‘That’s your problem,’ she said.
Plans took shape in her mind with amazing speed. She would ask Mr Ferguson for a rise and if he refused she would leave. There would always be another job for someone like her. She would let Jenny’s room to a student who would be away in the holidays when Jenny was home. Or she would find a residential job and let the whole house. Why not? She would join clubs and evening classes; she would meet men and stop being angry with Johnny. She would forget about Edward and Roz; she would visit her mother once a fortnight when they might both handle it better. She wished she could tell her mother what had happened, but her mother would be alarmed at the danger and appalled at the word. But she could tell Jenny, and Jenny would be proud of her.
‘You know,’ the cabbie said, when she paid him off, ‘you’re a very interesting woman.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said.
Fancy Seeing You
Geraldine had dyed her hair orange. It was so bright that it seemed to enter the room before she did. ‘Lucy,’ she exclaimed, holding out her arms. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
Lucy accepted a bunch of chrysanthemums from one of the extended arms and hugged Geraldine in return. She couldn’t recall if they had been on hugging terms in the past, but it seemed to go with their reunion. ‘I’m glad you could come,’ she said, although with Geraldine barely inside the door she was already beginning to wonder if the visit was a good idea. Geraldine’s voice was louder than she remembered; she seemed to be vibrating with energy; and the orange hair was a shock. If only her mother had asked her before giving Geraldine her phone number, Lucy thought, but that wasn’t fair: she had been curious enough to invite Geraldine when she rang up. Anything for a change, a novelty, she had thought; anything was better than sitting here night after night, staring at her own four walls and feeling sorry for herself. She told herself sternly that the evening was going to be fun, but she wasn’t convinced.
‘What would you like to drink?’ she asked. ‘Wine or gin?’
‘What are you having?’ Geraldine lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray, which Lucy, having given up smoking, did not possess.
‘Gin,’ said Lucy, who had never understood why anyone’s choice of drink should depend on what the other person was drinking.
‘Gin would be very nice,’ said Geraldine.
She was looking well, there was no doubt about that. Perhaps it was the blusher that gave her a healthy glow, or the pink eye-shadow; maybe they were one and the same. She looked somehow contemporary and made Lucy feel old. She poured a large gin for Geraldine and began to arrange the flowers. ‘These are lovely,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’
Geraldine gestured absently. ‘Oh, they’re nothing, they come from my ma-in-law’s garden. She can’t do enough for me now Charlie’s gone off, she’s so grateful I still let her see the children. Cigarette?’
Lucy explained about having given up and Geraldine asked her if she minded other people smoking. Lucy hesitated, torn as always between honesty and tact.
‘Not when I like them very much,’ she said, giving Geraldine a soup bowl for her ash, some of which was already on the floor.
‘If I can’t smoke, then I can’t go out at all,’ Geraldine said cheerfully. ‘I can only see people in my own home. How on earth did you manage to stop?’
Lucy didn’t want to admit she had been so miserable it seemed the ideal time to stop. If you have lost your husband, then you don’t mind losing cigarettes as well, just as if you are drowning you hardly notice if it comes on to rain. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘I just did.’
‘God, such willpower,’ said Geraldine, puffing energetically. ‘I simply couldn’t. Not this year anyway. Not after all I’ve been through.’ And she laughed.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Lucy, ‘and tell me all about it.’ She led the way from kitchen to living-room, wanting Geraldine to admire her Habitat lamps, her Peter Jones curtains, her junk shop table and chairs, the clever way she had made them enhance each other. At night she often sat admiring her room before she went to bed, thinking that here at least was something she could do well, create a home, even if no one wanted to share it with her. But Geraldine barely glanced at the room before she flung herself down with her drink and her cigarette and put her feet up on the coffee table.
‘Well, at first I just never stopped crying,’ she said. ‘I must have cried every day for six months, I should think. Then one day I woke up and I actually felt happy again, for no reason.’
Lucy thought of an article she had read recently which claimed that emotionally healthy people, who comprised only one fifth of the population, grieved intensely for a short time, then recovered and got on with their lives. Geraldine must be very healthy, she thought.
