‘Are you allowed?’
‘Of course not. I wait till she’s finished reading her books and drinking her sneaky red wine and when she goes up to bed I go down the garden. It’s cool in there at least. I like it. I bring my quilt.’
‘You aren’t afraid?’
‘Of what, for God’s sake – the dark?’
‘No, I mean of falling or anything…’
‘I’m not a simpleton, you know – I learn my way around very quickly. If I’m ever fucking let. Anyway, can we stop talking now. I don’t feel like talking.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘All right I won’t.’
‘Good. I’m sick listening to you anyway.’
‘Are you?’
‘No. You don’t have to talk. But you still have to give me my lesson.’
Agatha holds the silence for a few seconds and then: ‘What is it about the Shillmans – everything they have has to be from some place else?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Swiss chocolate, Scotch whisky, French toast.’
‘I don’t know… His job, I suppose.’
Agatha sits up suddenly.
‘What does he look like anyway, Shillman? Give me five words.’
‘Brown.’
‘Brown? Hair, face, eyes – what?’
‘All three. Well, sallow skinned.’
‘Because he’s Jewish?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is he handsome?’
‘I don’t know, Agatha, I’ve never really looked at him.’
‘Well, next time, make sure you do.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to know everything.’
‘But why, Agatha?’
‘My mother. She fancies him.’
‘She does not!’
‘Her voice changes when he comes into the room. She’ll be having sex with him next.’
‘She can’t! He’s Rachel’s dad.’
‘She won’t care – she’s voracious.’
‘Anyway, she’s in London.’
‘She’ll be back for a weekend before the play starts. Aunt Mary is throwing her a party. She’ll probably nab him then.’
‘Oh, shut up, Agatha, she will not.’
‘You know, she pities Aunt Mary for having Ted as a husband. Poor Mary, she always says, imagine having old Teddy Bear going at it on top of you.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe they don’t?’
‘Oh, she does. They do. I hear the bed, whack, whack, whack against the wall. Lucky for her, it doesn’t last long – that’s what my mother says. But do you know what I think? I think, good for you, Mary, at least you have someone who stays with you. More than my mother has anyway. Someone who cares enough to sleep with her in the same bed every night. More than I’ll ever have, probably.’
‘Agatha, you’ll meet someone who’ll fall in love with you. I bet you’ll get married.’
‘Who’d marry me? Unless it’s someone blind. The thoughts of all that fumbling around and clawing…’
Agatha holds the pillow and slides sideways down on the bed where she lies in a curve, sunglasses slightly askew.
Elaine sits on the dressing-table stool and looks at her own face in the mirror: worried, embarrassed. The silence. She wishes Rachel was here to break the silence.
Until Agatha sniggers. ‘Whack, whack, whack,’ she says.
And now they are screeching with laughter again.
When Agatha leaves, Elaine goes into the bathroom, wets the corner of a towel then brings it back to the bedroom and tries to clean the chocolate stain that her friend’s hand has worked into the nap of the quilt. In the end she is left with two stains: a big water mark shaped like a pond and inside that, on the lower right-hand side, the smaller, darker mark of the original stain.
After tea, she sees Agatha and Mrs Hanley going out for their evening stroll, Agatha’s white cane sniffing ahead. Agatha and her aunt are deep in conversation – about the party for Agatha’s mother, she supposes: what guests they should invite, what food to serve, what they will need to buy.
Elaine thinks of the time – the only time – her parents had been invited to a Hanley party. Her mother had come home early. After little more than an hour, in fact. She had said it was because she couldn’t possibly leave Elaine that long on her own. But she hadn’t been on her own: Mrs Preston had been babysitting.
Mrs Preston had babysat a few times before, but only in the afternoon when her mother had to go to the hairdresser or had some mysterious errand to take care of in town. Mrs Preston had one grown-up son who lived abroad. She had shown Elaine a photograph of him once – a big bald man with a red face standing behind the counter in a pub she said he owned, in a town that was more than a thousand miles away.
The photograph had confused Elaine; she kept getting mixed up and saying – But don’t you mean he’s your brother? Or is he your uncle then? Your husband’s big brother?
She could not get it into her head – the idea of Mrs Preston having a son who was practically an old man.
She had liked many things about Mrs Preston: her elegant way of sitting on the sofa and the way she smelled like lemon icing when you sat down beside her. More than anything else, the way she could draw like a demon. Whatever you asked for – horses, dogs, cats, houses. Thrilling versions of Elaine in costume: Elaine as a ballerina, Bo-Peep Elaine, Maid Marian Elaine. Elaine as a bride. Elaine with the Wimbledon cup held over her head.
One minute there would be a blank page on a sketch pad then Mrs Preston’s hand would start scuttling around and, out of that page, a whole new life sprouted. For those few moments Mrs Preston would disappear. Elaine always wanted her to slow down so she could catch the pencil lines in the act, maybe learn a few of their tricks. But Mrs Preston never slowed down, her hand always moving as if it was drawing against time.
The one thing she had disliked about Mrs Preston was the way she took the sketch pad home with her, pretending not to hear whenever Elaine had asked – or even occasionally begged – to keep a drawing of herself, for herself.
