Living In Perhaps

by Julia Widdows

  'I hate the fair,' I confessed to Tom Rose, as we lagged behind. Tom loped along in front, covering the ground eagerly and much faster than I would have liked.

  Tom Rose shrugged. 'I don't care either way. But there's bugger all else to do.'

  We could hear it first, and then smell it, before we could see it.

  Tom turned round to us and inhaled dramatically. 'Ah, the unmistakable aroma of hot dogs and vomit.' He threaded his arm tightly through mine, mainly, I think, to keep me walking. 'I told you you'd love it! I'll win you a panda.'

  'I don't want a panda. I want to go home.'

  He relinquished my arm. 'Fine. Fine. Off you go. Tom and me'll just puke our guts up on the Waltzer, and again on the Teacups, and you'll have to miss it. No, you go.'

  Which, of course, did the trick. As he knew it would.

  They went on the Waltzer, they went on the Teacups, they went on the Shake 'n' Slam. I don't know if that's what the last one was called, but that's what it did. I stood behind the barrier and watched the pair of them, hugging myself to keep warm. A group of girls I vaguely recognized wandered up and stood beside me. 'Look! There's Tom H. and Tom R.,' one of them shouted above the swirl of the music, and a quiver of interest rattled through them. They were all pretty girls, with long legs in tight jeans and hair like a shampoo ad. I thought that they went to the grammar school; their accents fitted, and they weren't quite as slutty as some of the other gangs of girls already roaming the fairground, looking for trouble and fun. I felt like an idiot with my conventional work clothes and my long face, which seemed as if it had just got a yard longer.

  'Hey, Tom!' another of the girls shouted, as the ride swung dizzily round our way. All four waved. I hopped from side to side, my feet cold on the damp ground. The boys' faces swept past, ugly with the G-force. I couldn't tell if they were delirious with joy or pain or fear. The grammar school girls giggled and hid their faces in one another's hair.

  Tom H. and Tom R. That was a new one on me. They'd never been as equal as that on Hennessy territory. I knew that my Tom was an object of general desire, but Tom Rose?

  I walked up and down, trying to warm my feet. The ride was slowing to a halt now, people stood up in the cars, ready to scramble out. The scrawny youth who manned the entrance gate turned and said, 'You next, is it, girls?' and the grammar school gang turned away, squealing. Tom and Tom Rose jumped down.

  Tom grabbed my hand. 'You missed a treat there. We were going so fast we actually swallowed our puke back in. Now, what next? Bloody hell, Caro, you're freezing!'

  Tom Rose caught up with me. 'You are freezing, Caro.'

  He was wearing one of his lumberjack shirts over a black T-shirt, and he shrugged it off and wrapped it round my shoulders. It smelled faintly of sweat, and beer, but, underneath, his mother's washing powder. I pushed my arms into the sleeves.

  'Thank you.'

  He waved a dismissive hand.

  The grammar school girls came up behind us. 'Hi, Tom,' they chorused. I turned to look at their clear sweet smiling faces, but they couldn't even see me. I was no competition, in my neat skirt and somebody else's plaid shirt. I hadn't spent an hour in front of the mirror in preparation for this evening out. Even if I had, it wouldn't have done me any good.

  'I know, let's go and shoot something.' Tom glanced round at his new audience. 'How about it, lay-dees? How do you like the sound of that?'

  At his insistence we passed up the first shooting gallery, which had ducks as targets, and carried on round the dingy canvas alleyways until we found another one with battered tin figures out of a Wild West saloon.

  Tom counted through his coins. 'D'you want a go, Caro?'

  'No.'

  'Come on. Have some fun.'

  'I'd be no good.'

  'Damn you, woman, have some fun!'

  'I told you I didn't like the fair. I'm only here because ...'But it was obvious why I was there. I didn't have to put it into words. Anyway, Tom was busy lining up his rifle, concentrating on the first target.

  I watched the targets come clacking round. The first one had a black hat and turned-down moustache. Both rifles missed. The next figure was a Mexican towing a mule.

  'Get the donkey!' shouted Tom. He squinted and fired. 'Fucking sights are useless!'

