Her mother had spectacles with swept-up, elaborately bejewelled frames. The jewels were made of glass, but they glittered, especially in strong sunlight, just like what Eleanor imagined diamonds must glitter like. Her mother, constantly smoking, had hair which she dyed so that it appeared to be black. She was a thin woman with bones that stuck out awkwardly at the joints, seeming as though they might at any moment break through the surface of taut, anaemic skin. In Eleanor’s opinion her mother had suffered, and once she had had a dream in which her mother was fat and married to someone else, a man, as far as Eleanor could make out, who ran a vegetable shop.
Her mother always had breakfast in her night-dress and an old fawn-coloured dressing-gown, her ankles below it as white as paper, her feet stuck into tattered slippers. After breakfast, she would return to bed with Eleanor’s father, obliging him, Eleanor knew, as she had obliged him all her life. During the school holidays, and on Saturdays and Sundays when Eleanor was still in the flat, her mother continued to oblige him: in the bedroom he made the same kind of noise as he’d made in the wrestling ring. The Prince of Hackney he’d been known as.
Her mother was a shadow. Married to a man who ran a vegetable shop or to any other kind of man except the one she’d chosen, Eleanor believed she’d have been different: she’d have had more children, she’d have been a proper person with proper flesh on her bones, a person you could feel for. As she was, you could hardly take her seriously. She sat there in her night-clothes, waiting for the man she’d married to rise from the table and go into their bedroom so that she might follow. Afterwards she cleared up the breakfast things and washed them, while he slept. She shopped in the Express Dairy Supermarket, dropping cigarette ash over tins of soup and peas and packets of crisps, and at half past eleven she sat in the corner of the downstairs lounge of the Northumberland Arms and drank a measure of gin and water, sometimes two.
‘Listen to this,’ her mother said in her wheezy voice. She quoted a piece about a fifty-five-year-old woman, a Miss Margaret Sugden, who had been trapped in a bath for two days and three nights. ‘It ended,’ read Eleanor’s mother, ‘with two burly policemen – eyes carefully averted – lifting her out. It took them half an hour of gentle levering, for Miss Sugden, a well-rounded sixteen stone, was helplessly stuck’
He laughed. Her mother stubbed her cigarette out on her saucer and lit a fresh one. Her mother never ate anything at breakfast-time. She drank three cups of tea and smoked the same number of cigarettes. He liked a large breakfast, eggs and bacon, fried bread, a chop sometimes.
‘History’s longest soak,’ her mother said, still quoting from the Daily Express. Her father laughed again.
Eleanor rose and carried the dish she’d eaten her Special Κ out of to the sink, with her cup and her saucer. She rinsed them under the hot tap and stacked them on the red, plastic-covered rack to dry. Her mother spoke in amazed tones when she read pieces out of the newspaper, surprised by the activities of people and animals, never amused by them. Some part of her had been smashed to pieces.
She said goodbye to both of them. Her mother kissed her as she always did. Winking, her father told her not to take any wooden dollars, an advice that was as regular and as mechanical as her mother’s embrace.
‘Netball is it?’ her mother vaguely asked, not looking up from the newspaper. There wasn’t netball, Eleanor explained, as she’d explained before, in the summer term: she wouldn’t be late back.
She left the flat and descended three flights of concrete stairs. She passed the garages and then the estate’s playground, where Liz Jones had first of all been done. ‘Good-morning, Eleanor,’ a woman said to her, an Irish woman called Mrs Rourke. ‘Isn’t it a great day?’
