She's Leaving Home (10 page)

Thank God, she was not exactly destitute. The divorce settlement all those years ago when her ex had been so desperate to go off with his floozy had been shrewdly invested and the house was hers, unencumbered. Better than Morrie’s home, in fact. Nor was she such an undesirable catch, though she said so herself. Solid and healthy: well rounded, it had to be admitted, but some men preferred their women cuddly. On the other hand, she liked to earn a living. There was no money to be made from
the grateful parents of a suitably placed old maid if she were to land the reluctant Mr Feinstein herself.

Sylvia poured more coffee and looked around her kitchen in satisfaction. Fitted cupboards from Owen Owen’s. The latest double fridge-freezer which her friends envied and schemed to buy in imitation. A Kenwood mixer with attachments, bigger than her sister’s. An electric kettle which whistled when the water was boiled,
and
an electric toaster. She congratulated herself on these acquisitions, though often they would remain in their packaging and be exhibited only when visitors or clients appeared. Houseproud was one thing, but slave to the stove was quite something else, and not Sylvia’s style.

So why did Morrie Feinstein interest her so much? It wasn’t his money. It wasn’t status, though to be a wife again, the head of a household, would be far preferable to queening it alone. Sylvia returned to the table, picked up the press cutting with Feinstein’s photograph and allowed herself to stare at his face for fully five minutes.

He was a man: and having been married once, he might be a captive again. Others, equally eligible like Simon Rotblatt, had so long resisted her blandishments that (though she would never admit it) Sylvia had virtually given up on them. Morrie, however, with his flirtatious wielding of the smoked salmon knife gave hints that with finesse he might be caught, someday. That was it.

Sylvia propped his picture on her cup and slowly began to circle the table, humming to herself. Then she ran her hands over her thighs and let them rest, there, at the groin, pressed together, where she could feel them on her pubic bone: the spot a man might slide his hands to if he were standing behind her, his arms around her, touching and pleading… She bent slightly and exhaled, her upper arms pushing in her fleshy breasts from the sides so they swelled up before her, and thrilled at the sensation. And if it was a man – Morrie or –
anybody
– she would feel something else, too, pressed into the small of her back, into the cleavage of her buttocks: and he would not need to use words, other than endearments, to tell her what he wanted, what he could give. That half-remembered hardness would be its own supplication. And she would turn and put her arms around his neck and raise her face to his to be kissed –

Sylvia Bloom caught sight of herself in a mirror, a stout middle-aged woman in a skirt that was too tight, belly bulging, blouse ridden out at the front, her fat arms upraised and a flush on her cheeks, solitary in her empty house. She dropped her hands lifelessly and stood still.

It had been fun trying to get Morrie into the mood. If he were attracted to her – really attracted, instead of playing the pliant shopkeeper – he had shown no signs of it. To be honest he was much too young for her. It was probably wiser to abandon any dreams of entrapping the grocer for herself and instead to persuade him to consider remarriage as a genuine proposition. For that she had no end of suitable clients who would pay nicely.

With a deep sigh she tucked the blouse back into its waistband, returned the press cuttings to their folder, and began to scribble notes in her private little book.

‘You planning to come, Colette?’

First lesson was a prep. The four friends were huddled around a table in the library, textbooks propped open before them. The room was two doors away from Miss Plumb’s office and, like hers, had been one of the main entertaining salons of the old house. It was high-ceilinged and airy, with an oak parquet floor in curious patterns, much eroded at the edges. The elaborate ceiling rose no longer bore a magnificent chandelier but a neon strip light which dangled and swung slowly in the draught. An electric bar fire provided limited heat. The walls were hidden by dusty shelves filled with several thousand old books in cloth and leatherette bindings, arranged in some idiosyncratic order clearly understood only by Miss Tyrone who had set it up four decades before. A display cabinet by the door bravely showed a selection of ‘New Books’, their garish covers protected by opaque plastic. The cabinet was locked.

Helen did not need to elaborate her question. The discussion with Miss Plumb would dominate their thoughts the whole morning.

‘I’m not sure there’s much point. My Dad wants me to leave now, never mind after the exams next summer.’ The girl spoke quietly; her green eyes were veiled.

