by Minna Howard
‘So, how are you, Mum? Is Dad there?’
She knew from her daughter’s voice how she longed for her to say: yes, it was nothing, just a silly blip in our lives, we are staying together. The house is a home again. Dad is chasing the snails in the garden, or reading the sports page in the newspaper in his favourite chair (not the cornflower one). She said, ‘No, love, he’s not. Things haven’t changed; he wants his space, he’s worked hard all his life and—’ Why was she making excuses for him? He was of sound mind, as far as she knew, and had made this brutal decision to end their marriage himself. She didn’t want him back, not the man he had become.
‘So you’re all alone, Oh, Mum… I…’
She forced herself to laugh; it sounded more like a cry for help. ‘Of course I’m not alone; no one’s alone in the Crescent, you know that. Linda rang just before you, wants me to join the Bridge Club and apart from the shop that takes up much of my time, there’s lots for me to do, people around. I’ll be able to get out more now I’m…’ she cursed the wobble in her voice, ‘now I haven’t got to cook dinner every night.’ How she longed to cook dinner, sit with Dan in comfortable apathy with a glass of wine, indulging in what he used to call ‘Tesco talk’.
‘I can’t bear to think of you alone.’ She heard the tears in Polly’s voice.
‘I’ve often been here alone when Dad was away on business trips,’ she reminded her. But she hadn’t felt lonely then, glad sometimes of a few days to herself to catch up on things, busy with preparations for his return. ‘I have my job, and anyway, I too need a new life. You and Tim have your own lives, just as it should be and—’
‘Yes, but you and Dad should have your own life together. You have time and money now to do more exciting things now that we are gone.’
‘Pol things don’t always work out as we went them to.’ If only she could take her own advice.
‘I hate Dad for doing this. It’s disgusting , this bitch is only ten years older than me. How could he love her more than you?’ Her voice was that of a hurt child.
There was no answer. When Tim and Polly had both left for university, within a year of each other, Dan and Sarah went out more, took little trips with friends before these had petered out for no particular reason; though plans were made for more trips later on. Dan became quieter, sunk into himself, there were crises at work apparently and he told her not to bother to cook supper for him he’d grab something easy if he were hungry when he got home. He bought a sports car with just two seats, no room for a family.
‘I want a bit of fun,’ he’d said, ‘I’ve worked hard for it, we couldn’t afford it when we first married, I think I deserve to spend some of my hard earned cash on myself.’
She’d understood, smiled with indulgence, even said what fun it would be to go on jaunts in the car, just the two of them. But it was not her he had bought it for, he did not want her beside him in his new toy.
Polly and Tim were bewildered at this sudden change to their comfortable, stable lives. Tim, in his last year at university studying Ancient History, hardly ever came home these days, but she knew he liked the bolster of knowing his home and parents were safely tucked up in the background of his life. Polly, at Art school, felt the same, and now Dan had for some unknown reason, torn out their security by the roots.
‘I’ll be fine, darling,’ Sarah said to Polly now, with a certainty she did not feel. ‘Now, tell me about this new bloke. What’s he like?’
He sounded like most blokes, yet he must be different to the others, as Daniel had been for her.
‘You’re still young, Mum, and you look great. You too might meet someone new,’ Polly said, with false cheerfulness.
‘I think it’s too late for that.’ She tried to sound jokey. She did not want anyone else. Could not go through this tearing rejection again. She had always tried to look good, even felt that her body was not bad for a woman her age who’d had two children, but now she recognised that it was no longer taut with youth. How would she dare to undress in front of another man? Dan had aged and yet she hadn’t cared , loved the familiarity of his body. He had obviously not felt the same way about hers. Had he had to psyche himself up, thinking of this other girl, before he could perform with her?
Her own husband had rejected her; how could she ever uncover herself for another man and risk his revulsion?
Two
‘Does this suit me?’ The middle-aged woman with the bulging thighs and bottle-blonde hair tugged at the delicate silk round her hips. She looked like a packet of meat straining from its plastic skin in the supermarket.
