The Men and the Girls (14 page)

Kate picked up her mineral water and took a slow mouthful.

‘It's more often the case than not,' Helen went on, ‘that women put far more into relationships than men. Men find marriage much easier than women do, for exactly that reason, and your and James's relationship is a marriage, after all, in all but name. The thing is, Kate, you have just given too much of yourself away. You are psychologically worn out. If you stay, you'll be worse than worn out, you'll be damaged.'

She paused. She began to eat her own soup rapidly and Kate realized that it was now her turn to say something.

‘I like looking after people,' she said lamely. ‘At least, I did.'

‘Of course. That's exactly what I'm getting at. You have given too much and now you're paying the price.'

‘But James doesn't ask for anything. And he looks after me.'

‘Dear me,' Helen said, spreading a piece of French bread lavishly with butter, ‘your thinking
is
confused.'

‘No, it isn't. It's sad, but it isn't confused.'

‘So what are you going to do?'

Kate hesitated. Helen leaned back and surveyed her.

‘Well?'

‘I've found a couple of rooms in Osney.'

Helen said nothing. She pushed up the sleeves of her wildly exuberant Peruvian jersey, and then she took the leopardskin-patterned plastic combs out of her abundant dark hair, and put them back in again, at a different angle.

‘Kate. Is there another man?'

Kate pushed her soup away. ‘There's a man I know, but I'm not in love with him. I'm just a little in love with how he lives, where he lives.'

‘I suppose Osney's a safe choice—'

‘Don't sneer,' Kate said, suddenly cross.

‘You could always live at Mansfield House—'

‘No. Thank you, but no. I'm going to work full-time for Christine and I'm going to live in Swan Street.'

‘With Joss?'

‘Of course with Joss!'

Helen regarded her. ‘So we won't be seeing much of you at Mansfield?'

‘Not for a little bit, not until I feel less—' she stopped. She did not want to tell Helen about the change that had come over her feelings for James, her shrinking from him.

Helen waited. Kate said nothing more. After a while, Helen gathered up her huge embroidered sack bag from the floor, and patted Kate's hand.

‘You are doing exactly the right thing. One has to call a halt to bullying and tyranny oneself, because nobody is going to do it for you.'

Kate looked at her levelly.

‘Exactly,' she said.

Back at Mansfield House, there was a stranger in the kitchen, a fair, tidy stranger in spectacles who said her name was Julia Hunter.

‘I'm a friend of Kate Bain's,' she said.

‘Is that why you're here?' Helen said. Julia looked to her deeply, dangerously conventional, the kind of together woman who would urge Kate to marry James rather than leave him.

‘No,' Julia said, smiling, ‘I just knew where to come because of Kate. I work for Midland Television, actually.' She paused for a second and then said with a shade of self-conscious pride, ‘We're making a series called
Night Life
and I'm interviewing for it.'

All the women in the kitchen had stopped stirring things and hissing at their children. Everyone was looking at Julia and Helen.

‘Television,' someone said. All the eyes that had been examining her clothes were now fixed on her face, and her smile hid a lurch of inward panic – and pity – at the contrast between the children in the kitchen and George and Edward, safely and cosily at their irreproachable nursery school's Easter party.

‘The aim of the programme,' Julia said as gently as she could, ‘is to look at all sorts of lives that go on when more conventional lives have gone home from work and consider everything finished until the morning.'

There was some laughter at this.

‘Never bloody stops here.'

‘You want to come and film bathtime?'

‘It's when the telephone begins, after six—'

‘Would you pay us?' Helen said, regarding Julia. ‘We have no income here. We can't afford to do anything for free, even though we'd like the publicity.'

Julia opened her mouth to say that such a decision was the producer's, and said, ‘Of course,' instead.

‘OK,' Helen said. She gestured at the women standing round them. ‘Let's talk. Let's discuss it.'

Much later, Helen walked Julia out to her car. Her opinion had shifted a little while listening to Julia, away from feeling that Julia was a kind of undercover policewoman, and towards an appreciation of Julia's usefulness to the refuge.

