You Must Be Sisters (3 page)

That annoyed her. Definitely, now she thought of it. It washed the spice out of the incident. For, by some mysterious process, the minute her parents approved of something it became devitalized. Now she thought of it, that Len who worked at the butcher’s – hadn’t his fascination sprung from the simple fact that her parents were appalled? Their horrified politeness had made him look so
virile
.

She gazed up at the 300 identical windows of Hall. No, she
wasn’t
going to be like everybody else, was she? Hadn’t she always been the sort to break out? No more of this cosy studenty life. The fact that she could write about it all, uncensored, in a letter home, made it suddenly tame.

THE MORNING AFTER
the moonlit cod Laura ventured into the Berkeley Café. Up till now she hadn’t dared; on peering inside, all she had ever seen was a blur of faces, and she was sure she’d know none of them. It always seemed full of older students, the ones who lived not in safe little Halls but in independent flats. She would like to be like them.

The Berkeley stood opposite the library. With its mock Tudor panelling it had a genteel tea-rooms atmosphere, but only at first glance. No Barbara Cartland hair-dos here. Laura got herself a coffee and peered through the smoke.

She could just make out a tableful of second year psychologists, the sort she admired, the sort who lived mysterious lives in flats and roared round Bristol on motorbikes. Leather coats, dark glasses, wild hair … they looked intriguing and existential and unsuitable. She took a breath and casually approached their table. Her excuse was that she slightly knew one of them, the one with the pale ropes of hair; he was called Andy.

Laura sat down and spoke to the nearest one: ‘Would you like a cigarette?’

‘Not for me,’ he answered. He had a stubbly chin. He reached out for a packet of French ones. ‘Not those; can’t taste them any more.’

He sat back in a cloud of strong, acrid smoke. They went on with their conversation.

‘It was shit,’ said the third one, who had dark glasses. ‘Christ, once that guy could direct.’

‘Remember those shots,’ said Stubbly Chin, ‘outside the hut?’

‘“The Red Desert”. How could anyone forget. The way he handled her indecision. Those grainy close-ups.’

There didn’t seem a lot Laura could contribute here. What was
this
desert business? She longed to know, to be one of them. She gazed into her coffee cup, occasionally sliding her eyes to the faded Levi’d thigh of Stubbly Chin, who was next to her.

Then Stubbly Chin said: ‘I’m getting into alchemy. Might write my thesis on it – you know, the alchemist’s power over the brain, the way, like, he altered concepts of time.’

‘Far out,’ said Andy.

‘Bosch’s the guy to study. Anyone got any Bosch books? His pictures just radiate alchemy.’

‘I’ve got a Bosch book,’ said Laura. They all turned.

‘You have?’

She nodded, blushing.

‘Hey,’ said Stubbly Chin. His name turned out to be John. ‘If you happen, like, to pass Wellington Crescent one day – number 6 – that’d be really nice. You could drop it in.’

‘Oh yes, I will.’ She felt the blush deepen with pleasure. She’d contributed at last.

They talked of other things. She watched them. Funny how what they said was different from what their eyes were doing. While they spoke, their eyes were flickering round the café, restlessly.

‘I’m thinking,’ said Dark Glasses, ‘after I get out of this place, of getting it together in the country. You know, a few friends, growing all our own stuff.’

‘Sounds nice,’ said John. ‘Really nice. Imagine most of this lot,’ he gestured round the room, his voice assured, his eyes – could they be almost anxious? ‘I can just see them, you know, nice safe house, mortgage, telly – you know, like the whole
family
scene.’

‘Ghastly,’ agreed Laura. How well he put it! Why then did she feel uncomfortable, shifting about in her seat?

‘Ah, my girl, just you wait. Wait till you – what d’they call him – your Mister Right comes along. You’ll be up to your ears in life insurance and dinner parties once a month.’

‘No I won’t,’ said Laura. ‘I’m just going to have lovers.’ Now that sounded good.

‘We’ll see, we’ll see. Anyway, catch me living a tiny life amongst all those other tiny lives way out in – well, Harrow or somewhere.’

Laura looked down at her hands. Shame that he’d actually said Harrow; as if he knew. Never, ever must she let it slip out.

