Mavis waited in her living-room. It was a very long time since she had invited anyone to her house, and she was surprised to find that she was feeling quite apprehensive. She wanted — no, she needed — the continued contact with Alice and Gabs, but wasn’t at all sure that the friendship (if that was what it was) would survive beyond the safe, if rather stifling, confines of the presbytery. Like a plant removed from its pot, it could just crumble away at the roots, leaving the three protagonists to flounder on their own once more.
It wasn’t that Father Cuthbert had been particularly hospitable or that she had enjoyed his obvious disapproval, but he had taken control of the meetings, and on the one or two occasions when feelings threatened to run high, it had been Father Cuthbert who had sorted things out.
Would that be her job now, Mavis wondered. Did that responsibility belong to the host, as well as the provision of the crisps and the wine? She hoped the wine would be acceptable (Mavis knew very little about wine) and that the crisps weren’t stale. She tried one, and it seemed fine. Cheese and onion flavour. Of course, not everyone liked cheese and onion. Perhaps she should have bought some salt and vinegar as well, or plain. Plain would have been safer. But there was no time now to go shopping for plain crisps.
She checked the room once more and closed a small gap in the curtains. There was a clean hand towel in the bathroom, and Mother was tucked safely up in bed. She hoped very much that the house didn’t smell of urine, as she suspected it sometimes did. She herself was so used to the smell of her own home that it was hard to tell.
The cat put his head round the door. For once, his expression was obsequious, pleading. He probably sensed that he was not welcome (he wasn’t) and that it would be better to approach with tact rather than his usual belligerence. Mavis shooed him out and shut him in the kitchen, where she left him snarling unpleasantly.
Alice arrived first. For a few moments, the two women hesitated, as though wondering whether or not to embrace. Nowadays people tended to greet one another in a kind of kiss-fest — mwah, mwah — one cheek and then the other, but Mavis had never felt comfortable with this. They hadn’t kissed at Father Cuthbert’s, but then it would hardly have seemed appropriate. In the end they shared a brief, self-conscious half-embrace, and Mavis took Alice’s coat and led the way into the living room.
“This is cosy.” Alice sat down in a corner of the sofa. “You — you live with your mother, don’t you?”
“Yes. Mother’s in bed.” Mavis started to open a bottle of wine, but her hand was shaking and the corkscrew slipped.
“Here. Let me,” said Alice, taking the bottle from her. “I’ve had a lot of practice with corkscrews. Too much practice, my doctor would say.”
Mavis smiled. “Thank you. I rarely drink. Not that I don’t like it,” she added quickly. “It’s just that drinking on your own isn’t much fun, and Mother’s not supposed to drink. It doesn’t agree with her pills.”
“Don’t you drink with your — with your —”
“With Clifford? Yes, we do sometimes. But there’s not much opportunity. He’s usually driving, for a start. But we share a little hamper at Christmas and on my birthday.”
“And I guess your mother has another early night?”
“Yes. And I’m afraid I give her an extra half sleeping pill. Is that awful of me?”
“Not awful at all. The name of this game is survival, isn’t it?” Alice poured wine into two glasses. “I’d give anything to share a little hamper with Jay, but we don’t even seem to have the time for that.”
Both women were relaxing and beginning to talk more freely when Gabs arrived. Gabs had no problem with kissing, and embraced them both warmly.
“Fucking cold, isn’t it?” she said cheerfully, throwing her coat over a chair and making for the small gas fire. “Real brass monkey weather.”
Mavis was slightly shocked by Gabs’ language and had never understood the connection between brass monkeys and cold weather, but she tried to take it in her stride. She offered wine, and Gabs accepted a glass of white. “Right. Where do we start? Not the same without poor old Father Cuthbert, is it? Who’s in charge?”
“I don’t think anyone’s in charge,” Mavis said uncertainly.
“Tell you what,” Gabs said. “I’ll be Father Cuthbert.” She lowered her voice. “Now, dears, have you all been thinking?”
The other two laughed.
“Gosh! You sound exactly like him,” Alice said. “But you forgot the prayer.”
“Let us pray,” Gabs intoned. “No, on second thought, let’s not. Let’s get down to the gossip. Much more interesting. Who’ll go first?”
Alice and Mavis looked at each other.
“Oh, I’ll go first, then,” Gabs said. “Well, I’m not changing my ways, that’s for sure. For a start, I’ve got a living to make.”
“But you told Father Cuthbert that you were seriously thinking about it,” Alice said.
