Her Living Image (10 page)

Alan stared at Pam, fighting back the tears which welled in his eyes. How could she? How could she?

“Hadn’t you guessed?” said Pam in her chirpy voice. “I’ve known for ages there was something going on. I mean, she’s always out, and she’s not at
that many concerts. She’s probably been at it for years.”

“Shut up!” Blindly, Alan ran to his room, where he beat and punched his bed and cried aloud in a rage like a child.

Pam was right, of course. He realized afterwards that he had known for years, that there were a hundred fine details that he had chosen to ignore about her behaviour, her phone conversations,
the times of her comings and goings. Dad must know. Unless he was wilfully blind too. But if he knew – why did he let it go on? They were obscene, disgusting. He started going out with
Carolyn soon after Pam made her announcement. Carolyn, he knew, would never behave like his mother.

Meg was shocked when Carolyn told her about the baby. She couldn’t believe that Carolyn had done that. It just wasn’t like Carolyn. But she was diverted from her
own reaction by Arthur.

“That bloody lad. I’ll kill him. I will, I’ll kill him. Who does he think he is? I’ll bloody kill him.”

It was only the second time Meg had seen Arthur really angry. The first was some eight years ago when he’d been accused of shoddy workmanship on a car which had been involved in a crash
two days after he’d MOTed it. He had had a fight with the insurance inspector and ended up in court charged with Assault. He was such a quiet, retiring man. “He’s never had a
cross word for me or Carolyn – never,” Meg told Jean ruefully. When he was angry like this he went berserk, she knew. She argued and pleaded with him, and warned Carolyn to keep Alan
away from the house.

“He’s a nice lad, Arthur, honest he is, a really decent lad. I wouldn’t wish for anyone better for our Carolyn, myself. And it’s not as if
–
I
mean, he wants to marry her. There’s no sense in it now, come on. What’s done is done. No use crying over spilt milk.”

Arthur could have been deaf, for all the effect this had.

“You can’t blame it all on him, anyway. It takes two you know. You can’t blame him and not her. You’re behind the times, Arthur, you’re old-fashioned. They all
do it now, look at the papers – look at the telly. It’s not like it was when we were young.” In the silence in which Arthur received this, Meg reconsidered. “Well, it
wasn’t so different when we were young, for that matter. Look at our Bertha, she was three months gone with Harry when she married Jim. And you know as well as I do Jim wasn’t the
father. It happens all the time. It’s not as if they’ve done anything very unusual now, is it?”

He glared at the Cosiglow, ignoring her.

“And she’s not a child any more, she’s over eighteen. Lots of girls are married by eighteen. And he’s a sensible lad, with good prospects, he’ll do well enough
when he’s finished studying at that university. He’s going to be an architect, Carolyn tells me. His Dad’s a doctor, you know, they live up on Quickedge, in ever such a nice
house. Four bedrooms, Carolyn says they’ve got.”

To Jean at work, she said wonderingly, “I know they all do, these days, I know that. But she does seem young. It doesn’t seem more than a few months since I was knitting clothes
for her dolls – and now –” She held up her needles, speared through the left front of a pearly-white matinee jacket.

Alan’s parents were perfectly civilized about the marriage, and Alan took considerable satisfaction in the fact that he knew they were rather shocked. Serve them
right. Lucy insisted on not taking it seriously for days.

“It’s too absurd, getting married at your age, you’re far too young. Come on darling, be sensible. You’ll meet thousands of girls before you find the one you
like.” She ruffled his hair. “You’re so romantic and silly – there’s nothing to an abortion these days. It’ll be awfully sad if you marry her and find you
don’t like her later.”

Like you, Alan said to himself. You hypocrite.

Meg, who thought things ought to be done properly, invited Alan’s parents round for tea, just before Christmas. Lucy accepted, but Alan knew they wouldn’t go.
She rang up on the morning with breathless excuses about having to practise a particularly beastly new piece for a concert tomorrow.

“Why don’t you go?” Alan asked her when she put the phone down.

She pulled a face, and ran her outstretched fingers through her long hair, pulling it out sideways from her head to that it fell back softly in the shape of a folding fan. “It’s
very sweet of them, Alan, but I really think it would be a bit of a disaster.”

“Why?”

“Well darling – because I don’t think we’ve got very much in common.”

