Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

Joyce noticed that when Lil and Vera talked about men, even Ivor, they often used this language of mock conflict, as if there had to be a war between men and women. Listening, soaking it up, Joyce thought how differently she would do things. She thought how much better she would handle Uncle Dick, if she were them. “If he were mine,” she thought to herself, her face heating up at the illicit form of words. If she had been Aunt Vera, she would have made an effort to make the place nice when he came home, instead of complaining to him about the children or the smoking stove or the stinking privy the moment he walked through the door. She would have talked about things he might be interested in, rather than going on about “your beloved Churchill” or making sarcastic remarks about the Masons if she knew he was going to a Lodge meeting.

Even Lil somehow managed better than Vera. You could see she was in awe of Dick’s authority in the wide world, granting him absolute superiority in all the mysteries she was defeated by. She was furious if ever her children were disrespectful to him; she reminded them how they were dependent on their uncle for a roof over their heads. But she also called him “His Lordship” and commented tartly at tea if he “deigned to honor them with his presence.” He meekly brought her his buttons to be sewn on and stood tamed and obedient while she tugged and stitched away at his collar or the waist of his trousers, scolding him because Peter needed new vests and socks and they hadn’t enough money, biting off her thread with a fierce twist of her head. Once Joyce overheard her speak sharply of his “carryings-on.”

He didn’t mind Lil; he laughed and tolerated her remarks and sometimes forked out money from his wallet for something she said they needed. Or there might be a companionable moment when they sat out on the wall in the sunshine in the garden after tea and smoked together, Dick bending with disarming gallantry to light Lil’s cigarette. But Joyce could also see how he discounted her because she was shapeless under her print dresses and wouldn’t even go to the girls’ prize-givings because she “wouldn’t know what to say to anyone.”

* * *

— Present for you, Vera, Uncle Dick said, dropping the brown paper parcel down on the table, which was laid for tea. Knives and forks clattered onto the floor.

Aunt Vera had only just come in from school; she still had her jacket on and she was taking off her gloves. She stopped short and stared at the parcel with suspicion.

— Oh, well, if you don’t want it, he said genially, I’ll take it back.

— What is it? She frowned as if this might be a trick at her expense.

— Open it and see.

Warily, she tore the paper open. Lil came from the stove with a spoon in her hand to look; the children gathered round. Sometimes Uncle Dick brought thrilling things from the docks: sweets, a wireless, pineapples, picture books, and once three hand-sewn American quilts, part of American support for the war effort that had sat forgotten in a shed somewhere.

Inside the paper were two bolts of cloth: a deep chestnut velvet and a slightly lighter brown satin. Lil reached out a finger to stroke.

— Real velvet. Don’t any of you touch, she said, in a half whisper.

— D’you reckon you can turn her out in something halfway decent, Lillie?

— Me? Oh, I’d be afraid to cut into that. It’s too good.

— What’s this all about? said Vera. Do you want something?

— Only for you to get out and have a good time for once.

— You could use the velvet to make a matching jacket, Lil said. A bolero.

— My idea of a good time is rather different to yours.

— Ladies’ Night in July. I thought you might like a night out, something new to wear.

— Oh, I see, said Vera, trouble at the lodge. You need to present the respectable husband and father all of a sudden.

— Something like that.

— Suddenly I’m wanted.

— Too much to expect, I suppose, that my lady wife might make the effort for once?

— And suddenly no one else will do.

— Not for the moment, no.

Vera flashed out in extravagant triumph.

— Oh, they won’t have you there if you divorce. You can forget about ever being elected to Warden’s Office if once you embark upon that little scheme of yours.

Lil clapped her hands and flapped her apron at the children.

— Go and do your homework, she said. Tea in ten minutes.

Uncle Dick shrugged.

— That’s up to them. I’ve got my letter of resignation written out in my pocket, if anyone makes difficulties. And I’ll take the cloth back with me if you don’t want it.

— I’ve done faggots and roly-poly, Lil said. Aren’t you staying for tea?

Uncle Dick’s refusals were always more like rebuffs than apologies: impatient indications of the more important business he had elsewhere.

— I’ve got to be back at the docks.

Lil picked up the knives and forks from the floor when he had left and wiped them on her apron; then she carried the fabrics out of the way of tea into the front room.

— You ought to go to this Ladies’ Night affair, she said.

Vera’s face was closed.

— Why shouldn’t you go? Why shouldn’t you have something nice to wear? You’re his rightful wife.

— I don’t want to spend my evening listening to that mumbo-jumbo.

Lil swept her sewing table clear from all the bits left over from Ann’s Mary Queen of Scots costume. Then she shook the satin and velvet out from their folds until they were heaped up in sumptuous excess in the dim light. The curtains in this room were always half drawn across; they didn’t use it much.

Vera stood passively while Lil draped the brown satin over her gray pleated skirt and cream blouse, her usual things for school.

— It suits you! said Lil. It goes with your dark hair. See how it hangs. It’s such good quality, so heavy. Look how it takes the light. The dress wants a classic line, very fitting; then a velvet bolero with a three-quarter-length sleeve. You could bind the edge of the bolero with the satin. Wear it with those earrings Mam gave you. You could wear it for the pageant, too.

Vera looked down at herself, hesitating. She leaned forward onto one hip to make the fabric swing and swirl.

— I certainly don’t want anyone else flaunting about in it, she said.

Lil tucked an end of the velvet around Vera’s shoulders and under her arms; then she and Joyce stood squinting their eyes at her, trying to blur the draped fabrics into looking like the finished outfit. She submitted to their attention with unaccustomed meekness.

— It could look very elegant, said Lil.

Lil and Joyce both set about persuading her, as if they knew something she didn’t know about what this dress could do for her, something she was incapable of managing for herself. Now that Joyce had seen the blond woman, she was afraid her aunt didn’t know what she was up against.

* * *

— I might go to art school, Joyce said to her art teacher.

Miss Leonard was tiny, ancient-looking, with a face as lined and vivid as a monkey’s; she walked with an odd sliding motion, lifting her knees and carrying her head very high and far back as if she were keeping her face above the dull muddy water of the rest of school. Girls who wanted to get on with some drawing or painting were allowed to be up in the art room at lunchtime. Joyce was making fussy tiny changes to a drawing of an extravagant tropical shell gorgeously lined with pink, although she was sure that her fussing wasn’t going to make the timorous drawing any better. She didn’t know what art school was, really, anymore than she had a clear idea of university, although she knew her aunt wanted her to go there. She hadn’t thought about going to art school until the very moment she said it.