Alice observed that, at some time since she had last been in his company, Father Zak had enveloped his girth in a shirt and a pair of trousers which he must have taken from his saddlebag. After he had made her tea, she saw him glance a little anxiously at his watch.
‘Alice,’ he said, ‘would you mind? I ought to call my sister. She’s expecting me for lunch in Cambridge.’
‘Cambridge?’ Alice said, thinking it rather a distance in view of the advancing hour.
‘Yes, Cambridge,’ said Father Zak mildly. ‘Newnham Croft. Do you happen to know Cambridge, Alice?’
Father Zak’s sister had a telephone voice so piercingly confrontational that Alice could hear the woman clearly from over five yards off. Intermittently Father Zak would say, ‘Jude . . . but Jude . . . say, Jude . . .’ But the sibling voice rolled right on over him. Alice discovered herself glad of the entertainment. She went through to the kitchen and picked up the extension.
‘Hello?’ said Father Zak’s sister, sounding extremely piqued. ‘Do I detect the telltale echo? And who the hell are you, then? The resident heavy breather?’
‘I’m Alice Angeletti,’ Alice said. ‘I’m a friend in need, I suppose. I want you to please stop bullying your brother who has been indispensable round here. He has nurtured the fallen. He has found headache pills and laced people’s tea with whisky.’
‘What whisky?’ said Father Zak’s sister.
‘Glenlivet, I believe,’ said Alice, wondering why she wanted so much to find favour with Father Zak’s sister. ‘Duty-free. You know.’
‘You swine, Zakky,’ said Father Zak’s sister, reverting to her brother. ‘And all the time it’s me that’s needing the bloody Glenlivet, as you know. You get your fat rump over here and bring that bottle with you.’
‘Jude . . .’ said Father Zak. ‘Say, Jude . . .’
‘And bring that friend of yours as well,’ said the sibling. ‘I really like the sound of her.’
* * *
And so it was that, when Christina called from Dulcie’s house, Joe and Pam were on their way to Roland and Alice was on her way to Cambridge. Granny P, who was sound asleep, was in no position to pick up the phone.
Joe turned up the following day. He was not accompanied by Alice, who had stayed over, unexpectedly, at the house of Father Zak’s sister, but she had now returned to her mother’s house to keep Pam company. It was Granny P who had come with Joe. Unbeknown to Christina, Alice was, for the moment, feeling so distanced from her husband – both by virtue of his overbearing role in Pam’s affairs and by the new strength that had been lent her by Father Zak’s bossy sister – that she had preferred not to travel with him in the same car. Her plan was to make the contact later, when Chrissie, she imagined, would be better disposed to receive her.
Mrs Jackson greeted her visitors warmly and asked them into the front room. Then she went to make a pot of tea and to summon both the girls from Dulcie’s bedroom. Christina entered reluctantly and sat, sullen and hostile, at the furthest point from her father. Dulcie was bubbly and charming and showed up rather well.
Granny P, like Christina, was guarded and uncomfortable. She perched stiffly, clutching at her handbag, her knees neatly together. Alice’s mother found that drinking her tea was more difficult than she had hoped. She knew that her son-in-law despised her for it, but the barrier in her case was one of relative ethnic naivety. She had nothing against ‘them’, as she had been known to remark in the past. Far from it. Yet the drinking of tea now gave her a feeling of slight unease – not unlike the feeling one got upon occupying an empty seat on a bus and finding it still warm from an unknown posterior.
Joe and Mrs Jackson talked easily together, mainly about Mrs Jackson’s job, in a sparky, unserious sort of way. It was evident, much to Christina’s annoyance, that an element of sexual chemistry was oiling the wheels of their discourse.
‘Come now, girl,’ Mrs Jackson said suddenly, beginning to gather up tea-cups. ‘Your da come to take you home for Christmas. Lucky girl, you.’ With that she left to carry out the tea things and gave her visitor the floor.
Joe got up. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Go get your stuff. Mrs Jackson has been very kind.’
