The Lives of Women (28 page)

‘Doesn't she look like a man?' Brenda Caudwell says under her breath. ‘She looks like that postman – do you remember him, that old pervert with the bandy legs? One time he flashed his mousey at our Peter.'

‘His
what
?' Karl laughs.

‘Well, that's what we call it in our house.'

Agatha asks, ‘Does she? Does she look like the old postman?'

Rachel says, ‘Oh God, yes, she does, shut up, shut up, she'll—'

Maggie is standing in front of them now.

‘What's so funny?' she says.

‘Nothing,' Brenda says. ‘I just want to pay for last week's lessons and to book in for next week.' She hands the envelope to Maggie and then walks around and stands behind her.

Agatha says, ‘I want to pay too but I'm not feeling well today so I won't be able…'

‘You're looking a bit peaky, all right,' Maggie says and lights up one of her French cigarettes.

Behind Maggie's back Brendie Caudwell is making faces. She is imitating Maggie's crabby expression. She has put her hand under the waistband of her jodhpurs and stuck her index finger out through the top of her zip. She is doing a little dance and wagging her finger pretending that it's Maggie's mousey.

Elaine can hear Rachel behind her, trying not to choke. Maggie looks at Rachel's big red face then at Karl, who chews his lip and stares at the ground. Paul has walked off. Elaine is about
to follow him. Then Maggie swings around suddenly and glares at Brenda. There is a split second between her swinging around and Brenda's freezing. Brenda looks at Maggie with a blank, innocent face.

Maggie turns back and asks Agatha if she needs to go to the doctor.

‘No, no,' Agatha says, ‘it's just a bit of a bug or something. I'll be fine in a day or two.'

Maggie finishes her cigarette, throws it down and screws it into the ground with her boot. Then out of the blue, and without even looking at Brenda, she says: ‘And how is that sister of yours doing, Brenda?'

Behind Maggie's back, Brenda stops grinning. ‘Who, June?'

‘You only have the one.'

‘She's fine. Thank you.'

‘Brussels, isn't it? Where she's working?'

Brenda says, ‘Yes, Brussels.'

Maggie turns around and carefully looks at Brenda.

‘Is she putting on any weight over there? I hear the food can be fattening.'

‘No. I mean, I don't know.'

‘Didn't send a photograph or anything?'

Brenda shakes her head.

‘Whereabouts in Brussels is she, anyway? I know Brussels actually; competed there once a few years ago.'

‘I… I don't know.'

‘The address, you must have seen the address, when you write to her and that?'

‘I… I can't remember.'

‘Are you sure it's Brussels at all? It's not somewhere else?'

Brenda gives a slow blink and cocks a cheeky lip at Maggie.

‘I think I know where my own sister is, thank you. Anyway, I better go now, I told my mother—'

‘Sure now – it's not the home for unmarried mothers, you know, out there near the old airport road? The home where they lock you up and make you scrub floors for your sins and then when your baby is born the nuns drag it out of your arms and give it to some couple who pretend it's theirs. And then you come on home with the spirit kicked out of you, and everyone thinks you're just a bit thick because you don't appear to have learned much French in Brussels or wherever the fuck it was you were pretending to be.'

Brenda's face is white; her mouth begins to wobble. Maggie throws the envelope on the ground at her feet. ‘You tell your mother from me, keep her money. Keep it for her grandchild. And if I ever see your snide little face here again, I'll punch it.'

Then Brenda runs off, and Maggie goes back into her house.

 

They come out of the yard without looking at each other; without saying a word. Agatha linking Karl, Elaine walking behind Rachel and Paul. Brenda is waiting on the corner by the Townsends' bushes.

‘Is it true?' Paul asks her and hands her the envelope that Maggie threw on the ground.

‘Yes,' Brenda says. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.'

‘Bitch, to say it like that, though, in front of everyone,' Karl says. ‘Fucking old cow.'

‘Poor June,' Rachel says, ‘what will happen to her now?'

‘I don't understand how she found out,' Brenda says. ‘How the hell did she… we were so careful. I'll have to tell my parents. Will I? Will I have to tell them? My father will go mad. He tore the place asunder when June told him she was pregnant. Kicked the washing machine, the fridge. The whole kitchen got it. Oh, fuck June anyway, she's ruined all of our lives now.'

They sit in a row on the Townsends' wall and for a few moments nothing is said until Karl stands up – ‘Jesus, Agatha,' he says, ‘what's wrong?'

Elaine looks down the line and sees that Agatha is crying.

‘Agatha?' she says and gets up. ‘Agatha – what's happened? What's the matter with you?'

‘I'm in trouble,' she says simply, ‘I need your help,' and she puts her arms out to Elaine.

 

13

Winter Present

January

BY THE TIME I
get into town and wander around and get home again, hours have gone by and the light is already fading. I come into the house and there is no Lynette. My father is not in the sitting room. The kitchen door is ajar and I see through the crack the side of his wheelchair. I imagine all sorts: his colostomy bag has burst and he's frantically searching for paper towels to clean up the mess; someone has broken into the house and has dragged him into the kitchen…

I rush into the kitchen and find him calmly positioned by the counter. It's the first time I've seen him in this room since I was a child and it throws me a little.

‘I'm so sorry,' I say, ‘I forgot about the time. Isn't Lynette here? She's supposed to be here, she told me she would be, she
swore
she'd only be an hour late.'

‘I told her to take the day off. Car trouble. She'd to go the bank for an overdraft.'

I note he is dressed and shaved and that there is no smell from his bag.

‘Did Mrs Larkin help you to—?' I begin.

‘I looked after myself.'

Even so, I see Mrs Larkin's paw marks all over the kitchen. Everything has been tidied away; damp teacloths folded at the edge of the sink and her rubber gloves pegged from an overhead utensil rack, so that they hang like cows' udders – a habit that really annoys me.

