The Likes of Us (47 page)

‘I was chatting to the owner. Likes the British. Makes a change these days. He says he had tears in his eyes as he watched the old Ark Royal leave Grand Harbour for the last time.'

‘Do you know where the Ladies is?'

‘Somewhere inside, I expect. Go in and ask.'

‘I don't like to.'

‘There's nothing to be shy about.'

‘It's the way they look at you.'

‘The men? It's your imagination.'

‘Oh, is it?'

‘You want it both ways.'

‘What?'

‘You don't like the men looking at you but you're offended when I say they don't.'

‘I know when men are looking at me.'

And I do. Like he's looking now. Sidelong. Eyes everywhere but meeting mine. Him and the others. All alike. Not with me any more. Inside himself. Thoughts about me but not for sharing. Not with me, at any rate. Oh God, I wish I hadn't come. I wish I hadn't seen that look. It's gone now, but I saw it. He doesn't know. He doesn't know that I know he can talk about me to someone else. ‘Went abroad with this willing piece I picked up on my rounds. Shared a bed in the sunshine. Nothing serious. All right for a fortnight, but don't want to get involved.'

I'm due to start my period. How can I stay so close to him for another week, share his bed, his bathroom, see him first thing every morning and last thing at night?

‘Are you going, then, before we move?'

‘Move where?'

‘Anywhere you like.'

‘I thought you must have somewhere in mind.'

‘I'm easy. Where would you like to go?'

‘Hampton Court, Kew Gardens, Richmond Park.'

Now why did I say that? He's looking at me now with a little frown.

‘Don't you like it here?'

‘I was just joking. You said anywhere I liked.'

‘There must be something you'd like to see.'

‘Haven't we just about seen it all?'

‘In less than a week?'

‘It's a little island.'

‘It seems smaller to little minds.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Don't mention it.'

‘I meant, what did you say?'

‘It wasn't important.'

It was, though. And I did hear it. Is that what he really thinks about me? He's good at hiding his feelings. I mean, they don't show in his face. If I have irritated him nobody could tell from his face. But he did say it. Straight out. As good as telling me I've got a small mind. Now when did he come to that conclusion – before we came or since we got here?

He's bored with me, that's what it is. He's lost interest in telling me things. When he notices something now he keeps it to himself. He's saddled with me, all this way from home. He can't make friends either, without including me. He's probably wishing he was on his own. If he's not now, he will be when I tell him the curse is due. A fat lot of good I'll be to him then. Because that's all he brought me for. It must be.

‘Look, do you want me to go and ask?'

‘Sorry. What?'

‘Sorry or what – which?'

‘Sorry?'

He's playing with me now. I always suspected he could have a clever tongue.

‘Would you like me to go and find the Ladies for you?'

‘No, thanks. I'll go.'

And, of course, like so many little things you think you'll find embarrassing, it's mostly in the mind. The man behind the bar hardly looks at me as he answers the question I don't finish.

‘Can you tell me where the
–
?'

‘Up the steps, madam.'

Yes, I shall probably start properly in the night. I must be careful about the sheets, and I shall have to tell George. Funny, I was half pleased that I wouldn't be bothered with it for a few days – that I had the perfect excuse – but now I'm fancying him, thinking about it, remembering what it was like – or what it would have been if I'd enjoyed it more. Suppose I said I wanted to go back to the hotel now and we went up to the room and I let him see what I wanted and I gave him a really good time, without one of those things, unprotected, nothing between us – surely I'm in the safe period now – he'd like that, wouldn't he? He'd be especially grateful for that.

