The Men and the Girls (35 page)

‘Pick those up.'

Very slowly, he trod on them.

‘Right,' said Hugh. He stooped over George and lifted him under one arm. ‘Bed. Bed is the only place for rude babies.'

George began to roar. Edward followed him. Julia said, anxiously, ‘Perhaps they should stay where they can see you—'

‘They can see me out of their bedroom window.'

He marched off across the lawn carrying George and dragging Edward. Once out of sight of Julia, the twins stopped crying and began to snivel. Hugh led them upstairs and sat them on their beds.

‘What a pity,' Hugh said gravely to them. His heart smote him. ‘How sad.'

They looked away from him.

‘I shall leave you here, and when you are good, in about ten minutes, I will wave to you from the garden and you can come down and say sorry to Mummy and we will start again.'

George put his thumb in. Edward began to twiddle a piece of hair above his ear.

‘Ten minutes,' Hugh said and went back down to the garden.

‘I've told them that I will signal to them when they can come down and say sorry. That gives me a chance to say sorry first.'

‘Don't—' Julia said. She was wearing jeans and a soft pink shirt she had had since Hugh had first known her, and her spectacles.

‘I desperately want to come back,' Hugh said.

She looked at him through her spectacles.

‘Do you?'

‘We suit each other,' Hugh said. ‘I wouldn't suggest going on just for the twins,
even
for the twins, but we do so well together, don't we?'

She sat down on a garden chair a little distance from him, and lifted her hair in both hands and dropped it neatly and smoothly down her back.

‘I am terribly ashamed,' Hugh said. ‘I have to confess that I genuinely, thoroughly, felt as I did, when I left, but I don't feel that now. Not a shred of it. I should never have taken it out on you.'

‘Your letter—'

‘I hope you burned it.'

‘I virtually did. Why did you write it if you didn't mean it.'

‘I was in a habit of thinking, I suppose. I can't even remember now what that habit felt like. Julia, I love you. I really love you. Don't you want me to come back?'

There was a long pause and then she said, ‘Of course I do.'

He held his breath. She said, ‘I've been furious with you, you see. Furious and fed up. I will not be penalized for behaving well, punished for being kind. Do you understand?'

He looked down at the lawn. ‘Yes.'

‘I went out to dinner with Rob Shiner,' Julia went on. ‘It was so dull. And I found I didn't have the heart for an adventure but' – she flashed a look at him – ‘I don't want to be exploited for wishing to stay faithful either, or for being the chief wage-earner. I must emphasize this because it's important. I love you and I want to be your wife but I won't, do you hear me, I
won't
be punished again for being a good and loving wife. Right?'

Hugh was scarlet. ‘No,' he said, so low that she could scarcely hear him.

‘Can we come now?' the twins shouted from behind the safety bars of their bedroom window.

‘Can they?'

‘I love you,' Hugh said to Julia urgently. ‘Can I get that through to you? Do you realize that I really, truly, love you?'

‘Please,' the twins shouted. ‘Please, please, please, we're good now, goody good, please, please, please—'

‘Yes,' Julia said.

Hugh turned towards the house.

‘You can come now!'

‘Vivienne Penniman rang. So did those people from Rapswell. They're having a Country and Western evening—'

‘Oh,' Hugh said, making a little dismissive gesture.

‘And a friend of Rob's wants to talk to you about an idea he has for a series on taboos—'

The twins erupted out of the garden door, squealing like piglets.

‘The first thing,' Hugh said, ‘now I'm going to be at home more, is to get rid of that Sandy.' He was laughing. He ran forward to field the twins. ‘The one with the fat hair!'

Kate lay on her bed in Sonia's room. Sonia had taken her children swimming, to the Marston Ferry pool. with a whole group of other mothers and children from Mansfield House. It was a hot afternoon and the air was full of hummings and buzzings and so still that the thin blue curtains at the window hardly stirred. Kate had started by gardening – the garden was rank with neglect – but the heat and a headache had driven her back inside. She had drunk two glasses of water, and then she had gone up to Sonia's room – nothing would make it other than Sonia's room – and had lain down on her bed and closed her eyes.

