I pushed the front door closed with my elbow, stepped over a pile of envelopes and dropped briefcase and basket on the seat in the telephone alcove. ‘Thank God to be home,’ I said aloud.
There was an icy chill in the hall and a pervasive, unpleasant smell hanging in the air. It felt as if I’d been gone for a month. I kept my coat on and went into the kitchen. It was exactly as I had left it at a quarter to seven this morning when Colin suddenly announced that we had to leave an hour earlier than usual, because he had to pick up his father on the Antrim Road for their nine o’clock flight.
Earlier, I was surprised and delighted when he wakened me with a mug of tea. Sitting up in bed, listening to him cooking his breakfast, I drank it gratefully and hoped it was a peace offering after the awful row we’d had the previous evening. Relaxed and easy as it was still so early, I went down in my dressing gown and to my surprise found my fruit juice and cornflakes sitting ready for me.
Now, I scraped the soggy residue of the cornflakes into the polythene box where I keep scraps for the birds and put it back in the fridge. I’d been halfway through them when he told me. That gave me precisely fifteen minutes to shower, make up, dress, organise the papers I’d abandoned in my study the previous evening and be ready to leave. The alternative was to leave on foot, twenty minutes after Colin, and spend an hour and a half travelling, three buses and a train.
I shivered miserably and tried to put it out of mind as I studied the control panel for the central heating boiler. It looked perfectly all right. On: morning, six till eight. Heat and water. Back on: Five. For getting home, early evening. Off, ten thirty. By which time we were usually in bed. I looked at my watch. It was only ten fifteen so why was it off?
‘Oh, not one more bloody thing,’ I said crossly as I tramped round the kitchen in frustration. The air was still full of the smell of Colin’s bacon and egg. I prodded the switch on the extractor fan. To my amazement, it began to whir. It hadn’t worked for weeks. I almost managed to laugh at my bad temper, but then I caught sight of Colin’s eggy plate. The very thought of the relaxed way he’d announced the change of plan made me furious again.
‘Come on, Jenny, concentrate. It was working this morning,’ I said firmly.
Among the many delights of Loughview Heights, as advertised in the colour brochure from any McKinstry Brothers agent and free to all would-be customers, was a range of modern conveniences ‘guaranteed to impress your visitors’. What the brochure didn’t say was that they also broke down at the slightest provocation. There’d been such a crop of failures recently I was ready to exchange them for reliable Stone Age technology like paraffin lamps and water from a well.
I stared at the control panel again. Somewhere at the back of my weary mind a thought formed. I was missing something blindingly obvious. I peered at the minute figures on the dial. Then the penny dropped. Slightly to the right of the control box was a large switch. It said ‘OFF’.
‘Off?’ I exclaimed incredulously. ‘Who’s bloody OFF? I’m not OFF, I’m here and I’m freezing.’
I pushed it down. The loud click echoed through the dark, empty house. A red light flowered. There was a woosh and a shower of tiny ticks, like rain splattering a window. I shivered, cleared and stacked the breakfast things, and went through to the lounge and found an even worse mess.
I stepped round the ironing board and drew the curtains across the black hole that echoed the chaos around me. I switched on the table lamps and turned off the top light. Even with softer lighting, the walls looked almost as grubby as they did under the glare of the overhead fitment. I pushed a pile of Colin’s papers, magazines and instruction sheets off an armchair and sat down.
I’d had plans for those walls this weekend. Tuscan. A rich, earthy colour that might even bring out some quality in the hideous, mustardy velvet curtains. The tins of emulsion had been sitting in the garage since the summer. But it looked as if my mother had put paid to that little scheme. I sized up the walls again. Allowed for the mass of the stone fireplace and the picture window. Calculated how long it might take me to remove the adjustable shelving and all the books and objects by myself. Shook my head sadly. Bitter experience had taught me things always take longer than you think. The tin says ‘one coat’. But when I did my study, the same dirty white had grinned through one coat. Some bits had ended up needing three coats.
If I didn’t have to go to Rathmore Drive for Sunday lunch, perhaps I could have just managed it. But there it was. I did. One more weekend, to follow all the others. Something on. Not something we wanted to do, but one more ‘must do’ among all the many ‘must dos’ that had come to dominate our life.
I tried to remember when we last had a weekend when we could just be together, sit over breakfast, talk, drink cups of coffee, or pull on boots and walk down to the loughshore. We had had so little time together recently it wasn’t surprising, really; Colin could be so thoughtless and I could get so anxious and agitated about things never getting done.
The room was beginning to warm up slightly, but the hot air pouring through the vents was blowing Colin’s scattered papers all over the place. Wearily, I got up and gathered them together. Half were specifications for the new factory in Antrim, now his special project. I’d seen them so often, I knew them by heart. Then I found the instructions for making the homebrew. A pile of photocopies – Which reports on new cars. And down at the bottom of the pile still on the sofa I found an overflowing ashtray full of Neville’s cigarette stubs and ash from Colin’s cigar. At least that accounted for the peculiar, stale smell in the room. Accounting for the furious row we had when Neville finally left would not be so easy.
