We have a history, Blowski and me and I don’t want her in it. He used to come to play the piano. Sometimes I opened the door to him, sometimes not. Brenda gave me suspicious looks from the back of the shop when I went in. I really couldn’t imagine what he saw in her. I’m not a snob I don’t think, the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve known, but she was … not common, I have no argument with common. She was coarse. That’s it: she was coarse and he was fine. It didn’t seem right somehow, they weren’t a fit pair. I don’t think I was jealous. I didn’t want him. Even if Brenda had gone up in a puff of smoke. I have to be alone.
I think there was talk on Mercy Terrace. I’m certain there was: the married Polish cobbler visiting the standoffish spinster from number 101.
The night before last I didn’t open the door to him. I don’t know why. I so look forward to his visits but somehow I wasn’t up to it, talk, closeness. I heard him knock and there was a sinking in my stomach like a sponge when you open the oven door too soon. And then I heard him talking to Inis, not the words, just their voices and her door shutting. For a minute I thought he’d gone in and I went cold all over, but then I heard him sigh and saw his shadow flit past the front-room curtains.
I am sorry now. I would like to see him now. I hope he comes tomorrow. He has grown thinner than ever lately and his knuckles are all askew. His patience is not what it was either, he’s quite cantankerous at times. But still, I like him.
If he knows some of my secrets, then I certainly know his. He is a bigamist.
‘There is something Brenda do not know,’ he said one afternoon. He had been playing a waltz and I had been watching his quick fingers on the keys, pretending just for the duration of the waltz that he was mine. That he would finish playing and we would lock the door, go upstairs together, draw the curtains. That I was the sort of woman who could do that. His nose was rather long and sharp in profile and his chin all rough with stubble. He sighed in a shuddery way, quite theatrical.
‘Yes?’
He turned to face me. ‘I can trust you?’ he asked. ‘It is secret but it hurt always to keep it secret.’ He put his hand over his heart and clenched it.
‘Who would I tell?’
‘I have two wife, me,’ he said. ‘One, I left at home. And never return.’
‘But why?’ Everything he’d said had led me to believe he had nothing to go home for when his country had become communist.
‘Hypocrites. Liars. Me, I hate law that betray a whole bloody people. I turn my back. Now I have no home. But Marika …’ he said, his dark eyes glittering.
‘Why didn’t you go back to her … or couldn’t she have come here? Why marry Brenda?’
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Let me ask you, Trixie Bell. You have ever been in love … I mean real?’ I started to consider but he shook his head before I could speak. ‘No, I see you have not. I love Marika. She so … beautiful. I never see woman, not single woman in this whole bloody world who hold candle to Marika.’ He clenched both fists against his heart now. I did not know what to say. The kettle whistled and I went to make the tea.
‘So why?’ I said when I’d returned.
‘She not love me.’
‘Oh I’m sure …’
‘No, no, no.’ He waved his hands. ‘She absolutely not. “You nice man,” she say. “You so kind.” When we marry I think maybe she love me, but, oh she not find me sexy, you understand?’
I nodded. I thought he was sexy. I supposed I would have done, if I was that sort.
‘So why did she marry you?’
‘Ha! I was good, what you say, catch, me. Like fish, eh?’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Good profession, good family, good look. But someone else she like better. Love.’ I thought for a horrible moment he was going to spit on the carpet, he said this word so fiercely. ‘He strong, he loud, he big. What man! Before me, she go with him. Then we marry, I think it finish, Marika and he. Then I find out, all the time, before marry, after marry, all time she still see him. I tell you, if I went home after war Marika be with him. I know it, me. I could not bear it. So I think, Blowski, you must start again. New profession, new woman, new country, new start. And I meet Brenda, she think me sexy, think I’m bloody miracle. So I feel good, I feel sod Marika. I live happy with Brenda, business all right. But sometime I remember … the music remind and sometime you, Trixie, you remind me of Marika.’
‘Oh!’
