“I mean, it’s no kind of life, is it? For anybody?”
“What had you in mind?”
“You want to put the past behind you. Get out and live a bit. You want to join some Societies. Get yourself a new girdle.”
Florence didn’t speak. She came away from the window; she never admitted it, but the antics and the shrieking of the children got on her nerves.
“The trouble with you is that you don’t make the best of yourself,” Sylvia said. “I’m not running you down, I’m only telling you out of the kindness of my heart. You’re no beauty queen, but you could do yourself up.”
“What for?” Florence sat down by the tea-trolley.
“For the fellers,” Sylvia said conspiratorially.
“I don’t know any fellows.”
“Well, and you never will, will you, if you keep mouldering in the house? What’s stopping you now? Your mother’s been put away, you don’t have to stop in and mind her anymore.”
“I wish you would not use that expression,” Florence said. Any of those expressions really; redolent of your time at the cooked meats factory. Sylvia laughed; she patted her hair, puffed out and lacquered in a style that had passed its apogee some years before. It was impossible to imagine her without this hairstyle; like a helmet, it covered her weakest point, the head. She was, Florence thought, a strange blend of savage self-assertion and abject dependence; pathetic and ferocious by turns. Florence knew so little of the married women of her generation that she imagined Sylvia to be unusual.
“It is a home for the elderly,” Florence said. “A sanctuary for the twilight years.”
“Get away,” Sylvia said. “Your mother’s off her rocker. Colin doesn’t keep any secrets from me.”
“Really?” Florence said. “By the nature of a secret, you would not know if he did.”
“You’ve room to talk, about the folks round the corner.”
“It wasn’t idle gossip. I haven’t seen them for some time. They are old neighbours, though they are not people whom we have known. I am concerned.”
Sylvia yawned, leaning back and allowing her fingers a token flutter before her mouth.
“You want to be concerned with yourself. I’m telling you. Smarten yourself up and get out a bit. The trouble with this family, it’s too introvert.”
“Oh, is that Colin’s trouble?” Florence asked.
“Well, he was introvert.”
“But you remedied it.”
“What kind of a life is that?” Sylvia asked. “I had other offers. I could have got married four times over.”
“That might have been unwise,” Florence said gently. “You know, you’ve changed, Sylvia. You will have your opinions now. I remember when Colin first brought you home.”
Sylvia blushed furiously. So she remembers too, Florence thought. Father had been alive, of course, quite hale and hearty. Mrs. Sidney wore a new Crimplene suit in powder blue with bracelet-length sleeves. She herself put on a beige jersey wool. There were fruit scones and a Victoria sandwich. Mother’s gimlet eyes spotted a traycloth insufficiently starched, and (although often they were not starched at all) she whisked it off. As she waited to meet the girl her son intended to marry, one pointed finger rubbed and rubbed at a spot on the wooden arm of her chair. It had been summer, a day very like this. Sylvia’s substantial black brassiere had shown clearly under her short cotton frock, and she had emitted great guffaws of nervous laughter whenever she was addressed. Father had been exquisitely civil. Colin had not known where to look. Florence and her mother had agreed later that, seeing her in the setting he was used to, Colin would be sure to see that he was making a mistake. But he hadn’t.
“I let your blasted mother put on me,” Sylvia said. “I’d know better now.” From upstairs came the sound of the lavatory flushing.
“Unfortunately it isn’t given to any of us to have our opportunities over again. Or what would you do if you could? Perhaps since you are now so dissatisfied with your life, you ought to have looked the other way when you saw Colin on the tram.”
“I can assure you,” Sylvia said, “that I didn’t meet Colin on any tram.”
“It would be nothing to be ashamed of if you had.”
“I assure you.”
“She couldn’t have,” said Colin, coming in. “It’s not possible.”
“I understood you met on a tram. I’m not saying anything against it.”
“Couldn’t have been on a tram,” Colin said. “I’m not saying we wouldn’t have been on a tram, either Sylvia or myself, but I happen to recall that the trams had stopped running some years previously. It was on the railway station that we met.”
