The Lives of Women (27 page)

He's back then with a plastic bottle filled with cool water.

‘It was clipped onto Mikey's racer. I filled it from the garden tap.'

‘Jesus, Karl, are you mad? What if someone heard you?'

‘I didn't make a sound; I could be a cat burglar, if I wanted.'

He tells her how, a few weeks ago, he and Paul stole the key into Dr Townsend's surgery and went looking for drugs.

‘What!'

‘We didn't find any. Actually, we didn't really look. Once we got in, we couldn't stop laughing and so we got out again.'

She tells him about the time she was night-walking with Rachel and Agatha and they saw Dr Townsend come home so drunk that he fell out of his car.

Then she tells him about the time they got over the back wall of Hanleys' and saw Ted walking around the garden room wearing nothing but a pair of purple Y-fronts and for ages afterwards they called him Purple Balls Hanley.

He laughs when she tells him that; he laughs so much the tears run out from the side of his eyes.

In the moment she is tempted to tell him about Agatha and what she has seen in the shed. She gets as far as saying, ‘Karl, if I tell you something…' But then he tells her about his bruise, the shape of Australia.

‘My mother must look like a whole atlas,' he says; ‘he hits her
and then I hit him. He's bigger than me, well for the moment, but I'll still have a good go.'

She doesn't know if she should believe him – everyone knows Karl is a bit of a spoofer. Then he lights a cigarette and his face shows in the flare of the lighter.

She says, ‘That's terrible, Karl, that's just…'

‘One day I'm going to break his fingers and that'll be the end of him and his fucking orchestra.'

He stubs the cigarette against the wall, twists it into shape and puts it into his pocket.

‘Light's just gone off in your kitchen,' he says, ‘are you right?'

The second time she drinks, she starts crying like a baby. She cries because Agatha is blind and because even if they make it up she can never be her friend again and be Rachel's friend at the same time. She cries because her mother is fat and she knows other people jeer her. She cries because she feels lonely, as if she is bricked in behind a wall and can hear everyone outside, but nobody can hear her. She cries because Jonathan doesn't love her.

And she cries because Karl's father hits Karl's mother and men rape their wives and go off with other women and sometimes even go off with their daughters' friends.

She cries and she cries. People ask her – why are you crying, Elaine? She says, ‘Nothing, nothing.' Or she says, ‘I don't know. I don't know.'

Before she starts crying, Patty is kneeling beside Jonathan, cutting his hair with a nail scissors. She lays each curl on the palm of her hand, then lifts the palm to her face and stares into it, turning her palm towards the fading light, then away from it, smiling at each curl as if it was a live thing and as if she really loved it. Patty picks each curl up in the pinch of her fingers, raises it over her head and slowly lets it drop on the ground.

‘Jesus – what's the matter with
her
?' Brenda Caudwell asks.

‘She's dropped acid,' Paul says.

‘Dropped what?' Brenda says, looking around.

The third time she drinks, she doesn't get sick. She talks and talks and makes everyone laugh. They are in the Shillmans' house.

Rachel makes them drinks from the cocktail cabinet. She opens all these bottles and puts ice into a shaker then puts on music and dances around like a South American. Then they all start dancing around. Until a group of older boys comes knocking on the door, some of them with girlfriends; boys who are practically men. One of them says, ‘Is this the free house?' He has black hair on his hands. Peter Caudwell walks through the gate and Brenda has to rush through the kitchen and sneak out the back and over the wall. Elaine goes with her to give her a leg up.

‘Fuck him, anyway,' Brenda says. ‘And I was really looking forward to trying out that acid stuff.'

*

When she comes back in, Paul Townsend is falling backwards on top of the cocktail cabinet. He falls like a shot cowboy. Bottles from all over the world topple and bounce on the black rag-rug. Two bottles fall on the side of the fireplace; one smashes, the other spews out a thickish green liquid. Two of the older boys pull Paul out of the cabinet and steady him up. Paul leaves a big crack right through the middle of the glass. ‘Oh no!' Rachel screams with her hands on her head. ‘I'm in such trouble now, I'm in such trouble.'

‘It's okay,' Karl Donegan says, ‘It's okay.'

‘How is it okay? How? How? Look at the place. That's my mother's Indian kaftan that girl is wearing. They're my father's Cuban cigars. I'll be killed, I'll be— Look at the cabinet. My mother's cabinet. She spent a fortune on that cabinet!'

‘Don't worry,' Karl says. ‘We'll get rid of everyone, clean up. I'll say I tripped on the rug and fell on the cabinet. I'll say I broke it.'