Julia had been to see her yesterday. It had been difficult to talk because there seemed to be nowhere to do it without clamorous toddlers or whirring washing machines or discussions about whether the police should be summoned to deal with Pat's boyfriend. Julia had looked tired but happy and had said that Hugh had come home.

‘You said if I waited, he'd come,' Julia said. She held Kate's hands. ‘You were right. But I had to get angry with him first.'

She had been lovely, Kate thought, gentle and lovely. She had asked, inevitably, what Kate would do next.

‘I'd love to know, but I don't. You see, you've got a career and I've only ever had jobs. I'm not complaining but I'm not such a fool that I can't see the difference.'

Julia had offered to find her a job at the studios. Kate had hesitated. ‘I can't be out of Oxford, you see. Because of Joss.'

‘Oh Kate—'

‘It's odd, isn't it? They all seem to gravitate to James; Joss, Miss Bachelor, Hugh, this American woman.'

‘I don't know James very well—'

‘I don't know Hugh.'

Julia laughed. ‘He isn't very complicated—'

‘Why did I leave the charmed circle, Julia? What was I doing?'

‘Obeying instincts,' Julia said, ‘like we all do. That's one of the things I've learned recently. I used to think that all you had to do in life was decide, and then your behaviour followed suit. But it's harder than that, isn't it?'

‘Much harder,' Kate said.

When Julia left, she said, ‘Don't forget about the job. Think about it.'

The trouble is, Kate thought, lying behind her closed eyelids, that I don't quite know where to start thinking. Everything seems asleep, even my instincts. All I know, the only petty irrelevant little thing I know is that I can't stand Sonia much longer; I'm even beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy for her dead husband. I suppose that's a start, I suppose that at least shows I'm still alive.

‘Miss Bain?'

Kate's eyes flew open. In the doorway to Sonia's room stood an elderly woman in wire-rimmed spectacles and a brown-print summer dress. She carried a sad brown cardigan over one arm and was slightly out of breath.

‘Miss Bachelor!' Kate cried, springing off the bed.

‘I don't wish to disturb you. Please don't get up. I simply wished to reassure myself about you.' She moved the cardigan from her right arm to her left and held out her free hand. ‘How do you do? We have never met.'

Kate looked round. ‘There's nowhere for you to sit!'

‘And what is the matter with a bed?'

‘Do you mind?'

‘Why should I mind?'

Kate's hands went to her face. ‘I – I don't know what to do with you, I've been so – so—'

Beatrice sat on Sonia's bed. ‘We should have met long ago. I wish you would lie down again. I'm sure you have a headache.'

‘A bit—'

‘Please,' Beatrice said, ‘we must dispense with getting to know each other. We must simply know.'

Kate subsided on to her bed again. She pushed herself back until she was leaning against the wall. Opposite her, Beatrice sat upright.

‘Miss Bain—'

‘Kate.'

‘Thank you. Kate, my conscience is not at all clear. I feel in a way – and this is one reason for my coming – that your leaving Richmond Villa had something to do with me, and I am most anxious that your return is not impeded by my continued presence there. I shall not visit the house any longer.'

Kate gazed at her.

‘Am I right?'

‘Yes,' Kate said. She had a sudden longing to put down her burden, to return candour for candour. ‘I was jealous of you. You were so clever and unusual. You caught James's imagination. But there was more to it than that.'

Beatrice's face betrayed nothing. ‘Of course. You felt you had lost control.'

‘How do you know? I did, but how could you possibly know that?'

‘I am a human being too,' Beatrice said with a glimmer of a smile, ‘even though I may scarcely look like one. I know the terror of feeling the power to choose is slipping away. So little of what we do is governed by free will, although we like to tell ourselves the very opposite. It makes us feel superior beings. The truth is that we are in large measure victims of our genes. Hence the struggle, the unending struggle.'

Kate moved forward on her bed until she was leaning towards Beatrice. ‘I'm so stupid, so stupid not to have got to know you—'

‘You can only decide what seems right at the time. Hindsight is a menace to self-respect.'

‘You mustn't stop going to Richmond Villa,' Kate said suddenly. ‘They love you there, you're so good for them. Joss loves you, even though you call her Josephine.'

