You Must Be Sisters (14 page)

When the lights came on for the interval he decided to take
charge
and suggested going outside for a spot of fresh air. And once outside he was intrigued anew by them, by the casual way that Claire sat down with a sigh on the nearest doorstep and smiled up at the luminous London sky.

‘Well,’ she said, turning her smile to him. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

Holly sat down beside her and put Claire’s handbag around her neck. ‘I thought it was jolly good, too.’

That was that, then. No need for cleverness at all. Standing rather than sitting because he was wearing his pale trousers, Geoff relaxed and lit a cigarette. The three of them gazed in companionable silence at the deserted doorways on the opposite side of the street. Names were written over the shops.

‘What does a Bespoke Tailor mean?’ Holly asked suddenly.

‘I’ve never known,’ said Claire. ‘But Geoff can tell us, I bet.’

‘It’s a tailor,’ he replied, pleased, ‘who makes your clothes specially for you. Not ready-made, in other words.’ At last he’d contributed.

‘Ah,’ said Holly, a new fact digested. They chatted a bit then, about sewing and then about something – pincushions, was it? – that Holly was making at school. Easy natural chat. It really was a help, Holly being there. Alone with a girl, he’d always found it difficult to know where to start, so to speak; that drive down to Eastbourne, for instance, he knew he should have been saying something. But Holly got things going; they could leap over the awkward beginning bits.

The bell rang; they returned to the theatre; they waited for the lights to dim. Trouble was, having had no brothers or sisters, he’d missed out. Missed out on that easy Saturday-morning informality with friends of sisters, friends of brothers, who giggled on the landing or borrowed one’s bike or were caught plucking each other’s eyebrows in the bathroom. In other words, who were generally being themselves. Ordinary. Sometimes he’d glimpsed it but never had he been amongst it. He’d missed all that, he realized, sitting here in his theatre seat.

As a result girls had been relegated to the evenings where they had to be prepared for and then, when the evening was over, perhaps prepared for again. In the evenings their hair was neat and their eyebrows plucked; one felt obliged to converse about subjects. But in the daytime, their hair in curlers, lunch plates rattling downstairs, one didn’t feel obliged to converse about
anything
. One just chatted.

The curtain lifted. Their heads bent towards him, whispering a question. He was included; they were a threesome.

This second half was altogether better. He’d worked out who was who by now. Knowing he needn’t be clever, he even started enjoying it. Behind him he was conscious of the vast Aldwych audience, brainy and intent, familiar with every word. But at least – comforting thought – not in such expensive seats.

And when it was over, and the audience was shuffling out through the Exit doors and Holly was stacking the corrugated cups in the empty chocolate box, they chatted. Sitting in their seats as the theatre emptied, they chatted about silly family things. The girls’ dog, called Badger, and his old age pills; things like that. And he realized with a start: their giggling didn’t irk me because it was Shakespeare and they shouldn’t, but because it was sisterly giggles and I couldn’t join in. There’s something so self-contained about two sisters, damn it. But it’s better now.

Afterwards he took them home. Claire, it seemed, was staying the night at Harrow with her parents, so he could take them both together. He led them through the streets to where his pride and joy sat beside its dead meter. His Lotus! Not for the first time it crossed his mind that cars were a good deal easier to tackle than girls. No soul-searching; no trying to impress. Just stick in the key, put the old foot down and you’re off, roaring through the empty streets of Covent Garden.

‘It’s jolly kind of you,’ shouted Claire.

But he wanted to take them home. He didn’t want to say goodbye to Claire so early. Besides, he was keen to see the background to these oval-faced girls; make his presence felt there; glimpse for a moment something he’d so far missed.

A prosperous home, definitely. Detached, mature garden, forty thou at least. They scrunched to a halt outside.

Indoors, small lamps glowed in the drawing-room and Claire’s mother approached with outstretched hand.

‘Hello!’ He could see her taking in the situation at a glance. ‘You must be Geoff. Really, you shouldn’t have brought my daughters home. I hope they tried to stop you.’ Without waiting for a reply she called out in a sing-song: ‘Dan! Come and introduce yourself and bring this kind young man a whisky!’ She smiled at him and gestured to a chair. She was very well-dressed; in fact
the
whole room was most tasteful. ‘If only my other daughter, the one at university, didn’t have the car, you would have been spared the bother.’

