The Man Who Understood Women (17 page)

He greeted Nicolette, the children, helped Jennifer with her chemistry, had a second helping of cottage pie.

I shall not cry.

There was a television programme he wanted to watch; they watched it, endlessly. She had no idea what it was about. I shall not cry.

Nicolette went out. The children one by one to bed. Flip to his basket.

This is our day.

He held out his hand. She realised there was something in it: a box, a small box. Taking it from him, she opened it.

A rose, but made of diamonds: perfect; exquisite; costly to excess.

‘For all the roses that have died,’ he said.

Now she cried, and he could not understand, because men never did, that in women it could be a sign of happiness.

Do You Remember?

1974

They had not gone out after the wedding; John had not
suggested
it. He had not thought of a very special table for two at any eating place familiar or surprise. Thus it was after a day of action, reaction and mixed emotions that Helen found
herself
, with a blue and white butcher’s apron over her rose wild silk, standing in the kitchen, champagne corks littered like the confetti there had not been, poring over the magazine article ‘Cooking for two: that first dinner’.

The illustration showed a polished wood table complete with flowers and candles.

The dining room table, at present groaning under its load of French casseroles with cast-iron bottoms, fancy chopping boards, and multifarious fondue sets, was out for a start. That left the kitchen, at whose counter top with its remains of tired smoked salmon sandwiches she looked wearily, or a tray in the sitting room in front of the television. The article permitted no compromise: best china, best silver, prettiest mats.

She cleared a space on the Formica counter top, noting with distaste distinct evidence that the bride, at the last moment, had trimmed the bridegroom’s hair using the kitchen scissors so to do, and applied herself to the next paragraph headed ‘Food. Not the time to experiment’. She had never felt less like experimenting and decided without difficulty on fresh
grapefruit
in deference to John’s waistline. Right. Next? ‘Give garlic a miss, although a well-seasoned but simple dish is suggested.’ Medallions de boeuf, beans and duchesse potatoes; breaded lamb chops (with little frills on their tails); escalopes of veal, depicted with a yellow-eyed fried egg atop. Sighing, she closed the magazine and went to the larder. The top shelf held huge chip pans, giant casseroles neither French nor cast-iron
bottomed
, a fish kettle of truly noble proportions. She was not used to cooking for two. She decided it was an occasion for a hideously expensive can of chicken in aspic, followed by the peaches in brandy she always kept on the shelf but never felt justified in using on an ordinary day.

Dinner for two it certainly was. Using the tin opener, she wondered how it would be alone with her man. It would not, of course, be the first occasion by any stretch of the
imagination
, but this time it was for keeps. The feelings that the
situation
evoked were, to say the least of it, mixed. What would they talk about? Thank heavens for television, although that was a disgraceful admission to have to make. What plans would they discuss? What decisions were there to take? Just herself and John. Such a frighteningly small unit, a unit that had today given away its final chance to enlarge its potential.
Why Jane of all people, Jane who would never leave home, Mummy’s baby, Jane, had had to fall in love with and marry a New Zealander was one of fate’s unkinder cuts, on which Helen did not care to dwell. Not if they were to get any
dinner
at all, that was. It was different with the boys. One half expected it in a way, although not one of her friends could match one son in Nova Scotia and another in Nepal. But Jane! Little, fond, loving Jane. Had they been such
frightful
parents? John’s friend in psychiatry said, on the contrary, the children were so well adjusted they were able happily and confidently to cut the apron strings, which was the best for everybody. Thinking of the upstairs flat, which once had been the nursery floor and which Helen had always secretly hoped might house the newly married Jane, she wished perhaps they might have been a shade less understanding, a fragment
perhaps
more cruel.

Of course, the world had shrunk, yet you could not exactly, with impunity, pop over to, or telephone too frequently, New Zealand or Nepal. She hated her friends, most of them at any rate, in particular Iris, with her four children living within
spitting
distance, and Geraldine who dragged a steadily
increasing
bevy of grandchildren through the toy departments at Christmas. She imagined herself trying to buy holly-sprigged wrapping paper in August, or something equally ridiculous (she wasn’t quite sure how long parcels took, but she knew the time to be outrageous), and remembered the radio’s yearly admonitions about final dates for posting overseas mail. One could of course keep in contact but where was the substitute
for the smiles or tears on a dear face, the feel of a small, warm, confidently clutching hand?

Feeling herself becoming maudlin, she picked up the peaches in brandy, wondering how best to attack the lid, and thought of the wedding. Wedding! Well, the most weddingly thing about it had been her own outfit. Not that it hadn’t been a jolly affair. Jolly to the point of being bizarre. But not a
wedding
such as one was accustomed to.

The register office ceremony had been over in the wink of an eye. Lucky actually that Jane had made it at all. She was
blow-drying
her hair until half an hour before. The bridegroom, all husky six-foot-plus of him, had not aspired to a tie and at the reception, by request of the indubitably happy couple, there had not been one speech.

Times, one could not say otherwise, had changed. New Zealand, Nova Scotia. When she and John had got
married
, you were considered lucky if you got so far as your own shores. There was none of this trekking to French valleys and Greek mountains with not a worry and scarcely a change of clothes. The whole ethos had changed, come to think of it. In her day if you went to a party you stayed at it. You also knew the name of the host and afterwards wrote a polite thank-you note. When you danced you made physical contact with your partner and when the music stopped you clapped. Today the music never seemed to stop at all, if you could call it music, that was, that dreadful noise that shattered the eardrums every time you turned on the radio.

‘Dinner ready?’ John said.

‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘You were lost in thought. Penny for them?’ He picked up the tray she had prepared and carried it into the sitting room.

