by Dominic Luke
She replaced the canvases with a feeling of dissatisfaction. Her own productions rather paled in comparison. She must remember when painting in future not to be too clinical, too symmetrical. She must learn to cut loose. But, really, how could one, with the exhibition weighing one down and not a stroke of work done today. Nothing prepared for dinner, the house getting shabbier and shabbier by the second, dirt accumulating, dust multiplying—
‘I do apologize, Gwen.’ Lydia came back into the room. ‘Terry has taken to visiting. I think he feels sorry for me.’ She laughed, but her laughter had none of that staccato, almost subversive quality that it usually had.
‘Who is Terry?’ Gwen asked, not really interested but needing time to gather her thoughts.
‘He’s from college. A colleague. Science. He’s also a local councillor, I believe.’
‘Oh, that Terry.’ Buffoon, Basil called him. A demagogue. A pain in the – ahem – bottom.
‘Terry thinks I need looking after. Rather tiresome in a way, but it’s my own fault. I daresay I gave him the wrong impression, crying on his shoulder.’
Gwen watched Lydia moving around the room, restless, picking things up, putting them down (no wonder the place is so untidy), unable to recognize in her the sort of woman who would cry on Terry’s shoulder (why, for goodness’ sake? ).
It’s happened again, thought Gwen. I thought that we had reached seven at least, but we are virtual strangers, we are only four on the scale.
‘I wondered, Gwen,’ Lydia began hesitantly, ‘if I might ask you something? It’s advice I want, really. I want to … to put my mind at rest. I feel I can talk to you. I….’
‘Well, of course, it’s….’
‘One knows about these things in theory. One has read about cravings….’
‘Cravings?’
‘But I have this urge to eat….’
‘To eat?’
‘Coal.’
‘Coal?’
‘You see! You’re shocked! It can’t be right, can it? There must be something amiss. But I just sit at night watching the fire, and the coal bucket’s there, and I get this overwhelming urge to….’
‘But surely one only gets those sorts of cravings if one is…. Oh. Oh, I see.’
‘Do you?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so, if…?’
‘You disapprove. An unmarried woman – a single woman….’
‘No, no, not at all, I’m not that old-fashioned!’ (Such fibs!)
‘It’s come as a bit of a shock.’
‘Ah.’
‘It wasn’t planned.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t quite know what to …’
‘That’s understandable, perfectly natural. It does tend to throw one off balance.’
‘I’m not at all sure I can … and when I think about … and, oh Gwen, I don’t know what to do! Richard is—’
‘Richard?’
‘—no help, he—’
‘What has Richard—?’
‘—refuses to talk and—’
‘Richard!’
‘Yes, Richard! Oh, I know, I know, I’m shameless. A trollop: that’s what my mother says—would have said. I’ve never, ever done anything like it before, but Prize, you see … and then Richard … and so I … and he … and then we …’
‘But, Lydia, it’s not possible!’
‘The age gap, you mean? But it isn’t anything serious. Just a bit of fun, he says. And I—’
‘No, you misunderstand. It’s not possible. Richard can’t—’
‘Can’t?’
I mustn’t tell her, it’s not my place, it’s confidential; even if we’d made it to eight or nine, I still couldn’t tell her.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Gwen! Of course it’s possible! It’s happening. I am having Richard’s baby!’
‘No, Lydia, you aren’t. Whoever the father is, it can’t be Richard.’ I shall have to tell her. I have no choice. There’s no knowing what might happen if I don’t. And, really, all this secrecy: it’s not as if it’s something to be ashamed of. ‘Richard had cancer, testicular cancer. He can’t have children. The cancer – the treatment …’
Lydia fell back onto the sofa. Gwen sank down into the chair. We are like puppets, she thought, puppets whose strings have been cut. Then: What have I done? Never mind puppets – why did I open my big mouth? It was not my secret to tell.
Although she was sprawled in the chair – undignified, gulping for air – she had the illusion that she was still falling, that she had yet to hit the ground, that she was speeding up as she fell, that her landing would be hard and painful.
This is not over yet, she thought. Not by a long chalk.