‘I don't want you to say you broke it!' Rachel screams at him. ‘Why should you take the blame?'

‘I don't mind,' Karl says. ‘Really, I don't.'

Another row with her mother.

‘Have you been drinking? Elaine – answer me, please, is that drink I smell off your breath?'

‘Is that drink I smell off yours?'

Her mother grabs her by the arm and squeezes it.

‘I thought I told you to stay in tonight. I thought I told you you weren't allowed to go out after six o'clock in the evenings.'

‘I'm not staying here on my own. While you go off drinking with Martha Shillman.'

‘I'm not out drinking! She's teaching me golf and we go into the club house afterwards for a bite to eat and maybe one or two— How dare you question me anyway? How dare—! For once in my life, for once in my life I have a hobby and you'd begrudge it me.'

‘I'm here on my own all day. And now you want me—'

‘I thought you were in Serena's.'

‘I don't like going there any more.'

‘You don't like Serena?'

‘It's Patty, always sneering and saying mean things.'

‘Oh now, you're just being silly.'

‘She said you were the fattest person in the neighbourhood.'

Her mother lets go of her arm.

‘You won't even let me go to the stables during the day. And now you want me to stay in every night too.'

‘You have to be punished, Elaine. After what you lot did to the Shillmans'. The place destroyed and that Karl Donegan smashing the good cocktail cabinet.'

‘He didn't smash it. He didn't go near it!'

‘Bad enough, Elaine, you telling lies on your own account, but lying for your friends too. You are staying in for the next two weeks and that's all about it. And you can forget about any tennis camp too,
missss
. You can put it straight out of your head.'

‘I'm not staying in this house on my own. I hate this house. I hate it.'

At the end of August, they hear the truth about Junie Caudwell, and then, one truth leading into another, they hear about Agatha.

Maggie Arlow is the one who tells them about June. She tells them first thing one morning when she's not even drunk. Elaine is on her way to the shops when she looks over the wall and sees everyone by the stableyard archway. Only Jonathan is missing. She sees Agatha is there and almost walks on by because it feels too awkward. But then Rachel spots her and starts waving like mad and so Elaine decides to wander in. When she gets near, Paul puts his finger to his lips and nods his head towards the yard.

Maggie inside shouting at one of the lads – ‘You fucking simpleton.'

And the rugged mumbling of the lad trying to defend himself – ‘Buh bu dubbedy, bud bu.'

‘What?
What?
I can't understand a word you're saying!'

‘Buh bu, dub bu.'

‘Oh, just get out there now and clean up that mess, or you're back on the train this afternoon to whatever arsehole of the country you were shat out of.'

‘Someone has a big fat hangover,' Rachel says.

Brenda Caudwell says, ‘How do you know?'

‘By the look of her.'

Brenda tuts. ‘How can you know just by looking at her?' she says. ‘That's just ridiculous.' She turns to Elaine. ‘You can't tell if someone has a hangover just by looking, can you, Elaine…?'

Elaine says nothing.

They can see through the archway into the stableyard, Maggie crossing from one side to the other, still shouting at the stable
lad. Brenda is holding an envelope; she lifts it to her mouth and sniggers.

Agatha is also holding an envelope in one hand, in her other a cigarette. She takes a pull and then says, ‘Oh God, I don't want this. Does anyone…?

Brenda shouts out, ‘I'll take it!'

And then Elaine takes a small breath and says, ‘I will.'

Brendie said it first, but Agatha holds the cigarette out towards Elaine and, for the first time in weeks, says her name.

 

There is the hard wet scratching of a yard brush; the clean, hard clip of horses' hooves on stone. There is the savoury stench of horse-piss on hay. There is Maggie. She comes out from the tack-room and begins towards them.

‘Well?' she says when she gets there.

She is short of breath; her eyes look startled; her face is ruddy, her mouth clenched as if she's eaten something that's slightly off.

‘Back in a minute,' she says suddenly and then rushes into the house.

‘What did I tell you?' Rachel says. ‘A stinker.'

They wait.

‘You're not even smoking that properly,' Brenda says to Elaine, then, ‘I mean to say, what a waste. I wouldn't mind but I baggsed it first.'

‘Shut up, Caudwell,' Agatha says and Elaine tries not to show her pleasure.

‘Yeah, shut up, Caudwell,' Elaine says, ‘you're always moaning.'

*

Maggie comes back out of the house. Her short dirty hair stands up in peaks.