The Men and the Girls (34 page)

James had been close to tears. He had felt full of fury, a really savage red rage at Mark Hathaway, and full, at the same time, of a longing to help and a sensation of helplessness.

He said gently, unsteadily, ‘Will you come to Richmond Villa? So that we can look after you? To reassure Joss?'

Kate shook her head, and winced. ‘Thank you. Thank you, James, but I won't do that. I'll stay here. I'm fine here.'

‘Please,' he said.

‘No,' Kate said. ‘I'm all right, really. They know what to do here, with people like me. They know me.'

Lying twisted on Joss's bean bag, James felt again his urgency that Kate should come back to Richmond Villa. Of course she must! If he, James, hadn't let her go in the first place, hadn't indulged her in a restless moment, she would never have been exposed to this kind of arbitrary brutality. He must make up for that, he owed Kate recompense for that, of course he did. But – did he? Why did he feel guilty? Was he guilty? Had he looked at her across the kitchen table at Mansfield House and simply been unable to bear the spectacle, the bare evidence of her suffering? Did he feel love then – or pity? What was it that made him wish that Kate, rather than Hugh, was now sleeping in the other front bedroom, across the landing from poor old Leonard, wheezing from shock in his flannelette pyjamas? Did he really, truly, love Kate still, or was he now simply consumed with guilt and pity? Oh pity, thought James, oh terrible, sirenish pity. I mustn't insult Kate with pity.

He listened. Joss's elaborately quiet breathing had relaxed into natural little snorts and snores. With difficulty, James turned himself on to all fours, and then got slowly to his feet. He stood looking down at her, at her ruffled crest of hair, her poor multistudded right ear, her still-childish hand clutching the duvet. At least I know what I feel for you, James thought, I feel rather what I feel for Leonard, only stronger. I feel great love, dear Joss, and frequently an equally great exasperation.

At five in the morning Cat took advantage of Miss Bachelor's open window, and brought her a shrew. It was not quite dead, so he played with it a bit, for her benefit, on the rug by her bed, and woke her up.

Beatrice put on the light, and peered.

‘Intolerable Cat!'

Cat looked offended. The shrew, now dead from fright or prudently faking it, lay on its side, snout and eyes closed. Beatrice got out of bed and went downstairs for a dustpan and brush. When she returned, Cat had vanished, leaving his trophy behind, in reproach. Beatrice swept it up, and dropped it out of her bedroom window, on to the concrete path below where, with any luck, Grace would fail to see it in the morning before she trod on it.

Beatrice had a headache. She knew perfectly well why she had a headache and was inclined to think she deserved every thud of it. She took the brush and dustpan downstairs again to the dismal cupboard where they lived with the carpet sweeper and the ironing board, and then went into the kitchen and made herself a pot of tea to take back to bed with her. The sky was light already, the Friday sky. The one thing to be said for Friday was the arrival of her copy of the
Times Literary Supplement
.

Back in her room, Cat waited. Where, he said accusingly, was his shrew?

‘I have no patience with your games,' Beatrice said, putting the tea tray down and climbing back into bed. ‘You mistake cruelty for sophistication, which reflects poorly on someone as intelligent as you are.'

Cat jumped on to the bed, after her, and trod about all over her knees, pushing his broad head hard against her hands.

‘Stop it,' she said. ‘Settle down.'

He inserted himself between the quilt and the top blanket, and rolled himself against her legs, purring sonorously, heavy and satisfied.

‘You are a good companion,' Beatrice said, pouring tea, ‘I will say that for you. You are independent and characterful and you have a sense of humour. It is time, Cat, that I reminded myself that once I was proud to think that I, too, could boast all three.'

