Tessa Hadley - The Past

Jill’s voice rang out downstairs, overbearing the murmurings of Granny and Grandfather. — Having the time of his life, she said. — Vive les étudiants! À bas le C.R.S.

Hettie had no idea why her mother was speaking in an unknown language, or what her father was doing, but thought her grandfather might make some cutting comment. She was anxiously wary of Grandfather’s disapproval on behalf of all her family — Roland because he was fussy over his food, the baby with her clamour and clutching fat fingers, though in fact he was tolerant of these sticky fingers, he liked Ali. Hettie had been drawn fatally, on certain occasions in the past, into the bad behaviour that brought a pained distaste onto her grandfather’s face; the more coldly he withdrew his attention, the more insanely she had tried to attract it, dissolving into tantrums and extremes of silliness which she feared he hadn’t forgotten. At least there was always Granny, who could be counted on to love you — though consequently Hettie rated her grandmother’s approval slightly less.

Tiptoeing in the dark along the landing, she didn’t want to climb back into her reproachful lavender-bed. In her mother’s room the curtains weren’t drawn across and the window was pulled up a few inches, letting in the shock of ripe night air, as cold as water. By touch Hettie identified the familiar loved items unpacked onto the dressing table: hairbrush, face cream, scent bottle. A little lamp with a short chrome neck offered an irresistible upright press-switch in its base; she pressed, and the room sprang into satisfying being, with her mother’s library book, Margaret Drabble, and its postcard-marker, and her mother’s spare shoes, and the coat in her mother’s shape on its hanger. Hettie breathed L’Air du Temps on her fingers, and longed to slip for warmth into the insulated space between the pink satin eiderdown and the top blanket; it was so perfect, when she tried it, that she closed her eyes in bliss. Jill woke her later, coming to bed and cross. — In the country when you put on the light at night, she said, — you must make sure the windows are closed first. Look at all the bugs that have come in.

Hettie thought guiltily that she must still be dreaming: the walls of the room were crowded with blundering moth-shadows, looming and receding. — I lost my way. I came in your room by mistake, it’s too dark here at night.

Her mother was implacable about returning her to her own bed.

— You’re my big girl, Hettie. You have to be sensible.

Jill left the children with her mother the next day and caught the bus into town: one ran from the village every morning, returning in the early afternoon. She needed things from the shops — food, zinc ointment for the baby’s nappy rash, Tampax. And she had business there too which she didn’t mention to her mother: she called in at the estate agents, to make enquiries about properties available to rent locally. It was strange to be back in these streets sodden with familiarity, and it was the first time in weeks — in months even — that she had been anywhere alone. Without the pushchair and the children hanging on to her she was weightlessly afloat. The estate agent she spoke to was someone she had known from primary school; she and he had been set apart together in the little gang of clever ones who would pass the eleven plus. Big-limbed and blushing, he looked displaced now in his poky office, but must have chosen it in preference to a life on the family farm — for the past’s sake, Jill felt tenderly towards his freckled pink wrist, clumsy in his clean shirt-cuff. She was aware of putting on a performance as married and sophisticated; she had pinned up her hair in front of the mirror that morning and now she flaunted her wedding ring, crossing her legs conspicuously in their slippery nylon tights under her short skirt. It was important to convince them all that she was sane and worldly, even as she made crazy plans to manage by herself.

— My husband has to travel a lot for work, she said. — If we rented somewhere down here, I could be closer to my parents, my mother could help with the children.

When they shook hands he called her Mrs Crane, and asked if he should send through details of any new properties that came up — but Jill didn’t want her parents to know what her plans were, not yet. — Don’t bother to post them, she said, smiling, charming him. — I’ll call in here whenever I’m in town.

She had time, when she’d finished shopping, for a coffee at The Bungalow on the high street. Tom would despise The Bungalow, where the fake beams were festooned with horse collars and horse brasses, there were plastic flowers in the vases, and the elderly waitresses — wizened, she imagined him calling them — wore black dresses and white organdie aprons with starched frills. A friend of Sophy’s at another table — Women’s Institute, tennis — waved to Jill, she waved back. I could live here, all the same, she thought. Because life is just life; I can choose to belong anywhere. Who’s to say all our radical friends in London are right, with their condemnations? You live how you can.

Reading through the details the estate agent had given her, she was exultant with self-sufficiency, though she didn’t see anything that fitted in the least with her idea — her old schoolmate, not knowing her, had chosen all the modern horrors for her, little boxes new-built on the edge of town, which in any case she couldn’t afford. What she dreamed of was somewhere on the edge of social life, where she could be free, not cluttered with falsity. She didn’t really know how much she had to spend, except that it was next to nothing — even if Tom sent her half his money, which he would very likely refuse to do. In London she had been getting copy-editing work from a couple of publishers, but she didn’t think they’d go on using her if she moved away. Recklessly she ate a buttered teacake, then ordered another one. These past awful weeks, she had gone days forgetting almost to eat; now she was wildly hungry and thirsty.

Sophy’s friend — gaunt and powdered and faintly arty, with dangling earrings — stopped on her way out, to ask yearningly after the London theatres. She said she always looked out for Tom’s articles, he was so clever. — Sophy didn’t mention she was expecting you. Are you staying long? She’ll be so happy to have you home. Isn’t it term time? Harriet must have started school by now.

Suavely Jill explained something about the children having had feverish colds, needing to recuperate in the country air. Because she was the vicar’s daughter, she’d learned to lie from an early age, not caring much if anyone believed her, so long as she firmly deflected further enquiry. When she paid for her teacakes and coffee she found that her mother had slipped a ten-shilling note into her purse — half-infuriating, but useful. Sophy was full of these secret charities, pre-empting you, accomplished with a little shy fuss like a quiver of nerves. Dawdling on her way to the bus stop, Jill saw a card in the wool shop window, advertising for part-time staff, and on an impulse she went inside, not caring who was watching. She didn’t recognise the woman who took down her details. The manageress wasn’t in today — perhaps Jill could call in again on Monday?

Jill could tell this woman didn’t think she was at all the right type for selling wool, with her short skirt and eye make-up and patrician condescending accent — whereas the idea thrilled Jill perversely, to end up here, with her first class in Greats from Oxford. Eagerly she insisted that she could knit, was skilled in knitting: which was perfectly true. She had knitted such lovely things before Hettie was born, including a shawl in 2-ply off-white lambswool, as subtle as a cobweb, in a complicated leaf pattern. She had had a job, while she was pregnant, on reception at a publisher’s, and when she wasn’t enlisted for tying up parcels of books, had striven away on her needles through long empty hours. The matinee jackets and bootees in the wool shop window — in brash strawberry nylon, and yellow and vermilion — weren’t anything like the tasteful old-fashioned things that she had made. She had imagined that motherhood was going to be dreamy and delicately absorbed like her knitting: then all the pretty clothes she’d prepared had turned out to be so wildly beside the point, in the days of shock and violence — as she thought of them — which began with the arrival of the actual baby. The dainty wool vests and cardigans had quickly become matted and tight with washing, and anyway they had given Hettie a rash — and she had outgrown them in a few weeks. Jill had only ever imagined her baby, in advance, as a tiny, wistful, curled-up creature-thing.