The Lives of Women (11 page)

When Agatha comes for her visit, Mrs Hanley brings her across the road. Elaine will listen to the women fussing her friend up the stairs to her bedroom. Her mother anxious and inclined to be squeaky if there is the slightest hesitation on Agatha's part. Mrs Hanley quietly encouraging, although she must know that her niece would prefer a case of stairs with a sturdy banister any day to an unfamiliar street or a room of strange furniture.

When Elaine hears her mother squeal, ‘Oh, careful, dear, careful there, mind now, mind,' she knows Agatha is pretending to falter just so they can laugh about it later on.

 

The two women leave; there is silence in the room. The girls listen to the footsteps go back down the stairs and then to Elaine's mother asking – as usual – if Mrs Hanley has time for a cup of tea and Mrs Hanley regretting – as usual – that she has so much to do. The front door then closes. The kitchen door opens. Agatha and Elaine burst out laughing.

They are giddy together. Everything is funny. Everything and everyone is there to be laughed at.

‘What does my mother look like from a distance?' Agatha
begins. She is sitting across the end of the bed, back flat against the wall.

‘I've told you a million times.'

‘Then tell me a million and one.'

‘Young. Your mother looks young. Way younger than mine, younger than most mothers I know, except maybe Patty's.'

‘Patty Cake?'

‘Patty Cake.'

‘Okay, four more words about my mother.'

‘Young…'

‘You said that.'

‘Slim. Hair. Tall. Walk. Blonde.'

‘Not beautiful?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Only sometimes?'

‘Well, she can look a bit sour.'

‘Sour! You never said that before…'

‘You know – as if there's a smell coming from the drains or something.'

Agatha screams out a laugh. ‘Yes! Yes, that's right. I know exactly what you mean. Is that all? Impression then, what overall impression does she give?'

She doesn't want to say that Agatha's mother gives the impression of someone apart, someone who is always en route to some other place; that she has a way of either walking ahead or lagging behind everyone else. She doesn't want to say that she has noticed how Agatha's mother always seems to stay close to the door of whatever room she happens to be in, as if waiting for a chance to slip out.

‘Well?' Agatha says,

‘No. That's all.'

‘I knew it. Shallow. Empty. That's why she's an actress, why she's good at pretending to be other people. She's like a jug, filling herself up with them.'

‘I'm sure you're wrong.'

‘Are you? Anyway. Your mother's turn. What does she look like then – five words.'

‘Oh God, Agatha,
please
don't ask me that…' Elaine says.

 

Agatha claims to see conversations. Words are blown like bubbles into a room, she says, some melt in an instant, others catch and float off – people then follow. The bubbles grow in number; they rise and fall, buckle – reshape. One careless flick of the hand and it's all over. She says that's why the floor is always wet at the parties her mother throws, hundreds of burst bubbles all over the floor. Either that or they've pissed in their pants.

‘You talk more rubbish than ever,' Elaine says, ‘you and your stupid bubbles.'

Agatha smiles and reaches out her hand. ‘I hear you're skinny now,' she says. ‘Are you skinny now? Let me see your skinniness so.'

Agatha uses these ‘seeing' words about herself all the time: ‘Let me see now, oh, I
seeee
. The way I look at it is… I must watch out for that. Well, I don't see why not…'

When they first became friends Elaine used to worry that Agatha didn't realise she was blind. That she didn't know other people in the world could actually see the things they were touching.
She was eleven then, Agatha just gone thirteen. Months later they had grown close enough for Elaine to tell her that and for Agatha to think it was funny.

‘Actually, I used to see,' she said then, ‘until I was five-and-a-half anyway. There was an accident.'

‘An accident?'

‘Oh but I never talk about that.'

Elaine didn't press her. There were plenty of things she didn't talk to Agatha about either. Her parents, the Hanleys, all that.

 

‘All right,' Elaine says, ‘here's my skinniness so.'

She places her arm on Agatha's outstretched palm, feels a cuff of cool fingers on her wrist.

‘What's this I'm looking at here?' Agatha asks. ‘Is it your neck?'

