Now You See Me

by Jean Bedford

  ‘Thanks.’ She picks up her bag and walks towards the door. ‘Mick ... please don’t tell Tom I did this.’ Her face reddens, she is humiliated at asking.

  ‘Of course not.’ He opens the door for her and kisses her on the cheek.

  ‘I think ...’ she has turned back, surprising him. I think I really came over here so you’d be onmy side. Isn’t that childish?’

  ‘You’re too scrupulous for your own good. You’ll never make a lawyer with that attitude.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t finish the degree now.’ She gives his arm a squeeze. ‘Thanks, Mick. I feel better, though you didn’t do a thing.’ They both laugh.

  Just before he shuts the door he calls out to her. ‘Rosa — would you like to bring the kids up to my sister’s place one weekend? They liked it, last time. We’ll take a gang, OK?’

  ‘That’d be great,’ her voice floats back to him from the entry hall.

  *

  At home, Rosa checks on the children in a flutter of anxiety. They are both peacefully asleep. She gets an open bottle from the fridge and a glass and sits in the unlit living room. For a while she just sits, the uncorked bottle and the empty glass held in her lap, then she pours some wine and sips at it, her eyes closed. It must be about two a.m., she thinks, wincing as she remembers the surprise on Sharon’s face when she opened the door, and her tactful retreat afterwards. They’d have been discussing her after she left. Then they’d probably have made love. She feels the tears overflow as she tries to recall how long it is since she has had any sexual affection. Mick’s arm around her was the first physical comfort she’d felt in ages. She’s surprised at an angry pang of jealousy towards Sharon. Jesus, she thinks, I’d better buy a vibrator, or I’ll be offering myself to strange men on the street.

  In the years she and Tom were separated she’d had several affairs, but without love she found them unsatisfactory. Now she thinks with what seems a terminal clarity that it’s time to let Tom go, to let the fantasy of them together go. She stares into the room, at the shadows and the irregular pools of blackness where furniture occupies the space, and wonders if she can face life at all. She thinks of Sylvia Plath and knows she can’t do that to her children. For a while she toys with ways of making suicide seem like an accident so that the kids wouldn’t know, but they seem too elaborate. She realises she’d find the whole thing absurd before she’d carried it through.

  ‘I don’t think you can kill yourself if you can see the funny side,’ she says aloud to the empty room, which is gradually becoming lighter as her eyes adjust. ‘I must be going mad, talking to myself all the time.’ She wonders if everyone does this when alone. ‘How little we know of each other,’ she says to the cat, who has woken up and lies blinking at her from the bookshelf. It seems, suddenly, appalling, the gulf between people. She gasps as she tries to hold on to the perception that this chasm lies between her and everyone, her children included. She deliberately lets it go. She won’t believe it.

  ‘I’m pissed, Sorry,’ she says to the cat, and feels the tears run again, remembering the fat cheeky tabby kitten, named Soren by Tom, after Kierkegaard, for his moments of staring intent stillness when he seemed to be contemplating the secrets of the universe. The cat has gone back to sleep. She leans forward and prods its soft belly. ‘I’m pissed and maudlin. You don’t care. No-one cares.’ But she can’t help smiling at the offended look and the fastidious curling of the tail around his legs and the way he keeps one eye open for a few moments in case she pokes him again. She pours herself another glass of wine. She thinks she will stay up all night. ‘I’ll be rooted tomorrow, but who cares?’ She can sleep while the children are at school; it’s not one of her work days and she has stopped going to her university classes. She sits on, drinking, until the bottle is empty, then she curls up on the couch and sleeps. The cat joins her some time in the night and the children find them both there in the morning.

  Judith adjusts her shirt collar and eases on her severe black jacket. She looks over her shoulder at Tess, who has pulled a pillow over her head.

  ‘Aren’t you teaching today?’

  There’s a smothered groan from the bed. ‘Not until eleven. When are you going to stop rattling about?’

  Judith smiles. She crosses the room and lifts off the pillow. She sits and runs her fingers through Tess’s soft pale hair. Tess pushes her face deeper into the mattress.

  ‘Rosa said she saw you at Gus Farrell’s sentencing. I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself, my darling.’

