Living In Perhaps (30 page)

But let's be frank, I'm not a Carolyn sort of girl, and where
you'd find a Carolyn sort of mother is beyond even my powers of
imagination.

'There is a future for you, Cora. You'd better start believing in
it. It will be here sooner than you think.' What does she mean by
that? 'I think that would really help, Cora, if you started believing
in something.'

We didn't have clay in Activity today. We had paper.

Trudy was taking Activity. I imagine it is a better job than
taking Group, in that the staff don't have to get anybody to talk,
even if they do have to sweep up all the mess afterwards. Trudy
seems even more plump. She wears an outsize T-shirt and her
baggy tie-dyed trousers clasp her thighs. Her circulation is less
than good and her red toes stick out of her Jesus sandals like a row
of radishes. Her cheeks turn bright pink and she breathes hard,
just going round giving out the paper. I wait for her to fall on the
floor unconscious due to some kind of aortic spasm.
Then
what
would we do? Scramble to escape? Or sit there looking dumbly at
each other? I'm afraid the latter's more likely.

We are each given a square of black sugar-paper, which is not
really black but a sort of anthracite. It looks matte and dusty, like
cheap coal. On top of this Trudy lets float down a square of
crimson tissue paper and then another of deep lipstick-pink. I
hear her wheezing breath coming round for a fourth time behind
our chairs, handing out circles of raspberry-coloured tissue. I
hear the rasp of her thighs in their tie-and-dye. When everyone
has her ration, Trudy subsides into her own chair and pauses
there a moment. Then she lifts her heavy shoulders with a sudden
deep breath and shows us how to tear the red tissue paper into
strips and fringes and how to stick it on to the black sugar-paper
in layers. Of course, we have no scissors. In the middle of the table
is a white two-pint kitchen basin filled with innocuous flour-and-water
paste. Each of us has a plastic spatula, with rounded ends
and a soft, flexible handle. We'd be hard-pressed to do any harm
with one of these. Except maybe stick them down our throats.

I can't see the therapeutic point of pasting fringes on to sugar-paper
but around me everyone is having a go. Marsupial frowns,
sweats and sighs. Rose tears her tissue into fingernail-sized pieces
and lets them flutter to the ground. At least with clay we are
allowed to make what we want. And personally, I would not have
chosen all these reds, not with Marsupial and her phantom
pregnancy, Rose the putative infanticide, Hanny and her crisscrossed
wrists, and Lord-knows-what other dubious female
problems there are in our group. The crimson, the deep pink,
the crushed raspberry, are all too indicative. Or maybe that's the
point.

Either that, or it was all that was left in the store cupboard.

Hanny is late. Hanny is very late. We have all started tearing and
sticking and she still hasn't arrived. The woman with the long earlobes
is murmuring to herself, Marsupial and the fair-haired girl
next to her begin to talk, some nonsense about the weather and
how it gets you down. Outside the sun blares through big
windows and a true-blue sky flies like a flag. Trudy lets flow cheerful
comments and compliments all round the group, like a
successful party hostess, making us feel embarrassed if we don't
join in. I have no one to talk to. Hanny isn't coming. I notice, at
last, that Trudy hasn't laid a place for her at this female dinner
table with its black mats and red red plates. I pull the crimson,
then the pink tissue paper into strips. I stick them on to the black
background. But I take the little circle of raspberry and pleat it
into a flower.

The quality of careers advice on offer at other schools must have
been far superior to mine. Also the parental expectations, the
family ability for map-reading round the highways and byways of
life. In the second autumn after I left school, Tom went away. He
had managed to improve his A-level grades and got a place at
university in London. And Barbara had crammed her five Os, and
embarked on a foundation year at the art school where Patrick
taught. I was astonished. She'd shown no particular talent or
desire for this area of operations before. And here was I, still
behind the counter at the dry cleaner's.

If my parents were schooled in the University of Life, it must
have been one of the smaller and quieter departments, some kind
of distant extra-mural forcing house. A mushroom shed, maybe.
Dim and quiet and undisturbed.

'Think yourself lucky you've got a job,' my mother kept telling
me. 'And not just one that's seasonal, either. You could've
been selling ice creams. Then what would you do come
September?'

