As Time Goes By

by Hilary Bailey

  The scene about Julie made me feel very depressed. I knew somehow Geoffrey was unhappy about if because he spent the night tossing and turning. Next day Geoffrey told me when he came home that he had answered Julie’s father’s letter at the Treasury. I didn’t ask what he’d said; there was no point in giving the matter too much importance. I acted as if it was over and done with, I’d made a mistake and that was that. But I didn’t like the way he looked at me. He wasn’t angry, just tired. He saw me staring at him, and looked back to his plate, saying, ‘I’m a bit tired, Anna –’ He was going to say something else, but he checked himself. I tried to be normal – in a situation like this the last thing you want is statements or plans, otherwise everything gets too definite, in a way you don’t want. I particularly didn’t want to hear anything at that moment. I was two days over my period and I was thinking I might be pregnant, which would change everything. I’d even be able to explain away my offer of money to Julie as an early alert, a kind of premonition that we’d need the extra space eventually. So there was certainly no point in an argument now. There never was with Geoffrey, anyway; he’d had enough rows with Pauline.

  ‘You’re peace,’ he used to sigh sometimes in the old days, with his hand on my breast. I began hoping the baby, if there was one, would be a boy. Boys are more solid, somehow. Having girls is like only going half the way, and it’s more important to have a son, especially if it may be the only child you’re going to have. We were fairly silent, what with me not wanting to discuss the letter, and thinking about the possible child. I asked him what sort of a day he’d had, but I noticed that these days he never told me much. He said there was some trouble with the roof, some important documents had got flooded. After supper he went up to look at the eternal papers. I was asleep when he came to bed.

  Next morning, in came the bank statement, which I knew contained details of the extra payments to his wife. As I was downstairs first – he’d overslept a bit – it seemed fairly natural for me to be there drinking coffee, with the statement in my hand, when he came down. I poured him some coffee and said, ‘What’s this – three fifty? Direct transfer? Is that what this bit means?’ Then I handed him the cup, just as he sat down. ‘Three fifty?’ he said. ‘What – pounds? What’s that – the bank statement?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Is this three fifty –’

  ‘Let me see,’ he said, putting out his hand. I passed it across to him, wondering what he was going to say. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘Pauline’s money. I put it up a bit. It occurred to me that Harriet’s being at college makes things worse and not better financially. There are still three of them at home, getting bigger and bigger – then there’s inflation –’

  ‘Geoffrey,’ I said. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Mm,’ he said. ‘No. No. I didn’t. I suppose if I’m to be honest it’s because I thought you’d object.’

  ‘I don’t see why you’d assume that,’ I said.

  ‘No, I suppose I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you should,’ I told him. ‘Shall I make some more toast?’

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve finished.’ He opened a couple of letters I’d put beside his plate, a sale catalogue and one from his cousin Emery in California. He began to read Emery’s as if it were vitally important – usually he skimmed them and read out the specially boring bits.

  ‘Any more Winnebago campers?’ I asked.

  ‘No – he’s changed jobs, joined another firm of house agents, selling a superior type of property.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I realised the discussion about why he’d unilaterally decided to give Pauline more money was now over as far as he was concerned.

  ‘I don’t see why she should have more money,’ I said. ‘She’s got a perfectly good job, with built-in cost of living allowance.’

  ‘It’s a matter of my responsibilities, not hers,’ he told me. ‘As I’ve said, the children are getting more expensive and the sum hasn’t been revised for six years. By now its real value is, let’s say, a quarter of what it was before –’

  ‘Well. I don’t understand these things,’ I said. ‘But I think you should have asked me. It’s a joint account – I can’t think why the bank didn’t ask me.’

