The Lives of Women (16 page)

 

She listens now to the morning chorus of car engines: the smug purr of the professionals; the rat-tat of all the in-betweeners; the chug of those cars that work hard for a living – Mr Jackson's station wagon, Mr Tansey's showroom specimen. Mr Ryan's car with the cartons of stationery stacked neatly inside. And Jilly erm-ermming them all on their way.

Soon Mrs Ryan will be wheeling Jilly out to the patio. Not long after that, she will be settling herself down at the patio table, her teapot and toast, her last night's newspaper.

She wonders if Mrs Ryan, as she turns over a page, ever glances down at the broken fence at the bottom of the garden and waits for it to tilt.

Elaine takes the usual few seconds then to imagine herself
getting up, throwing on her dressing-gown and going down her own garden path and then coming up the Ryans' garden with an excuse already tumbling out of her mouth. Except there is no excuse. Mrs Ryan knows well where she's been all this time: she's been going to mother-and-daughter afternoons, she's been wearing make-up at the Hanleys' garden party that Agatha's mother couldn't be bothered to come to in the end. She's been sunbathing in back gardens, practising her smoking skills and going out places; she's been talking and talking and talking – to friends, to boys, to complete strangers. She's been learning how to fit in.

 

She decides to stop thinking about Jilly and Mrs Ryan. Pulling her journal out from under the bed, propping herself up with her pillows, she considers the cars of the neighbourhood.

Out of all the houses around, only two of the men don't own cars. Mr Owens who ‘only' works in a shop in town – as she's often heard it said. And Mr Preston who has a withered arm and can hardly be expected to hold onto a steering wheel. The third non-car man is Mr Slater but, as he is retired, he is excused.

Preston and Owens live facing each other on the right-hand curve of the cul-de-sac. They take the same bus to work every morning, yet never walk to the stop together – one always leaving a little behind the other, as if by prior arrangement. She knows this has something to do with cars, or maybe the shame in the lack of a car. Cars are significant in this estate – she has always known that. Cars are manly possessions.

And out of all the houses around, only three of the women own
their own cars: the newlywed nurse who lives near the village; Mrs Tansey whose husband is a car dealer; and Mary Hanley from across the way. Dinky, sweet-smelling things that zip around corners and make her think of powder-puff boxes on wheels. It is generally accepted that Mrs Shillman could have her own car if she so wanted, but as her husband is usually picked up in an embassy car or else he's away, she gets to use his car almost as much as he does.

Other women can, and sometimes do, drive, but only if a husband is not using his car and only at his convenience. In Mrs Donegan's case to go to the supermarket on Saturday mornings or to run her children to music classes. And in Mrs Caudwell's case to clean her mother-in-law's house every Sunday, bring her weekly groceries and a fresh change of sheets.

Maggie Arlow also has her own car: a long, low affair from Sweden, dented all over and muck-caked at the bottom which the men regard as something of a disgrace. But Maggie is not of the estate as such and so lives by different rules.

And now there is Serena.

Serena refers to her car as a nervy little pony although it's not all that small – just smaller than the sort of car she is used to – and it's only really nervy when she jerks on the gear stick – something else she needs to get used to. Serena's car, like herself, smells of jasmine with an occasional slash of turpentine.

The house gives off a similar scent – jasmine and turps in varying degrees. Upstairs is more jasmine; downstairs more turps. In the dining room where she paints her pictures, the air is clogged with it.

‘I'm not calling it my studio just
yet
,' she said to Elaine, at the first of the mother-and-daughter afternoons. ‘I'll call it my studio when I've managed to finish one Goddamn picture that's worth the price of the paint.'

 

Agatha, Elaine, Rachel and Patty: Serena calls them her four little heartbreakers. Although so far none of them – apart from Patty – appears to have caused so much as a hairline crack on any heart in the neighbourhood.

Patty is different. And that, as Rachel Shillman points out, is the crux of the matter. She is a novelty. ‘I'm not saying that Patty isn't attractive.' Rachel then adds, ‘And no, I am
not
jealous. Although obviously I'd prefer to be walking around with her figure than this… whatever this is that I have to cart around with me.'

When she says this, she pulls two big handfuls of fat from out over her jeans, then lets them spring back into place.

 

As it turns out, Patty is almost nineteen years old, which Rachel says, from the boys' point of view anyhow, just adds to the attraction.

Karl Donegan's spots seem to swell up at the sight of her, and the eyes on Jonathan – as the boy with the tired eyes turns out to be called – glisten with sudden light.

Paul is forever trying to get her to talk to him, complimenting her New York clothes and asking endless questions about what it's like to live there.

She answers his questions like she answers most questions, with a shrug, unless the question is very direct and then she'll snap it straight back.

‘So what about your dad?' Paul asks her.

‘What about him?'

‘Why isn't he here?'

‘They're divorced.'

‘Oh? And where does he live?'

‘Right now?'

‘Yes, now.'

‘New York.'

‘And he didn't always?'

‘Didn't always what?'

‘Live there – you said
now
as if he lived somewhere else.'

‘Oh right. California.'

‘Is that where you lived before?'

‘Sometimes.'

Agatha says, ‘You know, Patty, listening to Paul trying to get you to talk, it's like he's following you through a big house and you're slamming door after door in his face.'

When she says this Patty just gives one of her half-smiles and shrugs. Then Elaine has to tell Agatha – ‘She smiled and shrugged' – in case Agatha thinks Patty is ignoring her.

