“I’ve got rooms,” he commented as they opened the swing doors and the cold air slapped them.
“I’d better not,” Maria told him, softening the words.
“You mean you’d rather not.”
“I mean … I don’t know what I mean,” she said, coughing in amusement. “Night, so.” She patted him on the shoulder, an awkwardly intimate gesture.
Damien pulled his plait inside his collar, turned up against the wind. He nodded and headed off toward the buildings.
“See you tomorrow,” she called, but he was out of earshot.
All the way home in the bus she kept her eyes shut, and her disbelief switched off, holding on to the warmth.
Tuesday, Wednesday, seven and a half hours of Thursday and still no sign of him. Not even the usual hallucinations. Maria killed some twenty minutes at the modern languages notice boards, wandered down a corridor dusty with light, and her eye caught sight of that French tutor she’d seen in The Pit. She spoke before her nerve could decide not to answer the summons.
“Excusez-moi, sorry.”
His face was long and tapered like a Brazil nut.
“I’m a friend of Damien’s. Just wondering had you seen him round at all today?”
Philippe’s shoulders would have liked to shrug. “I presume he’s still in London,” he told her with the faintest of accents. “He did say it was only for the weekend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed all week.”
“Of course,” Maria answered brightly.
It would be rude to truncate the conversation with that, as if she had no interest in the man except as a source of information. As was the case, she reminded herself, and felt doubly guilty. Her smile bared a few teeth. “You must be missing your games!”
He stared.
“Your games. Pool. I’ve seen you play, you’re brill.” Maria told him her name and how nice it was talk to him and that she would no doubt bump into him again sometime. Then she put her fingers over her mouth and cleared her throat, to halt the flow of words, and walked away—the wrong way down the corridor, so she had to lurk in the staff toilet until she could be sure Philippe was gone. Brill, she repeated into the mirror with an extra-wide grimace, to mortify herself. How seventeen.
She was paddling up gradually from sleep when her alarm piped. An irritating little sound, like a squirrel being strangled. Ten o’clock; once again she had forgotten to set it to half eight for weekdays. The lecturer would be straightening his grey tie outside the lecture theatre by now, ready to deliver his commentary on the salient points of rococo ceilings. Maria was aching in all her own salient points, after a crippling evening washing every window in an insurance company office.
There was no one who would notice if Maria went in today or not. Yvonne and she had exchanged only a few hellos since that disastrous weekend at home. As for Damien, he had been back for over a week, she calculated, and it was as if that blurred incident in the bar had never happened. He was reliably friendly; every time she stage-managed an encounter with him on the corridors, he stopped for a chat, impervious to the crowd swirling past them. They even had a short game of pool together, and one threesome with Philippe. But none of it added up to anything.
Maria wrenched back the duvet and reached for her long Johns. She would not come home early again today; warm evenings in the flat were a luxury to be rationed. She mustn’t keep leaning on Ruth and Jael, tagging along. Surely they would get bored of her if she had no life of her own to joke about. Besides, they could do with some privacy. Though it was not her fault, last night; it didn’t count as eavesdropping if the voices carried right through the wall. Words like self-respect and typical and self-indulgence and cliché came ripping through the cloud of murmurs. Every few lines, one voice reproved the other with a piercing “Shh!” Maria had lain there, troubled for them, sometimes trying not to listen, sometimes straining for the words.
Now she sat on the edge of the bed again and took off one runner, shaking it to loosen a tiny pebble, which hit the carpet and leapt under the bed. Maria rested the shoe on her lap and shut her eyes. If she was lonely, it was her own damn fault. If she was bored, why didn’t she do something about it?
By the time the bus got her onto the campus, lectures were over for the day. Maria made a draughty pilgrimage round the notice boards and, steeling herself to it, signed herself up for backstage work on the Dramattic’s Christmas Panto.
