Living In Perhaps (33 page)

'What are you waiting for?'

I lay there, trying to formulate an answer. A clever one, or a
heartbreaking one, I wasn't sure which to go for. And then he
added, 'Get a move on, for God's sake. My mum'll be home any
minute.'

Which showed me just how much Tom Rose wanted to know
the inner secrets of my heart.

I went round to Gloria's one evening after work to deliver her
newly cleaned winter coat. Pillar-box red, it was, with crinkly gilt
buttons just like little ginger biscuits. It didn't suit her, made her
look washed-out. 'What on earth's she gone and got herself now?'
my mother murmured, the first time Gloria appeared in it. But I
loved the blaring, loud colour of it, and Gloria for being so bold
as to choose it.

I hooked the coat in its polythene shroud round the banister
rail.

'Cup of tea?' Gloria asked me, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Stella was in the front room, tying a flimsy scarf round her neck
preparatory to going out. The doorbell rang. 'It's open!' she sang
out.

Warren stepped into the room.

'Where's my dream girl?'

He reminded me of late-period John Wayne, on a bigger scale
than a normal human being, chest like a meat safe, and wearing
high-belted, shapely, flowing trousers.

'Here I am, lover boy.'

Stella was munching her lipsticked lips in the mantelpiece
mirror. She met my eye in the reflection and winked. 'Tell us,
then, Carol,' she said, 'have you got a boyfriend yet?'

Warren put his hands in his trouser pockets and politely
feigned deafness, gazing at the ceiling. He let his eyes range
intimately over the light fitting. I said nothing.

'Well – have you?'

'Give the girl a break, Stella,' Warren suggested.

'She's seventeen. She ought to have a boyfriend by now. Go on,
Carol, you can tell us.'

'It's a sensitive age.'

'No, she doesn't mind.'

'Stella!'

'You don't mind, do you, Carol?'

I smiled and shrugged, a minute smile with clamped lips, a
minute shrug, like an itchy twitch.

'Carol?'

What could I say?

'Yes.'

Why not?

'Oooh! Is he nice?' She opened her mouth and touched the
corners where upper and lower lips joined with the tip of her little
finger, blotting up stray fuchsia-pink lines.

'No, he's horrible,' said Warren. 'That's why she's going out with
him.'

'I'm only asking.'

'Yes, and maybe Carol doesn't want to tell you,' he said, taking
her by the upper arm, putting his lips to her ear, tucking his big
nose into her shampoo-and-set. 'Maybe it's private, Stella.' And he
whispered something else into her ear. Stella giggled. She nuzzled
at his jacket. It was embarrassing to watch such behaviour
between people of their age. They pulled apart.

Stella was determined. 'What's his name?'

'Take no notice of her, Carol. She's just being nosy.'

What should I say? Not the truth, that wasn't my style.

'Go on, Carol, tell us. Tell your auntie Stell.'

'Dave.'

'Oooh,
Dave
.'

'Stell-
a
!' said Warren, half laughing.

'Where did you meet him?'

'She's an interfering old bag, Carol. You don't have to tell her
anything you don't want to. Just tell her to mind her own
business.' He picked up Stella's handbag from the chair and
pushed it at her.

'I'm only taking an interest in my niece, Warren. I'm only wanting
to know how she's getting on.'

Taking an interest. These weren't the sort of questions my
mother ever asked me. Though presumably she ought to have
hoped for a boyfriend, a nice steady boy, and then marriage, a
white church wedding, for me. The famous
settling down
she set
so much store by. And children, one day.
Grand
children. Unless
because I wasn't hers, not really hers – and lately proving it with
a vengeance – she didn't care any more. My putative children
wouldn't be her grandchildren. Not really hers at all. They could
be anybody's.

'We're on our way, Carol. Don't you worry. Come on, Stell, old
girl.'

'Less of the
old
girl, if you don't mind. I was your dream girl a
minute ago.'

He patted her bottom and stepped over to the door.

'Just tell us where you met him,' said Stella.

'At a friend's house,' I said.

'Oh, not very romantic,' she said, face all tragedy, eyebrows
awry.

'Where we met wasn't very romantic,' Warren told her.

'It'll always be romantic to
me
,' she replied, pummelling his
back as she pushed him out of the door.

Sometimes I wonder if the Hennessys ever knew I was Tom's girlfriend.
I wonder if they ever saw me in that light.

For so long I thought they were the most delightful, intelligent,
lively beings, whole humans where the rest of us were half-humans,
sprightly gods where we were heavy-limbed, blinkered
mortals. I really believed that they offered me something,
extended a hand, out of sheer generosity, because they had so
much and because they saw I deserved it. I thought they were a
household of pure, unconditional love. But, to tell the truth, they
were very good at
not
seeing, not really feeling, at staying each
within his or her own column of glass. And refusing to look out.