‘No bother, really. It was a pleasure.’ He turned conversationally to Claire. ‘I didn’t know you had a car – or another sister, for that matter.’

‘Half a car, really. Laura – my other sister – and I share it.’

Mr Jenkins came in. He managed, Geoff knew, an electrical firm. They shook hands, man to man. ‘Nice piece of machinery you’ve got out there.’

Geoff felt himself glowing. ‘Yes, it’s a good old banger.’ His car, he had suspicions, was to some people the major part of his identity; the thing that made him memorable. Never mind; he loved it, he was grateful to it.

The spell, his threesome with the sisters, was broken. He was now a stranger to whom one was polite. A low-voiced argument began about whether Holly was to go to bed now or later, and he wandered off, glass in hand, to look at the photos dispersed in silver frames around the room. He saw one of Claire, plumper of face in a Brownie uniform. The same body he’d actually dared caress at that party. He blushed and passed on to a girl seated on a horse.

‘That’s Laura,’ called out Claire. ‘Pretty, isn’t she. Her hair’s much longer now.’

‘And messier,’ said Mr Jenkins in a voice full of feeling. She was indeed pretty, despite the riding-hat.

He turned back. Holly had been sent to bed. Claire, settled into her home, was nice, even nicer. But it was late; that family hesitation was there; he was not without sensitivity.

He drained his glass. ‘I’d better be pushing off now,’ he said, and despite polite exclamations he pushed off. In the hall Claire smiled at him, tantalizingly near, but he couldn’t touch her.

Alone again with his Lotus he roared back through the sodium-lit suburban streets. It had been a good evening. He had been near Claire; nearer, in a way, than he’d been when she was in his arms at that party. And for an hour he’d been part of her family. Holly had aided all this.

Sisters, he was beginning to realize, didn’t get in the way; they helped.

DEAR CLAIRE
.

Laura couldn’t think how to begin.
At last I have a lover?
Too pretentious.
I’ve just met a super marvellous person?
Too squeaky.
I’ve just fallen in love?
Too
Woman’s Realm
ish.

They were all true, of course, but how difficult it was to write even to Claire about such a vast event. Nobody, surely, could feel the way she felt. It couldn’t have happened to anybody the way it had happened to her. And yet, annoyingly enough, every word she thought of seemed to have been used before. Like discovering a secret wood and then on closer inspection finding lots of little picnic benches everywhere.

How could she lift it from the cliché of girl-and-boy to the rare realms, the breathtaking heights, of Laura-and-Mac? Difficult. Much easier to see Claire, to grasp her arm and flood her with the news. However much she enlarged the letters and underlined them, they had a definite secondhand look. Big and secondhand, perhaps, but still …

I’ve just been swept off my feet by a marvellous person called Mac
. That would have to do.

He’s an artist but he’s been doing gardening since last summer – much more romantic than being a painter, don’t you think? He’s done one year at the art school here but he dropped out because it was teaching him nothing. We met at the Blood Donor Clinic of all places. And tombéd dans le lit that night
.

He lives in an extraordinary house full of interesting things. The people he lives with aren’t students, they’re a couple called Hal and Min who have two children. Hal doesn’t seem to have a job but plays the harmonium, wheezily, into the small hours and generally enjoys himself. The children sleep in a room full of murals of toadstools and caterpillars. I wish you could see it all
.

I’ve known him for two weeks exactly. Everything’s changed now. Somehow he’s such a relief from all those pseuds and weeds, more real than student life with all those tame rituals like Rag Day and ghastly parties, and all those intense discussions which are
exactly
the same as everybody else’s intense discussions, and all those safe little rooms where one could pretend to be rebellious
.

…
and all those safe little rooms where one could pretend to be rebellious
.

Unfair, thought Claire. Laura was as bad as any of them; worse perhaps.

Enough. Please come and visit. I’m dying to see you and haven’t heard any news for ages. Something exciting must have happened
.

Don’t leave me out of it
.

Claire folded the letter.
Tombéd dans le lit
, eh?

‘Why are you smiling, Clary?’

‘Am I?’

Yvonne nodded sagely, knitting on lap, sturdy ankles; a virgin still. A virgin, perhaps, for ever.

It was another evening alone together, Yvonne with her knitting, Claire with her pile of exercise books. Outside, the orange glow on the houses opposite, the empty street bathed in shadowless light, and no Geoff. He hadn’t phoned since the theatre outing. The suspense of waiting!

