Praxis (21 page)

Now that Praxis had tales to tell of the great and famous, and ate her sandwiches and drank her shandy in the BBC bar, Irma occasionally asked her to dinner, to sit opposite a spare man.

‘You have to be especially nice to this one,’ said Irma, on the telephone to the reception desk. ‘He’s the product manager on a new soup mix and it’s going to be a big account for Phillip. Wear a low dress, for heaven’s sake.’

‘What do you mean by especially nice?’

‘You
know
,’ said Irma. ‘He’s down here in London all by himself, and not even married. I wish I didn’t have to live like this; it’s all so sordid. I wish Phillip was Nobel Prize material, and not commercial. As it is, I have to do the best I can.’

‘You don’t, you know,’ said Praxis. ‘He’s only in advertising to keep you in nannies. And it can’t help to have you despising him every step of the way.’

‘You wait till you’re married,’ said Irma, and rang off.

She dialled through again, almost immediately, to Praxis’ great inconvenience.

‘Except I don’t think anyone ever is going to marry you. You’re much too sharp.’

‘Irma, I have to go. The Director General is in reception and his taxi hasn’t turned up.’

‘Now I’m married,’ said Irma, ‘I can be as sharp as I like. It’s lovely. I speak the truth; you can’t think what a treat it is. But you can’t afford to.’

‘Irma, I’m working.’

‘What a treat!’ said Irma, ‘I wish I was.’ And rang off.

Within three months Praxis was married and within four she was pregnant. Married to and pregnant by (there’s posh for you, cried Irma, one and the same man and all!) the product manager of the soup mix form, for whom she had worn, on Irma’s instructions, a low-cut dress. His name was Ivor, he was the only son of a county surveyor in the Midlands, had been to grammar school and business school, and was at the age of thirty on the middle rungs of a company ladder, doing well and pleased with himself. He was handsome; his hair short and dark, his brown eyes wide and bright, his mouth shrewd, wide and narrow, and his teeth very regular and very white. He was broad-shouldered, narrow hipped and well-suited. His shirt was very white, his tie conventionally and carefully knotted, his shoes polished, and his voice quiet and confident. One day, he knew, he would be Chairman of the Board. He found Phillip and Irma, as he confided to Praxis, bohemian and exciting. He had been pleased by their invitation to dinner. He wore his boldest tie for the occasion. He was nervous of Praxis’ cleavage, and kept his eyes firmly on her face for most of the meal. She would see his eyes drift downwards and then jerk upwards again, as if horrified at their own behaviour. He talked to her about capital costs, investment and the wage-price spiral, and seemed astonished when she understood what he was talking about. He told her about marketing policy, of what happened when a new food product was launched: how the product—in his case a noodle soup—would at first contain quality ingredients, while the market established itself: how then the cost—in other words the quality—of the ingredients would be reduced until minimum costs and maximum sales met on the graph he kept in his office.

It was advantageous to advertise, he said, and thus keep sales up, rather than maintain the quality of the product. Minimally. Advertising, he said coyly, with a glance at his host and hostess, and a daring one at Praxis’ cleavage, was more fun.

He looked like a tailor’s advertisement, Praxis concluded. This was the kind of man she should marry. Kind, good-looking, forward thinking, conventional and respectable. She did not think that he should marry her, not that he would even think of it. He needed a conventional, well-spoken, well-bred girl, with a Cordon Bleu cookery course behind her, a knack for flower arrangements, and parents to provide her with a formal white wedding and grand reception after a year’s engagement.

Mother, meet my fiancé, Ivor. Ivor, this is my mother, Lucy. Ivor, this is my sister Hilda. Yes, she’s very clever. In the Administrative Grade of the Civil Service. Why is she wearing a fur coat at dinner? It’s the static, you see. Now they weave nylon into the carpets, it’s everywhere. No, Ivor, don’t bring the dog. It might be a bit tricky. There’s rat poison down in the corners. And did you know the stars shine by day?

Hilda was going through a bad patch. Praxis met her for lunch occasionally. Her smile was a grimace. Or so Praxis thought. No one else noticed.

Hypatia, not Hilda. If you’d only go back, thought Praxis, find the real enemies, face demon truths, out-stare them, you might feel better. My sister Hypatia.