SEVENTEEN
DEAN LAY ON his bed, listening. The house was quiet. He knew that Basil was out, that Amanda was out too, but where was his mother? She was a tricky customer. She lurked. You thought the coast was clear, that you were safe, and then – BAM! – she came barging straight into your room without even knocking! It was out of order. An infringement of your human rights. Everyone was entitled to their privacy. It was the law. But no matter how many times you explained it to her, she never changed. She carried on blundering in, not giving a thought to the fact that you might not want to be disturbed, that you might be trying to concentrate, that you might be doing something private and confidential – that you might be doing anything. (You wouldn’t, of course, be doing anything – you’d learnt to be extra-super-careful before doing anything – but the principle was the same.)
Once upon a time, when he was young and naive, he had thought his room was a place of safety. He knew better now. Nowhere was safe. He was constantly under siege. The world intruded even in here. (He thought of the intruding world as a cold draught seeping under the door. The thought made him shiver. He turned the radiator up full.)
And people (Basil) had the cheek to call him lazy! It wasn’t laziness. It was exhaustion. How else were you meant to feel when you had to be on your guard the whole time? You couldn’t even relax in your own room! The world (Basil, Charley, the panther) was always on the lookout, trying to get at you, to trip you up, to make you look stupid. You had to be ready every minute of every day. You had to be poised for action, your defences had to be up, you had to be prepared for fight or flight (the latter, of course, was the sensible option, but when did anyone ever get the credit for showing sense?).
How did other people manage? Did they have more courage than him? Or were they just too stupid to care what happened to them? In some ways, Dean ruminated as he stretched out on his bed, the world was civilized; in other ways it was a cruel and brutal place. If, for instance, he’d been born as a gannet (he’d been watching David Attenborough on TV, always edifying), you could bet your life he’d have been eaten by seals when he was still a baby. If he’d been a turtle hatchling, digging himself out of the sand, tottering full pelt towards the safety of the sea, it would have been just his luck to be gobbled up on the way by some prowling predator. It was only because humans were top dogs on earth that he’d survived this long. By rights he should have disappeared into some beast’s ravenous belly years ago (at least it would have been quick).
He gave a heartfelt sigh, turned onto his stomach, propped his head in his hands, worn out by the struggle to survive. And as if that wasn’t enough to deal with, there was now something else weighing on his mind: girls. For ages and ages, he’d been able to keep girls at arm’s length, treat them as if they didn’t really exist (and, you had to face it, the boundary between what was real and what was not was somewhat blurred: even science admitted as much). Girls had been like tempting mirages, or like myths and legends told at night round a camp fire (Dean quite liked the idea of a camp fire, but it wasn’t very practicable in his bedroom). He’d liked to think about girls, lying in bed until late on a Saturday or a Sunday morning, the real world a vague and misty place somewhere in the remote distance, his duvet like armour, stronger than steel. But now—
&n
bsp; Well, look at it. He grabbed a handful of his duvet in his fist. Flimsy. Pliant. It wouldn’t protect you from a fly. And it was all the fault of the panther: he couldn’t put it plainer than that. She’d let the world in, she’d made girls real – and it was torture.
He rolled about on the bed, stuffing his fist into his mouth to stop himself from groaning aloud because you never knew who might be listening (his mother). Yes, it was torture, it was agony. Had he really struggled through eighteen and a half years for this?
He sighed and sat up, reached for one of the books on the floor where he liked to keep them: anything to take his mind off all the crap in his head. His atlas. That would do. He slid down the bed again, lying flat, opened the atlas, held it over his face like a roof. Europe. Italy. The toe of Italy. Calabria. A place he’d never been, remote, exotic – a land (surely) of marvels. He could understand why Cally’s mother had been so keen to go there. Lucky Cally, having a mother who’d gone to Italy in a campervan! What had he got? A hopeless mother, a sheep, bleating and following the flock; a father who was an arch-traitor and scumbag, you didn’t even name him; Basil; Amanda; the boys at college. All nobodies. None of them worth knowing. You’d be better off on your own.
Calabria. Calabria. A place. A girl. Both alluring and out-of-the-way. Both beyond his reach.
