In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  ‘Where did you and Christian meet?’ I asked Penny at last, looking sideways at her. She was unzipping the holdall, from which she pulled a headscarf, a nylon overall, a packet of Raffles and a lighter.

  ‘He was caddying up at the golf course one time when I was there for a lesson,’ she said, throwing her hair forward and using the scarf to tie it all up in a turban. ‘He offered to buy me a drink, but he couldn’t go into the bar because he wasn’t a member, and I couldn’t go in because I wasn’t a man. So we went to the pub instead. Being fellow outcasts brought us together.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, as she put on the overall and buttoned it to the neck. She looked like a film star pretending to be a charlady. Before answering she lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply, with profound relief. ‘It’s my parents,’ she explained. ‘They’re both reformed smokers, so naturally they’re total bigots. They’ve threatened to cut off my allowance if I spend any of it on cigarettes, so I mustn’t go home smelling of smoke.’

  ‘How much do they give you?’ I asked. I was expecting to be amazed, but even so wasn’t prepared for the exorbitant sum she named. ‘It goes nowhere,’ she sighed, and then looked ashamed. ‘I’m not complaining. I’m very lucky.’ She leant back, enjoying the cigarette and the sunshine. Sitting there, blinking through the smoke, dressed in that bizarre outfit, she suddenly reminded me of Aunty Barbara: a younger, prettier, saner Aunty Barbara. But then, I told myself, Aunty Barbara had been young and pretty and sane once too, as that brief piece of film footage had proved. It wasn’t her appearance, so much as her proprietorial attitude towards me that rang a bell. They had both tried to dress me up in pretty clothes, although Aunty Barbara’s gift of the bridesmaid’s dress had more of unhinged defiance than practical assistance about it, I now realised.

  As if reading my thoughts, Penny said, ‘I need a project. Something to get my teeth into. I think you could be it.’ She smiled, and I looked at her straight, white teeth and shivered inwardly with a mixture of excitement and trepidation at what form this mauling might take. ‘You’ve got a lot of potential,’ she went on, ‘but at the moment it’s buried under . . . under . . .’ she groped for the tactful word.

  ‘Underwood?’ I suggested, and she laughed. The school, and the estate it served was infamous across the county, its name a byword for social evils of every kind. Only my parents refused to view it in these terms: for them humanity was divided into the Fortunate and the Less Fortunate, and their life’s aim was the more equitable spreading of that elusive commodity, Fortune.

  ‘We could start with your hair,’ Penny said, pinching a limp curl and examining the ends. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me your mum cuts it.’

  ‘Dad, actually,’ I said.

  Penny rolled her eyes. She had finished her cigarette by now and carefully removed her disguise and stowed it in the holdall. ‘Come on. We’ll go and do it now.’ She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled for the dogs, who came bounding over, ready to play. They didn’t like the sight of their leads in Penny’s hand, and kept their distance so we were forced to throw sticks for them to fetch, in order to bring them close enough to be collared.

  Back at the house Maria had finished the carpets and was polishing the parquet with a sort of throbbing dalek. She was wearing an overall from the same range as Penny’s smoking jacket. ‘Your mum’s home,’ she said to Penny. ‘She’s gone to bed.’ Penny seemed unperturbed by this news, though it was only three in the afternoon.

  ‘Is she ill?’ I asked, as we shut the dogs in the conservatory.

  ‘Oh no,’ Penny replied. ‘She often goes to bed early to try and lose weight. She thinks if she stays in bed drinking mint tea it’ll stop her eating. Sometimes she stays up there all weekend.’

  ‘Is she very fat?’ I asked.

  ‘God, no,’ said Penny. ‘She’s as thin as a twig, the silly cow.’

  Before we left she pressed a copy of I Capture the Castle into my hands. ‘You must read this,’ she instructed. ‘It’s my favourite book. I’ll draw up a list of others.’

  ‘I didn’t realise I was going to have to do homework,’ I grumbled, as we got back in the Mini. Suddenly being Penny’s protégée wasn’t looking so attractive. I hadn’t read much fiction since graduating from children’s books. In fact the only grown-up book I’d read all the way through was The Lord of the Rings because it was Christian’s favourite, but I hadn’t enjoyed the experience. I found I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for non-human predicaments, however well described.

