The Lives of Women (12 page)

Agatha is the one to resume talking, a hard rein on her voice, holding it steady. Her mother doesn't know what the bloody hell she wants. One minute trying to make her look more attractive, the next dragging her aside and growling at her under her breath about modesty. Pulling her hem down, buttoning her up to the neck. ‘Modesty! In front of who, like – Ted bloody Hanley?'

She bites down on her bottom lip.

Through the dressing-table mirror, Agatha looks different. Delicate-looking is the term Elaine's mother always uses to describe her, but Agatha doesn't look delicate at all. She looks grown up and maybe even beautiful. At the same time her voice has grown harsher, her temper shorter, her gestures more aggressive. That playful shove a few minutes ago that had knocked her off the bed…

She decides to chance a joke: ‘Maybe you should arrive to breakfast wearing nothing but the sunglasses, completely naked. Give old Teddy a good heart attack for himself…'

Agatha doesn't laugh. ‘Good old Teddy,' she says, ‘pretending I'm not in the way. Well, trying to pretend anyway.'

‘Agatha, they love having you there.'

‘She does.'

‘All your lovely new dresses and everything. They love spoiling you.'

‘
She
does.'

 

Agatha sits, the sun of early evening on her shoulders, everything about her so still except for the fingers of her left hand which are picking and plucking at a piece of the quilt.

‘Do you want to hear Rachel's letter – it came today?' Elaine opens the drawer and pulls out a bunch of envelopes. ‘Listen to this… Her letters are so funny – I just love…'

‘No.'

‘No?'

‘I'm not in the mood, Elaine.'

Elaine puts the letter back into the envelope and then cautiously returns it to the stack in the drawer.

Agatha says, ‘I want you to teach me how to smoke.'

‘I don't know how to smoke.'

‘We should be able to at least smoke!
I
should at my age. I'm like a child, it's ridiculous. It's just fucking ridic—'

‘I'm not really supposed to,' Elaine begins, ‘my lungs, after, you know, being sick and…'

‘Oh God. All right. Goody-goody.'

‘I'm not a—'

‘Well, Rachel will teach me – do you think? Or that American girl?'

‘Yes, Patty or Rachel,' Elaine quietly says.

 

The sunglasses have spoilt the visit. Agatha's voice is agitated; there is also a sense that she might be looking for a row.

‘I can't believe I'll be stuck here all summer,' she says, ‘weeks of Ted and Aunt bloody Mary and utter boredom until I'm packed off to blind school.'

‘Nobody is sending you away to blind school. It's a teacher training college.'

‘I'm only going because my mother wants it.'

‘You'll have a proper job at the end of it. A career.'

‘A career. Listen to yourself!'

‘I'm only saying…'

‘I hate blind people. Always feeling you up. I hate my mother too.'

‘I know you do.'

‘Dumping me on the Hanleys every time she gets a bloody part. All summer I'll be stuck here. All summer. I wish everyone would just leave me alone.'

‘Agatha – what's wrong?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Tell me.'

‘If they'd just leave me alone, I'd find my own way… I'd figure it out. But they won't, they
can't
. I wish everyone would just fuck off.'

Agatha thumps the bed and then knocks her head with her fist.

‘I'm sorry,' she says, ‘I'm tired. I'm a crank, I know. It's just that…'

‘What?'

‘I don't know. I'm tired. I'm tired.'

Elaine brings her a pillow. Pressing it into her hand first, so she knows what to expect, then settling it behind her head.

‘Not you,' Agatha says, ‘I don't mean you. It's not… I can't sleep in that glass room in this weather – it's too bloody hot. I've started to sleep in Aunt Mary's shed.'

‘Are you allowed?'

‘Of course not. I wait till she's finished reading her books and drinking her sneaky red wine and when she goes up to bed I go down the garden. It's cool in there at least. I like it. I bring my quilt.'

‘You aren't afraid?'

‘Of what, for God's sake – the dark?'

‘No, I mean of falling or anything…'

‘I'm not a simpleton, you know – I learn my way around very quickly. If I'm ever fucking let. Anyway, can we stop talking now. I don't feel like talking.'

‘Then don't.'

‘All right I won't.'

‘Good. I'm sick listening to you anyway.'

‘Are you?'

‘No. You don't have to talk. But you still have to give me my lesson.'

Agatha holds the silence for a few seconds and then: ‘What is it about the Shillmans – everything they have has to be from some place else?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Swiss chocolate, Scotch whisky, French toast.'

‘I don't know… His job, I suppose.'

Agatha sits up suddenly.

‘What does he look like anyway, Shillman? Give me five words.'

‘Brown.'

‘Brown? Hair, face, eyes – what?'

‘All three. Well, sallow skinned.'

‘Because he's Jewish?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is he handsome?'

‘I don't know, Agatha, I've never really looked at him.'

‘Well, next time, make sure you do.'

‘Why?'

‘I want to know everything.'

‘But why, Agatha?'

‘My mother. She fancies him.'

‘She does not!'

‘Her voice changes when he comes into the room. She'll be having sex with him next.'

‘She can't! He's Rachel's dad.'

‘She won't care – she's voracious.'

‘Anyway, she's in London.'

‘She'll be back for a weekend before the play starts. Aunt Mary is throwing her a party. She'll probably nab him then.'

‘Oh, shut up, Agatha, she will not.'

‘You know, she pities Aunt Mary for having Ted as a husband. Poor Mary, she always says, imagine having old Teddy Bear going at it on top of you.'

‘Maybe she doesn't. Maybe they don't?'

‘Oh, she does. They do. I hear the bed, whack, whack, whack against the wall. Lucky for her, it doesn't last long – that's what my mother says. But do you know what I think? I think, good for you, Mary, at least you have someone who stays with you. More
than my mother has anyway. Someone who cares enough to sleep with her in the same bed every night. More than I'll ever have, probably.'

