The Facts of Life (5 page)

They stood. Edward, well-trained, took the port glasses out to the kitchen, where Sally heard him giving them a perfunctory rinse under a tap. Thomas led her out to the hall, pausing on the way to straighten an old ink drawing of an Indian couple engaged in impossibly flexible coitus, their faces untouched by desire.

‘It’s done on rice paper,’ he said. ‘Part of a set. I’m very much afraid something’s got inside the glass and is eating at it.’

‘They seem so calm,’ she said.

‘Only to the unpractised view.’ He pointed. ‘Look at how wide her eyes are open and, there, how his fingers are flexed in ecstasy.’

They moved on. Edward went out to start the Wolseley.

‘It’s so very kind of you to lend Edward your car,’ she told Thomas.

‘I can’t think why I bought the thing,’ he said. ‘I never go out of town really and if I
have
to, I go by train so that I can read on the way. It’s nice to see it in use.’

‘We must have an outing one day.’

‘Yes,’ he said, with no great enthusiasm. ‘Did you have a coat? It’s turned rather cold and that cardigan doesn’t look very warm.’

‘Er. No.’

‘I believe there’s a rug on the back seat.’

‘Thanks.’

He touched the small of her back lightly, steering her on to the path.

‘It was lovely to meet you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m so glad.’

There was a sadness in the cast of his face, however, that made her doubt his sincerity.

Edward met Sally’s patron the following Sunday afternoon. They had been out to her parents’ for a very tense and largely silent lunch of roast mutton and had excused themselves at the first opportunity. Heavy with two kinds of potato and steamed pudding, they drove back into town for a much needed walk beside the Rex. Sally had warned him that Dr Pertwee made sandwiches for their Sunday teas together. Punctuality was another custom of hers, so they arrived promptly at four-thirty.

Thomas had filled him in on the old woman’s history. Highborn, she had qualified in medicine, then shocked even her suffragette mother by advocating birth control for unmarried women and publishing two pioneering sex education manuals, euphemistically titled,
A Husband’s Love
and
Things A Wife Should Know
. That she knew so much without the blessing of marriage had earned her the title of ‘That Pertwee Woman’ for a season or two, a situation not helped by her open liaison with a notoriously unprincipled Dublin playwright. Nevertheless, the books sold in their thousands and the gratitude of countless readers won her a kind of honour. With the mantle of middle age, she assumed respectability, channelling the profits from her books into work among unmarried or abandoned mothers – who would otherwise have fallen into the punishing hands of the Church Army, lunatic asylums or their parents – and the foundation of girls’ grammar schools in Rexbridge and Islington. It was to one of these that Sally had won a scholarship and so come under Dr Pertwee’s protective interest.

Edward was expecting a formidable, tall amazon in high-buttoned black, with an iron-grey coiffure and commanding manner. He was taken aback therefore when the door was opened by a tiny creature in a pale yellow twinset and pearls, with hair like spun sugar, delicate, fluttering hands and a powdery, fluting voice. Edward was no strong-man but he felt he could have lifted her up with one arm. If she commanded attention, he felt, it must be through subterfuge rather than head-on confrontation.

‘Come in, come in, Sally dear.’ She kissed Sally’s cheek. ‘And you must be Edward. How do you do.’ She gave Edward a rheumatoid hand which resembled a canary’s claw and, instead of shaking, let him hold her fingers while she led him into her chaotic bedsitting room. A kettle was boiling on a gas ring and the table had been laid for tea, with a large plate of crustless sandwiches. The books and papers, which must have previously occupied the table, had been slung on to a heap which already engulfed the desk and was spilling on to the floor. The bread crusts were scattered on the windowsill, where sparrows and a starling were laying them waste. The mantelshelf was fringed with bills and invitations, weighted with an assortment of glass candlesticks.

‘Sit,’ she pleaded. ‘Do sit, both of you. You’re both so huge there’s no room to move about!’

They sat at the table; the sofa was taken up by an open suitcase and an assortment of hats, the armchair by a typewriter, resting on a rough-hewn plank that bridged the arm-rests. Dr Pertwee snatched the kettle from the ring and filled a teapot, shielding her hand from a scalding in the steam by wearing what looked like an old rugger sock.

