The Man Who Understood Women (13 page)

‘While others have gone out into the world and achieved great things, I have been occupied for what seems eternity with nappies, bottles, prams, pushchairs, rented houses,
buckets
and spades and sandy swimsuits. I have staggered out of bed in the small hours more times than you have had
birthdays
, to soothe the pangs of mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, measles, both the German and the plain varieties,
tonsillitis
, and croup.

‘I have bathed a hundred grazed knees, applied simply countless sticking plasters, dried Niagaras of tears and nursed, at a quick reckoning, six broken limbs. And on Friday nights, when they were small, of course, I have cut a hundred nails, a hundred, Dr Littleton-Cooper, including toes, of course, and shampooed five separate heads. I have watched more haircuts, bought more shoes (indoor and out) and sewed on more nametapes than you could imagine in your wildest dreams.

‘I have taken root, I swear, at the dentist’s, the piano, the dancing, and the skating sessions I have been called upon to endure; I have sat through unending successions of
conjurers
, pantomimes, ice shows, circuses, Donald Ducks, Mickey Mouses and Punch and Judys. If I had to watch the “Dance of
the Sugar Plum Fairy”, no matter how exquisitely performed, just once more, I swear I would get the screaming abdabs.’

Dr Littleton-Cooper rose from his seat, mumbling
something
about sick patients to visit, but Laura Prendergast pushed him back and refilled his glass. This time he did not protest.

‘I have not finished. In addition to the aforementioned
trials
of the early days, there are further delights of which you men of the world, of the mighty professions, know nothing … nothing. There is at all times an endless river of garments to be taken in or out, let down or up, put away for the spring, retrieved for winter, to be ferried to the cleaners and be
collected
therefrom. Acres of cupboards to be tidied,
hockey-sticks
– you see we are older now – to be disentangled from ball gowns, football boots from clean tennis shorts.

‘Often I have wanted to count the number of Speech Days, Parents’ Days, End-of-Term Performances, Prize-givings, Sales of Work and Carol Concerts through which I have sat, but I have been too busy catering for seven ravenous mouths, and double and treble the number when Molly and Polly and Dolly, and Harry and Larry have come for a week and stayed for a fortnight.

‘I have listened, Dr Littleton-Cooper, over the years to more fables than La Fontaine ever thought of, to more verbs, regular and irregular, than you would ever have guessed existed, and to my dying day I shall not forget the past
participle
of
se battre
’.

‘They say that as you grow older life becomes easier. Dr
Littleton-Cooper, they lie! They grow hysterical with
examinations
, bewildered by choice of careers and entangled in the most bizarre relationships from which one is frequently required to disentangle them.

‘When they finally decide upon their life partner, the fun, as they say, has only just begun. One becomes embroiled with living accommodations and wearing apparel, hysterical over whom to offend least over the wedding invitations, frustrated by landlords, builders, caterers, florists, plumbers,
electricians
and little men and women of every description. This, of course, is when they have finally made their choice.

‘Dr Littleton-Cooper, if you had seen some of the sights that have walked during the past years through my front door you would not believe your eyes. Apart from the difficulties, to which I have become accustomed, of distinguishing the boys from the girls, I have said goodnight to creatures with unsavoury beards whom I have tripped over in the corridor next morning, emptied a Vesuvius of ashtrays and thrown out, I swear, about a million beer cans.

‘I have seen romances broken and mended, listened in the small hours for keys turning in the door, waited in terror for imaginary policemen on the doorstep to tell me my son or daughter had wrapped the car round a lamp-post. I have lost one child to California (it always makes me think of figs), the others are despatched to Lowndes Square, Cambridge, Chislehurst and the Fulham Road.’

‘Mrs Prendergast,’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said, tilting his third glass, ‘you are a wonderful woman …’

‘Oh, no,’ Mrs Prendergast protested in horror. ‘I am a mother.’

‘You have had a hard life.’

‘Please don’t be ridiculous. I have enjoyed every moment of it and would do exactly the same were there a second time round. I am neither out of my mind, going to pieces, nor “on the turn”. It is not mysterious, and I really think you’ve had sufficient champagne! You haven’t, of course, understood a word I’ve been saying, despite your fancy waistcoat and your fancy name. Dr Smith would have caught on at once but has, of course, been kicking up the daisies now for a long time. I’ll say goodbye and Doris will show you out.’