The last six months had been the richest in Beatrice's life for many, many years and she had not only revelled in them, she had rejoiced to revel. She had started by being interested and ended by being enamoured of a house, a way of life, a group of people, a man. She had fallen into a luxurious habit of seeking amusement and stimulation and food – for an infatuation, Beatrice told herself firmly – by simply going round to Richmond Villa. She had gone all the time in the last few months, trotting regularly round like the paper boy or the milkman, persuading herself that she was valuable and necessary. Well, last night had changed all that. Last night, hearing about poor Miss Bain and drinking, unquestionably, far too much sherry, had been like being slapped in the face when she was a child and getting a fit of the silly giggles. There had been an inevitability about the last six months, its inexorable series of events, happening one after another like dominoes falling over in sequence, which had begun on that wet January night when James had knocked her off her bicycle. Well, Beatrice said to herself, drinking tea and looked at the postcard reproduction which was pinned to the wall by her bedhead of Dante demonstrating the whole pattern of the universe to the city of Florence, with an open copy of
The Divine Comedy
in his hand, well, Beatrice, now you have to get back on your bicycle and pedal off again; and to some purpose.

Seventeen

On the third day after her arrival, Kate moved into a first-floor room at Mansfield House with Sonia and her children. Sonia was coffee-coloured and calm, as were her children, two small girls who scarcely spoke. Kate felt she was intruding.

‘You come on in,' Sonia said slowly. She indicated to Kate a bed by the window. ‘You like that one? This refuge, this is the best time of my life. I'm learning how to be close to women.'

Sonia had killed her husband. She told Kate so within an hour. ‘You better know, then we needn't speak of it. I killed him in a violent situation but I should never have stayed till things were that bad.' She looked across at her daughters. It was impossible to tell what lay behind their huge brown glass eyes. ‘All I want is to pass on to them the strength not to let themselves ever be controlled or destroyed by anyone.' She glanced at Kate. ‘It's good he's not alive so I don't have to force myself not to go back to him no more.'

‘But—'

‘It's terrible, loving someone,' Sonia said. Her voice was almost too calm, trancelike. ‘I won't love anyone again. Not ever again.'

Kate made up the bed by the window. Sonia's daughters watched her in silence.

‘I clean, mornings,' Sonia said, ‘at the girls' school. This room all yours then, to do your own thing.'

‘Thank you.'

‘When you used to come here, I was new here, I didn't know you, but I used to think I wanted to be like you. Nice home, nice man. But I don't think that no more. The only way to have a nice life is to stay free. That's the only way to self-respect.'

There was something very depressing about Sonia. Her voice was steady and low and it went on and on and on. Her children, when they did speak, spoke in whispers.

‘I only tell you this,' Sonia said, over and over, ‘so we don't speak of it no more. That's all. You can't appreciate anything without self-respect, not being a woman, not your children, not anything. How can you have self-respect with a man treating you like that? How can you stay away from a man if you love him? Love's a terrible thing. It's a drug. It makes you want to please a man. How can you please yourself if you're always trying to please a man? Where's self-respect if you don't please yourself? You never know anyone till you've told them you love them. I won't do that again. I won't tell anyone that I love them. If you love someone you think you can help them, cure them. It's wrong to think that. You can't make no difference. I won't think that again.'

Linda and Ruth had been to Swan Street and packed up Kate's possessions. They had met Mr Akwa who had said politely that he hoped he had not precipitated Kate's departure. Linda said she thought he was probably the only man who hadn't. Mr Akwa had bowed and looked puzzled. A few days later, Kate received a card from him, with a ten-pence piece Sellotaped to it, that he had found under the armchair.

There was too much stuff to fit into the rooms with Sonia and her children, so Linda and Ruth stowed the rest away in plastic bags, in the basement. Neither of them said, Just for now, or, For the time being, and Kate was grateful for that. It was impossible, just now, to think further forward than the next half-day, or at most the next night, with Sonia's voice beginning again, quietly and relentlessly in the dark.

‘I only tell you this so we shan't have to speak of it again—'

Kate went down to Pasta Please. It was plain that Christine found it very difficult to look at her, even though her face was much improved. Benjie gave her a bottle of vodka.

‘You want to get that down you,' he said to Kate, ‘and then you want to do a bit of thinking.'

