The Lives of Women (17 page)

‘I would let you know, if you were ever here.'

Elaine likes being with Serena. She likes her almost as much as she likes Agatha and Rachel. Sometimes, she secretly prefers her. Recently, Agatha is often moody. And Rachel only ever wants to talk about Paul Townsend and how she can get off with him – something Elaine thinks is just never going to happen. Serena requires no effort, except that you listen to her, which is almost always a pleasure. When Serena talks to her she never feels stupid. She feels grown up and intelligent and, above all, chosen.

‘We're alike, you and me,' Serena says, ‘two sensitive, artistic people.'

Or, ‘Well, you get it, don't you, Elaine? You understand me – you know what I mean.'

‘Oh yes,' Elaine agrees, ‘I do, yes.'

She tells Elaine how she came to this place ‘of all places' to find her artistic self. Mrs Osborne was a second cousin of a woman in Serena's art class and that's how she heard there was a house for rent. Mrs Osborne then sent her some photographs.

‘A place like this, there are no distractions and artistic people are so easily distracted. When I found out about the house, and the big north-facing window in the dining room – the light from the north is so important for us artists, you see – I thought I'd use my savings, allow myself a summer here and if it happens it happens, and if not… Well, then I'm just going to have to go back to New York and get a job. Or something.'

She tells her about her divorce and her dating life; about the house she grew up in; about her friends in New York: their love affairs, their triumphs and disgraces. Listening to Serena talk so freely, Elaine often thinks, is better than reading a book: the way she wraps a story around you and people you've never met become so real, and the rest of the world and everyone in it just doesn't matter.

The late night conversations can be less satisfactory if Serena is tired or maybe has had a few drinks. Then, she tends to dip out of the conversation, lowering her voice as if about to reveal a dark secret. But the secret usually turns out to be a let-down: a few hasty half-sentences on a big blank page.

‘Patty, you see. Problems. Unsuitable – you know? One boy in particular – well we won't go there. But. Let me tell you something now. Let me tell you. Her father. Blamed me.
Me
. I mean, come on! Anyway, say nothing, tell no one. Know what I mean?'

She loves when they all go out in the car with Serena; the way everyone just knows it's okay to take off their shoes and place their bare feet up on the dash or across each other's laps in the back seat.

And the way they won't know where they're going until they get there.

When she was small she once got sick in her father's new car.

They were on their way to church, the breakfast her mother had forced her to eat, the smell of the new leather seats, her father's aftershave. They hadn't yet pulled out of the drive when the un -wanted breakfast came rocketing out of her mouth, her mother's hands held out to catch it, as if it was a ball.

‘To this day, I hate the smell of aftershave,' she tells Serena while she's helping her to unload the groceries. ‘If I ever get married, it will have to be to a man with a beard.'

Serena throws back her head and laughs. ‘I swear,' she says, ‘you are the funniest kid.'

 

In the house, Serena can be a vague presence: a voice calling out that ‘there's food in the icebox, please help yourselves'.

Or a different sort of voice yelling at a canvas: ‘For Christ's sake,
what's the
matter
with you! Honestly, I could just rip you apart with my teeth!'

She's a blur crossing an upstairs window. A back view mixing paint on the kitchen counter. A figure bent over a foot on a bathroom stool, painting toenails before a date.

But in the car, Serena becomes more solid. When she cuts a corner, the bangles on her left arm shudder. When she bends to light a cigarette, her long earrings get caught in her hair and whoever is sitting up front has to release it, which is why Agatha always has to sit in the back.

As soon as they pull away from the kerb, she slams a music cassette into the player. On the way home, the music stays off and then it's time to practise what she calls ‘a little light or even meaningful conversation'.

When she says this, Patty rolls up her eyes and looks out the window.

 

Elaine knows that this could easily have been her first summer of sitting on the edge of the green. She knows this for all the summers gone by when she has watched the older girls come out after tea and sit like a row of giggly puppets, watching the boys play football. Sit and wait until the evening sky turns mauve and the boys slow down and gradually begin to drift in their direction. Even someone as beautiful as June Caudwell had once been a ringside puppet before starting secretarial college and finding a proper boyfriend to go on proper dates with in town, and before she became all exotic and went off to work as an au pair in Brussels.