That evening she wandered down to the basement before the fourth rehearsal of Snow White and the Seven Bishops. A minimal welcome was offered, over plastic cups of coffee. The rehearsal was protracted and irritating, with the lead bishop fluffing his lines at nine crucial points. Afterward the crew all sat around listing the production’s faults. Maria liked the look of one girl, a scene painter with coal-black hair who claimed to be named Suzette. Hearing Maria’s name, Suzette turned to her, her huge ponytail swinging. “You live with Jael, don’t you?”
Maria couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t hurl her through a trapdoor of implication. She nodded uncertainly.
“I know her from way back,” the girl explained. “Has she learned to play that guitar yet?”
“She thinks she has.”
Suzette turned away to get some instructions from the tetchy director. Maria was just pulling on her gloves to go when Suzette glanced back. “Aren’t you coming to the bar for a nightcap?”
“Sorry, got to dash,” mumbled Maria, and made for the stairs.
Another adolescent panic attack; out at the foggy bus stop she cursed herself systematically under her breath. One, she had turned down a rare and valuable social overture. Two, being an old acquaintance of Jael’s did not automatically make Suzette a lesbian. Three, even if she was, she was only being friendly, and was hardly intending to molest Maria in the college bar.
She got home at midnight, bone tired and sick of herself. Letting herself in quietly in case Ruth and Jael were asleep, she was surprised to hear only one voice in the living room. Maria glanced wearily through the beads; it was Jael, huddled up in her flame-coloured kimono, the phone cord spiralling round her knees.
“Mmm. Whiling the hours away all on my lonesome. No, the youngster must be at college still. So what have you and Mumsie been up to?”
A long pause; Jael shifted on the sofa, tucking her feet under her. Go to bed, Maria told herself, yawning silently. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted a cup of tea.
“Me too.” A low, throaty laugh. “Wouldn’t say no. Why do you have to stay with her tonight? Possessive cow.” Jael listened, then broke in. “I’m not insulting her, I’m just lusting after her daughter. I won’t be able to sleep, you know. I’m just going to have to parade starkers on the roof till someone takes pity on me.”
Maria decided against the tea. A hot bath before bed, maybe? Her shoulders slumped in indecision.
“It is not ovulation, you’re a week out. I’m always horny on Friday nights. And no wonder, after your shameless conduct in the shower this morning. You didn’t learn that in the Department of Pensions. I bet you’re still wet.” The voice slid down. “Come on, tell me. No, your mother won’t hear through the wall. Aren’t you even the slightest bit wet for me?”
Maria leaned against the smooth wallpaper; she could feel her face heat up in the dark.
The words were almost inaudible. “Where are you, the hall? All right. Imagine I’m sitting on the stair just below you. Concentrate now, stop sniggering. Imagine my hand sliding up between your knees. Are you wearing those stockings with the—” A roar. “I am not kinky. OK, piss off, go get your beauty sleep. See you in the morning. How about breakfast in bed?”
Maria slouched in. “Evening, all.”
Jael was staring at the receiver in her lap. She looked up, pulling the kimono around her neck. “Kettle’s still warm if you want a cuppa. I was just talking to Ruth, she’s on filial duty tonight.”
“I’m sure she’s glad to get a break from us, have her dinner made for h
er once in a while.”
“You haven’t met Mrs. Johnson,” warned Jael, dropping the phone on the matted hearth rug. Then, watching Maria’s limp arm lift the kettle, she asked, “How’s the poppet?”
All her walls of independence crumbled; she felt like burying her tired face in Jael’s lap. Instead, she took a gulp of steaming tea. “Hunky-dory.”
“That bad?” Jael raised one eyebrow.
“I’ve signed up for the Dramattic’s Panto, and I think I’m going to hate it.”
“Drop out.”
“No, I can’t do that now.”
Jael let out a huge sigh that turned into a yawn. “I’ll never understand you honourable types. Ruth’s just as bad. Tell you what, we were planning a picnic in the hills this weekend; why don’t you forget about those thespy shites and come with us?”
“Shouldn’t you check with your other half? I don’t want to be in the way.”