I wonder if he called her or if she just appeared out of nowhere, as she sometimes likes to do.

The kettle is on, beginning to boil. ‘Is that for tea?' I ask and move towards it. ‘You want tea?'

‘I can manage,' he says, giving the wheelchair a deft little turn and reaching out for the kettle. He makes old-fashioned tea, scoops of leaves from a caddy, a scalded pot, a strainer, milk, sugar. Everything laid out and prepared in advance.

‘Oh God, I forgot your newspaper. I'm sorry, I can go back down now and—'

‘It's all right,' he says. ‘Mrs Larkin brought it.'

‘Of course.'

‘Would you like a cup?' he asks and I can't resist the novelty of having my father make old-fashioned tea for me, in the kitchen. In the
kitchen
.

There is a silence in the room although it's not as jagged as I might have expected. Still we could do with a buffer. I look for the
dog and there he is, standing at the glass panel of the back door, looking in at me. He lifts a limp paw and makes three effete scratches on the wooden frame.

‘He's much better now,' my father says, and then niftily glides past me to the door and lets the dog in. ‘Mrs Larkin gave him bread and soup. I think the plainer diet may suit him better.'

The dog comes to me and I try not to fuss too much over him.

‘Hello, Boy,' I say and give his head a couple of cool-handed pats. The dog licks my wrist and then goes to my father, who surprises me by the affection he shows, outdoing me by quite a few degrees – ruffling the dog's head, stroking his back, playing tenderly with his ears.

He turns away, lifts the teapot and pours two mugs of tea. He hands me one and says: ‘Yes, there's another couple of years left in the old dog yet.'

Our eyes catch and I wonder, just for a second, if he may be making some sort of a joke.

‘I bought turbot for dinner,' I say and then look away, because if he has just made a joke, I don't know what to do with it.

‘Ah,' he says, ‘actually, I've already eaten.'

‘Mrs…?'

‘Yes. Stew. A rather big plate of it, I'm afraid.'

He deals with his tea, and I notice he takes only one spoonful of sugar – a spoonful less than I have been giving him for the past few months. Then he lifts the mug with one hand while the other begins reversing his wheelchair towards the door. Once there, he holds the door open himself then, in a three-point turn, leaves the kitchen for the sitting room.

I put the turbot in the fridge and take my mug of tea upstairs. The dog follows.

 

On my dressing table is yet another page torn from my mother's telephone message pad, the pad so old by now it could almost be a collector's item. My mother would have bought this pad when I was very small and she was acting as a sort of secretary for my father – before he could afford an office in town and the salary for a real one. There is something almost childish about the pad, as if it's come from a ‘Let's Play Office' set. I can't bring myself to throw it out but, at the same time, wish Mrs Larkin would stop using it.

On each page there are three lines to be filled in –
Telephone call from: Taken by: Received on:
– and there is a space at the bottom for the message itself.

The message is from Michael. That's all it says: Michael called 2 p.m.

I open the drawer and place it along with the other messages I have received through Mrs Larkin. One from the vet's secretary, three from the bank. One from Lynette. And two from Brenda Caudwell. Brendie's messages are scrunched up into two angry little balls.

I lie on the bed and the dog lies on the rug and cocks an eye at me now and then. I am crying – but so what? Lately I am often crying or on the verge of doing so anyway. It's just something that comes on me and without warning, a bit like the lewd thoughts I can find myself entertaining about some unsuspecting man, often young enough to be my son. It's the hormones, I suppose.
The hormones in reverse. The last splurge before they go tumbling down the hill.

The dog lifts his head and looks at me as if to say – what this time?

He is used to my poor-little-me tears by now. They are never too tragic; no choking sobs or sense that my heart is bursting at the seams. Just a resigned sort of loneliness that, this time, happens to be for Michael. We both know this will pass soon enough.

‘I can't believe he remembered the number. I can't believe he bothered to find me. Again,' I say.

The dog is unmoved; he settles his head back down on his front paws, gives a small contented whine and begins to snooze.

The last time Michael Shillman found me was in New York. He found me before the age of the Internet when, to find someone in New York – someone who didn't want to be found anyhow – you would almost need to be a trained detective.

It was shortly before I went into business with Serena – I would have been about thirty-six, Michael around the thirty mark.

I was working in a small, upmarket French restaurant at the time where, one rung from the top, I was answerable only to the owner.

I had got there by working longer and harder than anyone else and the fact that I was one of the few in the business who wasn't using drugs probably helped too. I held onto that position by being something of an uptight bitch who tolerated slackness in neither work nor behaviour.

One morning the receptionist came into my office and told me there was somebody in the bar area waiting to see me. We'd been recruiting new staff – and the notice had made it clear that the hours for the interview were between four and six in the afternoon. ‘Obviously thinks he can cut ahead of the rest,' I said. ‘Let him come back, or let him wait.'

He waited.

The Michael Shillman I remembered was a toothy boy who seemed to be soldered onto his racing bike; his shoulders forever pushing into the distance, his head craning side to side. He passed messages between myself, Agatha and Rachel. He kept watch while we raided his parents' cocktail cabinet or while Rachel stole money and cigarettes from her mother's purse. He was quick-witted, had an innocent face which kept the adults at bay and was a boy who didn't mind breaking the rules for the sake of adventure.

I came out of the office and thought, there's a good-looking waiter looking for work – let's hope his resumé looks as good as he does. But it was little Michael Shillman, my friend's younger brother, maybe five or six years younger than me. Except he was now big Michael Shillman, and handsome and dark and tall like his father, and funny like his sister and clever like his mother, and I had always liked him in a big sisterly sort of way – until I saw him standing there beside the bar grinning at me, and the big sister part took a jump out the window.