Down Among the Women Read online

  ‘Do you think it’s because he plays Rugby that he always seems tired on Saturday nights?’ she asks Helen.

  ‘If he didn’t play Rugby on Saturdays,’ says Helen, ‘I doubt you would have the opportunity of knowing whether he was tired or not.’

  Jocelyn looks at her blankly.

  ‘It’s those Rugby songs,’ says Helen, ‘they get him going. And he needs something, I’m afraid.’

  Jocelyn is quite pale.

  ‘They’re so horrid,’ she complains. ‘There’s no feeling in them. I never listen.’

  ‘If you want feeling,’ says Helen, smugly, ‘you must take up with an artist. The only whole men in the world are the artists.’

  Helen lives a strange and isolated life in the studio where X works by night and which Y pays for. X keeps his liaison with Helen sporadically secret. He assumes both that Y must surely know about it, and that his friends don’t. In fact, of course, he is wrong on both counts. Both X and Y wonder, on the rare evenings when Helen joins them for supper, why their friends are now so rude to her.

  X does not like strangers in the studio, so Helen has either to entertain secretly or not at all. She is driven more and more into the company of Jocelyn, Sylvia and Scarlet, with none of whom, these days, she has much in common. She does have the pleasure, however, of having her opinion asked, and she thrives in the golden glow of sexual reputation. She is idle. She writes poetry, goes to poetry readings, tends her little home, and waits for X. She grows riotous pot plants. She waxes white and odalisque-like. X spends some four nights a week with Helen, some three with Y, which is surely a victory for Helen.

  He is working well. Y, after the interlude of her prize and a patch of acclaim, has fallen into a trough of non-appreciation. But she is glad that X is working well. The studio was a good idea. She suspects he has girls there from time to time, but does not wish to know for sure. At any rate, he is happy.

  Y is grateful to Helen for having helped her improve her life. Helen calls sometimes in the afternoons—when she knows X is out teaching, Y notices—and they drink coffee, talk about men in general and X in particular, and Helen will help put the children to bed. Y is defeated by, and X uninterested in, his children. X tried to paint them once but couldn’t catch their essence. And although he had fed them pheno-barb to keep them still, they would wriggle. Nothing will stop them wriggling and grizzling. Not threats, shouts, bribes, smiles or drugs.

  ‘You must take a lover,’ says Helen to Jocelyn now. ‘An artist or a poet. I’ll see what I can do. These are the worthwhile men.’

  Jocelyn is indignant. She regrets having confided her difficulty to Helen. She feels she has been unloyal to Philip. Next time Helen rings she is abrupt and unwelcoming, and Helen does not ring again for quite a time.

  Jocelyn opens her account at Harrods, and overspends wildly. She buys hoop earrings in solid gold which everyone takes for tin.

  There is no answer from the stripper to Philip’s letter demanding the return of his ten guineas. Just a rude, humiliating silence. Philip broods. He feels his friends are watching and waiting for him to resolve the situation.

  One Saturday night, after a hard afternoon’s Rugby playing and two inflammatory hours in the pub, Philip takes a taxi to the girl’s flat, instead of home to Jocelyn, to exact payment in kind.

  ‘You can’t be made a fool of by a whore,’ Butch had said to him in the changing-room that afternoon, when they were both slippery with soap and sweat and seemed to be sharing a moment of truth and intimacy. ‘It’s the kind of thing you remember all your life.’

  So now Philip bangs and crashes at her door. The girl, who is neither scraggy, elderly, nor his best friend’s sister, but plump, young and badly spoken, allows him in and concedes victory. Philip acquits himself well enough, but has the feeling she is laughing at him. He slaps her around a little.

  Philip returns to Jocelyn confused and depressed. He tells her all about it and asks to be forgiven.

  ‘I forgive you,’ she says (what else can she do? She has been married a month), and sits on the floor by the gas fire while Philip snores off into a healing sleep on the sofa. She cries a little, but not much, and for her situation rather than for Philip’s infidelity, which seems, now it has happened, to have a cosmic inevitability. She has always expected the world, if not to betray her, certainly to ignore her plea for happiness. Youth had perhaps blinded her to the truth for a year or so; now she is back to a more pertinent vision of reality. The gas fire is faulty. It pops and plops, and one jet burns blue and tiny, instead of golden and powerful. Jocelyn turns the gas off at the main tap in the kitchen, and cleans the jets. When she is next in the kitchen, she turns the main gas tap on again, but forgets that she has not turned off the fire itself, until the cat, asleep on top of the bookcase as is its habit, moans and falls off, unconscious.

