Claustrophobia (20 page)

Pen said nothing.

Jean smiled a very small smile. ‘Well, it's still only in discussion. But he's certainly in line for it. Mellors has put in his resignation. Some say retiring, but it's rather early for that. Personally I suspect he's had enough of all the
scandal
lately.'

‘Are you referring to the
tragedy
?' Pen said coldly. Strange how one choice of word could be such a clear signal.

‘Yes, yes, of course.' Jean tapped the table. ‘Nice to be offered the position, but a shame it has to be on the back of something so nasty.'

‘
Nasty
.' It was like speaking two different languages.

‘However you look at it. Still, I suppose if he takes it, the extra pay will surely come in handy,' and here she gestured towards Pen's belly, as if it were suddenly public property; an objective reality rather than an intimate part of her person. ‘You must be pleased.'

‘I'm sure Derrick will do whatever's right in the circumstances,' Pen said.

But Jean was still on her own private wavelength.

‘And you'll need that extra pay, having to give up work yourself,' she said. ‘Do you miss the university?'

‘A little.' Pen was cagey now.

‘My sister works there, actually. I don't know if you know her – Alice Henley? She's in admin. In the Arts building.'

Pen's heart quickened, but held steady. She didn't know Alice Henley, and there was no reason Alice would know her.

‘No, doesn't ring a bell.'

‘Well, it's a small world. But then I guess you weren't there very long really, were you? Are you having something to eat?'

Pen shook her head. ‘I must get going, in fact.'

Jean dispensed the usual banalities – you had to be grateful when it was just that, and not the veiled spite. Pen moved off swiftly, empty-handed. She'd get the clothing another time.

She had not reckoned on the whole degrees of separation thing. Kathleen was in another world – but how close, in some respects, that world was. Didn't people always say,
Perth is a small town
, even though it was well on the way to two million people now, and stretched out over a hundred kilometres? True, Kathleen knew her only by a different surname. But a word here or there to the right person – the wrong person! – might conceivably bring her undone.

Pen wished again that she could simply move away. Have the baby elsewhere.

But that was even less likely now, if Derrick had the deputy-headship within sight.

As she came to the huge glass exit doors of Gatelands, a sign caught her eye. Salon Paris-Chic. She thought with a pang of the Paris she would probably now never see. Certainly not with Kathleen. Sweet, generous Kathleen …

But Pen had resolved against second thoughts: the baby made anything worth giving up. Family life, the sort she'd never had, was everything. It was only the business with Jean and her sister spooking Pen a little, thinking people would recognise, connect her. She had to put all that behind her.

Under the salon's sign was chalked, in a most un-chic manner,
Walk-ins Welcome
.

A colour change would make her almost unrecognisable, but she was pretty sure the dye wouldn't be safe for the baby. Still, there were other ways of looking radically different. So Pen walked in and asked the girl to cut her hair really short.

It was just a little more weight lifted. She felt so light now, she was floating again. And cutting off your hair was a sign of commitment – like nuns entering the convent – she was re-entering her marriage.
No turning back no turning back
.

14

The house was a flurry of hired workers over the next few days, an intrusion Pen could hardly stand, but there was no other way the place could get finished with her pregnant and Derrick in his last weeks of term. Pen had spent hours on the net tracking down eco paints that wouldn't give off fumes and harm the baby, but even so, Derrick was adamant she mustn't do any of the work.

She was clock-watching now, waiting for him to pick her up for a lunchtime appointment with the obstetrician.

‘I could drive myself.'

‘I want to be there, darling. I've got some free time at the end of the lunch hour, and it makes sense.'

He wanted to do
everything
with her now. On the one hand, Pen was grateful; on the other hand, she'd grown used
to having a bit of her own space. Hadn't that been their plan all along, to open up to other people, not to be so fused with each other that they shut out the rest of the world?

All she wanted now was to be by herself, and shut out the rest of the world …

But it was his child too, of course. Even if in some bizarre way, she sometimes dreamt it had sprung from her passion for Kathleen. Passion: the very word made her feel sick now. Pen blocked it out of her mind – ridiculous.