Neville had appeared from next door before we’d finished supper. He was laden with packets and boxes which he deposited all round the kitchen wherever there was a space. The weekly shop still hadn’t been put away, nor the supper dishes stacked, when he breezed in, but Colin shooed me away. Not to worry, he said, he’d sort things out while they were getting the brew going. No problem.
I retreated to my study and tried to read essays. Not exactly what I had planned, when Colin was going to be away all weekend. But I couldn’t concentrate. From downstairs, great bursts of laughter rose at regular intervals, together with an unpleasant smell which made me think of sodden haystacks steaming in the hot sun after heavy rain.
Time passed. There were noises on the stairs. ‘Mind how you go, Colin, old lad. You’ll give yourself a hernia, you will.’
‘Steady on, Neville. Watch where you’re putting your airlock. You can harm a young lad like that.’
By ten o’clock I felt desperate. I set off to go and tell Neville there was packing to do and plans to make for the weekend.
Colin hailed me halfway down the stairs. ‘Oh, Jenny, just in time. We’ve made some coffee. Are there any biscuits?’
The kitchen was exactly as I left it, only now there were sieves, bowls and large saucepans, full of the drying residue of boiled hops, stacked all over the floor, and the pedal bin was overflowing. I picked out the biscuits from the carrier where Colin had put them himself, declined coffee, and started to clear up.
It was nearly eleven by the time Neville went and Colin strode back into the kitchen, looking pleased with himself. ‘Oh, Jenny, you shouldn’t have washed up. I’d have helped.’
‘That’s what you said at eight o’clock,’ I replied sharply.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll do it now.’
‘Yes, it does matter. It’s nearly eleven and we haven’t had a moment to ourselves all evening and you still have your packing to do.’
He came and put his arms round me and nuzzled my ear. ‘Oh, come on, Jen. It’s not that late,’ he began persuasively. ‘I won’t be two ticks packing. You go on up and have a nice shower and I’ll be in bed with you in no time.’
At that moment the thought of a shower and of getting to bed without any further delay was utterly appealing. I nodded wearily but decided to finish drying up the saucepans while he packed. I heard him fetch his weekend case from the cloakroom and run upstairs whistling cheerfully. I bent over to empty the pedal bin.
The night air was cold as I replaced the lid on the dustbin, but looking up I saw the moon appear suddenly from behind a great mass of cloud. Light spilled all around me. A spray of yellow chrysanthemums gleamed in the big flowerbed at the end of the garden. Beyond the dark mass of the shrubs and the climbers I’d planted to hide the solid shape of the fence, the lough lay calm, a silver swathe laid across its dark surface. On the far shore, where the Antrim plateau plunged down to the coast, strings and chains of lights winked along the coastline like pale flowers edging a garden path. The still, frosty air was heavy with quiet.
‘Jen. Can you hear me? Where are you?’
Reluctantly, I went back into the house and found Colin peering down over the banisters. His good spirits had vanished and he wore a patient look that did nothing to hide his irritation.
‘What have you done with my white shirts, Jen? I can’t find them.’
‘Which white shirts?’
‘Any white shirts. They aren’t in the drawer,’ he went on quickly. ‘I’ve looked.’
‘They’re probably all in the wash,’ I replied steadily. ‘I’ve been handwashing your drip-dries since the machine packed up. There are two or three of those on the fitment in the bathroom.’
‘But they’re blue,’ he protested impatiently.
‘Since when has there been a rule about wearing white shirts at conferences?’ I asked crossly.
I went back into the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled a pedal-bin liner off the roll. I heard him pound downstairs and turned and saw him glowering in at me.
‘Jenny, you know perfectly well I always wear the white ones for conferences,’ he said with a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do? Wash my own?’
‘Colin, if you had let me ring someone two weeks ago about the machine neither of us would have to wash your shirts. But you wanted to fiddle with the damn thing. I told you I’d rather we paid to have it done so we’d have some time to do other things. But you said no. You’d order the part. You’d fit it yourself. Well, if you had, the drawer would be full of shirts. So don’t go blaming me.’
The wretched pedal-bin liner wouldn’t open. I stood there struggling with it as I watched him change gear. The glowering face disappeared and his tone was sweetness itself as he started to explain that he wasn’t blaming me. I just didn’t understand how difficult his position was. Didn’t I grasp what a big responsibility this new Antrim contract was? Couldn’t I see that he was run off his feet, he was so busy? And just how important it was for his future. He couldn’t really use office time to make domestic phone calls, now could he? Besides, he was out on site so much. Surely I didn’t expect him to be responsible for everything, even his own shirts.
Something about that rapid change of expression, perhaps, or something about that sweet-reasonable tone made me angrier and angrier. At one point, I nearly threw the roll of pedal-bin bags at him just to get him to stop. But I managed not to. Instead, I insisted he had plenty of other shirts. That he could have checked last night he had exactly the shirts he wanted. At the very least, he could have checked before he and Neville made both the kitchen and the bathroom unusable.