‘Agatha, you'll meet someone who'll fall in love with you. I bet you'll get married.'

‘Who'd marry me? Unless it's someone blind. The thoughts of all that fumbling around and clawing…'

Agatha holds the pillow and slides sideways down on the bed where she lies in a curve, sunglasses slightly askew.

Elaine sits on the dressing-table stool and looks at her own face in the mirror: worried, embarrassed. The silence. She wishes Rachel was here to break the silence.

Until Agatha sniggers. ‘Whack, whack, whack,' she says.

And now they are screeching with laughter again.

When Agatha leaves, Elaine goes into the bathroom, wets the corner of a towel then brings it back to the bedroom and tries to clean the chocolate stain that her friend's hand has worked into the nap of the quilt. In the end she is left with two stains: a big water mark shaped like a pond and inside that, on the lower right-hand side, the smaller, darker mark of the original stain.

 

After tea, she sees Agatha and Mrs Hanley going out for their evening stroll, Agatha's white cane sniffing ahead. Agatha and her aunt are deep in conversation – about the party for Agatha's
mother, she supposes: what guests they should invite, what food to serve, what they will need to buy.

Elaine thinks of the time – the only time – her parents had been invited to a Hanley party. Her mother had come home early. After little more than an hour, in fact. She had said it was because she couldn't possibly leave Elaine that long on her own. But she hadn't been on her own: Mrs Preston had been babysitting.

Mrs Preston had babysat a few times before, but only in the afternoon when her mother had to go to the hairdresser or had some mysterious errand to take care of in town. Mrs Preston had one grown-up son who lived abroad. She had shown Elaine a photograph of him once – a big bald man with a red face standing behind the counter in a pub she said he owned, in a town that was more than a thousand miles away.

The photograph had confused Elaine; she kept getting mixed up and saying – But don't you mean he's your brother? Or is he your uncle then? Your husband's big brother?

She could not get it into her head – the idea of Mrs Preston having a son who was practically an old man.

She had liked many things about Mrs Preston: her elegant way of sitting on the sofa and the way she smelled like lemon icing when you sat down beside her. More than anything else, the way she could draw like a demon. Whatever you asked for – horses, dogs, cats, houses. Thrilling versions of Elaine in costume: Elaine as a ballerina, Bo-Peep Elaine, Maid Marian Elaine. Elaine as a bride. Elaine with the Wimbledon cup held over her head.

One minute there would be a blank page on a sketch pad then Mrs Preston's hand would start scuttling around and, out of that
page, a whole new life sprouted. For those few moments Mrs Preston would disappear. Elaine always wanted her to slow down so she could catch the pencil lines in the act, maybe learn a few of their tricks. But Mrs Preston never slowed down, her hand always moving as if it was drawing against time.

The one thing she had disliked about Mrs Preston was the way she took the sketch pad home with her, pretending not to hear whenever Elaine had asked – or even occasionally begged – to keep a drawing of herself, for herself.

 

The night her mother came home early from the Hanley party, Mrs Preston's head jumped up from her drawing and twisted towards the hall. She was on her feet then, flapping the cover of her sketch pad over and stuffing it into her basket. Her face all red as if she'd been caught doing something shameful.

She said, ‘But it's early yet, Mrs Nichols, if you want to go back to the party, I don't mind staying in the least.'

‘Not at all, Mrs Preston,' her mother had said, ‘thank you just the same, but, really, enough is enough.'

At the sitting-room door, Elaine had seen her mother reach out, as if trying to catch Mrs Preston's hand.

‘Oh no, no, Mrs Nichols,' Mrs Preston said, ‘you've only been gone an hour, I couldn't really.'

‘Of course you could,' Elaine's mother said, and Mrs Preston's red face nodded and mumbled a thank you.

*

A short time later, Elaine and her mother were sitting up in bed spying out the window, Elaine drinking cocoa, her mother sipping a tumbler of sherry and describing the party she had just left behind.

Her voice, light and girlish, had been barely recognisable. She used words Elaine had never heard her use before, such as ‘super' and ‘quite frankly'. She described people as ‘sweet' as if you could eat them. And Elaine had wondered then if, as well as special shoes and fancy hair styles, adults had a special voice and special words they brought with them to parties.

There had been cheese cubes on sticks, her mother explained. Paté and olives, some of them stuffed with a red thing in the middle that made them look like green eyeballs and had quite put her off.

You could have punch from a big cut-glass bowl.

‘Punch!'

‘Yes, it's a mixture of drinks. It's called punch because it's so strong it can knock you out.'

‘Knock you out – at a party?'

You could have red wine or white wine or gin and tonic. There were slices of lemon
and
lime. Some of the men drank whiskey and soda that came squirting out of a real syphon like you'd see in a hotel or maybe on the television.

‘And what about you?' Elaine asked. ‘Did you have
punch
?'

‘Oh no. Certainly not. A mineral, that's all.'

‘But why only a mineral?'

‘Because it's not lady-like, in my opinion, to drink alcohol in public.'

Only a select few of the neighbours had been invited: Doctor Townsend and his wife, of course – she had a lovely cream frock on and as for her shoes! Mrs Jackson was, of course, done up like a Christmas tree and, frankly, ridiculous. Mrs Osborne had been there with her sensible cardigan and her monotonous voice. The Ryans weren't there – probably not asked and is it any wonder?

Maggie Arlow was half-drunk when she arrived, although she was wearing a super Chinese-style jacket. She was playing up to Terry Jackson in the most disgraceful manner. Of course, she wasn't the only one to go down
that
particular avenue. The Shillmans, of course, were very much at home, being similar types to the Hanleys, obviously well used to one another's company.