Madelyn ignores this. ‘If it’s positive then at least he and Simon are in the same boat. And if it’s negative we can all stop worrying. And they’d know if they have to have safe sex or not.’
Jo still doesn’t really want to think about what gay men do in bed. If that’s old-fashioned of her, she thinks, well, she can’t help it. She just knows she loves Martin and she doesn’t want him to die. ‘I thought they were supposed to anyway,’ she says.
‘Well, obviously if one’s okay and the other isn’t. But if they’ve both got it …’ Madelyn shrugs.
‘I thought it could still make it worse … there are different viruses or something.’ She’s read all she can on the subject but still it gets jumbled up in her mind so that she can’t retain the information, as if anxiety has frozen her memory.
‘I don’t really know,’ Madelyn says. ‘I don’t think they do either.’
She doesn’t just mean Martin and Simon. She means the doctors too, the whole medical world, baffled by this new plague, constantly changing their minds and issuing different advice as fresh facts come to light. They are really saying they can’t help and they’re just as terrified as we are. We’re on our own out here, Jo thinks.
‘No, they don’t,’ she says bitterly.
‘They’ll find a cure eventually,’ Madelyn says, perhaps to convince herself as well as Jo. ‘They’re bound to.’
The sisters both wonder silently whether this is true and even if it is, whether it will be in time. Jo is shocked to find herself wanting Martin, if healthy, to leave Simon, to run away, to save himself while he can. But she knows he won’t. She likes Simon; she doesn’t want him to die either. But he isn’t family.
‘The last time I saw them,’ she says to Madelyn, ‘Simon was in bed with a cold. I hadn’t seen him for a while and he was so thin, I thought he was dying.’
‘I know,’ Madelyn says. ‘I saw him like that too. He looked terrible, didn’t he? But he’s okay again now. You must go round and see him looking better.’
‘Yes, I must.’ Jo can’t get the gaunt, shrunken vision out of her head. And that was just with a bad cold. God forbid Martin should ever look like that.
‘Jo, I’ve got something to tell you,’ Madelyn says suddenly. Her voice is odd, tense, highly charged.
‘What?’ says Jo. ‘I can’t stand any more shocks.’
‘Not even a nice one?’ Madelyn looks at her pleadingly. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you all day.’ And she rushes on, as if Jo might prevent her: ‘I think I may be pregnant.’
‘Oh, God, Maddy.’ Jo doesn’t know what to say.
‘It’s good news, if I am,’ Madelyn says. ‘Really it is. We’ve got it all worked out. There’s no way Robert can leave Sarah and I wouldn’t respect him much if he did, but there’s a crèche at the office and we can be together Monday to Friday. It’ll be just like now, only better.’
Madelyn has been in love with her boss for a long time or, as she prefers to put it, a hundred years. Jo has hoped and prayed she’d meet someone single and get married instead of wasting her life on somebody who goes home every weekend to his children and his wife, who has multiple sclerosis. The situation is a mess and Madelyn deserves better. But she loves Robert, who seems to Jo amazingly ordinary, and she is thirty-nine. Her biological clock is ticking away; Jo understands that. She just can’t bear the thought of Madelyn having only half a life and Robert having two.
It seems only last week that she and Madelyn were young and free, wearing long dresses in the daytime and taking the Pill, burning joss sticks and smoking pot, listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Now the sixties are old hat and being pilloried in the media for causing the moral decline of the nation. Her own children, of course, can’t imagine that she and Madelyn were ever young.
Madelyn is watching her with a hopeful face. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘Give me your good housekeeping seal of approval.’
‘Oh …’ Jo says, blinking rapidly. ‘Of course I do. You know I do.’
‘Mad by name and mad by nature,’ says Madelyn cheerfully. ‘Don’t tell the others till I’m sure.’