He laid the atlas over his face, hiding himself. He stood no chance with any girl, having a face like his. His spots might be clearing up (Charley was right, but that didn’t justify broadcasting it all around college), but spots were the least of his worries. It wasn’t as if he was even ugly. He had a face that was just dull and boring. Bland. Every day it grew less and less memorable. He could hardly bear to look in the mirror. And the worst of it was, his face didn’t even look like him. It bore no relation to the boy – the man – inside. The real Dean Morley – dynamic, intelligent, sparkling – was hidden beneath some sort of monotonous own-brand packaging, his false face and weedy body. How could he ever talk to her looking like this? What could he say?
Oh, Calabria, Calabria! The toe of Italy. The girl from the campervan. The toes of Calabria. Even her toes would be perfect. Her lovely wonderful toes. He wanted to see them, touch them, stroke them, kiss them—
Kiss her feet? What was he saying! He was turning into a foot fetishist! (His genes, laughing at him.) Oh God. As if he didn’t have enough to cope with.
He rolled back and forth on the bed. He couldn’t suppress the groan any longer, couldn’t hold it in, because it was not just her toes, it was all of her: all of her was perfect and he couldn’t stand it.
The atlas dropped to the floor, the duvet rode up in big twisted creases. God, he wished he could do anything right now, right this minute. He was going crazy….
But the risk was too great (his mother lurking, Amanda might be back). All he could do was lie there as if he was stretched on a rack. All he could do was carry on being tortured, feeling helpless, hopeless.
And exhausted.
EIGHTEEN
IN THE STAFF room – a haven of relative peace in a building swarming with hormonal teenagers – Lydia sipped her coffee whilst flicking through the Independent, isolated up one corner. Her reputation as something of an eccentric had its advantages. Not only was it expected in an art teacher, it also tended to keep people at bay. They were wary of approaching her, which suited her just fine, allowed her peace and quiet when she needed it.
As she turned the pages of the paper, she kept half an ear on the conversations going on around her. The talk was about work. It always was. It was as if they couldn’t find anything else to talk about.
She tossed the paper aside (boring, as usual) and straightened her skirt, taking a moment to admire it. At £10 from Help the Aged, it had been a real bargain. Ankle-length, voluminous, swirling, it made her feel rather prim. Probably made her look prim, too, but that was all to the good. No one would have expected her to wear a skirt like this and she enjoyed confounding expectations. In some convoluted way, she thought that wearing this skirt served people right for judging by appearances. It was a useful disguise, too. No one seeing a woman in a skirt like this would possibly imagine that she was carrying an illegitimate child whose father—
But anyway. She wasn’t prim. Nor trim: not for much longer, anyway.
Her mood became dismal as she tried to guess how soon she would grow too big for her Help the Aged skirt. She would get fat, bulge, waddle. At long last, there would be something else for the staff room to talk about besides work.
It was unutterably depressing. She stared down at the dregs of her coffee, swirled them round at the bottom of her mug. Perhaps she ought to get rid of the baby, wipe the slate clean. But she couldn’t wipe Richard – or Dean – away. And then there was poor Prize, the way it had ended: she couldn’t bear to go through all that again, even if the victim this time would be an embryo with no personality. Personality might be lacking, but it was always there, always on her mind. It was taking over, and it hadn’t even been born yet.
A pair of rather scuffed brown shoes came into her field of vision. Looking up, her eyes met Terry’s. It was, she thought, rather bold of him to come over like this. One expected more caution.
‘Erm, hello … er … hmmm …’ He scratched his beard, looked round, found inspiration in the Independent, discarded on the floor.
‘That paper,’ he said, pointing, ‘is a complacent, middle-class rag written by blinkered journalists sitting in their bourgeois ivory towers. It belongs in a BBC world where poverty is an Issue with a capital I, where the working class only exist as a conversation piece, where the disadvantaged are quarantined inside patronizing articles written by self-appointed experts, where racism and bigotry and prejudice are concepts that we’ve conveniently outgrown in this country, something only foreigners do….’
He paused for breath. The pause lengthened.
‘Goodness,’ said Lydia brightly. ‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes, I’ve finished.’ He blinked, trying to hide behind his beard, if such a thing was possible. ‘Was it a bit much?’