‘Oh you not so beautiful … well you older, you not so alive but something in your eyes …’
I felt like slopping my cup of tea right in his stupid sentimental face. He was so wrapped up in himself, his eyes so far away and dreamy, he didn’t even realise what he’d said. Although I don’t know why I was hurt. I knew I wasn’t beautiful. I even knew … even felt sometimes that I was only half alive, so he spoke the truth.
It was several weeks later, I don’t know exactly when, that he learned my secret. He is the only person I still know, who knows.
I got a letter from him out of the blue and it was a letter I couldn’t understand. A letter I have still.
Dear Trixie,
Thank you for last night. I so surprise by you. I think you friend only. I keep think of the rose. I not think you that way. I did not mean. I only come to play piano. Of course, I don’t tell Brenda. I see you soon.
Best wishes, do i say love?
Stefan Blowski.
That was the start of a bad spell for me. I didn’t know what he meant. I remembered nothing, not even a blank space. I did not reply to his letter or open the door to him again for months, nearly a year. I ached inside. If there was music on the television or the radio that sounded like his music, I switched it off. I stayed put mostly. When I did go out I made detours so I did not have to pass his shop.
Often he knocked at the door. I knew his knock, always the same, ratatatata, always twice, then a wait, then once more, then he’d swivel on one heel and walk away. Then I’d sit on the floor and hug myself and moan until the misery had washed over me and left me high and dry.
But one day I met him in the street, there was no avoiding it. I’d been in the butcher’s buying a lamb chop. He caught me as I came out of the shop.
‘Trixie Bell!’ He looked delighted. He clapped me on the upper arms with both hands, not quite a hug. The contact almost hurt. I caught a whiff of his rubbery cobbler smell. I’d forgotten how dark and wiry his eyebrows were or quite how bright his eyes. ‘Stranger, eh, Trixie?’ He smiled. I could not look away from him. His teeth were as bad as ever but did not spoil the warmth of his smile. He let me go. ‘I miss piano,’ he said, wiggling his fingers in front of him. There was no suggestiveness in his face or in his voice. ‘And I miss my friend,’ he said.
‘You can come again.’
And we returned to the old routine, the old friendship. It was different for me, of course, because he knew a part of me I didn’t know myself. Only once did he refer to what had happened.
‘Blowski understand,’ he said. ‘You not you, and I, I take advantage. I apologise, I stupid, me. I get carried away. Not again.’
And now we are just old people who meet now and then, he plays the piano hardly at all, his hands are so warped and stiff. We drink tea together and grumble about the changing times as if we are quite normal.
ADA
See how sweet I am, see how gay,
I’m adorable and coming your way.
Poor Trixie. If only she would let go then she could rest. We could wear the lovely dresses. If we could reach our toenails we could paint them. Without Trixie I think I could, supple as I am you cannot have failed to notice. And with our scarlet toenails we could dance. If Blowski would come now and it was me.
Oh Blowski, the only one since the other one, since Frank.
Blowski, a good man. It is not wrong to love him.
The only one to see right through Trixie to me.
It used to be more. Whole evenings and nights.
Shows we went to …
West Sid
e Story, Oklahoma, The King and I and what was the other …?
Music and dancing. Romance. Irresistible and coming out to play.
June nights, the sky blue glass, swallows drawing loops in the air.
Walking till our feet ached.
If I’d known that was our heyday …
Bugs and lamps and lanterns.
The smell of elderflowers down by the river and the moon wobbling in the water.
The ecstasy of close warm flesh pressed the whole length of you.
The flesh of another. Separate. Being.
Without Blowski to love, Trixie and I, we could not have lived for all these years. We could not have lived.
SWEET PICCALILLI
When Pauline arrived, Robin was ecstatic. He climbed on her lap, played with her glasses and hair, stuck his fingers in her ears, would not leave her alone. She was delighted with Robin, excited to have him to herself. She’d brought him a toy fire-engine with a diabolical siren and, for my birthday, Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course. It looked overwhelming – 632 pages of things you can do with food, things which by implication I should do with food.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Well, it might inspire you.’ I saw her eyes meet Richard’s in a conspiratorial way. ‘There’s a lovely recipe for sweet piccalilli in there,’ she added. ‘Richard’s always loved his pickles. Matter of fact I’ve brought a jar of chutney. Last year’s green tomato.’ She fished it from her bag.
