You Must Be Sisters (12 page)

Dan threw down his brush. It was a mess; he had to admit it. How it irritated him. He scrumpled up the paper and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Bloody shawl.

He got up and put his painting things away. Tonight he was very conscious of it being a hobby. Terrible word, hobby. Vacant hours that had to be filled. With the girls there, he’d never had time for a hobby. To his surprise he remembered complaining about it. Endless interruptions, packed hours through which one fought for a moment’s peace. Nowadays there was nothing to have a moment’s peace
from
.

Downstairs Rosemary looked up from
Good Housekeeping
.

‘All right?’ she asked.

‘Bloody awful.’ Dan poured himself a whisky; he’d feel better after that. ‘Never mind. Time for the dog.’

Every night before they went to bed they took Badger round the block. It could hail, it could thunder, but they always did. Whisky then dog. And whatever the weather they always wore the same shoes, Dan his brown gardening ones, Rosemary her old boots. Dan opened the hall cupboard and fished them out. Together they bent down and put them on.

Outside the air was sharp and Rosemary put her hand through his arm. ‘Chilly, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘I do hope Laura’s got lots of blankets.’

‘Hmm. Wonder what she’s doing now.’ Dan looked up at the sky. At least he shared that with his girls. Perhaps one of them was glancing up at it now.

‘Tucked up in bed, I hope.’

Down the familiar street they walked, Rosemary’s arm nice and warm in his. Badger, purposeful, trotted on ahead. Dan loved these nightly strolls, Badger’s tail a jaunty plume ahead of them, other people’s evenings in the windows.

They had a comfortable rhythm, those three. It was just that, occasionally, he could welcome those old interruptions.

LAURA HAD INDEED
been tucked up in bed. In fact, she still was. When she woke the next morning Mac’s arms were still around her. She lay still, not daring to move, not wanting to wake him; not quite yet. Nor did she dare look at him.

Instead she looked out of the window. The bed was close to it and from where she lay she had a view down into the garden. Amongst the matted grass and thistles she could see the small brown square of earth he’d dug yesterday. His fork still stuck out in the middle of it.

Proof, then. Solid fork; real mud. Real skin too, next to hers. It had happened, and outside she could see the sun shining on the newly turned soil.

She still didn’t like to look at him; easier to look around the room. Their clothes lay scattered on the floor; his underpants and jeans near the bed, her skirt abandoned in front of the fireplace. They’d found some wood and built a fire last night; later he’d undressed her beside the flames.

On each side of the bed, altar-like, a candle stub stood in its saucer of wax. The candles had been his idea. And in each saucer lay the cigarette ends from when, long after the fire had died down, they had lain back on the pillows. How damp, how marvellously
mutual
they’d been, lying there, blowing into the darkness their twin plumes of smoke!

He stirred. She stiffened. He grunted and stirred again. She lay rigid.

She didn’t dare look at him. She stared up at the ceiling. How very much easier to kiss someone, to do anything with their bodies, in the thankful dark! Much, much easier than to meet their eyes so close and in such very glaring sun. With one’s greasy face and smudged mascara.

He must be disappointed. He’d be polite and have a cup of tea and then say he’d better push off now. Heavens, she couldn’t have been much good compared with all those girls who’d had it a lot, or even had it a little. She thought of those heavings on the cinema screen; it looked so accomplished when those sort of girls did it.

Just then she felt her hand being taken by his. He grunted and turned his face towards her. ‘Hello, my sonner.’ He blinked through his tangled hair. Then he smiled. ‘You look really rosy.’

She buried herself in his arms.

‘My nice, rosy, morning girl,’ he said.

With her face in his hair she asked: ‘What’s my sonner?’

‘Old affectionate Bristol talk. My friend, it means.’

She ran her fingers along his straight eyebrows to feel what they were like. She was his slave.

‘Hey, you were laughing last night,’ he said. ‘I was amazed.’

‘It was so funny.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. After all that thinking about it, I suppose. All those huddles in the cloakroom at school. Such a relief.’ She laughed, pressed her face into his hair and kissed his warm, buried ear. She ran her hand over his shoulder and down his hard beautiful back. Goodness, what a relief. He wasn’t being polite and cool. Nor, though he was kissing her, was he trying to do it again, because she didn’t think she could manage that in full daylight. Not quite yet. Not looking down and seeing her limbs and his and everything. He was kissing her though, slowly, oh so slowly, sleepy mouth against sleepy mouth. She twined the sheets around them; they lay there, their hair mixed. Could anything be more satisfactory? she asked him. No, he said, nothing.

