Stir-Fry (17 page)

“But how exactly—”

“You get a friendly milkman to leave you a bottle of fresh HIV-negative semen,” Jael told her, “then you get a turkey baster, lie on your back, and …” She performed a graphic mime, almost falling over a boulder.

They exchanged a grin at Maria’s expression. “Sounds a lot more fun than the usual method, if you ask me,” murmured Ruth.

The women climbed through a gap in a barbed wire fence, holding it up for each other, then headed up a boggy field. Maria and Ruth picked their way delicately through the bushes. “The best way,” announced Jael, “is to run so fast that you don’t put any weight on your feet.” They watched her scamper up the field and burst into simultaneous applause when her foot sank into a moist cowpat. Staggering to the fence for support, she wiped her runners along a cushion of moss. “Well, at least I’ve made your day,” she told Maria. “That’s the first smile I’ve seen on your face all week.”

“Is it?” And then she was sick of evasions and blank expressions. “There’s this guy at college.”

Jael snorted.

“It’s no big deal,” Maria rushed on, “I just thought he liked me, and now I doubt it.”

“And there was I thinking you had definite D.P. Oh, well, another one bites the dust.” Jael kicked a stone theatrically, then used it to scrape some mud off her heel.

“What’s—”’

“Dyke Potential,” Ruth filled in. “Jael was planning to convert you by the force of her personal charms, weren’t you, pet?”

“I’d have done it by Christmas,” Jael agreed mournfully. “And now some handsome brute has ruined all my good work—”

“He’s not particularly handsome at all,” said Maria awkwardly.

“Do we get his name?” asked Ruth gently, leaning on a five-barred gate.

“It’s really not important. I just like talking to him.”

“I’ll bet.” Jael started climbing over the gate at the wrong end.

“What?” asked Maria, stung.

Jael turned with a manic grin, her feet clinging to the highest bar. “Come off it, Marianissimo. If you just liked talking to him, you wouldn’t be upset. Why not just say you want to go to bed with him?”

“Because I’m not upset, and I don’t want to go to bed with anyone.”

Cantering down the field, Jael bawled back, “Famous last words!”

Maria’s throat seized up in fury.

“Ignore her, it’s hormonal,” murmured Ruth. “She needs a few sozzled nights on the scene, and then she’ll calm down.”

“What scene?” Maria was relieved that the talk had shifted from herself; she led the way down the field.

“Oh, you know, pubs and stuff. Which for us means Saturday nights in one tiny inner-city lounge walled with women in paisley shirts and Docs. I can’t say I’m enthralled by it.”

“But Jael goes?”

“Sometimes. She used to go a lot on her own or with friends, but over the summer there were problems.” Ruth stared down the field after the tiny jogging figure.

“Like what?” asked Maria, then wished she hadn’t.

“Ah, I won’t bore you with the details, but basically we do our drinking at home nowadays.”

Maria sucked her lips. Only after picking a handful of coppery leaves did she think of something that would be safe to ask. “But if you don’t like pubs, how did you two find each other in the first place?”

“I owe it all to feminism,” said Ruth, taking one of the leaves from Maria and examining its veins. “We met at a Women and Literature symposium; Jael always claims she was there for the free sherry afterward.”

“But were you already—”

Ruth interrupted her as she fumbled for the right phrase. “Hard to tell. Who knows what we all are before anything happens?”

“I suppose,” said Maria soberly. After a minute, she returned to the question. “But were you surprised? Did you expect to fall for a woman?”

“Will I be perfectly honest with you?”

“You will.”

“I was twenty-two, and I’d never had more than the occasional unfulfilling snog behind the bike sheds. I thought I was probably asexual, like a plant.”

“Oh, you’re very like a plant,” Maria commented in amusement.

“Whereas her ladyship had gone out with lots of women and a few guys as well. So I still don’t quite know how we
got together. But I can’t imagine it any other way.”

Maria considered the details in silence.

“I’m not usually like this, you know,” Ruth went on. “I’m the quiet, reticent one, known in the women’s group for extracting intimate details of everybody else’s lives without giving any of my own!”

“So what’s changed?”

“I think you’re good at questions; you just seem to start the words spilling out of me.” The look she gave Maria over one shoulder, as she pushed through a gap in a hedge, was half grateful, half worried. “It’s because you seem so interested, and I know you’re not likely to use the information against me.”

