To Have and to Hold

  ‘Specially when you do it after you know you’re pregnant.’

  She paused and looked down at her gumboots, encrusted with last week’s mud. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just two bodies rubbing together in the dark,’ he said. ‘You used me.’

  ‘Men do it too.’

  There was a silence. Then he said: ‘I don’t want you to tell people.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at his back.

  His head was bent. ‘That you’re its mother.’

  She took a breath. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ann and I’ll just say we adopted it.’ He was lighting a cigarette. He blew out the match. ‘I don’t want people to know that the mother of my child’s a whore.’

  Her heart thumped against her ribcage. For a moment she believed this must be a dream. They were caught, like the Sleeping Beauty, in this cobwebby little room, now wreathed in smoke. Suddenly she would shake her head, the mist would clear and none of this would have happened. She would be outdoors, hoeing the chickweed.

  And he wouldn’t be speaking now, in that low voice. ‘You’re in my blood, Viv.’ He wouldn’t be saying this.

  ‘You’re part of me, you’re all of me. I wake up aching for you, the taste of you in my mouth, the feel of your skin –’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘You’re everywhere I breathe. It’s getting worse. Viv, I’ve tried to stay away, I’ve tried to pretend it’s not happening –’

  ‘It’s not!’

  ‘Yesterday I parked outside your school. I had to. I sat there and I saw your car, your lovely grubby car. I looked at the school, at all those windows, and do you know? I was happy, for the first time in weeks, just because I knew that behind one of them was you.’

  ‘Ken –’

  ‘I’m ill, Viv,’ he said. ‘I’m ill with you.’

  She cleared her throat. Her heart, like a rock, was locked inside her. She felt drained of breath. She said, in a quiet voice: ‘You mustn’t say all this.’

  ‘Viv, I want you.’

  Suddenly he stamped out his cigarette and went down on his haunches, down there beside her. He grabbed her shoulders; his fingers hurt. The bucket rocked, then fell over as he lifted her to her feet. He kissed her, pressing her against the shelves. Behind, the tower of plant pots shifted. Then she heard her children’s voices outside, calling. She pushed him away.

  He suddenly gave up. He stood limply; she couldn’t bear to see him. He put his arm against his face, hiding it, shielding his face as people do when near an explosion.

  Quickly, she let herself out of the hut, so her children wouldn’t guess that anything had happened.

  You have to concentrate, when shelling broad beans. It looks mindless, but if you are feeling disturbed you are inclined to get the two heaps of beans and pods confused.

  Viv was picking out the beans from the compost bucket when Ollie came in from work. He kissed her lightly on the neck.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Had to go to the Public Record Office and look up some stuff.’

  She didn’t turn. ‘You’re being very thorough lately,’ she said, picking out beans.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In your research.’

  There was a pause, then Ollie went out into the garden to greet the girls.

  It was a golden evening. Ann stood for a moment in her small paved garden. Ken had re-planted the tubs with geraniums; they glowed in the evening light, blood-red. If she narrowed her eyes, like she used to when she was small, they blurred to blobs. Next door the Maguire children shouted to each other; there was the scraping sound of their trike being dragged across the concrete. Through the open window came canned laughter from their TV.

  Last night she had dreamed, again, of this garden. To dream the same setting twice unnerved her. This time the extension had been finished, but it was much taller than she had expected and its glass was milky. She had been standing in the garden – empty this time, with no white urns – and she had been banging on the glass, but she could not get in. Nor could she see in, as its window were opaque. Someone was inside there, she could hear them breathing, but they didn’t, or wouldn’t, hear her. She had banged and banged. She realized when she woke that the breathing, of course, had simply been her husband, lying beside her.

  Someone flushed the lavatory chain; the drains rushed. She turned to go in. As she did so she noticed Ken’s shoes. They had been put outside the kitchen door. She picked them up; their soles were caked in mud.

  She put them down again and went into the kitchen. Raising her voice, she called: ‘Did you go out on site today?’