‘Why on earth did you have to invite Neville in on the evening before a conference anyway?’ I ended angrily.
‘Because I prefer not to spend all my time working, unlike some people,’ he threw back at me.
‘Unlike some people?’ I repeated furiously. ‘And what about these last three weekends? Who was working then?’
He went quite white, but I scarcely noticed as the pent-up resentment of the last weeks poured out of me.
‘Entertaining your wretched uncle from Australia because Maisie thinks he might just leave you something. And the bloke from British Steel, who might just wangle you a contract,’ I shouted. ‘Or maybe that doesn’t count as work because you could relax and wave your cigar around just like your father does while I lay on the meals. I suppose you think that’s what women are for. And I suppose you think I enjoy providing cut-price entertainment for McKinstry Brothers instead of having some time for us, like any working couple.’
Recalling the violence of my outburst, I shivered, although the room was now pleasantly warm. I looked at my watch. Ten fifty-five. The row had gone on for an hour or more. I ended up weeping from pure exhaustion. Colin apologised, insisted he loved me. Just wanted me to be happy. It would all be much better soon, he said. He thought he could promise me that. It might even be he would have some good news when he came back on Sunday night. Of course I was right about the shirts. They did look a bit creased but he’d manage with the blue ones. I was far more important than any old shirts.
So we’d made it up, and at half past midnight I got out the ironing board and did the bits of the blue shirts that showed. Going halfway, my father would call it. He always argued you have to go halfway to meet people, because we all make mistakes sometimes. No one’s perfect.
Eleven o’clock. Warm at last, I took off my coat and went and sat by the phone. Driving into Belfast this morning, Colin insisted he hadn’t told me about the early start because he didn’t want to upset me. He thought I mightn’t sleep as well if I knew we had to get up early. Hadn’t he done his best to help me, when he had so much on his mind? Didn’t I see how important this weekend was to our future?
I could see why it was so important for him. That was easy enough. After all, he’d talked about nothing else for weeks. He thought it would be the moment when his father offered him the directorship. And that was where our future came in, because it would mean more money, as he so frequently told me, besides the perks of his own office and a company car. Things would be easier for us. Of that he was sure. Why, I could even have my own little car, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice for me?
Outside school, he put his arms round me and kissed me. ‘I’ll phone you tonight between ten and eleven. I promise. Just as soon as I get away from the evening session.’ He drove off and I went slowly up the steps into the cold and empty building to put myself together for the day’s teaching, a full nine periods, most of them with examination classes.
The phone rang a long way off. Colin. At last. I set out to answer it, but I couldn’t find my way. I hurried, but didn’t seem to get any closer. Its peremptory ring got louder and louder. I struggled on. Tripped over things in the darkness. My basket. My briefcase. Then a pile of saucepans, which fell down and made a noise even louder than the phone. I woke up and found myself in bed, the room pitch black.
Colin’s alarm clock was still ringing its head off. And it was on his side of the bed. Desperate to stop the appalling racket, I fought my way through the tangled bedclothes, grabbed it one-handed and squashed its ‘Off’ knob against the crumpled pillow. I lay back exhausted, my heart pounding, the strident, metallic sound still vibrating in my ears.
I stared at the cold object in my hand, a wedding present from one of Colin’s friends. ‘Extra loud’, it had said on the box. A curtain of exclamation marks had been added. I was supposed to find it funny. Five forty-five, I read on its luminous dial. Yesterday’s early start. That wasn’t funny either. I just stopped myself flinging the wretched thing at the bedroom wall.
I switched on my bedside lamp, put my hands to my face and moaned, ‘Oh, couldn’t he have turned that bloody thing off instead of the central heating?’ Tears of anger and frustration sprang into my eyes. I’d so needed a good night’s sleep but the few hours I’d had were restless and dream-haunted.
Colin’s promised call hadn’t come till after twelve. The phone box he’d chosen was horribly noisy and the moment he spoke it was clear he only wanted to say he’d try again tomorrow, when he had more coins. I’d asked him to reverse the charges and quickly told him about the job and having to decide by Monday. But he couldn’t have heard properly. All he said was, ‘Well, if Monday suits you for doing it, that’s fine by me.’ Then I heard a voice call out. A woman’s voice. Very bright and sharp. ‘Do hurry up, darling, the taxi’s waiting.’ And he said, ‘Sorry, Jen, no more money. It’s all going fine, just fine. We’ll have a chat tomorrow,’ and hung up.
I sat up in bed and caught sight of my reflection in the glass-fronted wardrobes that lined the wall opposite me. I hardly recognised myself.
‘Stop it, Jenny,’ I said firmly. ‘That way madness lies. It’s dark and you’ve had a bad night. Don’t think. Act. Do something. Anything. Don’t dare think till you’re feeling more like yourself. Come on. Get going. You’re wide awake and you may as well make the best of it. Shower. Breakfast. One thing at a time.’