“You’ve said nothing incriminating so far, but by Christmas my dossier may be complete.”

“Speaking of which,” resumed Ruth more lightly, “have you given any thought to the holidays yet? How long are you likely to stay up?”

“I’ll probably catch the afternoon train on Christmas Eve, then come back up after New Year’s. There’s never much going on at home apart from the annual aunt invasion.”

“You’ll be here till the Eve? Great stuff,” said Jael, who had trotted silently from behind the hedge to fall in step with them. “So, lads, will we go the whole hog and put up a tree?”

“Yes, dear,” said Ruth, patting her on her windswept fringe, “and you get to sit on top in a pair of wings and a silver G-string.”

Walking back from the supermarket with a bottle of milk and a batch loaf, Maria felt her leaden mood begin to lift. The sun was setting over the park railings; tall willows were blocked out against the ginger light. She hummed the first two bars of a tune that eluded her as she headed up the stairs, swinging the grocery bag.

Opening her bedroom door, she was disconcerted to find Jael slouched on the duvet, her head back on the windowsill. “What are you doing in here?” she asked, too curtly.

“Sunbathing,” said Jael with a yawn, lifting her head. The ebbing sun made a fuzzy halo of her hair. “This room is magic in the evenings, isn’t it? I used to play my guitar in here.”

Resting her elbows on the windowsill, Maria looked over the glinting roofs.

“We never got around to repainting it. Does the orangeness not get on your nerves?”

“I thought it would, but it’s sort of grown on me; I like the way the curtains catch the sun. I think I get fond of anything after a few months.”

“Dangerous habit,” murmured Jael. “I see you’ve left up the calendar of monsters. It was a present from Ruth one Christmas; I couldn’t bear the way they looked at me.”

“Ah, but the December starfish is rather loveable, look.”

She shuddered. “Turn back to the harmless seaweed. Now, what I like are your posters, especially the Bogarts.”

“Do you?” Maria’s face turned in enthusiasm. “He’s nothing special on his own, but with Bacall he’s fabulous. I’ve always had a soft spot for screen couples.”

“One of my earliest sexual fantasies,” Jael confided, leaning up on one elbow, “involved Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and a gauzy four-poster bed.”

“Perv!”

“It was hot stuff. Unlike the real thing, which I didn’t try till I was in Berlin.”

“Which real thing?”

“Three in a bed,” explained Jael. “Take it from me, it’s overrated. Someone always gets left out.”

Maria was failing to look blasé. “Better put the milk in the fridge,” she said, picking up the grocery bag.

Jael followed her up the corridor. “Who’s your favourite of them all?”

“Film stars? Dunno. There was a time I’d have died to look like Audrey Hepburn.”

“There is a slight resemblance.” Cross-legged on the hearth rug, Jael contemplated Maria’s profile as she bent over the grate.

“There is not.” Maria struggled with the last match. “She had lovely dark hair, for one thing.”

“Yeah, but otherwise the urchin look is similar. Same little pointy ears. Are they pierced?”

“They were, at fourteen, but I’ve let the holes close over.”

Jael put out one finger to touch Maria’s neat lobe. “Ah, look at the size of them.”

“Gerroff, that tickles.” She smacked the hand away harder than necessary.

The firelighter finally sparked into life. Maria dusted her hands and sat back with a cough, watching the flame grow. “I’m worn out now, and all I’ve done is a bit of shopping. Must be PMS.”

“Lie down on the mammoth’s hide, and I’ll make you a cuppa.”

Flat on her back, Maria waited for the dizziness to pass. The rug smelt of firelighters. She let go of her muscles one by one and allowed her mind to slide into deep water.

A thump, a cackle, and she found herself being rolled up in the rug, arms crushed to her sides. She came to rest facedown, her nose tickled by a curl of brown fake fur. As she began to writhe, a thigh came down on the small of her back, and hot breath touched her ear. “Got you now, little girl. That’ll teach you to snooze in the spider’s parlour. Now, what shall I do to your ears?”

Maria let out a bellow. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Now, that wasn’t very clever. Do you not know by now I
never refuse a dare?” Teeth snapped just behind her ear, and the heavy body shuddered with laughter.

Maria gave a furious wrench and said murderously, “Get off me this minute.” Then, seeing the absurdity of her position: “I surrender, you dirty wee fucker.”

