Flying Under Bridges (15 page)

On the
radio Pasty Cline was singing a song about feeling blue. They played
country-and-western music very loudly in the Laundromat. Mrs Ede, who had been
working there for ever and could sort the entire town by sheets and
pillowcases, was rather deaf now but she still liked her music. Eve quite liked
it too. It was partly why she went. She never had it that loud at home and Adam
didn’t like country-and-western. Eve liked all those songs about unrequited
love for women, cars or dogs. All that passion. So unlike Edenford. Eve didn’t
know if she would die for love. She wouldn’t die for Adam because he wouldn’t
notice.

Eve sat
and listened and thought, I’d like to sing but I haven’t the talent. Why did I
not get given that? I’ll be forty-six next birthday. It’s odd to think that
when Patsy Cline was my age she’d been dead for twenty years.

Eve
picked up a copy of
Cosmopolitan
magazine. There was a girl on the front
wearing a leotard that suggested she had no genitalia of any kind. She
certainly had never had an unwanted hair in her life. Eve’s feet hurt. She
looked down at them. They were wearing sensible heels. Heels. Why the hell was
she wearing heels to the launderette? They didn’t look like her feet at all.
Her body seemed to start as herself and then finish as somebody else. She was
wearing stockings.

‘But I
don’t like stockings. I’ve never liked stockings,’ Eve mumbled to her own feet.
Eve looked at the woman in the magazine and she looked at her own feet and she
realised she had become a sort of female impersonator.

The
June issue of
Cosmopolitan
had much the same articles as the one Eve had
read at Pe Pe’s house before Christmas. There was a general presumption that
single women in their twenties were whiling away a lot of solitary hours in-the
gym, which was good because the office was no longer exciting for women but
rather a place of sexual harassment and the cause of exhaustion and distress
for working mothers. Anyone who wasn’t already a working mother was obviously
aiming to be one, so there were articles about how to catch a man (including a
pull-out map showing cities where men outnumber women. Top Tip of the Month —
move to a city on the map and then spill a drink on the man of your choice);
several articles on how to keep your man once caught, with follow-up advice on
the signs of impending date rape and the spread of sexually transmitted
diseases.

A woman
sitting opposite was reading
She
magazine.

‘Did
you know that American women spend more than ten billion dollars a year on
make-up and beauty aids?’ She flicked on through her article and sighed. ‘It
says in here that women buy eighty per cent of everything that is sold anywhere
in the world.’

Eve
nodded. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Men don’t even buy their own underpants.’

The
woman held up a photograph for her to see. ‘There’s that Claudia Schiffer. Lovely
looking girl. My Bert really fancies her.’ She tutted and put the magazine back
in her ample lap. ‘Imagine him making love to that. Claudia would be horrified.’

Old Mrs
Ede boomed into the conversation like Concorde riding roughshod over the air
waves. ‘I like watching the clothes go round in the wash. You don’t know whose
clothes have just whipped around in there before yours. Maybe a murderer
getting rid of evidence or a wife spinning away lipstick from her lover. Don’t
you think?’

Eve
didn’t know what she thought. ‘Adam’s got a bad egg stain on his beige golf
jumper,’ she said.

Mrs Ede
nodded sympathetically. Stains were a lifetime’s devotion to her. She had a
cigarette stuck to her bottom lip and ash dribbled down her front as she spoke.
At least she was making more work for herself.

The
woman with the
She
magazine was unmoved. ‘It says here that 1 in every
2.3 marriages in the UK ends in divorce,’ she said.

The
women all tutted together. It had been a difficult day for Eve. She had had one
of those smart-arse cashiers at the supermarket who race you with the scanner
while you’re trying to sort fresh from frozen into separate bags. She looked so
smug when she slapped down the bill and Eve was still panting her way through
bagging the household essentials.

‘Did
you know that supermarkets put longer floor tiles in front of expensive items
so that shoppers will feel more relaxed and so are more likely to buy things?’

