THIRTEEN
Erotic or not, Pamela, in the Ray-Bans, was ready to leave. Well, she thought nervously, ready as she would ever be. The front door swung open in her hand and she adjusted her sunglasses. The evening had continued warm, so there was no escaping the raking outdoor sun. English weather. You couldn’t bloody rely on it for anything. And here she was with eyes like Mr Toad, about to embark on an evening that, yet again, was to be stage-managed like something out of a TV soap. It was how her neighbours lived their lives. They were both In Television in some capacity or other, so she supposed that was why they appeared to live it.
Tonight it might be a Bondi evening, or they could be going American. They did sometimes dump the Land of Oz in favour of California. Bud had been known to come whooping out of the house while carrying a surfboard and wearing a T-shirt and white peaked cap both yielding the legend BIG BOY. With Peaches following on behind in little gingham shorts, little bow hair-slides, not much else, and hauling a cold box. The surfboard would be tied to the roof of the car, the engine would roar, the wheels would screech, and the fantasy would begin.
Thankfully Pam did not have much of a Baywatch or Bondi-type wardrobe to worry over. Nothing in lime green, for instance, or sugar pink, and nothing very sketchy. She stuck to white silk, enlivened by a large pair of red cherry-bunch earrings that The Girlfriend had given her with a curl of her lip, saying, ‘I’ll never wear them.’ Well, good. They were resoundingly vulgar, which took the edge off the virginal whiteness. And matched the eyes.
You have to remember, she told herself, that a flaw always looks worse to you than to the rest of the world. It was what she used to counsel Danny about his spots. It is the egocentricity of the visual self, she reassured him. Danny had not been convinced then; and she was not convinced now. At least with Peter she had never worried about her looks. With Douglas it was different – she wanted to be beautiful for him all the time. And Dean? Dean was restful because he gazed at her as if she were beautiful all the time. Oh, for a touch of that. She was not wearing the stockings and suspenders on the grounds that it was too warm But she wondered if that was the real reason. Oh, well, on with the show . . .
*
When they left the gym, Julian suggested they went to the pub. Alice was going to a hen night, so he was free for the evening. After several beers and a serious discussion about Arsenal and the England cricket team’s sad performance, Dean said, ‘That’s exactly the sort of thing I mean. If I had a girlfriend, I’d never be free. I’d have to ask permission to do things all the time.’
‘Try a boyfriend, then,’ said Keith slyly. ‘We’re much more easy come, easy go.’
They all laughed with suitable coarseness.
‘But seriously,’ said Dean, ‘I don’t want to be pinned down by anybody.’
Julian nodded in the direction of the barmaid, whom they had christened Breasts ‘n’ Beer. ‘What – not even her?’
More laughter.
‘You know what I mean. This. Just sitting here, without having to ring someone up for clearance.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Keith. ‘Blokes are much less possessive.’
Julian felt got at.
‘Wasn’t always like that, now was it?’ he said. ‘With that woman?’
‘She was never possessive,’ said Dean defensively. ‘And, anyway, I’m over all that now.’ He hated them getting on to the subject of Pamela. ‘Alice has got you right under her thumb, mate. I was free. You don’t get that with little girls.’
He leaned back and took a long, smug draught of his drink.
Too long, and too smug. ‘Oh, really?’ said Julian.
‘Really,’ agreed Dean. ‘Your shout.’ He dissolved into laughter for no particular reason other than the feeling he had scored. They’d scored off him enough over the last year or so. He winked defiantly.
‘Never checked up on you?’
‘Nope.’
Julian collected the glasses and got up. ‘Well, then, you will be surprised to know that she was outside our flat this afternoon, watching you.’
‘Who was?’ Dean said cheerfully.
‘Her.’
‘Who her?’
‘Oo-er,’ said Keith.
They fell about.
Julian brought his face very close to Dean’s and said, savouring each syllable, ‘That woman.’
Dean stared. ‘You are kidding?’ His heart began to pound. The humour left his face.
Julian cursed himself for not having kept silent. He and Alice agreed to. He’d get it in the neck for that, too, he supposed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She was there. Sitting hiding in her car as we walked by.’
‘If this is a joke –’ said Dean.
‘Am I laughing?’ said Julian.
He went off to get the drinks. At the bar the barmaid said, ‘Whatever’s come over your gorgeous mate?’
Julian looked round. Keith was half-standing at the table, while the only signs that Dean had once been there were an overturned stool and the swinging of the heavy glass door.
‘Said he was going to make a phone call,’ Keith told him.
‘So much,’ said Julian, ‘for being free.’