To tell the truth: something I find quite hard to do. Even to
myself, at times. The truth's not very palatable – easier to look
away, curl your lip, push it aside, like a plate of something you
really don't fancy. Hanny might have been on the right track, after
all.

That last year I spent less and less time at the Hennessys'. But I
still used to visit Tillie when I could. Sometimes I'd find one of
the younger boys there, sometimes even Isolde on another of her
trips home. But in a way I liked it more if it was just Tillie, all on
her own.

I was in the kitchen on one of my afternoons off, making a pot
of tea. I hadn't asked if I could, and I wasn't asked to do it. It was
just something I felt like doing. There was nowhere else that I
would behave so free and easy, not at any of my relatives'. At
Gloria's or Bettina's I felt like a guest, and at home making the tea
was a chore which I left to my mother unless I was actually made
to do it. But in Tillie's kitchen there were no rules, it was come and
go as you please.

I rinsed out the teapot with hot water, swilling it round and
round in circles, and tipping it into the sink.

Tillie was standing by the ironing board. There was a pile of
clean clothes, folded as she'd taken them down from the line but
still crumpled, in the basket at her feet. Mrs Van Hoog had had a
spell in hospital and while she was there Mr Van Hoog had withdrawn
to his chair on the veranda, catatonic, apart from the drift
of smoke from his pipe. Now Tillie was washing and ironing their
clothes and cooking all their meals.

She gestured at the basket. 'I thought I'd have more time, now
everyone's so grown. But it's never-ending. I was hoping to get
back to painting again.' And then she shrugged. In the quiet we
could hear birds singing.

'What is it you're doing?' she said to me, a frown in her voice.

I held out the teapot to show her.

'I mean, these days? What do you do with your time? Are you
studying?'

'No. I left school ages ago. I've got a job.'

'Oh. Where?'

How could she not know? She was Tillie, who cared about me.
She
must
know.

'In a shop.'

I didn't want to say the words –
dry cleaner's
sounded so dull,
so humiliating.

'Which shop?'

She gave me a look, as if to say, 'Do I know it?'

'It doesn't matter,' I replied.

There was a long pause, in which I lifted the lid of the teapot
and stirred the water round. I didn't want tea any more. My hand
felt heavy and slack.

'They've all rather left you behind, haven't they?' she said, looking
at me with such opaque blue eyes that I couldn't tell what she
was thinking. I waited for her to ask, 'Are you lonely?' or 'What is
it that
you
want?' I waited, teetering on the edge, waited for a real
conversation. I thought we might bare our hearts to each other.
But when she looked at me thoughtfully for a moment longer, her
eyes were still opals, blue and obscure; and then she glanced down
and went on with what she was doing. Which was ironing a shirt.

Tom came back in June, after his exams, and immediately
resumed his old life as if he had not ignored me for six months.
We met up two or three times a week. He'd catch me as I was leaving
work, or drop in during the day, or send a message through
Tom Rose. It was all quite casual, as if I was rather far down his
list, but it was something solid, too. Something to grab hold of.

After an evening out Tom never escorted me to my door,
seldom accompanied me home down our street. He was always
badgering Tom Rose to find some even later-opening place to go
to, and I had to get up for work in the morning. So I'd walk home
alone. It wasn't ideal, but I was used to the empty streets and the
shadows, with just the occasional dog walker out and about, or a
despondent figure loitering at a bus stop. I clutched my keys in my
pocket and held to the vague plan that if anyone ever grabbed me
I'd be ready to knuckle their eyeballs, quick as a flash. Oh, and
knee them in the groin for good measure, too.

One night we were sitting at a table in a pub (we were always
sitting at a table in a pub) and Tom leaned across and touched me,
softly, on the cheek, fitting the long fingers of his hand across my
neck and moving his thumb along my jawline from hinge to chin
as if he were measuring me for something. He did it with one eye
on Tom Rose's expression. I don't know, I have never known, what
it was that lay between them. Rivalry, complicity.

I don't know that he ever touched me so tenderly before or
after. I died of love that moment.

But it reminded me of Patrick's hand, his caressing thumb, that
time. That first time.

We only did it once, Patrick and me. Just the once. Maybe it was
his way of initiating his models, putting his stamp on them all.
Welcome to the club: here's your badge, and here's your secret
sign.

After he let his thumb rest on my jaw that time, and I asked the
fateful question about sleeping with his models, I knew the game
was up. Well, they were all irresistible to me, Hennessys, and they
knew it. It was only a matter of how soon.

