Flying Under Bridges (29 page)

‘You
did when you came home,’ laughed Kate.

Inge
bowed to her friend. ‘I am the Queen of the Grump.’ She handed Eve her drink.

‘I
shouldn’t really,’ Eve said feebly. ‘Not at lunchtime.’

Kate
looked at Inge and replied, ‘You never know how many lunchtimes are left.’ Eve
didn’t know, so she bumbled on asking Inge why she was grumpy.

Inge
plumped down next to Kate and smiled at her old friend. ‘Oh, it’s nothing.
Bloody press driving me mad. Keep asking the wrong questions.’

‘The
wrong questions? What do you mean wrong?’

Kate
looked at Inge and nodded for her to go on. Inge smiled and shrugged her
shoulders.

‘It’s
nothing. They want to know why I never married and I never know what to say.’

‘Tell
them the truth,’ replied Eve in all innocence.

Inge
blushed, but looking straight at her oldest friend said quite clearly ‘I can’t,
Eve. If I tell them I’m gay they’ll take me apart.’

Gay.
Eve was sure no one had mentioned the word to them at school. She thought about
Susan Belcher and the cobblestones and how innocent it had all been then.

‘Right,’
she said, and they carried on with their drinks. Perhaps it should have been
uncomfortable but it wasn’t. Inge wasn’t Inge Holbrook to Eve. She was her
friend. She was the girl who had carried triumph as captain of the netball team
while Eve stood at the side and cut up the oranges for the break. She now knew
that Inge, her friend Inge, was a lesbian.

When
she left she kept saying it to herself. She didn’t think it was a very nice
word — lesbian. Eve looked down the street at the other houses on the estate
and realised the place could be full of them and she wouldn’t know. It had
never occurred to her. She had thought you could tell by looking but you couldn’t.
She had seen them both wearing skirts sometimes. Kate and Inge were a lesbian
couple. She wondered how that worked with no man. Who was in charge? Then she
wondered if that meant she thought Adam was in charge, which was silly. There
was no reason why Kate and Inge couldn’t manage perfectly well. You don’t need
a penis to take out the rubbish. What was it that had made Inge who she was?
Had she had some bad experience with a man? That couldn’t be enough. If all the
women who had bad experiences with men became lesbians, there’d be a lot more
of them.

John
was just running up to the house when Eve came out. He saw her leaving Inge’s
and waved as he got to the driveway.

‘Eve,’
he called.’ ‘Looking lovely.’

She was
looking wet.

‘Isn’t
that Inge Holbrook’s house?’ he asked, looking across the drive. Eve nodded. ‘Quite
the celebrity. Not your sort I would have thought.’

Eve
didn’t feel like a chat. ‘What are you doing running in this weather?’ she
asked, looking at his tracksuit soaked in sweat and rain.

‘Every
day without fail. Good for you, you know. If I have the time I run three or
four hours a day.’ He patted his flat stomach. ‘I’m adding ten years to my
life, you know.’

‘Maybe,
but you are spending them running.’

John
frowned at her reply for a brief second and then laughed. ‘Very good, yes, very
good.’ The laughter stopped as if turned off and he was serious again. ‘Listen,
Eve, I’m so sorry about the whole blood thing. I do think it’s got out of hand
but I hope you know I was just trying to be helpful. I had no idea people would
react the way they have.’

‘You
could stop your wretched club passing silly motions,’ Eve said irritably.

John
took her hand and held it as he looked her straight in the eye. ‘Oh no, I can’t.
I may think they’re wrong but the men need to make these decisions for themselves.
It’s because men today feel so powerless that we need groups like the
Centurions. It’s done William so much good. You wouldn’t want me to take that
away from him, would you?’ Before Eve could answer he added, ‘Can I borrow a
towel?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m
working with Adam, and I thought I’d just freshen up first.’

‘Right.
In the airing cupboard.’

John
went into Eve’s house to shower.