*
Just as Pamela was about to close the door, two things happened. One, the telephone in the hallway beeped. Two, beyond her garden fence a car pulled up at the kerb. The calculating woman in her observed it to be large and shiny and dark blue – no little family runabout – and a man in a straw hat got out. He, too, was wearing sun-glasses, very dark ones. The mystery man. Average was the first thought – height, weight, mien – average. Not likely to be called Clint. She was the teeniest bit disappointed.
The telephone stopped before she answered it. She tapped out the code to identify the silent caller’s number. The strange, mechanical female voice gave it, and then proceeded to suggest, in its chilling robotic way, that if she wished to contact the caller she should just press. . .
Pamela put the phone down, stunned. Perhaps he had seen her after all? For the number was Dean’s.
Dean plucked up his courage and redialled. He was drunk enough to ask her to go to Dublin with him. Again there was no answer.
As she closed the door, she heard the telephone begin to beep again. No, she said to herself, no, no, no. New doors, she told herself. New doors.
And she walked down the garden path determinedly.
The man was Peaches’ father. Recently divorced from her mother. Peaches was clearly very fond of him. ‘Hitting the action now, aren’t you, Dad?’
And it certainly seemed to be outwardly true. New straw hat, new dark glasses (Pam suspected that he was wearing them for approximately the same reason she was – bags), designer linen, and a new car. This last, he announced proudly, was a GTI Three Hundred Series, which apparently meant something. He was a doctor by profession, a golfer, had surprised himself by doing well on the stock exchange, and told a good story. He kept patting his stomach with satisfaction as if he had recently lost weight and, indeed, later, he said he could now fit into the same trousers as when he was twenty-five. Pamela hoped she would not be asked to comment. What did you say to a statement like that? Bring out your bell bottoms?
Peaches was not so circumspect. ‘That’s good, Dad, flares are back in.’
Ah, yes, thought Pam, you can certainly leave it to the young to embarrass.
She smiled daintily and squinted through her sun-glasses looking for her glass. Everything seemed very dim. Except the sun on her wrinkles, of course.
The cocktails were, unsurprisingly, lime green. Peaches wore a clinging Lycra dress in the same shade. Both looked suitably lethal. Pamela downed her drink very quickly – one for the hit, two to get rid of it, and she noticed that the mystery man, Lionel, did the same. It was like imbibing lime juice and scented soap.
‘Lovely,’ they said in unison. So they were both nervous, she thought. She said, ‘Tell me about Leighton Buzzard.’ A sentence, she realized with a giggle, that not many people got to say. Mercifully the cocktails were doing their stuff.
Bud strode around the brick barbecue in a sleeveless white top which showed his muscles up a treat. When not striding, he folded his arms like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, and stared moodily down the garden at the pink pampas grass. The Brando revival had made its mark. Pam prayed to God he wouldn’t go out and buy a high-handled motorbike.
Lionel said, ‘It’s a place to get away from.’
‘And Dad has,’ said Peaches excitedly. ‘He’s come to London. To start all over again. Haven’t you, Dad?’
Pamela felt exquisitely embarrassed. Thank God for the Ray-Bans, she thought.
Peaches’ father removed his hat and showed thinning fair hair, soft-looking, like Peaches’. But there the similarity ended. He was diffident about the situation, where Peaches practically spoke in words of one syllable in order to spell it out.
‘You saw Pam, Dad, didn’t you? And you said, Now that’s a good-looking woman. . .’
He opened his mouth.
Pamela said quickly, ‘I remember when I was first divorced – you want to make new friends. . .’
He sighed gratefully.
Peaches, smiling indulgently at him, gave her head a little shake, as if to say, What a silly coward you are. . .
‘Could we have another drink, June?’ he said.
His daughter looked at him as if he had said something very rude.
‘Now, Dad,’ she said.
‘Peaches,’ he said shortly.
Pam gave him a look of sympathy.
Peaches filled their glasses. ‘June. I ask you.’ And she shrugged.
Bud stopped staring moodily at the pink pampas and called her. ‘Hey, Peachbabe – is this chicken done or what?’
Peaches popped off with a squeak.
Pamela said, ‘I remember when Danny went to senior school, I took him on the bus for the first few mornings, just to settle him in. He made me sit right at the front, while he sat right at the back.’
‘My sons were much more difficult than J – her. Never left home. Well, they did – but only to come back. I sometimes wonder if that’s why the wife and I –’
‘Oh, Daniel’s gone for good,’ said Pam crisply. ‘I know it.’ She raised her glass, astonished to see that it was nearly empty again. ‘I’m free. Quite free. It’s lovely.’
‘My daughter thought you were lonely.’
‘Oh, not at all, not at all. . .’ She got so carried away that she took off her glasses.
He leaned forward.
