Break Point (13 page)

"What did you
want, Bobbie?" Tash is looking at me. Well, I think she is. It's
hard to tell the way the light's shining off her
glasses.

"I just needed
someone to talk to. About this old lady I've been working for." I
start telling Tash about Gwen, but editing it, so she doesn't get
to hear about Rosie. Two old flames in one night would be too much
for Tash. Too much for anyone.

As soon as I
can, I get up to leave. I don't know who to look at as I say
goodbye. I can feel Babs watching me, dead intense. I want to feel
her hand on my leg, and her finger tracing under the crotch of me
jeans. I want her to snog me stupid but Tash is watching where my
eyes land, so I look from one to the other, and then turn
away.

*

It's late in
the evening and the heat in my thighs is burning up. It stayed all
through the Wimbledon highlights which Shari and I watched
together. We watched Agassi being interviewed with his sad, kind,
brown eyes, shiny rubber plants sprouting from him. We saw Lindsay
Davenport shrieking with delight again as she shot the winning
point to take her to her first ever Wimbledon final and now Shari's
bending forward in the airing cupboard in her little white uniform
with the lacy trimmings, pretending to sort out towels and sheets.
She's showing me her frilly knickers, on purpose like, and she's
getting me hooked on the game. Gwen is safely tucked up below,
snoring away, and all me defences are weakening. I want some more
stabs at fun and rebellion. I've already played too much of the
over 35's game. You know, the last ten years with June.

Shari
bends forward some more, like the tennis players when they're
waiting to receive. Come
on
, Bobbie, pull them down, come on,
she wants my finger to shake her damp lips,
them
lips, and it's making her groan
...

*

Later, we go
into Rosie's room. None of us is mentioning 'it'. And I'm sort of
glad that in the end Shari didn't touch me the way I touched her.
It means I'm still in control, though my thighs are saying
different.

Shari's
wearing Gwen's blue tutu-thing, it comes down to her knees and it's
got creases where her bust doesn't fill the bodice. Blue gives her
colour. She's uncoiling the stiff new flex of Mrs Parrott's
heavy-duty lamp. "Well,
she
doesn't use it. Here, feel the weight of
it?"

"I wouldn't
like to meet that on a dark night. It's slate or
something."

Shari plugs it
into one of Rosie's sockets and I feel like a naughty kid, sneaking
into a forbidden room. Shari opens up a drawer full of ancient
make-up. Dried up foundation sticks and heaps of lipsticks, some
new and phallic, others worn to a stump. Mascaras with brushes that
won't come out without a tug. Eyeshadows: some never touched;
others crushed to a powder behind hard plastic. Nail varnishes
stuck fast in bottles with worn labels. There's a small mirror over
the sink and Shari massages blusher into her frozen-chicken
cheeks.

Then she says,
"Bobbie? I love you in your Carewise uniform. Put it on for
me."

I go
off and do as she requests, giving her a twirl, and then she leads
me up to the bolt-hole. "I'm going to play one of my favourite
records," she says, and sticks on Olivia Newton John's
Hopelessly Devoted To You.
She sits in Rosie's wicker chair, rustling up the sky-blue
skirts to give me tantalizing views. "Here, you sit in the chair
and I'll sit on your knee," she says and the heat is back again.
"They call me hungry haunches," she says, as I madly unbutton my
uniform but she protests. "Don't take it off, Bobbie. Nudity is
dead unsexy." And so, in the light of the coral lamp, Shari sits on
me knee, on me hand which is right up the blue gauze. "Don't stop,
don't stop," she pants, the small dune of her vulva rocking to a
faster rhythm, until I hear the sound of my own deep gasps, because
Shari's taken me off the hook for a few earth-moving moments, with
a few strokes of her hand down there ...

And now we're
hugging at the net because it's all over, Shari has won.

"So this is
what Girl Power's all about, is it?"