“Poor old soul, I had to let him think he was doing some good. But no. No chance.”
“How do you — how can you — I mean, what makes you do it?” Mavis asked. She had been longing to ask this question.
“Well, funnily enough, I quite enjoy it. I know that sounds odd, but it’s a fact. Oh, I don’t mean I enjoy it sexually. No orgasms or anything like that. Perish the thought.” She laughed. “But I’m good at it, and my clients enjoy themselves, and it pays well. What’s not to enjoy?”
Mavis could think of lots of things not to enjoy about having sex with strangers, but she didn’t like to say so. Fortunately, Alice had a question.
“How do you find your — clients?” she asked. “Where do they come from?”
“Word of mouth, mostly.” Gabs got a pack of cigarettes out of her bag, looked at them longingly, and put them away again. “Reputation. That’s the best way. The least risky, too.”
“I suppose it can be dangerous,” Mavis said. “On your own with a strange man?”
“Yep. It can be. But I’m pretty good at looking after myself.”
I’ll bet you are, Mavis thought, not without admiration. “I could never do what you do,” she said. “Not in a million years.”
“Oh well. Each to her own.”
“Do the same people come to you regularly?” Alice asked.
“Oh yes. I’ve plenty of regulars.”
“Do you ever get women?”
“No.”
“And would you? Do — something with a woman?”
Gabs laughed. “No. Definitely not. Never thought about it till now, but no. ’Fraid not.”
“I suppose you have to have health checks,” Alice continued (another question Mavis wouldn’t have dared to ask).
“Oh yeah. My doc knows me well. I’m clean. And I’m very careful. Plus, all my clients have to have a shower first. I insist on that.”
“So if you enjoy your work and the Catholic guilt thing hasn’t kicked in, why did you go to Father Cuthbert’s little gatherings in the first place?” Alice asked. “It seems like a waste of time for you. And for him, come to that.”
“Good question. It was my sister’s idea, and she was so chuffed when I said I’d think about it, I didn’t like to let her down. Besides, it’s been a laugh, hasn’t it?”
A laugh? Those long evenings at Father Cuthbert’s a laugh? Mavis had experienced many emotions during her visits to Father Cuthbert, but never mirth. But then Gabs was one of those people in whose lives “having a laugh” seemed to feature quite largely. Mavis herself couldn’t remember the last time she had, so to speak, had a laugh.
“Don’t look so worried, Mavis,” Gabs said. “And don’t mind me. Steph says I don’t take life seriously enough, and she’s probably right.”
This was a Gabs Mavis hadn’t seen before. At the presbytery she had tended to keep her counsel, listening rather than talking, paying due respect to Father Cuthbert without actually agreeing with him. She had never sworn, and she certainly hadn’t talked of orgasms. Mavis herself had never said the word to anyone, even Clifford (there’d never been any need), and once again found herself admiring Gabs’ refreshingly direct approach. And Gabs’ spiky dyed-blond hair, her scarlet lips, her bat-black eyelashes, the studs in her nose and eyebrows, and the hint of a tattoo snaking up her neck from under her collar — these all added up to someone who behaved and dressed as she wished, letting others think what they liked.
And Alice. Alice too appeared confident; at home in her own skin. She was certainly not as outspoken as Gabs and appeared generally more conventional, but she had a certain poise. Yes. That was the word. Poise. She was older than Gabs, of course. Mid-forties, perhaps? Mavis wasn’t good at guessing people’s ages, and nowadays it was so hard to tell. People coloured their hair and everyone seemed to wear jeans, so they were all becoming increasingly similar. Mavis herself had never worn jeans, feeling that she hadn’t got the right shape for trousers. Besides, Clifford liked her in skirts, and she found herself dressing to please Clifford, even when he wasn’t there.
Mavis reached for the wine bottle. “More wine, anyone?”
Alice felt herself unwinding. She was tired, and the combination of the warmth from the fire and the wine (not very nice wine, but it did the trick) was making her sleepy. She watched with amusement as Mavis tried to conceal her embarrassment. Was Gabs being deliberately provocative, or was she just being herself at last, free from the confines of Father Cuthbert and the presbytery? Time would tell. Whatever Gabs was playing at, Alice couldn’t help liking her. She was fresh and unselfconscious and different. In Alice’s world, people were always trying to create an impression, but as often as not the effort involved masked any genuine characteristics. With Gabs, her act — if that’s what it was — seemed effortless. Idly, she wondered whether Gabs would do an interview — it would certainly make an interesting feature — but decided not to ask her. Not yet, anyway.
