You Must Be Sisters (8 page)

They should meet Mike, she thought. With his public school tweediness he was very suitable, and really she would like to please them if only they’d keep their voices down. He’d mentioned that on Sundays he often went to a pub called the White Hart; they’d go there and casually bump into him.

It was a bright January day near the beginning of term. They went out to the car and she got in beside her father. Seen from the passenger seat, Bristol took on the idealized glaze of a travelogue. They drove slowly, her mother stirring in the back seat. Always there seemed too much of her; too much hat, too many rings.

‘That’s the café we go to when we can’t stand any more Hall dinners … that’s the pub I wrote to you about that has the draught cider … behind those houses you can see the labs, and that’s where I buy my books …’ Pointing out each thing she felt it was
simultaneously
enshrined in her parents’ memory, Monuments of a Golden Youth, Our Daughter amidst the Dreaming Spires. ‘… that’s the fountain the cretins all fall into on Rag Day … and this is the Wills’ Building.’

Above them rose the Wills’ tower, huge, impressive, contoured with grime. Her father gazed up; then he looked at her. He wore the look he wore in church; soon he might say something embarrassing.

‘My own little girl,’ he said, ‘part of all this.’

She laughed; it filled the car. ‘Don’t be corny! Anyway,’ she added, knowing this was callous, ‘it’s all a sham. Built out of money from fags.’

They got out of the car and walked in the direction of the pub. The way took them along a curved street of peeling, beautiful terraces. There was no sound but the brisk tapping of her mother’s heels. Her cherry-pink suit made the houses look shabbier. All around them was a Sunday hush.

‘Where are they all?’ asked her mother.

Laura said: ‘During the week it’s full of students.’

Her father stopped and gazed down the road. Laura knew he was imagining them in their black gowns: they walked in two’s and three’s; some laughed, some discussed with furrowed brow; some, blithely bicycling, their gowns black and billowing sails, called to friends as they sped by. She wished that one, suitably gowned, would appear. He’d like that. Sometimes – this moment, for instance – she’d like to please him.

Just then a front door opened. The figure in the doorway blinked, stretched its arms into the air and yawned, revealing a large area of greyish stomach. Slowly it scratched its long, stiff hair. Then it stooped, picked up a milk bottle and disappeared back into the depths of the house.

‘That’s one,’ said Laura triumphantly, like a mammal-spotter.

There was a silence.

‘They don’t all look like that,’ asked her father at last. ‘Do they?’

‘Most of ’em.’

‘But you do wear gowns to lectures, don’t you?’

She laughed crushingly. ‘Heavens no! Hardly anyone does. It looks so silly.’

She heard him give a small grunt; a hurt sound. I like to please him, but I like shocking him even more, she thought. Why?

They walked around the corner and into another lovely street, all mouldings and balconies. From an open window Laura could hear a Bob Dylan song, as familiar as the thump of her pulse. Looking down into a basement window she could see rush matting and bookshelves. Looking up she could see, hanging from an upstairs ceiling, the sort of round white paper lampshade that no doubt she would buy when she left Hall and moved into a room of her own. The sense of a thousand identities the same as hers gave her that familiar obliterated feeling. If only she could talk to her parents about feelings like this! Then they wouldn’t be walking along in rather boring silence. How different from her walk through these same streets with Claire, Claire who understood everything. Her parents, by contrast, understood hardly anything at all. Then she thought with sudden honesty: partly because I don’t tell them.

They arrived at the pub. It was humming with voices; people spilled out on to the pavement. Mike was in there somewhere; he’d make up for that vision of grey stomach. She wanted to make up for it; there was something about that disappointed grunt that made her feel guilty.

‘It looks such fun!’ said her mother. ‘All these young people.’

Inside it was packed; thick with smoke, hot with bodies. Laura searched for Mike’s face but she couldn’t see it. The three of them edged their way to the bar.

‘Morning, Guv’nor!’ her father shouted in his hearty pub voice. In pubs he changed; he also for some reason liked to call the publican Guv’nor. Why did he?

‘What?’ The man leant forward as far as his belly and the counter would allow.

‘Anything on the old menu? Bristol specialities?’ It surprised even his family sometimes; they could forget how different he became in public places. Not at all his usual, meekish self. ‘Anything in the grub line?’ Facetious too, oh dear.