“I knew public transport was involved somewhere,” Florence said.
“And what have you got against it?”
Florence smiled faintly. “Nothing.”
“Only I was going to say, your father made his living out of it, didn’t he, people falling off buses.”
“Yes, my love,” Colin said. “We are all staunch supporters of public transport in this house. Perhaps that’s why you caught my eye. You so clearly approved of it too.”
“You were a while,” Sylvia observed, “in the toilet.”
“Allow me a few moments’ privacy,” Colin said. “Confine your interest to the children’s bowel movements, not mine.”
“The topic of romance on trams has worn thin,” Florence said. “I see that we must have something else. Sylvia sees it too.”
Defiantly, Colin took out a cigarette and lit it. Love is blind, Florence thought: for a year or two.
“Unhygienic habit,” Sylvia said. “I gave it up when I was pregnant with Suzanne. I read it in a magazine. Smoking and Pregnancy.”
“Sylvia takes magazines devoted to housewifery,” Florence said. “Does she have recipes making use of frozen chicken which are both tasty and economical?”
“I know what you eat,” Sylvia said. “Bread and jam.”
“In its place,” Florence murmured.
“Tea,” said Colin.
“I know. And tomato sandwiches. I don’t think Colin had ever had a proper meal in his life until we got married.” She got up. “We’ll be off, Florence.” She went out through the kitchen to the back door. “Come on, you lot, we’re off.”
An argument ensued. Florence could hear the protests of the children overridden by Sylvia’s firm flat voice. It made her nervous. If they wanted to stay, it probably meant that they were engaged in some form of covert vandalism. “The roses,” she said nervously.
“Roses,” Colin put his head in his hands. “You ought to get some cabbages in. The cost of living being what it is.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. They were Father’s roses.”
“Grub them up,” Colin said. “That’s it. Grub them up.” He groaned quietly, then stood up, stretching himself. He was a man on poor terms with his clothes—his shirt always coming out of his waistband, his trousers shooting up around his calves as he sat; it was difficult not to see this as a symptom of a more general failure of control. He had once been remarkably good-looking, but now his looks had faded, as if his features were doubtful of their application in his current circumstances. His habitual expression was one of anxious astonishment, like that of a man who has been stopped in the street by a policeman and finds he has forgotten his name. “Where’s my pullover?” he said, looking about. He hauled it over his head and smoothed his thinning fair hair.
“You’re ageing, Colin,” Florence said in a low voice.
“Ah well. At my back I always hear time’s wingèd chariot etc. It’s been ten years you know, me and Sylvia. I should have thought the amusement would have palled. You hurt her, you know. She cries. She isn’t entirely the jolly factory lass you take her to be.”
“Come on, Colin.” Sylvia was standing in the doorway holding the hands of her two younger children. “Thank you very much, Florence. Say thank you to your Auntie for the nice tea.”
Freeing their hands, pushing
past Florence, the children whooped out to the car. Sylvia followed them.
“I wanted your opinion,” Florence said. “About Mrs. Axon and her daughter.”
“I have no opinion,” Colin said. “Mrs. Axon has lived around the corner for as long as I can remember without having done anything to warrant my having an opinion on her.” His shirt had come out again; he was stuffing it back, hauling at his belt. “You know, Florence, Sylvia’s quite right. You’ve got to make a life of your own.”
Outside, Sylvia wound the car window down. “Colin, are you coming?”
“Anon, good Sylvia, anon. You see, the problem is, you were geared up to years of self-sacrifice, looking after Mother. Now all that’s aborted…well, you know what I mean. Eh, old girl? Pop over next Sunday.” A peck on the cheek. She stood in the porch watching Sylvia wind the window up again. There was something incongruously patrician about Sylvia’s averted profile, her mouth was set, her chin sagging. Colin hunched himself into the driver’s seat.
“It’s a flaming bloodsport,” Sylvia said.