“What about you, Mavis?” she said now. “Tell us how your — relationship is going.”
“It just — carries on,” Mavis said rather lamely. “It’s been going on for so long that it’s part of my life.”
“A bit like a marriage?”
“A marriage, and not a marriage.”
“Does his wife know?”
“Oh no.” Mavis looked shocked. “Of course not.”
“How do you know?” Gabs asked her. “She may have her own bit on the side, for all you know. The fact that you’re fucking her husband might suit her nicely.”
“I don’t think Dorothy’s the type,” Mavis said after a moment.
“Well, you don’t look the type, either,” Gabs said. “When you think about it, very few people do, but most of them are at it in one way or another.” She laughed at Mavis’s expression. “Oh, I know I look the type.”
“Do I look the type?” Alice asked, interested in the view of someone who was evidently an expert.
Gabs considered her carefully. “Possibly. You’re quite a private person, aren’t you? Not as private perhaps as Mavis — sorry, Mavis — but I reckon you keep your personal life to yourself.”
“I have to,” Alice said. “We all have to, don’t we? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Yeah. But a lot of women can’t help themselves. They just have to tell a couple of friends, and then word gets out. My guess is you haven’t told anyone at all. Am I right?”
Alice agreed.
“Not even the son? What’s his name?”
“Especially not the son, whose name is Finn, and who would be extremely interested.”
“Teenagers, eh?” said Gabs, whose own teenage years couldn’t have been that far behind her.
“Teenagers indeed,” Alice agreed. “I’ll tell him one day — I’ll probably have to — but not yet. Apart from anything else, he’s too busy coming to terms with his own hormones.”
“All the hormones and none of the sense,” said Gabs, who was showing a remarkable degree of insight for one so young.
“Too right.”
“I never wanted children,” Mavis said. “Just as well, really.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly want one,” Alice said. “It just happened.”
“But you’re glad you’ve got him?”
“Oh yes.”
“Who’s his dad, then?” Gabs asked. “Not your feller, I gather.”
“Not my feller. Finn happened long before that. It was an irresponsible artist called Trot.”
“You still see him?” Gabs asked.
“Yes. Because of Finn.”
“How civilised. Mostly they just bugger off.”
“That’s true.” Alice had at least two friends whose partners had buggered off, leaving them holding their respective babies.
At that moment, the door opened, and an elderly woman appeared, wearing a flowery nightie and carrying a strange yellow bag. She was without either slippers or teeth.
“Someone has locked poor Puss in the kitchen,” she said, ignoring the visitors. “Would you let him out, dear? He’s making a terrible noise.”
“Mother, you know we can’t have him around when we’ve got company.”
“He’ll be fine now I’m here.” Mavis’s mother sat down in a rocking chair, cradling her yellow bag in her arms. A clear plastic tube appeared to connect the bag with her nether regions, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what it was. “A glass of white for me, dear. And some of those nice crisps.”
“Oh dear.” Mavis looked around her in desperation, then lowered her voice. “I’m not sure what to do. She can be a bit aggressive when she’s had her sleeping pill.”
“Let her stay,” Gabs said. “You’d like to stay, wouldn’t you?” she said to Mavis’s mother.
“Of course. This is my house. Mavis only lives here.” She held out her hand, smiling sweetly. “I’m Maudie. How d’you do?”
Gabs took the proffered hand. “You’re lucky to have one of those.” She pointed to the bag. “They save so much bother, don’t they?”
“Oh yes,” Maudie said, patting the bag. “You don’t have to wait for help. I wouldn’t be without mine. You can just pee all night without even thinking about it. You should try it.”
“I don’t think I could do my job with one of those,” Gabs said, winking at Mavis. “But there’s a lot of my old people could do with one, but the authorities won’t let them have them.”
“Why ever not?”
“Risk of infection, they say. But I just think they want our lives to be as difficult as possible.”
“My dear, I do so agree with you,” Maudie said.
“How did you manage to get yours?”
“Mavis persuaded them. Mavis is a very good persuader. She said she couldn’t manage me without. I think she was just being lazy. But it suits us, doesn’t it, Mavis?”
Mavis was obviously uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.
“They tickle a bit at first,” Maudie was saying, “but you get used to it. And look —” she gave her tube a hefty tug — “they stay in, whatever you do.”