Sarah couldn’t tell Mrs Bradshaw the truth. She must tactfully suggest something else, to play along with the illusion that this woman had in her mind. Traces of beauty clung to her like a fading rose, but every time she came into the shop, she wildly underestimated her dress-size. In her imagination did she still see the thin, young woman she once used to be? She was relieved when Briar appeared before she could think up something to say.
An old friend, Celine had inherited this shop in a small street off the Fulham Road – which used to be a florist – from her aunt and they’d paired up to turn it into a clothes shop with beautiful clothes some of which Sarah designed made from luscious materials from India. Glowing silks embroidered with birds and flowers and butterflies inspiring Sarah to design exotic maxi dresses and jackets and exquisite trouser suits. Two women in the sewing room at the back of the shop made them up and did alterations so the clothes fitted each figure perfectly.
Briar was a slight, grey haired woman of interminable age who’d wandered into the shop one wintery afternoon and said she used to work in the fashion department at Harvey Nichols. Now, being a widow and childless, she was bored stiff of sitting at home all day with only day time television to occupy her, and if there was a job going please could she have it.
She was a marvel, straight speaking with the gift of being able to persuade the clients that the outfit she helped them choose did far more for them than the one they thought they wanted.
‘I think the green suits you better, Mrs Bradshaw,’ Briar said, holding up the green embroidered dress. It was a size bigger, and would not hug those hips quite so tightly.
‘But I love this blue, so rich…’ Mrs Bradshaw trilled, turning herself again, as if to hide the offending bulges.
‘Now, Mrs Bradshaw, I’d like to see you in the green, or even this raspberry pink.’ Briar said as she took the dress off the rack. ‘That blue drains your colour .’ Briar whisked her and the clothes she’d chosen for her into a changing cubical leaving Sarah feeling despondent.
She felt hopeless at her work now, hopeless at everything. Celine had been wonderful when she’d heard of Dan’s leaving. She was so much easier to cope with than Linda was.
‘God, I’m sorry, Sarah. What a pig,’ she’d said, when she told her. ‘What can I do? Do you want time off?’
‘I don’t know,’ she’d sniffed; tears she had once thought dried up came too easily now, like rain in the monsoon, especially when people were kind. They both got in early, a good hour before the shop opened and before the women who did the alterations. It was the best time to discuss the sales, the materials and the staff, while they were on their own.
‘I don’t want you to have time off, Sarah. It’s not long till Ascot, Henley, and there’ll be all those summer weddings, when people buy the most. Anyway, what will you do with time off, apart from mope, which will kill you?’
‘I know. I want to work, I’ll have to anyway, and I only come in five days a week. I can manage that.’ Both of them usually took the weekend off, though the shop was closed anyway on Sundays.
‘Do you want to come in on Saturdays?’ Celine regarded her intently with her calm grey eyes.
‘No. I don’t want to change.’ She’d meant she didn’t want her life to change at all. She wanted Dan back where he belonged, so she could sink back in comfy relief into the niche she’d spent so much time and energy creating.<
br />
‘I’m glad now I never married,’ Celine said. ‘I know I wanted to when I was younger, but really only because everyone else was and I felt a sort of misfit not to have done it myself. But now I treasure my independence, and the feeling that no one can mess me about, hurt me as Dan has hurt you.’
The pain was as bitter as a bereavement, yet Dan was not dead. He was careering around in a red sports car with a girl young enough to be his daughter. It was hell thinking of that, thinking of him in bed with someone else. That was her trouble; she felt the act of sex was something special, something you shared only with someone you loved, someone who loved you. But it wasn’t like that today. Sex seemed to be on a par with a game of tennis, or a round of golf. You did it as a ‘need’, as your right to a normal life. Sex was used as a selling-point for everything, from jazzing up medieval fantasies on TV to selling chocolate bars. Seemingly everyone but her was at it. Had Dan felt left out too; felt he ought to join this libidinous bandwagon before he needed a prescription for Viagra?