Elaine makes a choking sound and Agatha laughs.

She keeps her wrist and adjusts her hold slightly. ‘Okay, which letter are we on today?'

‘I'm not sure,' Elaine says, ‘you keep hopping all over the alphabet.'

Agatha's mother wants her to be a teacher. She is teaching Elaine the deafblind alphabet so that when she goes to the interview for teacher training college she can say, I've already taught the alphabet to my seeing friend. A better reason, Agatha says, is that they can gossip about people, right in front of their faces. They can say anything they like and no one will know.

*

‘I know all the vowels and some of the consonants,' Elaine says, ‘so when can I start making real words?'

She feels Agatha's fingers, like a nimble crab, clamber all over her hand, pinch the top of her index finger then make shapes against her palm.

‘What? What does that say?'

Agatha does it again, this time a little slower, saying the words as she presses them out. ‘Patience. Is. A. Virtue. You. Impatient. Cow.'

Elaine pulls her hand away and takes Agatha by the wrist, making three slow, uncertain moves, on her palm, the tip of her finger, the curve along the side of her thumb and index finger.

‘B. I. C.' Agatha says. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘When you teach me T and H you'll know.'

Agatha laughs and gives her a shove that topples her right off the bed.

Elaine steadies herself, then stands. ‘That hurt, you know,' she says.

‘Sorry.'

‘That really—'

‘Okay! Okay – sorry, I said.'

Agatha reaches into the pocket of her skirt. ‘I have chocolate. Swiss chocolate?'

She holds the bar out to Elaine, who stops rubbing her arm and steps forward. She breaks a piece off then gives it back to Agatha.

‘And where, may I ask, did you get Swiss chocolate?' Elaine says, mimicking her father in court – or how she imagines him to be in court, because she's never actually seen him there.

‘From a man, of course. I can't seem to recall his name.'

‘You took chocolate from a man and you don't recall his name? And would you like to tell the court what you did in exchange for this bar of delicious Swiss chocolate?'

‘I yodelled.'

‘Might I remind you that you are under oath?'

‘Under who? No, no, that definitely wasn't his name.'

Elaine laughs and breaks off another piece. ‘How was your weekend with the Shillmans anyway?'

‘All right. A bit quiet without Rachel. I played with Michael and Danny a bit… Ate a lot. You know, the usual. On Sunday night I made a fool of myself and started bawling. Oh God, when I think about it…'

‘Why? What happened, Agatha, tell me? Quickly, I want to know.'

‘He – Mr Shillman – was telling this story about that candlestick thing in their dining room – a menorah it's called. It belonged to his grandmother. The soldiers took it from her during the war and years later his mother found it in the back of a secondhand shop. Anyway, I started crying… I just thought it was the saddest thing. Oh, never mind. I made a fool of myself – that's all. It's a mad house around there – I don't suppose they minded. Oh yeah, and on Saturday night Marvellous Martha got a bit tiddly and had to be put to bed.'

‘What happened?'

‘Nothing really, just came in pissed.'

‘I want to know!'

‘Elaine, you can't stay in a person's house for the weekend and then go gossiping about their private business.'

‘Oh, I didn't mean to—'

‘I'm just teasing you. More chocolate? So what about you? What have you heard, what have you seen? Give me all the dirty details.'

‘Jackson.'

‘You had sex with him!'

‘Don't be disgusting.'

‘I thought you were madly in love with him?'

‘No!'

‘No? I thought of all the men around here, you would do it with…?'

‘I only said that because you and Rachel made me pick some -one out. Anyway, he's old. He must be at least forty. And I don't even like him. You'd have to like someone at least to have sex with them, wouldn't you?'

‘Would you?'

‘I heard him slapping the twins when I was out in the garden. Really, I mean,
really
hard. You could hear the wallops two houses away. I think they spilled paint or something over the lawn. But they're only four and puny. The screams!'

‘Bastard. He probably rapes his wife too.'

‘Agatha!'

