To Have and to Hold

  Viv said: ‘Ballet’s regressive.’

  ‘What?’ Daisy climbed off the settee and wandered into the garden.

  Viv said to her sister: ‘Remember Photo-Love and Valentine? I loved Elvis because he was so oily and sexy.’

  Ann said: ‘I loved Cliff Richard.’

  ‘That’s because you were nice. Nice girls loved Cliff.’

  ‘Nice girls who knew how to sew.’

  They smiled.

  Ann went on: ‘Remember Dad caught us reading Valentine behind the shed?’

  ‘He thought it was dirty and gave you a walloping.’

  ‘Ah yes . . .’

  ‘You always got the wallopings.’

  ‘I was the oldest,’ said Ann.

  ‘It wasn’t fair, picking on you. Dad never was fair.’

  Ann paused. ‘I didn’t mind.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  Viv paused. ‘Well, I do now.’

  There was a silence. Faintly, the girls’ voices came from the garden. Viv drained her wine. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Life. He was right.’

  ‘Fathers are supposed to be.’

  There was a silence. Ann couldn’t speak with the girls so near and the men soon returning. Besides, how could Viv help?

  In the next street the church bells started ringing. Ann laid the tea-towel back over the hamster’s cage. When she was younger she had had a hot, teenage love affair with God. None of her family had ever gone to church and so she had carried on her secret conversations in the dark. She had bargained into the blackness and prayed under the bedclothes. When she had had bad thoughts about Viv she had submitted to her own punishments, squeezing her belt knotches too tight. She had feared God with a passion so fierce it had made her dizzy, and she had starved herself to feel dizzier.

  The church bells rang and Ann reached into her carrier-bag and brought out the trifle. She had made it that morning, piping whorls of cream around the top and decorating it with cherries. When had she lost her faith? It seemed like yesterday. She put the trifle into the fridge for lunch and thought: once I believed in God. Now I believe in food.

  ‘. . . And he comes panting through the snow,’ said Ken, ‘puffing and panting, and she opens the door and says, “Where’s the salami?”’

  There was a roar of laughter. Ollie ate a handful of peanuts and thought: it’s wonderful what a scrummage in the mud will do, followed by a pint. Such simple male reassurances. Living with Viv, he needed them.

  Diz, the captain, leaned over and whispered: ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our Kenneth here.’

  ‘He’s my brother-in-law,’ said Ollie.

  Diz stared. ‘He’s not!’

  Ollie nodded. Over at the bar, Ken started another joke. He was one of the few men Ollie knew who improved with alcohol. Viv said he was like a car you had to handcrank to get going, but once the engine was started it could outrun the lot of them. That was in her more polite moments.

  ‘He’s a natural,’ said Diz. ‘Can you bribe him to join the team?’

  ‘He’s not used to rugger,’ said Ollie. ‘He’s a soccer chap.’

  ‘That calibre, who cares?’

  Ollie looked at Ken with new respect. And he could crack a joke. Put someone in an unfamiliar place, and after fourteen years they could still surprise you.

  The front door slammed.

  ‘Oh oh, here they come,’ said Viv. ‘Our Action Men.’

  Ollie and Ken came in. Ken carried an off-licence bag, and they wore the sheepish look of those with three pints inside them.

  ‘Good game?’ Ann asked.

  Ken nodded. ‘We won.’

  She smiled. ‘How marvellous.’

  He took a bottle of wine out of the bag. ‘A modest contribution.’ He looked at Viv and Ann. ‘And what have you two girls been doing? Yackety-yak?’

  ‘Christ,’ said Viv.

  ‘Watch it,’ said Ollie to his brother-in-law.

  Ken turned to him. ‘They’re angry with us. We’re in the doghouse.’

  ‘No,’ said Viv, a cigarette between her lips as she drained the sprouts. ‘I think you’re sweet.’

  Ken looked disconcerted. Ann willed him to take care.

  ‘So he comes charging down the field,’ said Ken.

  Ollie turned to Viv. ‘That’s that twit from the New Statesman.’

  ‘But you two saw to him,’ said Viv.

  ‘Tall bloke,’ nodded Ken, ‘built like a beanpole. No muscle on him.’