  But the mule went down to Tom Rose's shot. A cry of glee went up from the four girls, and Tom Rose turned round to take a bow, missing his opportunity as the following target creaked into view, a John Wayne type in a worn white hat. Nothing. The next was a bartender with apron and slicked-back hair.

  'He looks like Mister Clipper,' Tom jeered, bending to his shotgun. 'Let's get Mister Clipper.'

  The target clanged and fell backwards. I didn't see who'd hit it. Maybe they both had. Tom turned to me. 'Jesus, Caro, so sorry about your dad.' Behind me, the grammar school flock all giggled again. A fat bent creature trundled across the target area, waistcoated and staring. 'And there's her creepy brother!' Tom cried. 'Get the weirdo brother, too!'

  I'd had enough. 'I'm going home,' I said, and began to pull Tom Rose's shirt off.

  'Oh, come on, Caro, it was just a joke.' Tom abandoned his rifle and came over. 'Don't go. You know I can't resist a joke. I didn't mean it.' He put his arms tight around me and kissed my forehead. The grammar school girls were just a blur on the periphery.

  Tom Rose downed that target, and then the next.

  'Shot, sir!' Tom cried, in a crusty English voice, and clapped his hands high in the air as if he were at a cricket match. I wriggled out from underneath.

  'Don't get in a mood, Caro. Anyway, we haven't been on the dodgems yet.'

  I could smell a sweet burnt smell. 'I'm going to get some candyfloss,' I said. 'Want some?' But nobody did. I glanced at Tom Rose and saw that he had his arm draped around the shoulders of the blondest girl. Boys don't touch without intention: that hand on the elbow, on the small of the back, is never just there by accident. It's planning to lead to greater things.

  The trampled grass was littered with lolly wrappers and chip forks. I queued behind a fat woman. The sky was quite dark now, beyond the fairground lights, and the wind had dropped. Maybe next year I wouldn't be here, I'd be doing something spectacular and would never have to come back.

  When I got to the dodgem cars the session was under way. They sparked and banged and tangled, and their passengers' heads flew back like executionees. Tom Rose and the blonde girl were sharing one car, Tom Rose in charge of the wheel (of course) and busily charging a metallic blue car which my Tom drove. In it was another of the girls, hanging on to his shirt and screaming fit to burst. The session ended, cars coming to a sudden halt as the power went off. Their occupants stood up and climbed out. Both Toms stayed. The ride boy swung from pole to pole, and I saw them hand him up more money. The poles sparked and sizzled, the cars started up again. I watched them for a minute more, and then I walked away. The candyfloss stuck to my lips and disappeared on my tongue. I had only myself to blame. I didn't know how to have fun.

  *

  Stones against my window. I knelt up on the bed and lifted the curtain. Tom was standing in our driveway. I made a face at him and held up my fingers: two minutes. I climbed into jeans and a sweater. I wasn't going to a moonlit assignation with him in my suburban night attire. I picked up my keys but didn't dare to shut the front door properly – the latch always clunked and my parents' bedroom was only a whisper away. I tiptoed up the drive. Tom had vanished behind the hedge. At the gate he grabbed me and rolled me into the sharp-smelling leaves. His hands were cold, and his breath smelled of beer.

  'Where'd you get to, Caro? You just disappeared!' He made magician's gestures with his fingers, and an explosion with his mouth.

  'Shh!' I said, but he took my finger from my lips and fixed me with one of his vampire kisses. I pushed him away again. 'How did you know which was my room?'

  'I always knew. I'd see you staring out of your window all the time.'

  He knew. He'd always known. He kne
w everything about me; or thought he did.

  'What do you want at this time of night?'

  'I've got a plan!' he said, grinning. 'It's great. I had to tell you. I was going to tell you earlier, but then you skedaddled.'

  'What plan?'

  'For when I go to America.'

  If he had hit me over the head with a blunt instrument I couldn't have seen more stars. Tom had a plan, and I was in it and so was America. Something spectacular.

  'America?'

  'I thought you knew.'

  How? Tillie could have told me, or Barbara. Or Tom himself, as a matter of fact. But none of them thought to.

  'No. I don't know anything. When is this?'