‘I’ve got you and the view out of my window,’ she said. ‘Do I ever have to get out of bed?’

‘Never.’

They lay in the nicest of shared silences, the sort of settled silence which before today had been possible only with her sisters. Better than the lonely silence that had filled this room before he’d come into it. For she had been lonely, of course; twined cosily in her sheets, she could admit it now. Frightened too; not by anything solid, but by something intangible from which all her life she’d been sheltered. The poverty upstairs had something to do with it, so had the emptiness in the rooms below, and herself trapped in the middle, glimpsing desolation.

‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea.’

‘Nor, I must say, would I.’

She disentangled herself and walked all white and bare across the room. She was very nearly unselfconscious; he made it natural to be bare. How different from those episodes with John and Mike, the one so phoney and the other so muddled. Mac accepted her nicely, without fuss. Was that why she’d found it somehow silly to stop him last night? One of the reasons, anyway; he’d just presumed they would. Another was that great big bed being there and no one to stop them.

‘To think,’ she said, putting on the kettle, ‘that I haven’t known you twenty-four hours yet.’ She cleared away the empty tin of guavas. They’d had a curious meal last night: guavas and sausages – that way round, too.

Down in the street she could hear children shouting and the far plaintive tinkling of an ice-cream van. She had no idea what time it was. Mid-morning? Lunchtime? Odd to think of a humdrum day going on down there, people slamming doors, clocks chiming.

She took the teacups over to the bed. He propped his head up and lay there on the rumpled sheets, sipping. Lacking brothers, she had never looked unabashed at a full-grown, calm male. And she still couldn’t. Not really; not
all over
. She might have come a long way since yesterday, but not that far. In a film, if she’d been one of those heaving girls with their mascara still intact, she would be gazing into his eyes now and caressing him. In real life she lay down, careful not to slop her tea. He hooked her foot round his. ‘Let’s do it sixty times a day,’ he said. ‘Again and again, everywhere, all round the room, all round Bristol.’

‘You couldn’t.’

‘It’d be nice, though.’

There was more talk of this kind when they were interrupted
by
a chime from the university tower. One o’clock.

‘Oho,’ he said, unhooking his foot. ‘Long past opening time.’

It was the strangest feeling to walk down the street with him and realize that nobody who looked at them
knew
. Could no one tell? Her tingling skin, her smile? In the pub they sat close together, his knee against hers under the table. His fingers, which had been everywhere, clasped his glass. She worshipped his hands. They sat side by side saying nothing, silent with their large secret.

‘How’s the Cortina running, then?’ boomed a voice behind them.

‘So-so, Alec,’ boomed another. ‘Bit sticky these cold mornings, you know.’

Two bulky men holding pints. They stood inches from them. The jacket of one of them almost touched Laura’s hair.

‘And Dot? Bearing up, is she?’

‘Bearing up, yes. Touch of flu last week, Alec, nothing much. Lucky the twins were away at their grandma’s.’

Laura gazed at the split seam down Mac’s jeans. She knew the skin in there. She felt warm.

‘Excuse me.’

She jumped. An arm stubbed out a cigarette in the ashtray, brutally near.

‘Quite frankly, Alec, I advised her to let them stay away a bit longer. Never know with the flu, especially with the youngsters.’

‘You’re right there. Doesn’t do to take chances, does it?’

She gazed at Mac’s fingers, calm round the handle of his glass. She longed to touch them.

‘Daphne well?’

‘Oh, fighting fit, Jock. You know Daphne, always on the go.’

‘Beats me how she manages it, what with her old mum and all.’

She couldn’t bear it any longer. She took his hand and felt each of his fingers in turn, the nails, the tips. Wherever had she been as bold as this before?

‘Must be toddling.’

‘Rightio, Alec. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Laura watched the two men leave. Despite herself she couldn’t help feeling fond of them, for hadn’t they shared this charmed space?

‘I’m starving,’ she said.

Mac got her a hot pie with a dollop of brown sauce. ‘Aren’t you eating?’ she asked.

