Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

— Smells like a real old witches’ kitchen in here, Dick said.

— That’s them children bringing their creatures in.

— Well, let’s see what kind of a mess you’ve managed to concoct. Turn round, turn round.

Lil stood back and Aunt Vera turned on her turntable again, looking tense and exposed.

— Lift up your arms. Turn round.

Obediently Vera lifted her arms like a ballet dancer. Lil pressed a hand to her heart.

— Is it all right?

— Isn’t it a bit tight? he said cheerfully. It makes her look like the back end of an upholstered sofa.

— She does not! said Lil stoutly, but her voice was full of doubt. D’you think it’s tight?

— Should have cut it with a bit more room in it, he said, and they could see immediately that he was right. And isn’t there something funny with those sleeves?

— I like the sleeves, said Joyce, in a great effort of optimism.

— I could undo them, said Lil, and try to get a better seam.

— Oh, it’ll do, he said. Don’t bother.

— It’s not worth the bother, said Aunt Vera calmly, lowering her arms. It’ll do as it is. I’ve got better things to do than stand up here every evening like a dressmaker’s dummy.

She looked around for her way down from the table; someone had moved the chair she’d climbed up by. The brown satin dress seemed suddenly exposed as an awful failure: the lovely luxuriant deeply glowing cloth had been spoiled, cut in clumsy lines that made Aunt Vera’s belly a huge coconut, perched comically on top of her long legs, and her bosom a pair of slanting torpedoes. When Lil moved the stool for her to step onto, Vera hesitated; and Joyce knew she was paralyzed by her humiliating sense that the skirt might rip or she might topple.

— Allow me, said Uncle Dick. Smiling, he offered her his free arm, and she let him help her down onto the stool and then half swing and half jump her from there to the floor. She stood flushed and stoical.

— There’s room in these seams for me to let it out. Lil was contritely seeking remedies.

— Don’t fuss, said Vera sharply. Help me get the wretched thing off.

— Never mind, Lil, said Uncle Dick. Your sister isn’t interested in clothes, she’s got her mind on more important things. She doesn’t care what she puts on.

Joyce was suddenly hotly aware of her own frock that she’d changed into when she got home from school, a friendly old cotton thing with faded sprigs of blue flowers. She’d had it for years: Lil had made it for her when she was a flat-chested child, and it was so familiar that she wore it as unthinkingly as her own skin. For the first time now she saw it as if from outside: how tight it was across her developing bust, how high the waistline came across on her chest, and how compromisingly short the skirt was, even though Lil had let the hem down twice. A kind of rage flared up in her at her mother and her aunt, that they were so unknowing, so helpless themselves, allowing her to go on wearing this and never seeing how it exposed her. She wanted to run upstairs to hide, only she couldn’t move for fear they all saw how ridiculous she looked.

— In case any of you are interested, by the way, she proclaimed loudly, I’m going to go to art school.

Of course they had all forgotten she was even sitting there; they turned on her slow glances steeped in adult preoccupations. Whatever was she talking about?

— You’ll do no such thing, said her aunt. Not with your brains.

But Vera’s power was gone, standing there full of pins in her stocking feet, suffering so abjectly because her husband didn’t like her in her dress.

Joyce didn’t want brains. She thought instead of lemons: yellow, astringent, Mediterranean, against a dark and sensual background.

* * *

Joyce and a girlfriend took swimming things to the beach one day when the exams were over. This wasn’t a friend from Amery-James, it was an old friend from the North, Helena Knapp, who was staying for a fortnight and with whom Joyce had temporarily recovered an old, easy, sarcastic way of being. On the causeway leading down to the beach they passed a parked car, and Joyce, giggling, pointed out the naval peaked cap left on the backseat. Sometimes Martin and Peter came down here to spy on courting couples. There were shallow hideaways for lovers in the dunes that undulated rather unspectacularly back behind the shore, grown over with little dark-green shrubby bushes and bleached long grasses. That afternoon the tide was out. It wasn’t like real seaside: to reach the water they had to wade out for a quarter of a mile through mud that was soft and warm and sucking, melting away ticklingly under the soles of their feet. Mud clung like tan socks halfway up their calves. The coastline on the faraway other side receded in infinitely promising blue and purple layers of hills; farther up the estuary, where the crossing was narrower, they could see the two ferries plying to and fro.

The skies were the only spectacular feature of the estuary scenery. Changeable and full of drama, they loomed domineeringly over the flatland and altered the color of the water hour by hour; this afternoon it was pale brown, like milky coffee. The girls, up to their mid-thighs in tepid water, watched a sudden jostling company of small angry clouds overhead; fat warm raindrops plopped down all around them. It seemed very funny, to be in their swimming costumes in the rain. Their costumes were new, they had chosen them yesterday in a department store in town: Helena’s was a blue-and-white striped halter neck, Joyce’s was a strapless bloomer suit with a pattern of black-and-white birds against a dark pink background. Lil had given Joyce four pounds to spend out of the old tobacco jar where she kept her savings. The girls were in love with their new costumes and couldn’t stop looking down at themselves and at each other. They didn’t really want to submerge in the muddy water and spoil them.

Someone was calling them from the beach. They both looked round; it was Uncle Dick. His car was parked up behind the other one, and he stood on the shingle in his work uniform with his jacket over his arm and his sleeves rolled up. They couldn’t hear what he was saying.

— What? they shouted back, knowing it was futile and he wouldn’t be able to hear them either. They savored a few moments’ delicious remoteness, lingering there inaccessible in the spatter of hot rain, feeling the impotence of the figure on the shore to reach them.

— What in hell’s name does he want? Joyce wondered languorously.

— The legendary uncle, said Helena. Won’t there be outbreaks of lawlessness if he’s not at his post?

When he persisted and signaled furiously for them to return, they began reluctantly to wade back.

— Does your mother know you two are down here cavorting around half naked? he shouted, as soon as they were in hearing distance.

— We told her! Joyce shouted back.

— She said we could cavort, said Helena placidly, covered by the noise of their rather exaggeratedly splashing through the shallows, in our new costumes.

— You’re asking for trouble. You know what kind of spot this is.

— What kind of spot is it? Joyce did a perfect imitation of nonplused and wide-eyed.

— Get yourselves dried off, he said angrily, pointing to their towels. I’ll take you back in the car. Your mother and your aunt have no idea, letting you run around the place like hoydens. Anyway, it’s coming on to rain.

— Hoydens? murmured Helena in delight. They rubbed their legs down, streaking the towels with mud.

— What do you think hoydens do? wondered Joyce.

— Whatever it is, I think we should try it. To begin with, they cavort.

— I love to cavort.