  Tess makes an exasperated sound and half sits up. ‘I wish you would let me sleep, but you won’t. Anyway, it’s notdoing anything to myself. I like to see them punished, creeps like Farrell; it makes me feel good.’

  Judith frowns and withdraws her caressing hand. ‘Tess, this is the third or fourth time in a year you’ve gone off to court to watch a trial or a sentencing without telling me, and I’ve found out about it accidentally. I’m worried about it. It feels like an obsession to me.’

  Tess scowls at her. ‘I don’t have to ask your permission. Do I? The courts are public. Anyone’s allowed to go.’ She heaves herself away to the other side of the bed.

  ‘If you told me, I could come with you,’ Judith says softly, looking down at her hands. ‘Or, if not, we could meet for a coffee later.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Tess is almost shouting. ‘You’re not my keeper. I’m a grown woman; I can do what I like and go where I want. I’m sick of the way youwatch over me.’

  ‘Darling, don’t.’Judith reaches for Tess’s hand and begins stroking it. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking ... do you remember Fran? She used to be married to Mick Morgan. She was around vaguely when we were students.’

  ‘Yes, I know who Fran is. And I know she’s a shrink. And I know what you’re going to say next, so don’t bother.’ Tess is clutching the sheet now, her eyes wide with hostility.

  Judith sighs and looks sideways at her watch. She’s due in court in half an hour. ‘All right. I’m sorry. But at least think about it, won’t you? You’re ... you know you haven’t been yourself lately. Not entirely.’ She leans over and puts a finger to Tess’s mouth. ‘No, don’t deny it, sweetheart. You know I wouldn’t hurt you in a million years, but you have to face it. For your own good.’ She stands and picks up her briefcase from the dresser.

  Tess flops an arm over her eyes and laughs.‘For my own good. How did I know you were going to say that? You’re so predictable. I’m sick to death of it. Slotting in a deep and meaningful before work. You’ll be bringing champagne and roses home tonight, too, I suppose.’

  Judith flushes. She had been thinking of something special this evening — it would probably have come down to flowers and wine. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Will you be home tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Where else is there to go?’

  ‘Where you usually go. One of your dyke dives.’

  Tess lifts her arm away from her eyes to stare at her. ‘God, a flash of genuine anger for once. You’ll be hitting me next.’ She jerks her head at Judith’s reaction. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that. It was a joke. Piss off. Go to work. Put someone behind bars.’ She holds out her arms and they kiss. Judith closes the bedroom door gently behind her.

  *

  Tess sits up in bed with her back pressed against the cold wall until she hears Judith’s car backing out of the driveway. Perhaps she should go to see Fran, or if not Fran, someone like her. Or perhaps she should just move out, today, before Judith gets home, leave a note on the kitchen table. She hugs her knees and brings them up under her chin.No, she thinks, without passion,I need Judith.I need this comfortable house and her endless irksome forgiveness.I need the structure she provides.Her unwavering loyalty. But she needs other things as well, and it’s true that she has not been managing lately.

  She gets out of bed and goes to the dresser. She fumbles under neatly folded clothes until she finds the small, creased package. She shakes a lumpy line of powder onto the back of her
hand and sniffs hard, twice, then licks the rest up. She gazes at herself in the mirror, watching her eyes grow round, her pupils dilate. She finds herself beautiful like this; she can understand why most of her students are in love with her. Perhaps she will come home after her classes. Perhaps she will forgive Judith this time and make her evening memorable. Or perhaps she will go bar-hopping and pick up some exciting, dangerous drifter. Her reflected image widens its mouth into a delighted smile. ‘Who knows?’ she says to herdoppelgänger. ‘Who knows?’

  *

  Rosa runs into Judith outside Court Three and they decide to go over the road for coffee.

  ‘We never see each other,’ Judith says when they are seated, outside on the street, because she still smokes. She lights a cigarette now and inhales the first mouthful deeply. ‘I mean, we bump into each other here. And there are the picnics, but I feel I’ve lost touch with everyone, really.’