No one
heard Eve speak. It was all nonsense. Not about the floor tiles. That was true.
About the launderette. No one spoke. It is the ‘age of proximity without
communication’. Eve had read that. No one spoke. No one was going to. There was
just deaf old Mrs Ede, the woman reading. She, Eve and someone else’s feet on
the end of Eve’s legs. And it was the feet that made Eve get up and leave. She
couldn’t walk very fast in her heels but she tottered away from the
launderette, she wobbled away from her spin cycle, she teetered away from Patsy
Cline and straight into the nearest shoe shop on the High Street. Using her
rarely touched credit card, Eve bought a very expensive pair of trainers and
instructed the sales assistant, who had a ring through her nose, that she
could, ‘Chuck those heels in the bin.’

Newly
shod, Eve stepped out into the cobbled street. Her feet felt totally different,
her legs felt different. She felt bizarrely liberated and began to run. She
ran and ran and ran, straight into Inge Holbrook.

Inge
and Eve had been inseparable at school and it should have been a great reunion
but Eve didn’t see Inge at first because she was hidden behind a huge bundle of
sheets. It was only when the two of them banged into each other and the sheets
went flying that Eve realised who it was. Inge Holbrook. She looked just the
same as she had at school. Blonde and athletic, attractive even in an old
sweatshirt and jeans. Eve had a sudden flash of her getting out of bed at
school and looking stunning even in the terrible pyjamas they had made everyone
wear. It made her smile.

‘Inge?’
There was a slight stir in the street as Eve spoke. Many of the shoppers had
seen Inge walking but so far the consensus had been to stare slightly without
making actual contact. The woman straightening the rack outside What She Wants
tensed and the man on the hot-potato stand cocked his ear to see if he had
heard something. Inge turned and looked at her assailant. Recognition took a
moment so Eve helped her.

‘Eve…
Eve… Marsh… Cameron. Five X. Remember? Five X? I sat at the back with Susan
Belcher. How we all laughed when we found out her family lived in a house
called Windy Corner. The Belchers of Windy Corner.’ Inge was still frowning and
Eve felt a bit embarrassed. Quite a few people were looking now. ‘Yes, well, we
were easily pleased in those days.’ Inge looked at Eve again and then put her
head back and laughed.

‘Good
God, Camie, how unbelievable.’ Camie! Eve was thrilled. She hadn’t been
Camie
for thirty years. Cameron.

Camie
knickers… camie. Everyone called her Camie at school. Of course, after she
left school she had thought
Eve
was more sophisticated. Now she realised
it just sounded old. Eve and Inge smiled at each other. Huge, great, wide,
genuine smiles. Eve tried to think where to go next. There were so many years
to cross.

‘Lot of
sheets you’ve got,’ she said. Inge nodded.

‘My
friend’s not well.’

Eve
nodded sympathetically. ‘And my mother. My mother, she’s not well.’

‘I’m
sorry.’ There was a pause.

‘I’m
sorry about your… friend.’

‘Yes.’

The two
women, one famous and one not, were by now causing a slight stir. Inge
whispered to her old chum, ‘You have to help me, Eve. I can’t remember where
the launderette is and I don’t think the public can quite believe I have
sheets.’

After
setting the laundry off they headed to the Right Bite Café and had a coffee. It
was unbelievable. Not only was Inge back in Edenford but in her old house,
right next to Adam and Eve. They were neighbours and it was wonderful for both
of them. Eve, who had longed to talk, at last found someone who was willing,
and Inge, who was afraid to talk, at last found someone she felt safe with.

‘I
remember you that first day,’ Eve said, ‘wearing your boater like Maurice
Chevalier instead of some suet pudding like the rest of us. Straight away, Miss
Campden sat you at the front to keep an eye on you. Then I got moved to the
front too. What with my eyes and everything. That’s how we sat next to each
other. Poor Miss Campden. How she loved to read out Rupert Brooke. Do you
remember? “The cool kindliness of sheets …”‘ Inge joined in and they laughed
as they repeated together,

‘… that soon

Smooth away trouble;
and the rough male kiss

Of blankets.’

Inge
winked at Eve. ‘I think Miss Campden had a bit of a run-in with a Yank during
the war.’

‘Oh,
Inge!’

‘I do. Finished
up with a pair of stockings and that faraway look in her eye.’ Eve laughed Out
loud. It felt so good. Inge smiled at her.

‘So,
are you married?’ Eve asked, and then wondered why she had. Who cared if there
was someone else. She didn’t care about there being someone else.

‘No.
No, I’m not. I’m busy. Too busy.’