‘Not at all,’ she added, once more with feeling. The tender flesh around her eyes felt very tender. She touched it nervously.
He leaned further forward. He looked concerned.
She saw him, suddenly, as the doctor he was.
‘It’s very early days. Talk about it if you want to,’ he said. ‘Do you cry a lot?’
He was staring at her eyes. She put her hands up to their puffiness again. ‘Oh, no,’ she said brightly. ‘This was just some frozen spoons.’
If he had laughed, it would have been all right. But he stared In Loving Sympathy. Now Pamela knew where Peaches got it from. Mistake to come, she thought. Mistake.
Peaches called from where she was investigating the drumsticks. ‘You two get to know each other. And eat up those nachos. . .’
The two guests stared at a dish of something shockingly orange on the table. Pam felt rebellious. Or maybe a little pissed.
‘Chili?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Getting warmer,’ she said pertly, immediately wishing she hadn’t. It only drew attention to herself and in so doing drew attention to her bulging eyes. He kept trying to smile into them kindly.
She just wanted to go home. She fervently wished that she had gone out with Peter instead. And that was saying something. She gave a little laugh, chinked his glass self-consciously, and they drank.
He said, ‘Barbecues!’ and shook his head, continuing to be kind.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m not a bit lonely. I’m really not.’ Her voice rose. ‘Really.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ he said, in the voice of one about to administer an injection to a frightened child.
This happy accord was broken by a Lee Strasberg grunt. Marlon Brando was having trouble with the barbecue. What he had taken to be foil-wrapped sausages and had placed in a particularly hot spot with a macho flick of his barbecue tongs were in fact the individually wrapped bananas. These fruity amulets, perhaps wishing for a moment to emulate their masculine morphology, had overdone themselves and burst from their sheaths in a spray of viscid matter. Bud – from the way he handled this verbally – had never seen anything like it. Certainly where once only smooth oiled bicep led the path towards cool USAF T-shirt, quite a lot of liquid banana now got in the way.
‘Never mind, hon,’ said Peaches, but she was obviously disappointed. ‘I got something else in the freezer. No worries . . .’
He growled and ripped off his T-shirt and Peaches ran after him, twittering like an anxious Disney bluebird.
Pam marvelled all over again at how little liberation seemed to have clung on from the bra burnings of the sixties. That was where she went wrong with Peter, she thought idly. Instead of screaming, ‘You daft bugger,’ at him when he flooded the washing machine or put disposable nappies down the loo, she should have said, ‘Never mind, hon . . .’ And massaged his feet. They would probably still be married. She’d be nuts, of course, but who wasn’t nowadays?
‘Something’s amusing you,’ said Peaches’ father.
She pretended it was the exploding bananas.
‘My daughter says they’re erotic,’ he said.
‘They seem to be suffering from premature ejaculation,’ said Pam, giggling. It took her completely by surprise and it certainly shocked him.
‘I’m glad you’ve cheered up,’ he said cautiously, and she could tell that he very nearly patted her hand.
Dates, as she knew from the few she had attempted over the single years, were difficult. And unless you were gasping with attraction, truth to tell, they were a little wearing. It was all about learning history that was being told to you in the best possible light. And returning the compliment. If there was no gasping attraction, it became rather like two salesmen vying to talk about their product.
She found herself drying up in the middle of the tale of her conservatory. Christ, she thought, if she was bored stiff recounting the flooring arrangements, what must Peaches’ father be feeling? She was hunting for a spark, she was desperate to find one. But the space between them was as damp as a rained-on squib. She was at that point where, if you can’t be bothered to finish talking about something, you can be pretty sure that they can’t be bothered to listen. With a spark between them, she could have been recounting the experience of watching paint dry and he would be hanging on her every word. Or she his. Instead she was fed up to the back teeth with his table-side manner and his sympathetic, doctorly nodding.
Later, the chicken cleared away and the strawberry gateau yet to come, Pamela relaxed in the cool darkness. She could have done with something round her shoulders but did not want to attempt getting up until it was absolutely necessary. Lionel had brought a very decent bottle of wine which both Peaches and Bud had ignored. Standing up could be tricky. Bud lit some huge flares – far too big for their little garden, but they gave a nice glow, a little warmth. Soon it would be over.
Peaches, returning with the extraordinary cake, Iceland Shopping Hall’s best, proceeded to cut enormous slices. It was pink to the lime’s green. Lionel said quickly, ‘Just a little piece for me,’ and slapped his stomach again.
He gave Pamela a look as if to say he was in fine fettle.
It’s all disgusting, thought Pam. Like a cattle market for elderly beasts.
She, perversely, breathed out and gave a sigh.
