B
y summer, my connection to Sheba was well established. Hardly a week went by when we didn’t see each other outside of school hours. Sue Hodge had not yet been utterly vanquished; she was still hanging in there, waddling with us to lunches at La Traviata. But her days were numbered. Now, on afternoons when it rained, it was I—not Sue—who heaved Sheba’s bicycle into the back of my car and drove her home. (Sheba, I was amazed to discover, had never learned to drive. “I always get lifts,” she told me cheerily. “I know it sounds terribly conceited, but I’m the sort of person people like to do things for.”) Sue had fought a valiant battle, but in the end she simply wasn’t able to put the sort of work into Sheba that I was. She had her impending Sue-spawn, her ghastly little love nest with Ted, to worry about. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep her eye on the ball.
Shortly after Sue caught on to the fact that I had leapfrogged her in Sheba’s affections, it became apparent that she was saying things about Sheba and me to other members of staff. Sheba and I were a bit too fond of one another, she told people; a bit too close. The implication was that Sheba and I were engaged in some sort of sapphic love affair. I was not distressed on my own
account. I have been on the receiving end of this sort of malicious gossip more than once in my career, and I am quite accustomed to it by now. Vulgar speculation about sexual proclivity would seem to be an occupational hazard for a single woman like myself, particularly one who insists on maintaining a certain discretion about her private life. I know who I am. If people wish to make up lurid stories about me, that is their affair. I could not be sure, however, that Sheba would be capable of matching my indifference. I feared that she would be offended, or enraged, or else horribly embarrassed. After considering the matter carefully, I decided it was best not to tell her about the rumours.
It wasn’t easy keeping quiet. It was immensely irritating, in fact, not to be able to expose Sue’s rank hypocrisy. Sheba was always so generous to Sue. She would allow her to sit there, sucking up to her for hours, and never let on for a second that she was bored. She wouldn’t even tolerate me making jokes at Sue’s expense. Once, when Sue left our table at La Traviata to go to the toilet, I made the mistake of calling her a fat fool. Sheba just frowned at me and said quietly, “What energy you spend on hating people!”
Sheba was always very up-front that way—never afraid to express her disapproval when she thought I was being bitchy. Once or twice, when we were on the phone together, she actually slammed the receiver down in protest at my “negativity.” The first time that it happened, I was in midsentence and it was a few moments before I realised that I was alone on the line. I called back, assuming that we’d been cut off, but no, she told me, she’d simply grown tired of hearing me drone on.
It was a new experience, being told off like that. In my other friendships over the years, I have tended to dominate. I’ve never
made any conscious bid for power; it has always come about quite naturally that I should be the one to lead. But I can see now that my imposing personality has caused problems. It has created inequality, and that inequality has bred resentment. Jennifer always
seemed
perfectly happy for me to be in charge. She never uttered a critical word against me until the very end. (And then, of course, criticism was the
only
thing that came out of her mouth.) But after we had parted ways, I came to understand that there had been something subtly aggressive in all her meek compliance. There is, I see now, such a thing as the tyranny of the humble person—the person who nods and watches quietly while you babble and show off and shout too loudly and generally make a fool of yourself. How much healthier to have a friend who isn’t afraid to take you on, to tell you what’s what! It is never pleasant to be upbraided. There were many times, I don’t mind saying, when I badly wanted to give Sheba a shove. Yet, even in my anger, I always knew that her forthrightness was an asset for our relationship—something that could only strengthen our bond.
And certainly, I felt, there was still some strengthening to be done. Loving and attentive as Sheba was when I was with her, I did not yet have the sense that I could truly count on her. She had a strong tendency to scattiness. She was often elusive. There were times when she did not return my calls all weekend; times when, having made arrangements for an outing with me, she would forget having made them. I tried not to take these slights personally. Sheba had a family, I told myself. She had little Ben to look after. And her time management skills were not all they might have been. But, even after I had made such allowances, it was hard not to conclude that I occupied a very low place on Sheba’s list of priorities. I was confident that she
valued me. But as what? An amusing colleague? A good listener?