He's got to be glad he came. He's got to remember it and me, not tip me out of his thoughts like Mark did after that time in Leeds. Oh yes, he did, Cheryl. We know he was here, there and everywhere and you left for that other job, but he could have kept in touch, spared you an hour or two for a meal, or just a drink, showed you that even if he hadn't enjoyed your body enough to want it again there should still be some tender feeling – or at least respect – between people who've been as close as that. Close? Mouth to mouth, skin to skin, flesh to flesh. How close was that, ever? You've been used, they'd say; the types who sit around in baggy frocks and talk and talk about sexist advertising and exploitation and men who look at them in the street, until you think they must live every minute of their lives close to screaming. So why can't I say I used them – Mark
and George – that I had them for my enjoyment? I can't because I didn't. They had me, and I let them.

‘You're easeful, Cheryl,' my mother says to me when I come home and put my slippers on and curl up near the fire with the telly. ‘You never stir yourself. You let everything come to you.' And what doesn't come I do without. That's why she said what she said when I told her I was going abroad for the first time. ‘Do you good. Take you out of yourself.' To where?

I wonder what he's thinking – George – as he sits there waiting for me. His bare arm's stretched out as his fingers hold the cold glass on the table. You think they're thin, his arms, but they're strong and the muscles hard under that down of hair that's almost auburn in the sun. He's lean and hard like that all over, like a board, and not the slightest hint of a paunch. Only in that touch of scrawniness about the neck can you see – oh, ever so clearly when you think hard about it – what he'll look like as an old man, when the adam's apple shows bigger and the skin pulls tight over his cheekbones and round his mouth. His eyes are the kind that will turn paler then and perhaps water at every touch of a cold wind.

Oh, George, who are you? Why are we in this strange place together? What do you want with me? Tell me, George, because I'm lonely.

‘There, that couldn't have been so bad. Was it?'

‘No.' His humour's back. Perhaps I misjudged him: my imagination reading things that aren't there.

‘Shall we go back?'

‘To the hotel?'

‘Uh, huh. It's noisy and smelly here, with all the traffic. We can lie out on the roof.'

‘If everybody else hasn't the same idea.'

Come on, George, let me surprise you. We'll call in the room to change and then I'll surprise you; and afterwards we'll talk, because it will have been different and you'll know that.

 

The cars they hire out to you, they're all the same make, George says, all the same colour, all with around 30,000 miles on the clock. And the tyres. George wouldn't accept the car the garage man brought him until that bald front tyre was changed.

‘If I as much as drove out of the front gate at home with a tyre like that,' George told him, ‘I'd be pinched on the spot.' ‘But it's not raining,' the man said, oh so reasonable. Oh so reasonable is what they all are. ‘What's the trouble?' they'll say if you find anything wrong. As though sensible men can reach agreement on any subject on earth. But George was firm and the man said to follow him and drove round to a garage in a back street where he took a wheel from an identical car and swapped it for ours. We both laughed when the other car, with our bald tyre, turned up the next day for another guest. ‘Are you going to tell him?' I asked, and George said, ‘He's got eyes in his head. And, like Mr What'shisname pointed out, it's not raining.'

There are even more cars outside the hotel now and George says to go in while he finds a place to park. It's a relief to be out of that tin box in heat like this.

‘Oh, Mrs Jennings.' The girl at the desk calling. ‘Mrs Jennings.'

Nobody's addressed me by any name at all, except madam, so far, and I'm nearly to the lift before it dawns.

‘International telegram for your husband. It came just after lunch and I didn't know where to reach you.'

‘Oh, right. Thanks.'

It's confusion that carries me on into the lift and up to the room without waiting for George. Who knows he's here? The lift doors again. Sounds carry with all these bare tiled floors. His tap.

‘The girl downstairs gave me this.'

‘For me? A telegram?'

Turning away to give him a moment of privacy. The sea glinting between the white buildings beyond the dusty road. A family – mother in blue-flowered bikini overflowing with rolls of mahogany flesh, father in trunks, hair everywhere except on top of his head, two small children – crammed, with deck-chairs onto a sliver of sand. All the sand there is. Always there, every day, foreigners, rude; they stare if you go anywhere near them, as if you might march up and ask for your turn.

‘It's Kathleen...'

Me: blank. Who?

‘She's been taken ill.'

