The Lives of Women (23 page)

Agatha starts crying.

‘I'm… I'm sorry, Agatha,' Elaine says. ‘I didn't mean… I shouldn't have…'

Elaine reaches out to take her arm but Agatha shrugs it away.

‘Why don't you just fuck off,' she says through her teeth, ‘fuck off and leave me alone.'

Elaine reaches out again. ‘Agatha, listen…'

Agatha grabs a lump of Elaine's upper arm and twists it.

Elaine pushes Agatha's shoulder with the heel of her hand.

Agatha's hand sweeps back then flies down, slapping Elaine right across the face. Elaine feels the slap shudder right through her head. She lifts her own hand then and smacks her right back.

Her mother says, ‘Fighting like fish-wives out on the street. Anyone could have seen you.'

‘But she hit me first. She hit
me
!'

Elaine covers her face with her hands and rocks on the kitchen chair.

‘But to raise your hand to a blind girl, Elaine. A
blind
girl. God knows what the Hanleys will say. Do you think she'll tell? Do you think they saw? Mary sits in the back room of an evening, doesn't she? Or does she still sit out in that shed reading? Was Ted's car there?'

‘No,' Elaine says into her hands. ‘No, no, no.'

‘Oh well, that's something, I suppose.'

Her mother begins rummaging in the kitchen drawers. ‘Look, we'll put ice on your face, in the morning we can cover it with make-up.'

She lifts a corkscrew out and lays it on the draining board.

‘A cup of sugary tea is what's needed now. A piece of apple tart. You're shocked more than anything else. Deep breaths now. Deep breaths,' she says and pulls a bottle of wine from the fridge before putting on the kettle.

 

And a few minutes later: ‘If you ask me, you're better off without her. It's worse she's getting. Do you know she's been sleeping in that shed? Yes, Mrs Hanley only just found out. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, sleeping on her own, down the back of the garden like a cat. Her mother is not right in the head either, you know. She cares nothing for Agatha, never did. I'm not
sure I believe that story about Agatha's father being dead either. Oh, there's things I could tell you about that woman, and I will when you're older…'

 

And another few minutes again: ‘Oh, do stop that crying, it's ridiculous carry on. Agatha is Agatha – just because she's blind doesn't mean that she can't be a little bitch.'

Elaine stands up and looks at her mother.

‘You shut up about Agatha. What do you know about Agatha? You never liked her anyway. I see the way you look at her, as if you're afraid of her or she makes you sick or something just because she's blind. Well, you should take a look at your own big, fat disgusting self in the mirror sometime, see how sick you make other people feel!'

Her mother says, ‘Really! To speak to me like that. To speak to your own mother like… Well, there's a pair of you in it, if you ask me.'

Elaine waits for her mother to go upstairs, slam the bedroom door and lock herself in. Then she goes into her father's study and picks up the phone. But Mrs Hanley says Agatha has a headache and is too tired to come to the phone.

She watches Agatha from her bedroom window. She watches her as she leaves the house first thing every morning with Mrs Hanley – except for the two ‘Sadie days' when their cleaner, Sadie, comes in.
When Mrs Hanley is with her, they walk into the cul-de-sac, Mrs Hanley carrying a small bag of Agatha's things for the day. A short while later, Mrs Hanley returns, goes back into the house for a few minutes then comes out again with her handbag, gets into her car and drives off to take care of Ted's mother.

On a Sadie day, Agatha doesn't leave the house until lunch time, when Sadie walks her around to the Donegans' before returning alone and going down to the village to catch the bus home.

On three of these mornings, Ted Hanley is the one to take Agatha into the cul-de-sac. He brings her in his car and it only seems to take a few seconds before he's whizzing back past Elaine's window and has turned the corner out of the estate. It's as if he just opened the car door and booted Agatha out at the side of the road outside Karl Donegan's gate.

In the afternoons, she has sometimes looked across the road and thought she saw movement behind a window. She has stood for a while, watching and waiting, wondering if she should go over and see if Agatha has come back to the house and is in there, alone. But in the end, she has put it down to her imagination or maybe to simple wishful thinking.

 

She sees other things: Patty brushing her hair in the garden to the stroke of one hundred; Mr Slater coming home from town with a package under his arm; Serena speaking to him as she gets out of her car and him lifting his hat slightly to her then crossing the road with a dirty big grin on his face. She sees Rachel give Jonathan money to buy drink because she's the only one who always has
money and he's the only one who always gets served. Rachel steals the money from her mother's purse when she's drunk. She steals it out of spite, she says. Steals it and then immediately gives it away or spends it on everyone else.

