Where did I leave Natalie? Why, up in the Abbey grounds, chatting to Peter in that rather cosy, companionable way which means you want a job and the other might have one. ‘There’s a waiting list for working here,’ said Peter. ‘And the Abbey Fathers are very traditional. Outdoor work is man’s work, so far as they’re concerned. But you could try up at the quarry, if you’re desperate. Emphysema land.’
‘Emphysema?’ Really, Natalie knew nothing.
‘Dust in the lungs,’ said Peter. ‘Kills you in the end. But by that time you’ve got your cards, and are off. Why should they care? And what can they do about it? Spread used tea leaves when they blast, to keep the dust down?’
‘I’ve just got to get myself out of this situation,’ said Natalie. ‘Since there’s no one to help me I’ll have to help myself.’
‘Try the quarry then,’ said Peter. ‘The Devil helps those who help themselves.’
Since taking his advice, although it was always enigmatic, had turned out well in the past, Natalie took it now and the next day went up to that part of the old quarry which was still being worked, in the section of the hill above Bernard and Flora’s caravan. White dust shrouded the road and fields for yards around. It crunched underfoot as Natalie walked. Sirens sounded, and a whole section of Somerset hillside crumbled and collapsed in its own special granite cloud. A line of ancient giant rock-crunchers prepared to receive that day’s splendid dinner. The ground shook beneath her as the rock fell away.
‘Okay,’ said the site manager to Natalie. ‘You want to be the gofer? You be the gofer! You’re here in person, which is more than can be said for the one we employ now. No phone call, nothing! Can’t say I’m sorry; his mum’s up here all the time, about one thing or another. The trouble with today’s young, they can’t tell a job from a classroom.’
‘What will I have to do?’ She had no idea, but she was astonished and gratified to find a job was so easy to find.
‘Make the tea, run errands, copy out the work chits. Can’t use a computer out here: the dust gets into the works.’
‘And the lungs,’ she said, coughing, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny. Not one bit.
‘Shift work Monday to Thursday: 6 a.m. till 2. Thursday through Saturday: 3 to 11. Forty quid.’
‘The day?’
‘The week,’ he said. ‘No arguments. Take it or leave it. If you don’t take it someone else will.’
‘I can’t manage on that!’
‘Lady,’ said Bob, for so he was called, ‘that’s no concern of mine. Try for Family Income Supplement, if it’s not enough. Don’t expect me to keep you in luxury. Start on Monday.’
‘All right,’ she said.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked, in rather more friendly tones than before.
‘Eddon Gurney.’
‘Oh, Eddon. No bus. I’d give you a lift up in the mornings but the wife wouldn’t like it.’
‘I’ll manage,’ said Natalie.
Now what Natalie failed to notice, being not, as we have observed, the most perceptive or sensitive girl in the world – in spite of what I’ve said to the contrary in the past, in Natalie’s defence: I do think it takes a pretty obtuse kind of person not to notice when a husband plans to leave – was the flash of the Quattro round corners and hedges wherever she went. Angus was well and truly hooked on Natalie, as men can sometimes be on women whose moral approval they want. Of course Angus wanted her body – who wouldn’t? – but he wanted her to like him, approve of him, admire him and tell him he was doing just fine, as well. All those very reactions, in fact, a man can reasonably expect from a wife, but seldom gets, and Angus certainly did not receive from Jean.
‘I reckon you’re a closet queer,’ Jean would say, blaming him for her lack of orgasm.
‘You were a fool to buy this car,’ she’d say, every time the garage filled it up yet again. ‘More money than sense!’ ‘She’d never look at you, you’re past it – an old man with a paunch,’ she’d say, if he admired some woman on TV. ‘Why can’t you take up an honest profession,’ she’d say, if he pulled off some stupendous property deal.
‘Big fish in a little pond,’ she’d say, if he got his name in the local paper. And if he gave her a cheque, out of the blue, she’d say ‘Now what are you trying to buy?’ Or if he bought flowers, ‘What have you been up to, Angus?’
What he liked was Natalie’s silence, her soft, occasional glance towards him, the tremble of her bottom lip, how feeling hard done by, as she must about the auction, she had not ranted or raved. She wouldn’t talk to him, true, but she’d get over that. Moreover he had let it be known to Arthur that he and Natalie were in what Arthur liked to describe as a ‘leg-over situation’. He wanted it to be true, he was humiliated that it wasn’t true: he meant to make it true.
So when Natalie left the quarry in the pouring rain and started walking down the hill, it just so happened the Audi Quattro happened to be passing.
‘Give you a lift, Natalie?’
She’d said no often enough on the road to school, outside the house, by the post office, and at the shops, quite automatically. Now her lips seemed stiffened by white dust and she needed shelter. She stayed quiet and just got in. ‘What are you doing here, Natalie?’
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘What do you want with one of those? Do you no good. Wear you out.’
‘I want to be independent.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I thought all you girls together were happy enough living off the State. I could get you a job.’
‘What doing?’
Angus thought fast.
‘We’re entering a float for the Carnival. Needs someone to be in charge – what’s wrong with you?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Natalie.
‘No strings attached,’ he pleaded.
‘No.’ She didn’t even bother to think about it. She just said no. It annoyed him.
‘Eighty pounds a week, cash, no tax deductions.’
She shook her head. He wanted to shake her. He took her back home, or to her half-home, down at Sonia’s. The Quattro had parked outside better places, his expression said. Slumming, where the little children swarmed, and all of them fatherless! As are 23 per cent of all the nation’s children of course, but someone like Angus wasn’t counting. Takes a mad woman in a loonybin to actually count. One child in thirty these days is born physically handicapped. Did you know that? Sonia saw it on a poster only yesterday. And no money for research any more. The only people doing research are the drug companies themselves – the ones who make Thalidomide and allied substances. That’s the way it goes, these days. For the heart of the country read the pocket of the country.
‘Any time you want out!’ Angus said. ‘But I suppose you two ladies are snug enough,’ and he was pleased to see Natalie reacted to that. Just a spot of colour in her porcelain cheek, but nonetheless a reaction. She had lost the dishevelled look of the early days of Harry’s leaving, he was sorry to see. Except for a little patch of quarry dust left unbrushed on the side of her skirt, she was otherwise well turned out. When it rained the dust would turn not so much to mud as to a thick gluey paste. No brushing it off then. It won’t be long, thought Angus.
Sonia too knows what it is to love Natalie, to want to raise a spot of red on the porcelain cheek.