She left the room but a moment later was back.

‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t suggest to Jack that I now have “too much time on my hands”, nor need “something to occupy my mind’. The children have tried. Simply because I have no urge to work for the Council for Moral Welfare, the Family Planning Association, or the League for Penal Reform.

‘I will not be a prison visitor, house a foreign student nor address envelopes for the International Friendship League. I shall not take up basketball, badminton nor book-keeping, mathematics, modern ballet, nor music, and haven’t the
slightest
wish to learn Russian.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said.

‘I am going to the park. The primroses and daffodils are in bloom now. I shall buy some sandwiches and throw the crumbs to the birds. I may come back before dark if it gets chilly, otherwise I shall not. I shall talk to no one and no one
will talk to me. I shall not read a book and I am not taking my tapestry or my knitting.

‘Should you want me you will find me on one of the benches every day until I’m an old, old woman. I shall think of my grandchildren occasionally, and when it is their
birthdays
I shall telephone my favourite stores. Are you sure you’re all right?’

Dr Littleton-Cooper was distinctly glassy-eyed.

The telephone on the bureau rang.

‘Don’t take it,’ Laura ordered, putting on her gloves.

‘It may be for me,’ Dr Littleton-Cooper said. ‘I left your number with my secretary.’

Laura lifted the receiver. Dr Littleton-Cooper gazed out of the window on to the well-kept garden and wished his head would clear. When he looked round, Laura had put down the receiver and was taking off her gloves as though each finger was of the utmost importance.

‘It was Richard from Cambridge,’ she said. ‘Olivia has
toxaemia
of pregnancy. She’s going into hospital.’

Dr Littleton-Cooper pulled himself together and put a professional arm round her drooping shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, that’s nothing these days. Bed, rest and perhaps a surgical induction when the time comes …’

‘That’s not really the point,’ Mrs Prendergast said. ‘There is no one to look after the children.’

All my Love

1967

It was the telegram in the Post Office that threw Iris off balance – not that it took very much to do that these days – the telegram that led her into the piped-music-washed womb of the coffee bar.

It was a very ordinary telegram clipped to the top of a pile of them on the clerk’s side of the counter. It was upside down and she read it through the glass partition. The coding at the top and the time of despatch were of no interest. It was the message that sent her into the valley of despair, hurrying to the solace of coffee and cheesecake and the acquisition of goodness knew how many undesirable calories. ‘
All my love, Roy
’. Four words.

She turned from the counter without buying her stamps, walked agitatedly down the street, sat down at the nearest table in the nearest coffee bar.

‘Yes, dear?’

The waitress, no more than nineteen, had black-ringed eyes with lashes so heavy it was a wonder to Iris she could see.

‘Coffee, please.’

‘Anythinktereat?’

Iris followed her gaze to the trolley laden with over-creamy cakes in papers, chocolate layer cake, humpbacked shiny éclairs, cartwheels of Danish pastry.

‘I’ll have some cheesecake.’

The girl scribbled on her pad, tore off the sheet, folded it and slipped it under the glass of paper serviettes. As she did so the man came in. They both saw him together, became linked, the nubile girl and the middle-aged woman, with a common bond of desire.

He walked like a panther, light and boneless, carrying his six feet like a feather, broad chest narrowing to slim hips,
elegant
suit following his every move. An actor, Iris thought, or could have been, more probably, an executive: authority
radiated
from him. He wore a red carnation in his buttonhole as if by right.

The waitress, rooted to the spot, sighed. ‘They always sit at Jean’s table. There’s no justice.’

‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ Iris said. She was used to dealing with daydreaming juniors.

‘Not one of our regulars. Wouldn’t mind taking him home.’

‘I am in rather a rush,’ Iris said.

He had sat down and was studying the menu while the sharp-nosed Jean waited patiently by his side.

‘I’ll have a Welsh rarebit, and coffee.’ He smiled dazzlingly at Jean, then, to her utter amazement, he smiled at Iris.

All my love, Roy
. All her life, more often of late, she had longed to receive and, even more, to send so simple a message,
so few words in which were implicit so infinite a meaning. All my love. She had so much to give, so very much. Sometimes it overflowed and engulfed her, reducing her to tears. She’d look in the mirror then, to dry her eyes and see what they all saw, a stout woman of middle age whom love had passed by.

