Torn (23 page)

‘Very enterprising. I wish I had as clear an idea about what I want to do in the future, when Rory is off at school. I trained as a teacher so that's an option.'

‘You'd be good at that.'

‘How do you know?'

‘The way you are with the kids at the nursery.'

‘I wonder. I certainly don't want to go back to the City.'

‘Whatever you decide to do, you wouldn't go back to London, would you?'

‘Don't know. How disillusioned am I going to feel about living in the country if they decide to put a damn great dual carriageway in front of my house?'

‘But your place is only rented. You have the funds to buy elsewhere, somewhere there's no danger of new roads or housing estates.'

‘Is anywhere safe?'

Sheila tipped her head on one side. ‘Actually, you've seemed a bit distracted just lately. Is it just this roads thing?'

‘No. I don't know. Perhaps …'

‘What did the doctor say?'

For a moment Jessica was totally baffled by the question. ‘Doctor?'

‘Period problems?' Sheila reminded her. A waiter arrived at her shoulder.

‘Tha's one Napoletana and one Four Seasons, madams!'

Each claimed her choice and, with a flourish, black pepper was ground on the top. Glad of the temporary reprieve Jessica combed her memory.

‘Nothing important, just a bit of irregularity,' she improvised, when the waiter had gone. ‘He doesn't think it's worth worrying about.'

‘Not unless you think you might be pregnant,' Sheila agreed, with a lift of the eyebrows. Jess laughed merrily.

‘Just as well there's no fear of that then! No, he thinks it's … stress. They label everything stress these days, don't they?'

‘Talking of stress, how
is
Sean and the flat sale?'

‘Bit of a hiccup. Sean has put a spoke in the wheel. I've not seen or heard from him personally since that night last year. But my solicitor had a communication from his. He says Sean had a valid financial stake in the property and they're contesting my right to sell without making him a better offer. Mine say hold tight; it's not worth his while to pursue it through the courts. Doesn't mean to say Sean won't, though. He sounds bitter enough. It'll probably go to the wire – who's got the most nerve.'

‘I would have thrown him out on his ear and prosecuted him for theft. A man who abuses women sacrifices all rights as far as I'm concerned.'

‘I do believe that he intended to pay me back. And he was good to me in the early days. Even when things started to go downhill it was never the worst kind of abuse.'

‘Don't make excuses for him. You got out before it escalated! You said yourself you didn't want to wait until he knocked out some teeth or you were landed in hospital.'

‘I still wonder if I shouldn't allow him access to Rory, try to find a way to be accommodating and civilised.'

‘Rubbish! Why should you? He's not even Rory's father!'

‘But he might just as well have been. He was the only father Rory ever knew.'

‘Just as a matter of interest … who was Rory's father?'

Jessica had been expecting this question for some time, but now it had been asked was unsure how to respond. ‘You don't really want to know, do you?'

‘I wouldn't have asked.' Sheila shrugged. ‘But if you don't want to tell me?'

‘It's not that I don't want to, I can't. I don't know for sure. Don't look like that!'

‘Like what?'

‘So scandalised.'

‘I'm not scandalised. But I find it hard to get my head round the idea that any woman might not know something like that. Particularly you.'

‘What's so special about me?'

‘I'd have thought you'd have more respect for your body.'

‘For God's sake! What does that mean?' Jessica was feeling increasingly pressurised by the conversation. If this was how people reacted to the truth she'd been wise to keep it quiet in the past. Abruptly both women looked down at their enormous plate swamping pizzas and asked one another how on earth they would get through so much in the three quarters of an hour before the start of the meeting. For a while the conversation continued at this banal level. Then Sheila leant impulsively across the table and laid her hand over Jessica's.

‘I'm sorry, Jess. I didn't mean to come on all judgmental. But sex … with a man! It's so invasive. It's like consenting to rape!'

‘If you consent it can't be rape.'

‘What about the integrity of the body? Surely you know what I mean?'