I turned my face up to the shower’s warm rain and felt my anger drain away. I let the water play on my aching shoulders and imagined my tension washing away down the plughole like so many slivers of metal. I shut my eyes and saw a sandy beach lapped by blue sea. A coral reef shut out the crashing breakers of the ocean beyond. In the sun-warmed waters of the lagoon, I could dive down and follow the flickers of tiny fish, jewel-bright against the pale silver sand, the fine residue of the reef beyond, swept in by the pounding waves.
Reluctantly, I emerged from my reverie and reached for a towel from the heated rail. The towel was cold, damp and smelly.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said as I dripped across to the airing cupboard for a dry one. The statement was purely rhetorical. It was only too easy to believe the towel rail had finally packed up. It had been on the blink for months. I pulled open the cupboard door, put out my hand for a bath sheet and swore vigorously.
Pushed in among the piles of towels, the bed linen and the table linen was an enormous glass bottle full of seething, yellow-green liquid. The bath sheets were squashed up against the wall behind it. As I reached past the intruding object, the airlock made a loud, hiccupping noise and released a tiny puff of foul-smelling gas. Only a few seconds later, it did it again. Even I knew it was going too fast. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before it blew out the airlock and spewed its contents all over everything. Unless, of course, as Colin had done, I turned off the central heating to keep it happy.
I scrubbed myself dry, ran back into the bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Suddenly the penny dropped. All that racket on the stairs, on Thursday night, and the great jokes about straining your privates. Neville in his element and Colin egging him on. That’s what they’d been up to. And not a thought of ‘Do you mind?’ And now I was left to work out what in hell’s name I was going to do about it, given there was no way I could move the damn thing.
‘Damage limitation, Jenny. Damage limitation. That’s all’s for it,’ I muttered. I fished out the clean linen, carried it into the guest room and stacked it up on the twin beds. Amazing how much the cupboard held. Enough sheets to furnish a dormitory. Those McKinstrys who weren’t in construction were in textiles, which was handy for wedding presents. I ran my eye over the armfuls I had carried in and had a sudden appalling vision of having to wash the whole lot. Without a washing machine.
Another wave of fury swept over me. That was Colin all over. No matter what he did, it was always going to be fine. From the most trivial to the most important. Just fine. His only problem was, he said, that I didn’t seem to see things as he did. If only I’d relax and not upset myself everything would be just grand. I was always upsetting myself, he said. Well, perhaps he was right. He never got upset, and I couldn’t stop getting upset about the fact that he never got upset. I banged the guest-room door, ran downstairs and put the kettle on. I reached for the jar of coffee beans and nearly dropped it.
‘Stop it, Jenny. Stop it.’
I took a deep breath and concentrated hard on measuring the coffee beans into the grinder without spilling them. Then I searched through the carriers still parked on the garage floor and found some sliced bread. As I made myself some breakfast, the agitation slowly began to subside. I sat sipping my coffee and thinking about the day ahead. There was an awful lot to do, but it didn’t trouble me. I had time, a whole, precious day to myself. No one to see, no one coming for a meal and nowhere I had to go.
I took up a pad of paper and made a list. It was so long, I laughed out loud. Long lists only intimidate me when there is no time to reduce them. Today, I could choose what I was going to do and in what order I was going to do it. I sat for a little while longer sipping my coffee and leafing through the week’s accumulated mail, relishing the chance to be leisurely.
I put down my cup and got to my feet. ‘Let’s get this place straight,’ I said to the empty kitchen.
I cleared breakfast and washed up. Thursday’s shopping was put away, the fridge cleaned, the floor swept. I stepped out into the garage to refill the washing-up liquid and spotted the overflowing laundry basket beside the washing machine. I scooped it up, ran upstairs for the other two and shook their contents onto the kitchen table. It would have been easier to use the floor, but one look at it made me wonder when it had last seen soap and water.
I stared at the multicoloured pyramids which now decorated every freshly wiped surface in sight. ‘Surely there hasn’t always been this much to do.’
I thought back to January 1967 when we had first moved in. Yes, it had been a bit chaotic to begin with. Packing cases everywhere and that awful straw the movers used for all our china and glass. But that was only for a week or two. And before that there was Birmingham.
I remembered our furnished flat, the yellowed magnolia-patterned wallpaper on the stairwell, the draught under the living-room door, so fierce in winter it made the carpet flap, the tiny kitchen, so small we could barely get in together to do the washing-up. The first Saturday night we came back from shopping, the people downstairs were cooking bloaters. The smell was unbearable. We took one look at each other, ran all the way downstairs, had supper in a Wimpey bar and went to an early film.
That was typical of us, then. Problems had solutions in those days. Like the February week when the ancient heating-system packed up. We spent the evenings in bed, talking and reading and making love, our supper dishes left unwashed till morning, when we donned layers of woollens over our camping pyjamas until it was time to dress for work.
Perhaps distance lends enchantment, I thought, as I surveyed my pyramids. Perhaps Birmingham was different, almost an extension of student days. For fifteen months we had been a young couple in a flat. Nothing expected of us beyond our work, no appearances to be kept up, no ideal home to run or parents to visit, no contacts to be made, or useful acquaintances to be cultivated. There was just us. With new jobs and the challenge of new experiences. Encouraging each other. Sharing things, dreaming dreams and making plans. We’d talked endlessly about the future and all we wanted to do and see before we started a family.