  'Couple of weeks. I've got an exchange trip arranged with an American university. For a year.'

  So Tom, that slackest of students, had somehow wangled himself an exchange. A year in America and I could go with him. I put my arms around his waist. His cheek was warm against mine; his voice echoed through my head. As if our thoughts were joined.

  'And when I go,' he said, 'you can have my job.'

  A jolt, a lightning blast. My head throbbed with it.

  'Your job?'

  'Yeah, it's only weekends – they won't want the bother of finding someone else. I'll tell them you'll cover for my shifts.' He stepped back and regarded me. 'Get yourself some high heels and a little tight skirt, you'll do fine.' He gathered up my hair with one hand and pulled it back behind my head. 'And mascara. A bit of make-up wouldn't hurt, you know.' Again he leaned towards me but this time he rubbed noses Eskimo-fashion. His nose was so sharp.

  'You're off to America?'

  'Great, isn't it? I might stay on if all goes well. I can see myself in America.'

  He was grinning, drunk, so pleased with himself and the life he'd got sorted out. So stupid.

  I stepped away from him.

  'I don't want your lousy job. I don't need it. In my spare time – time which you don't know about – I'm a life model. I pose for artists. Loads of them. And I sleep with them, too. That's all part of the deal. Patrick started it. Your dad started me off. He was the first one.'

  What banal little words. They sounded as dirty and suburban as I felt.

  'Yeah, sure.'

  He was still grinning, still pleased with himself.

  'It's true.'

  'No, it's not,' said Tom happily, his grin wide and crazy like a cartoon animal's. 'Because you're Miss Caroline Clipper, and you never do anything your dad wouldn't approve of.'

  It wasn't true. If he had given it even a moment's thought he'd have known it wasn't true.

  I hissed at him, 'I don't know who my dad is, so how the hell could I do anything he wouldn't approve of?'

  Tom's grin was still in place. Nothing got through to him.

  'I don't know who my dad is, I don't know who my mum is. I'm nobody from nowhere. You don't know anything about me and you never have!'

  It was a shout, a scream. The noise of it shattered the still night air, rang off the rooftops and the windows and the empty milk bottles standing neatly on the step.

  I tore back down my pathway and pushed open the front door. As I passed, the curtains in the bay window twitched, but no one came out of my parents' room and nothing moved inside the house.

  49

  Out of Friendship

  I was getting up from lunch and saw that Moira was hanging about in the doorway, eyeing me. She came over, that trotting pony-walk she always does making me irritated before she even reached me.

  'You're down for a visitor this afternoon,' she said. Consulting a scrap of paper in her hand, frowning over the scribble on it, she added, 'Two o'clock. Tom?'

  I wonder what a heart attack feels like?

  I went up to my room and stared in the mirror. At least I could comb my hair. Wide blue eyes stared back, looking as wild as a rat in a trap. I'd like to say I barely recognized myself, but sadly I did.

  There was a time I would have died for Tom to come and see me. Not now. Perhaps I could say no, perhaps I could refuse a visitor who had come all that way. Despite the pleasant drive and the delightful scenery they might well be pretty fed up, after making so much effort. It might go against me, too, with Lorna and her colleagues. Not cooperating, yet again.

  I put on my least faded T-shirt, and the more faded of my two pairs of jeans, and combed my hair. I held out my hands to see if they were shaking. They were. But maybe not enough to be visible to someone else.

  *

  Moira walked me down the corridor. We passed the first room, and the second and the third. She opened the door to the last room, which was bigger. There were two windows, and three chairs. On the middle one, with his knees apart and his hands clenched and his head bowed, sat Tom Rose. It was the first time I'd ever seen him wearing a tie.

  Of course it wouldn't have been Tom Hennessy. I don't know why I ever entertained that thought.

  Moira had shown me to the room, but it was another member of staff who waited outside, one of the uniformed ones, in a buttoned white tunic; tall and very broad, more than a match for Tom Rose. Should the necessity arise.

  I sat down carefully. My knees were still shaking. Tom Rose looked older. His forehead was corrugated with permanent-looking lines. He didn't smile – at least he pressed his lips together and stretched them, but it could have been an expression of pain, or wind, or displeasure. I couldn't tell.