‘I’m not the only one who’s been dumped,’ she said, wondering now if she’d been kind enough to other women she’d known who had been through the same shattering experience. In the general gossip after such an event, blame had often been laid on the deserted wives. ‘She never really bothered with her looks after the children were born’ or, ‘He worked far too hard, and she just spent all his money’. Various other failings were trotted out as if it were entirely the wife’s duty to keep the relationship going. What were they saying about her in the Crescent now?
Celine appeared from the back of the shop where she’d been chatting with the sewing women.
Mrs Bradshaw was persuaded by Briar into the raspberry dress and then into a matching coat. Delightedly she turned herself about, this way and that, in front of the mirror. Sarah envied her confidence, or was it her blindness? Did Mr Bradshaw still love her? Did he pay for her clothes?
When she’d gone and Briar was in the back making coffee Celine continued the conversation she and Sarah were having before Mrs Bradshaw arrived. ‘So, what will you do about money? Will you have to sell the house?’
‘Dan is still giving me just enough to help with the household bills. It makes him feel less guilty, and he doesn’t want a divorce – we all know how much that can cost—’
‘Cost who?’ Celine broke in. ‘It sounds to me as if he’s having his cake and gobbling it up, too. If you went to court, it would all be tied up properly. You must go for a lump sum, though. If he pays you in instalments and drops dead before he can pay it all, you lose out. And if he really does love this other woman, why doesn’t he want to marry her?’ she asked, in the abrupt way she had.
Sarah suspected that Celine thought her foolish agreeing with Dan over this – or, at least, going along with it. It was hard to explain that she felt numb, too apathetic with grief and bewilderment to fight him over this. Divorce was too final. Keeping things as they were at least left a tiny path open between them.
‘This way I get to keep the house. I don’t want to move,’ she said, ignoring the painful thought that Dan had done it as a bribe to keep his payments to her low. ‘The house is my only emotional security. It reminds me that once we were a happy family.’
‘Then I’d sell it, move to something smaller and pocket the difference. You’ve got to move on, love. You’ve done your bit, bringing up the children and all. Look on this as a new freedom. Think!’ Celine threw her an encouraging smile. ‘Now you can do whatever you like.’
Sarah tried to smile back. That was what was so terrifying; she knew what she wanted, a rewind of her life. Things to be safely back as they used to be. Celine guessed this and gave her a hug.
‘There’s no going back,’ she said. ‘There never is, for any of us. Now, why don’t we do a new collection? I’ve been thinking about it for ages: fabulous sexy underwear to go under these clothes. I can get masses of that lovely soft silk, in all sorts of colours. What do you think?’
Sarah laughed. ‘Bras are more complicated to design than a suspension bridge!’
‘You could learn, and anyway, they would be designed especially for the evening, to wear under these clothes. Not for all day, or going to the gym.’ Celine’s eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘Imagine Mrs Bradshaw in her raspberry embroidered coat, then her raspberry silk dress.’ She giggled. ‘Then a raspberry silk bra and pants. Perhaps even with a little embroidered butterfly or flower somewhere strategic, to match up on the coat.’
‘You’d need an awful lot of silk to cover her boobs.’
‘Tow ropes to hold them up!’ Celine joked ‘But if we did just a few sizes; smaller sizes, for women who don’t need quite so much coverage.’
We want to get more men in here, buying for their girlfriends,’ Celine said with enthusiasm.
Girlfriends, Sarah thought bitterly. Could men not buy them for their wives? Did becoming a wife make a woman so lacking in sex appeal, that sexy underwear would be wasted on her? But Dan wasn’t that sexy, not any more. His legs had become thin and pale, his bottom all but disappeared, or anyway gone round to his stomach. He stooped a little, reminding her of an ageing heron. Yet, only a few weeks ago she had loved him, felt comfort curled up against his body in the night. It was loving him that made this hurt so much.
