Katherine Bucknell - What You Will

‘Because the women’s libbers were so goddamned embarrassing.’ Hilary coughed up a laugh. ‘So political, so filled with vengeance, so covered with hair. And because the only company they were ever going to have was each other’s.’

‘But if we wanted to pull men, why didn’t we just become cheerleaders?’

‘Didn’t you have to be from the Deep South to do that? Surely it never crossed your mind? Anyway, pulling men – on purpose ?’

‘You’re right. Never.’

‘So you see what I mean about you and Lawrence … ? It looked like the real man-woman deal. Like something in a French movie. Adult. Or I guess it would have to be an English movie – one of the Michaels, Caine or York, or Charles Dance – with the wounded, pale-eyed glamour and the Shakespearean voice.’

‘Lawrence has been telling me you have a thing for Englishmen.’ Gwen smiled, thinking of Roland, dark as he was, his shambling brilliance.

‘You and Lawrence started a whole mythology. We were awestruck. I was anyway.’

There was a little pause, their outbreaths whinnying, their shoes skiffing more lightly over the paved road as they passed the long row of boathouses at Putney: Vesta, Westminster Boys’ School, Dulwich College. There were flags fluttering, powerboats and dinghies on wooden trailers outside open doors, boats moored along the waterfront, a jaunty, maritime air.

‘But we were adults then, on the verge of it,’ Gwen said at last.

And Hilary asked, ‘Do you think we’re getting too old to be tomboys?’

‘Jeez. I haven’t got any other self-image handy. Can’t start primping now. I don’t have time.’ Gwen’s tone was arch. After another pause, she said, ‘Besides, Hil, the sort of guy we were interested in wasn’t attracted to a woman already spit-shined and curled on a tray, fully cooked. Maybe we were embarrassed. Maybe we were being defiant. Or maybe we were saving the potent thing – like for a rainy day. For a man we really wanted. The gem in the rough – do you really want it cut, faceted? Cool was wearing the most disgusting clothes you could find because you knew you could dress up if you ever wanted to.’

‘If you ever met a man you really wanted,’ Hilary said sardonically. ‘But, yeah. Maidenliness – it’s girl macho, isn’t it? Too easy if you use sex to get a guy. Any girl can use sex. Maybe even love is too easy. I got stuck there for ever with Mark – good friends who have sex on the side. The best I can say about it now is that it was completely reliable.’

This observation produced a brooding hiatus. They became a little separated as they threaded their way among the passers-by on the narrow pavement leading up on to Putney Bridge. The traffic swelled and crashed remorselessly; then they ran down on the other side among the faded roses at the edge of the grounds of Fulham Palace.

Gwen started in again with something bland and positive. ‘You look better anyway than you looked then. I guess you know that. Your hair looks better, too.’

‘We didn’t have haircuts in those days, did we?’

Gwen laughed. ‘I still don’t have a haircut.’ It was loose brown strands around her shoulders, some straight, some wavy, no obvious parting, fairly tangled, not even tied back to go running, wind-whipped, dark with sweat underneath.

‘Mine doesn’t cut anyway, even when the hairdresser uses scissors.’

‘But among ourselves, we were comrades, hey, Hilary? That was a good thing about those days. How we were friends?’

‘Not a lot of girls around, really. You had to be comrades.’

‘And no rivalry.’

‘Competition,’ Hilary objected.

‘It’s not the same. Remember the girls who came from wherever on the weekends? They had haircuts. Hair dos , even. How they were desperate for dates – to get engaged before they graduated. And only the pretty ones had a prayer. That was rivalry. Completely poisonous.’

‘It’s funny, though, how when you left –’ Hilary paused.

‘When I left?’ Gwen was waiting for a revelation, which she thought might be something funny; maybe Hilary and their classmates had all begun to pay great attention to their hair or to their dress during senior year. But what she got was more of a spear thrust.

‘It – felt like the ultimate move. That’s all. Finished us off.’

Just then, under the long canopy made by the old London plane trees lining Bishop’s Park and spreading without restraint over the paved embankment towards the river, they came up behind a woman walking with a baby in a pushchair. The baby was five or six months old, bright-eyed, alert, sitting up facing the woman with a little white blanket tucked up to its chest, its arms free and waving about sturdily with the joy of its ride and the excitement of the dappled golden light moving before its eyes. The pushchair bounced and lunged, its wheels catching against the blocks of the pavement, which were lifted at harsh angles here and there. The baby lurched forward then back, laughing and gurgling, as the woman strode steadily, wearily on along the green-railinged river.

‘Hello,’ said Hilary, stepping around the pushchair.

‘Hey,’ breathed Gwen.

But the woman said nothing as they turned and glanced at her. She stared ahead, into her baby’s eyes, vague-faced under fair, bedraggled hair, blue circles under her own eyes, half smiling, bearing it.

When they were out of earshot, Gwen said, ‘ She needs a good night’s sleep. I can remember being exactly like that with Will.’

‘What – a zombie? You have to tell me more about Will.’

‘My ultimate move?’ Gwen let the sarcasm sink in, but then she softened. ‘It was just like that, you know. He was my cox. That woman back there, me, any mother – we’re all galley slaves. You force the pushchair over the ruined paving, over whatever. Anything at all to keep the boat moving. The baby gives all the commands, shouts, shits, steers – whatever. Nothing else seems to matter. You can’t hear the world, don’t notice your husband. I guess from the baby’s point of view it must be like trying to control a giant: the monster mother. Scary. Uncertain. Which is maybe why the baby is so ruthless in its demands. And you submit to it. Willingly. You throw yourself down, betray the man you love, whatever it takes – to please the child. It’s a big deal. It’s crazy.’ She looked sideways at Hilary, half smiled with the slack corners of her heaving mouth. ‘I’m ranting, aren’t I?’

Hilary said, ‘We’ve been out a while. It can happen – with the exercise.’

‘Now. We have to go around this,’ said Gwen, gesturing up to high white walls and fences marked Fulham Football Club.

On they ran into the silent neighbourhood, between the staring front windows of empty, midday houses, a deserted newsagent’s, then weaved back once or twice to the north bank of the river, past outdoor lunches on pub terraces and gleaming café tables, laundry hanging out to dry, phlox spilling its clash of fuchsia over dark brick balconies above their heads, then at last back into the traffic, in rhythmic delirium, tired, surviving.

CHAPTER 4

The growing feeling of comfort between Hilary and Gwen made it seem easy, in the end, to sit down for dinner with Lawrence and Roland a few days later. Gwen didn’t have to insist.

Will was still orbiting around his mother in the kitchen as she turned on the pair of gas burners underneath the shiny, submarine-shaped poaching pan, unwrapped the salmon, poked at the little potatoes rolling about in their cauldron. He managed to make himself the centre of everyone’s attention for a good half-hour after Roland arrived with Lawrence, so that the jittery business of greeting, introducing, pouring drinks, was made even more chaotic than usual.