‘After all,’ Geraldine said, ‘to be miserable just because I’ve lost a man, that’s crazy.’ And she laughed again.
She had two distinct types of laugh: a small soft chuckle, the kind of sound a kitten might make if it could laugh, and a full-throated roar, the equivalent of laughter in the jungle from a big cat. Neither sounded as if she were really amused, rather concerned to prove her cheerfulness. As the conversation went on, Lucy noticed that Geraldine used the laughs quite often, after remarks that were not funny at all.
‘So,’ she said suddenly, ‘what happened to the Italian then?’
Lucy, already feeling uneasy, thought this was a strange way to refer to her husband. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘we separated.’
‘I know that,’ said Geraldine. ‘Your mother told me that. But what happened? I mean, with Charlie and me it was simple. Once I’d had the kids, it was all over. He just didn’t want to know. Headaches at bedtime and all that. Now he’s living with a bloke. Well, that says it all, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said honestly. ‘They might be just sharing a flat.’
Geraldine roared with jungle laughter. ‘Come off it. How naïve can you be? Could I have another gin?’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ Lucy said, getting up. ‘Sorry.’
‘You still haven’t told me what happened,’ Geraldine shouted after her.
Alone in the kitchen, Lucy poured two more large gins. She felt her inside squirming with the need to be secretive. It was too humiliating to admit how making love for pleasure had turned into making love for a purpose and still produced nothing. How could she say to Geraldine, with her two fat children, that Luigi had ended up banging her head on the floor with frustration, until she was afraid to make love in case it ended in violence. Refusing to believe her doctor’s report that there was nothing wrong with her, he also refused to go for investigation himself. In Italy he had made several girls pregnant, he now told her, so he knew there was nothing wrong with him. It must be Lucy. The doctors were fools. Perhaps she could have an operation.
‘What happened to the girls?’ Lucy had asked. It was the first time he had mentioned them and she wondered if he was lying.
‘Oh,’ he shrugged, ‘some had babies, some had abortions.’
Lucy, shocked, asked how many there had been, but he didn’t remember. She had felt suddenly out of her depth, in an alien country, although they were at home in London at the time. It had never occurred to her that her marriage depended on children because she had assumed that children would follow. But they had not, and now Luigi, who had been so loving that she had walked around with a permanent smile on her face, was blaming her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about them?’ she said.
‘It was before we met. You don’t tell me about everyone you loved before me.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Lucy said. But it was no good. Not sufficient that they made wonderful love, had enough money, both adored opera and pasta and sunshine. They must have a baby to prove all was well. Adoption was out of the question. Waiting and seeing would not do at all. They had done that already, for far too long.
‘Perhaps we’re allergic to each other,’ she said one day in desperation. She
meant in a chemical way, having heard something on the radio about antibodies, but he took it to mean they should get divorced. Even after she explained, the thought was still there and it was as if she had given him permission.
‘Oh,’ she said, going back into the living-room with the drinks, ‘it burnt itself out.’
‘What a shame,’ said Geraldine. ‘I thought Italians were supposed to be so passionate.’
‘I’ve only known one,’ said Lucy, ‘and he was.’
‘Well, I just don’t understand it,’ said Geraldine. ‘There’s Charlie living with a bloke and your Italian running out of steam. What’s the matter with men these days? No stamina, that’s their trouble.’
Lucy gulped down half her drink. ‘We probably expect too much,’ she said, although she did not believe it.
‘Nonsense,’ said Geraldine. ‘My father still worships my mother, waits on her hand and foot, and they’ve been married thirty years. I think it’s Women’s Lib, you know. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up having to make do with each other.’ And she laughed, the kitten chuckle.
‘Isn’t that a separate issue?’ said Lucy faintly. She had a feeling that the evening was getting out of control, galloping away into the sunset and dragging her after it, her heel caught in its stirrup.
