Exposure

by Avril Osborne

  CHAPTER 31

  The issue of how to do something purposeful with this time in her life is at the fore of Linda’s thinking. There is a vacuum that she has to fill. She wonders whether she might either do something political or in the line of social support, based on the experiences that she has just had. Jane’s article was a good model of how one could behave in circumstances like this. Is Linda such a coward that she will do nothing positive herself? There must be women in thousands, if not in hundreds of thousands, if the issue were looked at internationally, who have experienced the same struggle to come to terms with their sexuality. There have to be thousands who face secrecy or discrimination in employment and who face stigmatisation by families and society. The embryo of an idea begins to develop but as yet it is no more than that. Susan has said to her that she wonders what trouble Linda will get herself into next and, even though it was said jokingly, Linda agrees to think carefully and to let her ideas evolve slowly. What Linda does know, though, is that she was going to do something.

  She decides on a literature search on the subject of sexuality and employment and on what other women have already written about the same aspects of adjustment to sexual orientation as those with which she has so recently struggled.

  She needs to do something productive. She believes that her beginning thoughts about political action are sound. She calls it creating political community. She knows that she is not interested in community in the way that others are - living in a sub-culture of exclusively homosexual people. She would not ever want to live in what she sees as an enclave of homes exclusive to lesbians. No, her sense of political community is more a conceptual one, her concerns more about the diversity of women’s lives within the societies in which they live. Women living as Jane does, or as indeed she now does herself, need a sense of self-identity, a sense of community with like-minded women. They also need rights - human rights, the right to be recognized in every sense. For Linda, it is a question of exploring the sameness of her personal and social experience with all other women as well as the difference of being a lesbian woman within mainstream society.

  Her ideas shape into a proposal to seek out other women’s views - is there an inability in society to reconcile the sameness and the difference - does a woman have to be either in society and therefore perceived as ‘normal’ or excluded even, if in the subtlest of ways, because she is a lesbian?

  She toys with the idea of developing a research proposal. After all, her research skills would make the task easy enough. The ideas might be flowing, but Linda determines to move slowly as she is not intending to invent wheels that already exist or to run headlong into a cause that can go nowhere But she is a well-trained academic and she can and maybe should use that training wisely. What the University will make of it is another matter and she knows that if she is going to pursue this, it will be outside her terms of employment. She might look to another institution to sponsor her research.

  They are thoughts and they might stay as no more than that but they comfort Linda and help her to tolerate the mould back into the roles of Professor, wife and mother. There has to be something different for her out of all this. Going back to the Linda Pilar of a few months ago is simply not an option.

  Her birthday approaches. The day comes and goes. There is nothing personal from Jane though - just ‘best wishes’ on an anodyne card.

  And this was how the term progresses. She sees Jane at meetings and in the coffee lounge as she walks slowly along the corridor with the help of her stick. Linda is politeness itself but that is all. The rapport that accompanied their earlier working time together is also gone. Linda ensures that she remains the model of correctness, and if Jane is frustrated by this, she contains that frustration. Linda’s upset that Jane was moving jobs soon changes to ambivalence. Life at work is becoming intolerable -beyond Linda’s expectations. She concludes that she wants Jane to leave whilst she still loves her and before she becomes angry or even hateful. Jane’s acquired apparent indifference is hurtful in a way she has not experienced before, especially when it takes the form of spending her leisure time around the campus facilities with the ever present Hector.

  Eventually, the day dawns of Jane’s departure from the University. It is also the last day of term. It falls to Linda to make the farewell speech and the presentation of the crystal glasses for which the staff have collected. Linda’s is a correct but fulsome speech, focussing on the good work that Jane has done, the contribution she has made to the research programme and her well-deserved popularity with colleagues and students. Jane is not going far, of course, and there are already strong links between the University and the City Museum; that long and profitable link will undoubtedly be strengthened by Jane’s continuing contribution from the different discipline. She thanks Jane to the affectionate applause of her colleagues, presents her with the box of glasses and as she does so, shakes her hand and kisses her cheek. Linda’s lips barely touch the other woman’s skin.

  Jane responds, even if she is a little choked with emotion. That, Linda assumes, will be attributed by those present to the fact that she is sad to be leaving. Their colleagues cover any awkwardness with genuine and loud applause. Anyway, American colleagues are always more expressive. Wine and nibbles are on offer and the party mingles for another half hour before people start to drift away to start their vacations. Linda stays till the end, still following the protocol of what the most senior person present should do. She says her goodbyes to Jane with a final word of good wishes.

  That is it. If there is any personal message to her from Jane, Linda does not see it. Hector is at Jane’s side and stays there as Jane waits till the last of her colleagues trickle away. He puts another glass of wine in front of her and sits with her, just being there.

  “Come on,” he says as their glasses head towards empty. “We can’t have you going off to that flat on your own on this of all nights. Let’s eat.”

  Linda stands and watches as Jane and Hector leave, Jane turning for one last smile in her direction. It is over and that void is there in front of Linda once again.