Agatha lifts her legs up on the bed and edges her back to the wall. ‘Lots of men rape their wives,' she says, ‘Maggie Arlow told me. They're like slave owners – they pay for your food, so they think they own you. Quick dart in and out, any time they fancy,
then up with their zip and off they go about their business – that's what Maggie says!'

‘You've been talking to Maggie?'

‘I'm starting to take riding lessons. Aunt Mary thinks it will be good for me to spend time around horses – if only she knew what Maggie will really be teaching me! I'm to learn how to groom them – well, help to groom them. Yesterday Maggie hauled me up on one of the old hunters and led me around the paddock. You can come with me, when you're better.'

‘My mother does not approve of Maggie Arlow.'

‘Don't tell her then. She won't find out.'

‘Oh, Agatha, as if!'

Agatha sucks on the chocolate. ‘They all smoke dope around there, you know.'

‘Who does? Where?'

‘The stables. Two stable lads. And this girl. I haven't spoken to them yet but I've heard them.'

‘How do you know then?'

‘I recognised the smell.'

‘But how?'

‘Some of my mother's actor friends, you see, and—'

‘I don't believe you! Does Maggie know?'

‘I doubt it. She wouldn't smell it over the horses. Not to mention her own smelly, ginny Gitanes breath.'

‘She's not smelly – is she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Agatha, you think everyone is smelly.'

‘Everyone is.'

‘Am I?'

‘Yes, but in a nice way.'

‘Shut up. I am not,' Elaine says, holding her T-shirt out by the neck and taking a cautious sniff.

Her mother's voice comes singing up the stairs.

‘Elaine? Eeeelaaaine? Eeee-laine?'

‘Oh God, what now?'

Elaine goes to the door and opens it.

‘Yes?'

‘Would you and Agatha like some tea?'

‘Would you like some tea, Agatha?' Elaine says, imitating her mother's voice.

Agatha shakes her head.

‘No thank you,' she shouts down the stairs.

‘Sure now? I have some lovely fruity cake. Ask Agatha if she'd like some fruity cake.'

‘She has some lovely fruity cake,' Elaine says to Agatha. ‘Would you like some fruity cake?'

‘Tell her stick it up her fruity arse,' Agatha says.

‘No thank you, just the same. We're fine.'

‘Oh well, if you're sure…'

 

Elaine stays at the door for a moment. She notices Agatha is wearing sunglasses again.

‘You're wearing sunglasses all the time now?'

Agatha stops smiling and begins to explain. Her mother's idea; she thinks the glasses make her more attractive. She has four pairs
now – all identical – in case she can't find the other three and goes out one day and frightens the horses. There's a pair by her bed, another one on the shelf in the wardrobe, one in Aunt Mary's kitchen and, of course, this pair here on her face… She must look a sight without them, anyhow, otherwise her mother wouldn't keep pushing her to wear them.

In a sudden movement, she pulls the sunglasses off and asks, ‘Better with or without – what d'you think?'

Elaine gets a fright. Agatha's eyes look so much worse than they did the last time she'd seen them up close. That had been at the Shillmans' New Year's Eve party. Then, they had looked like two stray eyes that happened to find themselves stuck in the same face. They didn't match, but they did at least look like eyes. Now they are hard and faded, deformed. She pretends to consider, as if there really could be a choice in the matter, humming and hawing, making as much sound as possible while she searches for the right words to use.

‘If I had to choose, I suppose… Well, yes. The sunglasses, I think – yes, definitely the glasses. Simply because they make you look so much more glamorous.'

Agatha tosses her toffee-coloured hair away from her shoulders, then guides the wands of the glasses back over her neat little ears, settles them down on her well-shaped nose and smiles her beautiful smile with her perfect teeth.

Elaine can see the hurt in the slight tightening of the upper lip. She knows that Agatha has heard the lie in her voice and has sensed it on the air between them. She knows, too, that Agatha is hurt less by the fact of the lie than by the need for it.

Elaine can't think of the smallest thing to say that can pull them out of this moment. She goes to her dressing table, sits down, stares in at her own big red face, mutters something about the state of her hair and begins brushing it.