  ‘Me too,’ Rosa says. ‘It’s partly being in a couple, I think. And working. You go home and you’re buggered and you have a couple of drinks and you forget there are people you’d like to talk to. Outside the home. You forget thereis a life outside.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got kids too,’ Judith says. ‘You’ve got some excuse. How’s Tom?’

  ‘Fine, as far as I know. He’s left me. He’s living with Carly.’

  Their cups of coffee are put on the table and Rosa begins to stir sugar into hers.

  ‘You’re joking,’ Judith stubs out her half-smoked cigarette. She looks across the street to the decorative court building, once an emporium. Television cameras and reporters are grouped on the steps, waiting for the participants in some trial to emerge. She’s uneasily aware that she is still wearing her gown and hopes they don’t decide to include her as some background colour. She pushes her barrister’s wig off and puts it underneath the table, shaking out her perfectly cut hair so that it sways and falls back into its precise shape.

  ‘Did you know her well?’ Rosa asks. ‘Carly, I mean.’

  ‘At university? No, not really. I mostly hung out with Mick and the other law students. Carly was doing straight Arts, wasn’t she?’

  ‘And psychology,’ Rosa says. ‘Then she dropped out and did nursing. She was a psych nurse for a while, now she’s an administrator.’

  ‘I always thought she was a dyke,’ Judith says. ‘I remember coming on to her once at a party, but she wasn’t interested. I thought she and Tess had something going for a while.’ She grips her coffee mug tightly, remembering the insane nights of jealousy.

  Rosa is surprised. ‘Tess? But Carly had boyfriends ... Didn’t she have a thing with Mick for a while? Isn’t that how we all met her?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. She hadlotsof boyfriends. So did Tess, secretly. No-one we knew — mostly rough trade she picked up in bars. It took Tess a while to realise who she was.What she was.’

  ‘And you were waiting,’ Rosa says, understanding. ‘Were you in love with her all that time?’

  Judith wonders about it. ‘I suppose so. Since school, in fact. Did you know we were at school together, too?’

  Rosa shakes her head. ‘I hardly knew anything about anyone. At first I was too busy doing dope and drinking and having a good time. Then I met Tom and my world narrowed to him.’ She smiles. ‘Not a very good feminist model.’ She puts her hand on Judith’s arm. ‘But go on. This is interesting. Fancy loving someone all that time.’

  ‘More lust than love, then,’ Judith says. ‘It was like that pop song — you know ... “I’ll be watching you”. Every move you make, etc. At school Tess was a star athlete. She was beautiful, the golden girl. No — the silver girl, really, I suppose, with her colouring. She arrived in the second-last year and swept the floor of all the previous idols. Unhealthy atmospheres, girls’ schools.’

  ‘Is she still painting?’ Rosa remembers a student exhibition and disturbing semi-surrealist monsters leering from ruined, smoking wrecks of buildings.

  ‘No. She teaches Art History.’ Judith is silent for a while, brooding. ‘At least, I don’t think she is. She keeps things from me. There are days on end when I don’t see her. For all I know, she’s got a studio somewhere and she’s the next Frida Kahlo.’

  ‘Tom kept secrets from me, too,’ Rosa says. She has a sudden passion to confide. ‘He came home late at night. Some nights he didn’t come home at all. He wasn’t in his room at university when he said he would be. He lied about when he had to give lectures or go to meetings. He’d be keyed up and tense for weeks and then overnight he’d be different, relaxed, as if there’d been some catharsis. He was impotent with me for the last year. He swore he didn’t have a lover, yet three months after we split up he’s back living with Carly.’

  ‘Tess goes to gay bars,’ Judith says. ‘She picks up young women, strangers, goes home with them. She fucks her students — womenand men. For two years she had another long-term lover. She spent half her week with her and half with me. I thought I’d go mad.’

  ‘But you’ve stuck it out,’ Rosa says. ‘I couldn’t, in the end. I told Tom to go.’

  ‘Twelve years,’Judith says. ‘And now I wonder if it’s been worth it. She lies to me. I see contempt in the way she looks at me.’

  ‘Why do you put up with it?’