‘Simplest way to fight your horrible kin is through education,’ Brenda hissed, and prodded Colette’s arm with a pencil. The warmth behind the urging made the Irish girl smile.

‘Let her be, Brenda,’ intervened Helen. ‘It’s possible to have a marvellous family and still find that persuading them to let you go to university is an uphill task.’

‘Yours still being difficult too, then?’

‘A bit. They’re like Colette’s Dad in some ways; can’t quite see why I should want to spend another five years studying – two here at school and three at university – with no guarantee of a better job. They calculate, I suppose, that the cash I lose won’t be made up, specially if I get married not long after leaving college. Though when I talk to them they say money’s not the problem. Seems to be something deeper – an anxiety that I’ll change and grow away from them.’

Brenda tossed her curly head. ‘Well – I’m not giving up my job when
I
get married. I don’t see why I should, and you don’t have to these days. My grandmother told me she had to leave the civil service when she got wed – that used to be the rule. She ticked off my Mum when
she
suggested that was still best. My lot are keen I should go to college. And have a career too.’

‘I’m not sure it’s that easy,’ Helen mused. ‘The best jobs go to men – always have. And what happens if you want kids? Lots of places aren’t keen to employ women with children. Most husbands won’t allow it – my Dad won’t let Mum get a job, even a part-time one. Her place is at home, they both say, and I can see their point. I wouldn’t want to come back to an empty house and have to make my own tea.’

All eyes turned to Colette. For some years since her mother had abandoned the children it had been the girl’s role to make tea for her brothers and her father. The men were sometimes home the whole day but it was known they did not lift a finger. She bent her head and did not respond.

‘There’s one easy answer.’ Meg sat up and pushed her spectacles more firmly up her nose. A didactic tone entered her voice. ‘Don’t get married. Don’t let them dictate to you! Have your own bank account and your own home, make your own friends. Maybe have a car someday. Do your own thing. Why not?’

The others were dubious. That sounded like sedition. Helen lowered her voice: ‘One reason you’ve forgotten. You can’t open a bank account without a man’s signature. So you’d have to keep well in with somebody you can trust, such as your father.’

‘Or campaign for a new law,’ Meg muttered. She began to chew her nails savagely.

Helen shrugged. ‘Meanwhile we have to live with the law as it is. Hush now, or we’ll have the librarian on the warpath. Has anybody figured out the answer to test question three?’

The object of Sylvia’s cogitations was in the back room of his shop. He was bent over nearly double, one hand on a battered box of grapefruit, the other pressed to the small of his back. His face was scarlet and he was panting hard, with little gasps escaping between clenched teeth.

‘Nellie! Where are you? Will you come?’

It was difficult to make oneself heard when facing the wrong way and addressing the wet floor. It was the rain which had caused the problem: on the slippery concrete he had lost his foothold just as he had managed to lift the heavy box. As it slipped from his hands he had felt something crunch in his back. And now he could not move.

‘Nellie!’ he yelled as loud as he could, and yelped as the effort sent stabs of agony across his lumbar region.

The shop was busy. Nellie McCauley noticed at last that her employer had been absent for
some time and bustled out to rebuke him. His elevated backside which greeted her was a source of amusement and she debated with herself whether to tap it playfully. When she did so the howl which emanated from the other end stopped her in her tracks.

‘Oh, God, Nellie! I’ve done my back. Can you get an ambulance?’

Poor Mr Feinstein, the customers commiserated. Such a dreadful shame. They watched agog as the figure of their grocer, doubled up and seated on an old chair, was carried out gingerly to the ambulance.

Nellie scurried about and assisted as well she could with the blanket. Her reward came quickly.

As the white doors were about to close, Mr Feinstein grasped her hand and held it tight. ‘Nellie, mind the shop for me, won’t you? The fruit delivery I’ve checked, those apples need to go back – and the bagels were burned –’

Nellie squeezed the hand in response. Her heart, which had started to thump the moment she had realised the trouble her employer faced, was still beating oddly. His cracked voice, his evident pain, touched a nerve in her. She was needed, as never before in the years she had worked for him. She made herself smile reassuringly into the twisted face. ‘Don’t you worry. It’ll be in safe hands.’

