She's Leaving Home (59 page)

‘You have to accept, Jerry,’ she introduced a note of solemnity as she drew the lounge curtains, ‘that this is a decent house and I am a nice girl. A virgin, and I intend to be a virgin on my wedding night. I am not an easy lay, or a tart. Not like some I could name.’

Jerry lounged back on the pale blue sofa. ‘Like who? Come and sit here and relax.’ On a sudden thought he undid his laces and slipped off his shoes. The session could get gymnastic and
sweaty. It would not do to leave scuff marks on the furniture.

‘Like – oh, like that Helen Majinsky. You used to fancy her, didn’t you? Too hoity toity today. But I’m certain she’s sleeping with that GI of hers. Same as her Dad’s cousins. My mother said, one twang of an American accent and the Majinsky knickers were off. My mother is a bit vulgar but I bet she has a point.’

Roseanne had stopped fussing about the room and seated herself beside him. Jerry ran his fingers up the fleshy thigh until he found the skin above the stocking top. At his touch it reacted satisfyingly into goosebumps. She was not entirely immune. ‘Umm, sounds like a great suggestion to me.’

‘The question is,’ Roseanne ruminated as she allowed him to fiddle unproductively with the buttons of her blouse, ‘what are we going to do about it? It demeans all our friends to have that – that
looseness
going on. She doesn’t think any of our boys are enough for her. Don’t you think we should tell somebody? Older, I mean?’

‘Yeah, if you say so,’ Jerry concurred as he nibbled at her neck. Its smoothness was surprisingly attractive, with a clear view of breasts with the same yielding curve. With a quick nip he sucked in the hollow of her shoulder-blade and left a purple mark. ‘You’ve got some explaining of your own to do now. I’ve given you a love bite. Now let me get this straight – how far will you let me go this time?’

The city centre pub was dark, cramped and very dirty. On the planked floor scattered sawdust absorbed spills and expectorations. Customers leaned heavily on the bar, their elbows in patches of wet, cigarettes on lower lips, boots resting on brass rails. Disputes flowed freely over the day’s football, insults were traded. The air was a fug.

Helen and Michael squeezed behind a corner table, he with a pint and she with a Coca-Cola. He kept his flyer’s jacket on despite the warmth; one or two customers had been eyeing it.

‘I shouldn’t be in here. Eighteen is the age.’

‘I’m not about to complain. In some states, Helen, it’s twenty-one, and you’d have to show an ID. On liquor the US is more puritan than Europe. That’s why we boys try to be posted over here. Though one day pubs like this’ll sell cold Budweiser, and then you Brits’ll know what beer is.’

‘I don’t mind a lager and lime. That’s a woman’s drink.’

‘You want one?’ He half rose.

She shook her head. ‘No. Let’s talk. It’s so great just to see you.’

‘Especially today. Happy birthday! I’ve a present somewhere.’

He rummaged in his jacket as she watched him, amused and content to be in his company. The gift was wrapped in coloured paper. She unwrapped it and broke into a broad smile.

‘Oh, heavens. Black Magic. Lovely. You shouldn’t have.’

‘Box of chocolates. Not much, I’m afraid. But if I bought you perfume or a slip or something, your mother’d notice. If you’d been free tonight we could have had some fun at the base.’

She knew she seemed withdrawn without her usual vivacity. He would spot it at once.

‘What’s the matter, Helen?’

‘Nothing. Everything.’

‘Go on. Tell me. If I can help –’

‘You can’t but thank you. The next few weeks – I shall go bananas. Certifiable.’ This was the opportunity she had needed. She lifted her drink and swallowed. ‘I chide myself I mustn’t worry, just do my best. I have offers from Manchester and Liverpool universities – both would mean an education, but no escape. I’d be stuck. The rest have come through as refusals – perhaps they think I’m a bit young, or they don’t believe the exam grade predictions. The Oxford rejection really hurt, I must say. On Monday I’ll know whether I’m called for interview at Cambridge. The test papers last
month weren’t too bad – I felt I’d done fairly well. Almost confident, in fact. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘Do you want me to tell you yet again that you’re one smart cookie, and that you’ll do brilliantly? Have courage, have faith in yourself. My God, Helen, what kinda society is it that so squashes you down? It’s as if every other sentence I hear in Britain has “can’t” in it. Americans are joshed for our “can-do” mentality. I didn’t know what that meant till I got here.’

