Lying Together (21 page)

But she came into my head again last week. I was driving down the Moseley Road and it caught my eye: a shop practically bursting with fireplaces. There was loads of them, stacked up in the window and half over the pavement. Of course I'd realized that all these Victoriana type things was coming back into fashion since Mr Doody started asking us to take them out in one piece, and put them aside for the reclamation yards. But I didn't think many people would go back to laying coals and lighting fires with sticks and paper, when they could have central heating at the flick of a switch. But from the look of this shop, it seemed that I was wrong. I decided to park the van and take a look, just to see what all the fuss was about, and maybe thinking, somewhere in my heart of hearts, that I might run into the woman and her kid.

When I went inside, I was really knocked back. There was all sorts of fireplaces, some with mantels and mirrors and fenders, and a fair number with coloured tiles. They was all really bright and polished, quite attractive really. And in the middle of the shop there was the spitting image of the one I'd shifted.

A lad with a plait and filthy jeans came out of a back room. ‘Can I help?' he says, posher than I expected.

‘How much yer rushing us fer this one?' I asked, pointing it out.

‘One-fifty,' he said. ‘The tiles are especially nice.'

‘One-fifty? Is that all?' I laughed. ‘I did well, then, flogging one off for a quid a few years back.'

The bloke stared at me like I was daft. Then he said, ‘A
hundred
and fifty pounds. A good working grate like this costs a
hundred
and fifty.'

I nearly had a fit, thinking of what I could do with that sort of money – but I nodded, pretending I'd known all along. Of course, looking at it again, I realized it'd cost more than a couple of quid, all that cast iron with patterns and scrolls, all those tiles with flowers on them, all that gleaming black polish.

‘Yes,' I said to the bloke. ‘That's what I meant. The way the value's gone up, like. That's the thing, isn't it? You never know how much things are really worth at the time.'

But I do know, of course. And if I met that little woman, I'd shake her by the hand and tell her that taking out that grate was the best couple of hours' work I ever did.

TAKING PEOPLE IN

I
sense it from the minute I wake up: I'm reaching the perfect pressure. I lie on the bed unclothed, feeling the warmth of my body evaporate into the air, and the warmth of the air seep back through the pores of my skin. There's a complete osmosis, an exact equilibrium of heat. Days like this are rare, even in high summer, and the year has been disappointing until now. Grey, rainy, heavy. Lows on the chart and in the heart. I've stayed indoors.

But now I will get up. I will wash and breakfast. And I will go to the park and walk among the flowerbeds, inhale the moistness of the glasshouses, and lie on the grass by the lake. Someone will come past. And stop. Things will repeat themselves.

I prepare eggs, toast, marmalade. In the morning room, on the mahogany table, I set a cup and saucer, two kinds of plates, a toast rack, butter in a dish. I like the ritual of breakfast, the habit since childhood of starting the day properly. In this I am different from Rob. And from the others; the friends he brought to stay. They would get up at midday and stand at my windows half-dressed, squinting at the light, gulping at coffee and cigarettes. A little later they might bite at a biscuit, or crunch at an apple they would leave to brown on the sill.

Don't fuss,
Rob would say if I cleaned up the crumbs or rinsed out a cup.
Just relax, princess. Relax and be beautiful.

I tried so hard. It seemed such a good thing not to care about the material things in life, to be free from the slavery of habit. I watched the others, trying to copy what they did. But I don't smoke. And coffee makes me ill. And I am used to a tablecloth and cutlery. I am used to sitting down at eight o'clock sharp, clean and brushed and smelling of soap.

I sit down now. I pour myself tea from the big silver pot, milk from the silver jug. It is satisfying and civilized. I enjoy watching the clear liquid arc into my cup, the milk mingling it to opaque.
It's really no more trouble
, I would tell Rob,
than a tea bag in a mug. And a lot less wasteful.
But more ostentatious he thought. And infinitely more bourgeois. ‘Bourgeois' was his favourite word of condemnation as he lay on the Persian carpet, propped up with tasselled cushions, watching my colour TV.

He's gone now, of course. They've all gone. The whole thing was an aberration, a kind of hiatus in the pattern. They moved in, and then moved on. It's now quite a while since they were here. But I dare say they remember me fondly enough, look back with a smile at my old-fashioned and solitary life. Quaint Octavia – that's how they saw me. A girl with a big house and a lot of money. A girl who was good to look at. A girl who always said yes.

‘You're like a little kitten.' Rob would stroke my long blond hair while he read a book or talked to the others. They all did it, stroking, patting, as if they couldn't keep their hands off me. But they didn't seem to hear me when I spoke. They'd smile in my face, saying, ‘You don't mind, do you? If we have the meeting here? If we have the party here? If we move in for a while? If we invite our friends?' It was understood without question that they could all come to Octavia's house. That they could all eat Octavia's food. Drink Octavia's drink. Sleep in Octavia's bed. They thought I didn't mind; that I took sex like I took tea – calmly and with good manners. They didn't notice how stiff I was, how quietly I cried.

