Praxis (18 page)

There were wedding photographs on the mantelpiece. Michael looked handsome, sombre, and well-bred; Colleen lively and pretty. Colleen’s mother wore a hearty felt hat pulled down over her eyes, and Colleen’s father had insisted that his elderly flower-arranging mistress be in the picture. ‘Such a good friend of the family.’

‘You should go back,’ said Colleen. ‘Marriage is sacred.’

‘But I’m not married. I never married him.’

‘You’re as good as,’ said Colleen, with truth. ‘He’s been keeping you all these years.’

Colleen sat with her legs apart, arms clasped over her eight month lump, occasionally gasping and groaning. ‘And it’s not as if Mary was his own. Besides, you can’t just wander round London homeless with Mary; someone will catch up with her and take her away.’

‘She’s mine,’ said Praxis. ‘They can’t.’

‘Not unless you officially adopt her,’ said Colleen primly. ‘And that means being married. Go back home and marry Willy.’

‘Never,’ cried Praxis.

‘I don’t think you’ve given it a fair chance,’ said Colleen. ‘Living in sin is very different from being married. What you need in your life is more commitment, not less.’

At which point Michael loomed through the door, home early from work. His face was white and his eyes glazed: he took to his bed. He had triumphed that day, and sold a Silver Ghost to the nineteen-year-old son of an earl, but at once had started wheezing.

‘Asthma’s a terrible thing,’ said Colleen when she had settled her husband, and he was breathing more easily.

‘So’s envy,’ said Praxis, tartly. ‘He should get a job where he mixes with people less fortunate than himself.’

‘That’s nothing to do with it. Michael despises worldly privilege and wealth.’

There seemed to be little left of the original Colleen. She had become her husband’s spokeswoman.

‘What’s happened to the archaeology?’ asked Praxis.

‘It’s not really practical, is it,’ said Colleen. ‘Though I must say,’ she added, more brightly, ‘I did get interested in tracing trade routes via artefacts. I might go back to it later. But one has to settle down, doesn’t one? All that sleeping around—you can’t think how wonderful it is just to have Michael, and be married and secure. And now the baby. After the baby’s born I’ll make Michael join a tennis club. I expect all he needs is exercise.’

But she spoke without conviction. She looked at Praxis mutely, appealing for help, but Praxis had none to offer. She did not doubt that Colleen still filled the night with the sound of her tears, carefully controlled so that her husband did not hear.

As you start, so Praxis decided, you have a terrible tendency to go on.

Not me, thought Praxis, not me.

Colleen lumbered about the tiny kitchen, washing chipped cups in cold water, wedging herself perpetually between table and cupboard. She did not seem like an object of love but Praxis supposed she was. This at any rate was where love led. Mary watched, open-mouthed.

‘How’s it going to get
out?
’ she whispered later to Praxis.

‘Won’t she burst?’

‘Of course not,’ said Praxis, briskly, but she shared Mary’s fears.

They stayed with Colleen for two nights. A sense of nightmare assailed Praxis.

The welcome inside the house was dutiful, but strained: Colleen’s loyalty was to Michael: her desire to protect him from her former girlfriends in distress quite understandable. The welcome outside the house was non-existent. Nothing familiar met the eye. The London streets seemed strange and the people who thronged through them were indifferent to her plight. How could she ever get the better of this place: get the crowds to part and to acknowledge her?

Willy had made no attempt to get in touch with her, and Praxis was confused. She had expected him to come after her with axe, or writs or reproaches. Instead, there had been silence. Even the sense of having someone to have run from would have been welcome: would have given her some sense of scale.

‘When are we going home?’ asked Mary.

‘I thought we might live in London,’ said Praxis.

‘I don’t like London,’ said Mary.

‘Why not?’

‘You have to sleep on the floor.’

‘Not for long. I’m going to find somewhere lovely.’

‘And what about Willy?’ Mary looked at Praxis with clear, accusing eyes. ‘And what about my friends?’

She sulked: shuffled and whined.

‘You took her on,’ said Colleen. ‘You’re behaving very selfishly. Just because you’re bored…’ Her own eyes were glazed with boredom of late pregnancy.

‘I’ll feel better when it’s born,’ she kept saying, ‘and I can get on with things. It’s just not being able to
bend
.’

But she offered to look after Mary for a day or two while Praxis tried to find somewhere to live.