  From the lounge Ken called: ‘No, I told you. Stuck in that blessed office . . .’ He went on: ‘. . . checking all those blooming chits, that’s why I was so late. Drives me round the twist, Annie.’

  ‘Poor Ken,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ he called.

  She shouted: ‘Poor Ken!’

  She looked again at the shoes. She could just see their toes, jutting round the kitchen door.

  ‘. . . not to be trusted,’ his voice went on. ‘There’s someone on the fiddle there . . . The lying, the dishonesty . . .’

  She closed the kitchen door, clicking it carefully, and went back to her cooking.

  In London there are so many buildings that you can seldom see the setting sun; hours can elapse between its sinking out of sight behind the rooftops and its final departure. Meanwhile, and for a soft, darkening time afterwards, you can at least see the luminous sky.

  Viv had thrown the bean pods, and all the rest, into the compost heap. She stood for a moment on the lawn; her feet were bare and the grass already damp with dew. Around her rose the houses. Windows were open; she could hear reggae music. Up above her the sky was streaked, towards the west, with dissolving ribbons of blue. At the kitchen window Ollie stood, washing up. What a good husband he looked, with his sleeves rolled up. She reflected, yet again, how normal her household looked, how normal all those other windows looked in all those other impenetrable homes.

  She went in, and put the bin back in the cupboard.

  Ollie asked: ‘So she’s left school already?’

  ‘Tracey? Yes.’

  ‘The silly twerp. So bloody irresponsible.’

  Viv shut the cupboard door. ‘At least she has the excuse of youth.’

  Ollie didn’t reply. Viv put her pile of exercise books on the table and sat down.

  ‘She’s not a grown man,’ she said.

  ‘I do have eyes in my head.’

  She replied: ‘So do I.’

  She looked back at Ollie’s back. He turned. ‘Now what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ she said. She looked down at the exercise books. Sharon Thompson, Leroy Marks . . . the names danced. She deared her throat. ‘Shall I tell you the signs?’

  At the sink, Ollie stood still. ‘What?’

  She took a breath and spoke carefully, as if she had rehearsed this. She had rehearsed it. ‘Over-eagerness to explain where you’ve been. Over-exuberance with the children. Shiftiness with me. Guilt-induced ardour in bed –’

  ‘Unreturned,’ he said.

  ‘Not surprisingly.’ She paused and went on. ‘Over-scrupulousness in emptying your trouser pockets. Sudden knowledge of the current pop scene. Endless lunch-hours that end with you nipping into the toy shop and salving your conscience by buying the children elaborate toys, except you forget to get the batteries that go with them –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some tomorrow.’

  She rearranged the exercise books, aligning them exactly, edge to edge. She said: ‘It’s never been like this before, has it? We’ve always been open about it. It was like a game and only we knew the rules. We were in it together, weren’t we? Besides’ – she tried to talk lightly – ‘it was always material for that novel you’re always meaning to write.’

  ‘When I don’t have to earn our living,’ he said.

  ‘Half o
ur living.’

  ‘Half.’

  He turned to the sink. She thought: I’m always talking to men with their backs to me. ‘This time though,’ she said, ‘what seems more than a little tactless –’

  ‘Spare us the staffroom pedantry.’

  ‘– is the question of timing. Now doesn’t seem quite the time to choose.’

  Ollie didn’t reply. He seemed to have been standing like that at the sink for ever, facing the windowsill of leggy geraniums and the spotlit Fairy Liquid bottle. The whole thing seemed stagy, as if it were happening to someone else.

  ‘Ollie and Ellie,’ she said musingly. ‘It sounds faintly comic, like a music-hall routine.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’

  ‘Love’s like that, isn’t it? Sudden, blinding, unpredictable.’

  ‘Viv!’ He smashed the washing-up brush into the sink. Suds flew.

  ‘Up to now we’ve always been honest,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He said: ‘You weren’t honest about Ken.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘You lied,’ he said. ‘You told me you weren’t sleeping with him.