‘How about Abu Dhabi, Jen?’ Colin had asked one Sunday morning as we lay in bed reading the papers.
‘I don’t even know where it is,’ I’d admitted, laughing. I’d hopped out of bed, fetched my old school atlas and we’d worked through all the contracting jobs we could find so I could see just what the possibilities were.
Only a week later, the call came. Colin’s uncle had died suddenly, leaving a space on the board. Colin could finish his traineeship within the firm and move into his uncle’s place when his father thought he was ready.
‘But what about all our plans, Colin?’
Of course he’d agreed it was a pity. And yes, of course it was too soon. But he could hardly turn down such an opportunity, could he? Not many men made the boardroom before they were thirty, did they? And yes, he agreed it was a pity about my school. But he was sure they’d understand and let me go.
I went on resisting. After all, it had been Colin’s father himself who had said how valuable it would be to go away and get experience with other companies. Now all that was forgotten. Colin was needed at home, so that was the end of that particular idea.
I wondered now what would have happened if Daddy had not had his heart attack just a few days later. When that news came, I had flown home alone and spent a very unhappy three days moving between my father’s bedside and Rathmore Drive. My mother had been appalling. Oscillating between self-pity and anger with my father for upsetting everyone, she had made it clear that if my father didn’t make a complete recovery she certainly wasn’t going to look after him. She had her own health to think of as well, she insisted.
Back at school, I taught lessons and couldn’t remember afterwards what I’d said and discovered a warm sympathy in both my pupils and my colleagues that I had never expected. Back at the flat, I stopped protesting. During my time in Belfast, I had realised there was no point. Now, with my father off the immediate danger list, I had my own reason for wanting to go home.
I filled the sink and shook the soap powder so fiercely that I sneezed. As I prodded the first of the shirts into the foaming mass, something caught my eye. At the far end of the garden, the first finger of sunlight picked up the golden spray of chrysanthemums I’d last seen by moonlight. In the pale awakening of the early morning, the dew on the grass was so white it looked like frost. I watched the sky lighten. Soon, I could separate the grey-blue of the lough from the darker blue of the Antrim Hills.
I pushed open the window and caught the throb of engines. Moments later, the black and white mass of the Liverpool ferry glided across the smooth water, heading for its berth in the centre of the city. Behind it, the wake oscillated, sending out its vibrating ripples to break as tiny waves on the Down shore. Minutes after and miles away on the far Antrim shore, gulls would bob up and down briefly on the grey water, their unexpected motion understood only by those who could connect such a distant event as the passage of the Liverpool ferry with such a small local happening.
When I looked through the porthole and caught sight of the Down coast the December morning we returned to Ulster, the lough was far from calm. I had wanted to go up on deck. Soon, we would be able to see the places we knew so well, the beaches where we had walked, the bays where we had sailed with our friends. But Colin said it would be chilly and that he’d see to the car, so I’d gone up alone and found myself a small, partly-sheltered space on the upper deck below the lifeboats. From there, I’d looked out at the grey, broken water and listened to the mournful cries of the gulls following in our wake.
The Antrim shore was dark and brooding and the crags of Cave Hill rose ominously above the red and grey sprawl of the estates at its feet. By the lough’s side, the gantries stood, silhouetted against the sky like great mechanical birds feeding in the tainted water. Factory and warehouse, chapel and church, two-storey house and four-storey mill. So familiar, my heart leapt. But only with sadness. An unnameable sadness.
Words of Louis MacNeice suddenly came back to me. I could hear my father’s voice reading them, and the thought of that well-loved voice, so nearly lost such a little time ago, released a flood of memories.
Long after I’d been able to read for myself, I’d still ask my father to read to me. And he had, so willingly. Anything I put into his hands. Books from school, or from the library, or his own, well-thumbed volumes of plays and poetry. He read to me and then he’d coax me to read aloud for myself. Soon, we were able to take it in turns to read and our reading together had become a ritual and a reassurance.
At that moment the ship had begun to turn. I went forward to the rail. The water was brown in the harbour area, beaten into an unlovely whirlpool, spattered with debris and flecked with oily waste. The water slapped and protested as the ship whittled away the remaining inches between itself and the slimy masonry of the dock wall. I heard the chains run out, saw the gangway rise, and felt the deck shudder as the engines died. Ship and land embraced. I had come home. As I turned to go below, the tears welled up so fiercely I could not see my way ahead.
I rubbed crossly at the collar of a white shirt, squeezed it out and piled it on the draining board with the others. Six of them, the hand-finished ones Maisie gave him that first Christmas home.
‘Just a “little” present, Colin dear.’
I could still hear her voice, thin and bright, as the stack of gift-wrapped boxes was brought out from under the tree.
‘Oh, Mum, you shouldn’t have. After all you’ve done already.’