Ivor took Praxis home to her flat in his M.G. sports car. He drove fast and well: she felt secure, exciting and excited, secure in his admiration.

He asked if he could come in for coffee and was hardly able to believe his luck when she said of course.

Praxis had made the flat as bright, comfortable and conventional as she could: buying from Irma, at exorbitant prices, the bits and pieces she was throwing out as she went up in the world.

‘You’re a bohemian, too,’ he said, glancing round. She made coffee: they kissed on the sofa. Daring, he parted her lips with his tongue and thrust it into her mouth. His tongue was cool, sweet and unaccustomed. ‘That was a French kiss,’ he said

‘I know.’

‘I think you are a very daring young lady,’ said Ivor. ‘How do you know I’m to be trusted?’

His simplicity amazed her. She realised how easy it would be to manipulate his innocence: to offer herself as a forbidden delicacy, forever further and further out of reach, until he interpreted a frustrated appetite as love. She saw that he would believe whatever she told him about herself: that if she were more like Irma and less like herself she would construct an edifice of sweet smiles, reticences and false assertions around herself which he would happily mistake for her. She also knew that she could not do it, even if the prize was respectability, matrimony and motherhood—which it surely was. It would affront his dignity and her own. He was a good, kind, clever if obtuse man. She owed him honesty.

‘I know you’re to be trusted,’ she said. ‘The trouble is, I’m not.’ She pulled away from him and stood up.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I was carried away. You’ve no idea what you make me feel. How could you know? Men are such brutes. It won’t happen again. Trust me.’

She stared, open-mouthed. He mistook incredulity for moral censure.

‘You shouldn’t have asked me in for coffee,’ he said, like a small boy searching for excuses.

‘Why not? You asked.’

‘I’m supposed to ask and you’re supposed to refuse.’

‘Is it all games, then?’

‘So far as I can see,’ he said desperately. ‘It’s all games.’

‘I was never any good at games,’ said Praxis. She briskly took off her clothes. He seemed shaken and appalled.

‘This is me,’ said Praxis, naked and herself, ‘Come to bed.’ He followed, fumbling with tie, and buttons; embarrassed, folding his clothes, putting shoes neatly together, delaying, turning out the light. He was disappointed. He had wanted romance, and all she would offer was sex.

‘Leave the light on,’ she said, at which he looked even more wretched.

I will never see him again, thought Praxis, after this. And just as well: this Ivor, this advertisement for a clean-cut decent man is far more than I deserve, and certainly more than I want.

She named the parts of his body in medical and colloquial terms: as she did her own. She described to him coldly what he was doing to her, and she to him: in both technical and obscene terms. He seemed hardly to hear.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘It’s so beautiful. I had no idea.’

He seemed transfigured: she, to herself, merely animal.

When dawn was breaking he said, ‘I love you.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘This is not how people love each other.’

‘Yes it is,’ he said, determined. ‘Other people can do what they like. You can do what you like; I love you. Nothing’s going to change that.’

When dawn had fully broken he said, ‘I have to get back to my flat now, and bath, and change. I don’t want to leave you but I have to be at the office at eight forty-five. A lot of people depend on me. Will you have lunch with me?’

‘All right,’ she said, baffled. He kissed her tenderly; it seemed difficult for him to withdraw his flesh from hers. He rang her during the morning, at her busiest time. Flowers arrived. The other girls envied her.

‘How do you do it?’ they asked. Praxis replied, with truth, that she had no idea.

Irma rang.

‘What have you done to him?’ she asked, ‘or what didn’t you do, for a change? He’s been on the phone to me for half an hour and all he talked about was you. He didn’t even mention dinner, after all the trouble I went to. Some men take too much for granted.’

Praxis didn’t want to talk about it. There were four taxis available at Reception, and five M.P.s to be got home, all claiming priority of need, and she wished to give her attention to the problems this discrepancy posed. She was short of sleep and annoyed with herself.

‘Ivor is rather boring,’ said Irma doubtfully. And then, more hopefully, ‘But you might change all that, Praxis.’

Ivor collected Praxis from the BBC Centre at lunchtime. The envy of the other girls flattered her. He took her to an Italian restaurant at Shepherds Bush; watched the food disappear between her lips as if even that was blessed, and held her hand under the table. She fell asleep over the crême chantilly. He did not mind. He met her out of work, escorted her home, looked away while she changed out of her work clothes, sat reverently by her while she slept. He did not seem to feel the need for sleep, himself.