Christina, who had not thus far uttered a word, now paused before she did so, for fear of choking on indignation. She remained pointedly glued to her chair.
‘What have you done with my sister?’ she said, her words coming slowly, like little vials of poison.
Joe sighed heavily. ‘Chrissie,’ he said, ‘don’t be childish. Your sister, as you very well know, is pregnant. It must be self-evident, even to you, surely, that she is having a difficult time. It would be enormously helpful to her if you – if all of us – could sink our differences and give her our best support.’
‘Just so long as we all of us fall in with your agenda,’ she said. ‘No, thanks. Count me out. If you call that support what I saw you doing to her yesterday, well, I want nothing to do with it. I want nothing to do with any of you. Frankly, I’ve had it up to the neck. I want you all to get out of my life and leave me alone from now on. If you think that I’ll come back and be a part of your little fan club; if you think I’ll come back so you can screw up my sister and have me for an audience –’
Joe winced slightly. ‘Oh, Chrissie,’ he said. ‘Come on now. Pam’s life is entirely her own.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Christina mumbled, but he ignored it.
‘I intend that you will come back with me now,’ he said. ‘And also that you will conduct yourself civilly through Christmas. After that, I’m perfectly willing for you to return to your school here in England – if that’s what you really want. If you feel that a certain distance from the rest of us would be helpful to you through all of this. I must tell you, however, that I have already withdrawn your sister. I really had no alternative.’
‘Great,’ Christina said. ‘Terrific. Just pull her out of school before her exams.’ She got up suddenly and moved towards the door. ‘So long,’ she said. ‘I need a walk.’
She left the house and crossed Seven Sisters Road. She entered the local branch of Tesco’s, directly across from Dulcie’s house. There she began to fill a shopping trolley with items chosen at random. Tamarind sauce and bargain biscuits. Tuna fish in brine. Long-life batteries, size AA. A litre bottle of lime juice. A bag of King Edward potatoes. Six free-range eggs, class A, size 2. Extra-length Luxury Paper Towel. A bag of Pedigree Chum Small Bite Mixer, chain-stitched across the top with coarse brown string. She had an idea that her father, were he to try coming after her, would not think to look inside a supermarket.
After a while she began to experiment. She tossed in throw-away nappies and two bottles of baby oil. She chose four jars of Gerber baby food and a box of Farley’s rusks. She tried to imagine that she was Pam. She began to walk with her stomach stuck out in front and her back severely arched. She splayed her feet as best she could and adopted a penguin waddle. It felt disgusting, she decided. As she walked, she mumbled to herself. Damn them. Damn them all. Damn my father. Damn my sister. Most especially damn my mother. Why is she letting this happen? Remind me not to become a wimp when I grow up. Better to sell double glazing.
After a while, she noticed that other shoppers were giving her funny looks. A grey-suited floor manager had got her under surveillance. Then suddenly she was crying. Tears were running down her face. The floor manager hailed a female attendant who drew her aside and stuffed the pocket of her jeans with wads of Kleenex. She was encouraged to abandon her trolley as she was shepherded through to the back, past disassembled cartons and a row of friendly butchers making up polystyrene parcels of meat.
Then they came upon a tea-making region where several women in identical smocks offered comfort and hot drinks. It was all a bit like Being Saved, Christina thought. She’d seen it on the television. Born Again Clappies. If you stood up in the marquee to Be Saved, then a lady ushered you through to the back and you got to see what it looked like. Mostly, aft
er that, you just returned to your seat in the auditorium and you sang stuff like ‘I met Jesus at the Crossroads’ instead of ‘Mary Immaculate, Star of the Morning’. So what?
The ladies had all by then benevolently agreed that the shopper must recently have lost her baby.
When she finally got back to Dulcie’s house, darkness had overtaken the world. Her father and her grandmother were gone. It was evident from Dulcie’s spirited report that – after waiting a whole hour at the house – Joe had finally admitted defeat and had left in a condition of ill-concealed fury. He was angry as much with himself for having been patient and reasonable with his daughter, when what he ought to have done, Goddamnit, was heave her bodily out of the house and bundle her into the car.