And Brian, Brian had started at Gough Electricals. He went off
with Dad every morning in the car. My nightmare of a line full of
dancing blue overalls was coming to pass. They both took a
packed lunch, which my mother prepared, because they didn't
like the canteen food. Didn't trust it. I don't suppose Brian even
got the chance to try it. So he was launched in life. Weirdly
enough, they were both very proud of him. He was keeping up the
family tradition, you might say.

'Is that really what you want to do?' I asked him, when I found
out where he was going to work.

I stared at him, into his hazel eyes, light and flecky like fried
bread which the yolk of an egg has run into. He didn't look anything
like me, never had. When Mum told me that I was adopted,
was there a split second when I'd thought: so that explains everything!?
I don't think she gave me time – she followed up so
quickly with
But you
are
brother and sister
. She didn't even give me
a second in which to think.

Brian still had his schoolboy haircut and those pinpoint
freckles spattered over his nose, but his skin had coarsened with
the oily explosion of adolescence. His expression was surly and
blank.

'Do you always have to do everything people tell you?' I pressed
him.

'
No
.'

'But that's what you're doing! Don't you ever want to shake
people up? Give them a bit of a surprise?'

'Don't get so angry, Carol. You're always in a stew.'

'But don't you?'

'What for?'

'Just
because
. Just to show you can.'

'Well, I could if I wanted to,' he said, not looking at me.

We were standing outside on the lawn. He glanced up at the
great wall of the hedge, and scowled, and then turned away from
me. 'I'm going to get the shears,' he said.

'Brian!' I called after him. I almost shouted, and then thought
better of it. We never shouted this side of the hedge. Somebody
might hear us. But I wanted to grab him and shake him. I wanted
to shake him till his head jangled about on its shattered neck and
his eyeballs fell out, like some cartoon creature.

I caught sight of Barbara one day, coming down the steps of the
bridge at the station. She must have just got off the train, back
from a day at the art school. She wore a long silky dress like the
one Gloria is wearing in her wedding photograph, heavy satin,
gathered beneath the bust, a smooth skirt flowing to her feet.
Gloria holds an armful of flowers and Eddy, firmly, in the crook
of her elbow. Barbara held a big art portfolio tied with black
tapes. Her dress was a yellowish ivory, like something hidden away
in a cupboard for a long time and then brought out into the glaring
daylight. The hem swooped and drooped. Over the top she
had on a ragbag crocheted cardigan, much like the one she used
to wear to the Wren – maybe the very same one, since the sleeves
were stretched tight around her upper arms. Beneath the uncertain
hem of the frock I could see scarlet clogs. Her hair,
henna-red, hung to her waist, still without benefit of comb. She
was wearing sunglasses. They made her eyes blank, hidden.
She walked right past me, scanning the traffic for a space to cross
the road. She didn't say hello or nod, or even seem to glance in my
direction. Perhaps she hadn't seen me? Or failed to recognize me?

I don't think for one moment that was true.
I
'd have recognized
her
anywhere.

When his re-sits were over and he was waiting to take up his place
at university, Tom spent six months as, variously, an assistant
house-painter, a waiter and, finally, a van driver for a soft drinks
supplier. He rode around all day with his arm out of the van window,
ending up with a tanned right arm and a pale left one. Well,
it seemed exotic to me. I stroked the silvery hairs on his tanned
arm as we sat together, drinking beer, in the sunshine on the
prom. Tom upended his bottle above his open mouth, catching
the last drips, and then balanced it carefully on the upright of the
railings in front of us. 'Finito,' he said. He lay back, wiping his
mouth with one hand. '
You
could get yourself another job,' he said
to me. 'You don't have to stick where you are. You could be a
waitress.'

But I had seen those waitresses at the restaurant where he
worked. They were college girls, university girls on vacation, they
had a swing to their walk and a gleam in their eye. Their names
were Sarah, Suzannah, Julie, Elaine. That's why they were chosen.
Their high heels clicked like flamenco dancers' and they earned a
fortune in tips. 'More tips than me, especially when they twitch their
bums,' Tom complained. And laughed in lascivious delight at the
remembrance of them. I hated those girls. But whatever he said,
Tom, in his snow-white shirt and black waistcoat, with his pale curly
hair just perfect for the year, got more than enough tips.