‘I am supposed to conform.’ Helen intended the remark to emerge laconic, dry, but instead it sounded desperate and bitter. She followed the train of reflection out loud. ‘I love my family but I can’t live with their limitations and restrictions on me. I respect religious people like Reverend Siegel but if I stay we’ll start to fight; my disapproval and dislike will grow. I’m scared my belief in God – or in anything – will be wiped out. Like with my father, I suppose.’

Michael said nothing but his expression willed her to continue. A customer carrying two full pint glasses pushed past. Beer spilled in a sloppy puddle on the floor. Helen gazed after the man with a sigh.

‘I love Liverpool and its scousers. Honestly. Our humour and kindness are legendary, yet they make me miserable with their endless moans and their inability to see the virtues of sheer hard work. I do genuinely like most of the people I live with, but they want me to be the same as them, to stay here, ossify. I can’t. And I can’t bear it.’

Michael sipped quietly but did not interrupt.

‘And when I sit there in that interview – if it happens – I’ll have to conform to a whole new set of norms, those set by upper-class Cambridge dons, and I haven’t the foggiest what they are. Will they be snooty and stare down their noses at me? Will they take umbrage at my accent? Will I be anywhere near what they’re looking for?’

Michael was chuckling at her, as if she were talking nonsense. She ploughed on, ‘Oh, Miss Plumb tries to prepare us, but it’s as if we’re studying another planet with misted-over telescopes. Yet if I’m spot on in that one half-hour, this time next year I won’t be sitting in a scruffy pub near the river Mersey but in a panelled dining hall in one of civilisation’s oldest universities. On my way, but Lord knows where.’

‘Will it help if I urge you simply to be yourself? It seems to me you fulfil Aristotle’s maxim to the utmost.’

She sat up, puzzled. ‘What’s that?’

Michael grinned. ‘I’m not claiming to be a classics scholar. But my Pa quoted it to me: President Kennedy often says it to young people when he makes awards at the White House. Let me think. It’s Aristotle’s definition of happiness –
the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
The whole quote is longer and mentions virtue too, but that’s the gist of it.’

She lifted her glass in a mock toast. I like that. It sets out what a person like me should do: firstly use whatever talents I have, not neglect or suppress them, nor pretend I don’t have any, ’cause I have, period. Then aim to use them not merely to the full, which begs the question of what that means, but use them according to the highest external standards. There are absolute measures of excellence – or at least, there’s wide agreement. But those standards keep moving on, don’t they?’

‘Sure. What is excellence? Each age has its own convictions. The next batch reject their elders’ notions, as we are doing over pop music. But in each society there’s a revolutionary genius whose work was condemned as rubbish by the establishment of his day.’

‘Picasso. Mozart, I suppose. Solzhenitsyn today.’ She adored this sort of conversation and strove to match Michael’s parries. It reminded her warmly of the discussions she used to have with her father. Not that she and Daniel had talked much recently. There didn’t seem to be much to say.

‘Michelangelo – used to get into terrible trouble with the Pope. Leonardo da Vinci – died in exile.’

‘Galileo. Darwin, for heaven’s sake – I am supposed to be a scientist. D’you know he finished
Origin of Species
in 1844 but hid the manuscript for fifteen years because he could foresee the consequences? Scientists have always shaken the tree and been bashed on the head by the falling apple. Yet we never give up.’

Michael smiled. ‘Chatter away like that in your interview and you’ll have them eating out of your hand. But keep Aristotle in mind. He taught Alexander the Great, remember, so he knew about getting results.’

‘Thanks. I’ll look the original up at school. Could be very handy. Something’s missing about that maxim, though.’ Head on one side she contemplated her Coke. ‘Let me think: ah, got it. Nothing about
purpose
. It implies that the purpose to which you put your brain is irrelevant. I don’t agree. It’s not enough to be smart. I want to be useful too. We should try to justify our existence. Service to others is a worthwhile objective. That much I’ve absorbed from school.’ The discovery, though pompously expressed, intrigued her; she felt oddly pleased with herself.

‘This time next year I could be in Washington,’ Michael mused. ‘I’ll save up some furlough, tug a few strings and get myself on to the campaign. I’d like to do my bit to get Kennedy re-elected.’

Helen laughed. ‘I can see you taking it up as a career.’

