Living In Perhaps

by Julia Widdows

  I got my education elsewhere.

  Yet Lorna has said to me that I have (a) a wide vocabulary, and (b) a sharp mind, and what she hints at is: where did I get them from? Well, you can't inherit a wide vocabulary from a parent or parents you left behind at the age of one. So I must have used my sharp mind to pick it up somewhere. Neither nature nor nurture quite explains me. Maybe that's why Dr Travis sits there and writes so avidly with his little gold-topped pencil. I am an interesting study, a case in point.

  I ignored my education. It was just a tasteless meal placed before me, something I had to eat before I could get down. Everyone involved was too witless to see my finer points. Why should I help them out? So I looked and listened and picked up and absorbed. You can get a lot just by absorbing. Maybe that's what I would have learned in science if our science lessons had gone a little further.

  What I looked at and listened to was life. When I could get hold of any. And I read books, too, of course. Plenty of books. Thousands of books.

  The value of c is 6, by the way. Not that anyone's asking.

  My mother has a photograph, one of those whole-school photographs, taken when I was in the first year at the secondary mod. Had a photograph – perhaps I should say had. I doubt they've kept it, treasured it. I doubt they've kept anything. Swept the place clean. My books, my pyjama case, the puppy and kitten print from my bedroom wall. I wonder what happened to them? All erased, as if I had never been?

  It takes a long time to pick me out in the photograph, out of the hundreds of monochrome faces. We were arranged in rows, seated on the grass, seated on low benches, then standing on the grass, then standing behind on forms and benches. It took ages to arrange us all. 'Hands still. Smile please. Say cheese,' the photographer instructed, a professional entertainer's chirrup to his voice. 'Knees together, girls,' hissed the deputy head. My face, belonging to someone tall for their age, is somewhere in the middle, somewhere towards the left. Once you have found me, my shaving-brush bunches, my heavy fringe, give away Bettina's touch; but the girl beside me has bunches too, longer, a bit darker. The girl beside me is semi-blinking, glancing down as the shutter slides, which gives her the look of a dim carthorse. Others are smiling. There – now that you've got your eye in – further along is Mildred, and there is Natasha, half hidden behind a teacher's head. But look away, and it's hard to find us again. You have to search the rows of faces, find a marker: that teacher with the candy-floss hair, then go left for Natasha, back and left again, and – somewhere – there is me.

  No one would pick me out from that crowd as special.

  My school was not hot on careers advice. Miss Jessop, who had spent the entire thirty-five years of her adult life teaching religious education in girls' schools, was responsible for advising us on possible careers, between a full timetable of RE lessons and sorting out the Social Service rota. We had to go to see her in groups; there was no time for individual guidance. We were chopped up into alphabetical segments and sent along to find out how we might fruitfully spend the rest of our lives. Careers advice took place – there was no other space for it – in the medical room. The white enamel wall cabinet with the large red cross on it, the tingling smell of witch hazel, the big clean sink, lent a serious air to proceedings. So one day early in the summer term Mary Batty and Kay Bell and Christine Boyd and I found ourselves sitting on hard chairs in front of Miss Jessop, who looked uncomfortable and said, 'Well, girls, what did you have in mind?'

  It was the you-tell-me variety of careers advice.

  'Where does your experience lie?' Miss Jessop asked, and I said, 'The retail trade. Haberdashery. Knitwear.' I wasn't going to mention the sanitary products. Mary Batty helped in her dad's paper shop, and Kay Bell had sold ice creams on the prom, and Christine Boyd had done nothing at all (her mother was an invalid).We turned faces full of expectancy towards Miss Jessop, who fumbled with her yellow pearls. She had a manila folder in front of her on the table. A thin manila folder. 'Well, girls ...' she began.

  Perhaps Christine was hoping in her wildest dreams to be a nurse, and Kay fancied travelling to India in a hippie van, and Mary thought her dad should expand the shop – with her assistance – into prams and babywear. And I was definitely waiting to be plucked, inevitably, from the crowd, to be whisked away to London to take up my life as a single girl and to have fun. We didn't say any of this. To say it would have been to embarrass Miss Jessop further, to embarrass ourselves.