Up close, his dark eye gleamed, and the little fine lines, the hail-fellow-well-met crinkles of laughter around the corners of his eye,
were coloured with a thousand glittering pigments. I thought perhaps
he was impregnated with the materials of his craft. His
art
. I
should say
art
. But he was crafty. His hands were dry and warm,
negotiating with such clever, intimate knowledge all the planes
and angles he had studied so well. We were in the attic. The day
was hot and the breeze came and went like a lovely current,
tangling over my skin, now warm, now cool, as Patrick moulded
me to the shapes he wanted and I complied, as a good model
should.

And then I knew. I knew that all those lolloping nudes, century
after century, had done just the same. Marked with the artist's
stamp: 'I had her. She was mine.' Perhaps that was half the allure
for the audiences, not just the naked flesh but the knowledge that
this woman was available, not only to look at, had been available
to the artist and might, even if only in the world of imagination,
be available again.

Or, in some cases, this man.

Oh, Lorna, do not let me catch you reading my thoughts. Or you
will certainly mark me down as troubled, sexually troubled,
confused, mixed up. When in fact I have worked it out as plain as
day.

We were in the attic and I could hear, on the breeze that filtered
through, the usual sounds of the Hennessys' house. Doors
slamming, Sebastian's music – he had inherited Tom's old record
player – someone running urgently down the stairs. Somewhere
Tillie called a name, and somewhere else Mattie, chanting something,
jumped repetitively on and off a wooden step.

It was always
in the house
, they did their wicked deeds even
in
the house
. And afterwards, when I had pulled my clothes on again,
I wondered if Tillie hadn't called out
my
name.

So when Tom took me gently by the jaw and looked at me with
love, for Tom Rose to see, I melted again. I felt my soft insides
dropping away. I was foolish. Maybe
he
was the Machiavelli. But I
was reminded of Patrick's thumb, and how I had lain down with
Patrick on the old green sofa, knowing how many times it must
have been used, and I had heard Tillie singing in the kitchen
below. And I smiled at Tom, such a smile as would break his heart
if he knew what I was thinking about.

Well, it would if I had my way. But I think his heart was whole,
it was impregnable – unlike mine – and I don't know if suspecting
Patrick and me would have made the slightest dent. A bit of
hurt pride, maybe, a bit of peevishness at the loss of a possession.
Like when Sebastian accidentally stepped on one of his favourite
records and broke it. But not horror, desolation, enraged jealousy.

I wondered what it would take to dent his tinny heart? Crack it
open, really hurt him? I would have liked to know. Suddenly I
wanted very much to find that one thing.

Today it is raining as if it will never stop. And it's St Swithin's Day.
I heard Trudy telling one of the ones in uniform. The guards,
Hanny used to call them. 'That's it, there goes the rest of the
summer,' Trudy said. 'Just my blinking luck.' As if the foul weather
were a personal insult to her, and that was all she had in the world
to worry about.

No chance of getting outside today, but no one to go outside
with.

The guards
. I always think of Hanny in the past tense. I don't
suppose our paths will cross again.

Last year on this day it was beautiful, clear skies and stunningly
hot. A good omen. And it was my afternoon off. Tom borrowed
the Van Hoogs' little car and drove us out to a field by a stream.
Just a nondescript field with some trees and a stream, and black
and white cows across the bend in the river. I brought the food,
and Tom brought the dope and a transistor radio, and Tom Rose
brought a bottle of wine which he stood in the stream to keep it
cool. We felt like connoisseurs. We lay back in the grass and sunbathed
and listened to the grasshoppers. Tom tried to find a
music station with good reception on the radio but it was hopeless,
and in the end we just tuned in to the grasshoppers, to their
wheezy rhythms. The sky up above was forget-me-not blue,
criss-crossed with puffy vapour trails, and tiny, winking aeroplanes
spinning new trails just for us.

I thought that even though I had waited a whole year for a day
like this, it was worth it. I was blissfully, wordlessly happy. My
arms were above my head, resting in the dry spikes of the grass,
and I could feel Tom's thumb and fingers loosely circling one of
my wrists.

Tom said sleepily, 'What shall we do now? I know, let's play
Monopoly.' Nobody stirred. 'First to throw a six starts. Amazing! I
threw a six, very first go.'

Then Tom Rose murmured from behind closed eyes, 'So did I.
Wouldn't you know it?'

I stared up into the blue. 'Me too,' I said.

'No, you didn't.'

'You couldn't have. Three sixes in a row, too much of a
coincidence.'

'Yeah,
you
can't start. You'll just have to wait till your next turn.'

'Jump jump jump. Park Lane. I'll buy it,' said Tom.

'Waterloo Station,
I'll
buy it,' said Tom Rose.

'Waterloo's not on there,' I complained. 'Marylebone, King's
Cross, Fenchurch Street and ...' I couldn't remember.