She sees Jonathan coming back up the road with Karl walking beside him, carrying his haversack full of drink like a bag of loot on one shoulder.

She thinks about Jonathan more and more. She thinks about his tired eyes and his curly hair and the book he always carries in his pocket. For a long time he was the new boy, a slow shadow coming around the corner. Now he's Paul Townsend's best friend, leaving Karl Donegan dawdling in the background.

He has greenish eyes and bony fingers and a crooked front tooth. He has no mother. His father comes and goes at odd hours. He has one sister who is married and lives somewhere else. If she ever comes to visit him, Elaine has never noticed.

She thinks she must be in love with him. She feels it in every inch of her skin whenever he's around. She finds it more and more difficult to speak to him. She would like to be able to ask someone – is love not a pointless thing if you can't even bear to look the one you love in the face or can't imagine ever being able to relax on your own with him long enough to even kiss him? She would like to ask – how do you kiss anyway? And if it's true that French kissing means using your tongue – just how exactly do you go about it?

She can't ask Rachel because she would think it was funny and then the whole neighbourhood would have to hear about it. She can't ask Patty because she would only make her feel like a fool. She can't ask Brenda Caudwell because she probably doesn't know.

And she can't ask Agatha because Agatha is still not speaking to her.

 

One evening when her mother is out and her father is away on circuit, she walks into Serena's kitchen and sees his long skinny legs through the window dangling on the wall in the back garden. Paul's shorter rounded ones swinging beside him. Patty is lying on the grass on her stomach, one hand shielding her eyes against the last glare of the sun.

Serena, at the kitchen counter, face through a magnified mirror, is colouring in her mouth. She turns to her, fluffing up her long wavy hair with a flat, long-toothed comb – ‘Tell me I look cute,' she says.

Elaine finds the word ‘cute' an odd choice for a grown woman but tells her anyway.

‘So…' Serena says, ‘I hear you're coming to the tennis camp after all?'

‘Yes,' Elaine says.

‘It will be such fun. Won't it be such fun?'

‘Yes, it'll be fun.'

‘No Agatha again?'

‘No Agatha.'

‘You should go talk to her.'

‘I've tried.'

‘Try harder. It's more difficult for her, you know, and she needs to hold onto her pride. She's probably very lonely. I'm sure, once she hears your voice…'

Serena gives her a big happy smile, then gestures to the window, stiff-headed, as if afraid her hair will unfluff. ‘Why don't you go join them?'

‘I will now,' Elaine says, ‘in a minute.'

She lifts the dirty dishes from the counter and carries them over to the sink then, leaning into it, looks out the window. Now Karl Donegan's head has appeared over the wall; he hauls himself up and sits on the ledge, beaming. The boys are doing all the talking. Patty gives so little in return: an occasional toss of her hair, a word or two, a cocked half-smile. Sometimes she appears not to be listening at all. But the boys keep talking. It's as if they are trying to sell her something.

She hears Serena running up the stairs. The toilet flushes, the bathroom window opens and her voice calls down to the garden that she's going now and that Elaine is in the kitchen.

Elaine closes her eyes and backs away from the sink. She doesn't want to see the boys' bored reaction or Patty's indifferent shrug.

She waits for the clip of the door behind Serena, the small growl of her car as it pulls out of the drive. Then Elaine leaves the house, goes into the Hanleys' and knocks on their front door.

*

Ted Hanley opens it, a newspaper in one hand, a chunky glass of whiskey in the other.

‘Oh, hello,' he says, as if he's trying to remember her name or where he might have seen her before.

‘Is Agatha in?'

‘No. She's not here, I'm afraid.'

‘Not in?'

‘No. She's gone around to Karl's about twenty minutes since.'

He begins moving away from the door. ‘They're probably around in his house. I'm sure they won't mind if…'

She wants to say – you're a big fat liar. I know she's not with Karl. I know she just told you to say that.

But she nods and says, ‘Thank you, Mr Hanley,' then crosses the road and lets herself into her empty house.

Rachel says: ‘If it's any consolation, she's dodging me too. Won't even come to the phone. When I bump into her at the stables her face goes all funny and she'll hardly speak to me. I wouldn't worry about it. Let her stew in it for a while, Elaine.'