The Men and the Girls (11 page)

‘Nearly there, sir,' the driver said.

Hugh looked out of his window at the landscape which had abruptly turned from being a nondescript succession of fields and bungalows to being a manicured series of small green hills and curved yellow sandpits.

‘Cost millions,' the driver said proudly. ‘Best course in the Midlands. All-weather greens, club house with jacuzzi and gym, you name it. Those bunkers are filled with sand brought in from Saudi Arabia.'

‘Is Saudi sand better than our sand?'

The driver looked shocked. ‘'Course, sir. They had to fly it in. It wasn't just dug up at Bournemouth.'

The car turned in between curved walls ending in huge stone gateposts crowned with lions holding shields. Chiselled stone tablets pronounced, ‘Rapswell Golf and Country Club. Members Only'.

‘There's a waiting list of hundreds,' the driver said. ‘Half Birmingham wants to get in.'

The smooth drive was edged with smoother verges, the latter protected by a spiked chain looped between short, varnished posts.

‘It looks very tidy,' Hugh said.

The driver said reverently, ‘I tell you, Mr Hunter, it's the last word.'

Outside the club house, a vast verandahed structure which would have looked perfectly at home in Texas, the club chairman and committee waited in violent agitation. The scheduled golfing star had been stricken by a gastric virus and had cried off only an hour before. They were in despair. They had telephoned every substitute they could think of, but no-one was available at such short notice, no-one, that is, of any distinction. They clustered round Hugh, almost pawing him in their anxiety and disappointment.

‘Well,' Hugh said. ‘You will simply have to make do with me.'

‘Mr Hunter,' the Chairman began. ‘Forgive me but—'

‘Why not?' said Hugh, smiling at him. ‘Why not? I'm game for anything. I've never played golf in my life, but I've been performing for over thirty years.' He waved to the television cameras waiting at the edge of the group. ‘Morning, lads!'

One of the cameramen, who knew him, waved back. The committee looked at one another.

‘You haven't a choice, really,' Hugh said. ‘You've half an hour to kick-off. I'll carry it, I promise you, I'll open this club like no club has ever been opened before. Which of you is going to give me a golf lesson, on camera, that is? Then we'll do a tour of the facilities. I'll have a wallow in the jacuzzi if you like. Anything.' He leaned forward and patted the Chairman's arm. ‘Come on,' he said, ‘trust me.'

George and Edward Hunter, wearing identical dark-blue dressing gowns piped in scarlet, shared a bean bag in front of the television. They were not usually allowed television as late as this, but tonight was an exception because Hugh was appearing on
Midland Miscellany
, the daily round-up of news items from around the region. Behind George and Edward, Hugh and Julia sat on a cream-coloured sofa. Hugh had a tumbler of whisky in his hand; Julia, a glass of white wine diluted with soda water.

The screen filled with some stone writing. Julia read it out. It said, ‘Rapswell Golf and Country Club. Members Only'. Then a voice said that the television personality, Hugh Hunter, had opened the club earlier in the day and there had been a crowd of over eight hundred people. There were pictures of a huge, house-like thing, and then some of a room full of sofas and a lot of men standing about holding glasses, and a girl with a lot of teeth wearing a bathing suit under a towelling dressing gown, and then there was Hugh.

‘You took your jacket off!' Edward said reprovingly.

‘I had to,' Hugh said, ‘watch.'

They watched. They saw Hugh being taught how to hold a golf club by a man with a grey moustache. They saw Hugh swing the club at a ball and miss and go spinning about, clowning, apparently out of control, and then fall over. They saw him pick himself up and do it again and land up in the arms of a lady in a red suit who was laughing so much she could hardly stand up herself. Then they saw him flailing away at another golf ball in a sandpit and then trying to kick it nearer the little hole in the middle of the green, and being told off by the man with the moustache, except the man with the moustache was laughing all the time and didn't sound very cross. Then they saw Hugh running into the huge building chased by a crowd of people, and jumping into a sort of enormous bath, and then the camera got faster and faster and Hugh went scampering in and out of rooms, pursued by all these people, and there was very loud, very fast music and suddenly there was a great banging chord in the music and the camera stopped dead on Hugh, flopped out in an armchair, with his eyes crossed. The twins cheered and squealed and fell off the bean bag.