  ‘I had to lie.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t a game,’ she said. ‘It was serious.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘No – serious because there was a baby involved.’

  ‘So serious you couldn’t stop yourself screwing him even after you knew you were pregnant?’

  ‘Ollie!’

  ‘Secret assignations in the allotment?’ He turned and faced her. ‘The girls told me. He was there today, wasn’t he?’

  Suddenly she smiled. She felt buoyant. ‘Is that all it is?’ She jumped up and went over to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A little game of tit for tat?’ She tried to embrace him but he moved aside and left her at the sink.

  He stood flat against the fridge. ‘I’m fed up with being manipulated.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s all OK nowadays, isn’t it, for women? It’s called taking destiny into your own hands. It’s called being strong, independent women. You’re not called bossy any more, or pig-headed, or downright selfish –’

  ‘Selfish? To have a baby for my sister?’

  ‘You say you’re at the mercy of your wombs, you’re oppressed because you’re female, but what you do is as old as time, and just as devious.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You use your femaleness, you use your wombs!’ He slapped his aproned stomach. ‘But the difference is that now we poor sods can’t answer back.’

  ‘You and I – we can. We’ve always talked.’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Because we can’t do anything else.’

  ‘That’s crap.’

  ‘I’m fed up with talking,’ he said. ‘It’s a substitute for feeling.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I speak from experience, dear.’

  ‘Don’t dear me.’

  She sat; he stood. They were both close to tears. He said: ‘I’ve become an empty vessel filled with theories. Mostly yours. I don’t know how to live.’

  ‘Spare us the B-movie stuff.’

  ‘So you can have your beefcake –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s a real man, isn’t he?’ Ollie leered. She couldn’t bear to see his face like this; she turned away.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve always wanted that, and now you’re getting it. It’s called reverting to your origins.’

  ‘Don’t start that!’ she warned.

  ‘All this radical stuff is just skin deep,’ he spat out, his face ugly. ‘Underneath you’re a conventional working-class girl who wants a ballsy, macho man to fix your guttering and screw you rigid. I’ve watched you and Ken for years, well now you’ve got him eating out of your hand –’

  ‘Shut up!’ she yelled, sobbing.

  ‘And everyone’s saying how selfless you’re being, too –’

  ‘Lay off!’

  She jumped up from the table and tried to slap his face, but he pushed her away. She stumbled against the dresser.

  ‘Ollie!’ she yelled, her hand shielding her belly.

  _____Sixteen_____

  ANN WAS PUTTING away the shopping. As she opened the cupboard door she heard the click of the front door. She paused and went on, lifting out the packets and storing them with a now self-conscious care. She thought, with sadness, how for years she had welcomed that returning click. How he, if he were home first, must have welcomed hers.

  Ken came into the kitchen and paused inside the door. ‘Just changing,’ he said. ‘Squash tonight.’

  She was kneeling at the cupboard. She stood up, pulling her skirt down over her knees. She thought: when you are unhappy, you don’t want to look revealed – your legs, anything. She gestured at the skeletal extension. ‘Builders nowadays,’ she said, ‘So unreliable.’

  He frowned. ‘But it’s me who’s building it.’

  ‘Can’t trust them,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They just disappear.’ She hated her own light tone. She made herself half smile. ‘Don’t do any work for weeks.’

  He patted his pockets for his cigarettes. He was smoking more heavily nowadays. ‘Sorry, Annie. Look, I’ll get going again this weekend.’

  ‘Now it was different in the old days,’ she said. ‘Builders were a hundred per cent then, solid gold.’

  ‘Look, I promise –’

  ‘Promises, promises,’ she said, walking past him. He moved aside. In the doorway she turned and said lightly: ‘I promise to build the extension, I promise to love and cherish . . .’

  She left him and went into the lounge. She wanted him to follow, and yet she dreaded it. When he did, she picked up her Miss Selfridge’s bag and started to go upstairs. He moved aside for her and pointed to the bag.

