EIGHTEEN
The following morning, long after Pamela called in to buy her paper, Miss Phoebe Glen was leaning against the counter, wearing a pair of mittens from which her fingers wiggled and poked at the air.
The fat man watched, mesmerized.
‘Everything is dangerous,’ she said, having a little difficulty with the articulation. ‘What’s dangerous if not that sweet-tongued, red-mouthed girl from the Council? We are all in danger – every single last speckled one of us in the ocean. . . Our homes, our hearths, our freedoms. . .’
‘Mrs Pryor’s hedge was done last night,’ said Ani Patel. ‘Mrs Carter told me. And her father was knocked to the ground.’
‘It’s not safe to walk to the end of your street,’ said Miss Phoebe.
And she gave the fat man a very penetrating, if slightly off-skew, look.
‘Every single last speckled one of us in the ocean,’ repeated the fat man.
‘You could have the top back,’ said Miss Phoebe Glen. ‘It has a lovely view of the gardens. Together we would be safe.’
He watched her dainty mittens riffling through her fringe.
‘How much?’ he said.
This was beyond Miss Phoebe, who looked to Ani Patel for assistance in the matter. Since Ani Patel knew everybody’s income from the post office, she named a suitable sum. Tuesdays, she thought, I must have my Tuesdays back. Bleak House had given way to Lorna Doone, which meant as much to Ani Patel as The Story of Krishna meant to Peaches Carter.
Miss Phoebe held her breath, the memory of that girl from the Council returning in terrible waves. Eventually the fat man nodded. ‘I can suit myself,’ he said. ‘And I will.’
‘All settled,’ said Ani Patel, hoping they would go now so that she could be alone with her thoughts. She had a feeling things had been happening on the fireside rug upstairs. Something about the way it was placed. She must hope and pray. She bowed her head to the Goddess of Songs of Intercession, Ani-Vashtak, after whom she was named. Ani-Vash-tak blew mournful notes through a golden shell and she lit the blessed way to loving unity with the fire from her eyes. At all times she wore seven silver snakes wound tight around her neck. . . ‘With that lot strung round her,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘it’s a wonder she could sing or blow anything.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Miss Phoebe.
Ani Patel apologized. ‘I was miles away,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else?’
Surreptitiously Miss Phoebe Glen felt in her cardigan pocket for the scrunched up letter that had come from the Council that morning. It was the letter promised by that bright-faced young woman. Miss Phoebe Glen knew it word for word. It had three spelling mistakes and no commas. It said that she might find, if she thought about it, that she did not need all the room in her house. She might find, if she thought about it, that the bills incurred by having so much space were particularly wasteful. And she might find that she had some sympathy with the Benefit Department, who were having to rationalize all their commitments.
Yes, she could recite it with her eyes closed if required. And she knew where such arguments led. They led to one of those new so-called sheltered housing developments just by the M4. Cheap site. A ground-floor room with bath. That’s all a retired person with no means of her own needed. And you were very likely deaf, so the traffic would hardly be a problem. If you didn’t breathe too often, the fumes wouldn’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves either. Your sight was almost certainly so bad that the lights of the traffic at night made no difference to the peacefulness of your bedroom. And, anyway – older people didn’t sleep much, did they?
‘Gather ye rosebuds,’ she said, looking up at the Clarnico advertisement. ‘For there is nothing sweet that does not end in bitterness.’
The fat unemployed man looked respectful. The Widow MacNamally seldom spoke to him and certainly not like that. He would go.
Miss Phoebe gave him a look of hope. He was very acceptable, particularly now that he had taken to wearing his beret like General Montgomery, with the perfect above-ear crease. She thought they could probably be very happy together. Had his jumper not been quite so dingy, he would have looked, thought Miss Phoebe Glen, very respectable. But she could put that in a bucket and wash it. No extra charge.
They left the shop. No more Tuesdays, hoped Mrs Patel again mournfully. Now she would be here to keep an eye. She put her ear to the door between the premises and living quarters, and thought she heard the faintest sound of tiptoeing on the stairs. Her blood ran cold. Ari was supposed to be in his room doing pure maths. Nothing pure about it, thought Ani Patel, and she added bitterly that it was a pound to a penny what he had been doing up there was extremely applied.
Pamela, with her thoughts bound up in the notion of a brave new world that morning, may have been the only one of her neighbours not to notice the hedge or pause to discuss the terrible goings on of the night before. She left for the shop with a song in her heart, a lightness of step and a sense that she was to be congratulated on finding the world a congenial place as a woman alone. Last night with Rick had been fun. It put Peter and Douglas and Dean in perspective. So who needed more than friendship?