The man said, as if only idiots would ask: ‘No food on Sunday.’

‘Goodness, not even a packet of crisps?’ Oh how piercing her mother’s voice was! Laura felt ashamed of being ashamed of her, and still she blushed. Next to all the grubby T-shirts her mother’s hat looked so very cherry-pink.

‘Never mind, Guv’nor,’ said her father. ‘We’ll console ourselves somehow, won’t we, ladies?’

Half of Laura wanted to disown the Guv’nors and the cherry hat
and
obliterate herself amongst the T-shirts. Yet half felt threaded to these two, fused with them. It made things so complicated, the fact that she did love them. The way, for instance, that now it was acknowledged that she smoked, her father would offer her a cigarette as he was offering her one now with a certain grave courtesy that she found in no one else; as if, regrettable though it was, she would honour him if she took one. And the way he cupped her elbow and steered her through the crowd. Somehow he always made her feel special. She liked his little ceremonies, for there was none of this ceremony about her friends.

‘I must say, this is a charming place,’ said her mother. ‘So Olde Worlde.’ She took her glass of sherry and sat on the window ledge, like a practised hostess, including everyone in her smile. Laura shrank yet perversely she was touched. In the face of the barman’s indifference they were both so doggedly polite, so bright in the face of setback. How loyal she could feel towards them in sudden moments; yet she would rather die than ask that spotty specimen who was blocking her mother’s view and waving his cigarette smoke in her face to move over just a fraction so that they could all be more comfortable.

Laura sipped her drink, watching her mother looking composed amidst the smoke, the sunlight slanting through the window on to her hair, her legs crossed in instinctive refinement. Her eyes, bright and interested, rested on each of the faces around her. Oh why couldn’t she, Laura, be more sorted-out and just accept her fondly, without being so damned complicated about it?

She took a sip of cider, half of her tugging one way, half the other. Holly, she suddenly realized, was like this, too. Boarding-school had made two people of Holly; there was a Cliffdean one and a Harrow one. On the last day of the Christmas holidays the Harrow Holly had drained away; visibly it had drained away – Laura had watched, fascinated. By the time Holly had changed into her starchy school uniform, Sketchley labels still safety-pinned to the hem, the Harrow Holly had gone, leaving her face polite and absent. She had remained thus in limbo throughout the car journey across London and into Victoria Station. And there on the platform the absent face became inhabited again by a new Holly, the Cliffdean one. Her parents hugged her but her eyes had sought those of her friends, giggly friends wearing unbecoming school hats. And, unlocked by the sight of these faces, curious new words had appeared on Holly’s lips, words like ‘cripes’ and
‘nutcase
’. Laura smiled. She wasn’t alone in this, then.

‘Anyone you know here, darling?’ called her mother.

‘There’s somebody I’d like you to meet,’ she answered. ‘Can’t see him, though.’

Her mother scanned the crowd. ‘Tall? Short? What’s he like, darling?’

Before Laura could reply her father said: ‘There’s somebody over there, Laura. He’s looking at you.’

‘Is it him?’ asked her mother. Laura craned over the heads.

And saw him. Sweat broke out all over her body. It was John.

Her mother smiled. ‘Yes, he’s looking very curious.’ Laura saw with horror that her mother was giving him an encouraging smile. Oh, it was dreadful. How could she ever introduce them? It was unthinkable. The very idea made the sweat turn cold. The combination of him and her parents was too grotesque to contemplate. The innocent questions!

Perhaps he’d forgotten who she was; after all, she hadn’t exchanged a word with him since that awful episode, though the Bosch book had been wordlessly returned to her pigeonhole. But no – he was easing his way towards them.

‘Got your shoes on today?’ he asked, half smiling.

Laura stared at him, mind busy. What was it he’d said about silly little girls running about barefoot?

John’s smile lingered. His chin was still stubbly; at any other moment she would have wondered how he managed to keep it like that, neither bearded nor shaved. Then thank goodness he left.

Her parents looked surprised. ‘What was that about, then?’ asked her father.

‘Oh …’ Her mind raced. Then she had a brainwave. ‘Oh, we, er, had a sort of barefoot race across the Downs once.’

Her parents laughed, pleased. Relief spread over all three of them.

‘What
fun
you have!’ said her mother. Her father smiled. The grey stomach had been forgotten, at last.