  Judith swills her coffee dregs and lights another cigarette. ‘She had a rotten childhood,’ she says, almost as if changing the subject. She goes on in staccato sentences. ‘Incest and abuse. When her parents died she was sent to live with an aunt. That’s how she came to my school. She was still traumatised then. What seemed to me like a delicious aloofness was just shock. People think she’s remote, cold, but she’s not. She’s withdrawn to survive. She went to a psychiatrist for years. After university she was on heroin for a while. She had affairs with unstable men, sadists. Everyone in her life betrayed her ...’

  ‘And you feel you have to make up for that? It’s a big thing to take on.’

  ‘Well, it’s similar with you and Tom, isn’t it? Didn’t he have the same sort of history?’

  ‘Tom?’ Rosa is staggered. ‘What do you mean? His parents died when he was quite young and he was brought up by relatives, I think, but ... what on earth do you mean?’ Judith is furious with herself. She has been less than honest. There had been a period after Tom went back to Rosa when Judith had seen Carly fairly frequently, before she started living with Tess. She had been half in love with Carly; ringing her, making appointments for coffee, to see films, go for a drive. Carly had been full of bitterness about Tom, scornful towards Rosa, deliberately indiscreet, scattering confidences like dry sour dust.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Judith says. ‘It ... it must have been when you and Tom were separated. Everyone went through a sort of wild stage. Drugs and too much booze. They used to joke about it. Tom and Tess and Paddy. They called themselves the AOKs — do you remember that?’ She’s treading carefully around only half of the truth.

  Rosa shakes her head. ‘No. What did it stand for?’

  ‘Abused Only Kids. They’d all been knocked around, had therapy, ended up with relatives or foster parents. Sometimes they called themselves the Survivors. It was ... I don’t know. A phase in their healing, I suppose. A sick joke they carried on with when they were stoned or drunk, jeering at the rest of us because we’d led such sheltered lives. Outdoing each other with stories of the things they’d endured. Not that Tom said all that much, when I think of it.’ She ashes her cigarette and laughs. ‘Mick used to get furious with them. He said they were wankers. He said in his family it wasn’t called abuse, it was just knowing you were alive.’

  Rosa can hardly take it in. ‘Mick was an abused child, too?’

  ‘Well, he said he used to get beaten just about every day when he was a kid. His dad had some sort of war trauma, and his mother was a bible-basher. The others said he couldn’t be one of them because he had a sister, and they were each the only child.’ She looks at her watch. ‘It’s interesting how they all gravitated together, isn’t it? As if
they recognised something in each other. Listen, Rosa, I have to go now. I’ve got to meet some cops about their evidence for a drug prosecution.’ She puts money on the table for their coffees, brushing aside Rosa’s attempt to pay for hers. She retrieves her wig from the pavement and dusts it off. ‘Come to dinner one night, will you? Let’s get to know each other properly at last.’

  Rosa nods and stays sitting at the table. She orders another coffee and watches Judith cross the road and walk towards the Prosecutor’s offices.Secrets and betrayals, she thinks, wondering if Fran is right and these are merely meaningless words.

  *

  Carly has arranged to meet Alastair for coffee at the staff canteen. Now that she has finished with him she doesn’t mind people seeing them together, doesn’t care what they think as long as they are wrong.

  She sees him sitting at a table near the long windows and realises she still finds him attractive. But she has Tom, now, and that is taking up most of her time.

  ‘I’ve ordered the coffee,’ Alastair says, half standing as she sits down. ‘There’s something wrong with their machine, they tell me. It might be a few minutes.’

  He hasn’t spoken to her except in passing for weeks. He has been spending time with Sue, trying to come to terms with the fact that it might be over between Carly and himself. He is uncomfortably aware that Sue is a stop-gap for him, but he’s afraid of losing her, too, and being forced to face his loss and loneliness, so he lets her go on thinking they have a future. His occasional glimpses of Carly in the corridors make his heart stop. Now that she’s finally agreed to meet him and is across the table from him he can’t find anything to say to her.

  ‘I hear you’re going out with one of the nurses,’ she says, smiling at him. If he’d ever thought it might pique her jealousy, he gives up that idea now. It is clear that Carly is indifferent. ‘Suzy Moore, isn’t it? She’s a nice kid.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says flatly. Sue is a nice kid, and Carly is everything he wants. ‘Did you ever get those flowers I sent?’