  Penny took me to her local hairdressing salon, a frightening place staffed by androgynes in boiler suits. Over the roar of hairdryers and pop music she managed to secure me an appointment, and told the genderless alien assigned to me to ‘tidy it up a bit’.

  After two shampoos and a ‘treatment’ my hair was as slippery as sealskin. It never felt this clean at home. I wondered if there might be something wrong with our water supply: deposits of lead or rust, or dead squirrels in the tank. While the alien combed and snipped, scuttling round me on a plastic stool-on-wheels, like a giant spider, Penny lounged in a cane armchair, browsing through Harpers & Queen. Every few minutes another member of staff would be over to offer her tea or coffee or more magazines. As I got to know her better I would become familiar with this phenomenon. Wherever Penny went people would spring to do her bidding. Doors would be opened, bags carried, obstacles removed, assistance offered, so that her path would always be smooth. It was just a way she had – nothing tangible that could be imitated – and she accepted it all with perfect equanimity. Now she approached to supervise the blow-drying, smiling encouragement at me in the mirror as the hairdresser tried to subdue and straighten my curls.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be bothered to do this at home?’ he asked, dragging a section of hair taut with a fat brush and blasting it from above with a jet of scorching air. I laughed aloud at the idea. We did have a hairdryer at home – a 1950s model with a frayed flex and a rattling motor that was just as likely to suck hair in and chew it up as blow it dry. It lived in a box on top of the wardrobe along with a rubber glove which had to be worn to protect against shocks.

  When he was finished with me, he dusted my shoulders and held up a hand mirror so I could inspect the back of my head. I thought it might look vain to show too much delight in my changed appearance, so I just nodded non-commitally, then it occurred to me that not wishing to be thought vain was itself a form of vanity. I decided to make a note of this when I got home, in my book of interesting observations, which was still largely blank.

  Penny came to my rescue by telling me how nice I looked, which allowed me to smile, showing some of the pleasure I felt at my transformation. My hair swung, shiny and thick to just above my shoulders, where it tipped up to tickle me under the chin. I knew that as soon as I was outside the damp air and gravity – Pam’s old enemies – would flatten the top and crinkle the ends, but for the moment it was perfect.

  When Penny dropped me back home mum was still at the kitchen table tussling with the household finances. Something told me it wouldn’t be a good time to flaunt my change of image, however cheaply acquired, so I decided to creep upstairs to my room. But ours wasn’t the sort of house where you could creep successfully: hinges squeaked and floorboards jumped and banged and before I had crossed the hall Mum had spotted me over the top of her cracked spectacles.

  ‘Goodness, look at you,’ she said. ‘Have you won the Pools?’ This was her idea of a joke. We never did the Pools, of course. I shook my head.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ she said, tapping her pencil on the topmost of her papers.

  ‘Penny paid,’ I said. ‘And she gave me all these clothes. Cast-offs,’ I wheedled. ‘But really nice ones.’

  ‘I suppose the hairdresser told you to come back every three months for a trim,’ Mum said.

  ‘Six weeks,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, you’ve had that.’ She looked down at the columns of figures in front of her an
d sighed.

  ‘You could get a job that actually pays,’ I suggested.

  ‘There aren’t quite enough jobs to go around at the moment,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right for our family to have two when some families don’t even have one. Besides, it won’t be long before Grandpa can’t be left alone. He’s so forgetful.’ This was true. Only the other day I had caught him trying to leave the house in his pyjamas. He’d thanked me and laughed at his own absent-mindedness, and gone upstairs to dress, but half an hour later when I looked in his room, he’d gone back to bed, even though it was midday.

  ‘The trouble with never spending anything is that it leaves you nowhere to make economies,’ Mum said at last.

  That day marked a rite of passage in another way too. When I got undressed for bed I found a stain, like tar, in my knickers. I went down to Mum, who had abandoned the accounts and was mending the broken strap of her handbag with duck tape.

  ‘I’ve started my periods,’ I said, suddenly embarrassed to be a conspirator with her in this dark, female mystery.

  Her face fell for a second. My little girl, she was perhaps thinking. Or probably: more expense. She went to the cupboard under the sink and brought out a pile of old newspapers, and my heart quailed. Surely we’re not that poor, I thought. Then, from the depths of another cupboard she produced a pink squashy packet of Dr Whites.