  There was silence. I knew perfectly well the bank went by what Geoffrey said. He’d probably filled in a form without consulting me and the bank hadn’t questioned it. It gave me a sinking feeling, partly because it had happened, partly because I knew Geoffrey wouldn’t like the fact that I’d noticed this technicality where he and the bank were both wrong. A husband doesn’t want his wife to start sounding like somebody at work, especially when he’s made a mistake. I began to regret bringing it all up, but, after all, I thought, why should Pauline be taking money away from us? If she’d married that horrible social worker, or, better still, somebody else who’d take care of things properly, she wouldn’t be hanging about in Bromley taking our money.

  I found I was getting angry when I thought of it, so I just got up and told Geoffrey I had one or two things to do before I went to the Institute. I had to make out the grocery order, put Mrs Adams’s money in an envelope on the hall table, throw away the dying flowers in the hall and the sitting-room, or she’d just leave them there, thinking they were still all right. Women never stop – that’s what mother used to say. But although I didn’t show it, I was really upset with Geoffrey. I could feel him slipping away. He was beginning to look distant, and blank and patient more and more often, as if I didn’t interest him any more, and he didn’t really love me. When I’d done the lists and so forth I went upstairs. I was putting some handcream on, one of my nails was breaking, I had to take off the varnish and try to stop it, or I’d have to file off all my nails again and I began to think about the dishwasher Geoffrey and I had decided not to get, since we didn’t really need one, but, I thought, we would if there was a baby, and it would cost at least one of Pauline’s monthly payments. Every year of Pauline represented a quarter of our mortgage, two fairly luxurious holidays, the best part of a child’s school fees. It would have to stop, I thought, but then I realised it would be harder to persuade Geoffrey to stop the payments if I wasn’t contributing anything to the joint bank account. But if I had a baby I certainly wasn’t going to go on at the Institute. They hadn’t agreed to start a crèche there, obviously, but they had agreed to pay part of the fees to the state nursery a few streets away and Victoria and Angela Sims were pleased as punch, but I didn’t see any necessity to keep on working, dashing through the morning routine, crashing a crying baby into the car in the mornings, coming back from work with the child to feed and our supper to prepare. It might be all right for Victoria, who didn’t seem to mind things like having to get out of the tube at Baker Street to be morning-sick on the platform. She’d probably have the baby in the foyer at the Simpson and breast-feed it while lecturing. It was like medals, to show how tough she was. Anyway, her husband was young and not very successful, so she had to keep her job and pretend to like it. All I could see was that a life like that would destroy everything Geoffrey and I had built up together over five years, I’d be frazzled, have no time to spend on myself or the house, he’d be back in the domestic scuffle he’d hated so much before. On the other hand, as Dad always said, ‘Money counts more than you think.’ If I had no income, and Geoffrey went on paying Pauline, where would we be? I didn’t see myself in a Laura Ashley smock, making do, rubbing the baby’s Vaseline into my hands to keep them smooth.

  I began to think it might be better not to be pregnant until I’d worked out what to do. Then I had to sacrifice the nail and file them all down.

  Then, that day, I was late back from lunch because I’d found Berwick Market shut because of road works, and I’d had to go to Selfridges for some aubergines. Victoria was very snappy with me, because she’d had to take over my lecture class for ten minutes; I knew it was partly because she thought I hadn’t helped enough with the crèche campaign, which was tru
e, but then, I wanted a contented husband, didn’t I, not a set-up where somebody else minded my child? It was stupid to act as if she’d been public-spirited, and I’d let the side down. Anyone would think we were still at school. And in any case I knew when she took on the establishment she’d made enemies. The committee’d had to give way, otherwise they would have looked as if they were against the women staff having children. But they wouldn’t take it lying down. They’d wait for the right moment, then hit back. I’d be surprised if, when the next round of cuts came, Victoria’s name wasn’t near the top of the redundancy list. She’d have Angela Sims on her side, but it wouldn’t be enough, in fact it would antagonise them. They’d get the feeling they were under attack from women. Still, if I was having a baby I wouldn’t be there when it happened. So, when she gave my bag a nasty look and said, ‘I wish I didn’t have to cover for you while you pop round Selfridges’ and stood there looking martyred in her smock, I just smiled sweetly and said, ‘Sorry, Victoria,’ thinking ‘Sorry, Victoria – you’ve got it coming to you’.