It had not been something Elaine had been looking forward to, sitting watching the boys for hours at their football. And yet she knows she would probably have ended up doing it anyway – like so much that has happened to her over the past few years such as monthly periods and training bras, she had presumed it was another one of those things she would just have to put up with.

But when Serena takes the girls out, the boys stop playing football and stand with their mouths open, watching the car pull out of the drive; even the much older boys smoking at the corner near the shops turn their heads and watch them drive by.

Serena gives the horn a beep, and the girls give a little wave out the window and keep their laughing down to a snigger until they're out of the village and turned onto the main road. Serena hits the cassette and a big American voice swells into the car. They allow it a few seconds grace – before joining in: ‘You're so Vain' or ‘You Ain't Goin' Nowhere'.

When this happens Elaine feels something soar up inside her. The music, the movement, the sound of their voices, the sense of belonging. Sometimes it overwhelms her. This is my real family – she thinks then – these are my friends. I would die for any one of them.

 

There are other, smaller moments of joy: like when Serena takes them into what she calls ‘the city' and they go for coffee in a proper café where scenes from Italian life are painted on the wall and the waiter makes jokes to them and people on neighbouring tables say hello and Serena places her cigarettes and lighter on the table and
covers her eyes with her hands and says, ‘If anyone wants one – I'm not looking… If anyone asks – I didn't see a thing.'

And as they all sit there together, Rachel and Patty smoking with ease, Agatha improving day by day, Elaine just taking one or two drags of Agatha's cigarette because she still can't smoke with -out feeling sick, drinking real coffee and eating dark cake, she lifts her head to watch pass by the parade of all the lives she might one day lead: students in cheesecloth, office girls in cotton dresses, women with handbags and high heels.

On the way home, the light or meaningful conversation.

Rachel is by far the chattiest. Rachel, followed by Patty who, for all her tutting and eye rolling, will eventually join in and even sometimes take over. Elaine and Agatha sit together on the back seat, Agatha pressing letters onto Elaine's hand as Serena urges them to join in the conversation. Elaine figuring Agatha's words out – O. NO. NOT. THIS. FUCKING. OR-DEAL. AGAIN.

Her mother says: ‘I'm not sure about this mixing of generations. I mean, I don't know how the other women feel but I certainly don't want my daughter listening to all that adult conversation.'

Elaine doesn't bother to say: I've already heard all of your so-called adult conversations, between your shouting on the phone and your roaring in the Shillmans' garden in the middle of the night and your shouting in the sitting room with Martha Shillman over your
Geee
and
Teees
after-golf. Even from behind closed doors, I've already heard them.

*

Her mother says it again. This time to Mrs Shillman, who is sitting in their kitchen. ‘I'm not sure about this mixing of generations, Martha, after all…'

Mrs Shillman is smoking in short, sharp puffs, her right foot is constantly wagging. She says through her teeth, ‘It's a break from the kids I need. Not a whole bloody afternoon watching my Ps and Qs in case Big Mouth goes back and blabs every word to her father. Do you know what she told him? Do you know what she actually said? She said… I could kill her, I really could. She said that I had a drink problem – now isn't
that
lovely, Sara, I ask you? From my own daughter. And of course, he was delighted! Gives him one over on me, you see? As if he's sipping bloody cocoa every night of the week.'

‘Oh now, Martha, that's just ridiculous, surely he wouldn't pay any attention to – I mean the very idea! It's just too ridic—'

‘I'll give them drink problem, all right,' Martha says.

She is in Serena's kitchen making cheese and toast, while Patty writes a letter to her father with her looped wrist and secretive hand. She is listening to Serena on the phone in the hall to a friend she has made at meditation class: ‘Of course, I agree with you, totally, you are so right. Absolutely. That's okay, sweetie, of course it is. I agree, uh-huh. You did right. Of course, I mean it. Oh, whenever you want. I'm here for you, you know that. I agree, absolutely I do.'

And she remembers Mrs Shillman, a few weeks ago, saying Serena was ‘very agreeable'. There had been something snide in the way she had said it, although Elaine hadn't been able to work it out at the time. It occurs to her now that Serena does tend to agree with everyone – no matter what they say. Mrs Shillman probably thinks this is because Serena is some sort of hypocrite. But Elaine knows that's not true: Serena just wants everyone to feel better. Serena just wants to be kind.

Some day, she will say so to Martha Shillman. She'll say it right up to her face. Her words will be assured and crisply delivered; they will put Mrs Shillman back in her place.