‘We can have it with lunch,’ Richard said. ‘Sherry? Martini?’
I tried not to behave like a sullen child. I even pretended pleasure at the thought of my break. I packed a cotton dress that Richard admired, walking boots and shorts, several rolls of film and my favourite old Pentax. I even remembered sun-tan lotion.
We set off in the early afternoon. The car seats were hot against the backs of my legs. Richard drove. Pauline stood by the gate holding Robin, encouraging him to wave. I waved my hand at them, but did not properly look. When we had rounded the corner, Richard put on a tape. Bach’s Magnificat. The voices filled the car and flowed out of the open windows.
‘There,’ Richard said. As if he had proved a point. He put his hand on my bare knee.
‘There what?’ Every bloody person in sight was holding the hand of a child, or pushing a push-chair or wearing a tiny baby in a sling. I could not even bear to look at the empty child-seat in the back.
Richard gave me a look and joined in with the tape. I watched his Adam’s apple slide in his throat. I did love him then. Despite his confident demeanour I could see he was apprehensive about what I might do, or accuse him of. Cruelty.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one,’ Pauline had said to me over lunch. ‘I never had one single day away from Richard and Lucy. Not a single day. It never would have entered Fred’s head. But then you didn’t then, think of it. You didn’t expect any respite, then.’
I knew I must pretend. For Richard, for Robin, for Pauline, perhaps even for myself I must pretend that I was capable of this, of letting go for thirty hours. That’s what I calculated. I’d insisted that I had to be back on Sunday for Robin’s bedtime and Richard had reluctantly agreed.
Richard looked across at me in the car and smiled. ‘Happy?’
‘Happy,’ I lied. The miles pulled threads of love from the pit of my stomach all along the road behind us, catching on lamp-posts, tangling at corners. I saw that my hands were clenched into fists. I made myself open them and wiped away the little snakes of sweat on my skirt.
I knew I was pathetic, how friends of mine would leap at the chance of a break from their children but … I just did not.
It was a golden day. Once we’d got clear of London I noticed that the trees were a million fat greens, that the sky was stupidly, childishly blue. I shut my eyes as the miles passed, and the hours. I listened to the music and Richard’s voice joining in, and dozed. When I opened my eyes again, the Derbyshire hills, like the rounded flanks of animals were sleeping in the sun, grey walls and bushes threading their creases.
‘Awake now? You’re not much company.’
‘Sorry, where are we?’
‘Nearly there.’
‘Really?’
‘You’ve been asleep for hours.’
‘Tired.’
‘Well I put my foot down. No sense wasting time.’ Richard stopped the car in a lay-by and we got out.
‘Smell,’ Richard said and I drew in a lungful of the polleny air.
‘It is beautiful,’ I admitted. We stood at the roadside gazing at the complex view, hills, trees, more hills, the spire of a church emerging from amongst a dark huddle of distant trees. It was the first time I’d been outside myself since Robin had been born. For a moment I became flickers of birdsong and nodding of grasses and the deep cold creep of the river in the valley. A lightness grew around my heart. The pretence had worked.
I had almost forgotten the magic I’d learned as a child, that if you pretend very hard to feel something, then sometimes it will work and become real. Like a wish coming true. I could make myself cry by pretending to be sad. I could become truly grateful for the most hideous thing. And now the pretence of happiness, romantic happiness even, that had stuck like a seed in my throat had grown shoots and leaves. It wasn’t for long after all and the countryside was so glorious – and all Richard wanted was my happiness.
We stopped in Bakewell and toured the souvenir-shops. We bought a book of walks, some plastic dinosaurs for Robin and a box of fudge for Pauline. In a café we shared a pot of tea and ate slices of Bakewell pudding, all thick and eggy. We managed to chat about something or other neutral, friends, memories, laughed at the conversation going on at the adjacent table. ‘He gave me every excuse under the book,’ a powdery middle-aged woman was saying. ‘But I wouldn’t have none of it. “I’m not having it,” I says. And him with only the one leg!’
