Born of Woman (32 page)

‘You're
kidding
! No one goes that long without it. There must be something wrong with him.'

‘There isn't, Susie. Well, nothing physical. It's just that …' Her voice had petered out. All the sympathy she had felt for Lyn, the forgiving explanations, the endless kind excuses, seemed merely fatuous now. Susie's own contempt and irritation were disturbingly infectious.

‘If I was you, I wouldn't waste your time on him. There's plenty of other blokes around.'

Susie was right, it seemed. She had already received two eager propositions from men at the hotel and now a famous photographer had asked her out for a drink. Susie would approve of Oz. She was opposed to men in general, but she liked them in particular—especially when they had Hasselblads dangling round their necks, Equity admission cards weighing down their pockets. Perhaps she ought to go out with him just for Susie's sake. Or the sake of those brass studs. She could see them now—the perfect frame they made for his taut provoking bottom as he bent to change the film.

He stood up, strode ahead, barged his way through the barrier without a platform ticket, then started pacing up and down, checking angles and locations. She followed nervously.

‘Right, Jennifer, I want to pose you in the centre of that footbridge. There's some fantastic textural detail with the criss-cross pattern of the bridge leading the eye to the girders of the roof, and those railway lines echoing the curve and …'

Jennifer tried to appreciate his fantastic textural detail. All she could see were crowds of impatient passengers struggling to cross the footbridge with their luggage and their pushchairs while she and Jonathan blocked their way or delayed important journeys. Other people stopped to stare, creating more obstruction.

‘
Fantastic
!' Oz was murmuring, as she arranged her arm against a complex intersection of metal curves and struts. Fantastic was like darling—a word which had lost its heart. Yet she clung to it like some addict to his fix. If they said just ‘good' or even ‘excellent', she felt a nonentity, a failure. The trouble was, the book had made her vain and introspective, fretting about her looks or her performance, her speeches or her image. She felt like a pop-star with her attendant gaggle of groupies, tried to ignore them, smile only for the camera. Matthew had told her to treat the camera as a friend. Oz had added, ‘Flirt with it. Woo it like a lover.' She saw it rather as a snooper and a spy, sleuthing her up and down the city, in and out of cul-de-sacs, jumping out from corners, breathing down her neck. Susie would adore it, pose and pout and swank for it, respond to its advances.

‘Now, I'd like you to look mysterious—stare into the distance, raise your head a bit.' Oz had stopped being the Romeo and become the professional again. She could hardly hear him against the clank and roar of trains, the cackle of loudspeakers.

‘This is a platform alteration. The 15.50 to London King's Cross, will now depart from Platform 9. Will all passengers for London King's Cross kindly proceed to …'

She longed just to drop everything and run. King's Cross was only forty minutes' drive from Putney. It might be dry there—dry and bright, Susie in the garden with the boys. A week ago, she had daubed them all with body paint—Hugh and Robert red with spots, even the solemn Charles a zizzy green. They had used an ice-cold garden hose to yell and gasp it off. No one said ‘Be quiet' or ‘Don't be puerile'. Matthew couldn't see them from Australia, and Lyn was in his office in the City. After that, they had a barbeque. With Susie there, things which had loomed and threatened seemed somehow less important—Hernhope, house sales, even sex and babies—all took second place to charcoal-burnt chipolatas, ten-pin bowling, boat trips on the Thames.

‘Jennifer, you're flagging, darling. Just one more shot and then we'll stop, I promise.' Oz was changing lenses again. ‘Lean forward a little, will you, and then I can get that … Ah, Jonathan, you're back.'

‘Am I too late? I'm sorry.' Jonathan's cream suede shoes were squelching, his hair darkened and flattened by the rain. ‘The sweetcorn wasn't easy. I got the other things, but then I had to …'

Oz waved away the split and sodden paper bags of vegetables. ‘Don't worry—I managed without them. Thanks all the same, but we'll have to finish now. Perhaps you could drop me off on the way to your hotel?'

‘Of course.'

