It was the small matter of Sive that had clinched the situation with Elaine. Regardless of the compensations of the perfume counter, fatherless Hugh didn’t want a disowned child out in the universe. It wasn’t even as if Elaine pleaded or begged. That was not her style. After months of uncomplicated fun (she had lasted way longer than anyone else) she simply broke the news and left a pregnant silence. So Elaine became the one for whom he surrendered his old life. Or tried to. Their first separation had occurred after Sive was born. He blamed it on the new baby and the terrible sleeplessness: the only brand of sleep deprivation Hugh had known before was the kind born of night-long drinking sprees or hectic dawn sex, but this tiredness was of a different tenor. Even when he did manage to sleep, it was a shallow, uneasy kind, not the deep, dumb, dreamless slumber of the over-sated. When he woke, Elaine would be pacing the floor with the small, angry creature that was his daughter latched to her shoulder like some physical disfigurement. Sive dictated everything, their sleeping, their waking, their very conversation; that is if Elaine had been capable of finishing a sentence without leaping up to answer the baby’s call even when it was just a tiny whimper. The house was taken over by pastel mounds of miniature clothes, piles of nappies, rows of bottles and teats, vats of sterilising fluid. The amount of baggage one child involved appalled him. And whereas Elaine had transformed into a mother overnight – she was clothed in rolls of doting maternal flesh – Hugh was just a sleep-deprived, more irritable version of himself. Except in one thing. When he imagined this peeved baby growing up into a girl and being at the mercy of some bastard like him, it made him want to bolt … he took Angie from Reconciliation out on the town and found himself out on his ear.
In the intervening years he had spent as much time apart from Elaine as with her, but since Hugh Junior’s birth, Elaine had become more intransigent and each temporary separation was longer than the one before. The September day that Norah Elworthy started in Claims, Hugh realised with a start that this time they had been apart for six months.
The girl was hopeless at calculation. Jesus, why did Personnel send him innumerates! She needed a lot of hand-holding – that must have been why Dan Gildea was constantly hovering about her, poking manfully on her adding machine. But he had to concede that she was good with the public, often distressed and irate ex-workers who already felt aggrieved before they picked up the phone. To them Norah Elworthy was sweetness itself: efficient, calm, soothing. She excelled at assuagement. She was the human face of Claims. (Jesus, he was beginning to sound like one of those slogan-spouting poofs from Personnel.) Was it something as simple as her voice that made him change his mind about her? Was it that she was sitting directly in his line of vision, so that he spent 40 hours a week gazing at her? It certainly wasn’t her wardrobe, which still looked like the garb of a defrocked novice – skirts like lampshades, rubbed-looking sweaters, a rain mac the colour of mud. But she had the kind of blank clear face that belonged to someone to whom nothing had happened yet. Such clarity, the tame clothes, the chaste bob cut of her hair, the total unknowingness that she had breasts and, despite her beached quietude, a certain allure. He wanted to be the one to tear all of it away; he wanted to see her tested.
He started to take note of who she was friendly with. Well, it was important for him to know of alliances and loyalties in his team. There was Ellie Fox, a soft motherly woman ten years his senior who seemed to take Norah under her wing. She went for coffee with Maggie Joy, a flaky girl, bright but lazy, who came to work in denim skirts and tarty blouses, and she had long conversations with Martina Beale, a cool thirty-something with coltish limbs and hair the colour of tawny toast. Not forgetting Dan Gildea, of course, that weed from Rebates, whose lantern jaw and lank, foppish hair made him seem like a seedy predator. What on earth did she see in him? Once, Hugh had spied them sitting by the canal having sandwiches at lunchtime and they were often together in the canteen. This caused him some alarm. He couldn’t say why. Dan was harmless. Hugh wasn’t even sure which team he played for but he felt duty bound to take Norah aside and warn her off.
‘Norah? A minute please,’ he called after her as she was making for the door one Friday evening. The office didn’t clear on a Friday, it was evacuated with fire drill speed once five o’clock struck. Half into her coat and struggling with the second sleeve, she approached his desk.