She drove off enjoying the golden light and the hint of suburban woodsmoke in the air, congratulating herself on obtaining space in her life and the means to fill it pleasurably. And the benign sense of control and worth, and all those other matters that had long been an issue discussed with Margie and her other friends, lasted with her until late into the afternoon. You did not need to be a wife, mother or lover in order to survive extremely happily. Look at Jane Austen, she told herself, if a little vaguely.
It was the sports shop that did for this delightful equilibrium. Perhaps the goddess Nike felt a little meddlesome – understandable, given that one minute she was the great Greek Winged Victory and sister to the fierce river goddess of the Styx and of Zelos, and the next she was a brand name for sports equipment. If she was feeling a bit crabby about the ignominy, and Pamela happened to walk into one of her shops, who’s to say? It was thus.
By about four o’clock in the afternoon, Pamela began to feel bored with work. It was happening more and more. She realized that she had been dealing with four walls and a roof for so many years that it was, in design terms, like a marriage in which the other partner no longer speaks. She decided to go home early and work on the plan for her study. Before she could take risks with her new freedom, she needed to have a place in which to think. She had an idea of producing the perfect small space, designed to hold everything she might need. A babushka of a room, space within space, items within items, depths within depths. It was as absorbing as designing a puzzle, and she set off completely absorbed, feeling happy and at peace. It would be the first space she had ever created for herself since she was a teenager, and she felt just as romantic about it.
And then it happened.
One minute she was heading home down the High Road, scarcely noticing the lighted shops, the hurrying pedestrians, the chill wind, and the next she found herself in a sports shop. I must want to buy something for Daniel, she thought, surprised. Yes. That must be the reason why I have come in here.
It was a very long time since she had been in a shop like this, the essence of which was masculine. She looked about her. Large posters portrayed athletes’ shining biceps, glowing triceps, their gritted teeth above tensile neck and whipcord hands. She felt a little uncomfortable. Like a woman in a peep show. But, she told herself, she had a son, so she had every right to be here. And she eyed again the posters, the boxes of jockey shorts, the large pairs of socks and the massive trainers lining the wall. She could not take her eyes from it all, nor damp down the sense of being a deprived sweet-tooth let loose in a cake shop. She shook her head. She was not a deprived anything, she was here because she wanted to purchase an item of sports clothing. She practised saying it in just that high tone, in case she was asked to move on. Daniel, she thought, I have come in here to buy something for my son Daniel.
She was standing at a rack of shirts, not looking up at the posters any more, and wondering if it was infra dig for a mother to send her son something in Aertex while he was living with a female partner, when her idling eye noticed the changing rooms.
The doors were sketchy. She tried not to look but could not resist. In one, she could see over the top, was a man with his back to her and his neck bent downwards, as if doing up trousers or shorts. She could see the top of his shoulders, the curve of his neck, the utter concentration, the maleness. In another she saw under the equally revealing bottom half of the door a kneeling, hairy thigh. The combination of the two was so shockingly masculine, and the well of desire they plumbed was so deep that she nearly groaned out loud. She had to put her hand over her mouth and keep it there. And then she realized what was happening. She was now dispossessed of, and craving for, masculinity – a commodity of which, for the first time in her adult life, she was totally and utterly deprived at home. Unless you counted the yucca which had never flowered.
Coming into the sports shop was, she decided, subconscious – necessary, like getting a fix. It made her feel part of the whole world again, and not just half of it. You never thought twice about your right to visit a place like this until that right was removed from you. She closed her eyes as that hairy thigh came back to haunt her. This was no good, no good at all. If she carried on like this she would be arrested. Yearning was not too strong a word for what she felt now. A terrible, visceral yearning. Not for one man in particular, not even for a fantasy of one, just a yearning for masculinity. That was what the woman in her lacked – the opposing image to highlight what she was. Oh, she thought, oh, to feel that difference once more. She almost reached out. She had a sudden, dreadful picture of herself bending down and giving the masculine kneecap a grope, running her fingers over its bony, muscular hairiness, digging her fingertips into what could never be mistaken for feminine in a million years.
Instead, and very fortunately, she managed to remove herself from the shop as if nothing had happened beyond not finding the shirt she required. Once outside, she turned on her heel and fled. Putting away from her, as she hurried along, the picture of that neck, that leg, that knee. At least she had exercised control . . . She shivered. She could see the headline in the local paper now. . .