To Have and to Hold Page 3

  ‘She’s got a lot of problems – you know, child to support, mother who’s –’

  ‘I know, I know.’ He raised his hand. ‘But don’t we all. She’s daffy, Ann, like half the girls here. Course she’s got problems but look at you, how you’ve been coping.’

  Ann was silent. Derek lit a panatella. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed,’ he said. ‘That sunny smile hasn’t fooled old Derek.’

  Ann took the papers. ‘I’ll do them on Monday.’

  ‘Can’t trust them, Annie. Not like you.’

  ‘I’ve just been here longer.’

  ‘And it’s not just me who’s noticed. I think there may be some good news coming your way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Know I went to the Dinner on Tuesday?’

  Ann nodded.

  ‘Heard some encouraging noises about our Annie here.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t look surprised. Though that blush is very becoming.’

  ‘What did they say?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll find out. And now we know you won’t be leaving us –’ He stopped, and cleared his throat. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologize.’

  ‘Didn’t mean to –’

  ‘Don’t be careful, please,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s been so nice but sometimes I feel like screaming.’

  He indicated the door. ‘Don’t do that or they’ll think I’m misbehaving.’

  It was five o’clock. Derek stood up and started to sort his papers together. He opened a drawer and took out a video cassette.

  ‘Not another one,’ said Ann.

  ‘My dear, the weekend looms.’

  ‘How’s Mary?’

  ‘The same, Annie. Just the same.’

  Ann got up and took the mortgage form. ‘And the boys?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he replied.

  She looked at the cassette. ‘What’s it this time?’

  ‘The Sound of Music. Trouble is, it always makes Mary cry.’

  The cloakroom was tiny and Janine took up most of it. She was pulling on a satin skirt.

  ‘Doing anything this weekend?’ she asked.

  ‘Just seeing my sister,’ said Ann, edging past her to get her coat.

  ‘She the one with all the kids?’

  ‘Only two.’

  ‘Seems like more. Always have to change the blotters when they’ve paid a visit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They draw on them. Rabbits and stuff.’

  Ann smiled. ‘They keep rabbits.’

  ‘Bet their rabbits don’t wear ballet skirts.’

  ‘The drawings do?’

  Janine nodded, and started applying lipstick. ‘Doesn’t look like you, does she?’

  ‘Everyone says that.’ Ann edged back with her coat. ‘So who’re you seeing tonight?’

  ‘Never guess where I met him. On the escalator. I’d got me heel stuck.’

  ‘Thought you were seeing that frozen-food chap.’

  ‘Him?’ Janine pursed her glistening lips, inspecting them in the mirror. ‘He’s in Hull, getting a new company car.’

  ‘While the cat’s away . . .’

  Janine looked at Ann in the mirror. ‘Know something? I think you’re perking up.’

  The man in the pet shop was weighing up coloured gravels and putting them into plastic bags. Ken stood inspecting the tropical fish. He knew it was ridiculous, but nowadays he delayed going home. He knew he shouldn’t.

  ‘Look at them rats.’

  ‘Not rats. It’s gerbils.’

  Two boys were behind him. ‘Hoi, look at that one!’

  ‘Dirty bugger.’

  The man called across: ‘You two – out!’

  ‘What, us?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘We’re with him.’

  One of the boys moved over beside Ken. The air smelt of fruit gums. ‘Hey mister, what’s that one?’

  ‘That one there?’ said Ken. ‘Isn’t she a beauty. She’s a Mozambique Mouthbrooder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So called because she incubates the fry in her mouth.’

  ‘Yuk.’

  ‘Marvellous, really.’ He gazed closer. ‘There’s a world in miniature in there. See those bright little ones, like flashes of light?’

  ‘Which?’ The fruit breath came closer.

  ‘Those. Guppies. Started with guppies when I was . . .’, he looked at the boy, ‘. . . about your age. Every penny of my pocket money.’ He turned back to the swaying weed. ‘Young and eager,’ he said.