“So they do,” said Gabs.
“Mother, don’t you think you should go back to bed?” Mavis said, desperation in her voice. “We’re having a meeting.”
“Are you, dear? That’s nice. No, I think I’ll stay. I like talking to — what’s your name, dear?”
“Gabs.”
“What a very odd name.”
“Mother!”
“It’s okay, Mavis; I don’t mind,” Gabs said. “It’s short for Gabriel. My mother was religious.”
“Are you religious too?” Maudie asked, scattering half-chewed fragments of crisps.
“Not very, no,” Gabs said. “Are you?”
“Well, I go to Mass. I like Mass,” Maudie confided, “but church sometimes gets in the way, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does,” Gabs said. She leaned forward and whispered something in Maudie’s ear, and they both laughed uproariously.
Alice felt sorry for Mavis, with her unfashionable sixties hairdo and her sensible shoes. She was obviously a nervous host, and now her mother had gatecrashed the proceedings and was forming this unlikely alliance with Gabs. Gabs appeared to be enjoying the situation, and it was also clear that she was good with old people.
Good with old people. How patronising that sounded. As though the elderly were somehow different, separate, and could all be lumped together so that others could be good with them. Alice herself would have hated to be classified with people all her own age (forty-seven) and expected to behave in a uniform manner. But no one claimed to be particularly good with people of forty-seven.
“More wine, anyone?” Mavis had apparently given up the unequal task of guiding the meeting back onto the rails and was once again struggling with the corkscrew.
“No, thanks. I’m driving,” Alice said, aware that she was probably already over the limit.
“Why not?” Gabs held out her glass. “I came by taxi,” she explained. “It’s been a good week, and so I can afford a little luxury.”
“How much do you charge?” Alice asked. “That is, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“It’s complicated,” Gabs said. “I have a sort of sliding scale.”
“Do you now? That sounds exciting.” They both laughed. Mavis, on the other hand, merely looked confused, and was obviously worried about the continued presence of her mother. But she needn’t have worried.
“We’ve got some kitchen scales, but Mavis dropped them,” said Maudie, helping herself to more crisps. Someone (Gabs?) had poured her a glass of wine, and she was becoming merry. “Not sliding scales. Smashed scales.” She seemed pleased with her little joke. “Shall we sing something?”
“I think she’s confusing this with the day centre,” Mavis said. “No, Mother. We can’t sing anything. This is a meeting.”
“Keep the home fires burning,” warbled Maudie, spilling wine on her nightie and dropping her plastic bag on the floor. “Where’s the bloody cat?”
Gabs was enjoying herself more than she had anticipated. The evening, lubricated by cheap wine and the timely arrival of Mavis’s mother, was looking up, and while she felt sorry for Mavis (poor cow; where did she get that skirt?), she couldn’t help being amused at her discomfort.
“My guess,” she said, taking another swig of her wine, “is that the ‘bloody cat’s’ shut up somewhere. It’s making the dickens of a noise.”
“Let him out, Mavis,” said Maudie. “Poor puss. Poor, poor pussy. All by himself. Ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well.” She started singing again.
“All right. I’ll let him out. But on your own head be it, Mother. Remember what happened last time?”
“Bollocks,” said Maudie cheerfully when Mavis had left the room. “She does talk a lot of — what was that word I just said?”
“Bollocks?” Gabs said.
“That’s it. Bollocks.”
Mavis returned, accompanied by a huge tabby cat, which wound itself into the room with tail stiffly upright and a wary, malevolent gaze.
“What’s his name?” asked Gabs, who was fond of cats.
“Puss — Puss — what’s he called, Mavis? I’ve forgotten,” Maudie confided.
“Pussolini,” said Mavis.
“What a great name! Does he live up to it?” asked Alice.
“Oh yes. He lives up to it all right,” Mavis assured her.
The cat strolled up to Gabs, sniffed her ankles, and then jumped onto her knee.
“Goodness!” said Mavis. “He never does that.”
“He knows I like cats,” said Gabs, who had been surprised at the glimpse of humour from Mavis. Maybe there was more to Mavis than she’d initially thought.
“No one likes Pussolini,” said Mavis, with more feeling than she’d shown all evening. “Except Mother, of course.”
Gabs stroked the cat and wondered where the rest of the evening was going. Since the advent of Maudie, some of the point had been lost, and she for one couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.
“Where were we?” she asked now.
“Sliding scales?” said Alice.