Colin’s tone made me wince. Not just his effusiveness, but the particular way he chose to acknowledge the ‘real’ present, the awful furniture already installed in the new house. He had kissed her and sat with his arms entwined in hers as my ‘little’ present was brought out.
‘Nothing like a nice white shirt to help on the way to the boardroom,’ she said, in the sort of whisper that only the stone deaf could fail to hear.
The look of self-satisfaction on Colin’s face was so sickening, I had to turn away. That look and the way they sat with their arms entwined upset me more than I could explain to myself. It was an awful moment, but worse was to come.
‘I do hope you like yours as much, Jenny,’ went on Maisie, as Keith passed over the beribboned box bearing my name.
With all eyes upon me, I fumbled with the ribbons and tore ineffectually at the wrapping. When I finally got the lid off the elegant box inside, I discovered two superbly finished garments in cashmere. Light as a feather, and more expensive than any item I had ever possessed, I found myself holding what Valerie and I always called a ‘lady wife’ twin-set. And as if that were not bad enough, the colour was the particular pastel shade we’d long ago christened ‘knicker pink’.
I pulled out the plug and watched the dirty water settle to a flat calm. I braced myself and pressed a switch. The disposal unit minced the harmless water as if it were crunching chicken bones. The whole sink fitment vibrated, the soap holder moved crabwise across the draining board and the whirling vortex of water disappeared.
Well, the boardroom wouldn’t be long now. And then what? I started rinsing the shirts. Of course, everything would be fine. It seemed once Colin had convinced himself that something was fine, or going to be fine, then that was it. Finished. Classified. No need even to speak of it again.
Just the way this house had been ‘fine’. It was the show house for the Loughview and Kilmorey estates, and it had been Maisie’s idea we should have it, all nicely furnished as it was and only a little grubby from the probing fingers of potential buyers. ‘The last word in elegance,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Everything you could possibly want and nothing for you to do but unpack your bits and pieces.’
We hadn’t even seen it when Colin said yes. I objected, of course. And he agreed with everything I said. True, it wasn’t what we’d had in mind, was it? No, it wasn’t very convenient for my school. Yes, we had hoped for a little more privacy, hadn’t we? And then he made his own position clear. It was such a good opportunity. The nominal figure his father had suggested in lieu of a mortgage would leave us very comfortable. We could travel, as I wanted. And we could always redecorate, and even refurnish, to our own taste, after a discreet interval. We’d be fools not to take it.
I dumped the first batch of shirts in a bucket and started on my blouses. That was the trouble. Colin always saw my point of view, said how much he agreed with it, and then paid no real attention to it whatever. How often had we discussed and planned some course of action, only for me to find that just the opposite was happening? Once, I used to think it was my fault for not making myself clear. But now I wasn’t so sure. I was beginning to wonder if Colin ever thought about anything at all, or simply reacted to any situation as it happened.
I found myself rehearsing some of his characteristic phrases. ‘But it’s Saturday,’ he would say, or, ‘After all, we can afford it,’ or his favourite, ‘It’s too good an opportunity to miss.’ They seemed harmless enough, I had to admit, but the problem was the effect they had on me. Colin had only to utter one of them and I would feel I was quibbling, or being difficult or unreasonable. How was it he could manage to give such empty phrases the stamp of sweet reasonableness? And why was I always having to protest at decisions that materialised out of nowhere, as if there was no need for me to be involved in them?
The whole miserable business had begun that very morning we arrived home. Straight from the boat, en route to the flat our friends had lent us while they were abroad, we stopped off to see Maisie. She insisted we stay with them till the Christmas holiday was over. He had said yes for both of us, without a moment’s hesitation.
So we quarrelled that night in our bedroom, hissing at each other across the thickly carpeted room, with its pink fringed lamps and fat, pink eiderdowns. Colin said he didn’t see what else he could do when Maisie suggested it. He’d thought it would save me having to cook in a strange flat till after the holiday.
I would never forget that Christmas holiday. It was a nightmare from beginning to end, a continuous exposure to noise, food, and relatives. A continuous demand for sociability, small talk and team performance. And Christmas Day itself had been the worst of all.
The house was overheated and airless. Every room, even the bathroom, boomed with festive music piped from the new stereo, William John’s latest acquisition. Over the top of it, William John himself sounded forth, his voice heavy with goodwill but edged with unease. As if by continuous action he could disperse the burden of Maisie’s disapproval, he urged the company on from one celebratory meal to another and from one obligatory piece of jollity to the next. He circulated endlessly, enveloping himself with talk as if it were his only defence. He asked questions and paid no attention to the answers. He grew flushed, exhausted and irritable. His efforts made him so querulous that, in the end, I was hard-pressed to find any sympathy for him, even though I knew how much he feared the sharp edge of Maisie’s tongue.
Maisie had been even worse, if that was possible. Less good-natured than William John to begin with, she shuttled between kitchen and lounge, tight with tension and breathless with effort, so resentful of what she saw as William John enjoying himself while she had the worry of the food, despite the fact she’d refused all help with it. Her eyes darted about constantly without ever focusing upon anyone. Her endearments flowed endlessly all around the company, their emptiness as palpable as that of the gin glass which seldom left her hand.