“Rubbish,” said Jael, positioning another brocade cushion behind her head. “What do you think we’d be getting up to on a mountaintop?”
“The mind boggles,” said Maria, and carried her scalding mug down the corridor.
“Besides,” came a shout, “some things are even more fun with three.”
The bus wheezed slowly into the mountains; Ruth’s chocolate supply (“for blood sugar”) had dwindled to nothing by the time they reached the terminus. They set off up a random muddy path, held up at intervals by Jael stopping to photograph interesting patches of tree bark. “God, I’d love a ciggie,” she remarked wistfully.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Maria.
“Oh, I don’t anymore, not since I shacked up with your woman.”
“‘Shacked up with’ sounds like cattle,” Ruth complained; “couldn’t you use ‘met’ or even something nice like ‘fell for’?” She turned to Maria. “After the first fortnight, I dared her to give up smoking.” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added, “She stank.”
“I heard that,” called Jael from the hedge where she was poking around for late blackberries, “but I’m mature enough to ignore it. Speaking of stink, hadn’t that infant on the bus a bit of an aroma?”
“It couldn’t help itself,” commented Ruth. “Just imagine having no control over your anal sphincter. I thought it was fairly likeable, as babies go.”
“Would you ever mind not having kids?” asked Maria.
“No way,” said Jael comfortably. “Call me selfish, but they’d cramp my style.”
Ruth paused in deliberation, scanning the panorama of purple heather and black turf. “Well, having children can be part of heterosexist oppression … Ah, no, to be honest, I’m just more into women than men and babies put together. The theory came later.”
“There’s always squirting,” suggested Jael.
Maria’s eyes bulged.
“She means self-insemination,” Ruth explained with animation. “This couple we know in England, Wendy and Deirdre, they’ve been together for twelve years, and they’ve just had a baby boy that way.”
“But how exactly—”
“You get a friendly milkman to leave you a bottle of fresh HIV-negative semen,” Jael told her, “then you get a turkey baster, lie on your back, and …” She performed a graphic mime, almost falling over a boulder.
They exchanged a grin at Maria’s expression. “Sounds a lot more fun than the usual method, if you ask me,” murmured Ruth.
The women climbed through a gap in a barbed wire fence, holding it up for each other, then headed up a boggy field. Maria and Ruth picked their way delicately through the bushes. “The best way,” announced Jael, “is to run so fast that you don’t put any weight on your feet.” They watched her scamper up the field and burst into simultaneous applause when her foot sank into a moist cowpat. Staggering to the fence for support, she wiped her runners along a cushion of moss. “Well, at least I’ve made your day,” she told Maria. “That’s the first smile I’ve seen on your face all week.”
“Is it?” And then she was sick of evasions and blank expressions. “There’s this guy at college.”
Jael snorted.
“It’s no big deal,” Maria rushed on, “I just thought he liked me, and now I doubt it.”
“And there was I thinking you had definite D.P. Oh, well, another one bites the dust.” Jael kicked a stone theatrically, then used it to scrape some mud off her heel.
“What’s—”’
“Dyke Potential,” Ruth filled in. “Jael was planning to convert you by the force of her personal charms, weren’t you, pet?”
“I’d have done it by Christmas,” Jael agreed mournfully. “And now some handsome brute has ruined all my good work—”
“He’s not particularly handsome at all,” said Maria awkwardly.
“Do we get his name?” asked Ruth gently, leaning on a five-barred gate.
“It’s really not important. I just like talking to him.”
“I’ll bet.” Jael started climbing over the gate at the wrong end.
“What?” asked Maria, stung.
Jael turned with a manic grin, her feet clinging to the highest bar. “Come off it, Marianissimo. If you just liked talking to him, you wouldn’t be upset. Why not just say you want to go to bed with him?”
“Because I’m not upset, and I don’t want to go to bed with anyone.”
Cantering down the field, Jael bawled back, “Famous last words!”