  ‘Whereas you,’ she said, ‘small but perfectly formed . . .’

  ‘Sorry about my height, Viv,’ he said stiffly, ‘but I do keep myself in trim.’

  The girls came in. Ollie raised his eyebrows at the dress. ‘Wow Dais, you look like a middle-aged gospel singer.’

  ‘Ollie!’ said Viv.

  They sat down to lunch. Ken glanced at the clock; this was one of Viv’s three o’clock starts.

  ‘I refuse to be intimidated,’ said Ollie. ‘In this murky, uncertain world, rugger’s good clean fun.’

  ‘It’s the last remnant of your poncy school,’ said Viv, ‘I’ve got rid of all the rest.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Ollie, ‘it’s the only exercise I get.’

  Viv said: ‘The only exercise I get is sex and the stairs.’

  Ollie laughed. Ken looked at her warningly. ‘Little ears, Viv.’

  Ann said quickly: ‘What about school? That’s exhausting, surely?’

  ‘That’s nerves,’ said Viv, ‘like being on stage.’

  ‘And your allotment?’

  ‘That’s backache.’

  Ollie turned to Ken: ‘They were brought up in a bungalow.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ken. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, and added darkly: ‘I’m sure it affected them.’

  Viv said: ‘Twelve acres in Hertfordshire sure affected you.’

  Ann smiled at them. ‘Children!’

  Viv turned to her. ‘We thrive on class warfare, Ollie and me. It’s the dynamic of our marriage. We’re a microcosm of contemporary Britain. I climbed up from my class, with aspirations.’ She pointed to Ollie. ‘He climbed down from his, with guilt.’

  Ann smiled. ‘Stop pretending you quarrel on these elevated lines.’

  ‘It’s usually much more sordid,’ said Ollie. ‘Like who’s going to make who feel resentful for not being helped to clean the kitchen.’

  Ann looked around. ‘Seems you’ve spared yourself that one.’ They laughed. Daisy leant forward and took a potato.

  ‘Er, Daisy love,’ said Ken, ‘there’s a spoon for that.’

  Ollie turned to him. ‘So you think you’ll join our team?’

  ‘You’ve seen it,’ said Viv. ‘Typical middle-class bunch of wankers. Softies, lefties, media men. Belligerent yet indecisive.’

  ‘The only thing they can play with are words,’ said Ollie. ‘We need you.’

  ‘I too have opened a book,’ said Ken. ‘Despite the cloth cap and overalls.’

  ‘Ken!’ Ann put her hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t be so touchy,’ said Viv, leaning forward and grabbing a potato from the bowl. ‘So male. He doesn’t want you as his bit of rough. You’re good.’

  ‘You haven’t seen me play.’

  ‘I’ve seen the others,’ she replied. ‘Anyone’d be good compared to them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ken.

  ‘And I can tell by that muscle tone.’ She ran her hand across his chest. He stiffened. ‘I’m allowed to feel you. I’m your sister-in-law.’

  Ollie laughed. ‘She’s always doing that. I call it touching people up. She calls it body language.’

  Ken smiled and ran his finger across his moustache. he always did that when he was uneasy. Then he said: ‘I’d be delighted to join your team, if they’ll have me.’

  Ollie raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink
to that.’

  Ollie went into the hall to get some more coal. Viv joined him as he scrabbled in the cupboard.

  ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ she hissed.

  ‘Said what?’

  ‘About Daisy’s dress. It was bloody rude. Ann made it for her.’

  ‘It was only a joke.’ Grunting, he lifted up the coal scuttle.

  ‘You were making fun of her,’ said Viv.

  ‘But you do,’ he said. ‘Her prim little house and her Scenes of London place-mats.’

  ‘I’m allowed to,’ hissed Viv. ‘I’m her sister.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Sisters can do it. Other people can’t.’

  Ollie looked at her. ‘And I’m “other people”?’

  “Fraid so.’

  Ken and Ann sat, with their cups of coffee, in front of the fire. Ken gazed into the flames. ‘Had one of those gas-effect things in the pub. It fooled me.’

