After the Fire (8 page)

Milly supposed she would have to let Hen take her into the hospital. Otherwise her own car would be in town, available to her daughter for gallivanting around to see her own friends, to see her father, making a holiday out of what Milly wanted to be a hard and demanding vigil. But Milly disliked how often Hen managed to catch her up in good deeds. Now she would become one of them. Henrietta didn’t have real friends. People for her were projects like Red and Sadie and old Miss James. Even her husband was no more to her than a twice weekly duty. Henrietta lost interest in people without needs. Without this operation to involve herself in, she would probably be losing interest in Milly, who had noticed how often Hen simply dismissed her, as she had this morning.

Milly hated Saturdays, nothing but the opera to listen to on the radio, nothing to watch on the one channel her TV picked up. Though the bleeding had stopped and the afternoon was sunny, she felt too weak to go out for a walk. But by dinner time boredom had conquered her fatigue. One more game of solitaire and she’d go mad!

Though it was extravagant on her limited budget, Milly determined to treat herself to dinner at the pub. She could sit at one of the small tables so that no couple could take pity on her and join her. How Milly hated those talkative wives glad of any company to distract them from their resigned, doggedly eating husbands. But the few garrulous husbands were even worse, with nothing in their brains but jokes and facts, among which it was hard to distinguish what to laugh at. As for the young men, Milly flinched at the thought of being treated as Sadie was—a worn and blowsy drunk to be humored along. What a sorry state her life was in when even such company as she would find at the pub was better than her own.

That Karen Tasuki was working tonight. Milly watched her with speculative interest, and, when she came to take Milly’s order, Milly decided to probe a little.

“Where are those friends of yours?”

“Friends?” Karen repeated.

“The ones I saw walking on the beach this morning, the two holding hands.”

“Oh, just friends of friends here for the weekend,” Karen said, obviously trying to distance herself from them.

“Where are they staying?”

“With me … just until tomorrow.”

“Why aren’t they here at the pub?”

“Oh, they brought their own food.”

“I don’t suppose a place like this would appeal to them,” Milly suggested.

“They were here last night,” Karen said. “Are you ready to order?”

“You needn’t take offense.”

“I’m not,” Karen said, looking around. “It’s getting pretty crowded. I don’t really have time to chat.”

Milly ordered a small fish and chips with a carafe of white wine which, after she’d finished her meal, she could go on sipping for a couple of hours if she felt like it.

There were more weekenders here than usual, as sure a sign of the coming of spring as snowdrops or crocuses. How young and affluent and healthy they looked, some with winter-holiday tans, their jackets and Scandinavian sweaters no older than last Christmas. If their children had come to the island with them, they were left at home with spaghetti and the choice of a hundred channels on their dish-wired TVs.

Fifteen years ago there had been no pub, and dishes were still in the future. When she and Forbes came over with all three children, Milly had to cook, and the kids were thrown back on such old-fashioned entertainments as cards and jigsaw puzzles. City-spoiled and restless for their friends, they hated to come this early in the year. Once summer arrived they were happy enough to be here, part of a gang of summer children who didn’t mix much with the locals, though her son Martin would remember Dickie John.

In only fifteen years,
Milly wanted to call over to those young people,
you’ll be just like me, an old crow in an empty nest.
And in another fifteen years I’ll be just like them, Milly mused, as two old widows came in together, not friends so much as sharers of complaints about their health, their children and their pensions. She could imagine that future as she couldn’t have imagined this future for herself fifteen years ago. Then, life beyond children was going to be South American cruises and trips to Europe.

Why under these circumstances Milly didn’t long for death she didn’t know. Even the taste of this very good fish and chips, which Karen had delivered like a bowling ball, could cheer Milly until she defined such pleasure as living for her food.

“Why’s a good-looking girl like you sitting all by herself on a Saturday night?”

He was Chas Kidder, a classmate of Forbes, who had bought a place here not long after they had.

“Not waiting for my prince to come, I can assure you,” Milly said wryly.

“Well then, maybe I’ll do. May I join you?”