‘I have no taste for affected androgyny,' Beatrice said. ‘She is a credit to you. You are an admirable mother.'

Kate ducked her head. ‘I don't want her to be scared by what's happened.'

‘Of course she must be scared. Scared enough to realize that there are still men around who cannot accept that society has moved on in its attitude to a woman's place. But you need have no fear that Josephine will be damaged by what has happened to you. She is a very resilient person. She is also much attached to you. If it is possible not to take her electing to live at Richmond Villa too personally, I should try to do so. Sometimes it is impossible for two people endeavouring to be similar protagonists to live together.'

‘Oh,' Kate said impulsively, ‘you are such a comfort!'

Beatrice looked away. She put out a hand and brushed at the caterpillars of candlewick on Sonia's bedspread. ‘And you need not worry about that charming and competent American person either.'

‘Garth's mother?'

‘Indeed.' Beatrice gave a little smile.

‘Could you explain more?'

‘No.'

‘Oh,' Kate cried, ‘you are tantalizing!'

‘I mean to be comforting.'

‘How is Leonard?'

‘Very shocked over you, but better now. What, I wonder, in his young life, persuaded him to masquerade as a monster when he is nothing of the sort? The English public school system? Would you,' Beatrice said, ‘would you come and see me?'

‘In your room? With all the Marys—'

‘All the Marys?'

‘Joss said your room was full of Jesuses and Marys.'

‘Ah,' Beatrice said. She stood up. ‘Just one more thing.' She looked down at Kate. ‘You are a person in your own right, you know. You don't necessarily – not necessarily at all – need a man to complete the equation, any more than I consider myself to be only half a human because I am childless.' She held a hand out to Kate. ‘Please don't see me out, I can quite well find my own way. Come and visit me soon. And take heart.'

Kate stood up and took her hand. It was thin and dry, the palm like smoothed out, once crumpled tissue paper.

‘Suppose,' Kate said, holding Beatrice's hand, ‘suppose I find that I've – that I've broken something?'

‘That, of course, if it's the case, can't be helped. But you will never know unless you take the trouble to ask.' Then Beatrice took her hand away and went out of Sonia's room, and Kate heard her going carefully down the stairs.

Garth Acheson had been only a little soothed after his Indian supper with James. There was no doubt that James was a great guy, but his greatness made things harder for Garth because he could quite see, and didn't want to, how James's greatness appealed to Garth's mother. Garth admired his father very much, but he would never have said that his father was approachable. He never had been; he just wasn't the kind of dad you could mess around with. Garth thought that you could probably mess around with James quite easily, and with that Hugh guy, who'd been living there, and they were both years older than Randy, so clearly the ability to fool around was not a matter of age, but of temperament.

Garth adored his mother. He had seen from the beginning that she hadn't liked Oxford much and he felt that Oxford was at fault for not appreciating her. Thus he was truly grateful to James for doing what Oxford had declined to do, but he now felt that James was doing too much of it, and he wasn't at all sure that he had made this plain to James, out of his own gaucheness and ineptitude.

That Bluey adored being appreciated by James was absolutely evident. Garth couldn't believe that his father hadn't noticed, but his father noticed things round the house, like Garth's running shoes lying in the hallway or a dripping faucet, rather than human things. Garth longed to say something to Bluey, but he was afraid to, not least because he didn't want her to stop looking like she was looking at the moment. The person to tackle, the only person to tackle, was Joss.

But Joss wasn't the easy prey she once had been. Garth couldn't believe what had happened to her in six months; it was wonderful, but it was a bit scary too, and sometimes he thought about the first time he'd noticed her, carrying Miss Bachelor's shopping, when she was just a scruffy kid. Quite a little kid. Now she was surrounded by friends at school, and seemed to take half of them home each day, including a thin, dark boy called Nat Temple who was hopeless at sport. Nat Temple didn't seem to be very far from Joss ever, these days. Twice, Garth had noticed, they were wearing identical sweatshirts. However, Nat Temple or no Nat Temple, Garth had to get Joss on her own, somehow, to discuss with her the problem of Bluey and James.