She pushed back her hair and wondered why she couldn’t be reasonable. He was only acting like any normal person, really. It was just that, because he was marrying Claire, she couldn’t feel sensible about him at all. She mustn’t exaggerate everything he did. She must try to make an effort, for Claire’s sake.
‘You’ll like the Zoo,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘And on the way we have a lovely view right down into the Avon, with cliffs and the Suspension Bridge.’
‘I shall look forward to that,’ he replied, and smiled down at her from his tall and manly height. She could admire him, perhaps, if she tried. She must.
They left the house and walked up the road. At Geoff’s car they stopped and gave the usual exclamations at its beauty. Yes, thought Laura, and at least Geoff can drive a car. She gazed with sudden sourness at Mac. She’d just discovered from Claire that the garage was still sorting out the damage done to the Morris. It would probably take weeks.
‘Yes, she’s not bad,’ said Geoff, patting the bonnet, ‘but there’s an odd rattle in the ignition, and when something small goes wrong I always think it might be the symptom of some larger problem.’
Laura was pleased; he’d actually confided in them – even if it was just about a car. Claire was looking at the Lotus, her head on one side. She said: ‘Like a dirty face suggesting that a person’s knickers are grimy too.’
The others burst out laughing. All except Geoff, that is. He straightened up and stared at Claire.
‘Sorry,’ she laughed, linking her arm with his. ‘It just slipped out.’
The problem is, thought Laura, he needs loosening up. He might be better then.
As they walked up the road Geoff, after a moment’s hesitation said: ‘I always think that with cars there are only two noises.’ He paused. ‘Cheap noises and expensive ones.’
Never was a feeblish joke more heartily laughed at. And the longest laughs came from the two sisters, one who loved him and one who was intermittently trying to. They felt so relieved.
The famous film was bought and then they wandered along a gracious crescent that curved, columned and creepered, around the lip of the hill. Deep below lay gardens, tall trees and, still further below glimmered the next crescent. The houses might be mouldering but the harmony of stone and branches was lovely; an orchestration of man and nature.
‘Claire, remember the last time we walked through these streets?’ Laura asked.
‘Of course, when we visited those pot people. It was raining and it was still beautiful.’ How long ago it seemed when these crescents, then veiled in mist, had veiled the future too; before, in their different ways, each sister had claimed and been claimed.
‘Found anywhere to live yet?’ Laura asked.
‘No, but we’ve started looking.’
Laura gestured at the view. ‘Try and find somewhere as gorgeous as this. You must live somewhere beautiful.’
‘Actually we’re thinking of the suburbs.’
‘Claire! No.’
‘It’s the only sort of place within our price range, isn’t it, Geoff?’
Laura’s eyes swept the landscape. Don’t! she called out silently. This beauty is what you deserve. Don’t let Geoff drag you down into the humdrum; pull him out of it instead. I can’t have my sister living in a semi with a ding-dong doorbell.
‘You see,’ said Claire. ‘We both want children very soon.’
Both. Several decisions already taken that she, Laura, knew nothing about. A lifetime of such decisions to come. Laura felt that lonely feeling again. Married conversations, unintelligible to her, from which girlish giggles would be absent. Conversations which, as the years passed, would grow denser with shared jokes and mutual happenings until they would be all but incomprehensible to herself, an outsider.
She was jealous; she had to admit it. She stole a glance at them; Geoff was bending his head towards Claire and pointing out something to her, something in one of the gardens. When we get our house we’ll get one of those – the tilt of his head said that. Claire nodded and murmured something. She, Laura, was with a couple now.
Geoff paid for them all to get into the Zoo and became, by this generous act, their leader. They hovered around on the tarmac waiting for him to speak. Not that they didn’t feel he was the leader anyway; there was something unmistakable about his masculinity, coupled with Claire’s desire and Laura’s more spasmodic decision to bend whichever way he wanted and thus to please him. Already, wherever he turned they would have followed.
‘White tigers?’ he suggested mildly, unaware.
‘Bet you 10p,’ said Holly, ‘they’re not really white.’