“Isn’t your children getting married something in common?” Alan said venomously.

“Why are you so angry, my love? Do you really want us to go? If you really want us to, we will. I don’t suppose it’ll be that bad!”

He was astonished that she had backed down. She phoned Meg again and told her she was so silly, she’d made a muddle with the dates of two concerts, and it would be perfectly all right
for them to come tonight but only if Meg was absolutely sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble, it was so sweet of her
. . .
Alan was repelled by the ease with which she lied.

He had harboured for months the idea of telling her that he and Pam knew about Jeremy. But he knew that he never actually would. He dreaded her reaction: seeing her wriggle and flick her tail
and swim away in a sea of lies – or seeing her pop like a burst balloon. Either would be terrible.

Carolyn came round to his house that evening, and told him about her mother’s preparations for tea. He realized he hadn’t warned them what sort of meal tea was. Lucy took
afternoon tea at about four o’clock, and dinner at eight. Carolyn’s parents had tea at six p.m.

“Mum was awfully nervous about it. She thinks your parents are terribly posh.”

“Huh.” He had told her everything about his mother. Her reaction had been quietly puzzled. She had not condemned Lucy, as he half hoped, yet feared she would.

“She thought they’d better have something to drink so she got some sherry, then she was worried because she’s only got those little glasses – you know, little
tumblers, and she says they’re only for whisky.”

Carolyn’s parents never drank in the house. Occasionally Arthur would go for a pint at the local, but that was it. Alan was pleased. Lucy would find nothing more disgusting than a
tumbler of sweet sherry with her dinner. Tea.

“They don’t like me, do they?” Carolyn asked, as they sat picking at some smoked ham and coleslaw Alan had found in the fridge.

“Don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” He realized from Carolyn’s face that it did.

“Dad does. Lucy’s hardly met you, has she?”

“But they don’t want you to get married.”

He shrugged. “None of their business, is it?”

“I feel –” she hesitated, looking round – “I don’t know, frightened, when I look round this house. I mean, it’s all so – rich and
everything.”

“It’s just junk,” he said angrily. “Antique junk.”

“No but it’s like – like a stately home or something. And all these beautiful flowers. . . .”

“I hate them. It’s like living in a chapel of rest.”

“Don’t you want to live in a house like this when you grow up?”

“When I grow up,” he said, smiling at her phrase, “I don’t want my life to be anything like theirs. They are a pair of hypocrites. I don’t like the games they
play.”

She got up from the table, the food hardly touched on her plate. “But it is nice. There’s so many strange little things –” She was staring at the shelves of the
dresser, where various antique plates (prized by Lucy for the colour of their glaze, or the intricacy of their design) vied for attention with two corn dollies, a brass frog, some Victorian bottles
and two tall feathery maidenhair ferns. “We haven’t got anything like this at our house. These are beautiful, you know.” She touched one of the old plates, which was covered in a
dense pattern of tiny blue flowers, a brilliant deep Victorian blue. “Really lovely.”

Alan made a farting sound through his lips. “Clutter and junk. Don’t you like this?” pointing to her untouched coleslaw.

“I don’t like the dressing much.”

“Shouldn’t you eat, for two and all that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know how to cook this sort of stuff either.”

“Stop it, Carolyn. I don’t care if we live on chips and fish fingers for the rest of our lives. Here, have a bit of cheese.”

They went out to the pub, and when Alan came back Trevor and Lucy were at home. He found them, most unusually, sitting either side of the fireplace having a drink together. Pam had been out
at a friend’s all evening.

“Did you have a nice time?”

His mother giggled. “Have you been into their house? You must have been – isn’t it sweet? I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much furniture in one little room. You
should have seen our tea: ham, salad, cheese, crackers, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, bread-and-butter, trifle
–
all at once, mind you – cream cake, sherry, cups of tea –
” She counted them all off on her fingers, smiling innocently as she spoke. “It was perfectly wonderful.”

Alan asked his father, “Did you like them?”

“The mother seems a kindly soul. I don’t know about the father. He hardly said a word. Is he very shy?”

“He wants to kill me, Carolyn said.”

They stared at him in silence. At last Lucy said, “What on earth for?”

“Getting his daughter up the spout.”