Milly nodded. “What brings you here so early in the year?”

“Better than staying home and fighting with my wife,” he answered flippantly. “How are you, Milly? I mean, really, how are you?”

She knew better than to think Chas was genuinely concerned. That tone, that emphasis, that eye contact all came from a middle-management course on how to fire people without pain.

“Just as you can see,” she replied, knowing she’d been skillful with her rouge as well as her eye make-up.

“Never better, eh? I saw your ex the other day, and I can’t say the same for him. A girl that young isn’t becoming to a man his age, makes him look old and foolish. ‘You know you’ve traded down, don’t you?’ I said to him.”

“And he knew you were jealous,” Milly said.

“No, Milly, I’m not. All he’s asking for are bills and back trouble.”

He signaled Karen and put a possessive hand on her arm as he ordered. Chas was the kind of man to make a clear distinction between responsibility and appetite.

“She’s a waste of your time,” Milly said when Karen had left the table.

“I’m sure of it,” Chas said good-naturedly.

“She’s not interested in men.”

“I never believe that about a woman unless I get it firsthand,” Chas said and laughed.

Milly had never realized just how humiliating it was to have the man you were with try to fondle a waitress. She wanted to get up and leave, but she couldn’t sacrifice half a carafe of wine and be more of an embarrassment to herself than to Chas.

“How’s your wife?” Milly asked.

“Oh, tired of me, Milly. I’ll have to work myself into the grave. If I ever retired, she’d throw me out of the house.”

“That’s a long way off in any case,” Milly said in a kindlier tone.

“Fifteen years,” Chas said.

He was, like Forbes, five years older than herself, and he was seeing more realistically into the future now that the children were gone and not blocking his view.

“She said a funny thing to me the other day. She said in a way she envied you because you were young enough still to make a life for yourself.”

“What’s a life for yourself?” Milly asked wryly. “Well, I’ll never have to cook brussels sprouts again. There’s that.”

“You know, I like my wife,” Chas said. “I don’t really think she likes me. Men don’t seem to wear as well somehow, I can’t imagine living with one. How do women manage?”

“Don’t ask me,” Milly said.

“Don’t you really think you’re better off?”

“Better off?” Milly asked, incredulous, “in my ’sixty-nine VW, in a house not meant to be lived in in winter, twenty years away from the old age pension?”

“You’d rather marry again?”

“Certainly not!” Milly said. “I’m not
that
hard up.”

When they had finished dinner and their wine, someone began to play the piano, and two guitars were being taken out of their cases.

“I’m not old enough for the sing-along,” Milly said, getting ready to go.

Chas reached over and took her check.

“Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure, Milly,” he said and made an effort to rise to his feet.

She supposed he would drink until closing time and then try his luck. Milly was certain Karen would not disappoint her, nor would she disappoint Chas all that much. He was the sort of man to marry, and Milly couldn’t abide him.

C
HAS KIDDER WAS DRUNK
at the end of the evening and clumsily direct in his approach to Karen.

“You’re old enough to be my father,” Karen said.

“Is Hilly right about you then? Don’t you like men?”

“No friend of Milly’s is a friend of mine,” Karen said, anger overcoming her fear.

“Don’t you?” Chas demanded again.

“Don’t she what?” Adam asked, belligerent himself by this time of night.

“Ah, nothing,” Chas said, giving Adam a friendly-jab in the arm.

Karen saw how old Chas Kidder really was, how easily a younger man could deflect and defeat him. She thought of her father who didn’t have to try to pick up young women in bars because he had his pick among his college students.

In fact, Karen didn’t much like men though that had nothing to do with her being attracted to women. She felt sorry for women who were attracted to men, whether they liked them or not. But, as she drove home, hoping that Sally and Sarah were already asleep, Karen admitted to herself that there weren’t many women she liked either.

Sally was asleep, but Sarah sat by the fire smoking a joint. The smell gave Karen an instant headache, which triggered her worst memories of social failures in Peggy’s world.

Sarah offered her a toke. Karen shook her head.