When school broke up for summer in July, we had made no specific plans for meeting during the vacation, but there was, as far as I was concerned, an implicit understanding that we would be seeing each other shortly. As it turned out, I didn’t see or hear from Sheba for six whole weeks. I knew that she was spending a month of the vacation in France with her family. I myself spent ten days touring in Spain. But it had not occurred to me that she would let
six weeks
go by without being in contact. There were phones in France, after all.
My trip to Spain was pleasant enough. I saw some pretty things. But the food was greasy and I was rather miserable. This was the first trip abroad I had taken since falling out with Jennifer, and I had forgotten how mortifying it can be for a woman to dine alone in a foreign hotel restaurant. On my return to London, I left a few messages at Sheba’s home, thinking she might call in from France for them. But I still didn’t hear from her. I became worried that she might call while I was out on an errand, and I invested in my first answering machine—a cream-coloured device with an electronic voice that made announcements in the slightly surprised, prewar tones of Joyce Grenfell. This purchase introduced a new and not unwelcome degree of suspense to my homecomings. Every time I returned to my flat, I would rush to see if the little red light was blinking. But only once was my anticipation rewarded that summer. And then it was just a message from my landlord, returning a call I’d made earlier about a leak from upstairs. Sheba never did get in touch. I had learned by now a little something about how these things are played. I knew it was important not to overstep the mark, not to appear too clingy, so I left only a few more
messages at her house before I stopped calling her altogether. Then I waited.
I am good at waiting. It is one of my great skills. Richard described the Harts as immediate gratification people. Well, I come from deferred gratification stock. In my family, when I was growing up, taking what you wanted at the moment you wanted it was regarded as very bad taste. My sister and I were taught to look down on the children at our school who had new clothes each week. Their parents didn’t know how to save, our mother explained to us. “They have new jackets now,” she liked to say, “but they’ll have run out of coal by the end of the month.” Saving was the ultimate virtue in our household, for it was only by saving—by putting off anything desirable for as long as humanly possible—that the terrible fate of being “common” was ever to be escaped. We ate bread and lard for tea all week so that, even though my father earned his living selling stationery to shop owners out of a little van, we always had proper jam and scones on Sunday when our relatives came to visit.
My mother had an “everyday” and a “best” of everything. She saw it as a mark of her good, English sense that by making me wear a frayed crochet cap every day of my life for five years, until the thing disintegrated on my head, she was able, during the same period, to maintain my “best hat”—a glazed straw meringue decorated with three paper roses—looking as pristine as the day she had purchased it. On those occasions that she broke down and let me wear the best hat, she insisted on it being worn with a protective paper bag over it until I was safely at my destination. So strong was the pleasure deferral instinct in my mother that she would rather have me walk down the high street with a paper bag standing high on my head like a
papal crown than risk exposing the sacred meringue to the dirty air.
So you see, I know all about biding my time. Those early days when Sheba was keeping herself tantalisingly remote, I never became irate or flustered. I simply went on with my life—reading my books, preparing my meals, changing my sheets—quietly certain all the while that, sooner or later, she would wake up to my importance in her life.
Although Sheba didn’t find time for
me
that summer, I know now that she managed to put in several calls to Connolly. She called him once, breathlessly, from a pay phone at a supermarket in Avignon. (He was away from his pager, and by the time he picked up the message, she had had to dash off to meet Richard and the children.) And when she came back to London in August, she called him again. This time he got back to her straightaway. He was very excited to hear from her, apparently. He had missed her, thought about her constantly. They both agreed that it was impossible to wait until term began before seeing each other again.