‘How are your parents?’ she asked, joining them at the table.

‘All right,’ Sally said. ‘Dad gets ever more immobile. He just sits listening to the radio all day, I think, unless we find him something to mend. His mates come in now and then and sit with him, filling the place up with smoke. I got him a wheelchair but he doesn’t like using it. Twenty years on and he still can’t admit he’s a cripple.’

‘What about
her
? Tea, Edward?’

‘Thank you.’ Edward took his tea, relieved that it was both weak and Chinese.

‘Mum ought to be stopping work by now,’ Sally continued. ‘I pay most of the housekeeping bills – but I think she’d miss seeing the “girls” every day, and she dreads the thought of being stuck at home with him.’

‘And what do they make of you, Edward?’ Dr Pertwee turned her cool gaze on him and he saw that she had extraordinary bottle-green eyes.

‘Oh. Well.’ He chuckled, still uncertain of how much leeway he was allowed in discussing Sally’s parents with other people, having barely discussed them with her. ‘They gave me lunch today. A proper Sunday lunch.’ He glanced respectfully at the sandwiches, which Dr Pertwee promptly passed him. He took two. ‘They didn’t talk much. I think they disapproved when I said I only work in the bookshop to make ends meet – not as a proper career. And they aren’t altogether happy with my being German, I suspect.’

‘But you don’t
sound
German,’ Dr Pertwee protested.

‘I think that makes it worse – as though I’m trying to deceive people. And then, of course, I’m Jewish.’

‘Really?’ The old woman was the soul of discretion. She reminded him of the headmaster’s wife at Barrowcester. ‘Do you know Simon Stern at Tompion?’

‘No.’

‘No reason why you should, of course. He’s a mathematician. Have another sandwich, do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I think their real problem is with me being older, actually,’ Sally put in.

‘You’re not,’ Edward protested. ‘Not much.’

‘Three years,’ Sally said.

‘My dear,’ Dr Pertwee cut in, ‘Your age is immaterial. She’s probably jealous. After all, your poor father has been, shall we say,
hors de combat
for so long … In any case, the only reason for taking an
older
man as a partner is economic. With your earnings, pitiful though you might think them, and your qualifications, you have freedom of choice. I’ve always said that if
I
had ever married, I would have taken a man at least ten years younger than me.’

‘Why’s that?’ Edward asked her.

‘Biology, dear,’ she said and he saw Sally smile at his naïveté. ‘Men may keep their looks and fertility longer but their – how can I put it delicately? – their
potential
rarely outlasts a woman’s. Now tell me, Edward. Do you have your own lodgings?’

‘Not exactly, Doctor. I rent a bedroom from my old tutor. Professor Hickey. I think you know him.’

‘But of course. We are old sparring partners.’ She mutely offered the sandwiches to Sally, who declined with a smile and a headshake. ‘So you have little – how shall I put it? –
independence
to offer one another. I thought that might be the case.’

The doorbell interrupted Dr Pertwee’s train of thought. She glanced at her watch.

‘Oh blast. That’ll be my taxi to the station. I’m off up to London for the night – another ghastly committee. I really don’t know why I can’t say no. My mother was so very
good
at it. Even in retirement one isn’t safe. I shall have to cultivate a deceptive veneer of senility. Odd shoes, perhaps, or a tendency to drool.’ She hurried over to the sofa, threw a book on top of the clothes in her suitcase and slammed the lid shut with surprising vigour. Edward stood, followed by Sally.

‘We mustn’t keep you, Doctor,’ he said.

‘Nonsense, dear. Nonsense.’ She fussed, pulling on a lightweight cream coat and tying a silk scarf loosely about her neck. At the gesture he could suddenly see that in her day she had been extremely attractive. Even in age, some of her movements had an actress’s poise – she was used to being watched. ‘I’m so sorry to be rushing off like this,’ she added. ‘But I insist you stay quietly and enjoy yourselves. Eat and drink anything you can find and light the gas stove if it gets cold.’ The doorbell rang again. ‘Yes. Coming!’ she fluted.

