Nicola Barker - Love Your Enemies

Sarah hugged him, confining the heavy weight of his midriff in her soft, alabaster arms. She said, ‘God knows I’ve missed you, Anthony. This is a new beginning.’

A pool of blood surrounded Silver, but the crowd continued to clap and cheer. They couldn’t see the blood flowing on to the red carpet, only the pale fur of the dogs and the embracing couple.

The other dogs sniffed at the pool of blood with speculative interest. One of them tasted it with the tip of his tongue and then withdrew.

Selina Mitchell had never been particularly free-thinking. Since she was fifteen she had been completely under the sway of her dominant and rather single-minded husband Tom and her dominant and rather light-headed friend Joanna. She had always lived in Grunty Fen. If you grow up somewhere with a name like Grunty Fen you never really see the humour in the name, and Selina was no exception to this rule. She never thought it was a particularly amusing place to live. In fact she hated it most of the time. It was physically small, socially small and intellectually small. It wasn’t even close enough to Cambridge to bask in any of the reflected glory; but if ever Selina had cause to write a letter to London or Manchester or Edinburgh for any reason she invariably wrote her address as Grunty Fen, Cambridgeshire . She hoped that this created a good impression.

The only scandal that had ever caused real consternation, discussion and debate in Grunty Fen was when Harry Fletcher had started to wear Wellington boots to school (in summer) and the school had been forced to alter their uniform rules in order to acknowledge that Wellingtons were a legitimate item of clothing for school wear. The teachers had seen this new allowance as a victory for the environment over the purity of education, a muddying of the intellectual pursuit. The kids all wore wellies to school for a while and then switched back to mucky trainers after their initial joie de vivre had worn off.

Selina had been a quick-witted student — by Grunty Fen standards — and had been one of the few children at the village school bright and determined enough to go to teacher training college. At seventeen she had packed her suitcase and had gone to Reading to learn how to be a teacher; to spread discipline and information.

At seventeen she had thought that she would never return to Grunty Fen again, but inevitably she went home during her vacations to visit her parents and wrote long, emotional letters to her boyfriend Tom, who had tried to stop her going to college in the first place by asking her to marry him.

After three years at college Selina had returned to Grunty Fen, ‘Just until I decide where I really want to go.’ Eventually she had married Tom and had started teaching at the village primary school.

She disliked children and didn’t want any of her own. Tom liked children — probably because he wasn’t forced into a classroom with thirty of them every day — but he realized that if he wanted to hang on to Selina (she was one of the intellectual élite) then he would have to bow to her better judgement.

Time rolled by. Selina’s life was as flat as the fens and just about as interesting. Nothing much happened at all.

Joanna, Selina’s best friend, had lived a very similar sort of life except that she had enjoyed little success at school and had never attended teacher training college. She had got married at sixteen to John Burger whose family owned a large farm to the north of Grunty Fen, and had borne him two children before she reached twenty. She had always been wild and mischievous, but in a quiet way, a way that pretended that nothing serious was ever going on, or at least nothing seriously bad. Joanna was the bale of hay in Selina’s field. She made Selina’s landscape moderately more entertaining.

Joanna didn’t really know the meaning of hard work. Most country women throw in their lot with their husbands and work like automatons on the farm. But Joanna had more sense than that. She preferred to stay at home ‘creating a friendly home environment’ and cultivating her good looks.

At the age of thirty-nine she aspired to the Dallas lifestyle. She spent many hours growing and painting her nails, making silk-feel shirts and dresses on her automatic sewing machine and throwing or attending Tupperware parties.

Joanna was Grunty Fen’s only hedonist, but hedonism wasn’t just her way of life, it was her religion, and she tried to spread it like a spoonful of honey on buttery toast.

They were in a café in Ely, a stone’s throw from the cathedral, eating a couple of cream éclairs with coffee. Selina was making fun of Joanna but Joanna didn’t seem to mind. She pulled the chocolate away from the choux pastry with her cake fork as Selina said laughingly, ‘I still can’t think of that birthday without smiling. My fortieth, and I thought it would be some sort of great landmark. I was so depressed. I opened Tom’s present and it was a home first aid kit. Of course I said how lovely it was. Then, trying to hide my disappointment, I opened your present, firmly believing that it would contain something frivolous and feminine. But inside the parcel there were only ten odd pieces of foam, all neatly and pointlessly sewed up around the edges. Neither of us knew what the hell they were. I thought they might be miniature cushions without covers. Tom thought they were for protecting your knees during cricket games, a sort of knee guard. I even thought they might be falsies.’

Joanna smiled. ‘This must be one of the only places in the world where a woman of forty doesn’t understand the basics of sophisticated dressing. I thought you could sew the shoulder pads into all your good shirts and dresses. It’s a fashionable look, Selina, honestly.’

Selina shrugged her non-padded shoulders. ‘I will sew them in eventually, I promise.’

Joanna grinned to herself. She looked rather cheery. Usually before, during and after the consumption of a cream cake Joanna panicked about its calorie content and moaned about its probable effect on her midriff.

As Selina waited for the inevitable outburst she said, ‘If we didn’t come to Ely every few weeks for a chat and a break I’m sure I’d go mad. Ely. Imagine! This small, insignificant town has come to symbolize freedom and independence to me. It’s rather sad; it’s like the Americans symbolizing freedom with a sparrow instead of a bald eagle.’

She looked into Joanna’s face. Joanna was smiling. It was as if she was listening to a song that no one else could hear. Selina stared at her in silence for a minute or so and then said, ‘What is it, Joanna? I’m sure you’re up to something.’

Joanna’s eyes were vaguely glassy. Selina frowned. ‘You’ve not been taking those tranquillizers again, have you?’

Joanna laughed. It was a sort of throaty, gutsy laugh. ‘Oh Selina, if only you knew. If only! What’s Tom like in bed at the moment? Has it improved since our last little chat?’

Selina shrugged and her cheeks reddened. ‘Nothing much has happened in that department. Are you enjoying that cake?’

She had finished hers several minutes before, but Joanna was still (uncharacteristically) pushing her cake around her plate. Selina added quickly — to distract Joanna from intimate territory — ‘School’s been awful. Felicity has been sitting in on classes. It’s to do with the new assessment rules from the education authority. The classroom is no longer my kingdom. It’s been taken over by men in little grey suits. Of course Felicity loves it all. She even had the cheek to offer me a few tips on my teaching technique the other day. I’m surprised she was capable of taking any of the lesson in. Most of it she spent fiddling with her hearing aid. Anyway, everyone knows that Heads are incapable of controlling classes and that’s why they become Heads in the first place. Maybe I’m just bitter, but the thought of that old crone deigning to tell me how to handle a class! She said something like, “Be freer, Selina, be more adventurous, take risks!” I tried to tell her that the syllabus had destroyed all elements of spontaneity in the classroom. If the kids want to cope with the workload nowadays it’s all blackboard, chalk and copying.’