The Pumpkin Eater (8 page)

When these friends went to stay with each other in the holidays they invented interesting situations between themselves and their friends' brothers. Sometimes a brother would write, “Give my regards to the fair Angela,” or “my humblest respects to Miss I. Douthwaite, I hope she is in good health.” Then giggling attacked us like a plague, all day we were wracked with it, spluttering into our handkerchiefs, doubled up over our prayers, not daring to catch each other's eyes for fear of a new bout beginning. I had no brothers, and therefore took it for granted that none of my friends would want to come and stay with me. There had to be a sexual incentive for everything: that was why we went to church and were fairly attentive in scripture, biology and English literature. None of us, at that time, could concentrate on mathematics or geography and we plodded on with Latin only in the faint hope that we might one day be able to understand Ovid. We had not yet encountered medical text-books, which would have provided a sharper spur.

My friends knew, of course, about the clergyman's son. I told them that he was nineteen, since we were only interested in older men, but otherwise I was fairly truthful. “You wouldn't like him,” I said airily, keeping my great love for him to myself. “He doesn't care a bit about films or dance music or anything like that.”

“Oh, I like clever boys best,” Ireen said, sucking up to me.

“I
dote
on clever boys,” Mary White said. She had an aunt in London who was going to present her at Court. This same aunt had already taken her to a play by Noel Coward and a Cochran revue. Mary White regarded herself as a civilizing influence and kept telling us that her parents were going to be divorced. She was not to be trusted.

“Well, you wouldn't like
him
,” I said.

“Why do
you
, then?”

“I don't, all that much. You know how it is. One gets so dreadfully bored.”

“Oh my goodness,” they sighed, lolling about over their beds and hitting their open mouths, “so
bored
, my deah, so too too too
bored
…”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, and sulked for the rest of the day, stalking about with my blazer collar turned up and my lower lip sagging, to show contempt.

A few days later, when this tiff had been forgotten, Ireen found me in the library where I was sitting puzzling over a cross-section of a mighty liner in the
Illustrated London News
.

“I've been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “I've just had the most awful news.”

“What news?”

“Well, you know we were going to Spain these hols — ”

“Yes. Well?”

“And Roger was going to bring Brian and maybe the Maclarens were going to come with Eric and David — ”

“Yes. Go
on
.”

“Well! Now it seems we can't go because of this stupid old war! It just seems we can't go and that's all there is to it!” She threw a crumpled letter down on the green baize. “I just got this letter.”

“What war?” I asked, disbelieving.

“Don't ask me! Some old General's invaded it or something.”

“Invaded what?”

“Spain, you clot. I don't know. Nobody ever tells you a thing in this place. I don't see why we can't go anyway. I mean nobody's going to shoot
us
or anything, are they?”

“Oh no,” I said. “They wouldn't be allowed to.”

“Well, of course they wouldn't. But Pa says it's quite out of the question and we've just got to resign ourselves and go to
Littlehampton
.”

“How awful for you,” I said vaguely. I had never been abroad, and Littlehampton sounded rather distinguished to me.

“Awful? I could die! Of course Roger won't ask Brian
there
. I mean, there's nothing to
do
in Littlehampton. Honestly, I could kill that Franco!”

“Who's he?”

“This old General who's invaded Spain. I mean, it'll probably ruin the rest of my life, not spending these holidays with Brian. I should think we might have got engaged quite easily.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's jolly bad luck for you.”

“Well, it's all right for you. You've got
Him
to think about.”

“Yes,” I said fondly.