The bang of the front door relieved her; she squinted up as Ruth staggered through the curtain with a bale of turf briquettes. “Hello there,” Maria panted. “Could you possibly get your evil girlfriend off my back?”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Ruth’s voice was cold. “You’ve let the fire out, and we’ve no more matches. Would you ever stop acting like a pair of hyperactive infants and get out of my way.” She stepped over them to poke at the cinders.

Abashed, Maria rolled out of the rug and stood up. “Is there anything I can be doing?”

Ruth didn’t answer, and Jael tugged Maria away by the sleeve. Halfway down the corridor, she whispered, “Let’s stay out of her way, she’ll be all right by dinnertime. Why don’t you show me the rest of your posters?”

“Nah, I’ve got theorems to revise.” Maria shut her door. Her head was spinning. She sat on the bed, her feet sticking over the edge. The gaps between her jeans and socks were goosepimpled. If
ab
is equal in length to
cd
—What the hell just happened? Let there be a circle of radius
gh
. Why was Ruth so cross? Maria put down her pen, dry-mouthed.

She wandered into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap. Go on, she told herself, you’re meant to be good at questions. “You OK?”

“Fine,” said Ruth, breaking spaghetti into a steaming pot. “Sorry I snapped at you.”

“What’s wrong?” It came out less like a question than a statement.

Ruth sat down on the kitchen stool; her back made the shape of a comma. “I’m not sure.”

Apologies for the fire and the general mess rose to Maria’s tongue, but she stifled them. She took the spaghetti packet from Ruth’s hands and broke the rest into the pot, then turned up the flame.

“Maria.” The voice was thoughtful. “Have you ever had a suspicion that something was going to happen, but not been able to tell anyone because the effects of the warning might be just as bad?”

Her forehead furrowed. After half a minute, “No.”

“Oh, well, leave it, then.”

Maria found the lid of the pot at the very back of the cupboard. “Hang on,” she said, straightening up. “I once saw a film about an earthquake in Los Angeles, where the mayor was terrified to announce it on the radio, in case there might be a mass panic, which would make everything worse.”

“But also,” Ruth went on, “the mayor might be afraid that people would think her motives for the warning were selfish.” Noticing Maria’s doubtful expression, she added, “Oh, I don’t know, to influence the share price index or something. Besides, what if some people thought the earthquake was a good thing, and didn’t want to be warned against it?”

“A good thing?”

Ruth snapped a strand of spaghetti into one-inch sections. “They might want the earthquake.”

“How could anyone want an earthquake?”

“That’s where our metaphor falls down, doesn’t it?” asked Ruth; her eyes were scalding.

Maria took hold of Ruth’s shoulder, which felt surprisingly fragile under the angora wool. “Then why not drop the metaphors, and tell me what’s the matter?”

She stood up; rather than letting Maria’s hand fall, she lifted it off her shoulder and gave it a squeeze before letting go. As the pot began to leak white foam, she turned down the flame. “Lots of good reasons why not.”

“Like?” Maria’s tone was irritated.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to flirt with your curiosity like this. I’m just thinking out loud, I’m tired, I’m sorry.”

“Just—”

“No. Because you’d think I was greedy and suspicious and paranoid, and I probably am. And it might not do any good, and really it’s none of my business.”

Maria growled like a maddened dog and gave up.

“I’m sorry I brought it up. Ignore me, I haven’t been getting enough sleep.”

“I just want to help you, woman.”

The eyes were soft, like peat-browned water. “I know that.”

“At least let me finish dinner,” said Maria, resigned.

“If you could—”

“It shouldn’t be beyond even my abilities to move pesto sauce from the fridge to the spaghetti. Go on, have a wee lie down, rest those baggy eyes.” She watched Ruth move out of the kitchen like a zombie.

“Have you decided to stick with the job, so?”

Maria prised the paper clip out of the vacuum cleaner’s nozzle and straightened up. “Might as well, as I haven’t any other. The doctor says I’m doing my back no harm, it’s just tired.”

“Ah, sure my back’s been hurting for thirty years,” Maggie told her. “You get used to it.”

“Is that how long you’ve been cleaning offices?” she asked respectfully.

“God forbid. That’s only the last five years. Before that I ran a B&B, but with the fall of the dollar there just wasn’t the trade anymore.” The woman paused at the door. “I’ll be in the toilet having a fag if you need help shifting that big sofa.”