‘Done,’ Geoff answered jovially. Laura felt that after lunch, with a click, he had put himself into a different gear, a Saturday-afternoon one, known as Recreation and Fun. His Saturday-morning gear must have been Commerce and Duty.
They saw the white tigers. Geoff took a photo, no doubt identical to a score already taken that afternoon, and gave Holly 10p because she was right about the whiteness. Obviously a man of honour.
‘What now?’ asked Geoff, rubbing his hands. ‘Any preferences?’
‘Chimps,’ said Holly.
‘Chimps it is.’ He adjusted his camera strap over his shoulder and strode alert and purposeful in the direction of the chimps. How wispy Mac looked in comparison, meandering, his jumper still inside-out, and coming to rest in front of cages that the others were passing without a glance. Vaguely scratching his hair, he was oblivious to all humans and, waiting for him, Laura warmed to him anew. His absorption in the animals humbled her; they four were hurrying but he had time for everything. He was even talking to the sparrows. She waited, half impatient and half endeared. Often she felt like this.
There was a crowd round the chimps’ cage, for one of its inmates was practising some particularly ambitious and elaborate faces. Sneers, pursed lips, screwed-up eyes, wriggling eyebrows, it was working through its entire repertoire in front of its admiring audience. Holly gripped Claire’s hand, entranced; Laura called Mac over to have a look; Geoff raised his camera to his eye. The crowd pressed closer, staring with fascination at the rubbery contortions. Nobody seemed aware of the pair of cold and beady eyes buried in the folds of the face. Calculating eyes.
Without warning cheeks swelled, lips drew back, eyes gleamed and everyone standing near was sprayed with a spatter of evil-smelling saliva. With shrieks and giggles the crowd scattered; with a smirk, the chimp retired.
Laura, weak with laughter, turned away and suddenly noticed Holly. ‘What on earth’s the matter? What’s wrong?’
Holly was crying. Her head was bent over and covered with her fists. Claire and Geoff clustered round. Claire sank to her knees beside her. ‘Tell us, Holls. What is it?’
A pause, then muffled words. ‘Some got in my eye and it stings.’
They stared at each other. Mac collapsed in chuckles on the grass. Laura and Claire looked at each other, on the verge of chuckling too. ‘His spit went in your eye?’
Holly, still crumpled over her hands, nodded.
‘Here, let me look.’ Claire eased Holly’s fingers apart.
‘Ow!’
‘Come along, Holly.’ It was Geoff’s voice, calm and no-nonsense. ‘Stay still.’ He took out his handkerchief – of course it was large and white – and twisted it to a point. ‘Here we go.’ He knelt down, looking big beside her, and they watched as he damped his handkerchief on his tongue and gently put it into the eye. Holly relaxed. ‘You must lift the lid, you see,’ he explained. ‘There, now that doesn’t hurt a bit, does it?’
Silence from Holly, who was actually starting to feel uncomfortable. It was dawning on her that she’d made rather too much fuss and, now she thought of it, it hadn’t really hurt at all. Just surprised her. But she couldn’t say so now. And she’d been trying so hard to impress everybody with how grown-up she was! If she was babyish they’d have to act special with her and then she’d feel out of it, a tagger-along.
&n
bsp; Mac was still chuckling. ‘I’d feel honoured,’ he told her, ‘you’re unique. It’s not everyone that has a bleeding monkey spitting in his eye, you know.’
Laura looked at him. Geoff at least got things done. She remembered once when she’d cut herself, how Mac had just gazed admiringly at the red blood on the yellow of her sleeve. He’d been genuinely surprised that the colours hadn’t entranced her too. But then, at least he appreciated, he saw the colours, just as he appreciated and saw the sparrows. He was an artist after a fashion, wasn’t he? That was the difference between him and Geoff. Geoff did; Mac looked. She giggled; and it was rather funny about the monkey.
They were walking back home now. Spread across the pavement, they were chatting. Would Geoff, Laura wondered, be the jealous type? It was part of the Woman’s Realm appeal. It went with the open car and the straight nose.