“There'll be no one to talk to in Littlehampton and you know what the boys are like,
common
, and anyway Mummy'll have her eye on me every minute. When I'm with Roger she thinks I'm safe, if only she knew. Oh, I hate that Franco, I hate him, I just hate him!” She plunged her face in her hands and appeared to cry. I was very sorry for her. It seemed brutal to be going home to the intense and uncertain pleasure of the rope-walk and organ loft, and although I had no intention of sharing them with Ireen it did seem to me that she might be quite harmless at the swimming baths or on bicycle rides or in the cinema. It might, in fact, make me seem more independent and casual to the clergyman's son if I took a friend along (that's what I would say: “I brought my friend along”). Also, although she would discover that he was only seventeen, she would certainly be impressed by his tweed jacket with the leather elbows and the nonchalant way he smoked Gold Flake, without coughing. Then, too, she would help to fill in the unendurable days when he was in one of his moods. We could even go and call at the Vicarage, if there were two of us. We might even be allowed up to his room.

“Would you like,” I blurted. “Would you like to come and stay with us for a few days, I mean I know it's not Spain or anything like that, but it might be a bit more fun than Littlehampton, I mean for a bit. Well, you could ask your mother, couldn't you?”

She looked up in the middle of a sob. “Will
He
be there?”

“Oh yes,” I said recklessly. “He's always there. He's working very hard, you see. For his Higher.”

“Has He got a friend, do you think?”

“I don't know. I don't actually know his friends. But I mean he must
have
some friends. Well, we could ask.”

“I'd love to come,” she said. “I really would. I
do
think you're sweet.” She added brightly, and without conviction, “You must come and stay with us one holidays too. I think you'd get on awfully well with Roger. You're just his type.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I should think this stupid war or whatever it is will be over jolly soon. Then you could come to Spain.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “That would be lovely.”

But the war went on and Littlehampton was inescapable for Ireen. She wrote me many anguished letters in which she said that the only thing that prevented her from suicide was the prospect of coming to stay with me “and meeting
Him
.” I told the clergyman's son, “My friend, the one who's coming to stay, is terribly unhappy. She was going to Spain, you know. Then she couldn't, because of this war.”

“Gosh,” he groaned, “Gosh, I wish I would go to Spain.”

“Well, you'll have to wait till after the war, won't you?”

“There won't be any point after the war,” he said. “You idiot!”

I grew increasingly nervous as the time for Ireen's visit came nearer. I hoped he wouldn't call me an idiot in front of her. He was so unpredictable. My mother, sensing what she felt to be a lack of confidence, arranged for me to have a permanent wave. I refused, and she began to worry about me, dabbing at me all the time to tuck me in or straighten me up or smooth me down. I heard her say to my father, “She doesn't seem to be like other girls,” and he said, “Count your blessings, Mame, she's a beauty.” This hardly comforted me. I was not worrying about myself.

Ireen's train arrived in the early evening, so luckily I did not have to make any plans for that day. Tomorrow I would take her round the factory and meet the clergyman's son at the Copper Kettle for what my parents called “elevenses” and perhaps play tennis in the afternoon. I knew she didn't like reading, and rather doubted whether she would have the patience for mahjong. What would I do with her if rained? Worrying, I did not notice her as she came up the platform. In any case, I was looking for someone else.

Ireen was wearing what I later heard her describe as a powder blue costume. Her hair was rolled in a perfect sausage at the nape of her neck, and another bobbing over her rather low forehead. She wore high heels, a necklace and lipstick. She was carrying a handbag as well as a suitcase. I thought she looked perfectly frightful. I was horrified. I hardly heard a word she said as we went out of the station and I didn't dare look at the ticket collector, whom I had known all my life. All the way home in the taxi — my father had gone in the car to a meeting of the Cricket Club — I answered her in terrified monosyllables, keeping my bare toes clenched inside my sensible sandals, feeling the sweat of embarrassment behind my knees and in the barely perceptible folds of my breasts. Oh God, I prayed, make her have a bath, make her put on some proper clothes — oh God,
please
don't let her be like this. She had gone to the fair, she said, with a boy from the chemist's and her mother had been simply livid. “Gosh,” I said dully, hoping we would have a crash in which our corpses would be mutilated beyond recognition. Her lipstick, newly applied, had come off on her front teeth. I felt sick with shame for her.

My mother, after a slight buck of astonishment, took Ireen very well.