  The rasp of a match. The boy lit a cigarette.

  ‘Out!’ called the man.

  Scuffling together, both boys left.

  The man was now marking up prices on lumps of rocks. ‘Thought you were their dad.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Cheeky sods.’

  ‘No, nothing to do with me,’ said Ken.

  My dear, the weekend looms. There was Derek, with his house near the golf course in Potters Bar, and his species roses and his sad wife and his two bounding boys – Ann had seen their photograph. Their Saturday morning TV gave Mary a headache and their schooling cost him an arm and a leg. Freckled faces, smiling. There was Frances, creamy and content, who’d do her Sainsbury’s shopping while her husband followed with the pushchair. He’d made the child’s birthday cake this year, uneatable sponge but who cared? There was Mrs Maguire next door, Ann could hear her now, shouting at her children. How did they all fit into that house, with her husband unemployed and home all day? There was Janine. On Saturdays her ex came round; he took Simone out and then the little girl got stomach ache because he was trying, according to Janine, to buy her love with sweeties, and when Simone had a tantrum on Sunday then Janine knew who to blame it on. She said once:

  ‘You know Annie, sometimes I envy you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just you and Kenny. Snug.’

  Ken, his back to her, was standing at his aquarium. He was suspending a plastic bag in the water to equalize the temperatures. In the bag was a fish.

  ‘Always feel like I’m making tea,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dunking the tea-bag.’

  Ann laughed.

  ‘That’s a nice sound,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You laughing.’

  She paused. Then she continued sewing – one stitch, two. She kept her voice normal. ‘It’s something . . . well, I’ve been thinking about.’

  ‘Tremendous news and about time too. You’ve been working there long enough.’

  ‘I don’t mean the job business. I mean something else.’

  ‘What?’

  She stopped sewing. ‘But I don’t know what you’ll say.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘Nope.’

  She kept her eyes on him – the luminous fish, blocked by his shoulder; his pale blue shirt; his stocky body that she thought she knew so well. She looked at the intent back of his neck. Was he listening? ‘We could adopt.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Ken, say something.’

  Bubbles rose soundlessly in the aquarium. He didn’t turn. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Have you thought about it?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought of precious little else all week.’

  ‘Really?’ Her heart quickened. She went over to him.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated.

  ‘I could do it, I could love it, I –’

  ‘Ann –’

  ‘Black or white or brown . . . it would be ours.’

  She stood beside him. Then he turned. ‘I’m afraid . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. We’d both love it. We’d –’

  He said slowly: ‘I’m afraid you have a larger heart than me.’

  There was a silence. The fish swam on serenely, their tails fli
cking.

  Later that evening he went for a run. He thudded past pubs, their lit windows, the roar when the doors opened. He thudded past houses, their glowing, curtained interiors, the changing flicker of their TVs; he veered off along the high street, his breath rasping now . . . past the shuttered shops and the drifted litter and the all-night minicab office, a blare of neon and radio . . . past the takeaway kebabs and chips, a glimpse of plants and chrome, a whiff of grease . . . oh, the whole sordid city, it passed in a jagged blur; how his feet hurt, how his lungs ached, the freezing air rasping in and out like a saw . . .

  . . . He ran until he was running along unknown streets, under a railway bridge, past the stench of urine, and then buses were passing and lights dazzled and he thought his lungs would burst.

  Then he sat down on a bench. It was cold and wet. He buried his head in his hands.

  _____Four_____

  THAT NIGHT ANN dreamed she had a baby called Jonquil. She wheeled the carrycot to the supermarket; it was Saturday and crowded and she had a lot of shopping to buy if only she could remember it all. She knew time was getting short and her sister Viv was expecting her – she was waiting for her somewhere far outside London.

  She loaded up her trolley. People pushed past her, voices chattered behind the aisles, her watch was ticking loudly and she must hurry. She paid for her shopping and took the bags down the street to the car. It was not until she had driven a long way, right out into the countryside, that she turned to the back seat and saw it was empty. She had left the baby behind.