Maria’s throat seized up in fury.
“Ignore her, it’s hormonal,” murmured Ruth. “She needs a few sozzled nights on the scene, and then she’ll calm down.”
“What scene?” Maria was relieved that the talk had shifted from herself; she led the way down the field.
“Oh, you know, pubs and stuff. Which for us means Saturday nights in one tiny inner-city lounge walled with women in paisley shirts and Docs. I can’t say I’m enthralled by it.”
“But Jael goes?”
“Sometimes. She used to go a lot on her own or with friends, but over the summer there were problems.” Ruth stared down the field after the tiny jogging figure.
“Like what?” asked Maria, then wished she hadn’t.
“Ah, I won’t bore you with the details, but basically we do our drinking at home nowadays.”
Maria sucked her lips. Only after picking a handful of coppery leaves did she think of something that would be safe to ask. “But if you don’t like pubs, how did you two find each other in the first place?”
“I owe it all to feminism,” said Ruth, taking one of the leaves from Maria and examining its veins. “We met at a Women and Literature symposium; Jael always claims she was there for the free sherry afterward.”
“But were you already—”
Ruth interrupted her as she fumbled for the right phrase. “Hard to tell. Who knows what we all are before anything happens?”
“I suppose,” said Maria soberly. After a minute, she returned to the question. “But were you surprised? Did you expect to fall for a woman?”
“Will I be perfectly honest with you?”
“You will.”
“I was twenty-two, and I’d never had more than the occasional unfulfilling snog behind the bike sheds. I thought I was probably asexual, like a plant.”
“Oh, you’re very like a plant,” Maria commented in amusement.
“Whereas her ladyship had gone out with lots of women and a few guys as well. So I still don’t quite know how we got together. But I can’t imagine it any other way.”
Maria considered the details in silence.
“I’m not usually like this, you know,” Ruth went on. “I’m the quiet, reticent one, known in the women’s group for extracting intimate details of everybody else’s lives without giving any of my own!”
“So what’s changed?”
“I think you’re good at questions; you just seem to start the words spilling out of me.” The look she gave Maria over one shoulder, as she pushed through a gap in a hedge, was half grate
ful, half worried. “It’s because you seem so interested, and I know you’re not likely to use the information against me.”
“You’ve said nothing incriminating so far, but by Christmas my dossier may be complete.”
“Speaking of which,” resumed Ruth more lightly, “have you given any thought to the holidays yet? How long are you likely to stay up?”
“I’ll probably catch the afternoon train on Christmas Eve, then come back up after New Year’s. There’s never much going on at home apart from the annual aunt invasion.”
“You’ll be here till the Eve? Great stuff,” said Jael, who had trotted silently from behind the hedge to fall in step with them. “So, lads, will we go the whole hog and put up a tree?”
“Yes, dear,” said Ruth, patting her on her windswept fringe, “and you get to sit on top in a pair of wings and a silver G-string.”
Walking back from the supermarket with a bottle of milk and a batch loaf, Maria felt her leaden mood begin to lift. The sun was setting over the park railings; tall willows were blocked out against the ginger light. She hummed the first two bars of a tune that eluded her as she headed up the stairs, swinging the grocery bag.
Opening her bedroom door, she was disconcerted to find Jael slouched on the duvet, her head back on the windowsill. “What are you doing in here?” she asked, too curtly.
“Sunbathing,” said Jael with a yawn, lifting her head. The ebbing sun made a fuzzy halo of her hair. “This room is magic in the evenings, isn’t it? I used to play my guitar in here.”
Resting her elbows on the windowsill, Maria looked over the glinting roofs.
“We never got around to repainting it. Does the orangeness not get on your nerves?”
“I thought it would, but it’s sort of grown on me; I like the way the curtains catch the sun. I think I get fond of anything after a few months.”
“Dangerous habit,” murmured Jael. “I see you’ve left up the calendar of monsters. It was a present from Ruth one Christmas; I couldn’t bear the way they looked at me.”