‘I have to tell you,' Hugh said to Julia, ‘I was an absolute wow.'

‘I can see—'

‘They want me to go back and host the Christmas dance.'

‘Will you?'

‘They doubled my fee, you know. I could bear the Christmas dance for another double fee.'

‘Oh Hugh,' said Julia, taking his hand and smiling at him.

‘Long ago, before you were born, I did that kind of thing in a pantomime at Kidderminster. I'd forgotten I could.' He leaned forward towards the rolling, giggling twins. He felt tremendously happy. ‘Well, then. Was I funny?'

‘Yes!' shouted Edward. He scrambled to his feet and began to tear round the room. ‘This is you, this is you, this is you!'

George joined him. A lamp, its flex caught by their flying passage, tottered on its table.

‘Stop it!' Julia said, but she was smiling.

‘Here's you!' George yelled, leaping into an armchair and scattering cushions. ‘Here's you in that bath!' He collapsed on his back and kicked his legs about.

‘Amazing,' Hugh said, watching him, holding Julia's hand, ‘amazing, isn't it, to be paid six hundred pounds and a case of champagne for doing exactly that?'

‘But they loved you, you can see that, they loved you.'

‘He looked away for a minute and then took a gulp of his whisky.

‘Yes,' he said. He sounded pleased and confident. ‘Yes, they bloody well did.'

Six

Mark Hathaway bought Kate a
cappuccino
with grated chocolate scattered on the foam. He wore blue jeans and a black jersey of indefinable elegance and he looked, to Kate, like a French film star. He also looked young. His age worried Kate; he might turn out to be younger than she.

He said, sitting down opposite her, ‘You look terrific.'

‘Could we,' Kate said, ‘start with a more ordinary conversation?'

‘Like what?'

‘Like details about ourselves.'

‘Specification?'

‘If you like.'

‘Right,' he said, grinning. ‘Five-foot-ten inches, eleven stone, and thirty-two. Born in Hereford, chorister at the Cathedral, minor public school, Oxford, teacher training college, more Oxford, single. Father dead, mother still living, one brother married with two children. Salary adequate, prospects ditto. Restless. Your turn.'

Kate swallowed. ‘Thirty-six, single, daughter of fourteen, born in Oxford, educated at a comprehensive in Oxford, no further education, no professional qualifications. Both parents living, but hardly see them because my mother is a Catholic, and disapproves of the fact that I've lived with someone for eight years and haven't married them. Two older brothers, one in London, one in the North. Five foot-three and seven and three-quarter stone. Restless.'

‘Wow,' Mark said. He looked at her. She drank a mouthful of her coffee and looked back.

‘Of course you know the bit I'm most interested in,' Mark said.

‘My living with James,' Kate said, without coquetry.

‘Yes. Eight years. It's like a marriage.'

‘I know.'

‘Why haven't you married him?'

‘I never thought it would be right.'

‘Right? What kind of right? Morally right? Emotionally right? Appropriate?'

‘All that,' Kate said. ‘Everything.'

‘And you still don't?'

‘More than ever, just now.'

‘Thank God for that.'

‘He's much older than me. Twenty-five years older than me.'

‘Lord. Like a father. Don't you—' He paused, then he said, ‘Don't you miss being with someone young, someone your own age?'

‘I don't know,' Kate said. ‘I haven't been, not for eight years. I've just been with James.'

‘Am I allowed to ask if you're in love with him?'

‘I was.'

‘And now?'

‘You can't ask any more,' Kate said, ‘I don't know you.'

‘Then I'll tell you about me, shall I, to help things, to help you to know me?'

She looked at him. He was smiling but his eyes looked anxious, almost pleading.

‘All right.'

‘I didn't really want to teach,' Mark said, ‘but I couldn't bear to be away from Oxford either, and you know what Oxford is, what a bullying kind of place, and stuffed with education. I've got a little house at Osney and I let a couple of rooms in it, and I have this nice enough job. The girl you saw me with was an affair of the loins rather than the heart – I've hardly ever been in love, only once, perhaps, several years ago. I like jazz and the cinema and cooking and now I like red-headed women.'