And why not, thought Laura. Far better like this.

Though they hadn’t seen Mike, there was less reason for his presence now so Laura didn’t make them wait for his arrival. Instead they wandered round Clifton, had some lunch and then returned to Hall, a slumbering Sunday-afternoon place. Passing the dining-room, Laura remembered her homesickness that first
night
. Never would she confess such a thing to her parents! Anyway, by now it was cured. Time had cured it, sheer familiarity had made it nothing more nor less than tame.

‘Look, darling,’ said her mother. ‘Supper’s laid.’

Branston Pickle and Salad Cream jars stood bunched in the exact centre of each table. Sunday nights meant cold meat and lettuce. ‘Isn’t it nice, to have everything done for you!’

‘No, it isn’t. I’m grown up now.’

‘Darling, don’t be silly.’

Laura looked at the jars, smug in their Sunday night routine. She knew the place so well, the people, the food. Nothing held tremor or excitement.

‘It’s such a lovely place,’ said her mother.

Yes, and her saying that made it so boring.

CLAIRE ENJOYED GIVING
exams simply because, after a lifetime of taking them, it was a pleasure to sit back and watch other people doing the work. Relaxed in her chair, she gazed across at the classroom with its twenty bent heads and its twenty hands that scribbled, hesitated, then scribbled again.

It was February and mock C.S.E. time. These rows of fifteen-year-olds she knew well; each had a name, each had a face, she’d taught them for many months now, but just for three hours all were silenced into twenty busy brains and twenty busy hands. There remained small signs of individuality – Joyce’s cheerful butterfly hairslide, Dave’s alarming two-tone boots with their stacked heels, Elaine’s chain bracelet that tinkled as she wrote and became silent as she thought – but so oblivious were their owners that such things were no more than emblems; poignant badges of personalities that, at twelve noon sharp, would return to them.

Another reason for her enjoyment was a letter from Laura. There had been no time to read it at breakfast, and no space on the bus (for Laura had the car this term), but now, with those bent
heads
in front of her, she had two whole hours.

Wait for it. Tomorrow I move out of Hall! Before you collapse with shock I’ll tell you all. You know how I’ve been getting fed up with all its petty rules and things?

Claire, amazed, read on. Apparently Laura knew a girl who was fed up with her digs and wanted to move into a Hall. So Laura had gone out and found an advertisement in a newsagent’s window – a bedsit. This other girl was going to pay the remainder of the Hall fees; a straight swop.

Dead simple. It’ll be really easy moving, too, what with the car. Address: 18 Jacob’s Crescent, Bristol. And it’s furnished so I needn’t buy any stuff. Longing for you to see it! It’s a gorgeous room with its own little bathroom and an incredible view over the city. Hardly time to think of anything else, I’m so excited
.

Claire put the letter down and gazed at the rows of bent heads. What on earth were her parents going to say to all this? She, Claire, would have to explain it to them. They’d think Laura had gone absolutely mad.

And they wouldn’t be one hundred per cent wrong. Fancy Laura moving out of that satisfying little room! With only a term and a half to go, why didn’t she stay? She was so very impulsive, that was her trouble. Suggestible too. If someone she admired like that rather feeble specimen in the overcoat – Andy, was it? – said something, then she’d go right ahead and do it. He was the one who had brought up the subject of Hall in the first place.

Somewhere where I can be myself
, Laura had said that day. It hadn’t sounded like her voice at all.
Be myself
; perhaps that was the trouble. Perhaps, when one had always been considered interesting and rebellious, to be suddenly plonked down amongst thousands of other interesting and rebellious people made one feel watered-down. Just one of a mass instead of one in particular; everyone the same, the same denim skirt, the same row of Penguin Classics on their shelves. So she goes and does something completely different. Mad.

‘Of course,’ boomed the lecturer’s voice, ‘the deprived child and the child of so-called low ability is often said, by and large, to have been given insufficient love by its mother. Mothers who handle their babies from an early age generate a security, through physical contact, with their offspring. A fulfilled and healthily-reciprocated physical relationship prepares the child, we are told, for a balanced
and
neurosis-free relationship with the opposite sex.
But!
’ He paused, stared at them, then thundered, ‘
It this true?
Can we take this so absolutely for granted? What, exactly, are the criteria involved?’