  ‘See how you get on with these,’ she said. ‘Don’t flush them down the loo or they’ll bung up the drains. Wrap the used ones in newspaper and put them in the boiler.’

  She must have seen my queasy expression and mistaken its cause, because she laid a hand on my abdomen and said, ‘Does it hurt?’ I said it didn’t, but even as I was shaking my head I felt an unfamiliar ache, bone-deep and burning, spreading down the top of each leg, and I winced.

  ‘Poor you,’ said Mum. ‘A hot waterbottle sometimes helps. I’ll go and get it off Christian.’

  And so I went to bed with the hot waterbottle that night, and Christian had to do without, because I had stepped through a doorway now, into a special female world of privilege and pain.

  22

  PENNY CALLED HER parents Doug and Heather, or the Raving Tory and the Old Hag, depending on circumstances. The three of them played out a strange version of family life in which they doggedly pursued their own interests with the minimum of involvement from the others. Penny’s dad ran his own company – something to do with reprographics, she said – and worked long hours. Even when he came home he carried on working in his study until after midnight. If he ever took a day off he spent it on the golf course, where he played off nine. Penny’s mum put in equally long hours battling against advancing middle age and diminishing beauty, by means of shopping, surgery, and various fitness regimes. The rest of her time was spent in bed recovering from these exertions. Penny went to school, studied for her A levels, went out in her yellow Mini with Christian, or her girlfriends, or entertained them at home by making cheese fondues and discussing Art and Literature and the Meaning of Life.

  Occasionally Penny and her parents coincided for exchanges of essential information, and what they called ‘diary meetings’, where important events would be timetabled. Sometimes they would book a Civilised Evening In, when the three of them would sit down to dinner together, and Penny would be offered a Dubonnet and lemonade as an aperitif, while Doug and Heather put away the best part of a bottle of gin. They often had lively discussions, Penny said, the sort that might be called blazing arguments in another household. Her mother had been known to throw things for emphasis, and Penny herself said she didn’t feel properly alive unless she’d had four good rows in a year.

  Naturally I looked up to Penny as a mentor, and came to worship her with the same uncritical devotion that I’d previously reserved for Christian. It was Penny, more than anyone, who rescued me from myself. Without her influence I would have become a clueless, greasy-haired, teenage misfit. She teased and cajoled and flattered me into shape, and offered the kind of brutal advice my parents wouldn’t have presumed to utter, and which I would have ignored if they had. It was her example that made me think being a girl might actually be fun – an idea I would never have picked up from my mother, whose femininity took a more puritanical form. Years of trying to win Christian’s approval by imitation had inevitably left me with reservations about the value of my own sex. Observing Penny, or rather the progress of Christian’s infatuation with her, made me realise that girls were not defective versions of boys at all, but different creatures, deep and complex and fascinating, even to boys. Especially to boys. Suddenly just being a girl seemed to give me an edge over Christian. However much he loved Penny, and however well he thought he knew her, he would never fully understand the mystery of what it was to be female.

  But Penny’s intervention was practical as well as spiritual: I was her project, and she was accustomed to getting good grades. She had time and money to spend on me and she was generous with both. It was her support that gave me the confidence to develop my particular style of drawing, which Mr Hatch, my art teacher, was in the process of trying to undo. Whenever I did a picture, I always started with some small detail and worked out from there, using the sharpest pencil or the finest brush I could find, and proceeded minutely, rarely finishing. In life drawing classes, everyone but me managed to sketch a full figure in the allotted time, while I would have produced just one perfectly executed ear. My technique exasperated Mr Hatch, who favoured bold, sweeping strokes, and felt it his mission to liberate me from myself. He replaced my tiny brush and 4H pencil with palette knives, blunt stumps of charcoal and fan-shaped brushes, and gave me vast sheets of paper to fill. ‘Draw from the shoulder, not the fingertips,’ he commanded, watching my struggles to subdue these monstrous tools. ‘Relax. You’re all hunched up. Block it in. Don’t worry about the detail. BIG GESTURES.’ It wasn’t sheer cruelty on his part: he had the exams to consider, and unless I could be persuaded to cover an A1 sheet within six hours I was certain to fail.