‘I can do with three hours a night,’ he said proudly, ‘like Napoleon.’

When she woke he ran his well-manicured hand over her breast, tentatively.

‘You are everything I adore,’ he said. ‘You are an angel come down from heaven.’

She could not believe him. She guided his hand down to her crotch, to dispose of his gentlemanliness.

He told her the story of his life, and informed her as to his principles. He believed in hard work, honesty, industry, and firm but kindly discipline for children. He feared that since the war and the coming of the welfare state British workmen had turned into workshy scroungers, who these days had to be bribed, by means of piecework, to work at all. Then they complain, he said bitterly, ‘because the belts move too fast. They don’t seem to realise that their wages depend on our productivity. Where do they think the money comes from?’

He did not want to hear Praxis’ life story, or Praxis’ principles. He wanted her life to have begun the day he met her, and his opinions to be hers. She could see it might be restful. It was how most women lived.

‘I’m a figment of your imagination,’ she complained, yawning, on the second evening of their acquaintance.

‘Come here,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll show you how much of a figment you are.’ He had learned his love-making vocabulary, she feared, from romantic novelettes: perhaps his mother had left them lying around when he was a lad. It never ceased to embarrass her.

Presently she felt she loved him. Her flesh called to his: learned to miss him: tingled with expectation at his approach. And he was always there. Before work, at lunchtime, after work. In the middle of the night. If work called him away there were flowers and phone calls. Sometimes she wondered if the love she felt was a mental haziness induced by lack of sleep.

‘Has he taken you to meet his mother?’ asked Irma, and shook her head dubiously when Praxis said he had not. Sometimes Praxis wanted to be Ivor’s wife; sometimes she did not.

‘Anyway,’ said Irma, ‘it doesn’t matter to us. Phillip’s changed firms. He’s making boring documentaries now, of a sociological nature: he’s lost all interest in soup mixes. I think I preferred the old days. At least people laughed at the dinner table, and noticed what they ate. These days they just drone on, and use their soup spoons to eat the pudding.’

Praxis was offered a job in the Research Department at the BBC. She accepted. Ivor was angry. It meant a small drop in her salary but good prospects of promotion.

‘It’s a waste of time,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to work far too hard for not nearly enough money. They’re only taking advantage of you. You must turn it down. You’re happy where you are.’

Ivor liked to have Praxis where he could see her; where he was accustomed to seeing her, flanked by girls on either side. In the Research Department she worked for men, amongst men.

‘I’ll do as I choose,’ said Praxis. ‘We’re not married.’

He did not see her for two days. She cried in bed; and wondered where Colleen was, and whether she still cried at night, or whether she was happy water-skiing on Bondi Beach, amongst the sharks, and if the Pacific winds had blown Michael’s asthma clean away.

Ivor came back, as if nothing had happened; except that he slapped her once or twice during their love-making. Praxis had won, in a way: but she knew from the occasional sad expression on his face that he had considered asking her to marry him and decided against it. She was not a suitable wife for a rising business executive. Suitable wives were virgins, or all but virgins; they did not have complex pasts and unhappy childhoods, best not spoken about: they did not take jobs which went against a prospective husband’s grain.

Praxis liked her new job. She would do all the work required on this programme or that, quickly and easily, and her immediate superior would get his name on the screen. She did not mind. She thought that to have it there would only upset Ivor the more.

Willy, on one of the few occasions that Praxis now visited Brighton—for Ivor liked to take her out to lunch on Saturdays, and to the pictures on Sunday—remarked that Praxis had become rather boring. She hoped that it was jealousy speaking, but feared that he was right. Certainly, when she was with Willy and Carla, she seemed to have nothing to say. She had lost her dread of Holden Road, but at the same time it no longer seemed like home. She had no rights in it. The whole house sparkled and gleamed: Carla sang as she serviced it. The garden was neat: the drive was weed-free. Willy’s bike was oiled. The front door opened easily. All this Carla accomplished, as well as working in Willy’s canteen. Willy bought Carla fabric in the markets, and she made it up into clothes for Mary, which lay properly ironed and neatly folded in the drawers. In Praxis’ day Mary’s drawers had been a jumble of mostly unwearable garments, shrunk vests, and single socks.