Eve
decided to walk to the shop to get some exercise. The rain had passed and it
was turning into a nice afternoon. The route into town meant she passed the
Hoddle house. Horace and Betty had the largest house on the estate. It was
built in a hacienda style and was apparently identical to their one in Spain.
Perhaps having two houses exactly the same stops you getting confused in the
night. Mrs Hoddle was in the front garden cleaning out her bird bath. It was a
massive affair. More of a bird health spa really. She was very particular about
it.

‘Afternoon,
Betty,’ Eve called cheerfully. It was summer and it was sunny. Apart from being
fat, Eve did feel quite cheerful. The town would get over its obsession with
blood and they were doing very well with raising the money for the pool. She
thought about Inge and Kate.

‘Ah,
Eve,’ Mrs Hoddle muttered, while her rubber-gloved hands scraped away at any
suggestion of actual bird occupation in the bath. Soap suds flew from her
fingers.

‘Bird
bath looks good.’

‘Yes,’
she said, pleased. ‘Well, it’s the least I can do.’ That in fact turned out not
to be true. Providing a bath for passing flocks of feathered friends was the
most she could do. She stood up and snapped shut the lid on her Jeyes cleaning
fluid. ‘Eve, I shan’t be coming to the shop today.

‘Why?
Are you ill?’

‘No.
Horace and I have had a long talk and I just can’t support you on this any
more. I love this town and it’s too big a risk.’

‘Look,
the blood thing has got out of hand—’

‘The
blood is merely a side issue, although why people can’t say where their own
blood is to go… Have you seen this?’ She held up a leaflet. The world had
gone leaflet mad. Eve thought for one horrible moment it was yet another one of
Adam’s. ‘It was sent to Horace by someone from Dover. They know about refugees.
It’s where they sneak in, you know,’ she said darkly.

The
leaflet was entitled Dover the Land of Plenty and subtitled Refugees — 33
reasons why we should send them back and close the door.

Betty
stabbed at the brochure. ‘Look at Number thirteen and have another think,’ she
exclaimed.

Reason
13: Pregnant refugee mothers only want brand new equipment for their offspring.
Are these infants entitled to hold a British passport to success now that they
have been born in our local hospitals?

‘Betty,
how many babies can there be? Isn’t it better that they’re born here with a
chance than in some country where their parents might get beaten up?’

Betty
tapped the leaflet again.

Reason
21: No medical checks on refugees — with the knowledge of their promiscuity
and selling sex for money, who is to answer for the epidemic of venereal
disease that will undoubtedly become rife.

Betty
jerked her head up and down like a bird with a particularly resistant worm. ‘Do
you want to run the risk of one of those diseases?’

‘Well,
no,’ Eve replied, ‘but then I wasn’t planning to sleep with any of them.’

Mrs
Hoddle looked at Adam’s wife. ‘These are facts, Eve, and you can’t get away
from them.’

‘I don’t
know what a fact is any more. My son says there are facts but we forget what
they are because all facts are interpreted.’

Betty
gave a loud sniff at the very idea and turned on her heel to go back inside. A
small bird flew down and landed on the edge of the bath. It stooped for a
second and then flew away. Betty had forgotten to refill it.

Pe Pe
was coming up the road in her convertible BMW. Her model good looks and radiant
smile in the flash car could have been an advert for success. This was a woman
who never had a panty-pad that leaked. A woman whose teeth had little cartoon
stars on them when she looked in the mirror.

‘Eve,
hi!’ she beamed. ‘I was just coming to see you.’

‘Pe Pe,
how long have I known you?’

‘I
suppose it must be about four years.’

‘Do you
ever frown?’

‘I can’t.
Hop in.’

Eve
didn’t feel like going to the shop any more but she didn’t hop in. She wobbled
in and they drove off. Eve had a vision of Barbie with her Mrs Potato Head
friend.

Mother
was calling out when the women got in. ‘Who ha! Who ha!’ Eve tried to make her
comfortable while Pe Pe just stood smiling in the doorway.