There was another shocked silence. His father cleared his throat. “I – well, I hadn’t realized he felt like that. It was all – it was all very civilized and friendly.
There wasn’t really any difficulty over it. I wonder if
–
I wish you’d told me that, Alan. Perhaps I could have had a bit of a chat to him.”

Alan shrugged. “Don’t think it would make any difference.”

His mother took a swig of her brandy. He could see she was recovering.

“The detail in that house really is splendid, isn’t it?” She turned to Trevor. “Did you notice what they had above the fireplace?”

“No – horses, something like that.”

“Yes,” she enthused, “exactly. That famous one from Woolworth’s – with the horses charging out of the sea. I’ve never seen it on a wall in a real house
before. It was worth it just for that.”

“It’s on more walls in more houses than any other picture in the country,” Trevor said mildly. “That and Tina.”

“And the carpets!” she cried, getting into her stride now. “They are so wonderful! Who on earth designs them? With patterns like – like giant sputniks, and about
twenty colours in them.” She smiled at Alan. “They positively assault you, don’t they? I bet you could keep thieves out with a carpet like that.”

“You mean, they’d know there was nothing worth stealing?” said Alan.

His mother looked at him for a moment without an expression on her face, then she smiled and waved her glass at him. “All I can say is, I hope young Pam shows a bit more taste and
discernment when she chooses her parents-in-law.”

She said it as if it was a joke, but Alan knew perfectly well that she meant it from the bottom of her heart. He went to the door.

“Alan?” she said. “Come on darling, can’t you see the funny side? We liked her parents, they were loves. I expect they’d have a giggle about our house, if they
came round here.”

“Goodnight,” he said, and shut the door. He hated her.

Carolyn and Alan did not make love again until they were married. It was Alan’s idea. He made a sour kind of joke out of it, that they must wait until their wedding night. Carolyn
agreed because she could see he meant it, although she didn’t understand why. On their wedding night he was drunk, and she was affectionate and clinging, and it was as hopeless as he had been
predicting to himself. He felt, when he woke the next morning, that his life was at an end – a complete disaster.

Alan’s term began again on January 20th, and he returned to university with a guilty sense of relief. Carolyn, who still had her job at the ‘Craft Basket’, stayed at
home.

“I do think you’re sensible, love, doing it like this,” said her mother. “It’s far better. He can get on with his studying, without getting distracted, and you
can be earning your little bit and putting it away towards a house. And your Dad and I can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re not overdoing it, for the sake of the little
one.”

Carolyn nodded. She had not been given any choice in the matter. Alan had obviously expected to return to university alone, once the fuss was over. And there certainly wasn’t any point
in her moving out of her Mum’s to live alone at a time like this.

It was as if she wasn’t married; just as it had been before, going to bed in her pink and white room, setting off for the ‘Craft Basket’ at half-past eight in the morning,
just as she used to set off for school, home by five-thirty, tea, telly, and some needlework to keep herself occupied. She was making a patchwork quilt for the baby’s cot. Meg had already
knitted a whole drawerful of matinée
jackets and bootees, in white, pink and blue. (“I’ll put whichever colour it doesn’t need in the shop window, love.
They’ll all get used, don’t you worry.”)

Alan came back most weekends, and they went out for long drives in his father’s car. At Easter Carolyn went to stay with him at university for a week. He was borrowing a house that two
of his student friends rented. They had both gone home to their parents’. It was a dingy, poorly furnished little terrace, reminding Carolyn of the old house on Railway Street. But it was the
first time they had ever lived privately together. This week was a revelation to both of them. They could do what they liked
–
go to bed, get up, eat, bath, go back to bed –
there were no rules. No one to notice or be offended. It was a week lifted out of real life. Carolyn’s pregnancy added to the strangeness. There was a neat solid bulge where her flat belly
had been. The baby was kicking, at night Alan lay with his hand on her side and felt the repeated thrusting movements. He found it almost repulsive to think of it in there, kicking at the walls;
but it roused him sexually as well. It made her strange. Sex was in the air all the time. Each was constantly aware of the other’s movements, the other’s body. Even if they were reading
or washing up, there seemed to be rays of heat running in the air between them. Pregnancy made Carolyn aware of her body in a way she had never been before; her small breasts had become heavy and
almost painfully sensitive, and when Alan stroked her, or breathed close with his hot breath on her nipples, she felt giddy and weak.