‘No, Sheila, I'm afraid I don't. I like sex. I've told you before. And when I was on my own, without commitments, I saw no reason to deny myself … if I was turned on I'd do it, as long as it was safe.'

‘It wasn't safe that night was it?'

‘Apparently not. And as I can't recall who it was even, there's not much chance of remembering what went wrong with the contraceptive arrangements!' She was really rattled now. ‘I wasn't in a relationship at the time. But when I found out I was pregnant and told the likely gestation, do you think I didn't rack my brains? It couldn't even have been a one night stand, not that month. It's not like I woke up in bed the next morning with the culprit.'

‘Like Danny?'

‘Nothing happened with Danny.' At that time, her brain amended. ‘We just slept together, as in a row of zeds!' She wished she hadn't told Sheila even this much; the older woman was always bringing it up. If that still gives you problems, pick the bones out of this, Jess thought. ‘As for Rory's paternity, all I could come up with was it probably happened at a club … someone I'd been dancing with. It might have been a bloke from my office. It could have been a total stranger. The deed might have happened in the loos, the chill-out room, even a dark corner of the dance floor. I don't know! I was so bombed I didn't notice!'

Sheila sat up straighter and took her hand away.

‘Are you going to eat any more?' Neither of them had made significant inroads into their pizzas.

‘I don't think so. Sheila, look, I'm not particularly proud of the way I was behaving at that time in my life, but I'm not ashamed either! Ben had walked out on me and I felt I was getting my own back on him, the world, and men in general. I was determined to have a good time if it killed me!'

‘If you'd gone on like that it could have done. Didn't you have any family to look out for you, tell you that you were on a path to self-destruction?'

‘No. It was the pregnancy that pulled me up short. I've only got my mother and she's in the States … she's in her early seventies but still works on a feminist newspaper … you know the kind of thing … circulation of about fifteen!'

‘What about your father?'

‘I never knew him. Before you ask, it wasn't like my situation. She does know who my father is, just hasn't thought it significant enough to tell me. She didn't bother to inform him either. She slept with him until she knew she was pregnant. Then she ditched him. She has always said that the decision was an empowering one for her but I have no need or right to know. After all, why should I want a father? All men are part of the patriarchy, ergo all men are oppressors. Fathers included, presumably.'

‘Hmmm. Just out of interest, how old was Ben?'

‘You're not going to go all psychoanalytical on me? Yes. He was in his late thirties, I was in my twenties so it must have been a father fixation?'

‘You said it. And how old is Sean?'

‘He must be … forty-three-ish. But I'm older too, so what does that prove?'

‘Only that you've now gone from the sublime to the ridiculous!'

Jessica considered reiterating the fact that Danny was only a friend, when the waiter interrupted. He appeared to take their lack of appetite as a personal slight.

‘Wha's matter, madams? No good?'

‘It was delicious. But we've been talking too much, and we can't be late. We're going to the meeting.'

‘Ah! By-pass. No good. You tell them we need traffic! We need hungry people driving through town!'

The Great Western Cinema was housed in the renovated and refurbished train shed, not in the station house as Jess had imagined. Tonight the advertised programme of an Ingmar Bergman film and a cartoon from Poland was suspended. Anyone entering had to breach the cordon of placard-wielding protesters. The flamboyance of their attire – the beards, the extraordinary hair – marked them out from the apparently respectable and middle class who, as often as not, stopped to sign their petitions. A couple of uncomfortable-looking police officers were standing by. Inside, to allow greater flexibility in the use of the venue, moveable fold up chairs provided the seating rather than the fixed rows of a standard cinema. The back few rows in the auditorium were already taken, apparently by the friends and supporters of the protesters outside. Amongst them Jessica spotted Danny, slumped low in an aisle seat. Up on the stage were local councillors, a surveyor, a civil engineer, a government representative from the Highways Agency, and, looking ultra-respectable, James Warwick.

The auditorium filled, and after a quarter of an hour the doors had to be closed on any further entrants.