It was not what I'd been brought up to. It was not what Mummy and Daddy would have expected, at all. But they were gone years ago and the big house had become so very lonely. The neighbours had carefully minded their business and I had carefully minded mine. But one blazing midsummer day by the lake, Rob had smiled and said I was beautiful. And I had taken him home.

He'd been kind at first. He said he respected my quaint way of life. ‘Don't ever change, princess.' But then he brought the others, with their easy laughter and their easy ways – and I felt out of step.

I watched them carefully – how they moved, how they talked, what they said. I believed that if I tried hard enough it would happen; that I would mirror them unthinkingly until eventually there would be no difference between us. I was twenty-one – just like they were. It couldn't be too hard. I rode with them on buses and the backs of motorbikes. I ate with them in greasy cafeterias. I sat with them on draughty walls outside corner pubs and drank beer in thick glass mugs. But it didn't work.

‘Just keep quiet,' Rob would whisper whenever I tried to give an opinion. ‘I think your lot have had enough to say for the last few hundred years. Give the proletariat a chance.'

Jeni would put her heavy arms around me and tell him not to be so cruel: ‘It's not her fault. Octavia's not like the rest of them, are you? Anyway, it's her house, isn't it? And I think it's fantastic. Millions of times better than the last place we were in.'

Jeni liked my kitchen especially. She'd sit there, devouring handfuls of cornflakes straight from the packet, and concocting tumblers of thick pink slimming drinks: ‘Oh God, Octavia, something's got to work!'

The rest of them scattered through the house, the bedrooms, the library, Daddy's study – but mainly they occupied the drawing-room floor. They liked the Indian rugs, the cushions and embroideries, and the long curtains they could draw against the light. It had atmosphere, they said. Karen would sit cross-legged for hours, singing quietly to the Bob Dylan records Carl had told me I must buy, while Rob and Steve lay with their tangled hair against the sofa, smoking something strong and scenty and writing angry things on pieces of crumpled paper. They'd brood and chuckle together for hours. Often, Beverley would pull my head onto her flower-patterned lap and plait my hair the way she did hers – lots of little strands woven with coloured beads. Then we'd go into my room to look at ourselves in the tall cheval glass, my pale arm linked in her olive-skinned one.

‘You have such lovely things,' she'd whisper, plunging her whole body into my wardrobe, caressing silk caftans, cashmere jumpers, chiffon cocktail frocks I'd never worn. She'd look at the labels and say, ‘Zandra Rhodes! Oh, fabulous!' And I'd let her have things, although she was a size bigger than me and split the zips in places where she couldn't see. And she'd kiss me and say, ‘Don't let Rob know.' And she'd wear them when he wasn't around, twirling on the polished floors, catching her reflection in the window glass. ‘You're really kind, Octavia.'

Rob, of course, said kindness was meaningless, that it clouded the issues, the real class struggle, that there were no exemptions. ‘Property is theft,' he'd say with a grin, taking a five pound note from my purse. I used to think about it a lot. And one day I told him that he was right. I'd give it all up. I'd sell the house, the furniture, the clothes, give all my money to charity, get a job in a shop, be ordinary. They were all silent. Then they shrieked with laughter. ‘Oh, Octavia, you are funny!'

Rob laughed too. But later on he came to my room, kissed my forehead and looked in my eyes: ‘Now listen, Octavia – about what you said. I think, my angel, I need to protect you from yourself. You don't seem to realize what a sheltered life you've led – nannies and governesses and all that crap. And money whenever you want it. I don't think you realize what the real world's like. It's dog-eat-dog out there you know. Basically, princess, you wouldn't survive.' He put his finger under my chin and lifted my face, smiling in that way he had. ‘Now, I'm not getting at you. It's not your fault. You can't help your weirdo parents and their weirdo ideas. But promise me like a good girl you won't do anything rash.'

I kissed him and promised, and he smiled and lit a cigarette.

Rob was always rude about my parents. About anyone's parents. About families in general. They were bourgeois of course. And a drag, to be cast off as soon as possible. He said I was well rid of mine: ‘You're a free spirit, you see. God, I wish I had your luck!' He always assumed I felt the same way. Only once did he mention his two sisters: older, married, and living in ‘ticky-tacky houses' in suburbs too bourgeois for words. He'd been lying propped on the bed with an arm round me, drawing on a joint and rambling a little. But when I wanted to know more, he turned away on the pillow: ‘They're not important.' His mother telephoned once, late at night: someone was ill, he needed to come back. He refused to speak to her, wouldn't take the phone from my hand: ‘I don't know where she got this number, but if she rings again, hang up.'

