‘Ladies?’ Used to senility and deafness, the Wardress raised her voice so that it echoed round the glass span of the conservatory.
Hand over deaf-aid microphone, Mrs Partridge said, ‘No need to shout, we aren’t deaf.’
Good-hearted beneath it all, the Wardress smiled at her pair of celebrities. She propped open the double doors. ‘It’s like an oven in here. Hottest day for a hundred years; hottest summer since ’76.’
‘Going to get hotter,’ said Dolly.
The Wardress fanned her neck with her collar. ‘Ladies, The Press is here again. It’s The Independent this time. Aren’t you suddenly the famous ones?’
‘I preferred it when I was notorious and they weren’t all so damned patronizing,’ Ursula said. ‘Shall we go to them, Dorothy, or summon them to our rooms?’
‘I’ve emptied the small sitting-room for you,’ said the Wardress.
‘Let’s go there and make a grand entrance together, Ursula.’
They progressed at their own pace from the conservatory, where they had been tending their coffee and banana plants, towards the house.
‘The Independent,’ Mrs Partridge said. ‘Isn’t that the heavy black-looking one?’
As it turned out, the feature-writer was Charlotte, a slip of a girl in a silky suit and ear-rings like bunches of grapes and she was from Independent Radio. ‘I understand from the matron that you have had other meeja people here recently.’
‘That woman has a big mouth,’ said Dolly. ‘It’d be all the same if we didn’t want you to know. She could take up broadcasting on her own account, without a microphone.’
Charlotte, having smiled her way through getting her equipment tuned to the pitch of her interviewees, explained that she had been given a half-hour slot and she wanted to do something on older women that would make Woman’s Hour sit up. ‘I’m hoping it will get me noticed – nobody does anything serious about the really, really aged as real people; and when I read the piece in the Guardian I thought te-rrific! Centenarians and friends of Giacopazzi. It will make a smashing piece.’
When Charlotte had got her piece about the really, really aged real ladies and gone, Dorothy made a pot of tea which Ursula carried to the conservatory, a building which they considered theirs and which few other residents cared for because it was about the only room in the home where there was no television set.
‘What about that then, Ursula? Fancy my film coming to light – after all these years.’
‘And she made the connection between the mention of Niall in the Guardian interview and the film in the archives. She’s a clever girl, she’ll make a good journalist.’
Like many who went through the years and years of shortages and economies, the two old ladies poured their tea carefully and drank it sugarless, not talking too much as they savoured flavour and caffeine.
‘Shall you accept her offer to go and see it again, Dorothy?’
‘I think I might, so long as you come too. Will you mind?’
‘No, of course I should not mind. Why should I?’
‘I wondered – when you said that you weren’t sure that you wanted to see it again.’
‘That’s not because of you and Niall – you know that never bothered me greatly.’ She laughed her almost silent laugh. ‘I’m not likely to start after fifty years.’
‘I would have stolen him from you if I could have.’
‘I can’t say that I should have blamed you for it: he knew how to make a woman feel exceptional.’
‘He was the sweetest man, wasn’t he?’
‘Dorothy, let’s be honest… he was a libertine.’
‘That’s a word you don’t hear much these days.’
‘He screwed around.’
‘And you married him. After all those years, you got married. I never thought you would. Thought your feministy side would have put the mockers on marrying.’
Ursula smiled, deepening the deep vertical lines of her mouth. ‘The flaw in many a good feminist, loving men… a man. I never much enjoyed women in that way.’ Switching off for a minute or two, the old women lapsed into dozy contemplation. ‘Trix did. Did you know that? It was Trixie, wasn’t it, whose mother cut the flies out of her father’s best trousers? Or was that Pammy? Remember Pammy from those days?’
‘It was Trixie. If it hadn’t been for the war, she would have ended up as knocked-about and unhappy as her Mum. If I remember right, it was her sergeant in the ATS that fell for her. Didn’t they set up home together when they were demobbed?’
Ursula said, ‘She had never heard the word lesbian until she joined the WAAF.’
‘Well, you didn’t in those days, did you – well, not in our sort of circles; but I’ll bet your lot knew all about it. I knew that there were men like that, you used to see them in Southampton – especially round by the docks – old chaps with long hair and wearing lipstick. Lord, it’s no wonder they got called queer the way they used to go about. I just always thought it was men like that.’
She drifted back to the sub-world where she saw the past in such detail, where, more and more often these days, she discovered interesting facts she had never had time to notice at the time. Dolly Partridge could sit for hours roaming about there. Eventually she said, ‘There used to be a couple of ladies lived in Markham – before you came here – when I was a girl – they was getting on in years. One was tall and thin, walked like a stork, the other was tiny and very sweet-looking. They was real lavender and old lace. They had lived together donkey’s years, since they were girls… never went out without hats. Had high boned collars. Never wore anything except cream and fawn, fashions that was about fifty years before… a lot of scenty powder the same colour. It’s funny when you look back, I don’t think nobody ever thought anything about them living together. They were Sunday-school teachers. Nobody thought twice about it. You see what I mean… nobody much knew about women then…’
‘Or cared.’
‘…Just as likely they was just friends but you know, once you find out a thing and that they got a name for it, you begin to think about things you never thought about before. It’s like what you just said about young Trix. I can see now. She was very against her Dad… and her brothers… and men. She never blamed her Mum for going off and leaving them all. The war didn’t have all bad consequences.’
‘Here.’ Ursula tipped a small shot of whisky into each of their cups. ‘Drink before you start getting maudlin. You always do when you start thinking about the old days.’
‘Why do you always make out you are so tough? It’s why I never thought you’d get married.’
‘Because I am tough… and your batteries must be running down, you’re raising your voice. I married Niall because I couldn’t have coped with being the Other Woman to you. One can only sustain being the Mistress if one despises the Wife.’
‘You never said that before.’
‘The film never saw the light of day before.’
‘All the years we’ve been together and you never said you was jealous of Niall’s little fling with me.’
‘I never meant that I was jealous; what I meant is that I could never despise you. You are the best of all people. I guessed what would happen if you and Niall got together: you are the kind of woman men like. You look after their creature comforts.’ She spoke quietly, watching her friend twiddling the volume of her hearing-aid. ‘Oh Lord, Dorothy, why don’t you carry a spare battery – I shall never repeat all that if I live to be a hundred.’
The plump old lady peered. ‘What’s so funny, Ursula? This thing’s on the blink again.’
‘I said, Georgia Giacopazzi…’
Dorothy Partridge winced, ‘Ah, that’s better.’
‘Georgia Kennedy didn’t know everything that was going on.’
‘You’re right there. If she had a known we should be getting ourselves interviewed by the Sun.’
‘Or the Sport.’
Dorothy looked blank.
‘It’s a dirty paper… likes three-in-a-bed stories. You are behind the times, Dorothy.’