‘Yes, Mr Grove,’ she said.
‘Call me Hugh,’ he said. The Mister made him feel ancient.
‘Hugh,’ she said, trying it out tentatively.
‘You know we don’t encourage fraternising among the staff.’ He found himself colouring at the outrageousness of the lie.
‘Pardon?’
‘I couldn’t help noticing – you and Dan.’ He cocked what he hoped was an ironic eyebrow at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah now, don’t get up on your high horse, Norah.’ Using her name like this was a peremptory weapon; it suggested both authority and informality.
‘Dan and I are just friends.’
‘Bet you that’s not how Dan sees it.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Have it your own way, but that fella’s not to be trusted … he’s a bit peculiar, bit of a track record, if you get my drift?’
It was her turn to colour. A virginal blush that inflamed her cheeks and animated her features in a way he had never seen before. Tears gathered in her wounded eyes. Oh God, not the waterworks! Hugh stood up and came out from behind the desk, hoping the move would bolster the avuncular candour he was aiming for.
‘Look, Norah, all I’m saying is – be careful.’
The irony was not lost on him, warning this cautious, timid creature to take care. She was still wrestling with her coat so he helped her into it and she murmured thank you before scurrying away.
If anything had been developing between Norah and Dan, Hugh felt he had successfully nipped it in the bud. They still chatted but there were no more cosy tête-à-têtes by the canal (Hugh found himself eyeing the waterside benches surreptitiously) a fact which made him feel oddly relieved. He wasn’t sure what his next move would be. Then out of the blue, in November, Elaine made her peace with him and he returned home determined, inasmuch as he could be determined, to make a go of it. He put all thoughts of Norah Elworthy out of his mind.
The Christmas party was always a minefield, particularly when he and Elaine were back together. The obvious imbalance in the sexes at the office – even with half the country girls already scattered to the provinces for the holidays – the no-spouse rule, the fact that everyone made an effort, were all reasons for Elaine to be touchy about it. Not to mention that Sive was conceived after such an event. The girls always got dolled up in sparkly dresses, applied foundation and mascara, however inexpertly (Hugh was a bit of an aficionado, after all) and got their hair done. Claims joined with Rebates for the annual do (Rebates having more men) so there was always the frisson of not so familiar faces to enliven the mix. They hired a function room in the Parliament Hotel which the Department paid for out of its entertainments budget and Hugh footed the bill for the cocktail sausages and the white bread sandwiches (always left uneaten and decapitated at the end of the night like women with their hats askew).
‘I’m off,’ he had called to Elaine at seven on the night of the party, trying to sound casual. He was standing in the hallway, the front door open, frosty air fingering into the house. Elaine was upstairs putting Hugh Junior to bed.
‘Oh by the way,’ he shouted up into the well of the stairs, ‘I’ve booked a room at the Parliament, so don’t expect me home.’ It wasn’t as if it was something he’d never done before. There was no response from above. ‘You know what it’s like trying to get a taxi in Christmas week.’ At the other end of the hall he could see Sive finger-painting at the kitchen table.
‘Close the door, Daddy,’ she whined, ‘I’m cold.’
He pushed the door to with his foot but he didn’t close it. Elaine came
down the stairs, her brow thundery.
‘Who is it?’ she asked resignedly.
‘Don’t start, Elaine. There isn’t anyone. If you weren’t so damned suspicious …’
‘What?’ she demanded crossly, folding her arms, ‘you wouldn’t stray? So now it’s my fault?’
Oh God, he thought, this was exactly what he was trying to avoid.
‘If you’re that worried, why don’t you ring me later?’
‘And what would that prove?’
‘Look, look!’ Sive called out and held up two vermilion palms. She had climbed down from the kitchen table and was veering up the hallway, red paws aloft, aiming for Elaine’s hips.
‘No!’ Elaine cried, turning her back on him as she tried to divert the child.
Holding Sive at arm’s length, Elaine set her unceremoniously down on a stool beside the sink.
‘Let’s wash your handies before you hug Mummy.’