"I
dunno about Girl Power. I'm just an old-fashioned girl," she says,
pulling up her pants and slipping off the tutu-dress.
"
Now
we can be
naked. Naked's pure. Clothes are rude and sexy."

Then she says,
"Stay up here tonight with me, Bobbie."

"D'you want me
to?"

"Yeah course."
She reaches for her fags. "You wanted that too didn't you? With the
frilly pants and all?"

"Well -
yeah."

"You're not
one of those feminists, are you?"

"Hey,
feminists can be sexy, these days. They can screw, they can be into
S & M. The works."

"Can they?
Really?" She hoicks herself up through the skylight and onto the
sloping roof where she sits for her smoke. "Naked is for being
daring. Like sitting out on the roof in the dark."

She's now
standing on the slope of the roof in only her knickers, clambering
around like a spider, doing daring stunts.

"Hey, don't
mess out there, Shari. You're making me right nervous."

"I like dicing
with death," she says, still off the hook. "It's the only thing I
haven't done."

"You're only a
teenager, duck. You shouldn't be thinking such things. Come on
in."

"Lift me down
then, Bobbie."

SECOND
SUNDAY

I open my eyes
in the bolt-hole and there's a pair of early-morning eyes staring
back at me. It's a wonder I got any sleep last night. We were still
awake at dawn and then I started dropping off to the sound of, Love
you, Bobbie. Let's stay together always. Promise. That's why I'm
trying to catch up on my sleep now. And I swear June was lying here
not half an hour ago, eating jam tart, spilling crumbs in the bed,
the slob! We were watching Tash on video which kept blinking, a
home recording. Tash on her thirtieth. I can hear far-off coughing
in the crowds, and there's this God-awful clomping noise round the
edges. Clonking and wheezing like some antiquated machine grinding
into action, and the umpire sits on his high-chair and looks down
at the letter in his hand, the letter to Rosemary, and says, Time
Violation, Warning Miss ... and the machine's getting noisier, it's
making the foundations rock and I'm being shook awake. "Someone's
coming up the stairs, Bobbie!"

My eyes are
still foggy with kip as the bolt-hole door flies open, followed by
a stick, then the lurching bulk of Gwen herself. But how did she
manage it?

"Oh, here you
are!" She stops to get her breath. "I've had no cup of tea yet,
Rosemary, and my commode is filling up. Dear oh dear."

The squares on
me cheeks have come up raw red, I can feel them, like an inflamed
rash. "Sorry. I must have overslept."

"Well, look
sharp. I need about three cups of tea. I feel as if I've climbed
Everest."

I throw on my
dressing-gown. Must get myself back on the hook.

"You're taking
liberties, Rosemary. You're running riot all over the house and
it's got to stop."

I tail Gwen as
she groans back down Everest, complaining every third stair about
her ticker and her knees, and the clock chimes half past the hour.
Half past eight! And why isn't Gwen dead cross about finding two
half-naked females together on the bolt-hole mattress? Perhaps she
just doesn't see what she doesn't want to, and now I'm madly trying
to make up for the lost hour. I bring Gwen breakfast in bed with
the tea mashed just right and a boiled egg done all perfect with
soldiers all slim and buttered and the Sunday newspaper all thick
and folded. But when I mention the letter that we started
yesterday, you know, to Rosemary, Gwen just looks at me
blank.

"Letter
to
Rosemary
? Over
my dead body."

"I'll run you
a bath, Gwen."

"I don't have
baths on Sunday."

"You did last
Sunday, when Elliot came."

"Elliot ... "
She's searching for some sort of reference.

"My brother.
He did the garden, remember?"

"So he did.
And your Gordon called on the mobile telephone."

"Well, how
about a wash then?" Gwen lets me goad her across to the lobby for a
good wash-down. "There, I've run you a sinkful. I'll be right
outside if you need me."