I’d forgotten how eavesdropping used to be such fun, such sneaky pleasure. Now if I was in a café or restaurant I was too completely taken up with Robin.
‘God it’s good to see you smile,’ Richard said and touched my lips with his finger. ‘Aren’t you going to finish your pudding?’
‘Too rich. We could take one back for Pauline.’ He leaned over and finished it for me, then we walked arm in arm through the little town imagining living somewhere like this, looking in estate agents’ windows and rhapsodising about rural schools.
We drove to our hotel in time to change and have a drink before dinner. The view from the hotel bar was outrageously beautiful, a steep hill plunging down to a shallow silvery river far below and hills rising in the distance that looked as if they’d been blessed by the powdery evening light. I couldn’t resist that light and went out to take some photographs.
Everything conspired to be perfect: the weather, the wine, the food. My dress looked good, clung and dipped in all the right places. For the first time in years I wore lipstick and, to please Richard, I put on my new, glamorous, prickly watch. I behaved very well. Richard glanced at me anxiously from time to time and I responded with a smile. He was wearing a white shirt with a stupid collar but I pretended not to mind. As the weekend successfully progressed, his expression grew increasingly smug. He had been right after all. Doctor Goodie. All I’d needed was a break. He was partly right. I was surprised I hadn’t died from the forcible separation from Robin. Whole minutes passed when he didn’t even cross my mind.
After our green-lipped oysters, duck and syllabub we walked for a little in the dark. The sky was full of stars like bright press-studs and the moon was almost full, low and buttery. On the hills were the lights from scattered houses and sometimes the moving brightness of headlights on a far-off road. Richard held my hand.
‘Bats,’ he said. Deeper scraps of darkness swooped around us as we passed a looming barn. We heard the deep hoo-hooing of an owl.
‘It is so silent,’ I said. There were no traffic sounds, no voices, no wind to moan in the trees. The silence was like b
lack velvet, thick and soft in my ears.
‘When I was little,’ Richard said, ‘I used to think I could hear the stars.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Nothing. They squeaked.’
I laughed. ‘Let’s get back.’
‘Wait.’ Richard pulled me close to him and kissed me on the mouth. ‘Pity we have to go back,’ he murmured, ‘we could do it here …’
‘Do what?’
He kissed me again and put his hand on my breast.
‘Come on.’ I pulled away and walked back towards the hotel.
‘No sense of adventure, that’s your trouble,’ he said, following.
‘I’m only thinking about thistles,’ I said, ‘and midges and cow-pats. Just being realistic. Anyway, I’m chilly.’
He caught up with me and put his arm round my waist. ‘But are you feeling randy? That’s the main thing, we can do it anywhere you like, long as we do it.’
‘Mmmmm,’ I said. I was feeling sleepy. All I wanted to do was sleep – preferably alone – for a very long time and then drive straight home to Robin. But sex, of course, was part of the deal. That’s what we’d been leading up to. And it should be what I wanted to do. I just didn’t. I felt suddenly deflated, disappointed in myself.
Richard massaged me first. I tried to relax, but I was worried that the oil would get in my hair. The way he did my shoulders was lovely, but then he moved down to my buttocks and slid his slippery fingers up the insides of my thighs. How could I say I didn’t want it?
We ate slices of black-pudding as big as saucers with our bacon and egg breakfast. The hills were shadowy. I was relieved to have got the night over. I had even slept and not woken until the luxurious hour of eight o’clock. We planned to walk, lunch in a pub and drive back. My heart skittered at the thought of being home again, holding Robin in my arms to kiss him goodnight.
Richard’s head was bowed over the book of walks. I noticed for the first time a few grey hairs in his black curls. His chin was stubbly – he never shaved on holiday. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a little wisp of black hair curled in the hollow between his collar-bones. When we weren’t in bed and there was no danger of having to make love, I sometimes still desired him.
The Private Parts of Women Page 9