‘That’s right,’ said Peaches encouragingly, and looked across at her father.
He was asleep.
‘I’ll just go and check out the new car,’ said Bud, taking advantage. He stood up, pointed broodily at the gateau, and said, ‘Save it.’
Smoothing his blue jeans, he walked off as if he had two very large melons between his legs.
‘Pam has an interior design shop, Dad,’ said Peaches loudly.
He woke with a start.
Men, thought Pam, were truly amazing, for he immediately said, ‘Really – and how do you operate?’ All she would have managed in similar circumstances was, Where’s the fire?
‘Well – I get people to come into the shop first and we talk and they look at samples and ideas and catalogues, and then, once I’ve got a picture of the kind of things they like, I go to the site and we take it from there. It’s simple. Most people know what they want, they just need directing.’
‘Dad’s got a new apartment. Haven’t you, Dad?’
He nodded, mouth full of ersatz cream.
‘So he’ll be along.’
Peaches, a veritable Cupid in lime green, beamed.
‘Where is it?’ asked Pam.
‘Battersea Waterside,’ he said proudly. ‘Do you know it?’
‘No,’ she said, too past it to care, ‘but you hum and I’ll see if I can play along.’
Father and daughter blinked. It was time to leave. Verily.
She got up carefully, shook hands with Lionel, saw again the sympathy as he smiled in the flickering flare light. Peaches said, ‘Aah,’ as they locked hands, and Pam felt a spurt of irritation. She almost said, Round one and come out fighting, but thought she might slur. She would save the wit for another day. And with straight back she marched, veering a little, down the side entrance and out into the street.
Bud was just pulling up in his father-in-law’s car as she turned out of their front garden into her own. She held on to a branch of her hedge and waved at him with the other hand. Quite a difficult manoeuvre. He leaned out of the window and called, ‘Hey, there – talk about a love waggon,’ flicked at his cap with a finger and thumb, winked and moved on, melons still in place.
She scooted up the path and let herself in. Enough was really enough. In the kitchen she poured water into a glass and heard, very distinctly because the skylight window was open, Peaches’ voice saying, ‘There you are. Not difficult now, was it?’ As if she had just given her father a rather nasty injection. Touché, Herr Doktor, she thought. She marvelled, yet again, how impossible it was to convince people you were all right, really, if they did not want to know.
On her way up the stairs she passed the hall telephone. It seemed to glow and wink at her and before she knew it – cocktails, wine and adrenalin withstanding – she felt a tremendous and powerful urge. She tapped out Douglas Brown’s number. Just like that. She heard it beeping, heard it answered, and bravely held on, despite a further tremendous and powerful urge to throw down the receiver and run.
It was answered by a woman. A woman who sounded Scottish and quite elderly. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice anxiously, before Pam had time to speak, ‘I’m only babysitting.’
Crash, down went the phone. Pamela was really shaking now. Babysitter. So the bastard had done it after all. Had a child. She went cold. She went hot. So that was why he had gone to the shop. He wanted to tell her. The proud father. No doubt Zoe, the most poisonous auntie in the world, would be longing to tell her the news when she came in next week. She’d cancel her. Cancel everything. Get a train to Liverpool immediately and see her son. Her son.
And then she remembered – the cocktails were fuzzing her brain – and when she remembered, she laughed. Of course, of course – Douglas no longer lived in that rambling old Fulham flat of his. He had changed jobs and moved to Chelsea not long after they split up. Anyway, what was it to her if he had or had not become a father? It was all in the past. Every bit of it. She was glad that Douglas had not been at the end of the line. It would have been embarrassing and it would have been pointless. After all, disregarding the failure of tonight’s date, had not a new dawn begun?
She went to brush her teeth. Her eyes really did look very peculiar. A new dawn? Not really. Not at all, in fact. Unsurprisingly, all she felt was a wee bit sick.
She fell asleep immediately and, even more unsurprisingly, dreamed vividly and rather upsettingly of Peter, Douglas and Dean. They were each growing in a garden, very similar to her own, all tangled with weeds, and she was standing there with a pair of secateurs, unable to move.
She awoke at five, drank several glasses of water, and then lay there until it was time to get up and fetch the Sunday papers. This cannot go on, she told herself severely. Firstly, from now on she must do more constructive things with her time. Secondly, from now on she must enjoy her time. It was not enough to find fulfilment in telling a solicitor and his new wife to paint their dining room scarlet and hang a beautiful Venetian chandelier from the central rose – though that sort of thing had once been entirely fulfilling – now she must find the equivalent of repainting her life scarlet and hanging a three-drop Murano from its centre as well. Get that study sorted, my girl, she admonished, and get it sorted soon.