‘You said you know Kate,' Helen said now.

‘Yes,' Julia said, ‘our husbands are lifelong friends.'

Helen eyed her. If anything, she looked even younger than Kate, though this could be accounted for by her childlike colouring.

‘Another one—'

‘Sorry?'

‘Another child bride.'

Julia took her car keys out of her bag. To her mind, Hugh bore no resemblance to James and their mutual age was merely coincidental. James, after all, hadn't taken any care of himself for years, and it showed.

‘What an impertinent and uncalled-for remark.'

‘Is it?' Helen said, unperturbed.

Julia put the car key into the driver's door, and turned it. This Helen person, so big and bohemian and sure of herself, was just the kind of woman Kate wouldn't mind, might even like. Julia swallowed. Perhaps you couldn't do a splendid thing like run Mansfield House if you weren't pushy and three-cornered. She gave Helen the best smile she could manage.

‘I'll be in touch to firm up dates,' she said, across the roof of the car.

‘And the money,' Helen said.

She watched Julia drive away. Interesting. What was it that made some women choose men old enough to be their fathers? Was it, Helen wondered, climbing the steps back to Mansfield House front door, could it be that women like Kate, like this Julia Hunter, hoped that by so doing they could always think of themselves as girls?

Julia collected the twins from their party. They were scarlet with over-excitement, their shirts had come untucked in an unaesthetic frilly manner and they were clutching party bags adorned with Easter rabbits with daffodil-yellow fur and sticking-out teeth.

‘Pow!' George yelled at the sight of Julia.

‘I do hope they've been good,' she said anxiously to Frederica MacBride, who ran the nursery school. ‘Perfectly,' said Frederica, who said that to all the mothers in order to emphasize that no child ever misbehaved with
her
. Julia knelt to tuck in Edward's shirt while he jiggled up and down and biffed her lightly on the head with his party bag.

‘Enough,' Julia said quietly, looking at him.

He gave a loud sigh, and let his party bag fall to his side.

‘Pow!' shouted George again, rushing up. Julia looked at him too, and so did Edward. ‘Pow,' said George in a smaller voice, and then, in a whisper, ‘Pow.'

On the way home, Julia asked them what they had done at the party and what they had eaten. They said they'd had sausages and cake and played musical cushions and had an Easter egg hunt. She asked them if they'd had a nice time and they said yes. Then she asked them a whole lot of other things and they said yes, yes, yes to her, because they were really preoccupied with taking off their trousers and their pants, impeded both by their child-safety belts, and by keeping their four round blue eyes fixed on the driving mirror in order to meet Julia's if she glanced at them. When they arrived at Church Cottage, they were haphazardly dressed again, and strangely serene. Julia unbuckled them from their seat belts and they stampeded into the house, to find Hugh in the kitchen, roaming about at the end of the telephone cable, and laughing and talking into the receiver. He was wearing jeans, and a pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he was smoking and his hair was ruffled, and Julia coming in and seeing him so confident and happy felt a rush of love for him and, in addition, that pleasurable internal sinking that heralded a hope he would think of making love to her.

Hugh fielded the twins inadequately with one hand. ‘Must fly, the team's home. Sure, sure. Wonderful. Ready to roll, then? Good to hear you. Ciao.' He put the telephone down and scooped up the boys.

‘Don't burn me!' Edward shouted, squirming theatrically away from Hugh's cigarette.

‘I will if I like,' Hugh said, kissing him. ‘I'll do anything I like. I'm the father.'

He glanced at Julia. Her shy, excited expression was unmistakable. He came across the kitchen to her, still holding the twins, and bent forward to kiss her.

‘Anything I like?'

She coloured and laughed.

‘Oh Hugh—'

‘Had a good day?' he said, his face still close.

‘Oh yes. Kate's refuge has agreed to be filmed. It's run by a terrifying woman, one of those bossy independent women who think men are pathetic, but it'll make wonderful television.'