Eve
nodded and moved on. ‘By the way, I heard Miss Robertson died. You remember —
biology, wore a tweed skirt all through that heat wave. It was Miss Robertson
who-told us babies came from sex. I thought at the time that it all seemed most
unlikely and probably quite uncomfortable and I can’t say I’ve changed my mind
much. I was ages getting the facts straight.’

Inge
grinned. ‘Miss Robertson had so many hairs on her thin I used to find it
difficult to concentrate.’

Eve put
her hand over her own chin and nodded. ‘It was that same summer we discovered
about riding our bicycles over the cobblestones down Larchfield Lane. Do you
remember? Sent tingles right through you.’

‘Do I
remember? Susan Belcher couldn’t get enough of it. I can still see her — all
plump legs and navy knickers, bumping down across the cobbles, especially the
uneven ones, gripping her saddle with her thighs till she hit the kerb at the
end and gave a great squeal as she collapsed on the handle bars. I think about
that sometimes.’

Eve had
forgotten. She had forgotten so much of what Inge talked about that afternoon.
They had more coffee, went to dry their wash and then came back for cake. It
was wonderful. Inge’s face was so beautiful. Not a mark on it.

‘And do
you remember Miss Robertson making us cover up all the windows with masking
tape and back copies of
Science for Schools
magazine before the sex
education lessons? She didn’t want the fourth form to see, but it made it
rather dark so to be honest I couldn’t see too well either, and it certainly
wasn’t something you did with the lights on. I remember a lot of hazy film
with amoebas and tadpoles and Miss Robertson sweating profusely. The rest is a
blur. Later we untaped the windows and dissected a chicken, which Miss
Robertson was taking home for supper.’

‘Where
did you go for the sixth form?’

Inge
shook her head at the memory. ‘St Ansten’s — my parents were so worried about
my hormones that they confined me to an all-girls boarding school. The whole
subject of sex was taboo. I spent two years at St Ansten’s working out why we
weren’t allowed long-handled hairbrushes in the dorm and why no girl was
allowed unaccompanied into the hockey equipment room.

A woman
at the next table had been pretending not to listen. She got up to go and as
she passed by Eve and Inge’s table she stopped.

‘Oh
God, it is, isn’t it? Don’t tell me but it is.’

Inge
stopped speaking. For a brief while she had forgotten to be careful. She leant
across the table to Eve. ‘Eve, I think you’ve been recognised.’

The
woman laughed as if Inge had said the funniest thing in the world. ‘Inge
Holbrook! I know I shouldn’t but I’m going to. May I?’ The woman pushed her
bottom on to the bench seat next to Eve so that Eve had to move along. The
woman’s whole attention was on Inge. It was as if Eve wasn’t even there. ‘My
name is Paula, Paula Ross, and I run the campaign for bereaved people with
special needs — I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Anyway, we are holding our first
annual ball in the autumn and I just know you would be the perfect speaker. We
had asked that newsreader but you know she’s had such trouble with…’ The
woman mimed the words ‘breast cancer’ and moved on. ‘You don’t have to decide
now, naturally, but I can’t tell you how marvellous it would be. Here’s my name
and address…’ The woman scribbled on a napkin. ‘Do call any time. Now, where
can I get hold of you?’

Inge
dutifully wrote out her agent’s address and handed it over. The woman looked
positively tearful. ‘Marvellous, it’s going to be marvellous.’ And then she was
gone.

Inge
waited till the door of the café had closed behind the intruder and then both
she and Eve started to giggle.

‘Oh
God,’ sniggered Inge. ‘Do you think she heard us talking about sex?’

Eve
looked at her old friend. Inge said it all so naturally. Eve couldn’t believe
she was sitting in the Right Bite Café in Edenford High Street talking about
sex. She wasn’t sure she had ever talked about sex with anyone. Mother had
never really explained it, except to say that sex was something two people did
only when they were very much in love. This seemed strange to Eve as a child.
Everyone knew that Harry Minter and his wife, Marie, who lived across the road,
did it all the time and he was horrible to her. At parties he would sit with
his hand round the back of her neck and squeeze it every time she said
something he didn’t like or if she wanted another drink. Then they would go
home and you could hear them going at it hammer and tongs in the sandpit in
their back garden that they’d bought for their kids.