Christine said she would keep Kate's job open for three weeks. Susie, now pregnant and waiting for her software salesman to decide whether or not to leave his wife for her, had come back to fill in Kate's job. ‘And if you decide on a change in three weeks,' Christine said, ‘she can cover until I find someone else.' She was kind to Kate, but in a faintly exasperated way, as if she had known something like this would happen all along. ‘I hope at least you've finished with Mark now.'

‘Oh yes.'

Mark had sent flowers to Richmond Villa. Joss put them in the dustbin.

‘And his note,' Joss said, ‘I didn't even open it.'

‘It wasn't yours to throw away,' Kate said.

Joss scowled. ‘You can't want to hear from him!'

‘I don't. At least, I never want any further doings with him. But I want an ending, an explanation. There might have been something in that note.'

Joss brought it the next day, creased and stained from the dustbin.

‘I only ask you,' the note said, ‘to remember that I loved you and still do. But I know there is no future.'

Kate crumpled it up. ‘You were quite right,' she said. ‘The dustbin was too good for it.'

Joss looked round the room. Sonia and her daughters' clothes hung on wire hangers from hooks all along the walls because she had kindly emptied the only cupboard for Kate. Kate had not wanted her to, had begged her not to. ‘I like to,' she said. ‘As I told you, I'm learning to live with women.'

‘You can't stay here,' Joss said.

‘Helen offered me her flat.'

‘Helen! You can't live with Helen!'

‘I know that.'

Joss watched her. She looked better, much better, and the bruises were fading.

‘The trouble is,' Kate said, ‘that Helen's very shaken. I don't want the others to think I'm her sort of pet, but she keeps coming to look at me as if she feels she's had a close shave herself.' She looked up at Joss. ‘Don't get this episode out of proportion, Jossie. It wasn't actually very much and, if I'm honest, I could have seen it coming.'

But Joss didn't want to hear. She put some sweets for Sonia's children on their pillow, and kissed Kate hurriedly, and went down to the second-hand bicycle James had just bought her from an advertisement in the
Oxford Mail
, which she had left carefully padlocked to a lamp-post.

When the twins first saw Hugh they couldn't speak. They fell upon him, and wrestled with him, each twin to a leg, with pent-up, suffused faces, but they couldn't say anything. Hugh found he couldn't say anything much either. He staggered with his clamped human leg-irons to the lawn, and fell over on to the grass, so that he could reach down and tickle them, to make them let go.

‘You were in Joss's house!' George shouted accusingly.

‘I was,' Hugh said, ‘I was indeed.'

He scooped George up, and then Edward and held them hard against him and Edward whispered, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,' in a fierce monotone.

‘Don't cry,' George commanded.

‘I'm not—'

‘You are!'

Edward inspected him. ‘You are!'

‘I'm so pleased to see you.'

‘You don't cry when you're pleased,' Edward said scornfully.

‘Sometimes you do if you are terrifically happy.'

‘We cried at Joss,' George said. ‘We wanted to come to her house.'

‘Do you like Joss?'

They looked suddenly shy and nodded violently.

‘So do I,' Hugh said, but with some apprehension. ‘Don't you think it's time I had a kiss?'

Their faces were hot and damp and soft. They clung to his neck with limpet hands and kissed him and kissed him and Hugh resolved upon the instant to behave forthwith like an Italian father who always kissed and caressed his sons, and not like an English one who was afraid to.

Julia came out of the house carrying a tray with tea things on it. The twins hung on to Hugh and watched her.

‘Go and help Mummy,' Hugh said.

‘What help?' Edward said in his new contemptuous voice.

‘Help her take things off the tray to put on the table, and find a cushion for her chair.'

‘Don't have to—'

‘Don't want to—'

They looked at him warily.

‘There's been a lot of this,' Julia said.

‘If you don't help Mummy I shall take you up to your room like babies and put you to bed.'

They crawled sulkily away from him towards Julia and stood up on one leg each and began to bang mugs about. George dropped a plate of biscuits.