‘Why now?' she'd said, the first time, to the specialist. ‘After losing one, and trying for so many years? I thought I just couldn't conceive.'

The specialist was a woman of her own age, with a sharp angled haircut and expensively cut summer trousers. She crossed and uncrossed her knees each time she made a statement, as if self-conscious. Then Pen realised, ‘She's
flirting
with Derrick.'

Derrick seemed oblivious.

‘Well,' the woman said, ‘sometimes it's the anxiety that prevents it happening. The more you think about it, the more you can't conceive. Without going into personal details, I once knew a woman who had so much trouble conceiving that she adopted a child, and then immediately fell pregnant.'

‘Because she'd stopped worrying,' Pen murmured.

‘Yes.'

‘Like a china egg,' Derrick said. They both looked at him. ‘I mean, when a hen won't lay. It seems to work.'

Everyone laughed.

This second visit, the specialist was even more flirtatious, Pen thought. The woman wore a low-cut blouse, just a little
less than professional, as if she'd dressed for the specific appointment. Surely not – maybe she just affected that manner to make the husbands feel included. To put them at ease with her handling of their wives' bodies.

Derrick was like a little boy again, perched on his stool, nodding at the doctor's every pronouncement. Pen could hardly get a word in.

‘Is it going to be all right?' she said finally.

The doctor sat back; her smile gleamed faintly patronising.

‘At this stage, everything looks fine. But you know, Penny, there are no guarantees in this business. We'll just take it month by month.'

Pen stiffened. ‘You mean everything's
not
all right.'

Derrick intervened. ‘Pen, the doctor said everything looks fine. She's just speaking generally.'

He smiled and nodded at the woman again.

‘We just do the best we can, Penny,' she said. ‘There's no need to be fearful.'

Afterwards in the car, Pen was disgruntled. She wanted to be annoyed with Derrick over the flirting, but in truth it hardly bothered her anymore. Once it would have outraged her.

‘I didn't like that
no guarantees
business,' she said to Derrick.

‘Lighten up, darling. They just have to be truthful. She didn't mean there was anything wrong.'

‘It was cold. She's so cold.'

‘That's her job. You want a cool head when you're giving birth, don't you?'

‘Cool, maybe. Not cold. And she keeps calling me Penny.'

‘They can't remember everything, darling.'

‘It's not everything,' Pen said. ‘It's my bloody name!'

Derrick looked surprised. ‘Calm down, sweetheart.' He leaned over and squeezed her hand. ‘You know, that short hairdo really suits you. It's taken me a while to get used to it. I kept thinking there was a stranger in the house. But it actually looks quite pretty.'

‘Buying me off with flattery,' Pen thought. ‘After the flirt.'

‘Can you call in at the shopping centre on the way through?' she said finally. ‘I'd like to pick up the mail.'

It would save her a trip after school, since Derrick had the car today, and it wasn't on his route home.

‘If you can be quick.'

Funny how he always said that, as if the time it took were wholly at her discretion, and not dependent on the crowd or the queue. Derrick sat in the Volvo with the engine humming while she went up the brick steps, her walk permanently cautious now, her movements studied and slow. She unlocked the box and pulled out a pile of bent envelopes and junk mail slips.

Among the bills and bank statements, she saw at once a letter addressed to Pen
Stone
.

There was no return address, but she knew the handwriting was Kathleen's.

No time or privacy to open it now – if that was even the right thing to do. Pen shoved the envelope down to the bottom of her handbag, shuffled the other letters together, and turned back to the car.

‘Anything I should know about?' Derrick checked over his shoulder and swung out into the traffic again.

Pen shook her head.

‘What was that one you put away?'

He said it lightly, as if it really didn't matter and had only grazed the edge of his curiosity. But how surprising that he'd noticed. He must be watching closer than she thought.

‘Just a library overdue,' she said. ‘I think I've already returned it.'