'Waterloo. Sure is. Is that my change? Why, that's very handsome
of you. Thank you, I will.'

'Jump jump jump. May
fair
. That's for me,' said Tom.

'What about me?' I said, forcing myself to laugh. 'When's it my
turn?' I scrambled to my feet. They still lay on their backs, arms
over their faces, shielding themselves from the sun.

'Community Chest. Just my luck,' said Tom. 'Wait – look at this!
You have come first in a beauty contest.'

'In a beauty contest!' Tom Rose chorused. 'Win ten thousand
pounds.'

'It's not ten thousand. It's never ten thousand,' I protested. I
kicked Tom lightly in the side with the tip of my shoe. He was
shaking with laughter, Tom Rose too.

'Come on, Caro, have your go.'

'Have your go or we'll have to go for you.'

'Oh, too late! Jump jump jump. Goddammit – Go to Jail.'

'Go to jail, Caroline Clipper,' said Tom, extending his arm and
raising a harsh pointing finger at me.

And that's the way it was, that's the way it always was, Tom
pulling the strings and Tom Rose cheating to keep up with him. It
seemed like we were having fun, but I'm not sure that we were.

I walked into the Hennessys' kitchen, looking for Tom.

Tillie had to think for a minute. 'He's gone to a music thing in
London. With Tom Rose. Back tomorrow, though.'

It was like a punch in the stomach. I lowered myself on to a
chair, and did what I always did with Hennessy information,
claimed prior knowledge. 'Oh, was that today?'

I existed on scraps.

But Tillie was still here, alone in the quiet kitchen, weighing out
butter and flour, and Tillie was enough.

'Would you do something for me?' she said.

She might not have been able to read minds but she ought to
have been able to read faces. I blinked in case mine gave away too
much. 'Of course I would. What?'

'Go and pick me some rhubarb. About this much.' She gestured
a vague measurement with her hands.

It was disappointingly mundane, but, for Tillie, anything.
'Sure,' I said, and smiled.

The rhubarb patch was down at the end of the garden, by the
fruit trees, where some years, if he was feeling like it, Mr Van
Hoog cultivated sprouts and kale, and leathery lettuce, and
radishes like crimson bullets. (Vegetables were not his forte, too
dull and demanding.) And where the children, if they were feeling
like it, though usually they were not, hoed and raked and
weeded for him. Or – more likely – raided the currant bushes.

As I walked down the garden I could hear the grating,
drumming sound, like stones in a grinder, of the lawn mower next
door. My dad's lawn mower. These sounds were always lying
there, just there, open to inspection if anyone cared to. Our lawn
mower, our clacking shears. The Hennessy voices, their ringing
self-confident cries. 'It was definitely
out
, Caro. That's thirty-love.'
'Unpeg that washing for me, Carolina, there's a honey.' 'Oh, come
on, Caroline Clipper, can't you do better than
that
?'

On the concrete base of the old summer house Patrick was
putting up a new shed. He'd planned to for ages, said he needed
somewhere for the less glamorous end of his business, the tools
and spare bits of wood. Like most things he planned, nothing had
come of it. But today, today I could see him standing there with a
hammer in his hand, a panel of wood propped against the tree
stump. The makings of a shed were all around him. And with him
was a man, a young man, perhaps the most beautiful young man
I had ever laid eyes on. They were surveying the pieces of wood
laid out at their feet. I walked on down the path towards them.

'It's just a simple piece of construction,' I could hear Patrick
saying. 'Any fool could do it,' and the other man laughed. His head
tipped, his dark curly hair fell back. I saw the shape of his brown
throat. I've always been a fool for throats.

'What are you laughing at?' Patrick growled, with fake displeasure.
'Laugh at an old man like me, would ya?' He rubbed his
hands together as if he meant business and set his feet wide apart.
'We'll see about that, Eugene. We'll see about that.'

But Eugene, a tall Florentine angel, a
Portrait of a Young Man
by
Raphael, by Titian, by Giovanni Battista Moroni, just went on
laughing.

I walked past. I went on down the garden, ducking my head
under the slumped branches of the apple trees. I found the
neglected rhubarb thrusting its stalks snakily out of the couch
grass. I pulled that phallic species of vegetable, fruit, whatever you
want to call it, I pulled this much (a Tillie's-width, as indicated),
just enough to make a fruit pie for all the Hennessys. And then,
with the stalks tucked under my arm, I walked back.

Eugene was stooping now, steadying a length of wood, using
the tree stump as a saw-horse, and Patrick was standing with arms
folded, watching him. I stopped on the path, six feet away,
wondering if I might be introduced. But neither of them said a
word, or looked my way.

Despite it all, despite everything, everything they had ever done
to me or said, I had become invisible again.