‘If it’s not too much of a burden,’ said Praxis, falsely. ‘It seems bad to burden you at such a time—’

‘She can do things for me,’ said Colleen, practically. ‘I can sweep and she can use the dustpan and brush.’

Colleen, thought Praxis, where are your dreams now? Your hockey cups and netball trophies: your nights on the downs with the boys?

Praxis, not without reluctance, went to visit Irma and Phillip. Irma would feel sorry for her, she knew; as sorry as she herself felt for poor Colleen. Phillip would patronise her, and the memory of their first encounter would remain between them like some extravagant vase of flowers on a dinner table, preventing the easy flow of conversation and ideas. He would besides, presumably, be on Willy’s side. Whatever Willy’s side was.

‘Phillip’s given Willy up,’ said Irma, loftily. ‘Don’t worry about that. Willy’s of no value to him. Phillip only associates with people who can get him on in his business of improving the world.’

‘Where is he now?’ asked Praxis. Phillip was at work, said Irma, in tones of amazement, as if the activity was bizarre. He sat in a room composing television commercials in preparation for the opening of ITV, the commercial television network set up to rival the BBC.

‘Doesn’t that rather go against the grain?’ enquired Praxis. Willy regarded the arrival of ITV as the death of socialist aspirations. ‘TV commercials,’ said Irma, smirking, ‘by increasing demand reduces capital costs, and thus the consumer benefits and the revolution approaches. Phillip hasn’t joined the system, of course, he’s only infiltrating it. Phillip always has a good argument for doing what he wants to do. They sit in this room,’ said Irma, ‘composing TV commercials, and none of them has ever even read the script of one, let alone seen one. And they call it work and come home tired.’

It was, Phillip had told her, a prime example of the eccentric amateur charm of the English, a proud lack of professionalism, which was presently going to bring the nation to its knees and the revolution nearer.

Praxis had never heard of the revolution.

‘Phillip’s nothing if not clever,’ said Irma, with a curl of her scarlet lips. ‘And always in the forefront.’

Phillip and Irma lived in a high narrow clean house in a crescent of high narrow dirty ones. There were pot plants on the windowsills of Irma’s house. Up and down the street common children played, vulgar women sat on steps, and bored young men mended cars.

‘The area’s bound to come up,’ said Irma. ‘The estate agent thought we were mad, but Phillip knew better.’

The last three words came out spitefully. Was it hate, or habit? Praxis couldn’t make out.

‘Of course we only have the middle floors,’ said Irma. An eighty-five-year old woman lived in the basement: twin brothers of seventy-three had the attic floor. Both had the protection of the law, and could not legally be driven or bribed out.

‘When they die,’ said Irma calmly, ‘at least I’ll have the whole house. I look forward to it. Playing house is all I do have to look forward to. I play Phillip’s L.P.’s very loudly in order to hasten the old folks’ end. In the meantime the twins piss through the ceiling and the old lady craps by the dustbin. Yellow liquid dripped through the ceiling-rose, the other day, on to the table. We were giving a dinner party for one of Phillip’s clients. I laughed.’

Irma trilled her pretty laugh. She had a baby and a girl to look after it, but there was no sign of either.

‘Can I see the baby?’ asked Praxis.

‘What for?’ demanded Irma. ‘It doesn’t say or do anything interesting. It just crawls about, making a nuisance of itself.’ She was expecting another one.

‘I put a knitting needle up me, darling, but nothing happened. I expect the baby will have a hole in the head; like mother, like baby. Of course Phillip’s over the moon. Anything that reduces me, enhances him. I’ve had two abortions. I couldn’t stand another. They come and stand at the bedside in their Harley Street suits and stretch out their hands for the money. In cash. They won’t take cheques, which means somehow I have to get the cash out of Phillip, without letting him know what it’s for. According to Phillip, the more children we have the better. He wants to use them in commercials. Soft as a baby’s bottom, that kind of thing. He says there’s a fortune to be made.’

Irma was by and large indifferent to the details of Praxis’ fate, though she sympathised in principle.

‘Of course you can’t go back,’ she said, ‘to that dreadful smelly little man.’

‘But where can I live? And how? I can’t stay on Colleen’s sofa for ever.’

‘I should think not. I’m sure it’s damp and lumpy, like its owner.’

‘And there’s Mary.’

‘There doesn’t have to be Mary, Praxis. You only choose Mary. We all think you’re slightly dotty. Leave Mary behind with Wee-Willie-Winkie, or send her back to the clergyman’s wife.’