Eleanor smiled. The weather was lovely, she said. Mrs Rourke was a lackadaisical woman, middle-aged and fat, the mother of eight children. On the estate it was said that she was no better than she should be, that one of her sons, who had a dark tinge in his pallor, was the child of a West Indian railway porter. Another of Mrs Rourke’s children and suspect also, a girl of Eleanor’s age called Dolly, was reputed to be the daughter of Susie Crumm’s father. In the dream Eleanor had had in which her own mother was fat rather than thin it had seemed that her mother had somehow become Mrs Rourke, because in spite of everything Mrs Rourke was a happy woman. Her husband had a look of happiness about him also, as did all the Rourke children, no matter where they’d come from. They regularly went to Mass, all together in a family outing, and even if Mrs Rourke occasionally obliged Susie Crumm’s father and others it hadn’t taken the same toll of her as the obliging of Eleanor’s-father by her mother had. For years, ever since she’d listened to Liz Jones telling the class the full facts of life, Eleanor had been puzzled by the form the facts apparently took when different people were involved. She’d accepted quite easily the stories about Mrs Rourke and had thought no less of the woman, but when Dolly Rourke had said, about a month ago, that she’d been done by Rogo Pollini, Eleanor had felt upset, not caring to imagine the occasion, as she didn’t care to imagine the occasion that took place every morning after breakfast in her parents’ bedroom. Mrs Rourke didn’t matter because she was somehow remote, like one of the people her mother read about in the Daily Express or one of the celebrities her father told lies about: Mrs Rourke didn’t concern her, but Dolly Rourke and Rogo Pollini did because they were close to her, being the same as she was and of the same generation. And her parents concerned her because they were close to her also. You could no longer avoid any of it when you thought of Dolly Rourke and Rogo Pollini, or your parents.
She passed a row of shops, Len Parrish the baker, a dry cleaner’s, the Express Dairy Supermarket, the newsagent’s and post office, the off-licence attached to the Northumberland Arms. Girls in the grey-and-purple uniform of Springfield Comprehensive alighted in numbers from a bus. A youth whistled at her. ‘Hi, Eleanor,’ said Gareth Swayles, coming up behind her. In a friendly manner he put his hand on her back, low down, so that, as though by accident, he could in a moment slip it over her buttocks.
There’s a new boy in Grimes the butcher’s, Liz Jones wrote on a piece of paper. He’s not on the estate at all. She folded the paper and addressed it to Eleanor. She passed it along the row of desks.
‘Je l’ai vu qui travaillait dans la cour,’ said Miss Whitehead.
I saw him in Grimes, Eleanor wrote. Funny-looking fish. She passed the note back and Liz Jones read it and showed it to her neighbour, Thelma Joseph. Typical Eleanor, Liz Jones wrote and Thelma Joseph giggled slightly.
‘Un anglais qui passait ses vacances en France,’ said Miss Whitehead.
Miss Whitehead lived in Esher, in a bed-sitting-room. Girls had sometimes visited her there and those who had done so described for others what Miss Whitehead’s residence was like. It was very clean and comfortable and neat. White paint shone on the window ledges and the skirting-boards, lace curtains hung close to sparkling glass. On the mantelpiece there were ornaments in delicate ceramic, Highland sheep and cockerels, and a chimney sweep with his brushes on his back. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, and in the fireplace – no longer used – Miss Whitehead had stood a vase of dried flowers. Her bed was in a recess, not at all obtrusive in the room, a narrow divan covered in cheerful chintz.
‘Le pêcheur,’ said Miss Whitehead, ‘est un homme qui… Eleanor?’
‘Pêche?’
‘Très bien. Et la blanchisseuse est une femme qui…?’
‘Lave le linge.’
Liz Jones said it must be extraordinary to be Miss Whitehead, never to have felt a man’s hand on you. Gareth Swayles said he’d give it to her, she’d written on one of the notes she was constantly passing round the class. Imagine Swayles in bed with Whitehead!
‘La mère n’aime pas le fromage,’ said Miss Whitehead, and Liz Jones passed another note to Eleanor. The new boy in Grimes is called Denny Price, it said. He wants to do you.
‘Eleanor,’ said Miss Whitehead.
She lo
oked up from the elaborately looped handwriting of Liz Jones. In their bedroom her father would be making the noises he used to make in the wrestling ring. Her mother would be lying there. Once, when she was small, she’d gone in by mistake and her father had been standing without his clothes on. Her mother had pulled a sheet up to cover her own nakedness.
‘Why are you writing notes, Eleanor?’
‘She didn’t, Miss Whitehead,’ Liz Jones said. ‘I sent her –’
‘Thank you, Elizabeth. Eleanor?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Whitehead.’
‘Were you writing notes, Eleanor?’
‘No, I –’
‘I sent her the note, Miss Whitehead. It’s a private matter –’
‘Not private in my class, Elizabeth. Pass me the note, Eleanor.’
Liz Jones was sniggering: Eleanor knew that she’d wanted this to happen. Miss Whitehead would read the note out, which was her rule when a note was found.