His wife, of course. Mrs Jennings.

‘Is it serious?'

‘I shall have to put in a phone call.' George looking round at the telephone as though he doesn't know how to start.

‘Who knew you were here?'

‘My father. I had to leave word with somebody.'

Because he couldn't cut himself off. He's still tied. He's separated but he leaves word where he is. If not who with.

On the phone now to the girl at the desk. ‘Hullo... Yes, this is Mr Jennings. I want to make a call to England. It's a London number...'

Listening to the number he gives her. Could be anywhere in Greater London, except for the three or four exchanges I happen to know.

George sits on the bed, his back to me. The bed where I was going to give him a good time, something to remember. Why can't I feel for him, for her? Because I don't know her. Mrs Jennings. I don't know him; nothing of all that life of his, past and present, out there. Only a joke, a laugh, some figures of speech, the way he holds his knife and fork, chews food; his smell, his weight and touch in the dark, his spasm and his gasp.

He's telling me nothing. Sitting so still. ‘Surplus to requirements.' That's one I've heard him use. Now it's me. ‘Not wanted on voyage.' I won't ask.

‘I'll be about downstairs.' If you want me.

Cool lobby with grey and yellow tiles. The girl's face turning from the switchboard, eyes behind huge dark glasses. She knows. They all know. Do they care? None of their business. But I've made it their business by wearing this ring. I care what you think, which is why I'm pretending. Mrs Jennings. No, I'm not Mrs Jennings. I'm me, Cheryl Green, on a dirty fortnight with Mrs Jennings's husband and what's it to you?

If it's serious enough for a telegram, he'll have to go home. Find an early flight and leave. And what shall I do? ‘You stay on, Cher,' I can hear him saying. ‘It's all paid for and you may as well have the benefit.' Of what? Curious looks? Questions from the bolder or kindlier ones? ‘What a pity your husband had to leave.' ‘Yes. He was called away on urgent business.' Still living that pretence after he's gone.

But what can I tell my mother if I arrive home a week early myself?

Well, I know what I'm going to do for a start. Get rid of this bloody ring. Not another minute will I wear that.

I'm standing on the rocks between the road and the sea when I hear him call. He waves as he walks towards me.

‘Did you get through?'

Why am I asking? He'll tell me what he wants me to know. Just as much. Just as little.

‘Yes.' A deep breath. ‘She's taken an overdose.'

That quick flick of a glance as he said it, anticipating my reaction, which is something like three seconds of pure naked panic before, with my heart pounding, he says, ‘She's all right. They found her in time.'

‘Can you get a flight home?'

A shake of the head; something stubborn about the mouth. ‘I'm not going. It was a put-up job. She never intended it to work.'

‘How can you know that?'

‘I know her.'

‘All the same...'

‘She's pulling the string, that's all. Letting me know she's still holding the other end. She didn't want me when she had me – not what I call wanting – but she just can't let go.'

George talking now, letting it all come out, everything he's never told me before. How he went for her quietness, thought she was different, ladylike; found she was just dull, didn't care, went through life in a trance; wouldn't think of a child, but let him take his occasional satisfaction till shame turned him off and he couldn't any longer. Now she was bleeding him dry of every penny she could, living in that expensive mortgaged house, never lifting a finger to provide for herself, just hanging around till he couldn't imagine what she did all day, what she thought about, how she passed her idle life: a kept woman with no obligation to provide his pleasure.

‘She knew where I was. She'd get it out of the old man. He'd soften when she pleaded with him. He'd like us back together. Separation and divorce, they're all against his grain. I can't make him see what she was doing to me. She wasn't unfaithful, didn't drink too much. She liked money but she kept things going in a fashion. Why couldn't I make the best of things, look at people who had real troubles? Well, in twelve months' time I'll be legally free. And in the meantime I'm not going to let her spoil this.'

‘All the same, it won't look very nice, will it? Your wife taking an overdose while you're abroad with your fancy woman?'