‘How would I know? I lead such a sheltered life.’ Geraldine narrowed her eyes, as if she were staring at Lucy from a long way off. ‘Fancy seeing you,’ she said, ‘after all these years.’
‘I think we should eat,’ Lucy said. ‘The lamb will be overdone.’
‘It’ll be mutton dressed as lamb.’ Geraldine laughed, the tiger’s roar this time, and sank back into her seat. ‘Can I do anything to help?’
Lucy brought in the lamb, the peas, the roast potatoes. She went back for the gravy and opened a bottle of wine. Perhaps they had had too much gin; maybe that was the trouble. Too much gin on an empty stomach. She was never sure if gin suited her but she liked it for a treat.
Geraldine ate ravenously but without praising the food. She drank rather fast, too. Lucy began to wonder if one bottle would be enough.
‘Did he call you Lucia?’ Geraldine asked suddenly.
Lucy’s stomach lurched. ‘What?’
‘The Italian. Did he call you Lucia?’
‘Oh. Yes. Yes, he did.’ But it was too late. Tears scalded her face, tears she hadn’t known were lying in wait for her. Geraldine watched for a moment, looking shocked and sympathetic. Lucy found to her own surprise that she didn’t mind making this exhibition of herself, that there was a voluptuous sense of relief in tears, even if Geraldine had to witness them. Then Geraldine got up and came round the table. She hugged Lucy.
‘Poor you,’ she said. ‘What a shame. Poor Lucia.’
It was comforting to be hugged, even by Geraldine, whom she did not know well and had not seen for ten years. Going to the same school on the same bus, always being the two last to be chosen for netball teams, having mothers who were friends: none of that made for intimacy, but it did establish a sort of comfortable familiarity. Cousins rather than sisters; friendship was something else. Then she became aware that Geraldine was kissing her on both cheeks and around the eyes, somehow drinking up her tears as fast as they appeared. In a way it was appropriate, and nice; in another, simultaneously, it felt incongruous and wrong. She drew back, on the pretext of wanting tissues from the box on the table, where they had been doubling as napkins. Geraldine went back to her seat and lit another cigarette.
‘Bloody men,’ she said.
Lucy blew her nose and started to mop her face. She felt shaken up and yet somehow calm as well, like someone who has just missed being run over by a bus. Now that the moment was past, she was not at all sure she hadn’t imagined it.
‘Whatever made you leave London?’ Geraldine asked in a conversational tone.
‘I felt like a change,’ Lucy said, ‘and I’ve always been fond of the sea.’
‘But what d’you find to do down here?’ Geraldine drummed her fingers on the table. ‘I mean, it’s fine for a weekend, like me now, visiting. Charlie’s ma once a year, but what do you do in the winter?’
‘I haven’t been here in the winter yet,’ said Lucy, ‘but I think it will be all right. I just wanted to live somewhere quiet for a change. And there was a job going.’ She felt as if she were being auditioned: having failed to land a starring role, she might yet be offered something in the chorus.
‘Well,’ said Geraldine, standing up, ‘there must be some night life in this godforsaken place. Come on. Let’s go and find some men.’
Outside in the street it was cold: the wind whipped their faces and the sea made a reassuring noise. Lucy wondered what she was doing there when she longed, suddenly, to go to bed. It had seemed as if the only polite way to get Geraldine out of the flat was to go with her, but there had also been, left over from school, a feeling that Geraldine might be right to go looking for adventure, and Lucy would be feeble, a stick in the mud, if she refused. Geraldine had always known the best places to smoke undisturbed at break and the best dances for picking up boys. If anyone could find a nightclub at half past eleven in a seaside village, it was Geraldine.
I must be drunk, Lucy thought, as they approached the car. And if I am drunk, then so is Geraldine and she shouldn’t be driving.
Geraldine drove fast and Lucy was frightened. She was glad seat belts were compulsory, so that Geraldine couldn’t be offended when she put hers on so promptly.
‘When Charlie went off,’ Geraldine said, as if they had been talking about him, ‘he came back one day to fetch some things when he thought I was out, only I wasn’t out, I was hiding under the bed, and he cut up some of my clothes. Wasn’t that amazing?’