‘Some people might find it a bit much.’
‘But not you?’ Hopeful.
‘I’m not some people, I’m me. Politics have no power over me. I’m immune. Nigel used to go on. He was a great admirer of Mrs Thatcher.’ (Though he had, she remembered, insisted that Mrs Thatcher must secretly be a man, finding it impossible to believe that a mere woman would have the capability to turn the country upside down in what Nigel had considered to be such a novel and interesting way.)
‘Who is Nigel?’ Terry was suspicious.
‘No one,’ said Lydia. ‘No one important. You must remember,’ she continued, swerving away from the subject of Nigel, thinking of Gwen’s recent visit instead, ‘not everyone is as interested in politics as you are.’
‘I do tend to put my … er … foot …’
‘Poor Gwen! She didn’t know where to look.’
‘Why poor Gwen?’
‘Basil Collier is her husband.’
‘Ah. Oh. I see. So she’s Collier’s wife. Poor Gwen, indeed.’
‘And Dean Morley is her son,’ said Lydia, sailing close to the wind, unable to stop herself. ‘Do you know Dean?’
‘Hmm. I believe I do. Quiet lad. Acne.’ He was looking at her stomach. ‘How’s the, er, um, little one?’
‘Hush! There’s no need to tell everyone!’ Social ineptness was not always amusing, she thought, as she glanced around the room, but the work talk continued unabated. Nobody paid much attention to Terry at the best of times. Terry was unimportant – which was why one could talk to him. One didn’t have to make an effort; one could talk off the top of one’s head, say anything—
Well, almost anything.
‘It’s all a bit of a mess,’ she said, forcing a smile onto her face. Much worse than I’d thought, she added silently, because if the child wasn’t Richard’s then it had to be … it must be…. Oh Lord, would the child get acne too? Would it
turn out to be odd?
‘Chin up,’ said Terry. ‘It can’t be as bad as all that.’
When Nigel had said such things, it had set her teeth on edge, made her want to scream. But there was something soothing about Terry’s banality – perhaps because he so obviously didn’t realize he was being banal.
He frowned, said hesitantly, ‘This Nigel person. Is he your … husband?’
‘No. We were never married – thank goodness.’
‘But you were together…?’
‘For ten years.’ She blanched as she said it. It sounded such a huge span of time. She had spent a quarter of her life building castles in the sand; whereas Nigel had just been marking time until someone younger, prettier – richer – came along.
‘I do … do … understand,’ Terry bumbled.
‘I doubt it.’
‘I’ve got an ex-wife.’
Yes, he would have. ‘I think we should leave both our exes in the past where they belong.’
‘A good idea.’ A smile broke out, faded; he scratched his beard. ‘I don’t suppose … I mean we could … if you liked … go for a drink later?’
Was he asking her out? A date? Surely not! He was just being kind. If he’d been Prize he’d have been licking her hand.
‘I’m sorry, Terry, I really can’t tonight. I’ve got a meeting.’ The Exhibition – which was now a fixture, referred to with a capital letter – provided a good excuse, but as she spoke she felt a pang of regret, which was silly. It must be Prize she was thinking about, not Terry.
‘Are you sure … sure you’re up to going to a meeting … in your condition?’
‘I’m pregnant, not a cripple.’ No wonder his wife was an ex-wife. But one shouldn’t be cruel; he meant well. And she had never shouted at Prize. ‘I’m afraid I can’t very well get out of it. The Exhibition, you see, is my … is my—’ She broke off, put a hand to her mouth, but the laughter forced its way through her fingers. ‘My baby! Oh, oh, ha ha ha! My baby! Ha ha ha ha!’
Once again she was convulsed with helpless laughter, just as she’d been in the pub the other day, drawn spades at twenty paces. She must be off her rocker, lurching between extremes of emotion like this. It was like walking a tightrope. One wrong step and she’d fall to her doom. But it was never ending, this tightrope, stretching back into ten years of wasted endeavour, stretching ahead into unknown territory, a world of nappies and sleepless nights which was totally alien to her. How would she ever cope with a baby? No wonder she was hooting with laughter. Her life was ludicrous.