At lunch-time, a pretty young girl came in with an older man. She had long blonde hair and a baby mouth. Under her mock fur coat she wore a tight top that finished just above her flat, stomach, and low cut skinny black trousers. A silver stud winked from her tummy-button. The man was about fifty, with steel-grey hair and a blue pinstriped suit. Her father? Her lover? Before Dan left her, Sarah wouldn’t have cared a bit, live and let live, but now she hated this unsuspecting man for preying on this young girl.
‘Can I help you?’ Sarah addressed the girl as Briar had popped out to the bank for them.
‘I want to try on one of those maxi dresses.’ The girl meandered over to the rack where they hung. They were made of bright silk, embroidered with flowers, tiny birds or butterflies.
Sarah sized her up; unlike Mrs Bradshaw, this girl was far too thin, she could be a six. She handed her a pale pink dress and a cream one.
‘This is all we have in your size at the moment, but we can make something up to order.’
‘I wanted black,’ the girl pouted, a spoilt baby with a spoilt voice.
‘We can make you one,’ Sarah repeated, ‘though it would cost a bit more as it would be fitted just for you.’
The girl looked bored as she listlessly riffled through the rest of the clothes on the rack. The man hovered uncomfortably by the door.
Sarah moved away from her, letting her browse. She doubted she would buy anything. She knew the type; they liked to shop, they wanted to buy something now, this minute. They could not be bothered to wait for it.
She must have given the man a more severe look than she intended, for he blushed and looked awkward, said to the girl, ‘Is there nothing you like, pet?’
Pet. Was that what she was, his little pet to play with? Did Dan call his new girl that? The bitterness gnawed into her and she glowered at the man. Had he got a discarded wife somewhere, suffering as she was, while he made a fool of himself over this spoilt child?
The man’s lips tightened and a wave of despair crossed his face. ‘Why not have a silk jacket? There’s a pretty black one over there, on that rail,’ he said reasonably, going over to the jacket, black with embroidered cuffs and collar.
‘No,’ the girl sighed. ‘I don’t see anything I want. Perhaps we could go to Harvey Nicks or Harrods.’
Briar coming back into the shop caught this remark.
‘You’ve got a lovely figure,’ she gushed. ‘Now I’m not quite sure what you are looking for, but this dress would look wonderful on you.’ She pounced on a pale-blue one in the middle of the rack. It was a sample. Sarah knew it was not one of her best designs, and it had not sold very well, but in a moment Briar had the dress on the girl and it l
ooked as if it had been made for her.
‘That looks wonderful,’ the man enthused, catching the girl’s eyes in the mirror and smiling at her.
‘I don’t know. I wanted a black dress. The girl pirouetted in front of the mirror.
Sarah left them to this ridiculous charade, silently cursing all middle-aged men who chased after these young girls. They had had their turn when they were young; couldn’t they leave these girls to find boys of their own age? But then, she supposed young men often didn’t have the money or the savoir-faire that the older men possessed.
Did Dan parade his little chick in shops like this? Buy her all sorts of clothes to please her? To please him?
When they had first met, Dan was still studying and he did not have the money to indulge her so. Once, he’d saved up all his bus fares, walking to college in the wind and rain, to buy her a silk shirt. That was real love. A lump grew in her throat like an expanding balloon. When they’d got money, like this man – and Daniel now – they were only buying something for themselves. It was a form of bribery, keeping these girls sweet with presents so they would disregard their failing bodies. After all, you never saw a poor old man with a pretty young girl on his arm, did you?
She looked at this man with pity now. Did he really have to demean himself so? Could he not find a woman nearer his own age? Perhaps that was the truth of it. His self-esteem was such that he couldn’t compete with one. He needed a foolish child to look up to him, to be impressed by him.
Catching her look, the man regarded her with concern. He had kind eyes, she thought suddenly, and he was attractive, well dressed and obviously intelligent. Why had he been hit by this destructive madness? She wanted to ask him, demand even, if he had a wife and children discarded somewhere.
Then she caught Celine’s anxious glance. She must not take out her misery on the customers. She had no right to. Perhaps she should stop work for a while until she’d got over this ridiculous hatred for middle-aged men with young females.