‘The new boy in Grimes is called Denny Price,’ Miss Whitehead said. ‘He wants to do you.’
The class laughed, a muffled sound because the girls’ heads were bent over their desks.
‘He wants to have sexual relations with Eleanor,’ Liz Jones explained, giggling more openly. ‘Eleanor’s a –’
‘Thank you, Elizabeth. The future tense, Elizabeth: s’asseoir.’
Her voice grated in the classroom. Her voice had become unattractive also, Eleanor thought, because she’d never let herself be loved. In her clean bed-sitting-room she might weep tonight, recalling the insolence of Liz Jones. She’d punish Liz Jones when the bell went, the way she always inflicted punishment. She’d call her name out and while the others left the room she’d keep the girl longer than was necessary, setting her a piece of poetry to write out ten times and explaining, as if talking to an infant, that notes and conversation about sexual matters were not permitted in her classroom. She’d imply that she didn’t believe that the boy in Grimes’ had said what Liz Jones had reported he’d said. She’d pretend it was all a fantasy, that no girl from Springfield Comprehensive had ever been done in the playground of the estate or anywhere else. It was easy for Miss Whitehead, Eleanor thought, escaping to her bed-sitting-room in Esher.
‘It’s your bloody fault,’ Liz Jones said afterwards in the washroom. ‘If you weren’t such a curate’s bitch –’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, shut up about it!’ Eleanor cried.
‘Denny Price wants to give you his nine inches –’
‘I don’t want his bloody nine inches. I don’t want anything to do with him.’
‘You’re under-sexed, Eleanor. What’s wrong with Denny Price?’
‘He’s peculiar-looking. There’s something the matter with his head.’
‘Will you listen to this!’ Liz Jones cried, and the girls who’d gathered round tittered. ‘What’s his head got to do with it for God’s sake? It’s not his head that’s going to –’ She broke off, laughing, and all the girls laughed also, even though several of them didn’t at all care for Liz Jones.
‘You’ll end like Whitehead,’ Liz Jones said. ‘Doing yourself in Esher.’ The likes of Whitehead, she added, gave you a sickness in your kidneys. Eleanor had the same way of walking as Whitehead had, which was a way that dried-up virgins acquired because they were afraid to walk any other way in case a man touched their dried-up bottoms.
Eleanor went away, moving through the girls of other classes, across the washroom.
‘Liz Jones is a nasty little tit,’ a girl called Eileen Reid whispered, and Joan Moate, a fair-haired girl with a hint of acne, agreed. But Liz Jones couldn’t hear them. Liz Jones was still laughing, leaning against a wash-basin with a cigarette in her mouth.
For lunch that day at Springfield Comprehensive there was stew and processed potatoes and carrots, with blancmange afterwards, chocolate and strawberry.
‘Don’t take no notice,’ Susie Crumm said to Eleanor. The way Liz Jones went on, she added, it wouldn’t suprise her to hear that she’d contracted syphilis.
‘What’s it like, Susie?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Syphilis? You get lesions. If you’re a girl you can’t tell sometimes. Fellas get them all over their equipment –’
‘No, I mean what’s it like being done?’
‘’Sail right. Nice really. But not like Jones goes for it. Not all the bloody time.’
They ate spoonfuls of blancmange, sucking it through their teeth.
‘’Sail right,’ Susie Crumm repeated when she’d finished. ‘’Sail right for an occasion.’
Eleanor nodded. She wanted to say that she’d prefer to keep it for her wedding night, but she knew that if she said that she’d lose Susie Crumm’s sympathy. She wanted it to be special, not just a woman lying down waiting for a man to finish taking his clothes off; not just a fumbling in the dark of the estate playground, or something behind the Northumberland Arms, where Eileen Reid had been done.
‘My dad said he’d gut any fella that laid a finger on me,’ Susie Crumm said.
‘Jones’s said the same.’
‘He done Mrs Rourke. Jones’s dad.’
‘They’ve all done Mrs Rourke.’ For a moment she wanted to tell the truth: to add that Susie Crumm’s dad had done Mrs Rourke also, that Dolly Rourke was Susie’s half-sister.
‘You’ve got a moustache growing on you,’ Liz Jones said, coming up behind her and whispering into her hair.
