Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories

by Betty Burton

  This was where she felt at ease. The clutter of loyalty, responsibility, guilt and love that surrounded her thinking, dissolved into the haze that hovered a few feet above the chalk-hill flowers. She sometimes thought of herself as living in a cocoon like that of a caddis-fly larva, except that, instead of the camouflage being detritus of the riverbed, hers was stuck over with bits of wife, mother, neighbour, magistrate, committee-member.

  Here she emerged and was on a par with yellow butterflies, blue scabious and junipers. She took out a small pad and a couple of pencils.

  Fifty years is a hell of a long time. Still pretty, though. True, a bit of a chin, and the underside of the arm shows that the supply of hormones is lessening. Men still look twice — mature men, men like Rick. Tom had been four, and now he's twenty-five, married, living on an estate, a Young Exec. — they call them Admins, these days. Andy on a year's VSO before going back to try again for a qualification. Rick settled in an office with two phones, lined curtains and Wilton carpeting.

  The July sun was almost overhead. Heat flowed over the hill like a tide, drawing out the smell of earth and grass and chalk-hill flowers. The air was still and full of insect sound and the valley quivered in the haze. Ella lay down and put her hands behind her head as she had done that other time staring into the blue bowl.

  She could go back to Rick right now. Come straight to the point. Rick, I know it will create havoc, it will mean you learning to use the cooker, push a trolley round the supermarket and do some of the housework ... No, that would sound aggressive. 'Assertiveness is...' She couldn't remember, it had to do with being aware of one's own basic ... rights? Yes, and with respect for yourself and using the right approach. Rick, I think I would like to read for a degree in Art History. Rick, I've been up to the Art College and ... Rick, do you know what I've always wanted...?

  Rick, I want ... I want ... I want...

  The words seemed to hover. From the blue bowl, the solid hill, the quivering heat-haze, came the sharp-tongued retort, 'Well, Andrew, we can't have everything we want can we?' Ella's own shrill voice, irritable at the small child's wants. 'Well, we can't have everything we want.' Andy's hurt look, Ella's guilt. What had he wanted that had made her so shrill? She had done a lot of that at one time. Sharp. Snapping. Resentful. Guilt. Remorse. Always the guilt. She put her arms round his knees to draw him down to her. He was stiff, unyielding, punishing her, then allowing himself to sink into her lap — generous forgiveness.

  She had picked a clear-blue creeping flower.

  'See? It's called speedwell. Look how little it is, and you see the big tall flowers...' she had reached out to some rose-bay willow-herb, tall and slender, '...it's not a bit of good the speedwell saying I want, I want, I want to be a tall pink flower. It can't be and there's nothing it can do about it, so it might just as well be pleased that it's blue and beautiful, and glad that the bees like it just as much as they like the pink one.'

  'Don't it be cross sometimes?'

  'It certainly be very cross sometimes.'

  Ella kissed the baby who was now trying to show solidarity with the starving millions in Africa, and her cheeks were wet. Why do we have to practise being parents on our own kids? She had tried to do it right.

  God! It was all a hundred years ago, wasn't it.

  Read for a degree. What was that compared to bringing up your kids? What a hash she'd made of it, though. Women did, she had learned that much, learned it too late to be of much use. The terrible early years looking into other prams. Trying to keep everything the same as before there were any babies. Never enough hours, enough sleep, enough money, enough understanding.

  The trouble was you didn't know you were making a hash of it. With most things you can tell, but with your kids you don't know until the damage is done. Maybe that's why the grass always seems greener on the men's side of the fence — seemed greener. Men like Rick, anyhow. Make a hash of an interview and you didn't get the job. Make a hash of the job and you didn't get promotion. Make a hash of your finals and you didn't get your degree. The results were immediate. Rectifiable.

  Make a hash of your kids and...

  She must have been lying there a long time. The direction of the sun had changed and was now reflecting off some shiny surfaces way across the valley. Two box-kites hung in the air there. That's where the bloody cars must go now they couldn't get up here. She turned and saw Rick unpacking their lunch. She would go back and resume her undemanding life as the wife of a company director and be satisfied. What she had said to Andy was true, you can't have everything.

  Face the fact that there were things you could never have, never be. Face the fact and contain the frustration, the resentment. You could tell pretty whimsical little tales to three-year-olds, who couldn't detect a false analogy. The speedwell has no capacity for frustration or resentment.

  Slowly, Ella wandered back to where Rick was pouring the wine. If he said 'A penny for them?' it would mean that he had noticed that she had been crying and was giving her a chance to talk if she wanted. He would think that she had been remembering other picnics when they came with the crowd. How would he react if she answered, 'I've been crying for the future.' He would look nonplussed. Ella in one of her dramatic moods — arty, what with her poetry, and her painting.

  Taking the glass he held out for her she sat beside him looking out over the valley.

  'A penny for them?'

  His hand took a familiar route down her back.

  'They're worth more than that.'

  Next he would caress her shoulders.

  Playing the same game they had played the first time she went out with him. She held out her hand and he gave her a coin, he saw too late that it was a one-pound coin. He wrestled for it. Lost.

  'They had better be worth it.'

  He caressed the bare brown skin of her shoulders.

  'I've been a speedwell too long, I want to be a rose-bay willow-herb.'

  He used to get irritable when she said things like that, or when they had been to an art exhibition with some of the crowd, putting her down, making her feel silly.

  'Oh yes? Nice. Not worth a quid.'

  His hand was moving down her back again.

  'You're still a good lay, El.'

  On the whole, it was better up here now than it had been years before. Going home didn't matter, wasn't a thing to be dreaded at the end of the day. Rick wasn't competing any longer. No kids, no mortgage, no need for keeping up appearances. All that insecurity — gone. And if she had made a hash of bringing up the kids, it was too late to do anything, and anyway they seemed to have turned out much like other kids ... better than many.

  She would soon get used to being fifty as she had forty or any of the old milestones. And she was still Rick's good lay. Some of the old crowd had tried out swapping and temporary arrangements of one sort or another. She didn't think Rick had ever been involved, but during the sixties ... ah, it didn't matter, none of its mattered. Rick's lay. That had always been pretty good.

  His hand on her shoulder was now still, only the thumb making circles in the hollow at the base of her skull. The two box-kites drifted, and reached a point where she saw them balanced, framed in her mind's eye. She took up her pencils and sketch pad.

  Rick picked up the sports pages again. 'I reckon it's time you did that seriously, you aren't getting any younger.'

  'What is it, then, do you fancy laying an art student?'