It seemed incredible to Iris, incredible and indescribably painful, that no one realised that inside the fat and ugly body were thoughts, deeds, hopes and fears identical with those beneath the bosoms of the slim and beautiful. There was so much love within her unprepossessing exterior that sometimes Iris feared it would break its bonds and flow in a glorious river of beauty to swamp the nearest stranger. So much gentleness, so much compassion, she sometimes willed it to wither and die so that she might be left in peace.

The girl was right. There was no justice. She knew how to treat a man, had more love to give than the hard-faced bitches working through their second and third marriages, pitilessly reducing their mates to size; more than the pretty dollies who took and took; more than the moaners, the naggers, and the succulents who grew fat on the lifeblood of their men.

She knew they were weak and that she was strong, that they needed the comfort of her arms, the tranquillity of her bosom. She would be quiet, unshakable, always ready to give. She knew the secret, the strength, the ability to give and to give and to give … He was still looking at her, more gravely now. She was
undeceived
by his air of authority. She knew he was tense, nervous, angry, demanding, thoughtless, selfish; that he was weak….

‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ the waitress announced.

‘All my love,’ Iris said.

‘Pardon me?’

Iris looked at her. ‘I didn’t say anything.’

The blank, sooty eyes examined her.

‘It was cappuccino you was wanting?’

Iris looked at the frothy, steaming cup. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘The cheesecake’s fresh.’

She smiled dismissal at the girl, and together they both had a final look at the man. He was waiting for his Welsh rarebit and still looking at Iris in what she could have sworn was an inviting way. She felt a slow blush creeping up her neck in the manner of a young girl, which she was not. Most decidedly was not. She started on the cheesecake. Perhaps after all there was going to be someone.

His order had arrived. She liked the way he ate, unhurriedly, calmly. He caught her looking and she turned her attention to the coffee, uninteresting and too weak. We would have a little house, she thought, perhaps by the river, not a so-called ‘town house’ made of matchboxes, something older, more mature, that’s what she was, but that was what a man needed, someone to rely on, who would always be there.

She would give up work – he looked as if he could keep her – and economise by making things for herself, the house, growing vegetables if there was a tiny garden, she’d always had green fingers. They wouldn’t need many friends, not when she had someone of her own, they’d be self-sufficient, stay at home most evenings, people’s eyes would light up with envy – ‘my husband, meet my husband’.

He was smiling openly now, she smiled back, her heart
singing
. The cheesecake was gone but she scarcely recalled eating it. He had finished, too, except for the last of his coffee. His smile was a bit lopsided really, rather attractive; lazy, dreamy eyes. He beckoned to Jean for the bill.

Iris called for hers, her hands shaking a little as she fumbled in her purse. Would he come over, or would they meet
outside
? She wished she’d worn her new suit, nearly had, but it still grew chilly in the evenings.
All my love, Iris
. On cards and telegrams. On birthdays and anniversaries, and sometimes on nothing at all.

He was standing up now and looking straight at her, or rather at her right ear. She glanced behind her, and a girl with green eyes, bathed in auburn hair, tall and reed slim, was
getting
up from her table. She wore a pale pink suit and her legs seemed to go on for ever. She insinuated herself past Iris’s table and went over to the man. Together they walked out of the shop, he holding the door open for her. They stood for a moment on the pavement laughing into one another’s faces, then disappeared down the street.

Iris waited for the pain, which started in her throat, to recede …

It did so, slowly numbing as it went.

She was nothing; a fat fool. How could she have expected him to see inside her where lay all the love? Had there been a mirror opposite she would have been all right; would never have made such a stupid mistake, believing that she looked as she felt. In dissection she and the green-eyed girl would prove
identical, except in Iris there would be more tenderness, more compassion, more love.

He probably hadn’t even seen her at all, sitting there fat and flushed with her coffee and her cheesecake, and her kind but untidy face.

She saw the green-eyed girl in the house by the river. It would have to be the town house though, and no vegetables, quite definitely no vegetables; you couldn’t grow courgettes and avocado pears. She’d lie there in a leisure gown waiting for him to come home; if he was late she’d scold and he’d soon grow tired. Tired of her green eyes and her auburn hair and her scolding, and their voices would rise, and they would live in toleration not in love, and most probably when his hair grew grey and she’d sucked him dry she would put on her town clothes and leave the river, and sit in a coffee bar where a man would smile at her …