  There is very nearly a nasty accident. Jocelyn’s life is full of them.

  Philip tells the story for years, of how the cat fell off the bookcase and saved his life.

  Next Saturday he plays Rugby with more than normal violence, and cracks Butch on the side of his head with his heavy boots. Butch is concussed, and when he is out of hospital, Sylvia has to move into his flat to nurse him.

  This suits both Butch and Sylvia. They lie wrapped in each other’s arms, both afraid to move for fear of aggravating Dutch’s injuries. Their passion, thus repressed, becomes transmuted into a golden glow of love, which stands them in good stead if not for years, at least for months.

  Jocelyn, forgiving, and Philip, forgiven, resume their married life. They are polite to each other, and kind, and perhaps a little embarrassed by the intimacies of married life. Jocelyn finds she is more bashful of her body than she had ever believed possible, and undresses in the bathroom. He, so happy, soapy and naked, amongst men, presently does the same. He is a considerate and loyal husband. He and Butch are never to play Rugby together again. By the time Butch is fit and back in the field, Philip has given up. He takes up tennis instead, so that he and Jocelyn can take their Saturday sport together. They take it in unspoken turns to win.

  Presently Philip is made Group Executive at the fast expanding Watson and Belcher, and presently, when the bedroom is redesigned, sleeps in one of the twin beds. There was almost an embarrassing moment when the change from the double bed was made, and almost a spoken protest from Jocelyn, but the moment passed. Philip takes care to join Jocelyn in the other bed at least once a month, and more often, sometimes, if he has taken a client to a blue film or a strip club, and the memory still looms in his mind.

  Jocelyn, out of kindness to her husband, trains herself in sexual disinterest, even distaste. Presently she is apologizing to the world for her frigidity.

  She strips the Festival papers from the walls, distempers them pure white, and begins to buy antiques. She is proud of her home. She gives coffee mornings; has some nice lady friends, all with accounts at Harrods. Still she does not write to Miss Bonny, although she hears that Miss Bonny now lives in a little cottage in Westmorland, which she shares with Miss Tippin, Jocelyn’s Classics teacher.

  Stalin dies. Jocelyn thinks of the office, and wonders what horrors they will live off now their demon has gone. She considers going back to work, but Philip is not enthusiastic.

  Monthly, Philip and Jocelyn drive to visit one or the other sets of in-laws. The young couple stay overnight in twin-bedded spare rooms which, in both houses, are remarkably similar. They have pink bedside lamps, twin beds, and chintzy curtains, and look out over well-kept flower gardens. Philip’s father nudges him in the ribs and asks about the strip clubs; Philip’s mother offers Jocelyn pot-plants and noticeably refrains from asking why Jocelyn is not pregnant.

  Jocelyn’s parents say practically nothing.

  Jocelyn writes to Miss Bonny, and tears it up. She never liked Miss Tippin. Hockey one, hockey two, hockey three and away! Sunny winter afternoons, the ground still crisp and crackly with frost, the edges of the park misty. Is
it all then to come to nothing more than this?

  She becomes rather thin. ‘She will ruin her life if she goes on like this,’ writes Audrey to Sylvia, signing herself Emma, ‘she can talk of nothing but hairdressers and hats.’ They should move to the country, Audrey-Emma maintains. Philip should give up advertising before his soul rots completely away. How can people hope to be happy while they live such unnatural anti-social lives? Audrey-Emma is sure, moreover, that Jocelyn and Philip drink too much coffee, which everyone knows is bad for the liver.

  Sylvia won’t be drawn. ‘I don’t see much of Jocelyn and Philip these days,’ she writes. ‘We live rather far out.’ In fact Butch has finally quarrelled with Philip—having no patience with a man who opts out of Rugby in order to play tennis with his wife—and makes it difficult for Sylvia to maintain the friendship. Sylvia feels tired and ill. She is pregnant, and Butch is not happy with what he sees as her bloated and perverted shape. He calls her ‘fatty’ in public, and marvels to friends and pub acquaintances at her increasing size. Dutch’s divorce is going to be long, costly and complicated. He and Sylvia now have a tiny little rented house in Dulwich; it is hard to keep going financially because Butch’s wife’s solicitors have insisted on interim alimony of a third of his salary at the vacuum cleaning firm.