“Sorry, love.” On a sudden whim Colin transferred his hand from the knob of the gearstick to her knee. He patted it. “You mustn’t let her get you down. She’s lonely, you know.”
Sylvia sniffed. “Come on, let’s get home.”
Colin steered along Buckingham Avenue with his usual caution. The little saloon forced him to drive with his arms stiffly extended, as if he were fending off the week ahead.
“You were getting at me,” she said.
“Well, just a bit.”
“Florence sets you off.”
“I said I’m sorry. Can we have a bit of peace? I said,” he raised his voice for the children in the back, “can we have a bit of peace?”
The most difficult thing was not knowing: how many months. Evelyn took down the calendar and pored over it. You could not be positive that the missing Thursdays were implicated. That would be a jump altogether too far ahead.
“Do you want to go to the doctor?” she said. “It would cost.”
Muriel said that it was free now.
“Free? Nothing’s free. What sort of stupid talk is that?”
She didn’t know what was going on in the world, Muriel said craftily. Craftily, because it was Muriel’s scheme to have her inadequacy prick her, so that she would buy a television set. Evelyn wouldn’t have one in the house, not while she was alive; and after her death she expected to exercise some sway. After all, they hadn’t missed the radio when it had broken down, and they didn’t feel the lack of newspapers. Soon after the last war Muriel had been sent with the month’s money to the newsagent’s. It had been wrapped up in a piece of paper, and she had lost it. Evelyn couldn’t see her way to finding the money twice over. So the shop had stopped delivering. Evelyn had never read them anyway. All the news was the same, and all bogus. The papers took no cognizance of the other world, except when they found some cheap talk of poltergeists or table-turning to fill the pages up.
“And where do you go?” she demanded of Muriel. “Where do you go, that you know so much?”
Muriel didn’t answer that question. Either Evelyn knew where she had been, and was mocking her, or she did not; in which case, her powers were on the wane, the long battle was drawing to an end. They tell you what’s free at the Class, Muriel said. They tell you what you can get for nothing.
It was strongly in Evelyn’s mind now that it must be someone from the class who was the father of Muriel’s child. But it was no use bothering Muriel about it, no use trying to get anything out of her. It did cross her mind that something malign in the house might be responsible for the girl’s condition; but she had to admit that in her extensive experience she had not heard of such a thing. There were unnatural unions, but did they come to fruition? Muriel looked as if she would come to fruition, quite soon. No, surely her first thought was right. The lax Welfare had turned their backs. Some half-wit had prevailed on a quarter-wit. Only one thing she would have liked to find out; was he in some way deformed?
Social Services Department
Luther King House
Tel: 51212 Ext. 27
10th October 1974
Dear Mrs. Axon,
I must apologise for the delay in contacting you, but Miss Axon’s file was mislaid when the Department moved to new offices recently, and has only just come to hand.
As Miss Axon has not attended our Daycare Sessions since the move to The Hollies, we are anxious to know whether any difficulty has arisen. Miss Taft of this Department wrote to you on July 3rd, but you may perhaps have overlooked this letter. If it is convenient for you, I will call at your home on October 15th at about 3 P.M., and I will hope to see Miss Axon then and have a chat with her. If this date is not convenient perhaps you would kindly telephone me at the number above.
Miss Taft is now attending a course, and as she will be away for six months Miss Axon’s case has been handed over to me. I hope to be able to help you with any problems that arise.
Yours sincerely,
ISABEL FIELD
CHAPTER 2
“Isabel,” Colin said. “Isabel.”
“Don’t slobber, Colin.”
“You are unkind.”
“Oh?”
“You are vastly too good, Isabel. You make it plain.”
“Yes.” Isabel wound down the window of the car. A dank semi-rural darkness entered. She lit a cigarette.
“Colin, why do you always lock the doors?”
Heaving and sighing.
“The car doors, Colin, why do you insist on locking your passengers in? Oh, come on, Colin. A bit of coherent conversation.”