‘Weren’t you terrified?’ Lucy asked.
‘Yes, of course. But flattered as well. I didn’t know he had such strong feelings.’
Periodically she stopped, whenever she saw anyone, and asked if there was anywhere to go dancing. Most of the people merely looked surprised, but finally she found someone who assured her that Jack’s Place, at the top of the hill this side of town but after the second lot of traffic lights, would be just what she was looking for, and she couldn’t miss it because there was a red lamp in the window.
‘Well,’ said Geraldine, accelerating, ‘that’s appropriate, anyway.’
‘I’m beginning to lose my nerve,’ Lucy ventured. It seemed a daring confession and also a gross understatement.
‘Don’t be chicken,’ said Geraldine, shooting a red light. ‘Fortune favours the bold.’
Jack’s Place, when they finally found it, looked anything but inviting. A red bulb glowed faintly in the doorway, and there were a few parked cars and motor bikes outside. In the lobby a bored girl looked at them curiously and picked her teeth.
‘Are you members?’ she asked.
Lucy felt panic, imagining huge entrance fees. Why am I so timid? she wondered. Is that why Luigi banged my head on the floor? Or am I timid because he did that?
‘No,’ said Geraldine, ‘but we’d like –’
‘Then you’ll have to sign in,’ said the bored girl, pushing the register at them.
Geraldine signed with a flourish. Lucy, peering over her shoulder, was startled to see the names Jane Smith and Natasha Rostova. Geraldine, catching her glance, winked at her. The past rushed back at Lucy: evenings at the local disco, with Geraldine pretending to be foreign.
‘Come on,’ said Geraldine, advancing. ‘Into the valley of death rode the four hundred.’
Following the sound, they found themselves in a medium-sized room with a bar at one end and an electric organ at the other. There were a few couples at the bar and a crowd of young men doing nothing in particular and looking very unsettled. No other women in sight.
‘What would you like?’ Geraldine asked when they reached the bar.
‘Oh – white wine,’ said Lucy, thinking that most of all she would like to go home, and (second best) to die. Geraldin
e paid for the drinks, the couples moving out of her way and the young men crowding in. She picked up the two glasses and made for a corner table; Lucy followed. Coloured lights revolved and the organist worked himself up into a frenzy.
The corner table was a mistake. No sooner had they sat down than four or five young men joined them and they were boxed in. The young men came almost at a run, as if determined to be first in the queue for something in short supply.
‘D’you come here often?’ one asked, and his friend guffawed behind him. They were both very young and had the acne to prove it. Lucy felt a hundred years old. Never had the vision of an early night, alone, in a Viyella nightdress, with a mug of Horlicks seemed more attractive.
‘Niet,’ said Geraldine to the spotty youth, and turned to Lucy with a burst of pseudo Russian.
‘You what?’ the young man asked, not unreasonably.
Oh God, Lucy thought, realising she was meant to translate. ‘She’s over here on holiday,’ she said.
‘Where’s she from then?’ his friend asked, staring at Geraldine.
‘Russki, Russki,’ said Geraldine passionately.
‘Go on,’ said the first youth, his lip curling with scorn, ‘you’re having me on.’
‘No, really, she’s Russian,’ said Lucy. ‘She really is. Honestly.’ It seemed vital she should make him believe it.
‘D’you speak Russian then?’
‘No, but I … understand a litle, and she understands quite a lot of English, so we each talk our own language.’ Lucy paused a moment and added, ‘She’s a bit shy, you see.’ She saw Geraldine’s mouth quiver.
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said the first youth, but his friend turned to Geraldine and said very slowly, moving his lips with great care, ‘Will you dance with me?’
Geraldine stared at him blankly and the organist played louder than ever.
‘Why don’t you translate?’ said the first youth.
‘She’s a bit deaf as well,’ said Lucy, feeling vicious.
‘What’s her name?’ his friend asked, thumping his chest. ‘Me Peter.’
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