‘Plenty of protein in this.’ He held up his new brimming pint.
She
was to discover that he seldom ate, saving his energies for booze, cigarettes and when he was rich enough (which was seldom), hash.

She munched her pie; he swallowed his beer. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ she mumbled between mouthfuls, ‘I don’t know anything about you. You might be an escaped convict for all I know. And you don’t know a thing about me.’

‘Doesn’t worry me. It’s nice like this.’

‘Oh, but I want to know all about you! Every detail.’

‘Hmm.’ He scratched his head. ‘I’ve got a rhinoceros skull; found it in a junkshop.’

‘Yes, but what about your parents, things like that? Do they live in Bristol?’

‘Yep.’

‘Hmm.’ A silence. ‘Do you want to hear about me, then? I have two sisters and a dog.’

‘Wow, a dog.’

‘He’s all of ours, really.’

‘I like dogs.’

On this pronouncement they got up to go. It was true; he wasn’t concerned with the things around and behind her, her past, her background. Only – for he was taking her hand and smiling at her – only with her. She hoped. How could she tell?

It had turned into a mellow, sunny afternoon. They wandered through the streets, past terraces and crescents, and after a while found themselves outside the university buildings. Students were everywhere – emerging from the library, gossiping in the road, disappearing into the Berkeley Café. It surprised her, seeing them. How irrelevant they looked, as irrelevant as the fact, now she remembered it, of her double seminar this morning and practical this afternoon. How senselessly busy they seemed! They resembled the mice in the lab going round and round on their little wire wheels.

Arm in arm, she and Mac left them behind. Down the hill of shops they wandered, and through the little park she had crossed only yesterday on her way to the clinic. Not yesterday, a hundred years ago. Passing some flowerbeds she asked: ‘Shouldn’t you be at work today?’

‘Yep.’

He smiled at her, collapsed on the grass and, a neat package, rolled down the bank. He lay at the bottom, bundled up She
went
down and sat beside him.

‘I’m an artist, really,’ he said, his face still hidden. ‘An undiscovered genius. You should see me masterpieces.’

So he wasn’t just a gardener. There was much to discover. A chink opened; she glimpsed vistas.

He lay back, hands behind his head, and gazed up. Suddenly she went cold.

Had he just stopped like this because it was the end of their day? Was this charmed feeling, this timelessness, something that she alone felt? He looked so very self-sufficient lying there, gazing beyond her at the sky, the limbs she’d touched clothed now and no longer hers. Was this it; just his casual way of coming to a full stop?

He wasn’t moving; it was late, the sun slanted across the grass. She didn’t know whether to move or not, and sat gazing at a nearby bush which was already sprouting; on its branches veined bundles had split, and from them hung tassels and damp young leaves. Painfully green, those leaves.

Just then he got to his feet, looked around, stretched and started walking away from her. Her heart froze.

But now he was stopping beside the bushes and stooping down. Picking something up, then something else.

‘What are you doing?’ she called.

He straightened up. In his hand she could see a bunch of sticks. ‘Nicking some kindling,’ he called. ‘Don’t want to freeze tonight, do we?’

He filled his arms with sticks, and then straightened up again. ‘Why are you smiling, my sonner?’

Then he smiled too.

ONCE SHE’D BECOME
a teacher, Claire thought that her childhood feelings towards school would change. But after a whole year there was still that same mixture of dread and excitement, mostly dread, that settled on her as she walked through the gates each morning, through the entrance hall and into those chilly corridors
that
smelt of disinfectant and murmured with the hum, always the hum, of children. Metaphorically, she could hear the gates clanging shut behind her, closing her into this big grimy building. Behind walls, scuffling feet, the sudden mass scraping of chairs and the single sad note of a piano.

There was the childhood feeling, too, of being in a different world, sounding differently, smelling differently, even divided differently, with its five periods before lunch and three after, from the outside world. All sealed in. Ordinary outside sounds, street sounds, lorries changing gear as they turned into Clapham Junction, the hoarse chant of the
Evening Standard
mid-day edition man, motorbikes revving up outside the Honda showrooms – all drifted into the classroom with a peculiarly intense normality, rather as they drift into the windows of a sick room. Lost, weekday world. When at lunchtime she crept out, as she sometimes did, for a bar of chocolate, she felt the thrill of the truant in this place of housewives and noisy cars, a place which, in her non-school hours, she took so amazingly for granted.