Jo thinks about the others on her way home. She won’t be tempted to tell them: she is used to keeping Madelyn’s secrets since childhood. She feels ashamed to be missing her parents, though, as if she ought to be too grown up to mind them running off to Portugal. That’s how she thinks of them, like naughty children playing truant or, worse, like rats deserting a sinking ship, although the economy is supposed to be much improved, she reads. Her parents have taken against the government in a very personal way and decided to leave the country as if on a matter of principle, though Jo thinks it also has something to do with the need for sunshine to warm their old bones and cheap wine to cheer them up. She feels older than her parents now, fighting a lonely rearguard action; she needs them to give her moral support. Before they left they switched channels every time there was a TV commercial about AIDS, sometimes with Martin in the room, going with one swift click from tombstones to ‘Come Dancing’, and Jo wanted to scream at them, He’s your son, don’t you care, can’t you see what’s happening?
‘You must come and stay with us,’ they said to the room at large, and then to Martin, ‘Bring your friend.’ Perhaps that was enough; Martin thought it was. But Jo was angry. She felt they were leaving her to face the problem for them. ‘If they don’t know already I can’t tell them now,’ Martin said. ‘They don’t even know I’m gay, for God’s sake. It’d be like you saying you’re getting divorced if they didn’t even know you were married.’ And he laughed, the way he always did about important things.
Jo is still surprised that her private life could be invaded by politics, something she has always thought of as being rather dull and belonging to the newspapers. After years of the whole family being vaguely Liberal, she has found herself with Socialist parents going to live abroad and feeling self-righteous about it, while her daughter has turned into a passionate Conservative since her boyfriend managed to become a yuppie. Jo still can’t understand exactly what it is Dave does, though Debbie, flushed with pride, has often tried to explain it to her. All Jo can take in is that Dave, who used to run a market stall, now has something to do with futures trading that involves vast sums of money and a lot of shouting and telephoning and computer screens, and allows him to run a BMW, although he is only twenty-five years old. It seems incomprehensible to Jo; the job is so far removed from her experience that he might as well have become an astronaut. But she is pleased for Dave, who is a nice boy, and happy for Debbie, who loved him long before he was rich.
She is less pleased at the way her peaceful home has become a battleground. Suddenly she and Matt are ridiculed by children and parents alike for voting for a party that cannot decide what to call itself. Debbie blames her brother for being on the dole; where once she thought him unlucky, she now calls him lazy. If Dave can get rich, then so could Ian, Debbie says. Ian disputes this hotly. Political arguments break out at meals, till Jo can’t enjoy the food she’s cooked, though her children seem able to eat and argue at the same time.
Matt bans politics at the table. Debbie talks about Dave’s new flat in Dockland, the feeling of space, the view of the river from the terrace. She talks about motor racing at weekends, at Brands Hatch or Silverstone, about dinners at restaurants costing £100 for two with wine. Ian kicks her under the table and she lets out a shriek. Matt tells them both to behave themselves. ‘I wasn’t talking politics, Dad,’ says Debbie, looking innocent. The corners of Matt’s mouth twitch: Debbie has always been able to get round him. She is a real Daddy’s girl. Ian has tears of rage in his eyes as he rushes from the table; Jo feels his pain as if it were her own.
Her parents suggest he should go and stay with them in Portugal for a while. He is sure to find a job more easily there, they say. As a waiter, for instance, in a restaurant run by some English friends of theirs. Ian brightens; Jo thinks it is a terrible idea. ‘He could come and work for me in the ga
rage,’ Matt says. ‘I’ve told him often enough.’ Ian scowls and says that would be charity. Jo doesn’t like to ask why help from his grandparents is more acceptable than help from his father: she is afraid of the answer.
Over the next few months, the scene is repeated with variations until it feels to Jo as if her happy home life has gone for ever. ‘It’s just a phase,’ Matt tells her. ‘They’ll get over it.’ Jo loves her children dearly but she thinks they have been having phases and inflicting them on her ever since they were born. Yet she can’t bear the idea that one day they won’t live with her any more.
Today when she gets home from lunch with Madelyn it is late afternoon and growing dark. Ian lies on the floor watching television with the sound down and a record on the stereo very loud. Jo has to shout over it. ‘Dad not home yet?’ Ian shakes his head, eyes fixed on the screen, feet waving in the air in time to the beat. ‘Where’s Debbie?’ Jo asks. ‘She said she’d start supper.’ Ian shrugs. The record stops abruptly and the silence is quite a shock; Ian says, ‘Mum, Gran rang up. They’ve found me a job. Will you tell Dad?’