  'Well, girls,' said Miss Jessop, toying with the folder but not opening it. 'You have some useful experiences behind you. I would advise you to start looking in the Situations Vacant column, to put your names down with firms who ...'

  I stopped listening. I watched the fluttering shapes of leaf shadows dancing over the table in front of Miss Jessop, and over Miss Jessop herself, transparent, carelessly dancing shadows, where the sun shone down through the lime tree that grew outside the window of the medical room. I drifted in and out of the sound of her voice. Words like 'loyalty' and 'punctuality', phrases such as 'good attendance record', 'many local businesses', and '... may not need any exams', leaped above the surface of my consciousness like flying fish, only to disappear without trace, without meaning, again. I stared at the first-aid cabinet and wondered how much it must weigh, and what would happen if it suddenly fell off the wall and on to Miss Jessop's head. Somewhere in the branches of the lime tree, a blackbird started singing. And I felt, for the very first time, that I would not mind staying here for ever, in the safe smell of wood varnish and witch hazel, drifting in and out of listening, with the summery leaf shadows always playing over me.

  'Remember, girls,' Miss Jessop said, sharply, as outside the medical-room door the afternoon lesson bell shrilled. 'When approaching a prospective employer, always dress neatly and respectably, always behave like young ladies. Always mention any useful experience.'

  Kay Bell became a go-go dancer eventually, so I heard. Prancing about in the beer spills on a bar, dressed in tight black shorts and a red satin blouse, knotted just under the bosom. I wonder if she bore Miss Jessop's advice in mind as she approached her sausage-fingered future employer?

  I shouldn't be so wicked. I got my job by following Miss Jessop's advice, although it was a route I could have worked out for myself. I bought the local paper and looked in the Sits Vac column. I was all ready to mention my useful experience in the world of haberdashery to the area manager, who agreed that I should 'pop in for an interview teatime-ish' the following Tuesday. He was on the telephone in the tiny back room when I arrived and he remained on the telephone throughout our short conversation.

  'Look, Shirley – I know all about Ipswich,' he said, and flagged me into the room with one big arm. His suit jacket was light beige with a very faint check. One of the cuff buttons was loose and there was a mark on the sleeve. I was already practising applying my observation skills to the world of dry cleaning. 'Shirley,' he said, 'I'm not talking small-fry here.'

  He nodded to me, and pushed some paper and a pen towards me. A telephone message pad, a bright yellow Bic.

  'I know, I know,' he told Shirley, in the tones of a man who wished he didn't. 'I know all about that. Believe me.' He cupped one hand over the receiver and mouthed at me: 'Just fill in your details, love. The salient points.'

  You tell me, I thought.

  'Look, Shirl, there's nothing that you can tell me. I know. I saw the offending item with my own eyes. Name, address, national insurance number,' he added, in a throttled whisper, nodding at me. I stood to write. There was no room to sit down, and he was in the only chair. A wrinkling cup of coffee waited on the Formica desktop before him. 'No, no, Spiller's had it, Shirley. Take it from me, the man in the know. How old are you?' he asked me, frowning. 'Sixteen when? Write it down. Date of birth. Dee-oh-bee,' he added, as if in explanation, stabbing at the message pad with a forefinger. He picked up the coffee, elbow out, and sipped a mouthful, ignoring the skin that came with it. 'Spiller is yesterday's man, Shirley, my darlin
g. Ipswich or no Ipswich. Take it from me.' He laughed, a loud, brigandish ha-ha, like a crackle of lightning over the wireless. There was phlegm in his lungs. The dry-cleaning fluid, maybe. 'Ever worked behind a counter before?' he asked me, and I nodded, beginning to speak, when he suddenly crowed, 'Shirl! If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, Spiller's a dead man. No objection to working Saturdays?' he added, in a low voice. 'No? Well, a pleasure to do business.' He swapped the receiver over as Shirley's voice ranted out of it, and extended his right hand to me. 'When can you start?' In two weeks, I said. After my exams, after my birthday, when school would chuck me out with a grateful sigh.

  Which was how I passed the rigorous selection process for the job.