  Sylvia does editorial work at home for an accountancy journal. She has to struggle to understand its contents, and is pale from strain and boredom. But they do have a television set—the BBC broadcasts live shows in the evenings. It has an eight-inch screen. Sylvia does not like television much, but Butch waits anxiously for the programmes to begin. They do not have much conversation these days, and something has to sop up the silence.

  8 SCARLET GOES TO MARKET

  DOWN HERE AMONG THE women.

  I have company on my park bench. Two young girls collapse, all giggles, next to me. They plonk down their parcels and ease their feet out of their boots. They are friends, and look alike. They have the same slight bodies, long straight hair, round fleshy faces, docile eyes and unhealthy skin. They are animated and happy. They look at me out of the corners of their slidy eyes, as if they expect me to slap them down. Why should I? I like them.

  One is getting married. She has the bridesmaids’ dresses in a carrier bag. They are yellow see-through.

  ‘That’ll give the priest something to think about,’ she says, with satisfaction.

  They chatter. They gasp and squeak. The bride is pregnant and glad to be. Her only worry is lest her wedding dress doesn’t fit on the day. They talk of the ceremony, the reception, the clothes, the presents. They talk of everything and everyone except the groom. Oh, blessed pair.

  In ten years’ time—no, don’t think of it. The tower block where I live is full of women who were once girls like this, now off to Bingo, desperate, with their children left locked up; pale, worried and ageing badly; without the spirit any more even to tuck a free-gift plastic daffodil behind the ear.

  At least the priest accords them a soul. At least like Mayflies they have their brief dance in the sun before they go down into the darkness.

  They gather up their parcels, wriggle back into their boots, eye me with a certain curious friendliness—they don’t understand why I sit by myself, quiet and respectable, without a friend—and pass on into their future.

  I sit on my park bench and cry for all the women in the world.

  I think perhaps we are in the throes of an evolutionary struggle which we must all endure, while we turn, willy-nilly, into something strange and marvellous. We gasp and struggle for breath, with painful lungs, like the creatures who first crawled out of the sea and lived on land.

  The sun comes out. An old woman, a felt hat on top, and black Wellingtons below, passes by and laughs into the wind, and proves me wrong. Her face is ruddy, lean and cheerful. She seems to be what nature intended. But I do not think Byzantia will look like that when she is seventy-five.

  I cry for my own malice, cruelty, self-deception and stupidity.

  The children come up. ‘What’s the matter?’ they ask. ‘The wind in my eyes,’ I say. ‘Shall we go home?’ I ask. ‘No,’ they say. ‘Not yet.’

  Where did we leave Wanda and Scarlet? Back in the early days and on bad terms, aggravated by Byzantia’s wakefulness.

  Wanda is antagonistic to the world. Scarlet is fat and spotty. Byzantia is teething.

  But rescue is at hand.

  Wanda has a boyfriend.

  There has been trouble with the Education Office. Wanda’s job is in jeopardy. Not, as she had predicted, because of her political past, but because she has explained to a class of nine-year-olds how babies are born. She has drawn a diagram on the board. Parents have complained. The press has become involved. The fact that Scarlet is an unmarried mother is cited in anonymous letters to the local Education Authority as proof of Wanda’s unfitness for teacherhood.

  ‘They are quite right,’ says Scarlet. ‘You aren’t fit. Anyway, why should children know the truth when it’s all so revolting? I would far rather believe I came out of a doctor’s black bag than out of you.’

  ‘Go and live with your father,’ says Wanda. ‘I don’t want you.’ It is her normal retort when Scarlet goes too far, and can be relied upon to silence her daughter.

  Wanda’s boyfriend is a Schools Inspector who has been delegated to investigate the incident. He is a tall, pleasant-faced, rabbit-mouthed, stooping man, with flappy scarecrow trousers and pockets full, Scarlet feels, of string and white mice. He is a stamp collector, and plays the spinet. His wife has left him recently. She has run off with another man.