Hugh followed them into the kitchen. Mummy, he thought. How he hated that she called herself Mummy. She plunged Sive’s hands into the waiting water, scrubbing them vigorously with a nail brush.
‘You’re hurting me,’ Sive wailed but Elaine ignored her. Hugh watched as the water gradually stained.
‘If you stay the night, don’t bother coming home – ever!’ She lifted Sive down and rubbed her hands dry with a towel. ‘I mean it.’
‘Ever!’ Sive repeated triumphantly.
The Parliament had laid on a disco and the exultant boom greeted him at the door and made him feel energised and hopeful. Claims were gathered in an alcove when he arrived, festooned with party hats and boas of tinsel, and when he approached (always studiously late so they would have time to warm up and get a few drinks in) they all lifted their glasses and hollered in unison above the din. Such extravagant enthusiasm cheered him though he knew it shouldn’t; they merely wanted to show him what a good time they were having, what fascinating, interesting specimens they were with a few vodkas on board, and that this – the glossy hairdos, the high heels – was who they really were, not the office drones Hugh saw every day.
Norah was there at the edge of the group as if she’d just arrived, with an untouched glass of beer in front of her. She, of all of them, looked most like her daily persona. Same hair, an unruly cluster untouched by chemicals, the impossibly clear skin, the unglossed lips. Not even remotely his type. She had, according to her own lights, dressed up: in a tiered gypsy skirt in stained-glass colours and a demure white blouse with (oh God, he thought) a sailor collar that looked luminous under the disco’s strobe lights. The only concession was her shoes, a pair of black pumps with some silvery stuff running through them. Hugh found his heart turning; it was the strangest sensation and so long since he’d felt it that he didn’t recognise it. He promptly sat down beside her.
‘Move over in the bed there, Norah,’ he said throwing a comradely arm over her shoulders. The rest of the gang, noting the gesture, responded – Maggie, sheathed in leather, wolf-whistled, Ellie in some frilly confection, twirled the stem of her Babycham glass and clapped her hands together ineffectually, Martina leapt up from the banquette seat and hallooed. That was the other part of the bargain here: not only did Hugh have to be a benign witness to their letting their hair down but he, too, had to be casually outrageous. They wanted him to misbehave. No, they expected it.
Norah’s body stiffened as he touched her, her shoulder tightening as if her inner self was recoiling. Their thighs rubbed together. He could see the outline of hers under the flimsy stuff of her skirt. Now that he had his arm around her he felt he should keep it there out of a kind of politeness. If he pulled away it would look as if he were withdrawing favour. The lounge girl came at that stage to take his order, which gave him an excuse to move honourably. He fumbled in his hip pocket for his wallet.
‘Another round for the table, love,’ he said and the girls erupted once more.
Generally, he didn’t dance. It wasn’t that he couldn’t. In fact, he fancied himself at the jive but most of these girls were schooled only in solipsistic shuffling and any attempts to match his expertise resulted in arm-twisting and awkward entanglements so he avoided it. It looked too much as if he was pushing them around. Anyway, it was too weighted to choose one of them over the others, so he usually sat the dancing out. As did Norah. By eleven they were the only two left, the table before them scattered with the debris of the night, watchtowers of half-empty glasses snagged with frothed beer and dejected lemons, an ashtray rubbled with butts, sodden party hats. The DJ made smooching innuendoes into the mike between numbers, the only time it was possible to hazard conversation, the music being too loud otherwise. And anyway, what would he say – I have a room upstairs, meet you there in ten minutes? When he looked at Norah, he felt he would have to explain what he meant.
‘Come on, you two,’ Maggie Joy roared, coming back to the ruined table for her drink.
She pumped Hugh playfully on the shoulder before being dragged back to the dance floor by Pete from Rebates. Otherwise, Hugh might have asked Maggie up; at least she would have been fun to dance with. He’d seen her in other years dancing pogo-style, graceless but energetic, fisting the air and hopping about like some beefy biker.
‘Norah,’ Maggie mouthed in encouragement, the music having started up again.