I stand
against the cold radiator, listening to the splish-splash of the
water, the tutting from Gwen, and perhaps I should go inside and
insist on helping her out. But Gwen's now calling me in anyway, to
help her, to squeeze out her flannel, to wash her lower half
because she can't bend down.

As I'm washing
her, I'm wondering what June would make of Shari. Shari and me. A
right motley pair. Though we're not really a pair, we're worlds
apart. It's just a bit of fun, and I quite like Shari in her own
way, she's made me feel sort of young and alive again, like Babs
made me feel.

I step out of
the wash-room while Gwen sits on the toilet, and here comes Shari
now, her hair tied up, all immaculate, ready to work.

"I'm the
weekend servant girl," she says. "You go back to bed and I'll bring
you up your breakfast."

*

Shari brings
up a tray to the bolt-hole, with doyleys, a teapot and egg inside
knitted cosies, and a pink rose in a vase, fresh from the garden.
She does a curtsey and lays it before me.

"Your
breakfast, ma'am."

"What are you
like?"

"D'you think
I'm mad?"

"Barmy."

"Barmy about
you."

"Shari, I'm
... "

Shari raises
her hand. "It's Finals' Day, ma'am. I'll run your bath and lay your
clothes out in your chamber. What will you wear today, ma'am? It
has to be something special." I giggle and Shari says, "What I need
is one of those big jug thingies and then I can pour water down
your back while I'm scrubbing it."

"There's one
on the first floor landing. Jug and bowl. Gwen OK?"

"Gone back to
bed, ma'am, after her wash."

"She's not,
has she?"

"Yeah, and she
noticed her lamp gone. She asked me to bring it back down. It's not
like she even likes it."

"And I thought
we were getting somewhere yesterday and all. We started this letter
to Rosie. Perhaps I'll try again later, after the
Wimbledon."

*

Gwen beats me
to it. She calls for me at half past eleven and I'm sort of twitchy
because the tennis is due to start in half an hour.

"Let's press
on with that letter, Robina. Bring me the pad." She reads over
yesterday's unfinished attempts. "Bring me a pen, would
you?"

"Are your
hands up to writing?"

"I'll
have a go. It'll look better if it's in my own fair hand. It'll
look like I've made the effort, won't it? Now then. I've worked out
what I wish to put. Dear ... Rosemary, " she reads out each word as
she writes it. "I ... will ... come ... straight ... to ... the ...
point." After a while she carries on writing in silence, though her
lips shape the words as I look over her shoulder at the growing
letter.
I am writing to offer you an olive
branch as I feel it's high time we settled our differences. I would
like you to come home one weekend soon. If you are agreeable to
this, please telephone me. Yours, With Love,
Mother
. "There. I've done it. Now then.
I'll give you her last known address. It can only come back to me
if she's moved, can't it?" But I know it won't because it's the
same address that Babs gave me last night. "Now put it in an
envelope for me, Robina, and get it posted off today before I
change my mind."

*

I rush
upstairs with the letter, still unstamped, because it's time for
Wimbledon. First they're having the Women's Finals, then the Men's
(followed by Doubles). I'm off duty and I'm going to try and switch
off to Gwen who's Shari's responsibility today.

Shari looks at
my face all flustered with the red patches. "Sit down, Bobbie, and
I'll put the television on for you."

"Gwen wants me
to post this."

"I'll do it.
What is it?"

"A letter to
Rosie. I can't believe she wrote it."

"I'll put a
stamp on and post it for you. I've got to nip out for something
anyway."

"You're a
star."

I look at the
telly and feel that thread of sadness because in a few hours it'll
all be over till next year. But I'm not watching it next year, am
I? This is my last binge I said. Shari hoovers around my feet, she
wants the carpet all manicured and nice for me, but what am I going
to do next week without the tennis or Belvedere Road? Because I'm
packing my bags tomorrow, Shari or no Shari. OK, so Shari's reached
the climax of the tournament but who knows what happens to them
afterwards?