  ‘Listen, Ken.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Don’t get angry . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You shouldn’t criticize their children.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ssh!’ she hissed. ‘I mean, when Daisy took that potato.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? It was bloody bad manners. Anyway, you do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You put the girls right,’ he said, ‘and quite properly, in my opinion.’

  ‘That’s different,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I mean – well, Viv’s my sister.’

  ‘So? They’re my nieces. If I don’t, who else will? In this madhouse.’

  ‘Ssh!’

  Ollie and Viv were returning.

  It was dusk by now, and Viv and Ann had left the two men to do the washing-up. They wandered along the aisles of the garden centre, the rain pattering on its roof. Beyond the displays of coiled hoses rose up palm trees, shiny and tall, and cascades of ferns. The place had a white, hard light. Ann thought of the supermarket in her dream and the hot pulse of her search. Why had she been searching for Viv?

  ‘The dizzying possibilities,’ said Viv’s voice beside her. She was inspecting a rack of seed packets, and lifted one out. ‘Produces a rich profusion of sky-blue blossoms,’ she read out, ‘from earliest spring to the first frosts.’

  Ann smiled. ‘You believe it?’

  Viv nodded. ‘Every year.’ She put the packet back. ‘It’s optimism. Or stupidity.’

  ‘Or faith.’

  Viv had come here to buy seed potatoes for her allotment. They wandered on.

  Ann said: ‘Last night I dreamed of a baby called Jonquil.’

  Viv stopped. ‘What a lovely name.’

  She looked at Ann, then led her to a bench. It was white, wrought-iron, with a price-tag. They sat down. For some moments Ann didn’t speak. She was realizing – later she remembered her exact thoughts – that one day she must bring herself to buy plants for her extension room because that would now be its purpose. It would probably look quite decorative and, as Ken said, whatever they used it for, it couldn’t fail to increase the value of their house.

  She said: ‘I think I’m going mad.’

  Ken wiped a plate dry. ‘Hope she doesn’t go mad at that place.’

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘Her and her Access card.’

  Ollie passed him a bowl. ‘Ann never goes mad, surely.’

  ‘Not alone.’

  ‘Ah, but under the evil influence of her sister . . .’

  Ken rubbed the bowl dry. ‘Well, Viv’s the one with the green fingers. Things grow, for Viv.’

  Ollie nodded and passed Ken another bowl. Ken looked through the foliage at the garden. He willed Ollie not to start talking: Ollie liked asking the sort of probing questions that made Ken’s armpits hot.

  Ken cleared his throat and pointed to the rabbit pen. ‘I see there’s some new arrivals. How many this time?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Breed like rabbits, eh?’

  Ollie nodded. ‘The kids are getting blasé about the Miracle of Birth.’

  Ann said: ‘I didn’t think it could get worse, but it does. Every day. Nothing means anything. I wake up . . .’ She paused. ‘There’s Ken beside me but he seems miles away.’ They were sitting on the ‘For Sale’ bench. Ann turned the price-tag over and over in her hand. ‘He can’t help.’

  ‘No,’ said Viv.

  ‘Nobody can. Not him, not you.’

  ‘I wish I could.’

  Ann took a breath, then said in a rush: ‘Yesterday I was watching Mrs Maguire in her garden. She’s always screaming at her children, and I looked at her back view, her big broad back, she had her legs apart, and I hated her. I did, Viv. I hated her for taking them for granted. I felt I was going mad.’

  ‘You’re not mad!’

  ‘He won’t talk about it, you see.’

  ‘And he won’t consider adopting?’

  A couple strolled past them, pushing a trolley of peat bags. Ann and Viv sat in silence.

  Finally Ann said: ‘No.’ She paused. ‘He minds.’

  ‘I thought he would.’

  ‘Whose it is.’

  Viv nodded. Ann fiddled with the price-tag. ‘He does love children.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Even though he may be, well, severe sometimes. But that’s because he wants the best for them.’

  Beside her, Viv nodded. She rummaged in her bag and brought out her cigarettes.

  Ann said slowly: ‘He was so excited this time.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Telling everybody. He even told the neighbours and you know what he’s like with them.’

  Viv nodded, and blew out smoke.

  ‘That’s what’s made it so difficult. He’s clammed up. If we could share it, if I knew he felt it too. This feeling of . . .’