Derrick looked at Pen, and then smiled, in sequence. The infinitesimal lapse in between chilled her. He was opaque; perhaps he had always been.

For a few seconds it seemed as if all other people were opaque, like aliens, or automata. The big trucks, cement mixers, road trains grinding before and behind them, groaning up the highway to cross the hills and head east with their pointless greedy loads, endlessly coming and going – all seemed to be running by daemonic order, unrelated to human beings. Pen could hardly breathe, and it wasn't just the carbon monoxide.

‘I wish you didn't have to go back,' Pen said as Derrick dropped her home. She would have liked to lock the doors and draw the blinds. She felt enormously tired. Wanted someone else to do it all for her.

‘It's only a few hours till school's out,' Derrick said.

When he had gone, she pulled out Kathleen's letter, turning it over twice, three times, as if the outside could tell her anything. It was a fat letter; it had been posted the day before.

She feared reading it, in case it shook her resolve. Kathleen might have been abrupt on the day they split up, but clearly she had a lot to say now. The temptation to read it – just to read it, not to respond – was huge.

Yet it could only be anger, or pleading. Neither of which Pen felt up to facing.

She couldn't cross it out and say ‘Return to sender', since there was no sender's name. Though that would have been the best way to tell Kathleen it was futile – just as Kathleen herself had done to Derrick, more than a decade ago.

Neither could she write ‘Not at this address', or the thing would go back to some dead-letter office, she supposed, until someone figured out how to find ‘Pen Stone', or else binned it. But still not a good idea, in case it ever fell into curious hands.

She opened the Bushman stove: it was musty and foul from disuse, even though Derrick had cleaned out the ash at the end of winter.

At first the letter, sealed and compact, wouldn't catch, so she scrunched up some newspaper and thrust it in to build a little pyre.

To crown the pile, she went into the former study and reached down the old letter Derrick had sent to Kathleen, the letter that had started everything. Now was the time, if ever. Pulled open and torn into pieces, it punched the air at once into lucid flame.

Pen sat carefully by the glass door, and pulled the handle back into locking position.

‘You shouldn't use the fireplace in this weather, you could send up burning ash and set off the whole bush out there.'

Pen turned, incredulous. Her mother stood just inside the glass sliding door, untying a large-brimmed sunhat and patting her hair.

‘It's not the fireplace,' Pen said, standing up, ‘it's the stove.' But she knew her mother was right.

‘Still.' Mrs Stone stepped over, peering in through the dark stove door. ‘What on earth are you burning? Is it letters?'

Pen ignored the question, sullen. ‘I didn't hear you knock.'

‘No, I thought you didn't, so I came in. It's very dark in here. Gives the place an awful mood, Penelope.'

Pen shrugged. ‘Just your tinted glasses, from being outside. They'll come good in a few minutes. Did you want a cup of tea or something?'

Mrs Stone's lips drew tight. ‘You mean, what am I doing here?'

‘No, I meant do you want a cup of tea.' Pen went gingerly down the steps into the kitchen and filled the kettle, mechanically. Anything to keep occupied.

‘Didn't Derrick mention I was dropping by? I've got a boxload of baby gear from Eleanor's daughter – they thought you might like to look through it.'

Derrick
had
mentioned it, but he hadn't said when.

‘Thanks.' Pen peeked inside the box: it was full of woollens and growsuits in pastel colours, some of them faintly stained. ‘I don't know where I'll put all this stuff, though. It's a bit soon. Months away.'

‘It'll pass soon enough. And besides, I wanted to sort out what we're doing for Christmas. Martins are giving me a free ham and it's no good all on my own.'

‘Derrick doesn't eat ham,' Pen reminded her.

Mrs Stone frowned. ‘No, but
you
could. Can't do that vegetarian thing with a baby on the way, you know.'

You can, actually
, Pen wanted to say, but there was no point, since she wasn't vegetarian anyway, and with her mother she had to pick her battles.

She brought the teapot to the table and sat down wearily.