Norah looked at him meekly. Jesus, better to dance with her than be left stranded here with her looking like a wounded lamb and obviously counting the minutes until she could safely leave. She had already twice looked at her watch and he needed more time.
‘How about it, Miss Elworthy?’ he asked and held out his hand.
The dance floor, a circle of scarred wood in front of the DJ’s table, was heaving. ‘Dancing Queen’ was just coming on and the assembled company could not decide if it was a slow number or not. Norah stood, hands hanging, so Hugh took the lead, holding her as if for a waltz. She was much shorter than he was and it was quite a stretch for her to reach his shoulder, so instead she clutched him awkwardly at the waist. Her touch through his damp shirt – the place was stiflingly hot – was so tentative, so determinedly noncommittal that he could barely feel it but even so, or because of it, it made him blanch with desire. He dropped his leading hand and clasped her around the shoulders, drawing her in so that they were less moving to the music than swaying gently on the one spot. Locked like that, he was aware of every minute move of hers. The fluttering began in her shoulder blades as of something trapped, a tremor that spread to her arms even though they were wrapped around his waist and her head was buried in his chest. The girl was terrified, he realised; the only reason she had moulded her body to his was to suppress the tiny trembling. It should have been a turn-on but instead Hugh felt strenuously entrusted. It was, strangely, not a burden; he felt, rather, that he was steering a delicate cargo through the crowded room. The music throbbed, the crowd pulsed about him but so powerful was the feeling and his own sensations so surprisingly fragile that he and Norah danced the entire set like this. He felt like a life raft in a turbulent sea. Also he didn’t know what he might say when it was over and, in truth, he wanted the sensation to last. Not just the quivering – who wouldn’t fancy a quivering virgin at their mercy, he would joke with himself afterwards – but this unspoken intensity, all hers, which he had never been the object of and certainly had never experienced himself. He wanted to draw off it; he was greedy for it, so greedy that when the music stopped and all about them the dancers were clapping and then dispersing, they stood there, raft and survivor, until Dan Gildea tapped Norah on the shoulder and she awoke, it seemed, since the state they had entered into was close to an animated slumber, and pulled away from him.
‘Are you alright?’ Dan asked, but looking accusingly at Hugh. Jesus, maybe he was sleeping with her, Hugh thought. How else to explain the Caped Crusader pose? Hugh stepped back.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said faintly, giving Hugh that look again, except it wasn’t meekness, Hugh realised, it was something so na
ked and unguarded that he couldn’t bear to look.
‘Take her away, Dan,’ Hugh said and stumbled off the dance floor, feeling in some obscure way that Norah had made a fool of him.
Early in the new year he made his move. The magazine was one of a stash he’d kept locked in the drawer of his desk, a hangover from his wilder days. Beasts and women, strictly top of the shelf fodder, dogs mostly, slavishly about the models’ pubes or appearing to suckle at their breasts. It was crude stuff, in the sense that these models wearing only stilettos and pouting in fake ecstasy being licked off by dogs had never really worked for him, at least not in the way it was supposed to.
He slipped the magazine into a sheaf of folders and laid it on the side of Norah’s desk during her lunch hour so she couldn’t guess its provenance. He felt fuelled by a kind of savage reprisal as if she had openly and deliberately spurned him. He was right in her line of vision when she opened the buff folder. He waited. He expected shrieks, some dramatic gesture. He’d even imagined the magazine might make her throw up. He’d felt a bit queasy himself on first seeing these images. She looked up and around on discovering it but then she leafed deliberately through it before closing it. Opening her desk drawer she placed it quietly inside and continued on with her work. Not a flicker crossed her face; she did not raise her eyes; she did not bolt from the room. Boy, she was good, Hugh thought; she’d denied him a scene.
He’d imagined how it would go. He would catch her eye, enquire what was wrong and when she’d break down, he could be first the comforter and, if the circumstances demanded it, the avenging boss, declaring a witch-hunt against such filth. But she had yielded absolutely nothing and he was the one who felt unmasked.
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