‘Who
ha, who ha!’ yelled Mother. Eve knew she wanted the commode but she wasn’t
really concentrating. As Eve moved to pull her mother up under her shoulders,
Claudette the cat launched from nowhere. It was hard to know who was more
shocked, Eve or Mother. The old woman weed on Eve’s new trainers and blue
trousers. It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t see a thing. Her glasses had been
in her handbag and were covered in horseradish. Eve thought about getting her a
plastic handbag to put food in. She thought about putting her in a home, like
the woman at the party had said. She thought about a lot of things.

Suddenly
Mother stopped her howling and looked straight at Pe Pe. She pointed at her and
said quite clearly, ‘Baby.’ It was the first real word she had produced since
the stroke. Neither Pe Pe nor Eve knew what to say.

Afterwards
Eve sat in the kitchen just wanting to weep. Pe Pe sat looking at her
sister-in-law.

‘Come
on, Pe Pe, you’re the Queen of Self-Help. I have a mother who keeps gravy in
her handbag and has managed to pee on my entire wardrobe. I have a kamikaze cat
who wants at the very least to maim me and I am living in a town where everyone
is either about to be mugged, burgled or infected with VD. What am I supposed
to do? You must have the cure.’

Pe Pe
just sat, smiling. Then slowly, across her smile, tears began to descend from
her eyes. It was bizarre. She looked completely happy, but tears just kept
pouring down. Eve didn’t know what the hell was going on.

‘What
is it? What’s happened?’

‘It’s
definite. William can’t have children. He’ll never have children. We had the
report. I shouldn’t have opened it without him but I couldn’t wait, and now I
just can’t tell him. He won’t cope. He just won’t cope.’

Pe Pe
sobbed, still smiling through her waterworks. It was like a rainbow behind a
waterfall. As Eve debated what to do, John appeared in the doorway wearing
nothing but a towel around his waist. He was young and had muscles you could
bounce pennies off for sport. His hair was newly washed and hung in little damp
curls around his head.

‘Sorry,
thought someone might need help.’ He dripped on the lino.

Pe Pe
gasped for air and carried on smiling.

‘Pe Pe’s
just…’ Crying and smiling Eve wanted to say but she couldn’t. John reached
for a tissue on the kitchen counter and moved towards Eve’s unreal
sister-in-law. Gently, he began to wipe her tears. Neither one of them said a
word and Eve sat there thinking that men and women could probably do without
each other if it were not for the annoying business of reproduction. After a
moment’s mopping, John turned and went back to the rather critical matter, Eve
thought, of putting some clothes on. Pe Pe sat sniffing and then finally went
home without ever asking Eve how she was.

Adam
and John went out to bang on doors when Eve finally went along to the charity
shop in the late afternoon. Eve watched Adam set off. Edenford was not that big
a town. She was sure he must have visited everyone twice.

Eve
arrived at the shop determined to see the Romanian project through but Doris
Turton simply wouldn’t hear of it.

‘I must
say that I am surprised at you, Eve,’ she began. ‘I would think that you of all
people would know that Susan Lithgood was a very religious person.’

‘Well,
yes, but—’

‘These
people, they’re not Christians, are they?’

‘Well,
I don’t know, but—’

‘I
think they may be Muslims.’

‘I don’t
think so.’

‘I don’t
think they want our help. I’ve seen them on the television and they do nothing
to endear themselves to us.’

‘They’re
not panda bears.’

‘They
just want our benefits, that’s all.’

‘I don’t
think anybody popped over here from Romania on a whim. They need our help. We’ve
got room. What about the old swimming baths? We all agreed they would be
perfect.’

‘They’ve
been sold,’ said Emma the Knit.

‘They
can’t have been. Adam promised—’

‘The
swimming baths are not the point,’ said Doris, sniffing. ‘This is a Christian
town with a Christian tradition and we are not about to have that disrupted by
people who want to come here and sit outside WH Smith with their hands out.’

Eve
left and bought a packet of light Silk Cuts, but after she’d smoked two she
threw up in the sink. She wiped her face and went to sit with her mother. Mrs
Cameron stared out of the window as Eve tried for the kind of conversation they
had never managed to have.