Kate smiled at him. ‘I can't reciprocate. I haven't got a neat little catalogue like that.'

‘I don't want you to. I'd rather find out. In time.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Which I've now run out of.' He looked at her. ‘I have a half-day on Monday. Can I see you on Monday? Did I pass the coffee test?'

She hesitated. He stood up and pulled on his coat, and then bent over her for a moment.

‘Come on,' Mark said, ‘come on, Kate. Take your fingers out of your ears and hear the call of the wild.'

Kate caught a bus out to North Oxford. She hadn't been to Mansfield House for over a week and her conscience was heavy with the knowledge of her neglect. In addition to that, she felt that Mansfield House would set her in order, put her the right way up again, by reminding her of familiar patterns and priorities. She could also talk to Helen.

That Helen was wonderful went without saying. Strong-minded, tireless, colourful, she aroused admiration in those who wanted to help her and terror in those who didn't. She had never had children, and her marriage had foundered under the demands of the causes she espoused, leaving her believing that men, on the whole, simply weren't up to relationships that required them to fulfil a fair half of a bargain. Being sexually energetic, however, a series of lovers passed through her hands, mostly much younger lovers who were apt to wear expressions of stunned acquiescence during their spells of being in favour, but none of them lasted long. After their dismissal, they would hang about Mansfield House for a while, hoping for a glimpse of Helen, or they would waylay Kate or any available inmate, to ask, uh, if, uh, she could help a bit with what went wrong. Kate had learned that, harsh though it was, the kindest thing in the long-run was to tell the truth.

‘Sorry, Matt. She got tired of you.'

‘
Tired
of me?'

‘Yes.'

‘But she doesn't get bloody tired!'

‘Not of Mansfield House, not of her work.'

‘Just me—'

‘Yes, Matt, just you.'

‘What if I got a job?'

‘It wouldn't make any difference. When she's tired of someone, that's it.'

‘Tired of blokes, that is. She doesn't get tired of
women
—'

‘No.'

‘So she's a bleeding dyke.'

‘No.'

‘I give up.'

‘Yes. That's what you've got to do. Give up and go away.'

Kate had grown fond of Helen. She was the kind of woman who can only lead, who is poor at follow-through. Kate didn't mind following through, didn't mind taking orders, being second in command. At least, for five years she hadn't minded that. There was, after all, the luxury in waltzing into Mansfield House knowing that at the end of the day she could waltz out again; indeed, that very knowledge had driven Kate to feel that she must come as often as she could. It was also, without question, something she was good at; she was calm, unbossy, patient in persuading the women to run the refuge for themselves in order to give them the independence to learn to run their own lives again.

‘You don't know what it's like,' the women said, often and often. ‘You don't know how it feels to have such a low opinion of yourself that you never look higher in life for anyone than another woman-beater.'

She didn't know, of course. How could anyone living with courteous, warm-hearted James know, with the thumping blood of experienced recognition, what it felt like to live with such self-disgust, with such nauseating apprehension?

‘It was always a relief when he hit me,' someone once said to her, ‘because at least then the waiting to be hit was over. The waiting was always the worst.'

Nobody had ever hit Kate. Nobody had ever hit Helen either. ‘That's why,' Helen said to Kate, ‘it behoves us to help.' Kate had always agreed, had done more than agree, had felt powerfully that she was thankful to have a chance to help. But now . . . Now, sitting on the bus as it toiled its way up the Woodstock Road, she felt reluctant, not eager. It wasn't that she wasn't sorry for battered women any more, any less than she couldn't see what was excellent in James any more, it was just that she couldn't really feel either. ‘I can get my mind round it,' she said to herself, ‘I just can't get my feelings round it too. I'm not afraid, am I? I'm not afraid of helping Helen? I don't think so. But I am afraid of age, suddenly, I'm terrified of it. I don't know why. All I know is that it makes me draw back from James.'