“You don’t, do you?” Sarah said quietly. “I forgot.”

“Why should you remember?”

“I would have made friends if you’d let me, you know,” Sarah said, her tone mildly reproachful. “I always used to admire you. Maybe envy’s a better word.”

“Me?”

“You and Peggy were together longer than anyone I knew. People get tired of me.”

“Peggy got tired of me,” Karen said.

“She didn’t,” Sarah said. “You could see through her, and she couldn’t stand it.”

“That’s not true. Peggy’s a better person than most people give her credit for.”

“She said the only reason you stayed for eight years was that she paid you to do it.”

“That’s not true!” Karen cried.

Sally stirred and opened her eyes. “You’re home. Oh, Sarah, do get rid of that stinking thing. That’s why I’ve been having such horrible dreams,”

“It’s getting harder and harder to find friends with bad habits,” Sarah said, butting her joint.

“I’ve got to sleep,” Karen said.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t trust Sarah’s judgment, but her view of what had happened confronted Karen with the fact that she had no view of her own. She had simply accepted Peggy’s. What else could she have done? She could hardly have said, “I am not boring!” It hadn’t occurred to her to ask, “Do you really mean that?” She had seen Peggy willfully hurt other people with dismissive judgments but always as a defense against an attack she saw, or thought she saw, coming. Could she really have thought that Karen stayed on only for the free ride? Might Karen have simply gone out and found a job? Peggy hadn’t given her that option. Anyway, she would have hated it. Peggy needed to feel generous. She needed to feel in control.

I didn’t see through her,
Karen thought.
I didn’t even see her clearly.
Karen did not want to go over it all again now. It was over, and Peggy wasn’t anyone she needed to understand. She needed only to understand herself, to know that she would never again, under any circumstances, be dependent either financially or emotionally on anyone. Sally and Sarah would be gone tomorrow. For the first time the idea of being alone was a relief.

Henrietta awoke both exhausted and restless after a day in town. Increasingly often now, she had a sense of living her life on hold, “spinning my wheels” was Hart Jr.’s expression for it; yet why it should be so she didn’t understand. She had no great plans in abeyance. Living life from day to day was what she had always done. It was hard to see Hart in his present state, but he was well looked after, and it was a job beyond her physical strength. She did not look forward to his death, for, even as he was, he was her anchor. She had no appetite for the drift that freedom would bring.

But if there really was a plan to this life, these last years of Hart’s life might have better been allocated to Peter. Yet Peter might have been badly damaged rather than killed, and so perhaps Hart was living out a limbo his son had been spared. If you could just know that, if you could see the use, then not so much of life would seem such a terrible waste. Henrietta could not quite convince herself. Suffering so isolated people that it was hard to believe they might be doing it for each other. Henrietta could certainly understand why you’d want to believe that.

I’m like a three-year-old,
she thought as she got dressed,
still asking why, why, why of God, a bored grown-up whose attention is almost impossible to get.

When she remembered Red was due this morning, her tiredness lifted. She was always better off with her attention focused on someone else.

The puppy bolted through the door ahead of Red, nails clattering across the linoleum of the kitchen floor, eager and then suddenly cautious, backing up against Red’s legs.

“This is Blackie,” Red said. “I had to bring her, but I’ll tie her up outside.”

“I’ve heard about you,” Henrietta said, offering her hand to the puppy to sniff and then to lick, while Red refastened her leash.

“I just more or less have to put up with her for another month until she’s old enough to learn to behave,” Red said.

There was a faint blush of color under Red’s usually very pale skin.
Scarlet,
Henrietta suddenly remembered and was surprised at how the name didn’t suit Red so much as describe some new life in her face, a pilot light glowing that hadn’t been there before.

“What made you decide to get a dog?” Henrietta asked when Red came back from tying Blackie up.

“For company,” Red said, “and I want her to be a watchdog, too.”

Red’s answer to putting her money in the bank? Often Red took Henrietta’s suggestions and turned them to her own purposes.

The puppy began to bark, outraged at being shut out and tied up. Red frowned.