The night her mother came home early from the Hanley party, Mrs Preston’s head jumped up from her drawing and twisted towards the hall. She was on her feet then, flapping the cover of her sketch pad over and stuffing it into her basket. Her face all red as if she’d been caught doing something shameful.
She said, ‘But it’s early yet, Mrs Nichols, if you want to go back to the party, I don’t mind staying in the least.’
‘Not at all, Mrs Preston,’ her mother had said, ‘thank you just the same, but, really, enough is enough.’
At the sitting-room door, Elaine had seen her mother reach out, as if trying to catch Mrs Preston’s hand.
‘Oh no, no, Mrs Nichols,’ Mrs Preston said, ‘you’ve only been gone an hour, I couldn’t really.’
‘Of course you could,’ Elaine’s mother said, and Mrs Preston’s red face nodded and mumbled a thank you.
*
A short time later, Elaine and her mother were sitting up in bed spying out the window, Elaine drinking cocoa, her mother sipping a tumbler of sherry and describing the party she had just left behind.
Her voice, light and girlish, had been barely recognisable. She used words Elaine had never heard her use before, such as ‘super’ and ‘quite frankly’. She described people as ‘sweet’ as if you could eat them. And Elaine had wondered then if, as well as special shoes and fancy hair styles, adults had a special voice and special words they brought with them to parties.
There had been cheese cubes on sticks, her mother explained. Paté and olives, some of them stuffed with a red thing in the middle that made them look like green eyeballs and had quite put her off.
You could have punch from a big cut-glass bowl.
‘Punch!’
‘Yes, it’s a mixture of drinks. It’s called punch because it’s so strong it can knock you out.’
‘Knock you out – at a party?’
You
could have red wine or white wine or gin and tonic. There were slices of lemon and lime. Some of the men drank whiskey and soda that came squirting out of a real syphon like you’d see in a hotel or maybe on the television.
‘And what about you?’ Elaine asked. ‘Did you have punch?’
‘Oh no. Certainly not. A mineral, that’s all.’
‘But why only a mineral?’
‘Because it’s not lady-like, in my opinion, to drink alcohol in public.’
Only a select few of the neighbours had been invited: Doctor Townsend and his wife, of course – she had a lovely cream frock on and as for her shoes! Mrs Jackson was, of course, done up like a Christmas tree and, frankly, ridiculous. Mrs Osborne had been there with her sensible cardigan and her monotonous voice. The Ryans weren’t there – probably not asked and is it any wonder?
Maggie Arlow was half-drunk when she arrived, although she was wearing a super Chinese-style jacket. She was playing up to Terry Jackson in the most disgraceful manner. Of course, she wasn’t the only one to go down that particular avenue. The Shillmans, of course, were very much at home, being similar types to the Hanleys, obviously well used to one another’s company.
Most of the people had been extremely well-spoken even if one or two were not quite respectable. But then artistic people were often that way. Even so, everyone – apart from the neighbours – had an interesting side to them. Mary Hanley had introduced her around like a special guest. And as for Ted? He was so sweet. Well, Ted couldn’t – just couldn’t have been sweeter, quite frankly. He offered her a cigarette and when she’d said no, he’d offered her a different variety, in case the first had been a little too strong for her. Ted had said she was ‘the perfect lady’. It had been the best night of her life.
‘Better even than your wedding day?’ Elaine had asked her mother.
In the dark there had been a pause, then a quickly mumbled – ‘Don’t be silly, of course not.’
When her mother fell asleep, Elaine had stayed at the window. She could hear the party sounds pop out whenever the front door opened: laughing, talking, music. She saw the people who arrived late and the people who lingered at the door saying long goodbyes. She saw a man and a woman kissing in the shadows and then jumping apart when the Hanleys’ porch door opened. And she began to understand why it was that her mother had left the party early. It was for the same reason she always seemed to enjoy looking at the photos from a holiday far more than she had ever seemed to enjoy the holiday itself.
It had been the middle of the night when her father finally came through the Hanleys’ front door. She watched him shake Ted Hanley’s hand on the doorstep, then turn and walk down the slope to the gate before coming back over the road with his hands in his pockets. In the streetlight she could see his stern, unhappy face.
She had tried to imagine him at the party – who he would have spoken to and what he could have said. If he had sat down on a chair or remained standing up all night. Or maybe he slipped off into an empty room and sat at a table on his own in the dark.
Ted Hanley had stayed on the doorstep saying goodbye to his guests; now shaking this man’s hand, now helping that woman into her coat. How she had wished her mother had been awake to see him looking so pleasant. She would have just loved the way he was drawing the coat over the woman’s shoulders, and the way he kissed her then on both sides of her face, the way the French were said to do.
It was natural to presume that not only did her mother love Ted Hanley but that she was a result of that love. Because she couldn’t see the point of the man who had just passed under her window and through the front door. This man who ate dinner on his own, read newspapers on his own, went racing on his own. Even spoke to unknown people on his own private telephone. This man who watched television in another room.
7
Winter Present
December
THERE’S A BLACK GUY standing on the doorstep. I am taken aback by the sight of him and know this must show on my face.