  In the evening, Linda sits alone in the study, working quietly at a paper she is writing for submission to an archaeological journal. The children are out at youth activities, Ken is in late surgery and she is free to let her tears course down her cheeks, blurring the computer screen. Tina comes in, catching her unawares

  “I know, Linda.”

  She looks at Tina.

  “I worked it out for myself. This is the day that Jane left the University, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, Tina. The children - I don’t want to cause them any pain.”

  Tina looks at her.

  “It’s not for you to apologise.” Then she says the one thing that matters, that tells Linda that Tina has no judgement to make.

  “These things happen. It’s just a question of looking after the little ones.”

  “Thank you, Tina.” She takes Tina’s hand in one of their rare moment of physical closeness and squeezes it.

  She sits on her own for a while after Tina leaves to make some coffee. She is a very unlikely source of comfort, is Tina, but all the more precious for that. The older woman comes back just ten minutes later and, sensing that Linda wants her company, sits on the edge of the armchair in the room.

  “You know, what I still don’t see in all this is how the press got a hold of the story about you in the first place.” Tina sips her coffee as she says this, watching Linda’s face for her reaction.

  Linda knows that it is still an unsolved mystery. She just has not allowed herself to dwell on the question. But now she takes the article from the drawer and reads it again with Tina sitting beside her. For all that these few words have caused so much havoc in her life, she has only read it on the day it was published, not since. Sarah King certainly did a sensational article; one which mirrored her style on the ‘Sex Romp’ article about Susan. The spin she chose under this strap line - ‘University of Lesbianism
’, was about significant numbers of lesbians and gays in the city’s University staff group in relationships with other staff, and with students.

  Jane and Linda are named, the proof of their relationship being provided by the sighting of them in a particular Italian restaurant. A colleague of theirs saw them, according to the article, holding hands and behaving intimately. Other names were printed, mainly lecturers, but Linda is the most senior person mentioned.

  The words ‘lesbian’ and ‘dyke’ are both used but only in general terms and references to themselves as ‘believed to be partners’ were not, in themselves, pejorative.

  “It could have been any one of hundreds of people,” she says now to Tina, “If it was in fact someone from the University.”

  Then it clicks. Linda just stares at Tina. Brenda Ramsey. Susan told Linda about the confession to the police and about the file that Brenda kept on them. Of course. It had to be her. Why has she not thought this through before? It is obvious now. She did just not realize before because she did not read the article again for all these weeks. And she only half listened to that part of Susan’s account of her talk with Inspector Philips.

  She tells Tina. Tina knows the name - there has been enough publicity over that woman and the Susan situation in the press in recent weeks. Tina is as heated as Linda has ever seen the otherwise tranquil personality. What she would like to do to that young woman is not fit to be said out loud. Linda just smiles. At least she understands now. And she hazards a guess that Brenda would have been paid, and paid handsomely, for her account to the press. Linda wonders what embellishments the woman put on the story. And she can certainly remember touching Jane’s hand and face in the restaurant. That was true. She just did not think for one second that anyone else was so interested in their table as to be watching. They were only momentary touches but they happened. And she cannot honestly say that she regrets it - for all that that evening has cost them.

  As she sits here, Tina’s presence a reassuring comfort, she thinks about some of the more recent exchanges between Ken and herself. The previous evening, he found some of her jottings from her computer search on lesbian women. He was livid as he confronted her and as she confirmed some of the political views that were so obviously in her mind.

  “It’s not so bad, Ken” she muttered, irritated by his demeanour.

  “Not so bad?” he exploded. “How do you think I feel having my wife” - he almost spat the words out - “My wife paraded in front of the public like this? And my wife is now thinking of getting herself further into all this deviant nonsense. What sort of a bloody wimp does this make me look like?”

  She saw what he meant but signalled, exasperated, that she dismissed the effect on him. Her concern was with the children - not the preservation of his ego.

  “You’ll survive, Ken. There are plenty of bisexual women in the world living in marriages.” She felt, and sounded, scathing.

  “Bloody Dyke,” Ken roared.

  They stopped there as Angela came in, just awakened by the row, and still warm from sleep.

  “Hello, Darling,” Linda said, putting her arms out.

  “What’s a dyke, Mummy?”

  “It’s just a word for people like me who have special friends, Angie. People use it sometimes if they want to be unkind.” She glared at Ken.

  “Are you Jane’s partner?”

  That was the hardest question.

  “No, Darling. I was. But it was a little while ago.”

  “Oh,” was all Angela said, then, “Jane’s nice.”

  Ken got up, said, “Back to bed, Angie.”

  Linda opens up now with Tina, telling her about the children.

  Angela is going to be OK. Linda knows it. But she is seriously worried about Kenny. Something makes her sense that she cannot go to him as she would do in other circumstances. This time she has to wait for him to come to her. And she has to trust that Ken will do what he can to help Kenny. She is also glad that the article by Helen Moore appeared to go down well with Kenny. She gathered that was true, not from what he said, but by the fact that he did not comment and seemed more at ease after it appeared. She saw him reading it intently and quietly on the day it appeared.