‘Oh, Ian.’ She’s quite overcome. And why didn’t her mother tell her first? How can she steal her son without even asking permission?
‘It’s all right, Mum. It’s a good thing.’ His eyes fix on hers, daring her to object. ‘You ought to be pleased for me.’
And of course she is. In a way.
Jo puts the stew in the oven and walks down the road to the garage. The air smells of bonfires and mist. She wants to be alone with Matt to tell him the news. All she can see of him is two feet sticking out from under a car he is repairing. Everyone else has gone home and the place is empty and echoing. Matt works harder than ever now he is in business for himself but he loves it; he says being made redundant is the best thing that ever happened to him.
She tells Matt about Ian and he comes out from beneath the car and gives her a big hug. ‘It’ll be good for him,’ he says, ‘but it’s tough on you, love.’ She sinks into the hug, smelling the warm familiar smell of Matt mixed with the garage smells, and lets herself cry a little. Matt kisses her. She says as she said to Madelyn, ‘I don’t like the eighties.’
‘It’s change you don’t like,’ says Matt, holding her.
She feels bereaved, as if Ian has died, and heavy with Madelyn’s secret. They walk home together, arms round each other, and she thinks how lucky she is to have Matt when other women are lonely or married to horrible men. She shouldn’t complain about anything, she thinks.
‘It’s all right,’ Matt says. ‘I’m not changing.’
‘But you are,’ she says. ‘You’re getting better all the time.’ This reminds them of one of their favourite records twenty years ago and they both smile.
When they get home Ian has gone out to celebrate, leaving a note: ‘Mum, I borrowed a fiver, hope that’s OK.’ Jo screws up the note and throws it away before Matt sees it. She pours them both drinks and checks the progress of the stew while Matt goes upstairs to have a bath. Debbie comes in and says, ‘Oh, sorry, Mum, did I forget to turn on the oven? Look, I won’t be in to supper, I’m just going to change and then go right out again, okay?’
‘Everyone’s changing,’ Jo says, ‘and it’s not okay at all.’ She tells Debbie about Ian and the job in Portugal and Debbie’s face slumps. ‘Oh, shit,’ she says. ‘I hate you using that word,’ Jo says, ‘and I thought you’d be pleased. You and Ian do nothing but fight these days.’
‘I thought he’d be around when I’m not,’ Debbie says. Suddenly she looks like Madelyn telling her secret, nervous and proud. ‘Look, Mum, I’ve been waiting for a good moment but there isn’t going to be one. Dave wants me to go and live with him. Will you break it to Dad?’
Jo slams the stew back in the oven. ‘No, I bloody won’t.’
‘I do hate you using that word,’ Debbie says, hugging her. ‘And these aren’t really changes, these are things you’ve known were on the cards for ages, you just don’t like getting them both in one day.’
‘You’re only nineteen,’ Jo says, feeling stupid, knowing they can’t stop her, thinking how upset Matt will be.
‘You were only nineteen when you married Dad,’ Debbie says, as Jo knew she would.
‘But you’re not getting married.’
‘We might. Eventually. When we’re ready to have kids.’
The confidence of youth, Jo thinks, remembering. But she doesn’t envy Debbie, she worries about her. Does she realise she is facing a lifetime choosing between condoms and monogamy? That she might end up a single parent? That she is growing up too fast?
‘Anyway,’ Debbie says, ‘you ought to be pleased. You and Dad are like a couple of old love birds most of the time, you should be glad to have the place to yourselves again.’ Suddenly she sounds almost jealous.
‘I’m not telling him for you, Deb,’ Jo says. ‘You’ll have to tell him yourself.’
‘I’ll get Dave to tell him,’ says Debbie. ‘Man to man and all that.’
‘Try getting Dave to ask him,’ Jo says. ‘That might go down better.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ says Debbie, kissing her. ‘You’re so tactful.’
The week passes slowly at her dull office, but she needs the money and the people are nice. Next Saturday when she goes for lunch with Madelyn, wanting to be soothed, Martin is there and sudden panic ices over her spine.