‘Did you talk to her about Kate?'

‘Down,' Edward said firmly. He slithered out of Hugh's grasp to the floor.

‘Me too,' George said, following.

‘No, I didn't. Should I have?'

‘James is very worried. Kate seems miserable. She's withdrawn.'

‘Oh dear,' Julia said, but she wasn't thinking about Kate. ‘Was – was that a good call?'

‘It was. It was the final budget assessment for the programme. Well within limits.'

‘Oh good—'

Hugh leaned across to the table and stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray painted with a blue cockerel, that they had bought on holiday in Portugal. Then he took off Julia's glasses and put his arms round her.

‘Am I right,' he said into her hair, ‘in thinking that you aren't listening to a word I'm saying?'

She gave a tiny giggle.

‘Because you are, aren't you, simply calculating how long it will take you to get the twins to bed, so that—' His hands moved down her back to her bottom.

‘Stop it,' she said happily, wriggling.

He pushed his fingers between her legs. ‘So that I can get you to bed and fuck the hell out of you?'

‘What?' said George.

‘Fuck the hell out of Mummy,' Hugh said, more conversationally.

‘
Hugh
!' Julia said, enchanted and scandalized.

‘I can see Mummy's pants,' George said.

‘Can you?' said Edward, hurrying over.

They looked.

‘Black ones,' Edward said to George.

Julia wrenched herself free and tugged her skirt down. She was flushed and laughing.

Hugh looked down at himself. He grinned. He looked back at Julia.

‘Come on,' he said, ‘these boys are going to have the century's fastest bathtime. At least bathing children is something I can do perfectly well bent double.'

Joss lay on her bed in the early spring dusk. She thought that, for the very first time in her life, she might very nearly be the least little bit happy. As this was not a sensation she was either used to, or had trained herself to admire (it being much more cool to be depressed), she was not quite sure what to do with it, so she was lying on her bed in the dim room, without music, for once, just doing a little savouring.

The weird thing, the really bizarre, weird thing, was that the beginning, the first cause of this wonderful feeling, lay with Miss Bachelor. If it hadn't been for Miss Bachelor, Garth would never have noticed Joss and Joss would not now be lying on her bed vowing not to bite her nails again and conjuring up his face in the dusky air. There she'd been, taking Miss Bachelor and her usual awful shopping home, when what she'd always dreaded had happened, and someone from school had suddenly appeared, out of the delicatessen in Albert Street, and what's more, it was that new American boy from the first-year sixth, that really cool boy who looked like Tom Cruise. Joss had wanted to die. She'd wanted to murder Miss Bachelor and then just die, shrivel up and simply disappear down one of the drain grids in the gutter.

Garth had brought a French loaf from the deli. He'd got it propped against one shoulder, like a rifle. For a second, Joss thought he wouldn't see them and, if he did, he'd never recognize her because she was just one of the fourth year and looked gross anyway, she knew it, just gross. But he'd stopped in front of them, and smiled his beautiful, wide, white American smile and said, ‘Hi, there.'

Joss had gone purple. She could think of nothing except that she was holding this bloody basket with the lavatory paper and the biscuits and the tins of soup and that Miss Bachelor was wearing her belted brown overcoat which made Joss die of shame just to walk beside.

‘How do you do?' Miss Bachelor said.

Garth's smile was still there. ‘I'm just fine,' he said. ‘Can I help carry that basket?'

He gave ‘basket' a short ‘a'. Joss was ready to faint. He said, to Miss Bachelor, ‘We're at school together. My name is Garth Acheson.'

Miss Bachelor looked at Joss.

‘Josephine?'

Joss whispered, ‘I c'n manage—'

‘You sure?' Garth said.

‘It's most kind of you,' Miss Bachelor said, looking penetratingly at Joss, ‘but I think Joss can totter as far as my front door. She has, after all, often done it.'

Garth held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, then, ma'am.' He bent a little towards Joss. ‘See you tomorrow, Joss.'