  In a jovial voice he said: ‘We have been going mad lately.’

  She indicated the bag. ‘I can spend my money how I choose –’

  ‘Of course, I just –’

  ‘I do earn my living.’

  ‘Can I see it?’ he asked.

  She lifted the dress out of the bag. It was yellow and silky, with thin shoulder-straps.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘won’t you be a bit chilly?’

  She gazed at him. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I mean it’s lovely . . .’ He stopped. She put the dress back into the bag. ‘Where’re you going?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going out tomorrow.’

  ‘Who with?’

  She stood there, one foot on the stair, and closed her eyes. ‘He’s tall and dark,’ she said dreamily, ‘and he doesn’t say, won’t you be chilly, he says, ah, your shoulders are smooth as butter and your arms are soft and downy and the back of your neck as tender as a child.’

  There was a silence. ‘Annie –’

  ‘I too can live a fantasy life,’ she said.

  ‘Look –’ He stopped.

  ‘Look what?’

  ‘Look, love, I know it’s all been upsetting, your dad and everything –’

  ‘Think it’s just that?’ She stared at him.

  Head bowed, he shuffled his foot, pushing down a loose edge of the hall carpet. Then he looked up, ‘Actually, who are you going out with?’

  ‘The girls from work.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I won’t be in anyway. Youth Club.’

  She asked: ‘Think you’re still suited to the job?’

  ‘Which job?’

  ‘Being the moral guardian of the flower of our youth?’

  He stared at her. There was a silence. She was about to say: just going to hang this up. But she realized that he too was going upstairs, to change. Their bedroom would be too small for the two of them. How sad that was.

  She hung the carrier over the banisters and went into the kitchen. She heard the house creak as he went upstairs.
There was always something one could be doing in the kitchen. Scrub scrub, wipe wipe, cook cook.

  There was hardly room to stand in the cramped cloakroom. Certainly not enough room to change clothes, but Ann had managed it, all bumping elbows. Janine was the expert at miracle changes, emerging like a sniggering butterfly.

  Stuck around the basin were postcards from last year’s holidays: a Greek donkey from Frances, a Spanish beach mushroomed with sunshades from Cora, who had since become impregnated by a motorbike mechanic and left the office, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa from Janine, embellished with lewd biro speculations. Tonight she herself was one of the girls. She felt reckless; she had a teenage stomach ache – not that she had done much of this as a teenager, that was Viv’s speciality – but she’d done enough to know.

  She looked at her shorn, streaked hair. She wore big earrings for a piquant effect. She leant towards the mirror and outlined her lips redly. For the first time in her life she wanted to get drunk. She thought: I never felt like this, even when I lost my babies.

  She went back into the office. Derek, who was just going home, raised his eyebrows. ‘Good Lord, it’s Audrey Hepburn.’

  Janine sneered: ‘Give over, Grandpa.’

  He inspected Ann in her yellow dress. ‘You look . . .’

  ‘Sexy,’ said Janine.

  ‘Very pretty,’ he said.

  ‘She’s coming out with us.’

  He turned to Ann. ‘What’s all this in aid of?’

  ‘Search me,’ smiled Ann. She hooked up her slipping strap. Search her, she truly didn’t know.

  Trish nudged Janine. ‘You wearing those panties you bought?’

  Janine nodded, and said to Derek: ‘They’re called M.’

  ‘M?’

  ‘Get M on, get M off.’

  They all laughed. Derek said: ‘Well, old stick-in-the-mud will wend his weary way.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Janine. ‘It’s under-30s night.’

  ‘Under-36s,’ corrected Ann.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Fletcher,’ said Janine in a posh voice. She turned to Derek. ‘Hurry up and you’ll catch Gardeners Question Time.’

  Derek started to leave and paused at the door. ‘Lock up, will you?’ he asked Ann.

  She nodded. She hated herself for her new hardness of heart, that she did not feel sorry for him. He left.