'You could learn to swing your hips.' He patted my thigh and
laughed. 'Get some hips first and then learn to swing them.'

'I couldn't,' I said. 'They wouldn't hire me. I'm clumsy, I'd drop
things.'

It was an excuse. I didn't even like their eyes when I walked into
the place. They looked you up and down, summed you up in a
split second. Summed you up and flicked on to the next person to
walk in. Dismissing you.

He didn't know. I had tried once, swallowed my pride, sashayed
in, asking. Eager to mention my previous experience, of dealing
with customers, of keeping a ready smile. Some hope.

He had never known the truth of it. It wasn't just there for the
picking.

I was hoping that Patrick would ask me to sit for him again. I
thought he might get me some work modelling at the art school,
I'm sure he could have. He could have said to all his colleagues, to
his students, 'I've found a wonderful life model. Very patient, very
still. Born to it. You must meet her.' He could have said, 'She's the
perfect inspiration, the perfect muse. You won't be able to resist
her. Naked
or
dressed.'

I might even have proved brave enough to out-stare Barbara, if
I'd had to model for her class.

But then I remembered that what he'd actually said was 'Come
on, you're not busy.'
You'll do.

And I thought that maybe, all down the centuries, that's what it
was. Rembrandt's Saskia, Elizabeth Siddal, Camille Doncieux
(later Mrs Monet), Vermeer's golden-haired girl with the egg-shaped
face. Perhaps what was the most compellingly lovely
element about them all was their
convenience
. 'Come on, you're
not busy' – blind to the babies, the baking, the master's socks to
darn – 'you'll do.'

Isolde often came back to visit, as if she couldn't keep away. Didn't
like it when she lived there, longed for it now she'd gone. Maybe
she missed Barbara, and Mattie and Sebastian. Maybe she missed
her mum and dad. She'd be suddenly there in the golden sunny
evening, leaning over the veranda rail and pulling the roses
towards her, examining them critically, as if she still lived in the
house. Smart, jewel-like, a finished creation: her own work of art.

When she hugged me I caught the scent of her perfume, deep
and strong. Not like the patchouli everyone my age reeked of. And
she hugged me when we met, taking my upper arms in her hands
and leaning close like someone highly practised in the social arts.
I fear I was a bit wooden. She was nicer then, gracious to everyone
in the house, not carping and disdainful as she had been. She
played the perfect guest.

I always thanked her for her postcards. 'When you come to
London,' she said, 'we'll go to the Tate – have you been there
recently?' I mumbled something and she carried on. 'You'll love
the Hayward, and the special exhibitions at the National Portrait
Gallery.'

Yes, I'll love them. I will. And for a while it seemed a certain
thing, a thing that would unavoidably happen – though I didn't
quite know how – in the natural course of time and events. I
would go to London, I would be a single girl, I would have fun.
I would continue my education. In some way, some very special
and totally deserved way, my real life would begin. I just had to
wait for it to start.

In October Tom went to London. He was allocated a room in a
student hall of residence. But if he'd rather, he could lodge at
Eugene and Tamara's. (They lived together now, so Isolde said, in
a crummy flat in Notting Hill.) Or with Arthur and Dill, if he
cared for more homely comforts. He had a choice. I waited for my
invitation, from him or from Isolde, to sample the heady sights of
London, to taste the wicked fruits.

None came.

I'd been brought up to be fatally polite, not to be pushy, never
to
impose
. I waited, and waited.

Tom arrived home, on Christmas Eve. I'd thought it would be
sooner. Barbara told me that university terms were shorter than
school terms, and the schools had broken up the week before. I'd
been counting off the days: no Advent calendar for Christmas,
only for Tom. He had a small beard, which didn't suit him. It
made his pointed chin appear more pointed, and because it was
pale it looked transparent and fake; a young lord out of amateur
dramatics. It didn't matter, my heart still leaped to see him, the
familiar way he moved, his long body and long legs. Despite
the ridiculous beard, my heart still jumped. Tom Rose was home
too, a strapping
man
now, in a striped rugby shirt.