“Oh yes. Sliding scales. Perhaps I’d better save that for next time?” She glanced towards Maudie, who appeared to be listening attentively. She might not have her own teeth, but there was nothing wrong with her hearing.
Maudie reminded Gabs of her own great-grandmother, a redoubtable woman who had lived to be ninety-eight. Adored by her numerous descendants, she’d managed to stay on in her own home until the very end, regardless of the gloomy prognostications of her family, who were concerned that she would have falls and forget to eat properly. Considerate to the last, she had died in her sleep two years ago on Boxing Day, leaving her relatives with happy memories of a riotous final Christmas and the reassuring thought that she had died in her own home (the fact that they had done their best to remove her from it was conveniently forgotten). Gabs still missed her, for she herself was the black sheep who’d skipped a couple of generations, and she hoped that she would be able to carry on the same feisty heritage of nonconformity.
“Would you ever marry?” Alice asked her suddenly.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“It might interfere with your livelihood.”
“I’d give it up,” Gabs said. “It was only ever a stopgap. I sort of fell into it; I can fall out again — no problem. There’s plenty of other things I could do. I’ve got my care work, for a start. But if I do marry, it’ll be someone rich. My old gran always used to say, ‘Don’t marry for money, but marry where money is.’ I think she had the right idea.”
“And did she? Marry where money was?” Mavis asked.
“No.” Gabs laughed. “My granddad hadn’t got a bean. But I gather it wasn’t for want of trying. What about you two? Would you marry your fellers if you could?”
“Good question,” said Alice. “But yes, I think I would. Well, I’d live with him, anyway. I love Jay, and I think we’d make a good couple. What about you, Mavis?”
Mavis glanced at Maudie, who appeared to be asleep. “I don’t know,” she said. “Once, I certainly would have. But he kept on promising to leave his wife, and I kept pretending I believed him, and now I think I’ve accepted things as they are. I have my home; he has his. He’s got his kids, and I never wanted any. It’s odd, but I think we’re best off as we are. Provided Dorothy never finds out.”
“What about if something happens to him?” Alice asked.
“Yes, that’s always bothered me. No one knows about us, so I’d probably be the last to hear. And then when I did find out, there’d be no one to offer a shoulder to cry on.”
“That bothers me, too,” Alice said. “We’re the invisible ones, aren’t we? There’s no place in the pecking order for mistresses. We sort of hover on the outskirts of other people’s families — skeletons in cupboards, secrets that have to be kept. I often wonder what I’d do if anything happened to Jay. That’s one of the reasons I’ll eventually have to tell Finn. He and I are pretty close, and I’d really need him.”
Listening to them, Gabs felt some sympathy, but she also couldn’t help thinking they were both mad. There must be a moment between attraction and falling in love, and if the guy was married, that was surely the moment to stop. This had nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with practicality. Gabs had no compunction about sleeping with other people’s husbands, but she had no intention of falling for one. That way lay endless complications, and Gabs preferred her life to be straightforward.
“How do you manage to live like that, year after year?” she asked. “Secret meetings and phone calls and never being able to be seen out with your man?”
“That seems odd, coming from you,” Alice said, but without malice.
“Oh, I’m different. I don’t get involved,” Gabs told her.
“How? How do you not get involved?” Mavis asked.
“It’s a job. You don’t get involved with all those socks and ties you sell, do you?”
“That’s not at all the same,” Mavis objected, although she couldn’t help laughing. “No one ever fell in love with socks and ties.”
“True. But it’s the same idea. You approach your job in one way, your social life in another.”
“Well, I couldn’t do what you do,” Mavis said, not for the first time.
Gabs tried to conjure up a mental picture of Mavis stepping out of her sensible skirt and old-fashioned court shoes and preparing to entertain an eager (and paying) client, but failed. “Horses for courses,” she said. “You’ve got your socks and ties; I have my clients.”
“And I,” said Alice, consulting her watch, “have to go. I’ve got a piece to finish this weekend, and I haven’t even started it.”
“Me too. Early start tomorrow,” Gabs said. “No days off in my job. I’ll just phone for a taxi.”
Alice and Gabs gathered up their coats and bags and prepared to leave. As they stood in the hallway saying their farewells, Maudie’s voice could be heard coming from the living room.
“Bad girls,” she called after them cheerily. “All of you. Bad, bad girls.”
Mavis looked shocked, but Gabs laughed. “She’s right,” she said. “No flies on your mum. We are bad girls. After all, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”