  She drove back, fast. She knew that Jonquil must be gone; someone must have stolen her by now. The supermarket had grown larger in her absence; it was in a different street, with trees outside. The aisles stretched for ever, the whisperings were louder, as if the packets of Persil were talking, and her legs were so heavy as she ran, and sometimes she heard mewlings and she knew now that babies must be there, not just Jonquil but other babies – she could hear them – but why did nobody take any notice? She tried to ask people but no sound came out of her mouth; her lips moved but people just stared at her as if she were mad; and as she ran her limbs were so heavy, as if her body was filled with sand, and just around the next corner she must surely find her. But there was nothing. No baby. Just aisles of shelves. And squashed amongst the tins, poking out like tongues, wedged here and there, she found plastic bags of knitting.

  Viv’s hair was bunched up on the top of her head and fixed with a child’s red plastic clip.

  ‘Come in, excuse the chaos.’

  Ann followed her into the living room. ‘Looks the same as usual.’

  Though she only lived half a mile away she had not been to Viv’s house for several weeks, not since she had gone into hospital, and she felt the old reactions rise like a taste in her mouth. It was almost reassuring, in a world which had changed so utterly, to find some familiar feelings left. She gazed around with a mixture of awe, exasperation and a kind of bemused envy. It was a large room, the whole ground floor, with the kitchen at the back, overlooking the garden, and a bay window overlooking the street. ‘Lived-in’ could be one description; Ken called it squalid, but that was after he had once risen from the settee and found a piece of buttered toast sticking to the seat of his trousers.

  Breakfast had not been cleared away and the table was strewn with Sunday papers. There was a half-eaten croissant on the floor which Viv picked up and absentmindedly ate as she switched on the kettle. The walls were crowded with pictures – Indian hangings from Viv’s mystic sixties days and an explosion of children’s drawings: stiff-haired apparitions with spider hands, called Mummy and Daddy. There was a ripe smell of soiled sawdust from the hamster’s cage on the dresser, and the pegboard was covered with reminders to Ban Cruise Missiles, buy bog roll, and use the services of Dyno-Rod Plumbing and Emergency Drain Clearance.

  Ann started clearing away the breakfast plates.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Viv.

  ‘I’m not an invalid any more.’

  ‘It’s not your mess. You’ve come to lunch.’

  ‘I want to do it.’ Ann filled the sink. The windowsill was cluttered with plants, parsley in a jam-jar of yellowish water, and some lanky mustard and cress growing from a saucer of cotton wool. Through this she could see the garden. She thought of her dream, and Viv waiting for her in the countryside, and how years ago Viv had waited for her behind the potting shed, in the bright sunlight of their childhood. Then she thought quite distinctly, for the first time in actual words: I can give a childhood to nobody.

  ‘Here, let me do it.’

  Viv was there, moving her aside and taking the brush. Ann had not started the washing up.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You dry.’

  Ann said: ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘Mucking about outside.’

  ‘Don’t you ever worry?’

  ‘Worry?’

  ‘That they’ll get lost?’

  Viv stopped, her hands in the water. ‘Remember when I left Rosie in the greengrocer’s?’

  Ann thought for a moment, then she nodded. ‘She was very young. I suppose you just couldn’t believe you’d had one.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Viv nodded. ‘How’s it been at work?’

  ‘Nobody told me any jokes.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the teatowel?’

  ‘Over the hamster’s cage.’ Viv pointed to the dresser. ‘He only comes out at night, so they cover him up to make it dark. So he’ll wake up.’

  ‘But if he’s covered up they can’t see him.’

  Viv laughed. ‘They haven’t figured that out yet.’

  Ann lifted the tea-towel from the cage and peered in. ‘He’s asleep.’ They laughed.

  Suddenly Ann felt such a longing that it took away her breath. She sat down.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Viv.

  Ann pretended she had seen something on the floor, and had just sat down to pick it up.

