Movement (16 page)

Was I the only one who knew that Susan had been in love with Pia for nine months, ever since Susan came to our Women's Socialist Literature Collective?

Looks like we have a nibble for the book. Virago says they can do a run of 7,000 paperback. Your photos are fine. I'm actually getting off on being a literary agent. I'd give up the PR job altogether if I could find enough feminist clients.

Our collective was more than an editorial group. For some of us, it was Bloomsbury. For Sara, it was a revolutionary citoyenne brigade. For Pia, it was a CP lit caucus, descended from the thirties. Like so many of the progressive groups in London now, it was half North American. Why did we stay in Britain when the pound was falling, the postboxes were being blown up, and everyone was going on strike? Well, because a lot of us had studied English literature. We figured if we wanted to write literature, we had to be in England.
Un peu naïve
, you might say, but that idealism was the very best part of all of us.

It's odd that Susan, despite all her other quixotic ideas, never had any illusions about being “a writer.” She had come to London as a reporter. As a photographer and journalist. She said she would take pictures and do reviews for us, but forget this creative writing business. Superbly realistic, she seemed, and very young. The brightest one of us, for sure. My five years here haven't cured me of what my British mates call “individualism.” I still place friends in some high school yearbook. “Most Likely to Succeed.” That was Susan, because of all of us, she knew what she wanted to succeed
at.
Pia qualified as “Most Popular” and, as I gradually understood, also “Most Innocent.”

Why do I keep coming back to Pia? Perhaps because her vulnerability brings out the mother in everyone. As Moira says, “feminism stimulates lactation.” Of course, one look at Pia and most mothers would run the other way with their arms locked across their breasts. She is almost frighteningly gorgeous with that bobbed, hennaed hair, those antique silk blouses and Hepburn slacks. She usually wears funky pumps or black espadrilles and a coke spoon on a silver chain around her neck. Women in the collective were always teasing about the sexism in her dress.

“What do you mean?” Pia declared after one meeting. “I'm the biggest raving dyke here.”

“But you still dress like some man's fantasy,” Susan said.

“Why some man's?”

Susan blushed. She really was young sometimes, or maybe just honest.

“And who are you geared up to be?” asked Pia. “Jill Johnston's fantasy in your loose sweaters and always jeans? That's an image, too, you know. Why the hell do you bind your hair in that leather noose? You look like some vegetarian nun.”

Susan let it pass, partially because she was beginning to be seduced and partially because Susan always respected people with
reasons
who had thought out their positions. They disagreed desperately on Doris Lessing that night. Pia said Lessing was too worthy, too moral. Now, her idea of an expatriate was Anaïs Nin. Susan charged Pia with having a patriarchal aesthetic and they had a terrible fight.

Great to hear you're doing so well in San Francisco. How's the job? Does California feel any different now that you're an editor? Are you being smothered by good old Yankee provincialism? We were all over at Pia's last night comparing letters from you, our prodigal sister. We all miss you a lot.

On the night of Sara's wedding, I had arranged to stay over with a friend—just in case Susan wanted the flat to herself, just in case anything happened with her and Pia. At midnight, they were drinking Sara's daddy's champagne from the same glass and talking about a Holly Near album. A half hour later, they were missing from the party.

The next afternoon, Susan told me the story. I was quite proud of Susan for taking the initiative. After hearing the first side of the album and half of the second Pia said, “Not as hokey as I expected. I like it.”

“And I like
you
,” said Susan, taking her hand.

“This isn't going to work out, honey,” Pia told her. “It never works out with straight women. I'm just intermission.”

“We'll see about that.”

Susan said the sex was wonderful, a real turn-on. For me, it's pretty much an aesthetic appreciation. I've always thought women's bodies were more beautiful. I fell in love with Isadora Duncan when I was twelve and with Vanessa Redgrave ten years later. Evidently, however, Pia's initiation wasn't as delicate as I had imagined.

“You don't have to do that, you know,” Pia said. “Straight women always think they've got to come down on you the first time.”