Jonathan drove them back through traffic-jams and rainstorm, left Jennifer in her room to bath and change. Jennifer stripped off her clothes and stretched naked on the bed. Strange to think of Jonathan being homosexual. He didn't seem sexual at all. She couldn't imagine a panting, thrusting body beneath that immaculate facade. She was obsessed with bodies at the moment. The longer she was deprived of sex, the more she felt constantly on edge, on heat, spinning fantasies from damp and steaming denim, from gleaming teasing studs. Or perhaps it was simply Susie talking about bodies in a way she kept recalling: ‘A screw's only like a meal', ‘Love's a mixture of hormones and hot air.'

Susie brought up subjects she had avoided all her life, took the blush and censure out of sex and discussed it as freely as books or records. She somehow found it threatening and disturbing, torn between Susie's easy-going sluttishness and her own more stolid views. Susie was still a child in some respects, yet sexually she was so much more experienced. She had slept with a score of different men, even with a woman. Susie had poured out all the details, seemed to have relished the affair.

Jennifer had listened, shocked and yet excited. When Susie tried to kiss her, she always pulled away. Women shouldn't kiss. Yet she found herself dwelling on the kisses, thinking about them when Susie wasn't there childish kisses too fervent for a child's, tasting of chewing-gum and cheap scented lipstick, overlaid with nicotine. Susie had even touched her breasts one evening—sort of casually as if it hardly mattered. When she pushed her off, Susie had pouted and called her a prude, explained that in her Women's Group they learnt to give pleasure to their own and each other's bodies, instead of always waiting for
men
to dish it out.

Jennifer trailed a hand across her breasts, remembering Susie's hand—a hot, sticky hand which knew exactly where to linger. Shouldn't do it, not even on her own. This was Newcastle's most decorous hotel. Touching yourself was bound to be forbidden, like a lot of other things—the regulations on the door were almost longer than the Bible by the bed. It would be nice to talk to Susie, giggle over Oz. She ought to phone, in any case, check on the boys, make sure Mrs Briggs was coping, have a word with Lyn. She turned on her tummy, dialled the Putney number.

‘Wormwood Scrubs.' That was Hugh's giggle, not Susie's.

‘Police Sergeant Bloggs here. I've just apprehended Jack the Ripper. Want me to bring him in?'

‘Auntie Jennifer! Where are you?'

‘Newcastle.'

‘What,
still
? I thought you were going to Scotland.'

‘We've been and gone—in less than half a day.'

‘Crikey! You must have gone on Concorde. Did you buy me some Edinburgh rock?'

‘Sorry, darling, I was so rushed, I didn't even see a shop. How are you?'

‘Fine.'

‘Everyone else all right?'

‘Yup. We don't like Susie's cooking though. She tried to make a curry and it looked like sort of dog's mess.'

‘Is Susie there?'

‘No. She went out.'

‘OK, I'll have a word with Lyn, then.'

‘He's out, too.'

‘You mean, he's not back from the office yet?'

‘Well, yes … but then he went out again. Pushed off with Susie. In the car.'

‘With
Susie
?'

‘Yeah, they took a picnic. Meanies. Wouldn't let us come.'

‘When, Hugh? When did they go?'

‘Oh, hours ago.'

‘Who's looking after you, then?'

‘No one. We don't need looking after. Susie left us some supper—tins and things.'

‘When did they say they'd be back, then?'

‘They didn't. Not till late, I imagine. They were out till one last night.'

‘
One
?'

‘Yup. Susie woke me up when she came in. She tripped on the mat and started giggling.'

‘But surely Lyn wasn't …? I mean, Susie was probably at her Women's Group. She's often late back from that.'

‘Yeah. Maybe. I thought I heard Lyn come in with her, but it may have been some other bloke. Hey, want to speak to Oliver? He's dying to tell you about his …'

‘Er … not now, darling. I'll phone again later. I … I've got to get ready for dinner now. L … love to everyone.'

Jennifer rolled over on the bed. The receiver felt damp and heavy in her hand. She let it fall, stared up at the ceiling. All she could see was Susie—Susie sprawling on the picnic rug, walking the streets with Lyn till one in the morning, kissing in some doorway … No, of course they hadn't kissed. Lyn had always steered clear of Susie, treated her like a schoolgirl.

So what were they doing out together—alone, without the boys? Picnics and sprees were her-and-Susie things, not Lyn's. Susie was betraying her, betraying her own views, criticising men and all they stood for, then grabbing her husband the minute she was gone. Yet Susie could hardly help herself. It was almost second nature for her to flirt and taunt and charm—part of her attraction.