As things stood, he had achieved absolutely nothing except the prospect of Alice’s sarcastic recriminations and the more immediate prospect of a stony drive back in the company of his damp-eyed mother-in-law. Alice’s mother was, in truth, always uneasy when left alone with him, so she desisted, en route, from offering any opinion, except to venture – timorously and once only – that she did not like to think of little Chrissie sleeping another night with ‘those’ people.
‘ “Those” are perfectly delightful people,’ Joe snapped irritably. ‘And far better than Chrissie deserves. My concern is merely that they may tire of her by bedtime and turn her out to spend the night in a doorway.’ After that they maintained a judicious silence.
When Joe called Mrs Jackson from a mobile phone in the car, Christina had returned, she said, but was refusing to come to the telephone. All the same, he found Dulcie’s mother so warm and unfussed about the business of billeting his daughter, that he was not only reassured, but much revived.
‘I’m indebted to you, Mrs Jackson,’ he said. ‘Beat the girl for me, won’t you? Lock her up at once on bread and water.’
Mrs Jackson laughed heartily. ‘Don’t you worry there, honey child,’ she said. ‘Anything to oblige you.’
That evening, after supper, Christina was telephoned twice. Once by her grandmother and once by her mother.
Granny P assured her that she understood completely just exactly how Christina felt. The whole thing with Pam had been absolutely dreadful and her father had obviously steamrollered the girl, but what else had one come to expect?
Chrissie’s problem, however, was easily resolved. First of all, Granny P said, they would stay at home for Christmas. Just the two of them. Then, after that, since Chrissie meant to finish her education in England, there was no reason why she should return to her boarding school. She would live at Granny P’s house and attend Mummy’s old day school. Mummy’s name was up there in gold letters in the Assembly Hall and the current Head would, sans doubt, be overjoyed to accommodate Mummy’s progeny.
Alice, too, assured her daughter that she understood completely just exactly how Chrissie felt. The whole thing with Pam had been too dreadful – but what else had one come to expect?
‘Now, Chrissie,’ Alice said, ‘what about you and me? Just the two of us. Why don’t we change the plan for Christmas? Perhaps you would like the island of Sark? Perhaps you would like the Mull of Kintyre? Somewhere utterly, wonderfully alone. Or perhaps you would like my new chum to come along? She’s terrific fun, Chrissie. She’s a whirlwind. And she is truly formidable in the presence of Glenlivet. We could have the most adorable, girlie time together.’
Alice waited for Christina to reply, but a reply was not forthcoming. ‘Then afterwards, my sweetie,’ she said, ‘of course you can stay at school in England, but maybe you’d prefer a nice quiet girls’ school? Say, what about that Quaker school in York?’
Christina swallowed hard. ‘I’ve decided I don’t want to see you,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see any of you. I’m sorry, but I really need you all to leave me alone.’
For the second night running, Christina and Dulcie shared Dulcie’s thirty-inch bed. They had learnt the art of sleeping stretched out, flat and straight. No bumps or curves. In the morning, Dulcie got ready for school. She wore her jeans with the yellow stretch bust bodice and the backless high-heeled shoes. The terms were longer in the state schools and Dulcie hadn’t yet broken up for Christmas.
‘You might as well come to school wiv me, Chris,’ she said. ‘It’s no good you skiving here indoors.’
Part Four
Balancing
Judith and Dulcie.
Late and Early Perpendicular
Judith was definitely perpendicular. That was the first thing Christina noticed about her. She saw Judith for the first time on the evening of her first day. Everything was just beginning, yet everything, until that moment, had seemed so dull. Then suddenly there was Judith, at the far end of the room, standing where she had not been before.
Judith was dark-haired and beautiful and six foot tall. She was wearing a scarlet raw silk party dress which, being ruched, wrapped her briefly from cleavage to crotch like tissue paper round a bunch of St Valentine’s Day roses.