  But what I hated, now, was going back to my office at the end of the day, everything about it seemed to upset me. The prints on the walls irritated me, the blinds which made stripes across the high buildings across the road but didn’t cut out the noise of the traffic, the desk with its usual pile of students’ folders for marking. I sat down to do some work, checking first-year essays on iconography in Renaissance paintings, but my mind wandered, and I began to see myself, hair, teeth – they needed cleaning – legs: was my skirt really the right length? I stared at my hands, with the short nails, and began to feel bad about my weight. There was Geoffrey’s supper to think about – I hadn’t bought flowers to replace the old ones – I was, I realised, very, very tired. I couldn’t concentrate, I had to do something, but not this. I remembered that long summer holiday in Yorkshire before Andrew Thwaite went to university. We rode about the narrow, dusty roads between the fields on our bikes. I had no idea where Andrew was now, I wished I knew. I walked down the corridor, did my make-up anew in the ladies, went back to the office; thought about the empty flower vases in my house.

  * * *

  There was bad news from the William Thackeray estate. Robberies and muggings were up 15 per cent on last year. The Council had finally admitted after four months of appeals and evidence that the rats were really back. The tenants had got together to sue the Council for the damage to their property and lives caused by the rats. Others, finding themselves temporarily homeless because of the asbestos removal, and therefore in squalid bed-and-breakfast conditions in badly maintained hotels, were saying they’d rather risk the asbestos dust on the estate, and return to where they at least had rooms to live in. Those in areas on the estate where the risk from asbestos was less had set up a vigilante group to discourage hooligans vandalising the empty flats, lighting fires undetected, robbing people unobserved. The police were protesting about this. A solitary old couple, who couldn’t face moving out, had died by falling over the railings of the nineteenth floor and everyone had said it was suicide.

  ‘The tenants are in uproar,’ Val told her mother-in-law. ‘When the women get turfed out of the bed-and-breakfasts to tramp the streets, they’re going round to the Council and staying there in the warm with all the kids. They’ve had to call the police, twice, to get rid of them. Then one of the men got in an argument with a Council official, and punched him – he’s been arrested. It’s chaos down there. The Town Hall’s got a permanent policeman on the door now.’

  ‘Well, I’m just glad you’re here,’ said Polly. She saw her non-daughter-in-law’s alternative future as the unmarried mother of a mixed-race child. Val was doing what she thought right. She always looked like a fighter, but, thought Polly, if anything went wrong she would get sucked into the web of the Council, the social services, the DHSS, like the others, and all the fight in her could be used up just trying to survive, get a little money for extra heating, get a hospital appointment for a chest infection caused by damp living conditions, get enough nourishing food to maintain her child – the bottom was a long way down these days.

  All in all, that bleak January, when snow lay obstinately on the ground, getting dirty, melting, re-freezing, being sprinkled over with fresh snow which obstinately got dirty, melted and re-froze, but never went away, when a north-east wind blew day by day, piercing coats and sweaters, and penetrating cold forced its way upwards through shoes and socks, all in all, you had to admit, nothing looked any better.

  At No. 1, the holidays went on and on, the problems of the household manifesting themselves, as they usually will, through food, the first problem being how to afford any, the second on the basis of likes and dislikes, principled eating and food sensitivity. Polly saved scraps; Val and Max were vegetarians; Rufus was allergic to milk and eggs. In the fridge there was a jug of made-up soya milk, some vegetarian margarine, the remains of a lentil and aubergine casserole, a pound of pork sausages, some home-cooked baked beans and half a can of pet food. With the cold, the jumpers and socks dried on a wooden airer in front of a gas fire. Disorderly scenes took place around the gas stove as pulses bubbled and take-out hamburgers were heated up in containers; the kitchen looked like a navvy camp. The family, as one might roughly describe a group of people with, now, four names on their doorbell, was just about getting by.