She got up and drew the curtains. What, she wondered, would Laura think of him with his neatly-pressed trousers and settled career? With his lack of murals and wheezing harmoniums? The sort of person about whom one could say nothing remarkable in a letter. She’d probably think he was terribly boring, though for Claire’s sake she wouldn’t say so. She’d just be extra polite.

‘Gosh,’ said Yvonne, closing the letter. ‘She really goes in for the wierdos, doesn’t she. I wonder if they’re hippies. Mr Crawford calls them The Great Unwashed.’ Mr Crawford was her boss. She looked at Claire, eyes bright. ‘He always has such a clever way of putting things, don’t you think? He sometimes says this country’s going up the spout and somebody ought to take the kettle off.’ She hesitated. ‘D’you know, Clary, I’ve got something
so
exciting to tell you. I’ve been dying to tell somebody all day.’

‘Out with it.’

‘Well, you know what I told you last week, about Mr Crawford coming back from lunch and sitting on the edge of my desk. You know he asked me if I had any boyfriends?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘And I told him I’d got lots – you know, just to make him feel jealous. That was clever of me, wasn’t it. Well, today …’ She
looked
at Claire. She glowed. ‘Guess what he did, Clary. Go on. I bet you’ll be green with envy when I tell you.’

‘He screwed you on the office floor.’

‘
Nikki!
’ cried Yvonne. Nikki had just walked in. Yvonne looked as if she’d been shot.

‘You have a filthy mind,’ said Claire.

‘Just realistic. Anyway, no more tasteless remarks from me, girls. Just off. Anyone seen my hairbrush?’ She rummaged amongst the cushions. ‘Never mind, I’ll just mess it up and pretend it’s an Afro.’

She swept out. They heard the front door slam, then a man’s low laugh and finally the roar of an engine. Nikki never stayed in to correct exercise books.

Yvonne turned to Claire, her brow puckered. ‘Honestly, Claire, she drives me bananas!’

‘Don’t mind her. Go on.’

‘Well, you see, he was giving me some papers to type and when he came up to my desk he stood quite near me …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Go on.’

‘Would you guess, he put his hand on my shoulder! Oh Clary, I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. Honestly, I was all collywobbles inside.’ She gazed at Claire. ‘Do you think if I drop a gentle hint, just a
teensy
hint, that – well – I’m quite free and happy-go-lucky really, do you think he might, just might, ask me out?’

‘I hope so.’ Claire smiled encouragingly.

‘Gosh.’ She sat back in her armchair, radiant. Then she rallied and, picking up her knitting, said: ‘Anyway, I mustn’t go on about my own silly little life. Tell me about
your
Man. I’m dying for a peek.’

‘He’s not my man. I hardly know him.’

‘Oh, but he is, Clary. I can tell. You’ve got that far-away look in your eyes, and sometimes you don’t even hear what I’m saying.’

‘Heavens, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize.’

‘Don’t worry. Us girls in love, you know –’

With a yelp she jumped up.

‘My pie!’

‘What?’

‘My Low Calorie Peach Delight! I’ve left it in the oven!’

She disappeared. From the kitchen Claire could hear flustered rattlings but here in the sitting-room silence reigned. She sat at
the
table, momentarily swept by a wave of the usual maddened poignancy produced by Yvonne’s presence.

She opened the first exercise book. She tried to concentrate on the pencilled words but her eyes kept sliding away from the page and resting on the walls, the curtains, the tapestry milkmaid it had taken Yvonne six months to stitch. She couldn’t settle. To think that it was just because Geoff hadn’t phoned was the easiest way of putting it – the nearest peg, so to speak, on which to hang her heavy clothes.

No, it was more to do with Laura, and with her own certainty that Laura would dismiss Geoff as boring. It wasn’t for Geoff’s sake that she was uneasy – after all, in some deep way she was more sure about her feelings for him than she had been sure of anything for a long time (if only he could be sure of
her
). It was just that it pointed to something in Laura that for the last few months Claire had been noticing; a snobbishness, a withering dismissiveness that created areas of people or things, packaged them and bundled them aside as middle-class and suburban. Perhaps Mike had suffered this same fate; neutered somehow by hailing from Norbiton instead of a houseful of drop-outs who played harmoniums at three o’clock in the morning.