  'Bed-wetter, cat-getter, fire-setter,' I suggested to Hanny the other day.

  'What?'

  'Haven't you ever heard that phrase?' I asked. But she hadn't. For someone so well-travelled and worldly-wise, she's led a sheltered life. 'It's what they say about children who later on turn out to be bad. How you can tell.'

  I gave her a long look, but she was just staring at the flower beds, at the red busy Lizzies which are now all in bloom. Screaming bright-red busy Lizzies. Under the glare of a grey summer sky they are migraine-inducing.

  'It's a triumvirate of things, of clues that should set alarm bells ringing in people's heads. You know, people who know about these things.'

  'What things?' Hanny asked. 'A triumvirate is the name for the three people who ruled Rome. Augustus, and Octavian, and Thingy. Or was Augustus the same as Octavian anyway?'

  'I was only using the word to mean what I wanted it to mean,' I said. I felt we'd strayed off the point. And there was much more I'd wanted to say.

  Hanny sat back, lifting her fragile white face to the non-existent sun, and closed her eyes. She wasn't listening to me; she often didn't really listen. In some ways she reminded me of Barbara. Getting someone to notice you is one of the hardest things, even when they're your friend: getting them to really notice you.

  Later that afternoon, when it was too late, I thought: triad. Triad was the word I wanted. How could I have made such a foolish slip?

  I remember the day Sebastian came running in, his face all twisted and dirty with tears. He grabbed Tillie from the kitchen and ran with her. We all followed, terrified by the bloodless look of her face, drained of all emotion until she could find out what it was she really had to worry about. Mattie wasn't with him, it was Mattie she was frightened for. We ran in a ragged line across the field and through the scrub till we came to the big oak tree. Mattie was there, sitting on the ground, scratching in the dirt with a stick. Tillie fell on him with little cries.

  But it wasn't Mattie. Sebastian touched Tillie on the shoulder and she looked up.

  In the tree, suspended from one of the old swinging ropes, twisting in slow circles, was a white shape, a long sausage. I stared: all I could see was a tent packed tightly into its carrying sack, just like Brian's Scout troop took when they went off to camp.

  Tillie jumped to her feet. 'Oh, poor Pickles!'

  She ran over to him, slowed his body, stilled the gentle swinging of the rope. She lifted his dead weight until the rope looped and she could ease his head out.

  'Poor, stupid, stupid Pickles.'

  For some reason she sent Barbara running back home for a sheet, and only when he could be decently covered did she carry him home, with the rest of us trailing behind, mutes in the funeral procession.

  We buried him in the garden, at the far end, under the sickly apple trees. Tom sweated to dig the hole in the hard-baked earth, whacking it open with a pickaxe first. Then we laid Pickles inside, still wrapped in the sheet, and put in his newest bone, and scattered the tops of cornflowers into the grave, like sparkling blue dog biscuits. Barbara said some prayer for the departure of the soul, and Tillie and Sebastian kept wiping their eyes. Patrick had been away in London for a day or two and was expected back that evening, but they didn't wait for him. I got the feeling that it was all a bit hurried. Barbara said it was only because it was so hot.

  I got the feeling that it was all a bit hurried because Tillie did not want anyone asking what had happened to Pickles. He got himself stuck in a tree, he got himself caught in a rope. She said, twice, that his paw was caught in the noose along with his neck, that he must have struggled to free himself but it was too late. She was so emphatic that she thought it was an accident. I'm sure she was sure that it wasn't. She wanted to get the horrible evidence out of the way as soon as possible and forget all about it.

  I hadn't seen his paw in the rope. I had seen him hanging, like a long sad sausage.

  How did I know that it was Brian who burned down the Hennessys' summer house? Well, I didn't at first. I was quite convinced by the barbecue-and-spark theory. No need to look further. No need to be suspicious at all.

  Then, one evening a couple of days after the conflagration, Barbara grabbed my arm, saying, 'There's something I've got to watch on telly. Come on.'

  We went upstairs to the back bedroom. Tillie was in the bathroom, supervising the younger boys with their teeth-cleaning and pyjamas, and Tom's door was firmly shut, loud music pulsating beyond it. Patrick had gone to the pub.

