Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘Oh Ed’s in the Dordogne, but you probably knew that. I suppose it’s been about twenty-five years. I hardly ever see him.’ Daphne looked wistful. ‘Still with Margaret – his Canadian wife.’ Her expression turned mischievous. ‘Mags was a fan. Went to one of his lectures and started writing to him, bombarding him with adoring letters. No aphrodisiac like flattery. You know how it goes. Anyway, they’ve been together ever since.’

‘Do you like her?’

‘I hardly know her. I suppose she’s a good person. Solid, reliable, keeps an even keel. Nothing like Ellie. But then nobody could have her joie de vivre .’

‘Ellie was such a remarkable mother,’ agreed Jane. ‘I always wished mine could be a bit more like her – both the glamour and the unpredictability. I loved the way she’d organise a huge picnic for us all and then the next day she was leading a battalion of protestors into a line of French policemen.’

‘Yeah. Or fucking a Frenchman.’ Daphne’s tone was suddenly peevish.

‘Do you think she was away too much, that she should have defended you more?’ Jane grasped the opportunity. ‘Safeguarded you?’

‘Safeguarded? From what?’

‘Well… from Ralph.’

Daphne looked interrogatively at Jane before answering, but she didn’t say, ‘Oh leave me alone.’ Instead, she responded reasonably, ‘Well, Ellie’s approach was absolutely of its time. But it’s like I said when we met before, the thing between Ralph and me wasn’t something I wanted safeguarding from. Of its time too, of course, but wonderful in its way.’

‘You don’t think it harmed you? That it affected your life at all?’

‘No. I really don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d know if I was harmed, wouldn’t I?’ She didn’t expect an answer.

Jane knew she must be cautious but couldn’t resist taking up the challenge. ‘So you’re saying what Ralph did was fine?’

‘Oh God, Janey, I don’t know. It was a very specific thing. He fell for me and I happened to be a child. He wasn’t in love with other girls. And then as I grew up… I wanted it. I loved him. You remember. It was exciting.’ She beamed and glinted. ‘Why should there be such a specific age placed on what young people can and can’t do? It’s so puritanical. No one’s allowed to break the rules or have fun.’

Jane moved in closer. ‘What would you do if a man made Libby love him?’ A flash of puzzlement crossed Daphne’s face, and then she appeared to resolve the question by some sort of internal reasoning. She was so easy to read.

‘It’s a different era now. I mean, think about what was going on in those days. Do you remember? You couldn’t behave like that today. Everyone was so busy having fun and getting liberated, it was only fair for kids to… I don’t know. I suppose we’re all children when we’re in love. I don’t know anyone of my age who didn’t have some sort of inappropriate fling or grope or… something in those days. You expected it. It didn’t seem wrong at the time. And you saw how both my parents were behaving. It was in the air.’

It was true, thought Jane. An image flashed of a day when she went home with Daphne after school and Edmund was there with Dizzy, his research student. The girls sat in the kitchen and watched them prepare a bottle of wine and two glasses to take upstairs. ‘Sustenance – we’ve got a lot of correcting to do,’ announced Ed. Later, Jane followed Daphne to her attic room and, pausing on the top-floor landing, they heard the unmistakable sounds of sex coming from behind the door to Edmund’s study: deep male outbreaths in a furious duet with female sighs. It was monstrous and fascinating, as though there was a dangerous animal on the other side.

Jane was so shocked and embarrassed she looked away, pretending not to hear. She thought Daphne was also ignoring it, as she turned and ran back down the stairs, but when they got to the kitchen, she was laughing. ‘Ralph said he thought Ed was having it off with Dizzy. Yuck! They’re terrible, my parents.’ Perhaps she was pretending she didn’t care, thought Jane. It was an upside-down world.

‘Does your mum know?’

‘I’m not sure. She’s probably doing the same thing.’ Daphne gave a harsh laugh, as though her parents were wayward children and she was the tolerant minder.

‘You must remember what it was like then?’ Daphne’s adult voice forced Jane back to the present.

‘Of course I remember,’ replied Jane, noting an annoying touch of the schoolmarm in her own voice. It had been as though the cloud of steam from all the sex people were having had been located somewhere above Barnabas Road. It certainly wasn’t in Wimbledon.

‘Everything was hanging out – it was so… hairy,’ said Daphne.

‘Hairy?’

‘You know, hair grown long, hair gone wild, hair not shaved. Like Hair the musical. Like when we found Ellie’s copy of The Joy of Sex ? God that was hairy! The woman with unshaved armpits… and that bloke with his beasty, black beard and greasy locks. And testicles viewed from absurd angles. Ugh.’ Daphne chuckled as though she was still the kid with the naughty book in her hands.

At the time, it was all dizzily distant, desirable yet dangerous, and far removed from the codified progression that was used by young teenagers after parties: ‘How far did you go?’ Jane couldn’t quite remember how it went. Was it number 1 = kissing, number 2 = hands on breast outside clothes and 3 = outside down there? At least it defined things and implied a logical system, whereas Daphne had led her into hazardous confusion. Their emergence into the irrational land of adolescence coincided with an era that reinvented notions of what it meant to be free. Entering Daphne’s sphere was like setting off along the yellow brick road. Everything was suddenly in Technicolor; Wimbledon was the black and white Kansas. She knew that even then.

‘It’s all very well to think of the fun and games.’ Jane noticed that Daphne hadn’t answered her question about Libby. ‘Course it’s fun to think you invented freedom and to rush around pushing back boundaries. But you’re ignoring the dark underbelly. The hairy , dark underbelly of those times.’ She was trying to make Daphne smile, though it wasn’t funny. ‘You know? Things like the Paedophile Information Exchange? They campaigned for the sexual rights of children, as in the right for kids to enjoy sex with adults. It was lined up alongside gay rights as though it was the same sort of deal. Sickening!’

‘Oh God, I don’t know.’ She kept saying that, noted Jane. ‘You can’t compare things then and now.’ Daphne appeared relaxed and comfortable. ‘I mean, in some ways we’re more liberal, like not locking up men for being gay. But with teenagers, they’re called “children” almost till they’re able to vote and fight in a war. It’s all mad.’ She leaned back, stretching her arms and running her hands through hair that was luxuriant as ever, even if these days it was tinted a bold, mahogany shade. Just as they’d always done, bangles jangled on her wrists and Greek, hammered-silver earrings swung and glittered.

Jane brought out the Arctic Roll and sang ‘Happy Birthday, dear Daffers’. The lone candle was blown out and Daphne cut two thick slices, exclaiming about the generosity of her friend, whom she kissed. The present was ideal. ‘You’re a darling, Janey. My old favourite. I’ll have scented death baths. Nothing like those to raise morale on a cold London evening.’ They ate another two slices of the roll and Jane was bewildered to find herself enjoying it. She hadn’t tasted the synthetic sponge and cheap vanilla ice cream since she was a girl and the combination transported her straight into the kitchen at Barnabas Road. ‘Looks like we’re going to polish the whole thing off, like in our misspent youth,’ she said.