‘She’s like my own child. And she hardly knows the Allbrights anymore.’

‘Well,’ said Irma, buffing her red nails, straightening a picture here, blowing a speck of dust there, ‘I suppose we must all have something to love. Except me, of course. I can do without.’

‘Surely you love your baby.’

‘I leave all that kind of thing to Phillip.’

Irma tripped about her glossy home, on high stiletto heels which marked the parquet floor at every step, head high, middle lightly corseted so that her new pregnancy didn’t show, scarlet lipped, doe-eyed, heavily scented, infinitely angry, infinitely bored.

She turned to Praxis suddenly, tears in her eyes, smudging the mascara on her lower lashes.

‘It can’t go on,’ she said to Praxis.

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Praxis, ‘how it can. Or what it takes to make it stop.’

Irma did not offer Praxis, even temporarily, the shelter of her spare room. Praxis, it was mutely understood by both of them, was neither grand enough, interesting enough, or beautiful enough to occupy it. She had, besides, a bad cold in the nose, and Irma feared lest she catch it.

Praxis was receiving the world through slightly watery eyes and dimmed ears. The rims of her nostrils smarted.

‘You should be in bed,’ said Irma.

‘I haven’t got a bed to be in,’ said Praxis.

‘Well, tucked up on Colleen’s sofa then,’ said Irma. ‘I’m sure she’s glad of company; and the snufflier the better. It’s clearly what she likes. Her car salesman wheezed all through the wedding ceremony. Or do you think she’s just desperate?’

‘I think she loves him,’ said Praxis, and Irma eyed her pityingly, and then took a broom and banged the kitchen floor to startle the old lady in the basement and then ran up the stairs—the price tags, Praxis could see, were still on the soles of her shoes—to the bedroom, to bang the ceiling there and annoy the twins.

‘I don’t think you’ve got enough to do,’ remarked Praxis. ‘Why don’t you go to work?’

‘Because of the mother-baby bond,’ said Irma, calmly enough. ‘Phillip says it is detrimental to the child’s emotional and mental development if the mother goes out to work: and I want no comments from you, please.’

Praxis closed her mouth.

‘Phillip will be back soon,’ said Irma, dismissing her friend, and closing the conversation at the same time.

‘I’m afraid you caught me on a bad day,’ Irma said on the doorstep. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you again and as soon as you’re settled do come round again. It’s no use me trying to help you, I’m hopeless at that kind of thing. I’m only good for entertainment value. Now what you must do, Praxis, is get married to some exciting man with a future, and bring him round to dinner. You’ll have to do something about your clothes, mind you. So long as I’ve known you you seem to have been wearing the same dusty black sweater. Why?’

Because there’s a never ending supply of them at church sales, Praxis could have said, and because if I wore the tight black satin blouse and flounced red Spanish skirt which was my Raffles outfit, you’d know altogether too much about me.

You might even tell Phillip. Praxis reserved Phillip in her mind, as it were, for another occasion.

Praxis met Hilda out of her office. Her sister came down the steps at a quarter to six, brisk and efficient, in earnest conversation with a grey-faced colleague. She motioned to Praxis to wait quietly, finished the conversation and then came over. She was wearing a fur coat in spite of the warmth of the day, but she seemed palely cool, and her brown eyes cold.

‘You should have rung to make an appointment,’ said Hilda. ‘I am going to the opera tonight, and I haven’t much time.’ But she consented to have a cup of coffee with Praxis, in a sandwich bar.

‘I had a phone call from Willy about you,’ said Hilda. ‘I think you’re being very irresponsible. Who’s going to look after the house and who’s going to visit mother if you just walk out like that?’

‘There’s no reason,’ said Praxis, bravely, ‘why it should be me and not you.’

‘I’m the eldest and I’m earning,’ said Hilda. ‘You have nothing better to do. How can I possibly get down to Brighton? He told me to tell you he wants Mary back. He’ll go to the Children’s’ Department if she’s not back by the end of the week.’

‘How can he look after her?’ protested Praxis. ‘He’s out at work all day.’

‘I expect he’ll move Carla in,’ said Hilda.

‘Who’s Carla?’

‘Willy’s girlfriend,’ said Hilda, blandly.

Praxis found her coffee cup trembling in her hand. ‘Willy wants to marry Carla. She’s only a shop-girl but Willy doesn’t mind. He doesn’t come from a particularly good background himself, I suppose. Not like us.’