Walking up the street later, she shook away her unease. No,
she
decided they impressed her terribly. Such a change, they were, from the good-natured young lot at Hall, and such a change from those chinless wonders she was sometimes unfortunate enough to meet in Harrow, who actually asked her father ‘What time would you like her back, sir?’ and dreadfully uncool things like that.

That Sunday afternoon Laura went for a walk. She walked across the Downs and into Clifton. She was beginning to know her way around the alleys, terraces and curving streets, and easily found Wellington Crescent. It was a beautiful day in early November, and the golden sun lit the façades of the houses, façades whose shadows deepened as the crescent curved round in a large arc.

Actually, she was a bit chilly in her T-shirt but she hadn’t brought a coat, partly because it had been warmer when she’d started out, and partly because she’d decided not to wear a bra, and with her nipples obvious as anything through the material she looked liberated. Outside number 6 she hesitated and took a breath.

John answered the bell. He looked at her blankly.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Laura. Er, remember?’

‘Oh yeah. We met in the Berkeley.’

‘Right. I’ve brought that book.’

‘What book?’

‘The Bosch.’

‘Ah. I remember. Come in.’

His room was painted white. It had a rumpled mattress on the floor with an Indian bedspread over it, a lot of books, and on the wall a blown-up photo of what she couldn’t swear wasn’t a huge breast, very close up. Could it be?

‘Lovely room,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Like some tea or something?’

‘Yes please.’ Yes, on closer inspection it couldn’t be anything else.

He disappeared and she sat down on the bed, wondering whether she was welcome or not. But he didn’t have anyone with him, and he was so glamorous and a second year and all. Surely she could stay for some tea?

He sat down beside her and poured it out. Then he reached for one of his yellow cigarettes and lit it.

‘Can I try one?’ she asked, looking at his hand as he gave
it
to her. What exactly had she come for? Could she admit it, even to herself?

It was very strong. She gulped down some tea.

‘You dig Bosch, then,’ he said.

‘Oh yes. He’s so, well, strange.’

‘Quite a guy, Bosch. His obsession with the anus, for instance.’ Haze hung in layers round the room. He blew smoke out; the layers split, flimsily. ‘As the erogenous zone. I prefer the good old front-entry myself, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes!’ she laughed.

‘I’ve yet to meet a chick who liked it, really liked it, from the rear.’

She laughed again, knowingly, but felt uncomfortable: having had it neither from the front nor the rear, ever. And aged nineteen too.

He went on: ‘Anyway, perhaps one day I’ll meet one and realize what I’ve been missing. But most English girls are so hung-up.’

‘Oh no,’ she replied with spirit. ‘Not all of us.’

‘Most of you. Not like French chicks. Now,
they
know how to turn a guy on. Wow, can they use their bodies. Sex is important to them.’

‘It is for us too.’

‘But just how important? You’re – what’s your name – Laura, right? A guy screws you; it’s cool, right?’ He leant back across the bed and stretched out his legs. He blew some more smoke into the haze. ‘But which matters most to you, the guy or the fuck?’

‘Well … it depends.’ She was getting into deep water here, but she didn’t know how to change the subject. She took another drag and another gulp of tea. She couldn’t think what else to do so she drained her cup, taking a nice long time about it.

‘For those chicks it’s the fuck,’ said John. ‘Pure and simple. It’s really, like, beautiful. No pretence.’

‘Yes.’ She thought for a moment. What could she say? ‘Yes, I agree. There’s something depressing about sincerity unless it’s very intense and real.’ She wasn’t quite sure about that but it was better than nothing.

‘It’s amazing,’ he went on, ‘the fantasies, the compromises people swathe round themselves when all they want is a good screw.’

‘Yes. People kid themselves. It’s all their silly upbringings.’

‘Right. You know, you’re a girl after my own heart.’

Laura felt herself glowing.

‘Come here,’ he said, and pulled her back beside him. He started stroking her hair.

She tried to relax against him. After all, wasn’t this really what she had come for? To start being liberated and adult?

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘talking of that, why’re we sitting here like a pair of idiots? I’m stacked like a fucking chimney.’

Before she knew it he’d unzipped his trousers, taken her hand and – heavens! plonked it on something stiff and stout.