There’s a chance he’ll think I’m racist but there’s not a lot I can do about that. Unless I say something like, ‘Listen pal, you’re not the first black man I’ve ever set eyes on. Places I worked in New York? Every second person was black. And as for Paris, where I trained? Not one white face amongst the porter staff, which says a lot for the French and their so-called sense of equality – wouldn’t you agree?’
I’m having this conversation in my own little head with this guy on my doorstep who is so magnificently, so unbelievably gorgeous it’s almost ridiculous.
Sunlight shoves through the cracks in the clouds and at the same time it has started to snow again. Not real flakes as such – more like silver dust motes in this sudden gush of light. It flatters my visitor anyhow as he stands there in his white overalls, snow specks fussing around him. It gives him the look of a big black angel.
He holds out a business card. I take it from his long hand: fawn-coloured palm and round pinkish fingertips.
I read the card then glance up at eyes that appear to be lacquered with light – a deep green light – and ask myself how is that possible?
He takes a few steps back into the garden and lifts his face towards the roof.
I can see now how well put together he is – far from slim but not too bulky either – comfortable, as if he’s been upholstered in soft brown leather. I can’t help but notice his shoulders. I wonder how old he is and reckon on twenty-eight. Then I wonder about the shape of his feet and if he’s married. Somehow I know he’s not gay. For a split second, I see him standing naked at the side of my bed, my mother’s lilac-coloured quilt crumpled behind him.
He brings his eyes from the roof and looks straight at me.
‘One moment, please,’ I primly say.
I go into the sitting room. My father, in his wheelchair in front of the television, appears to be watching the racing at Chepstow, the sound so low he couldn’t possibly be able to hear it. I suspect he’s just staring at the coloured shapes jostling about on the screen. He’s lost interest. Today’s newspaper, like the rest of the papers for the past week or more, lies untouched on the bed, within its folds the racing section still intact. And he hasn’t eaten his lunch again.
‘There’s someone to see you,’ I say, ‘and you haven’t eaten your lunch again.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
I’m a little surprised when he says this, as he has never struck me as someone who was motivated by hunger but rather one of those men who eat whatever is put in front of them. Besides, with my mother, he probably never had that much chance to work up an actual appetite before the next plate was shoved under his nose.
‘That’s the fourth day in a row that you haven’t touched your lunch. Lynette tells me you’re losing weight. You know, she wants to call the doctor?’
He ignores me.
‘Look, you can’t carry on like this – you need your nourishment, especially in this weather. You have to eat something. I mean, you left half of your breakfast and last night—’
He turns his head and we exchange a brief and startled look – it’s as if the voice of my mother has just entered the room.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to eat if you don’t want. Don’t worry. Fine. It’s all fine.’
I hand him the business card; he looks down and says, ‘Fenton?’
The old lawyer’s glint comes into his eye. His bottom lip pushes slightly forward, one unruly eyebrow gets ready to pop out of his forehead: I imagine these to be two courtroom gestures that have served him well over the years. There’s a pause before his eye glides back to the witness. ‘Am I to understand that he is, in fact, alive?’
I say nothing.
‘Send him in so,’ he says, smugly tapping the card off the side of his hand.
I lift the plate and begin to move away. ‘You may find him a little changed,’ I say.
I would just love to see his face when Othello walks into the room but I’m afraid I migh
t laugh. And I don’t like my father to see me laugh.
Lynette is standing with her coat on when I come back into the kitchen, patiently waiting to resume our conversation. ‘It’s snowing again,’ I say. ‘And you should see the guy who just walked into the sitting room.’
‘This weather,’ she says, ‘this country.’
‘No, I mean it, you should see him.’
She looks at the untouched sandwich then gives her worried sigh. She thinks my father is pining for company, for conversation, for something. I wonder if she may be in love with him. When she talks about him, I sometimes have difficulty understanding just who she means. I wish she’d sit down and talk about something else for a change: tell me about what she does in the evenings, about the village in Malaysia where she grew up, about Hong Kong where her married sister is living. I want to distract her, to get her to change the record anyhow, if only for a moment or two.
‘What I miss about New York,’ I begin, ‘all I miss about New York, I sometimes think, are the seasons: the well-defined, no-ifs-or-buts about it seasons. I like knowing when it’s time to pack one lot of clothes away and take out another. I like knowing which direction the heating bills are going. In summer the humidity will wipe you out; in winter the snow will move in and take over your life. But generally speaking, spring comes at spring time. Autumn in the fall. I’m not saying the weather is completely predictable – and we do have our treacherous days. But? At least you more or less know where you are. And, well, I miss that.’
Lynette continues to look at me, even after I’ve finished. ‘Maybe that’s why people here so insecure,’ she finally decides, ‘never know what come next.’
I look past her out into the garden. This morning started out with ice-spiked rain from a low grey sky. A while ago we had big fat snow clouds. Now it could be summer out there but for the veins of black shadow from the winter branches and the occasional confetti of snow.
‘Too lonely,’ Lynette is saying, ‘need friends. Everybody need friends.’
‘My father?’
The Lives of Women Page 9