She looked at Mac. Tranquil, harmless, he was springing along the pavement, rattling his baccy tin along the railings, on, off, in time with his own private thought-rhythms. No, nobody could call him jealous. Once she’d told him about her past amours. He’d listened with interest but with none of that studied non-reaction, that careful light laugh when one had finished, those tense little questions popping up unguarded at odd moments during the following days – none of those signals of the truly disturbed. She glanced from Geoff’s tanned profile to Mac’s hunched shape. Was Mac just not masculine enough to be jealous? Or was jealousy an emotion to be despised, anyway? She did remember feeling put out, though, at the time.
She put an end to these comparisons. They were taking up precious time when she could be gossiping with Claire who, she realized sinkingly, would soon be called Claire Hare and living in a semi.
Back in the room, the two sisters left the men sitting about in armchairs and began to prepare supper. ‘It’s all so quick, Claire. Tell me how it all started. What stage had you got to by that cocktail party?’
They started chopping vegetables. They worked well together; Laura didn’t have to explain where things were kept. With some sisterly sixth sense, Claire knew. It pleased Laura to see on the soap dish their companionable rings, her assorted ones of twisted copper next to Claire’s single diamond. From time to time one of them with automatic hand would reach out and stir the garlic and onions that glistened in the saucepan, or take a swig of wine from the smudged and shared tumbler.
‘… and that was that.’
‘A romantic story.’
They laughed, they chatted. Laura felt happy having Claire at last to herself. They were making risotto. The gay mound of vegetables grew under their busy fingers. Just for a while those two complicating males were distanced, despite their presence three yards away, leafing through newspapers. Despite the fact, too, that they were the subject of the conversation.
The risotto was cooked. The dishes were put on the table.
‘FHB,’ murmured Laura, looking at the food she was spooning out. ‘Right, Claire and Holly?’
‘What on earth,’ Geoff asked, ‘is FHB?’
‘Family Hold Back. There’s not enough risotto.’
‘I’ll FHB,’ said Holly, ‘if I can STP afterwards.’
‘It’s a deal,’ said Claire.
‘What’s STP?’ Geoff asked.
‘Scrape the Plate, dope.’
‘Holly!’ cried Claire. ‘How should he know?’
Sitting there, the two men suddenly felt united in being outsiders; this sisterly repast seemed to be governed by its own secret code. Infantile that code might be – FHB, STP, honestly! But its very silliness distanced them further, proving that it sprang from somewhere far deeper than mere taste, sprang indeed from the sisters’ long and linked roots which no one, husband or lover, would ever quite reach. They’d done a million things together; they’d known this Aunty Josie who’d just died; how many other aunties, for a start?
For once Mac and Geoff were thinking the same thing. They might make new roots of their own but they’d never be tangled up in those deep, deep childhood ones.
On the journey back to London, Claire felt uncomfortable. This had nothing to do with Holly, curled asleep on her lap with Beezer still clutched in her hand; nor with Geoff, so capable in the driving seat. No, she was worried about Laura. As they passed the same verges her parents had passed eight months before, discussing the very same girl, Claire asked: ‘Geoff, did she seem all right to you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Happy. It’s just that she struck me as, well, too anxious about looking happy. A bit confused. She kept striking different attitudes.’
‘She certainly made me feel as if I was doing everything wrong.’ Now! With his foot down he was managing it. 7,500 revs! No doubt about it. The dial said so. Not bad, that. Into the red sector.
‘Poor Geoff! I hoped you wouldn’t notice. And then sometimes she was so nice. She’s like that at home, you know. She’s so changeable.’
‘They both seemed happy enough to me. Quite idyllic really, if they can stand the mess.’ He double de-clutched.
‘I think that’s part of the trouble,’ Claire went on. ‘Laura herself said it was almost too idyllic. Unreal, I think she meant. Despite the rubbish and the family upstairs. They just make her feel it’s real life, the gritty stuff, but it isn’t.’ She was warming to her theme. She liked talking to Geoff about Laura; it cemented them round a problem and made him part of the family. ‘She used to be a big fish in Harrow. Then she suddenly found herself at Bristol, amongst thousands of girls exactly like her, the same denim skirts. So she felt submerged and got out so she’d feel individual again.’