  ‘Of what?’

  Ann paused. ‘Emptiness. Nothing being worth doing.’

  Viv drew on her cigarette. ‘Worse than last time?’ she asked finally.

  Ann thought for a moment. ‘Yes.’

  A couple passed, the man holding the hand of a little girl.

  Ann said: ‘She’d be that age by now.’

  Viv nodded.

  Ann said: ‘I still think of her, every day.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Even though she was hardly there. Hardly born.’

  They sat in silence. Viv smoked the rest of her cigarette. They had seldom spoken about Ann’s stillborn child, and there seemed even less to say now. After that birth, three years ago, there had still been hopes of another. Viv gazed down at her potatoes; they lay in their string bag like a clutch of eggs. She dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her foot.

  ‘Just emptiness,’ said Ann.

  Viv put her arm around Ann, who sat there stiffly.

  Then Ann said: ‘He could still have one, of course.’

  Viv nodded. There was another silence. A man passed, wheeling a sack of peat. An assistant passed, holding a bunch of keys. They watched a woman stroll by, carrying a fern in a pot.

  ‘If only it was that easy,’ said Viv.

  ‘What?’

  Viv pointed. ‘Buy a baby and take it home.’

  Ann’s voice rose: ‘Ready potted.’

  Suddenly they both started to laugh hysterically. They sat there side by side, shaking and hiccuping, gasping for breath. Viv felt her sister lean against her at last, her shoulders jerking; the tears started to run down their faces.

  The garden centre was closing. Above the glass roof the sky had darkened. Customers averted their eyes from the sight of two women, sitting together and now weeping.

  The church bells were ringing for the early evening service. Ollie sat on the settee, reading the Sunday Times Colour Magazine. Ken furtively glanced at the clock: six. He willed Ann to hurry up. He felt a kind of queasy loneliness. At first he thought it was the result of all that drink but at last, with surprise, he identified the feeling as homesickness. He hadn??
?t felt it so strongly for years. There was something about this place that unsettled him and made him long for his own safe lounge. He stood at the bookshelves, leafing through the Portable Orwell. Despite Viv’s preconceptions he had actually read some Orwell and had always admired the passion of the man. At least Ollie had stopped talking.

  Daisy wandered in and said: ‘I can whistle now.’

  ‘Can you?’ He closed the book. ‘Show me.’

  She whistled.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said.

  ‘Can you whistle?’

  ‘Of course.’ He whistled ‘Hills of the North Rejoice’, a tune that never failed to stir him.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘A hymn.’

  ‘What’s a hymn?’

  He stared. ‘You don’t know?’ He looked at Ollie, who was busy reading. He turned back to Daisy. ‘You don’t know any hymns?’

  She shook her head.

  Ann unwrapped her plant and put it on the windowsill. Ken was sitting in the armchair reading the Sunday Express. From behind the page he asked: ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The plant.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at the label. ‘Can’t pronounce it.’ She threw away the cellophane. ‘I just liked it.’

  He turned a page. Then he said: ‘They don’t know any hymns.’

  ‘Who don’t?’

  ‘Your nieces. Isn’t that sad?’

  She looked at him. ‘But you’re an atheist.’

  ‘Agnostic actually.’ He turned another page. ‘I still think it’s sad.’

  She nodded, and turned back to look at the plant. It had little buds coming. She couldn’t think of anything to do. It was becoming familiar, this feeling of panic. Nine o’clock in the evening and there was nothing in the world which seemed worth the effort. The only way to quell the panic was to tell herself: it’s Sunday evening, that’s why.

  She wanted to ask Ken if he felt the same. But then she realized: if he did, it wouldn’t make any difference. And that gave her the greatest fear of all.

  Viv lay awake. It was the dead centre of the night. Beside her she heard Ollie’s regular breathing; she heard the stirring of her children in the next room. The creaks and sighs of an old house; how many children it must have kept temporarily safe. She heard a car hooting. She heard her father’s voice, shouting at Ann: Life’s not fair, young lady, and the sooner you realize that the better! Ann, as young and tender as Rosie, her sweet wide face perplexed, for how could anyone bear to tell her the truth?