“Pia, this is wonderful.”

“Yeah, doll, it's OK for me, too.”

Remember Susan had wanted to be with her for almost a year.

“Pia, I think I'm in love.”

“Don't say that.”

That meeting at Pia's was the first time we all got together since you left. Everyone has been frantically chasing around on this Agee-Hosenball CIA stuff. If the Home Office deports them, I'm leaving. I may not have much choice. They're searching peoples' flats. Someone took Jenny's address book from her car seat. The government is tightening ass everywhere. It's scary. With the pound this far down, people are going frantic politically—turning Tory or Commie. More Tory.

Pia and Susan had always gone to the same meetings, parties and marches. Now they would be going together. Their debut was Jenny's Ph.D. celebration. Jenny had broken off with Pia three months before. Pia had seriously thought about marrying Jenny and following her off to Kenya. Now Jenny was going to Lake Rudolf on her own. Pia hadn't told her about Susan yet and she was clearly agitated as we rode the cab from Holloway to Lexham Gardens. Susan held her hand and chatted with me happily.

Amazing how unself-conscious Susan was. Their affair scared Pia, I know. Too easy, she thought. Susan didn't know her well enough yet, Pia told me. Or maybe Susan couldn't find anyone else. Pia was accustomed to, and probably enjoyed, breaking down the tensions of shy, frightened or coy straight women. And here sat Susan, publicly—almost relentlessly—holding her hand.

You could feel the approval when they walked into the room. Pia's black silk elegance was accented by Susan's stunning cinnamon overalls. Jenny embraced them both and led them over to the wine table where Pia downed a bottle of Graves Burgundy during a fifteen minute conversation about clitoridectomies among the Masai.

Pia asked Susan if she'd like to bop. Susan, still on her first glass of wine, said she was a klutz. But soon they were swinging, Pia's slacks flouncing, to Bill Haley and his Comets. Pia sashayed into the drapes and managed to bring the rod down on their heads. Of course Susan was hurt, too, but she was considerably more sober.

Pia spent the rest of the evening lying in Susan's lap, eating pâté, and chatting to the visitors. She hadn't looked that relaxed in a year.

Pia has been doing some work for the
Guardian
arts section. Fringe theatre reviews and a couple of interviews. She says you can do more in the union if you're working for a mainstream paper. You must have had some impact on her, you little bourgeois reformer.

They were really good for each other. It made me happy just to have breakfast with them in the morning. Studious, practical Susan became almost frivolous. Pia felt more secure than she had in ages.

Together they worked closely on the abortion campaign, the feminist aesthetics conference, the union. Alistair called them “the Bobbsey Twins” which Susan hated because it reminded Pia they were both American.

“Even if you were Canadian, it wouldn't be so bad,” Pia told her. “But it's like waking up with a mirror sometimes. You're everything I tried to escape—broad American accent, orthodontic straight teeth, rampant freckles.”

Pia had worked damn hard at getting away from West Hollywood High. She took the first train to Bennington and couldn't get out of the States fast enough when she got that offer from The Hogarth Press.

“I knew I would never make it as an all-American girl,” she told Susan. “I found the culture so stifling. I wasn't wholesome enough.”

“And I'm Miss USA?” said Susan.

“You're sweet enough.”

“I suppose I'd be more interesting if I had a heroin habit or was into bondage.”

“I suppose you would.”

“I love you. Isn't that enough?”

“Maybe too much,” frowned Pia. “Don't talk like that.”

You asked about Shana in the last letter. She's the artist whom Pia has been seeing. They're still “together,” if that's the word. It's been three months now. Perhaps they've stuck it out because Shana's always away. She's not very good to Pia. She sees other people, including Jenny, who still hasn't split for Lake Rudolf. Pia has been drinking more lately, expensive Dutch gin that Shana brings back duty-free from her tours. She's getting thinner, smoking more. I don't want to guilt trip you or anything. You made the right choice in going back to the States. But you
were
so good for her.