‘You might be right there.’ Really, compared to humans cars were so pleasantly simple. Things went wrong; all, in exchange for a certain number of pound notes, could be put right. People, especially great involved families like the Jenkinses, all discussed their problems as if nothing else existed. Heavens, they should lift up their heads and look around them. See some real problems.
Not, of course, that he wasn’t interested in Laura. She had many of Claire’s qualities, she was his future sister-in-law, he enjoyed her company and he was not insensitive to her beauty. It was just that she simply got too much attention for her own good. He said: ‘Laura and Mac know that in Britain they can never starve. That’s what I think.’
‘You mean, they’re basically secure so they can make rude faces at all the things that are in fact letting them live their lovely free lives.’
‘Something like that.’
His voice held an air of finality; Claire had some sense. She stopped talking about Laura. But the trouble was, there was nobody she could talk to; everyone took sides. Geoff, her parents, none seemed to understand the delicate balance of good and bad in Laura’s present life. People liked to put things into slots; they’d take one look and either dismiss it as irresponsible etcetera or extol it as liberated etcetera. Both were too simplistic, for Laura’s life seemed a mixture of many things; even Geoff, adequate though he was proving himself in such conversations (much better than when she’d first known him), even Geoff disapproved too much to be very helpful.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘Shall we go to Scotland for our honeymoon?’
‘Yes! Yes!’
They talked about Scotland then. Geoff had it all worked out; a small hotel near Inverness (run by a friend of his aunt, so they’d get very favourable rates and of course the best treatment), and then a motor trip round the lochs, staying at the kind of inns Britain was supposed to have: whitewashed walls and wooden beams. They did exist, didn’t they? The whole holiday a mixture of the practical and the romantic, for wasn’t he both of these things, though he might keep the second hidden? It would be good to sweep Claire away from all those burdens that she took on herself – burdens of her sisters, and flatmates, and horrible schoolchildren. She even worried in case the people she saw in the launderette were lonely! She was so complete and strong herself she attracted people who clung, that’s what he’d worked
out. He thought about this sort of thing more often than people guessed, actually.
‘Can we fish in a loch?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘And climb the purple hills?’
‘Yes, except I don’t believe they’ll be purple yet.’
‘And go out with a picnic in a small leaky boat?’
‘I expect that can be arranged.’ He wanted to call her darling but as yet he hadn’t quite managed to slip the word easily into the conversation.
Claire clasped her hands together. A real holiday, and they could go exactly where they wanted. Alone and free, just the two of them. Alone and free, come to think of it, just like Laura and Mac. But Laura and Mac were different, for wasn’t their whole existence a sort of holiday; yet, because they had nothing to holiday from, not a real one at all? In fact as unreal as Laura, lying amongst her half-hearted but sunny lettuces, had hinted?
twenty-six
ONE WEEK LATER. It was Saturday night and already twenty past seven.
Hurry up, Rosemary! Dan twisted the car keys round his finger; he shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he waited, but impatiently. From the faint sounds upstairs he tried to guess how nearly Rosemary was ready. A tinkling clatter – she must be at her dressing-table now, fiddling around with those glass jars and pots of cream. Hundreds, she had. That meant the last stage of the ritual had been reached. A soft swish as she shut her jewellery drawer; the creak of floorboards as she stood up. Such familiar sounds, each accompanying an act he no longer had to witness to see. After twenty-five years of marriage they were as much a part of him as his breathing, and as much a part of the fabric of the house as the grumbling of the pipes and the sigh and scrape as Badger adjusted his position on the middle stair. At this sort of moment he always lay on the middle stair; he liked an eye on each of them.
Tonight, though, even Badger’s sounds made him irritable. Steps overhead as she went back to the cupboard. She’d be looking for her shoes now. A long pause. Twenty-two minutes past seven. She couldn’t decide which ones to wear. So clearly he could picture her, kneeling down and plucking at the heap with fastidious fingers (she’d just painted her nails and they’d still be wet), with furrowed brow drawing out shoes one by one as if she were drawing them out of a Christmas stocking. What did she buy all those shoes for, anyway? He never saw her wear half of them. Typical.