Michael did not laugh in reply. ‘Maybe. Kennedy’s next term could be terrific. He’ll wipe the floor with Goldwater. He’ll gain a much stronger mandate than in 1960 – maybe even a landslide. That’d mean progress with reform, on poverty, on race.’

A door opened, admitting a blast of chill air. A customer at the bar swore crudely, somebody responded similarly and the door banged shut. The streamers of tobacco fumes swirled and settled.

‘As long as foreign policy doesn’t overwhelm you,’ Helen commented quietly, ‘as it did over the Bay of Pigs.’

‘Cuba’s quiet, thank heaven. The administration’s learned some painful lessons. The military will be reined in much more, my Pa reckons. Give them their heads and they’ll bomb everything that moves. Give ’em a new toy like napalm and they’re determined to try it. That’s not a policy, that’s the negation of a policy. Kennedy knows that.’

‘You don’t think those assassinations in Viet Nam will make any difference? Madame Nhu was a horrible person but the situation is hardly stable, is it? The furthest I’ve ever been is a school trip to Bruges so I shouldn’t comment, but I loathed the sight of those Buddhist monks burning themselves. Sooner or later that regime was bound to fall apart.’

That’s probably true, Helen, but the Kennedys know Viet Nam. Remember they went there in 1951. That dope General de Lattre de Tassigny told ’em the French army could not be beaten and that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh’d be wiped out. Jack and Bobby knew better – in Saigon they couldn’t get out of town because of the insurgents. On his return Jack did a radio interview in which he allied himself with the ‘have nots’ and declared that Communism cannot be defeated by force of arms alone. In his opinion the USA should not buttress the status quo, when that implied the French hanging on to the remains of their empire.’ Michael waved his finger in the air for emphasis. ‘This President knows more about Indo-China than most commentators. He won’t get us embroiled. As long as he’s around, we’ll ensure the Mekong delta stays non-communist without thousands of our troops being entangled. You’ll see.’

‘The Kennedys. You speak of them in the plural, Michael. As if there’s a whole tribe.’

‘But there is. The father has an unsavoury reputation around Washington: when he was ambassador at your Court of St James he advocated peace with Hitler. But he’s out of it now. Bobby I have a lot of time for – he’s eight years younger than the President and a harder-edged, more emotional personality. He’s got loads to learn if he wants to be President, including how to get on with those he has to deal with. My Pa says he and the Vice-President are barely on speaking terms and Bobby makes sneering remarks behind LBJ’s back – that’d have to stop. And a third brother is in the wings. We could have Kennedys in the White House till the end of the century! Americans are not
averse to dynasties. The Roosevelts, for example.’

Helen drained her glass. ‘Long way from boxes of birthday chocolates,’ she teased gently. ‘But I do admire him. Kennedy is the most imaginative and intelligent figure of our day; while he’s in charge, you feel the forces of good are in the saddle, don’t you? His heart’s absolutely in the right place. You sense that he himself’d like to move faster and it’s the reactionaries who are preventing him, but given enough support he’ll win through. Best of all, he’s
young
. In Europe all we hear are old men like Mr Macmillan, or de Gaulle, or Douglas-Home or Konrad Adenauer! Old, and grotty, and out of it. Kennedy fills me with – oh – hope, I suppose. Yes, that’s it – hope.’

Michael rubbed his eyes in the thick air, then glanced at his empty glass. ‘If Kennedy succeeds in what he’s trying to do, Helen, he’ll go down in history as one of the great Presidents – he has the potential. You remember the inaugural?’

‘Oh, yes. Who could forget?’ Helen smiled, and touched her lover’s hand. ‘Kennedy reached out and spoke for us – the young, the next generation.’

‘Ask not – what your country can do for you –’

She joined in.
‘Ask what you – can do for your country.’

A fight had broken out a couple of tables away. Two men, both hopelessly drunk, staggered to their feet and ineffectively swung their fists at each other. A stool crashed to the floor followed by a beer mug. Their companions joined in the shouting, but made no attempt to separate them.

Michael raised his glass in rueful salute. ‘Amen to that. Time for another drink?’

Helen winced as one of the drunks managed to land a blow on the unshaven jaw of the other. It would take some manoeuvring to avoid the altercation and reach the exit. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she murmured, and swiftly gathered up her coat and chocolates. ‘It’s about to get a mite unpleasant in here. Sorry, Michael, but this is Liverpool. Time to leave.’