Actually, I had known Pia two years before Susan phoned me from Victoria Station, said she was a friend of my sister's, and asked if she could spend the night on my couch. She wound up staying years. Yes, I was quite in the middle of their relationship in a lot of ways. Mother to Pia, confidante to Susan. Interesting, I thought I knew Pia until Susan told me about their conversation on fantasies.

“So if I'm Miss USA,” said Susan, “who are you? Don Juan in Hell?”

“No, I hate Shaw, too snide,” said Pia.

“Not Mr. Darcy?”

“No,
not
Mr. Darcy.”

“Well, it's got to be romantic,” said Susan.

“Oh, definitely romantic,” said Pia as she rolled over and played with Susan's long curls. “How would you feel about Peter Pan?”

I told Susan, later, that she made a good Wendy, certainly a much better one than I. I never had Susan's capacity for involvement. Sure, I admit I was in love with both of them and scared to death of it. Like my Aunty Jane, who's a smalltime dance impressario in Brooklyn, I'm more given to secondhand adventures. Obviously both Susan and Pia understood that.

Spare Rib
wants to excerpt your essay for their January issue. They can't pay, of course. And they all ask about you.

That
Spare Rib
party was probably the beginning of the end for Susan and Pia. It was like an anniversary of the women's movement in London. Everyone was there. Sara wore black this time, one of those sensuous voile blouses with satin slacks. Spectacular. This was the first time we'd all been together since her wedding.

Funny, five years ago we were all novices and now we were professional feminists. Leah ran the Women's Studies Centre at Warwick. Kate had started Scottish Women's Aid. Moira, after an outrageous three year affair with Pia, had married a rabbi and founded a literacy project for women in Slough. Susan had been offered this magazine job in San Francisco.

Susan was alternately jubilant and tormented about the job. I know she would have stayed in London if Pia had asked. But Pia was dancing with everybody else that night.

I'm still toying with the idea of going back to the States, myself. You're a good example for me. I do miss it. I miss people with the same sense of humor, whose accents I understand the first time around. I'm tired of never having enough meat and of getting the flu twice every winter. I sometimes even miss my mother. But if I left England, I would miss the Half Moon Theatre, the King's Head Pub, the terrible jokes in
Private Eye
. How could I leave my friends here?

They went to Brighton to settle their future. Whitsun at Bobbie's. I thought it was a bad idea because Bobbie can be overbearing and, besides, she's been in love with Pia for years. But she was gracious, apparently. Served them Asti Spumanti in bed. And except for Sunday brunch, when she went into a tirade about the politics of semiotics, Bobbie stayed in the background.

They spent the weekend sleeping late and noshing at those little cafes on the waterfront. Susan said they had never been that close. She would stay awake at night, just for the sense of Pia's arms around her. She didn't say she loved Pia. She hadn't said that in months. She thought Pia might say it now. All Pia really had to say was “Stay.”

She didn't. On Sunday night, during their second bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. Susan said she had to decide about whether she would go to San Francisco.

“Look,” said Pia. “I don't want to be responsible for anyone's life.”

“But loving someone is a responsibility.”

“Susan, I don't like being pushed.”

“Who's pushing?”

“You are, damn it. You always are. By being too kind. Too loving. You're a good person, Susan.”

“And what's wrong with that?”

Pia always got angry when she felt guilty and she shouted back now, “I'll tell you what's wrong with that. It's not very
interesting.
”

Are you still thinking about coming back for the summer? Moira says she can get a cottage at the Lakes for a week, or something at the Yorkshire Downs. Pia was glad to hear you were coming.

They were together for Susan's last night in London. The next morning, Susan almost missed her plane because Pia couldn't find her briefcase. She bumped her head as we all jumped in the taxi to go to the West London Air Terminal. That seemed to break the tension and we laughed and exchanged last minute messages to friends in the States.

“The book?” said Susan. “My copy of the manuscript, what did you do with it, Pia?”

“I don't have it. I thought Moira was supposed to get it to you.”

“So what's this?” said Susan. “The collective unconsciousness?”