  Viv fetched the coal from the cupboard under the stairs. As she loaded the scuttle she remembered: she had lost the girls in Spain.

  Last summer . . . a wide, empty beach. She and Ollie arrived there early and left the girls for half an hour while they went back to their hotel to unpack. When they returned the beach had filled up with people, thousands and thousands of them. The girls had been swallowed up in the crowd of sunbathing bodies, none of whom spoke English. It had taken them two hours to find the girls, sitting quite still and shuddering with tears.

  She shuffled some coal on to the fire and said: ‘It was a nightmare.’

  ‘I had a nightmare last night,’ said Ann.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Viv sat on the table, swinging her legs and drinking a glass of wine. The meat was beginning to hiss in the oven but she hadn’t bothered to start the vegetables yet. She always did things at the last moment, whereas Ann would have peeled and prepared them all beforehand. How dull she seemed to herself, when she was with Viv. But then that had always been the case. Viv seemed to suck the colour from her. She should have become used to it now.

  On this momentous Sunday, before everything changed for ever, she remembered looking at Viv swinging her legs in her faded jeans. Her messy hair pulled up on the top of her head, artfully artless; her charming face – a snub-nosed prettiness which men had called kittenish until she answered them back; that indefinable air she always had, like many beautiful women, of being in the possession of a secret. It wasn’t just her looks. Heads turned towards her like flowers towards the sun. She made others, by comparison, seem half-asleep. Even more beautiful women looked blanker; her life came from within. Ann could bear this; she told herself so many times. For didn’t she love her?

  And besides, she had a husband of her own, who liked the way she prepared vegetables beforehand. And who said, infrequently but with some feeling, that he loved her.

  ‘Wonder what they’ll talk about?’ said Ann.

  ‘You
can’t talk, playing rugger. That’s the point.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous – all these years they’ve hardly ever been together.’

  ‘We’ve been there, that’s why. And you know what we’re like.’

  Ann looked at her watch. ‘Better lay the table.’

  ‘Don’t be subservient.’

  ‘They’ll be hungry,’ said Ann.

  ‘You sound just like my sixth form. They’re becoming so docile. It’s because we’re doing Jane Eyre. They’re getting worried they’ll be a failure in men’s eyes.’

  Ann paused. ‘I feel a failure.’

  ‘Don’t ever say that!’

  ‘Ken doesn’t say so, of course –’

  ‘I’d kill him if he did.’

  ‘He doesn’t. It’s me.’

  ‘Oh Ann.’ Viv jumped off the table and came towards her. But at that moment the front door burst open and the girls ran in.

  ‘Hello Auntie Ann.’ Rosie came up and hugged her.

  Ann pressed her face against Rosie’s cheek. Eight years old and she still smelt new and fragrant. Sweet, slow Rosie, whom she secretly loved the best, though she would never admit it to a soul. She turned to Daisy, and pulled something out of a carrier-bag. ‘It’s your turn this time, Daisy,’ she said, giving her the dress she had been sewing this past week. ‘I do hope it fits, you’re growing so big.’

  Daisy put on the dress; it was pink and frilly. She jumped up and down in front of the mirror.

  Viv inspected her daughter. ‘What a wonderful frock. You look like the heroine of a Georgette Heyer romance.’

  Stung, Ann said: ‘I do read other books, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Not just those ones.’

  ‘Just taking the piss.’

  Ann frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say that. Anyway, you read them too. Before you became the local intellectual.’

  ‘Wasn’t much competition in Watford,’ laughed Viv. She looked around. ‘Once I believed in romance. When anything was possible. Before all this.’ She smiled. ‘Remember reading them under the bedclothes? Remember Belle of the Ballet?’

  ‘Ah yes . . .’

  ‘With her tip-tilted nose and light dusting of freckles . . .’

  Daisy said: ‘Mum, why can’t I do ballet?’

  ‘Because you do dance.’

  ‘I want to do ballet, in a ballet dress.’