  We settled down on the bedspread with a bag of Maltesers. Barbara was the sort of person who couldn't watch television without giving a running commentary. 'D'you recognize him? Not him. That one. See? He was in that cop show on ITV. Played the sergeant. Oh, look at her hair, good God! What does she look like?' She kept shifting on the bed, propping herself up and then lying down again. Maltesers were rolling everywhere. I got up to retrieve a couple from the floor, and popped them in my mouth. At home I could have done that without getting a mouthful of fluff as well. Not that I would ever have picked sweets off the carpet at home. Our kitchen floor might have been so clean you could eat your dinner off it, but that was not an idea we entertained. Germs, and, anyway, manners.

  It was a drizzly evening, which brought the dusk down early. I glanced out of the window. There was someone down there in the half-light, standing near to what was left of the summer house, hands in pockets, surveying the burnt remains. Not Tom, too chunky. I looked harder. Someone wearing Scout uniform. It was Wednesday, Scouts night. I ducked down so that I couldn't be seen and peered over the window sill.

  'Caro! What the hell are you doing?' Barbara asked tetchily.

  'Spying.'

  'Spying on what?'

  'Foxes,' I lied.

  'Whatever for?' She didn't really want an answer. She was rustling round on the bed, feeling under her back for a stray Malteser.

  Out in the rain, the dusk, a chunky Scout was kicking at the long-dead embers with his toe, stirring the remains, admiring his handiwork. He glanced up, not at me crouching by the lit upper window, but at the hedge. In the half-dark I could have sworn that he grinned. And I knew, with a cold curdling feeling in my stomach, that Brian had a parallel life too, that Brian didn't always keep to his own side of the hedge. That Brian knew things and never mentioned them, for reasons of his own.

  I sat back down on the edge of the bed. Barbara stretched out her palm with a single Malteser balanced on it. 'Want the last one?'

  'No thanks.'

  She clapped it to her own mouth, chewed and swallowed. 'Good.'

  33

  Sticky Decisions

  If I had to choose my favourite painter, who would I come up with? Velázquez, or Rembrandt? Or someone else entirely? What if all the others had to go, and I could save just one from destruction, who would I choose? Hans Holbein, or Dürer, or maybe Leonardo. Though that's being a bit too obvious.

  Barbara was always saying that kind of thing: what would you do if ...? Or: if you had to choose between ... ? With her, it was to stave off the boredom. I'm not sure that she really wanted to know anyone else's answer.

  So, Rembrandt, or Velázquez.

  If I had to choose my ten favourite paintings, that would be easier. Nobody after 1870, I sh
ouldn't think. Lots of portraits, a domestic interior, a frozen winter landscape, a still life. Or nature morte, as they also call it. Dead nature.

  Of course, I have only seen them in books. And some of them only from postcards. Isolde was always good at sending postcards. You might expect it of her.

  ... or maybe Vermeer.

  Once I asked Tillie that question, stupidly, as I sat at her kitchen table and she pummelled bread dough. 'Who's your favourite painter?' I asked, like silly girls at school sitting vacantly on desktops at break-time in rainy weather, asking, 'Who's your favourite pop star? Which one's your favourite out of the Monkees?'

  'Who's your favourite painter? Rembrandt?' I thought I knew the answer, of course.

  'Oh no,' she said, wiping stray hair away from her forehead with the back of her arm. 'Vermeer, I should think.' And she turned aside, said in a low voice, half joking, 'I know just how his wife felt.'

  Then she heaved her bowl of dough over to the counter top beside the stove, and continued, educationally, talking across her shoulder. 'She had eight children, and when he died young, she had to sell his paintings to pay off all the debts.'

  I don't know what I said in reply. It wasn't the kind of discussion I was expecting.

  Tom took me to bed when I was fifteen and two months, which was not really, as he explained it, breaking the law. I can't recall his reasoning now. At the time it was convincing.

  Tom's sexual technique was much the same as his kissing technique, and he was very bony. His hipbones grated on mine, just as his teeth had grated on mine. I wish I had enjoyed it more. I suppose in time I did.