paying job since the day his business failed. She’d been in Manchester on the way to her conference and had spent an hour with him in the Oxfam shop, which he loved her to do. Often he put things aside for her. (Maggie was repulsed by the idea of second-hand clothes.) When they were little he had made their clothes; it was the way he could be a provider; and they had not been grateful. Little girls like to look the same as everyone else.
He had brought out a battered pale cardboard box and showed her, lifting layers of tissue from a deep crimson pleated skirt and shimmering beaded bodice, the most fabulous cocktail dress. “Wow, Daddy, is that what I think it is…?” “Yeah,” he breathed. “It’s a Schiaparelli.” Anna had thought the dress was one of his own, a rare original Richard Senoz, surfaced from lost time. She didn’t confess this, she’d have hated him to know she could no longer tell one of the great designers from another. “How it ended up in an Oxfam collection bin is a mystery. It’s a classic size 12, old money. It should fit you.” His swift, expert glance had measured Anna regretfully: “It won’t, not with those navvy shoulders: what do you young women want with them, you don’t earn your living breaking stones, do you? You had a lovely figure when you were twenty.”
The Schiaparelli would go to auction, it would be sold and the money spent succoring the poor… But how Daddy’s eyes had gleamed. She knew that shine, the love of the marvelous. She saw those eager, magpie eyes looking out of any mirror. The older you get, the easier it is to know yourself the present habitation of immortal, elemental spirits. So many subtle phrases of the DNA text pass unscathed through the mill of recombination. A turn of the head, a smile… She was father and mother and grandma Senoz, and all those others, further off. Her mother’s voice, her father’s eyes (and what nonsense this mingled inheritance makes of the battle of the sexes).
But Daddy’s bright-eyed lust for marvels was a warning. Watch out, Anna. Let that trait take over, you and Spence and Jake will be in the poverty pit for life… She must resist the siren call of Transferred Y. She must not think of talking to Nirmal. If ther
e were any truth in Suri’s results, someone else would have been shouting about it by now. Forget it, forget it… The slow train fueled that terrible feeling of urgency, of chances missed and doors shutting, that had started to haunt her, clutching at her heart, making her feel old.
The next morning, a Saturday morning, miraculously none of the three of them had anything to do. Anna and Spence lay sleepily talking until, since Jake was deep in Saturday morning tv and they were safe from interruption, they moved into doing sex. Anna’s periods had been maliciously irregular since Jake was born. She was having some unscheduled bleeding and couldn’t be arsed to take out her tampon, so they did without penetration, but it was good. Anna went to check her email. Spence made tea, delivered a mug to Anna and retired to bed with his tax docs (staying in bed was his way of rewarding himself for this drear activity). She came back and burrowed into the crackling nest.
“How’s the Amoldovar kid?” asked Spence dryly. “Still packing his six-gun for you?”
“How did you know I had a message from Miguel?”
“You always do. Hey, Anna, look at this. Shere Khan and the Coast of Coramandel has sold twenty thousand copies in the UK pre-publication.”
“Is that good? You have to allow for returns, don’t you. Oh, I meant to tell you. Wol says, well, Rosey says that Wol says, that you are being mentioned at publishing parties.”
“My God. God bless the gallant captain and her crew!” His voice shook, between laughter and triumph. “I knew I was doing well. I hadn’t figured it out, in case… Holy shit, Anna, I’m making a living! We’re solvent! We can live without your salary this year, babe. Hey, hey, I’m the breadwinner! We are comfortably off!”
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