  Linda knows that it was a sound article, confronting bigoted attitudes and basically saying that Jane Gray was a bright mature academic who happened to be gay and who could comment critically on the experience of women in similar circumstances from an international perspective. It was the educated journalistic demand for tolerance that lifted the article and brought some dignity to Jane’s situation and, by inference, to her own.

  Tina read all the papers at the time, quietly and on her own. Her advice to Linda is simple – she should wait. The children will come to her.

  And she is right. It is several days before Kenny comes to her but he does come. It is a Saturday in fact, when Ken is at morning surgery and Tina and Angela are out doing the food shop for the weekend. It is safe for him to come in without losing too much face. She plays down the gap in time since she has talked with her son.

  “Hi, Kenny,” she sys with a gentle smile of welcome, putting down the morning paper.

  He hovers and gives a gruff ‘Hi’ in return. She breaks the impasse.

  “I love you, Kenny.”

  “I love you too, Mum.”

  He comes over and it is a young Kenny who hugs her and then cries for a while in his mother’s arms.

  It comes out slowly. Dad has said that Jane is not going to be about ever again. Is that right? She says, “Yes”, aware of her betrayal of her own feelings as she does so. The school has talked to him about the paper. Linda thinks it must have been the school counsellor. It has been explained to him that it is not the terrible thing to be a lesbian or a gay person that the papers and others make out. It is just the way some people are. His mates have not teased him. If anything, they have been very matter of fact about it all. But it was Angela more than anyone who affected him. She came into his room and just said that Mum was sad and she left again. He knows that he has been a big part of that sadness.

  It is a quiet morning, one that they spend together and she talks about emotions and feelings that people can have for someone of their own sex. They are not bad or wrong. Kenny grows up this morning and makes a fundamental adjustment. He does not understand and he asks no questions about the sexual aspects. But he loves his mother. She is still the same person. When they get to that point, Linda knows that the work is done as far as it can be for now. When Ken and the two shoppers arrive home, Kenny is once again in his room but this time the door is open and music is issuing forth. Ken gives Linda an enquiring look and she nods with a sense of triumph over her husband that things are better. Tina simply gives her a smile and Linda says to her,

  “You were right.”

  Flashbacks from the accident recede as her sleeping pattern returns to normal and as other events dominate her thinking. But they come back again when the news breaks that Dave Ramsey has been released after being interviewed.

  If he is not responsible for the attack, then who is? It is an uncomfortable, unanswered question, one that she shares with Susan. But Susan is increasingly less interested in all that. Susan has the ability to move forwards, Linda realizes, faster than she can. Mind you, Susan has someone new in her life - that must be a great incentive to forget the events of the summer. She wonders in her private thoughts about Susan and whether she will now finally settle down. She hopes so, for her friend’s sake. But she doubts it.

  She feels very ambiguous about her friend, and it is a friendship that she no longer thinks of as special. Too much has happened to tarnish that. Somewhere her respect for Susan has gone; not so much because of the sexual aberration she has told Linda about; more because of the hard indifference of emotion that Susan is so capable of.She would ideally have seen more of Susan at this time, if only to say some of this, albeit in more neutral terms. But Susan is busy and Ken never lets her name come up without some cryptic re
mark. It is a line of least resistance, she knows, but it is getting easier to just bow to his will and allow a growing distance from Susan.

  The climate between her and Ken remains very cool, since neither of them wants to spend very much time with the other except to maintain a front for the children. Things are changing in intangible ways and Linda knows that everyone in the household senses it. Tina is better than all of them at holding things together but the children, consciously or otherwise, become too good in their behaviour to really be themselves. There is a kind of heightened awareness about keeping things as normal as they were before. Because of that, life in the Pilar household takes on an artificiality. It is almost imperceptible but it is there all right.

  Their social life is negligible. And the prospect of Christmas this year is a daunting one. She and Tina work out the practicalities of presents and catering. The children have spurted in height over the year and both need new bikes. That makes present decisions for them easy. She orders by phone for the rest from one of the main department stores on the high street - casual clothes for Ken, candles and vases for friends, a brooch for Susan. Tina finds nice cards and wrapping papers and obviously knows Linda’s tastes well. The two prepare the shopping list for the Christmas family catering and it is agreed that Tina will see to most of it. The family will collect and decorate the tree on the Saturday before Christmas. Linda hopes that Tina will be with them for Christmas, as a means of diluting the inevitable tension that Linda imagines will prevail, but an ailing sister is taking priority. She will be back for New Year.

  So it is to be just the four of them, and Linda is not happy with the prospect of Tina’s absence. Somehow, she has been the sticking plaster over the family wound.

  Ken arrives home late from the surgery on Christmas Eve. The children are full up with pre-Christmas excitement but Ken is fractious at the surgery having gone on so late. Linda’s efforts at mulled wine and canapés go without thanks. She is tired too but they both keep up some sort of front till the children go to their rooms to watch TV - there is no point in asking them to get a good night’s sleep.