When they were comfortable, she said: ‘I was thinking how times have changed. I mean, in our day the only things that were “switched on” were lights. Do you realise that whole breeds are dead or dying – maternity nurses, maiden aunts, sewing ladies, companions – and au pairs, babysitters, home helps, and flatmates have been born?’

‘Coal was delivered by horse and cart,’ John said, warmingto the game, ‘and chicken was for Sundays.’

‘We had trams, silk stockings, and lace mats under glass.’

‘Milkmen had horses, tobacconists sold tobacco, and when you went to the barber you knew you were going to get short back and sides.’

‘It is beyond their comprehension,’ Helen said, ‘the
children
’s, I mean, that we had no boutiques, heated rollers, tights, astronauts, supermarkets, or disposable nappies and dishcloths. That we existed without washing machines, and waste grinders. That “engagements” meant just that and that “diamonds were for ever”.’

‘Can you imagine me,’ John said, ‘having my hair set?’

‘Or me wearing patched blue jeans and plimsolls?’

‘Pets were fed on household scraps, nothing drip-dried …’

‘One had neither ballpoint pens and aerosols, nor
polythene
bags …’

‘… Parking meters, Sellotape, fish fingers …’

‘… Launderettes, instant puddings, the Pill …’

‘They do not realise,’ Helen said, finishing up the last of the peaches in brandy, ‘quite how fortunate they are.’ She listened. ‘Was that the bell?’

‘I don’t think so.’ John stood up. ‘Yes, it was. Who the devil could it be?’

‘If you answer it you’ll find out,’ Helen said, as she had been doing for the past twenty-six years. He was the same with
letters
, never opening one until he’d turned it this way and that, examined the stamp, held it to the light and speculated who it could be from. She heard voices in the hall and piled the remains of supper on to the tray.

‘Guess who?’ a familiar voice said from the door, before she had time to make it to the kitchen with the tray.

‘Jane!’

She sat down, overcome with weakness. What was the
trouble
? Surely they hadn’t decided on divorce after two hours! Had Nick walked out? Jane changed her mind? In the blink of an eye she saw herself pushing her grandchildren
triumphantly
down the high street, nodding patronisingly to Iris on the other side of the road; in the stores at Christmas time buying dolls with interchangeable wardrobes.

‘It’s all right, Mother,’ Jane said.

‘Is Nick with you?’ Helen asked suspiciously.

‘Of course. He’s talking to Dad.’

‘Then I don’t understand.’

‘It’s quite simple,’ Jane said. ‘We guessed the two of you would be sitting here in this huge house, supper on a tray …’

Helen pulled it towards her defensively.

‘… playing games.’

‘Games!’ Helen said incredulously, wondering what had come over her daughter. ‘When did you last see your dad and me playing games? Any sort of games. He can’t play bridge, never did have a head for cards of any description …’

‘I didn’t mean that kind of game.’

‘What on earth did you mean, then?’ Helen asked.

‘“Do You Remember?”’ Jane said gently. ‘I bet – well, Nick and I both bet, actually – that you’d be sitting here, the two of you, recalling how it cost a penny on the tram from Gran’s to the Town Hall …’

‘Tuppence!’ Helen said.

‘… hair was permanently waved, and the only sort of wedding was white, usually floral, and preferably choral.’

‘What utter rubbish!’ Helen said. ‘We weren’t doing any such thing.’

‘So we decided, Nick and I,’ Jane said, ignoring her, ‘that since it might be an awfully long while before we see you again, and since we don’t have to be at the airport until five in the morning, which means leaving at three, that we’d like to take you out. We’ve got tickets and it’s a good play, so get your skates on, there’s a darling.’

Helen said dazedly: ‘A theatre! But don’t you want to … I mean you and Nick … the wedding …?’

‘Mother!’ Jane was laughing.

‘I’d forgotten,’ Helen said, picking up the tray once more, primly, ‘times have changed.’

At Jane’s insistence she left the supper plates and the chaos
in the kitchen, which she protested half-heartedly would not clear itself away, and put on her rose silk coat again.

The play, a comedy from Broadway, had Helen laughing until the new mascara she had invested in for her ‘mother-
of-the
-bride’ role was running down her face.

After the theatre, dismissing the tinned chicken and peaches in brandy, which Helen had to admit to herself had been some time ago, Nick insisted on taking them to dinner at a cellar restaurant, open all night, where the food was super and Helen felt frightfully old. By the end of dinner, however, the dolly birds did not seem quite so young, or the music quite so loud, and John was laughing as she hadn’t seen him do in months, and before they realised it was one in the morning.

‘We must take you home now,’ Nick said, ‘or we shall miss our plane.’

At home, the curled-up sandwiches in the kitchen did not seem so sad.

‘We will go out more,’ John said in the bedroom.

‘There are loads of new places to eat we don’t even know about,’ Helen said, reaching for a hanger.

‘We will sell this house!’ John said decisively.

Helen stared at him. They had lived in it since they were married and John had always declared that there he would die.

Now he was saying: ‘We’ll buy a flat, a small flat …’

‘But the garden?’ She always teased that he loved her less than his roses.

‘We shall go abroad, travel …’

‘The business?’

‘There are younger men.’

‘Where would we go?’

‘Does it matter?’ John said. ‘Do you realise that after twenty-six years of hard labour we are free? Free!’

Helen pitied Iris with the heavy brood of grandchildren she pushed daily down the high street, and Geraldine
ploughing
hotly round the shops. She saw vividly the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa … they might pop in to New Zealand on the way.

In bed, John said: ‘In our day, when you waved people off on their honeymoon that was that!’

‘Yes,’ said Helen contentedly, making herself comfortable. ‘Do you remember?’