Connolly proposed a plan. He was meant to be going with his parents to the family caravan in Maldon for the last week of August. When he got there, he would tell them that a soccer match had come up and that he needed to get back to town early. His mother would probably insist on his staying at a friend’s. But on Saturday afternoon he would meet up with Sheba somewhere and, together, they would sneak back to his parents’ empty house.
When the Saturday came, Sheba put on a white sundress that showed off her French tan and took the tube down to Warren Street. Ben was spending the afternoon at a friend’s house. Richard was at home, working on his book. Polly, who was not
in the habit of revealing her social plans, was simply out. Sheba had told them all, with as much casualness as she could muster, that she was going to the West End to do some clothes shopping.
She had arranged to meet Connolly at a bus stop near the women’s hospital on Hampstead Road. He was late. When she finally spotted him, hurrying towards her from the direction of Mornington Crescent, she began to wave madly. He was still about a hundred yards off when he caught sight of her. As he made his self-conscious, gangling approach, he put his hands in his pockets and avoided her gaze by pretending to be interested in passing cars.
When he got to her he squinted and nodded hello. They had agreed previously not to engage in any public embraces but, unable to contain herself, Sheba playfully feinted a punch to his belly. “We’ll go round the back, through the garages,” he told her, and Sheba laughed—partly with nerves, she says, and partly at the way he pronounced
garage
to rhyme with
marriage.
They set off.
The little square where Connolly lives is at the centre of a sprawling council estate that occupies half a square mile or so of land between Hampstead Road and Albany Way. Connolly had chosen to enter his house by the back way in order to avoid any difficult encounters with friends or neighbours. But as they walked up the rear alley, where the local tenants keep their cars, a young man emerged from one of the lockups and nodded at Connolly. Connolly responded with an almost negligible twitch of his eyebrow and kept moving. When they got to Connolly’s door, Sheba glanced back and saw that the man was staring at the two of them.
“Who was that?” she asked Connolly.
“Just the brother of my sister’s mate,” he answered.
“Still,” Sheba said, “you should probably have something prepared. Just in case he asks you who I was. Don’t you think?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Connolly muttered—slightly irritably, she thought. He had opened the door now. He led the way through a small laundry room into the house’s front hall and on into the kitchen.
Sheba recalls being very impressed by the cleanness and order of everything. The wood-look Formica counters were completely bare. The white backsplash tiles gleamed. Even the grout between the tiles was without spot or stain. The only indication that the kitchen had been recently used, she says, was a neatly folded, pink cloth that hung over the sink’s shining steel faucet.
Connolly offered her a cup of tea. Sheba said she’d rather have a glass of water. He had a distracted air. When she leaned forward to kiss him, he appeared not to notice and turned away. She remarked on the tidiness of the house. His mother’s kitchen put her own to shame, she told him. Connolly didn’t say anything, but it seemed to Sheba that he was vaguely displeased by this comment.
“Seriously,” Sheba persisted, “your mum must spend her entire life scrubbing.”
“Not really,” Connolly said, frowning. “She just likes it neat.”
After a bit, Sheba asked to see the rest of the house. Connolly nodded. They climbed the stairs to the first floor in silence.
“This is the front room,” Connolly said, opening a door. Inside, the air was sickly with air freshener, Sheba recalls. There was a nylon, patterned carpet, a display case containing several
framed school pictures of Connolly and his sister, and a large, three-piece suite in beige and cream stripe. Sheba had never actually seen a three-piece suite before, she says. Not “in real life.” The sighting amused her. “It was like meeting a crying clown,” she says, “or a sailor with an anchor tattooed on his forearm.”
The other room on the first floor was his parents’ bedroom. Connolly hesitated before opening the door, and Sheba, sensing that her breezy comments were only adding to his unease, remained silent as they gazed briefly at his parents’ neatly made double bed. As they climbed the final flight of stairs, Sheba enquired about the family caravan in Maldon. Was it nice there? “It’s all right,” Connolly said. Then he added, in a sulky tone, “
You
probably wouldn’t like it.”