Christina was eighteen. Almost three years had passed since the day she had first set off to school with her friend Dulcie Jackson. She was attending a party given for new undergraduates by the college secretary. She had been standing near the door, attempting a little interaction with a group of cowed newcomers. The women among the undergraduates – with the exception of the one glowering metal exponent – were dressed either in drooping pastel or, like Christina, in sweatshirts and jeans. The men – with the exception of those who had done ‘a year out’ in India – were short-haired and either blazered or tweedy.
Since the secretary’s manner was one of conspicuous and guilt-inducing bustle, the youthful guests had become increasingly timid and apologetic, as though they felt their presence there to be a nuisance to her. The only ice-breaker, Christina noticed, had been the secretary’s cat – a rotund, beige eunuch with a startling raven’s croak.
Christina, just as the vision of Judith had intruded to distract her, had been endeavouring to determine what the party was all about. Was it a mechanism through which the secretary, by getting in first and chalking up Brownie points, could annex the loyalty of all incoming undergraduates against other, rival claimants? If not, where were the college dons? Or was the party merely a condition of the unfortunate woman’s employment? Written into her contract? Something like the charters of those medieval grammar schools that made it obligatory to provision each impecunious scholar with a measure of small beer at breakfast? Thou shalt feed Warm Sherry and Pretzel-Flavoured Bread Sticks to all Newly Entered Scholars on the Fourth Day of October.
In this perceptibly damp context Judith looked electric. Christina thought she looked as if she had just leapt from a millionaire’s cake.
The college secretary was suddenly at her elbow. She topped up Christina’s glass before she spoke.
‘There is somebody here who wants to meet you,’ she said. ‘If you will come this way.’
Christina followed the ball-bearing action of her hostess’s busy rump. The woman, being not only purposeful but stocky and wide around the hips, was making an effective pathway through the throng. She was wearing a scratchy-looking, knee-length kilt made of heavy wool and finished with leather straps and buckles – the real McCoy, this kilt, Christina thought – no fashion item, this. The secretary’s legs were clothed in opaque, white tights and, like a highwayman, she wore a bunch of lace at her throat.
‘Judy,’ said the college secretary. ‘This is Christina. Christina – Judy.’
‘ “Judy”,’ Judith said promptly, ‘is the abused wife of a misogynist in a seaside pantomime. Nobody calls me Judy.’
‘Nobody?’ said the secretary, her manner touched, just perceptibly, with a hint of unpleasant innuendo. She left, at once, to play busy hostess elsewhere.
‘My name,’ Judith said, ‘is Judith.’ She paused and looked rather fiercely at Christina. ‘ “Judith”,’ she said, ‘drove a tent peg through the head of a Babylonian general. In one temple and out the oth
er. Bingo. She nailed him to the floor.’ Judith accompanied this intelligence with a small, satisfying gesture, tapping with the knuckles of her right hand upon those of her left. ‘I was named, you see, after one of the Great Redeemers of Israel.’
‘Me too,’ Christina said.
Judith blinked. Then she laughed. When Judith laughed, she revealed that her wide, red mouth was crowded with small, slightly overlapping white teeth. ‘True,’ she said. ‘That’s true. Still, if we are talking female role models here –’ She broke off and took possession of Christina’s glass.
‘If we are talking female role models here,’ Christina said quickly, ‘then my name-saint could break through leg-irons and sing plainchant while doing headstands on a gate.’
Judith laughed again, showing her pretty, criss-cross teeth. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Chrissie. It’s great to meet you. I mean really. Follow me.’
In the kitchen, Judith surprised Christina by extracting a silver hip flask from her clutch-bag. Then, from a cupboard, she took down two gargantuan green tumblers with tiny bubbles set into the glass. They looked like stage props from the giant’s table in the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk.
‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ Judith said. ‘A precaution against Fiona’s drinking habits. She gets in the twice annual bulk-buy for occasions such as this.’
She banged an ice-tray forcefully on the drainer, making the ice cubes jump. Then, having allotted the tumblers a good five ice cubes each, she doused them from the hip flask and she placed a glass in Christina’s hand.
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