The afternoon of that day passed without incident at Springfield Comprehensive, while on the estate Eleanor’s father slept. He dreamed that he was wrestling again. Between his knees he could feel the ribs of Eddie Rodriguez; the crowd was calling out, urging him to give Eddie Rodriguez the final works. Two yards away, in the kitchen, Eleanor’s mother prepared a meal. She cut cod into pieces, and sliced potatoes for chips. He liked a crisply fried meal at half past six before watching a bit of television. She liked cod and chips herself, with tinned peas, and bread and butter and apricot jam, and Danish pastries and tea, and maybe a tin of pears. She’d bought a tin of pears in the Express Dairy: they might as well have them with a tin of Carnation cream. She’d get everything ready and then she’d run an iron over his uniform, sponging off any spots there were. She thought about Crossroads on the television, wondering what would happen in the episode today.
‘I’d remind you that the school photographs will be taken on Tuesday,’ Miss Whitehead said. ‘Clean white blouses, please.’
They would all be there: Eleanor, Liz Jones, Susie Crumm, Eileen Reid, Joan Moate, Mavis Temple, and all the others: forty smiling faces, and Miss Whitehead standing at the end of the middle row. If you kept the photograph it would be a memory for ever, another record of the days at Springfield Comprehensive. ‘Who’s that with the bow legs?’ her father had asked a few years ago, pointing at Miss Homber.
‘Anyone incorrectly dressed on Tuesday,’ Miss Whitehead said, ‘will forfeit her place in the photo.’
The bell rang for the end of school. ‘Forfeit her bloody knickers,’ said Liz Jones just before Miss Whitehead left the classroom.
The girls dispersed, going off in twos and threes, swinging the briefcases that contained their school books.
‘Walk with you?’ Susie Crumm suggested to Eleanor, and together they left the classrooms and the school. ‘Baking, innit?’ Susie Crumm remarked.
They walked slowly, past concrete buildings, the Eagle Star Insurance Company, Barclays Bank, the Halifax Building Society. Windows were open, the air was chalky dry. Two girls in front of them had taken off their shoes but now, finding the pavement too hot to walk on, had paused to put them on again. The two girls shrieked, leaning on one another. Women pushed prams around them, irritation in their faces.
‘I want to get fixed in a Saxone,’ Susie Crumm said. ‘Can’t wait to leave that bloody place.’
An Evening Standard van swerved in front of a bus, causing the bus-driver to shout and blow his horn. In the cab of the van the driver’s mate raised two
fingers in a gesture of disdain.
‘I fancy selling shoes,’ Susie Crumm said. ‘Fashion shoes type of thing. You get them at cost if you work in a Saxone.’
Eleanor imagined the slow preparation of the evening meal in her parents’ flat, and the awakening of her father. He’d get up and shave himself, standing in the bathroom in his vest, braces hanging down, his flies half open. Her mother spent ages getting the evening meal, breaking off to see to his uniform and then returning to the food. He couldn’t bear not being a wrestler any more.
‘What you going to do, Eleanor?’
She shook her head. She didn’t know what she was going to do. All she wanted was to get away from the estate and from Springfield Comprehensive. She wondered what it would be like to work in the Eagle Star Insurance Company, but at the moment that didn’t seem important. What was important was the exact present, the afternoon of a certain day, a day that was like others except for the extreme heat. She’d go home and there the two of them would be, and in her mind there’d be the face of Miss Whitehead and the voice of Liz Jones. She’d do her homework and then there’d be Crossroads on the TV and then the fried meal and the washing-up and more TV, and then he’d go, saying it was time she was in bed. ‘See you in the morning,’ he’d say and soon after he’d gone they’d both go to bed, and she’d lie there thinking of being married in white lace in a church, to a delicate man who Wouldn’t hurt her, who’d love the virginal innocence that had been kept all these years for him alone. She’d go away in a two-piece suit on an autumn afternoon when the leaves in London were yellow-brown. She’d fly with a man whose fingers were long and thin and gentle, who’d hold her hand in the aeroplane, Air France to Biarritz. And after wards she’d come back to a flat where the curtains were the colour of lavender, the same as the walls, where gas-fires glowed and there were rugs on natural-wood floors, and the telephone was pale blue.
‘What’s matter?’ Susie Crumm asked.
The Collected Stories Page 22