‘But –’ Sally began.

‘There are towels in the bathroom and clean sheets on the bed. I’ve got the key so just pull the door shut when you leave. Now. I must fly. Bye-bye, dear.’ She presented her cheek for Sally’s bemused kiss then held out her hand again for Edward to clasp. ‘Such a pleasure meeting you,’ she said, and left, closing the door firmly behind her.

They stood, waiting and amazed, until they heard her taxi shudder away down the street, then they tumbled, laughing, on to the mattress.

‘A bed!’ Sally gasped. ‘A
bed
! She’s given us a
bed
!’

She kissed him greedily then he rolled them over and kissed her back, small nuzzling kisses around the mouth, down on to her long neck and up behind an ear. She was wearing vanilla essence again.

‘Do you think we can?’ he asked, his face in her hair, unable to meet her eyes in case she was outraged.

‘There’d be hell to pay if we didn’t,’ she chuckled. ‘I think she’d have doubts about your – how can I put it delicately? – your
potential
!’

They laughed and writhed, kissed, rolled apart a little to stare, thought of something else funny, then kissed again, snorting with amusement. Slowly, with the unbuttoning of shirts, slipping off of belts and shoes and tense, gasping release of bra clasp and suspender fastenings, the prolonged frustration of the previous weeks came to possess them. Smiles fell away into bitten lips, laughter into a kind of astonishment. Slowly, intently, and with the occasional hoarse mutter and misplaced elbow, they made love. On one of his recent fortnightly visits to the barber, Edward had shyly accepted, with fresh understanding, the enigmatic offer of ‘something for Sir’s weekend?’ He had been fearful since, lest this prove presumptuous on his part, but no less afraid of being without them should such a heaven-sent opportunity arise. Sally cried out when he thrust into her, prompting the first of several apologies, and he kissed away a tear forced out across her cheek.

Compared with Sally, he was a sexual neophyte, if not quite a virgin. There had been girls while he was a student – sheltered daughters of academics or bolder, but heavily chaperoned students at the few women’s colleges. None of them, however, had gone further than teasing and flirting, stirring him to such fever pitches of frustration that he was often tempted to seek relief elsewhere. At the end of a drunken celebration following the completion of first year exams, he had ended up in a brothel on the edge of town. It was not the red plush sin palace of his teenage imaginings but a drably respectable private house, where gentlemen were expected to await the next available lady’s pleasure in a far from cosy parlour full of crude knick-knacks and seaside souvenirs. After a numbing wait, a tired older woman led him to a back bedroom where he was shut in with a girl so young and evidently frightened that what little ardour was left him drained away and he fled in disgusted confusion. In his second year, when word from even friends of his family dried up altogether and Europe began her slow, reluctant manoeuvring into war, he found himself increasingly ostracized. Awkwardness was caused first by his Jewishness, and then his nationality. Even invitations to tea dried up and he spent hours of refuge from this tacit rejection alone in the college library or labouring compulsively at the piano. The internment camp, where he had to sleep in a crowded impromptu barracks, rank with the smells of underwashed clothes and frustrated male, crowded his libido into silence much as boarding-school had. There were women there who doled out the sloppy overcooked food, some of them quite young and friendly, but he regarded them as coldly as if they had been so many automata. It was only later, when he fell ill, that his sex drive came surging back – almost as a symptom, it seemed, of the disease. The mere memory of a nurse’s black stockinged leg or downy neck as she rearranged his bedclothes or took his temperature could work him into hot spontaneous spasms of desire. Sally’s unexpected arrival at his work table on the hospital promenade and her direct, encouraging smile, had been as warm bread to the starved.

Spent, he held her, panting, in his arms. Then he tiptoed across to draw the curtains, turn on a light and bring back a glass of water and the rest of the sandwiches. Seeing her curled there, soft, dark hair wonderfully awry, cheeks flushed, lips swollen as if with crying, he found himself unable to stop talking.

‘It was strange having Sunday lunch with your parents today,’ he began.