“The A6 murder,” Colin said.
“What?”
“This. Murder. Similar. Circumstances. Night, a field, or a tract of, I don’t remember, some open ground, I suppose, by the side of the road. Hanratty. Before your time.”
“Oh, Colin.” She put out a narrow cold hand to find his face. “Colin, you are a worrier.”
“Personally, I think the conviction was unjust,” Colin said. “I’m against capital punishment. The truth is, Isabel, now forgive me, it’s rather maudlin I know, but the truth is Isabel, I’m against death. Death in any form.”
She sighed, in the damp darkness of the passenger seat.
“Sylvia,” he said. “Sylvia is forbidding me eggs. My arteries. She read these things. Aagh.” He let out a long breath, releasing his tie further with one hand. He heaved across to her, wet and sweating. “Do you know, sometimes I feel very much like suicide. But I had a good idea the other week. I thought I would buy myself a record of the Marches of Sousa. And if I felt really tempted to suicide, I would play it. You wouldn’t kill yourself after that—after you’d marched about a bit. It would be too ridiculous. Isabel, Isabel.” He pressed his face into her neck. It was a source of constant amazement to him that she did not pull away; not every time.
This is October. Isabel is just a name on a letter, received by someone else.
This is Colin off to his evening class. Sylvia is clattering the dishes together in the sink, slamming them with dangerous force onto the stainless-steel draining board. It is clear that she thinks Creative Writing a waste of time. Early evening bouts of violence echo from the lounge; the air hangs heavy and blue with gunsmoke, the children squat before the TV set, their mouths ajar.
“You see nothing of them,” Sylvia says. (This conversation has been held before.)
Colin reverses himself and strides back into the room, swerving to avoid cracking his shins on the coffee table. Blocking the TV he treads the carpet before his offspring like a Lippizan stallion; but not very like.
“They,” he reports, “see nothing of me.”
“What?”
“I wafted in there and stood in front of the television. They didn’t address me by name. They saw me merely as an obstruction to their view.”
“Waft?” Sylvia says. “You couldn’t waft. Never in a million years could you waft.”
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“They’re in a state of advanced hypnosis. Deep Trance. Tell me,” he says, “why couldn’t I have gifted children? It would have been an interest for me. Why can’t they all be little Mozarts?”
“We haven’t got a piano,” Sylvia says.
“I’m away.” Going out, Colin stuffs his notebook into his pocket.
In the hall mirror he glimpses his own face, weakly handsome, frowning, abstracted. He loosens the knot of his tie. Despite what Florence said about him aging, he looks years younger than his wife. He tries the effect of a boyish lopsided grin. It reminds him of something; his father’s hemiplegia perhaps. He erases it from his face and departs, banging the door behind him.
There were some eighteen people in the classroom, rather more female than male, rather more old than young. Teacher was rubbing the leftover algebra off the board, a plump lady in a cardigan, and chalking up the words WRITING FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT. Excuse me, said Colin, stumbling through the desks and finding himself a seat to overflow. He looked around for Zelda Fitzgerald. She wasn’t there.
“Perhaps if we all introduced ourselves,” Mrs. Wells said. “Perhaps if we all say a few words about the sort of writing we want to do. How we see ourselves.”
How we see ourselves, Colin thought in querulous alarm, how we see ourselves? I am a history teacher, a teacher of the benighted past to the benighted present, ill-recompensed for what I suffer and despairing of promotion. My feet are size eight and a half, and I belong to the generation of Angry Young Men, though I was never angry until it was too late, oh, very late, and even now I am only mildly irritated. I am not a vegetarian and contribute to no charities, on principle; I loathe beetroot, and the sexual revolution has passed me by. My taste in clothes is conservative but I get holes in my pockets and my small change falls through; I do not speak to my wife about this because she is an excellent mother and I am intimidated by her, also appalled by the paltry nature of this complaint or what might be construed by her as a complaint. The sort of writing I want to do is the sort that will force me to become a tax-exile.