He relaxed briefly and grunted. ‘It will. I know that. You’re a grand girl, Nellie. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.’

It had to be admitted that Miss Plumb terrified them. It was not only that reverberant accent which made her so alien, nor the self-confidence expressed in that basilisk stare, nor the clothes, almost tight-fitting, of a cut which would have been frowned upon had any of the pupils worn similar. Helen’s father, remarking the fine quality grey tweed, had once commented in his daughter’s hearing that for a schoolteacher Miss Plumb was an attractive woman. The cling of the skirt, the curve of the bosom hinted at an undertow of sexual energy which the adolescents recognised, though they had not the least doubt that her sexuality was totally sublimated to her profession. The notion of Miss Plumb with a man, doing his bidding and sighing with distracted passion, was too droll to contemplate seriously. Whatever else she was, Miss Plumb was
formidable
, and as such certain to put men in their place.

Brenda, the self-appointed leader of the quartet, knocked on the door.

‘Come!’

Miss Plumb had followed precedent and used the main room of the Georgian house as her study. The oak parquet here was polished to a shine and she had imported scarlet rugs found on holiday in Isfahan. To one side was a carved stone fireplace with baked blue Liverpool tiles alongside the grate. No one had ever seen it lit; heat came instead from a cream-painted radiator behind Miss Plumb’s back, which left the rest of the room cool. The ceiling edges and corners still sported elaborate if flaky mouldings, though here also the chandelier had disappeared to be replaced by a standard issue Bakelite shade. Over the mantelpiece a heavy mirror, its gilded edge faded, was screwed to the wall; before it were ranged a handful of invitation cards, the print too small to be read by nosy eyes from a distance. A vase of daffodils stood at the mantelpiece’s centre and a carriage clock, locked away every night. On all sides solid wooden bookcases rose, some to the ceiling, others to waist height laden with the fruits of a lifetime’s erudition in several languages – Miss Plumb rightly judged that no burglar would be interested in those.

The headmistress was seated at her large desk, head down, her back to the bow window, facing the door. Papers were ranged in neat piles before her and she was annotating a folder. Behind her the city stretched out, the truncated red cathedral to the left, the Cunard building straight ahead, the river a silvery ribbon in the distance. The test thus set was to hold her eye and not let attention wander to the forbidden temptations of the port or its shops, cellars and clubs. The world inside this
room should be sufficient.

The girls trooped in and stood uncertainly in a semicircle. Miss Plumb let them wait a pregnant few moments when she finished her writing, then looked up briskly. ‘Good afternoon. Bring those chairs over and sit.’ They obeyed meekly.

‘Helen, Brenda, Colette, Margaret.’

Meg squirmed. The girl hated her given name.

‘You are intelligent young women with an excellent future ahead of you. Your teachers are well pleased with your application and progress. We take it for
granted
–’ she paused and swept her gaze from one solemn young face to the next ‘– that you will apply to university to read for an honours degree. So will others in this school. But you are judged capable of entry to the highest establishments. I mean of course Oxford and my own university Cambridge.’

She was met by four studiously blank faces.

‘We’ll come back to the details in a moment. I should warn you at once that if you are willing to try, that will mean extra classes to prepare you for the General Studies paper. Especially as you –’ she consulted her notes ‘– as you are all scientists.’

Miss Plumb was not a scientist. She allowed her head to turn towards one of the bookshelves. ‘It will be hard. I will myself tutor you in preparation for examinations and the necessary interviews. Remember Longfellow’s wise words – if you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it. You will need to read a great deal which may be unfamiliar – ancient history, literature of several countries, philosophy. Has any of you, for example, heard of Kant?’

Blinks. Helen swallowed. She had an inkling of what might be coming next and had prepared herself.

‘Aha! Well, you will by the time I’ve finished with you. Now, tell me. What are you reading for pleasure right now?’

Meg, too, was ready. ‘Thomas Hardy’s
Far from the Madding Crowd,
Miss Plumb. It was a school prize.’