  Penny’s contribution to this battle was to tell me my own style was exquisite, and to buy me a set of Rotring pens, with nibs like needles, and a box of coloured inks. Generous soul, she knew that as well as praise and encouragement an artist needs materials. It was the best present I’d ever had, and I immediately reverted to my own method of stubborn miniaturism.

  It was the attraction of opposites that pulled Christian and Penny together. One area in which this difference proclaimed itself was their attitude to conversation. Christian tended to favour long silences, punctuated by the delivery of strictly factual information. ‘I’m going out.’ ‘I can’t find my calculator.’ ‘God, it’s cold in here.’ Penny, on the other hand, liked nothing better than to talk, and had fluent and well-rehearsed opinions on a staggering range of subjects. She felt it her pressing duty to discover as much as possible about the world around her, why she was here, and what she should do about it. Her favourite topics for discussion were moral dilemmas, and she would often read out salient items from the newspaper and demand our views. Do the parents of an anorexic sixteen-year-old have the right to force-feed her? Should white couples be allowed to adopt mixed-race babies? Should Siamese twin A be sacrificed to save Siamese twin B? I think it was Dad who enjoyed these discussions more than anyone: they reminded him of being at theological college. I could usually predict what he was going to say. For weighty matters he advocated praying for guidance, and considering the examples set by Jesus. For dilemmas about personal behaviour, he said, the conscience was usually a reliable guide. ‘Even when I think I’m torn between two courses of action, I find that after careful reflection I generally know what to do: and it’s nearly always the thing I’m least inclined to.’

  It was during one of these conversations at which Penny, Christian and I were present, that Dad said something that amazed us all.

  I’d wasted the morning messing about with lemons. A beauty tip in one of Dawn’s magazines recommended rinsing mid-brown hair in lemon j
uice to bring out the natural highlights, so I’d bought a net of lemons from the market and done as advised. My hair didn’t look any lighter for my efforts, in fact it looked slightly darker, where it was now stuck together in crispy clumps. Rather than waste the rest of the lemons, I trawled Mum’s ancient, greasy recipe book for ideas. It had to be something simple which wouldn’t tax me beyond my enthusiasm, or require exotic additional ingredients unavailable in our larder. At last I found something suitable: written on one of the many scraps of loose paper stuffed into the back of the book. Barbara Fry’s Real Lemonade. I’d noticed that most of these handwritten recipes were attributed to some original inventor or donor. Grandma Percy’s Queen of Puddings; Aunty Molly’s One-Egg Sponge; Mrs Tapley’s Meatless Meatloaf. It was as if they were part of some ancient female lore that even women like my mother, who hated cooking, had to guard and pass on. Aunty Barbara’s lemonade recipe obviously dated from happier times, when she and Alan used to entertain: it even included instructions on how to frost the rims of the glasses with egg white and sugar – a touch of refinement I was determined to copy.

  I remembered, as I was paring the lemons, that Penny had once let slip that her parents sometimes had the neighbours round for cocktails on the terrace, and I had a sudden impulse to recreate this experience in our own garden, with homemade lemonade and whatever snacks I could find in the larder: peanuts left over from Christmas, perhaps. Penny was due to come round to pick up Christian at six. They were spending the day apart, allegedly studying for their A levels, which were looming, although the mournful strains of acoustic guitar and the regular thud of darts issuing from Christian’s room led me to have grave doubts about his commitment.

  We didn’t have a terrace, exactly, but while the lemons and sugar were steeping in the boiling water, I swept the dirt and shrivelled leaves from the brick paving outside the French windows, and shaved off the clumps of moss and sprouting weeds with the edge of a spade. It was late May, and the afternoon sun was warm on my back as I worked. Now that I bothered to look, I could see that the brickwork had been laid out in an intricate herringbone pattern, with a hexagonal mosaic effect in the centre. It astonished me that for all these years I’d walked back and forth across it and never noticed. Then I fetched the wooden table, which was parked, neglected in the long grass under the apple tree, and scrubbed away the dead blossom, bird droppings and snail slime. Some of the stains went deep into the wood, which was grey and spongy from its untreated exposure to the elements, so I covered it up with a once-white tablecloth. The unfamiliar sounds of industry brought Mum out to investigate.