  He shows Wanda photographs of his wife. She is not unlike Scarlet to look at, only without the spots. Wanda remarks on this, and Edwin Barker, who is fifty-five, looks at Scarlet with increased interest. He has a semi-detached house in Lee Green, which is an outer London suburb.

  Edwin takes Wanda out three Sunday afternoons running. He forgives her for being a divorced woman, for teaching children the facts of life, and for having an unmarried mother for a daughter, but Wanda is not interested in his forgiveness. He takes her to amateur theatrical productions and for rides into the country in his little car, but she is not interested in amateur drama, and can see no merit in countryside for its own sake. He saves her job, and this she does appreciate. On the third Sunday he parks the car and tries to kiss her, but Wanda finds the prospect distasteful and refuses. He is hurt, and bewildered. All the way home he talks about how he was cheated out of £3. 10s. 0d. by a stamp dealer.

  The next day, Monday, Edwin telephones Scarlet while Wanda is at school and asks her and Byzantia over for the day on the following Sunday. Scarlet accepts, but is frightened to confess to Wanda that she has done so.

  Six days of thinking about Skinny Winny—as Wanda refers to him—and fearing Wanda, and she is practically in love with Edwin. Well, there is no one else to attach her feelings to.

  On Saturday she is particularly nice to her mother, makes her breakfast in bed, tells her how good she is with Byzantia, offers to sew on her buttons, until Wanda asks her what the matter is. They are very fond of each other, these two; they resist their attachment, circle each other at as great a distance as unkind words can put them, but still must orbit round each other.

  ‘Skinny Winny has asked me and Byzantia over tomorrow,’ Scarlet admits. ‘Well, he likes Byzantia, and he doesn’t want to lose her, and he knows you can’t stand him. So he has to ask me.’

  Wanda just laughs.

  ‘He wants a wife,’ says Wanda. ‘He wants promotion and married men stand a better chance in the rat race than single men do. He resents paying income tax, too, at single rates. He could claim a child allowance on Byzantia. On the salary he’s getting now, it would work out about the same whether he had my wages coming in, or you and Byzantia to claim as dependants. He worries about things like that. You’re a very good bet to a man like him, and he will enjoy forgiving you.’

  ‘You mean you don’t mind me going?’ Scarlet so
unds disappointed.

  ‘Of course not, my dear,’ croons Wanda, ‘off you go, have a good time. Fuck yourself silly if it’s what you want.’

  Scarlet is most put out. But she goes. She and Edwin get on well. She makes tea and butters scones. They hold hands. Scarlet likes the comfortable mediocrity of Edwin’s home. She likes the thought of the toaster. She likes being forgiven. She likes the way he takes Byzantia upon his knee and plans her future. She likes the fact that he is respectable. She longs for respectability.

  Later, she discovers that she likes being seen out with him. People stare. He is so old and thin, and she is so young and fleshy. They are mistaken for father and daughter, until he takes her hand, or puts his sinewy arm round her, and proves otherwise. That amuses her.

  She even likes it when he parks the car and kisses her. He is so old. She is conscious of his past, stretching back and back, of the whole great mysterious sum of his existence, now being offered to her through the pressure of his lips.

  It is not desire that is stirred, it is her imagination; but how can she know this? She feels she loves him. When she thinks of him kissing her, she is simply enchanted.

  No one can understand her.

  Edwin calls at the flat every day, nods in a slightly, but only slightly, embarrassed way to Wanda, and continues his wooing of Scarlet. He won’t let her go out cleaning any more. Silently, every week he hands her £2. 5s. 0d.

  Byzantia laughs and chuckles as he bends over her, his faded blue eyes crinkling. He is a kind man. He is an old man. His back is weak—he has mysterious pains in his spine, for which he consults doctor after doctor. Byzantia doesn’t know this. She holds out her arms to him. He picks her up and tries not to wince. They love each other: old flappy legs and plump, curly, brilliant Byzantia.

  Byzantia will not stay in her cot. She will not go to sleep. She is an exhausting child. Wanda is tired. Wanda is tired of Edwin, tired of Scarlet, tired of life, tired of lifting Byzantia back into her cot while Scarlet and Edwin drive down leafy lanes and kiss in their mis-matched way.