  'Hi,' I said. It was a silly little word and it quivered in the air between us. Hi.

  I could more or less understand why my aunt Stella had come to visit: a mixture of curiosity and guilt. I had no idea why Tom Rose was here. I hoped to God Moira wasn't busy behind the scenes arranging us some tea. I wanted this over as quickly as possible.

  'I had to say I was your cousin,' Tom said, squeezing his knuckles even more tightly and looking sideways, not at me. 'They won't let you in otherwise.'

  'Thanks. You shouldn't have.'

  'On your mum's side.'

  Poor Uncle Bob, I thought. But let it go.

  'Didn't they check?'

  'How? Show them my birth certificate? It wouldn't be the same name anyway.'

  'No, I suppose not.'

  'They wanted ID, though. I just showed them my student card.'

  He sat there glowering at the floor. I didn't know what else to say.

  When his voice came out again it was a croak. 'How're you doing?'

  'OK. What about you?'

  That was when he looked at me, looked up, hollow-eyed.

  'I don't know, Caro. You tell me.'

  I hate these visitors. I hate the way they have the right to come here and invade you. I'm glad Hanny's boyfriend never showed up. I'm sure that would have been the final straw for her. David, sitting here, wringing his hands and looking cow-eyed and apologetic. It's all right for them, they can walk out of here and get in their cars and go home, back to their lives and their little everyday worries. They can gaze out at the attractive scenery, and maybe stop for tea and scones on the way home – or, better still, a couple of stiff drinks – and thank their lucky stars they're not banged up in here with the loonies.

  'You look different.'

  'I thought I looked remarkably the same.'

  'Remarkably. You always did come out with those big words.'

  I didn't think that remarkably was a very remarkable word.

  'So, what are you up to these days?' I asked, to head off any more questions from him.

  'I've finished uni, got a job in London now.'

  'Oh yes?'

  'Pays peanuts but it's a foot on the ladder. I'm staying with Barbara. She shares a flat with two other girls.'

  'Anyone I know?'

  Tom Rose shook his head. 'Friends from college. Barbara and me – we – we're kind of – going out.'

  Barbara and Tom Rose? Now there was a turn-up for the books. I thought she'd always hated him. Circumstances must have thrown them together. I hitched my feet up and sat cross-legged in the easy c
hair. It might even be possible to enjoy this visit.

  Tom Rose stretched his arms out in front of him, cracked his knuckles, stretched his hands over his head and brought them down on to his face, rubbing the whole surface, keeping them there. I couldn't see what was going on behind them.

  'It's been rough for her – she's had a rough year.'

  It's rough in here. I've had a rough year.

  'What about Tom? Did he come back?'

  'Yeah, and then went away again.'

  'Where is he now?'

  'Um, Boston, I think. He chucked in his course, and he's working as an assistant to some sculptor. Someone Patrick knew from way back when.' Of course. To London, to Boston. Typical Hennessy trajectories.

  I was getting tired of this.

  'Why have you come here? Is it to gawp?'

  'No. I came because of Barbara. She's got a bad conscience.'

  She's got a bad conscience?

  'Because when the police said it wasn't accidental, she put two and two together.'

  Don't tell me: five?

  Barbara, whose advice to troubled women was always impatient and extreme – 'Kick him straight out!', 'Cut off his balls!' – recognized a gesture when she saw one. Or believed she did.

  'And you came all this way just to tell me this?'

  'I've come out of – out of friendship. Because she feels bad enough as it is, and – about you, she feels—'

  'But why would she think that?'

  He looked as if his belly was giving him a pain again. I hoped it was. I hoped his guts were mangling.

  'She knows what your temper's like.'

  I don't know what she means about my temper. I've told Lorna I don't have one. Isn't my word good enough?

  'The big bust-ups you and she would have. That final falling out.'

  I unhooked my legs – they were stiff with cramp – and stretched them to the floor. I could see now that my tennis shoes were ragged and filthy. So much for the glass slipper; now hand me that woodcutter's axe.

  'She said you were mightily pissed off at Patrick, and she could quite guess why. He's the love'em and leave'em type.'