‘Due to “Health and Safety”‘, explained the leader of the District Council, in his alter ego as chairman of the meeting. James Warwick winced. The introductory statements were then made; the fact the town was used as a rat run between two arterial routes; the problem of congestion; the damage to the fabric of the town by forty-plus-ton juggernauts rumbling through streets originally designed for horse-drawn vehicles. All this was presented to a backdrop of intermittent heckles and barracking from the back of the room.

Then a map of the town and its surrounding countryside appeared on the PowerPoint screen. On it the two possible routes for a by-pass were clearly delineated. Both were to the north of the town. One, route ‘X', only a mile or so north of the town's suburbs, swept around on the south side of Spine Hill, between Gore Farmhouse and the river. The other, route ‘Y', did exactly what Jessica had feared. It crossed the river at Skirmish Bridge then followed the line of the lane around the hill before striking out through the fields opposite the hamlet of Northwell. The surveyor explained the geological and landscape factors which had been taken into account to inform the choice of each route. The low-level murmuring and occasional shouts from the back grew in intensity. People towards the front began to turn and to shout back. Soon the auditorium was a barrage of noise. The chairman rapped his gavel on the table repeatedly before an acceptable noise level was re-established.

‘This isn't helpful! We have called this meeting so that everyone can have an input into the decision. Nothing is cut in stone yet. But if you all shout at once …! Can you put your hands up please?'

As they were selected members of the assembled company stood up to have their say. The contributions of some were tortuous and rambling, never getting to the point. Some talked of noise and fumes and children with asthma, others of over-dependence on the car. Of those opposing the road, many, it seemed, owned businesses or shops in the town and, like the waiter in the pizza restaurant, felt a diminution of through-traffic would damage their profitability. The rest objected on environmental grounds; to them a congested town was the lesser of two evils.

An equal number of those gathered were in favour of a by-pass. Of these a few spoke up against the despoliation of the countryside, but the countryside they were concerned about was the few miles between Warford's suburbs and Spine Hill, not the landscape beyond the hill. The further from the town the better was their message. Jessica felt the unfairness. Of course the townsfolk wanted to push the road away from them. The population of Northwell was very small, few had attended the meeting, and if this proposal came to a local referendum, as the councillors promised it would, there was not much chance of route X being elected the people's choice.

The ‘new-agers' at the back were growing increasingly restive; their waving hands not often chosen. More were shouting out their comments, shouting down the contributions of others. ‘What about depletion of the world's fossil fuels?', ‘Why do we need a new road at all?' ‘New roads generate traffic and contribute to global warming!' ‘Offering two routes is a ploy to divide and rule!' The gavel was rapped with increasing irritation.

‘Quiet! Quiet please!'

‘Why is James Warwick on the platform?' Another shout from the floor. ‘He's got an interest!'

‘Please wait to be called by the chair!' There was a muttered conversation between the chairman and the landowner. The gavel was then rapped again.

‘As Mr James Warwick is one of the major landowners who will be affected by this road, whichever route is chosen, he asked to address the meeting. Mr Warwick.'

James Warwick slowly stood up. ‘As the chairman said, I have a close personal interest in this road.'

‘Financial interest!' shouted someone.

‘But my opinion carries no more weight than anyone else's.'

There were hoots of disbelief from the back of the auditorium.

‘Both routes would cross my land. But despite personal considerations I do believe that the town would benefit from a by-pass. And I think that the route Y option is far more sensible, practically and environmentally.'

Jessica raised her hand. At a nod from the chairman she stood up.

‘But route Y involves the destruction of an historic bridge, and it will cut through a stretch of entirely unspoilt countryside which presently has no roads and no housing. Surely a new road will be less of a sore thumb in an area where there are already roads, and houses?'

‘If I may say so, I think you are displaying a rather nimbyish attitude.' James cleared his throat. ‘I happen to know it's the view from your own house which will be affected by route Y.'