‘It’s all right,’ Martin says, and she knows he means just the opposite. He smiles reassuringly at her while his eyes look serious. Madelyn puts her arm round him as if to protect him. Jo feels they are all like children trying to face up to a new school, trying not to look scared.
‘He’s had the test,’ Madelyn says, ‘and it was positive.’
What a family we are, Jo thinks. We all have to be postmen for each other. She feels herself starting to cry as she looks at Martin, but she isn’t surprised or shocked: it’s as if she’s always known this is how it would be.
‘I’m not dying, Jo,’ Martin says. ‘I’m living with it. There’s a big difference. I may never get it and even if I do, it doesn’t mean I’ll die.’
They have lunch and she tries to believe him.
‘And you mustn’t blame Simon,’ he says, reading her thoughts. ‘It may have been me who gave it to him.’
Jo knows this is true but she blames Simon anyway. They eat in silence and she gazes at her little brother and thinks how cruel it is that she can’t save him. She runs through his childhood and adolescence in her head as if she were using fast forward on the video.
‘My test was positive too,’ Madelyn says softly.
They both look at her and smile. Madelyn hugs her stomach and smiles back. Jo feels a sense of affirmation, a pledge of hope. Something to hang on to, a bit of the future. Madelyn’s child, to be born in the next decade. Life going on, no matter what, against all odds. They hold hands, the three of them, thinking of the fourth.
‘Oh, Madelyn,’ she says, ‘I’m so glad.’
‘Isn’t she clever?’ Martin says lovingly.
‘Martin for a boy and Joanna for a girl, I thought,’ says Madelyn, looking pleased with herself.
Jo finishes her wine. Suddenly she can’t wait to get home and tell Matt, face to face. And to hold him very close.
Casualties
Neil rings her up to invite her to his wedding. Janis hears jubilation in his voice, clearly telling her that someone else wants him even though she doesn’t. He and Sandra will be very pleased if she can be there. Janis congratulates him in what she hopes are warm, neutral tones, more like an old friend with whom he had lost touch than an ex-wife. She says it is nice of him to ask her and she will let him know. She needs time to think.
After she puts the phone down she checks herself, as if she had been involved in a road accident, and finds to her relief only surprise, even a bruise of envy, but no actual damage. She monitors herself precisely and she notices another emotion creeping in: a sense of relief that perhaps Neil will in future be
less likely to ring her up to see how she is getting on without him.
She was never sure how to handle those phone calls. Did Neil want to hear that she was lonely and miserable or that she was happy with a lover? Either way, she always felt he was checking up on her, trying to control her behaviour, the way he had done when they were married, seeing if she was still available. She always feared there was the dreadful possibility that since neither of them had remarried he might ask her to try again and refusal would offend, like asking for credit in the corner shop. She has never found it easy to say no to Neil. Does that mean she has to go to his wedding?
She pours herself a large drink and remembers the party. She finds she has not forgiven Neil for that: her resentment is still fresh. In those days it was called wife-swapping; later it became known as swinging or, as now, recreational sex. She thinks the original title the most honest because it suggests that wives are commodities to be bartered and exchanged, rather like cigarette cards or marbles in the hands of small boys.
She remembers urging Neil to have an affair, if that was what he wanted. She might want to have one herself one day. If you are both teenage virgins when you get married, it is galling to wake up ten years later and find that the whole sexual revolution has passed you by. But Neil says no, he doesn’t want to have an affair, that is the whole point. ‘I want to watch you with someone else,’ he says.
Janis is chilled by this remark. (Jan knows it is a common male fantasy, good for reviving flagging interest. Jan knows a lot of things that Janis never knew.) She feels as if she has been riding along in a sledge, wrapped warmly in a nice fur rug, and he has suddenly taken her out and thrown her to the wolves howling behind them. She has never even kissed another man with her mouth open. She remembers a time when Neil used to stop her reading sexy books. She remembers being so in love she could hardly bear to turn over and go to sleep. She remembers saying, ‘Oh King, live for ever,’ to Neil when they made love on their honeymoon. Obviously things have changed while she was not paying attention.
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