The picnic rug had spread right across the ceiling. Jennifer shut her eyes, but she could still see Susie lolling on her back, feeding Lyn with little bits of sausage, giggling through her cider. The rug changed to a counterpane, afternoon to night. Lyn was creeping upstairs in dogged pursuit of Susie, wheedling outside her door, then slipping in and turning the key behind him. Ridiculous. He had never once set foot inside her room. It was an attic room up a little narrow staircase which Lyn studiously avoided. He was usually fast asleep by one. Susie had probably come in with some casual local pick-up, some twenty-year-old with acne and tattoos.

Jennifer swung off the bed, dragged on her dressing-gown, paced up and down between bed and window, bed and chair. That only left the picnic. Was it really so unthinkable that Lyn should go out for some fresh air and a sandwich on a summer afternoon with a girl who shared the house? Except it was no longer afternoon. So why were they still out? And why had they barred the boys?

She could see Susie's hand again, reaching out to Lyn, this time, fondling him instead. Could she be jealous of a woman? She was jealous of them both—angry with Lyn for taking her place as Susie's mate and confidant, bitter with Susie for sneaking off with a man she denounced as a chauvinist and pretended to despise.

Yet who was
she
to censure? Hadn't she echoed all the criticisms, let her own resentment feed on Susie's? More than that—she had even started borrowing Susie's fantasies, allowing herself to be tempted by strangers in hotels or flattered by photographers, casual chat-ups, vulgar overtures. Susie was too young and irresponsible to understand the complex bonds of marriage. She was a temporary, a fly-by-night, who would have vanished in a month or so, off to be an actress, or a mistress, charming someone else. Whereas Lyn was hers for ever, marriage was for ever, and she had simply shrugged it off, risking lasting sacred things for the sake of a few cheap thrills.

She trailed into the bathroom, ran the taps. She had to admit she would
miss
the thrills. She had enjoyed her break at Putney, yet she had enjoyed it at a cost. Lyn had always been excluded, the one outsider in a family of seven. She felt a sudden rush of pity as she saw him sitting on his own at nights, tired and supperless, while she and her new-found siblings shared chopsticks and chop suey in the Yang Tse Kiang or stuffed themselves with popcorn at the Putney ABC.

She stepped into the bath, rubbed her body harshly with the flannel, soaped the make-up off, the sham, the shame. She had only one last dinner left, then she would return and be his wife again, not Matthew's creature or Hartley Davies's star—not even Susie's playmate. Susie was a danger. They must escape her influence before things went too far. She tried not to guess how far they had gone already. Lyn was off sex at the moment, but a younger girl might be just the cure he needed—some flighty little teenager with no hang-ups at all. Susie probably liked the back way, was probably on the Pill, and for all her gripes she had admitted Lyn attracted her. It would be milder in the south, a balmy evening full of scents and stars—the whole of Putney Heath as their double bed …

Jennifer jerked out the plug, drubbed herself dry, returned to the bedroom cocooned in two large towels. Lyn and Susie simply wouldn't work. She might flirt with him, try to add him to her list of pick-ups, but she would never understand him. He was too sensitive, too complex. That was
her
role and no one else would snatch it from her. They would have to get away, leave Susie safely behind. Why risk rows and jealousies, ugly complications? Lyn hated it at Putney, anyway, complained about the continual noise—the five competing radios, the stampedings on the stairs, the lack of a free bathroom, the long-drawn-out formal meals. It surprised her, really, he had put up with it so long, especially with their neglect of him added on as well. No wonder he had responded when …

Better not to think about it. She walked to the window, double-netted, double-glazed, pushed the nets aside, looked out at only grey—the sky a traffic-jam of weeping roofs and gutters, rain drumming on the pane.

‘I stayed a night in Newcastle before continuing my journey. I could not sleep for nerves. It rained and rained.'
Jennifer suddenly remembered that entry in the diaries, scribbled in the scrawny green-backed notebook which Hester had brought with her from London to Northumberland, returning there after fifteen years away, to be housekeeper to Thomas Winterton. She had stayed not in a tower-block, but in a humble guesthouse where they burnt the rissoles and rain splattered on the floorboards from a leaky roof.