  Polly slacked off her junk hunts, the weather was against market trade, though people with items for sale, attracted by word of mouth, were accumulating. Indeed, there were signs that Polly might be able to make a living trading some of the time from home since other dealers were now ringing her to see what she had. Word of the Victorian painting she had found spread fast, in a trade all too keen to think in terms of gold strikes, although Polly observed that the prosperous dealers tended to be those who opened up on time, answered their telephones and had never in their lives almost bought a Tintoretto or a Ming vase for fifteen pounds. She began to look around for premises central enough to be on the antiques trade route but large enough to house four or five – or six or seven, she thought wildly – other people. Pam and Sue said they would move into a flat when they got jobs, Val was waiting for acceptable Council accommodation to come along, but these plans were ‘ifs’, not ‘whens’. In the meanwhile everyone needed a roof over their head, and somehow, as the sunny ’60s dragged into the badly-mauled ’80s, roofs had become harder and harder to come by.

  Polly drove along with a sheaf of estate agents’ hand-outs beside her. She decided to pay a call on the old man to tell him about the sale of the picture. It hadn’t taken place but she thought that at his age he needed good news now, not later.

  She banged on the broken up front door in Kilburn, but got no answer. Next door, a woman with her hair in rollers came to the door. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid he was found dead last Wednesday. Are you a relation?’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, what a shame. I had some good news for him.’

  ‘Well, too late now,’ said the woman.

  ‘Oh, sod it,’ said Polly. ‘If I’d come sooner at least he’d have died with something to look forward to.’

  ‘Never got over his wife’s death. Stopped looking after himself properly,’ said the woman. ‘In the end the social services came and broke the door down. He’d been gone a week by then, they reckoned. I felt bad about it, but there you are, he wouldn’t ever accept any help. Not from anybody. I used to hear the social worker banging and banging on the door – half the time he wouldn’t open up. I knew he was in there.’

  ‘Did he have any relations?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Inheritance, is it? You from the lawyers?’ the woman asked.

  ‘No,’ said Polly, and explained about the painting.

  ‘Oh,’ said the woman, ‘well, I never – you’d better try the social services. They might know something about the family.’ She was thinking as she spoke. ‘But, while you’re here,’ she said, ‘my husband’s got an old oil painting. Do you wa
nt to come and have a look at it?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve got to be getting on.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ said the woman, the slight gleam fading from her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Polly, handing her a card with her name and address on it. ‘Don’t let me keep you standing in the cold.’

  ‘I suppose you have to give him the money, by law,’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly. She got back to the house, feeling gloomy, in time to show an American business man and his shocked wife round the house. There seemed no point in noticing Rufus drawing on the skirting board in the sitting-room in felt pen, since these people would obviously undertake a massive conversion. The rise in property prices meant that a quarter of the buildings in the locality were always scaffolded and renovations were being undertaken on a scale not seen since the German airforce dropped incendiary bombs on the neighbourhood in World War II.

  She answered the door. It was Clancy.

  The phone rang and Jason P. Honeycutt told her he was coming to Britain. They fixed a date to meet in a few weeks’ time. ‘We’re very excited about this,’ he said. The American couple came into the room and the man made Clancy an offer of £330,000. She told him she’d ring tomorrow.

  ‘Well, Poll,’ said Clancy encouragingly from the sofa, ‘it’s all happening.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I knew you’d fall on your feet somehow.’

  In fact she was beginning to feel her feet slipping from under her.

  ‘All your little bits of patchwork coming together into one big quilt at last,’ he suggested. ‘Even that picture you copped off the old man.’

  ‘I feel absolutely empty when you talk to me, Clancy,’ she said, ‘exactly as if you’d rubbed me out on a blackboard. I think you empty me out, so you can fill me up with yourself.’