‘What on earth am I doing here?’ I asked myself as I stood in the lounge on Christmas morning, watching Colin mixing drinks at the bar and serving them out to William John’s cronies and their blue-rinsed wives. I looked up and spotted Keith, grim-faced and uneasy, changing records under William John’s supervision. I went over to him and tried to comfort him. He muttered something bitter about ‘conspicuous consumption’, and then Maisie bore down on me.
Half the time I felt a failure for not being able to ‘enjoy myself’ and the other half I felt a fraud for even trying to. In the end, I hit on the idea of playing a film extra. That way, I could put some life into a non-speaking part. Laugh merrily over spilt champagne. Smile happily as mother-in-law points you out as Colin’s little wife. Accept delightedly drink or liqueur, chocolate or crystallised fruit. Or even a paper hat.
A few hours’ exit were granted in the afternoon to go over and see my parents and then back we went for the evening performance. By bedtime, I was beside myself. As we shut the bedroom door, I turned to Colin for comfort and all he did was look down at me with amazement and say, just as if he were humouring a fractious child, ‘Oh come on, Jenny, what’s wrong? It’s Christmas. It’s the old man’s way, you know. He does lay it on a bit thick, but he’s all right. He’s very fond of you, you must see that. They both are. That was quite a present you had from Mum, wasn’t it? More than generous.’
I despatched another sinkful of grey water with a furious press of the switch.
‘More than generous,’ I repeated. Just what my mother said last night. That was it. Generosity was quite their forte, their well-practised technique, for getting what they wanted. When you had finished being ‘more than generous’ you could stand back, secure in your own good opinion of yourself, and expect repayment. How could anyone refuse you anything you wanted when you had had the foresight to be ‘more than generous’?
I turned on the cold tap so fiercely that a stream of water bounced off the clothes in the sink, splashed me in the face and poured down the front of my sweater. I stood and shook myself, but it was no use. The ice-cold water was trickling down inside my jeans. ‘Damn the bloody McKinstrys,’ I hissed as I peeled off my wet top. ‘Damn, damn their bloody generosity,’ I fumed as I ran upstairs in my bra to find something dry to wear.
By the time I found a cotton top and an old wool sweater to go over it, my wet jeans had made a damp, cold spot on my tummy. I stripped them off and scuffled in the drawer where I keep my gardening clothes. As I pulled out my old green cords, I caught the lingering perfume of lemon geranium. I sniffed appreciatively, stuck my hand in the pocket and brought out a handful of withered leaves. They were the trimmings from the cuttings I’d set going for Valerie, after that splendid day at the end of the holidays up on the north coast.
Dear Valerie. The thought of my oldest and closest friend brought a sudden anxious stab of distress. Valerie and I hadn’t seen each other all term and it was entirely my fault. Several times when I had come back from theatre visits or parents’ evenings, Colin had said she’d phoned. She’d chatted to him, passed on bits of news and sent me messages, but I hadn’t phoned her back. I couldn’t think why on earth I hadn’t. Every time I watered her cuttings, I vowed I’d do it right away. I thought of her so often, but I still didn’t do it.
Why on earth not? I asked myself crossly. You’re a fool. An absolute fool. She’s the one person who’d really be able to help you.
I continued to scold myself as I pulled on the green cords. I zipped them up and found they sagged limply round my middle. ‘Gracious, you have lost weight this term,’ I muttered as I looked for a belt.
But all the belts I tried needed an extra hole and I didn’t feel like searching the garage for a hammer and a sharp instrument, so I found a pyjama cord of Colin’s, threaded it quickly through the loops and tied it in a bow. ‘Like a sack tied in the middle,’ my mother would say. Well, she wouldn’t see it, would she? So there. No one would see it. I pulled my sweater firmly over my handiwork and ran downstairs to phone Val.
Why are you still puzzling over it, Jenny, I asked myself as I settled by the phone. Why do the reasons matter so much when you know she’ll understand?’
As I started to dial her number, the hall clock began to strike. I dropped the receiver as if it had given me an electric shock, stood up and laughed at myself. Valerie is one of those people who can sparkle half the night but has an awful job waking up in the morning. It was still only eight o’clock. Well, at least today there’d be nothing to stop me ringing her. I’d have a good old blitz till about eleven, make a mug of coffee, and get her after she’d had some breakfast.
Feeling positively light-hearted, I collected my buckets and headed for the clothesline. The sun had come out from behind one of the bright, white clouds that streamed out of the west. I could feel warmth on my arms as I pinned up the first shirt. The dripping fabric inflated in the breeze like a wet sail, showering me with droplets as fine as spray from a toppling wave.