 

Patty is the only girl in the neighbourhood who would be allowed to have boys in her house without supervision, but she never asks them inside. When they knock on the front door, she comes out
and leans on the door frame. When she gets bored listening to them, she goes back inside.

Her mother calls out, ‘Would the boys like a Coke or something?' And she shouts over her shoulder, ‘No, Mom, they're fine.'

One day, when there happened to be only Elaine and Patty in the back of the car, Serena said, ‘Oh look, there's Paul, he looks a bit lonesome, let's ask him along?'

And Patty said, ‘Oh nooooo, Mom let's
not
.'

 

Agatha says: ‘The boys are too young for her that's why she's no interest.'

‘Too young for her maybe – but what about us!' Rachel yells and flings herself back on the sofa.

 

When the girls are lying on Patty's back lawn, the boys sometimes come out to Paul's back garden, next door. First there will be the sound of their voices through the wall. Then a few jokes are lobbed over the top. Paul's head might appear, followed by his body, and then Karl and Paul and Jonathan will be sitting on top of the wall, swinging their legs and talking down.

They do this a few times before they begin dropping down into Patty's garden and sitting on the lawn with the girls.

One day this happens when Paul is on his own. Patty looks up from the pillow she's made of her folded arms. ‘What are you doing here?' she asks him.

‘I just…'

‘I don't want you in here right now,' she says.

‘You're joking?' he says, his face becoming uncertain and then turning bright red.

‘Why would I be joking? If I wanted you here, I would have invited you over.'

 

Elaine wonders if that's what she might expect when she gets to Patty's age, a sort of sophisticated world weariness.

‘You mean a general not give a fuckiness about anyone or anything,' Agatha says.

‘Well, I call it plain ignorance,' Rachel says. ‘I mean, to speak to Paul like that. It was just
awful
. We should have all left with him. And I would have done, only I was paralysed with embarrassment. One thing's for certain, he will never,
ever
show his face near her again.'

But the next day, Paul's face was back again, grinning over the top of the wall.

 

Elaine watches Patty and thinks she is like a cat, spending hours on the back lawn, following the heat of the sun with her army sleeping bag which she spreads on the warmest spot in the garden. Sometimes she'll turn over on her stomach and read and then she might actually move, swinging the lower part of one leg from the knee.

The sleeping bag belonged to her father when he was young and in the army.

‘He fought in the war?' Paul asks.

‘In more than one,' Patty says.

‘Did he kill people?' Rachel asks.

‘What do you think?' Patty says.

 

She never sits at a table and eats a meal like anyone else, but carries her food around with her: a hot dog eaten in her hand as she walks up the road; a sandwich brought up to her bedroom; a bowl of cereal at two in the afternoon as she walks down the back garden. A bag of popcorn sitting on the wall in the evening, when most people are at home eating their dinner. And one Friday night when she was in Elaine's house, she opened the fridge door and began drinking the Sunday-morning orange juice straight from the carton, nearly giving Elaine's mother a heart attack.

Patty really only comes alive when she's playing tennis or riding a horse. Or when she gets involved in one of her deep, meandering conversations that Elaine can never quite follow. She goes to bed in the middle of the night and gets up in the middle of the day. She often looks like someone who is only seconds away from falling asleep.

Serena says that's because of her relaxed disposition.

Elaine's mother says it's because she's a spoilt, lazy lump.

Paul says it's because she's a really deep thinker.

Agatha says it's those dickie cigarettes she's been smoking with the stable lads in Arlows.

Sometimes when she's finished painting for the day, Serena will come to the back door in bare feet. She'll stand for a while, taking gulps of fresh air as if she's smoking an invisible cigarette, then call out, ‘I'm going out in ten minutes – be ready or be left behind.'

If anyone is missing – and it won't be Elaine – Serena will tell Patty to go call them. ‘I don't want to leave any of my heartbreakers out,' is what she'll say.

Rachel is absent most because she has to babysit: days when their ‘girl from the country' is off or when Mrs Shillman has to go to a function or maybe is at the golf course giving Elaine's mother golf lessons.

‘Lessons in how to drink, more like!' Rachel shouts out one day, making everyone laugh except for Elaine.

If Elaine's mother is out with Mrs Shillman then, when they come back from their drive, Elaine will usually call around to keep Rachel company before it's time to go home.

Rachel says, ‘You don't have to feel bad. If it wasn't your mother she was out with, it would be somebody else. She hates staying in, that's all. She hates being a housewife. She hates having kids. She thinks we hold her back. There's no need to look so shocked – that's just the way she is.'

Agatha is sometimes missing too – afternoons when she has to go out with her aunt or evenings when she says she's too tired. But Elaine is a constant. She is there every day of the week from the moment she sees the first sign of life across the road: the front door left open to let in the air and let out the turps; or the first twitch of the curtains on the sitting-room window; or the milk bottles lifted from the porch. And it doesn't even matter that Patty is still
in bed, she's happy to talk to Serena, and if Serena needs to go out, or wants to go and paint, Elaine will tidy the kitchen and fold the laundry and just hang around until it's time to call for Agatha, who these days rarely gets up before noon.

 

‘You'll wear out your welcome in that house,' her mother says.

‘They like me being there. And anyway, I'm not the only one.'

‘Well, I don't know how she puts up with it – all those teenagers hanging about. It would drive me insane.'

‘It's not that kind of house,' Elaine says, ‘and we don't just hang around, she takes us out places.'

‘Well, you might tell her that people around here, we like to know where our children are. Yes, we do. And I'd appreciate it if, in future, you could let me know next time she decides to
take you out places
.'