Tessa Hadley - Married Love and Other Stories

Neil seemed relaxed enough; she had been afraid that her difference might embarrass him on his home ground. She’d expected him to move more self-consciously here, where he might be known and recognised, but he didn’t lift his head to look out for old friends or greet them. He must have walked these streets with the same absorption as a schoolboy, all those years when he was taking the bus seven miles every day to the grammar school in town where he’d got a free place, with the briefcase that his parents had proudly bought for him, full of the books that were going to educate him out of the estate.

— Clover Close, he said merrily. — Grassymead Lane. Oak Grove. Hazelbush Way. You’d think you were in the Forest of Arden if you closed your eyes. Except that real country addresses never sound anything like that. The test is if the name is as plain as possible, then you know it’s the real thing. The ruling classes live in places called Old Hall. Stone House. Long End. The Rectory.

Sheila’s home was called The Rectory and it was in the country, but nowhere like the Forest of Arden. It was in a bleak, poor village in East Anglia, where the red brick rectory was the grandest building after the church. Neil had said once that his dad, who was a tool-setter at Lucas Engineering, probably earned more than hers; she had no idea if he was right.

Neil’s dad Dennis stood waiting for them in his shirtsleeves and braces at the front door, which was on the side of the house, opening on to the kitchen. He was compact and smiling, with a round face and thick peachy skin, rosy where the blood vessels were broken across his cheeks; his springy grey-black hair was slicked back with Brylcreem. He had the air of a man used to performing a comical role, pleasant and placating. When Neil’s mother May came crowding behind him in the doorway, wiping her hands on a tea towel, Sheila saw that she was small too; Neil overtopped them both. Sheila was going to be the tallest person in the house.

— All right, son? Neil’s father grinned at him. — You can still find your way back home, then? Which bus did you get?

He held out a disproportionately huge hand to shake Sheila’s, and although he touched her with scrupulous gentleness she felt the strength in his grip. When Neil explained which bus they’d taken and how it had wound slowly around another estate for forty minutes, his father shook his head in disbelief: the eccentricity of the buses was clearly an old comfortable joke. In Bristol, Neil would have scorned such small talk. May, hanging back, kept her hands wrapped in the tea towel, nodding and smiling shyly; she had a miniature figure like a doll’s, with skinny little-girl legs gauche under her short skirt. Sandwiches made from sliced white bread, cut into perfect triangles, were set out on a counter on two plates, covered with paper torn from bread wrappers.

— I said not to make a fuss, Neil said to his mother, helping himself to a sandwich; May in a darting movement slapped at his hand, scolding him. — It’s all right, he reassured her. — Sheila hasn’t got any manners, either.

May blushed and couldn’t look at Sheila. — Don’t take any notice of him, she said apologetically. — I don’t.

Sheila heard now that Neil’s Birmingham accent, which she had thought so strong, was softened and compromised compared with the way his parents spoke.

— She’ll have cooked us a meal, too, Neil warned. — This is just to tide us over.

— I thought after your journey you’d want something. Shall I put the kettle on for tea?

The kitchen was too small to sit down in so Neil and Sheila drank their tea on a sofa in the living room, in front of the gas fire turned up high. Sheila was so eager to please that she ate all the sandwiches on her plate, though she didn’t know how she was going to manage anything else. The shoebox-shaped room was a little gem of neatness. There were antimacassars along the back of the sofa and on the back of every chair, a glass-fronted cabinet full of ornaments, framed photographs on the tiled mantelpiece of Neil and his sister Chris, of Chris’s wedding. Neil had told Sheila that every Friday after his mother came back from her job at the bakery she stacked the furniture and rolled up all the carpets to wash the floor underneath.

— Are you at the college with our Neil then, Sheila? his father asked. Sheila was surprised that Neil hadn’t told them more about her. She didn’t talk to her parents much, but she was sure that they knew at least where Neil came from and what subject he was reading.

She explained that she was reading classics, Latin and Greek.

— Very interesting, Dennis said. — Veni, vidi, vici .

— All that stuff. It’s the Greeks that I love. Revenge and passion, the war between the sexes, justice on earth. Of course, it’ll be no use to anyone after I’ve finished, but I don’t care. My dad read classics, too, so it’s in the family, I suppose.

— It’s brewing that’s in mine, Neil’s mother said with a quick laugh. Sheila knew that May’s uncle and brothers worked at Davenports the brewers; they had got Neil a job there over the summer.

Neil ate only a couple of sandwiches, then he got out his cigarettes.

— Go on, have one of mine, son, his mother said, pushing a pack of Embassy Regals at him. — Do you smoke, Sheila?

Sheila didn’t. But she saw the moment of closeness it made between mother and son, heads bent together over the lighter, eyes narrowed and cheeks hollowed in inhalation. May had a little chrome-and-Formica smoking table at her end of the sofa, with an ashtray fixed in the centre on a metal stalk. Although Neil’s face was round like his father’s, the wary sharpness in it made him resemble his mother more. Like Neil, May glanced evasively sideways at whoever she was speaking to. In his teenage years, Sheila knew, Neil’s mother had been his confidante, talking late into the night with him and his friends when he brought them home. She seemed more assured with the cigarette in her hand; a social manner descended on her, mildly rakish and teasing.

— I tried to get him to put something decent on, because you were coming. May nodded at her husband. — But he goes his own way.

— She’s not bothered, Dennis said. — Are you, Sheila?

— I’m so glad you didn’t. Sheila smiled at them. — Look at us. We’re a real mess. We don’t want you to do anything different from what you do usually. Please.

She wondered what they thought of her clothes, a long crimson Indian skirt with braid around the hem and a crushed-velvet top embroidered with mirrors: these might be their idea of disgraceful rags. She hoped that her looks worked for her, though: her pale skin and long curling red-brown hair. She knew that Dennis was paying her subtle, harmless attentions because of them, without even knowing that he was doing it: spooning sugar into her tea and smoothing the creases out of her coat when he hung it up.

— You’re right about Neil. He is a right mess. What about that hair? What does he think he looks like? Dennis broke out suddenly.

— Oh, leave him alone, May said. — Why shouldn’t he have it how he wants? That’s how they all wear it now.

Neil smiled to himself: that private irrepressible smile of his, as if he couldn’t help being delighted at some comedy he was watching. Dennis didn’t seem to mean his complaint to offend anyone. He was a joker, an entertainer. You could see that he was the one to confront the public world, sheltering May, who had been brought up in an orphanage after her mother died and her father abandoned the family. Dennis took care to mention this more than once, as if the injustice of it still rankled with him.

— Sheila lives in a rectory, Neil offered. — Her dad’s a vicar in Suffolk.