Suddenly, I was on the north coast, the beaches deserted, clean and empty, the summer people gone. I was walking by the sea, the real sea, the Atlantic, its breakers driven by the force of the wind out of the great empty spaces of mid-ocean, unmarked sand at my feet. The cry of the gulls filled the air. Pieces of driftwood caught in the black tangled masses of wrack, seashells small as children’s fingernails, pebbles bright with moisture, fragments of glass, transformed by the cleansing sea from rubbish to tiny jewels, lay spread out before me.
‘Hello, Jenny, you’re up early this morning.’
I swore under my breath, disentangled myself from the sixth hand-finished white shirt and said, ‘Hello, Karen.’ One look at her face told me there wasn’t the slightest possibility of her going away.
While the fence at the end of the garden adjoining the council estate is six feet high and backed by a fast-growing screen of willow, the fences on both sides of the Loughview gardens are only three feet high. Tastefully planted with low-growing shrubs, ‘all part of the extra care which make these properties so desirable’, it makes it possible to carry on a conversation with other young executive neighbours up to six houses away. If you so wished.
I didn’t. The first time I’d seen the house, I’d suggested we put up a six-foot fence all the way round and plant honeysuckle and climbing roses, knowing that would add another couple of feet in time. Colin agreed immediately that it would look very nice. But that was before we discovered Karen and Neville lived next door.
‘How are you, Jenny? We haven’t seen you for ages.’
I went on pegging my way down the line, though I knew there would be no escape. Karen followed me along on her side of the fence, displeasure written all over her face.
‘I’m fine thanks, Karen, just fine. How are you?’ I added dutifully.
Not that I needed to ask. Karen was Karen. She was flourishing, as always. Newly-set hair, tailored slacks, floral pattern smock, well-made-up face. As my mother would say, and regularly did say, ‘Karen Pearson always looks just immaculate.’ Intimidating at the best of times, at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning it was positively indecent.
Karen has always been ‘immaculate’. Ever since my first day at primary school, when she was detailed to look after me, she has been a model of propriety. Always tidy. Always in the right place, at the right time. And ever since that day, by virtue of her two months seniority, she has been ready to show me the right way to do things, exactly as she showed me my peg in the cloakroom and supervised my changing into my house shoes on our very first meeting.
I came to the end of the clothesline. There was nothing for it. I marched back towards the house and paused at the bald spot in the flowerbed where Colin and Neville stood to chat or hop over to peer under the bonnets of their respective cars.
‘Look, Jenny, I can’t stop now,’ she began breathlessly as she caught up with me.
I breathed a sigh of relief but I should have known better.
‘I think I hear Simon,’ she went on. ‘You must come in for coffee, ten thirty, and we’ll have a proper chat. They’ll both be asleep again by then.’
I opened my mouth to protest; but she was too quick for me.
‘I have a parcel for you. Came yesterday. And a note from Valerie. I can give them to you then,’ she ended firmly as she looked back over her shoulder and closed her kitchen door.
I worked off my fury on the garage and by ten thirty I was feeling quite pleased with myself. I had a huge pile of newspapers and flattened cardboard for the charity collection, two boxes of magazines for the local hospital, and three boxes of assorted objects which I would insist Colin went through and disposed of. As I swept out the cobwebs and last year’s autumn leaves, I was amazed at just how large the double garage had become.
It was turning into the loveliest of autumn days, mild and blowy, with sudden bursts of warm sun. As I scrubbed my hands at the kitchen sink, blinking in the strong sunlight, I told myself that it was far better to do Karen properly and get it over than to try and dodge in and out of the garden all afternoon, never knowing when that sharp little voice would scatter my thoughts to the four winds. Once I’d done my duty visit, I could whiz through the rest of the house. Then I’d be free to go into the garden. I was dying to go down and look at the chrysanthemums. There might be enough in bloom for a big arrangement in the hall.
‘My goodness, you have been busy, Jenny.’
The small, close-set eyes took in every detail of my appearance in one quick sweep as she directed me through to the lounge.
‘You’d better sit down and have a rest while I perk the coffee. I’ve got it all ready.’
Somewhat taken aback, for Saturday morning coffees were usually served at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, I settled myself on one of the raft-like armchairs identical to the ones we’d inherited with the show house. I looked around me. The place was as pristine as a furniture showroom, even down to the crystal vase containing six long-stemmed red carnations with the regulation two sprays of greenery. And not the remotest trace of two children under three.
I dropped off my mules and drew my bare feet up under me. The seats of these ocean-going armchairs are so deep that my feet don’t reach the ground unless I perch on the edge. And I wasn’t in the mood for that. As I leaned comfortably back, I spotted the smoked glass coffee table. It had been placed squarely between the two armchairs and was laid with a bright red woven cloth and pottery coffee cups. On the pottery plates, matching red paper napkins were aligned precisely with each other.
Watch out, Jennifer, I said to myself, as I took in the detail. Trouble in store. I stared at the two red triangles until their sharp outline blurred. I caught the smell of coffee and fresh scones and braced myself. Karen wanted something. I picked a stray cobweb off my trousers, concealed it in my pocket and sat looking out through the picture window which framed the Saturday morning comings and goings of other inhabitants of Loughview Heights.