Frozen with terror, she stared at the wall, at the books, at the goose-pimply photo, at anything.

‘See what you’ve done to me?’ he murmured. He took his hand away and hers was left there, ludicrously clasping it like a handle. She didn’t look at her hand. She disowned it.

‘Feels good, doesn’t it,’ he said. ‘See? You’ve turned me on.’

Quickly she snatched her hand away and struggled up. ‘Er, I think I ought to be getting back,’ she gasped, still not looking at him. ‘I really must.’

‘Hey, relax. What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied, primly smoothing down her hair and addressing the wall. ‘Really, I, er, have so many things to do. Heavens, look at the time, too!’

‘Look at me, for Christssake!’ She heard the zip being pulled up. ‘Why this coy virgin crap?’

Because I
am
a coy virgin, she thought wildly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just, well, don’t feel like it.’ Why can’t I be honest?

‘Look at me. Is this the way to leave a guy?’ She turned round. He was dark in the face and furious.

She protested: ‘But I didn’t expect all this to happen.’

‘Honey, do you mean me to believe that? You come here with your tits hanging out, throwing your libido all over the place …’ He shrugged, and sat down on the bed again. ‘Hell, will I ever learn. You’re just like most of them; running around barefoot and thinking, like, you’re really wild. But you always have a pair of shoes ready in case your feet get wet.’ He sighed. ‘Well, run along back to your nice Hall or wherever. Come back when you’ve grown up.’

She slammed out of the room, out of the front door, and walked quickly up the street. She wasn’t going to run, not for anybody.
He
might be looking out of the window. She felt unreal, as if the whole brief scene had happened to somebody else – and furious, and humiliated, and upset by those last things he’d said. Silly, theatrical words; he’d probably copied them from one of his beastly films. She wasn’t going to think of it.

If only Claire were here, she thought, aching with homesickness. We could laugh about it together. But she isn’t, and I don’t feel like laughing. Oh, if only he’d
kissed
me first!

But as she walked across the Downs, her body shivering because it was dusk now, she couldn’t stop herself thinking about those last things he’d said and she knew, though she hated him for saying them, that he hadn’t been absolutely wrong.

…
AND THEN A
big hook came down and puled Roggo up it puled and puled until he was dangeling up abuv the trees and the roofs the hook was not in his cloths it was stikking rite into his skin and the blud was cuming out and falling down the sky onto the tops of the houses it made big red pudels
…

Claire raised her eyes. Her washing had stopped. She put down the exercise book and hauled her clothes out of the machine. But all the dryers were occupied, so she sat down again and took up the book.

…
and then the hook droped him and he fell down and he was all rite
.

How well she knew those hasty endings. They meant the telly had been switched on. ‘Wasn’t he hurt at
all
?’ she wrote briskly in Biro, and opened the next book.

Its cover was greasy with wild explosions of crayon. She settled down with relish. Hector’s homeworks were always the same; one had a nice secure sense of expectation as one opened the cover. Each homework was the next instalment of a bloodcurdling serial of interminable length (six months so far) called simply
Jap Doom
. Despite its curiously dated feel it held Claire spellbound because the hero (called, needless to say, Hector) was left each time so close to death she could never see how he
could
possibly survive. But he always did. Hector gave good value.

Episode 24. The green ooze, all slimey with tentakles, came closer and closer. Hector struggled in his tite ropes
– No, she’d leave this treat till last.

She opened the next book.

My Hamster. My hamster is brown and of medium size. He is very clean and tidy. All hamsters originally come from Syria and are imported
…

Claire’s heart sank. She yawned. This was goody-goody Jonathan, with his painfully neat writing. He’d taken a lot of trouble. Why did his always getting things right annoy her? She ought to be pleased, but somehow Hector was more fun.

She looked up. The dryer in front of her was being emptied by a portly old woman. Large satin knickers with legs came out, one by one, some pink and some greyish. The woman bundled them into a bag. Claire blushed for her and for the indignity of being poor and portly and having to use a launderette where you can conceal nothing.

She got up, pretending not to notice the other woman, and pushed her washing into the dryer. Then she sat back and watched it curve and fall, curve and fall inside.