But he was forever staring at the silver-framed photos on the piano and the mounted snapshots in the stiff, brown pages of the old albums. He loved the pictures of my grandparents, formal on studio furniture with potted palms; my bachelor uncles – overcoats and dogs in the Highlands, light suits and gins in front of Raffles Hotel. And most recently, the end of our life in Delhi – my father against the white façade of government offices, our bungalow with its garden, the servants lined up, me a blond child in Manjit's arms just months before we came back to England. Rob would pore over them for hours, jeering at my father's moustache and droopy linen jacket, my mother's Dior afternoon dresses, wide-brimmed hats and long white gloves. ‘Look at them! The remnants of our glorious colonial history. Thank God you were too young to remember it all!'

But I did remember it. The pressure of the air. And the brilliance of the flowers – the huge red dahlias blazing just in front of the house. And the distant clatter of china cups in the afternoon shade as I lay on my mattress inside the veranda. We'd been happy, all three of us. Perfectly happy. But I didn't tell Rob all this. Rob always misunderstood about Mummy and Daddy. He'd turn the pages and snigger: ‘What parasites!'

I'd tried to tell him that it wasn't like that. Daddy had worked himself to death, staying up late into the night with his boxes of papers. Everyone in the Service had respected him. And they'd loved my mother; she was so hospitable – always tea parties and guests for supper. Rob would look at photograph after photograph, faded smiles in bright light: ‘She certainly knew a lot of handsome young men.'

So I stopped telling him anything, let him go on drawing his conclusions. It pleased him to make fun.
‘Righting the balance,'
he said as he tried on Daddy's silk scarves and Panama hats, striding up and down, snapping his fingers: ‘I say, you there, boy! A cup of char for myself and the memsahib!'

Rob made them all laugh, and I tried not to mind. I tried not to mind when he started wearing my father's suits every day, staining them with food and cigarette ash; and when Jeni went out to a disco in my mother's pearls and came back without them. And when Karen and Steve broke the Royal Worcester plates by sitting on them. And when Mandy burnt a hole in the pale blue Wilton when she fell asleep, stoned. They are my friends, I said to myself. And they must share what I have.

They stayed a long time, sharing. I can't remember how long. But gradually they drifted away, got jobs, sent me postcards:
Can you believe we've got our own mortgage and Bev is having a baby? And Steve's been offered this fantastic job in Hong Kong? And Carl and Jeni have a book shop in Bath?

‘Wankers,' said Rob. He'd been the last to go. In the final months he lay about the floor, unshaven, gnawing at leftover food, slinking along the landings, turning knobs, opening boxes, pulling and picking at my life.

I couldn't stand it in the end.

And now, today, this warm summer's day, I will have to go the long way round to the park. When we first came to this house, Mummy and I could run straight there, out of our back garden gate, down to the lake. We'd lie in the sunshine under the dahlias, pretending we were back at the bungalow and someone would soon bring us tea. But the back gate is padlocked now, jammed tight with damp, and I will have to go along the Crescent, past the mansion flats, through the railinged gate. But it won't matter. No one will be watching. Everything will be quiet.

It's almost noon as I leave the house, and the light is falling in solid blocks, cutting shapes on the masonry, dividing the road with hard edges of shadow, the geometry of pointed gables in triangles along the middle of the tarmac. A few parked cars reflect the sun along the bright side of the road, but there is no one on the pavements. The residents of the Crescent are very private. They sometimes smile at me as I walk along, but they never speak. Most of them are old, and stay indoors.

I have put on my big straw hat and my dark glasses. I have to protect myself from the sun. My skin is just as ivory-pale as it's always been. My eyes are just as large and blue. On a day like this I have to hide them from view. I wear gloves. A lady always wears gloves. I have many pairs. Today they are pale lilac, to match my frock. It's my favourite, a Jean Muir original. It makes all the difference.

I visit the glasshouses first. As a child, walking with Mummy into the sudden wall of heat, I was reminded of India. And I am again, now. I see splashes of shimmering red, a jungle of deep green. Everything moist, warm, scented. I drift along the rows of terracotta pots. My high heels skid a little on the red tiled floor. Hoses snake across my path. Sprinklers start up suddenly, tingling on my skin. My dress is damp. It clings a little to my back, my thighs. The heat is building up. I remove my hat, my glasses. It is time.

I choose the spot. I am superstitious; I keep to the same routine. Here in view of the lake, on a quiet piece of lawn, near the bed of dahlias. Spiky red dahlias. They are very tall; they reach my shoulder as I stand beside them. They have no smell; they attract by show. I hold out my hand, touch their tubular petals, their splayed open centres. I lie down. The heat of the day will soon start to wane.

I know him at once. I smell him, the acid of his aftershave, the faint odour of tobacco and sweat. The sun is behind his head as he stands over me. He is a dark shadow. Thinner than Rob. Taller. He pauses, deciding. I know what he will decide. The dahlias vibrate in the background.