“Of course you're a good deal older than this one,” she said, giving me a brisk pat. She frequently called me “this one”, as though I were one of a litter, and always accompanied it with this affectionate cuff which was sometimes quite painful.

“She's not,” I said bleakly. “She's younger.”

“I'm fourteen and a half,” Ireen said, “but of course everyone thinks I'm at least eighteen.” She gave me a nasty, tolerant look and added, “In the holidays.”

“Well, there you are!” my mother exclaimed pointlessly. “This one will be fifteen in November and look at her!”

They both looked at me and I hated them. I was clean, I was thin, and — a great rush of warmth came over me — I was loved. For all my lack of waves and beads and grubby swansdown puffs and lilies of the valley, I was loved, which was more than they were. I couldn't say this to my mother, but she seemed to sense it because she gave me a quick, conspirator's smile and I almost thought she winked. “Of course there are those,” she said, slapping my bottom as she passed by, “who can put up with her …”

It was not so bad, after that, being left alone with Ireen. She talked incessantly as she unpacked, and I sat on the window sill looking down at the ugly town with its church spire soaring steady and grave above the mess of houses. In one great leap from here I could alight on the spire; then swoop, with a graceful diving motion, through his bedroom window, drifting about his bent head like vapour, pouring myself into his ears and mouth, wreathing myself round him warm, searching, invisible as air…

“Are you meeting Him tonight?” Ireen asked.

“No. Tomorrow.”

“I simply can't wait. I'm sure he's absolutely gorgeous.”

“We might play mahjong if you like tonight. My father's got a craze for it.”

So after supper, indeed, we played mahjong. My father was very courteous to Ireen, explaining about the four Winds and so on, and he even built her wall for her, which I thought was unnecessary. She had changed into a sort of crepe dress, which I guessed had once belonged to her mother. She giggled a great deal, just as she did at school; but while at school it seemed perfectly natural, I found myself wondering now what she found so funny, and why the simplest word from my father could set her off on this uncontrollable spluttering.

“You must bring Ireen to the works,” my father said. “That is, if she'd be interested?”

“Oh
yes
!” Ireen said, “I should adore that!”

‘We're coming tomorrow morning anyway,” I said. “Don't you remember?”

“Show her all your old haunts,” he said, as though I were a ghost.

“But we arranged it already!” I insisted. “You said to come to the office about ten o'clock. Don't you remember?”

“Did I, dear? Now Ireen, you can't throw away your bamboos in that reckless fashion …”

At last we went to bed. Ireen put her hair in curlers and did extraordinary things to her face, slapping it smartly with the back of her hand and covering it with grease. “You can read my magazines if you like,” she said. “It says in one of them you must do this
every
night if you don't want a double chin by the time you're twenty. They have terribly serious articles too, you know, about cancer and having the curse,” she giggled briefly, “and what to do if your husband is unfaithful and all that. Of course Mummy's never told me a thing, but those magazines are mostly awfully frank, you really should read them.”

“I'm reading
Jane Eyre
,” I said. It sounded priggish, perhaps, but I was in some ways very stupid.

“But that doesn't
tell
you anything! I mean, look here.” She pulled a magazine off her bed and opened it at random. “ ‘I am fifty-one years old and have recently experienced some pain and difficulty in relations with my husband. I am afraid that this may have a bad effect on our married life, and I have already noticed a slight cooling off on my husband's part. Can you help me before it is too late? Signed Anxious Wife.' And the woman says, ‘This is a condition known as kraurosis, which is a vaginal shrinkage due to hormone withdrawal in middle age. In most cases the use of a special cream will restore normal elasticity. Your doctor will be able to help you if you go to him.' Well, I mean, they tell you things like
that
, and it's terribly useful because no one else would, would they? I bet your mother's never even
said
the word vagina to you, has she?” She giggled hopefully and I answered, with complete truth, “No, she hasn't.” If the woman had a sore throat, I couldn't see what it had to do with her marriage, or why she should write to a magazine about it. “What else does it tell you?” I asked curiously.