Alwayhom
‘When did it happen?’ I had demanded – as though it made a scrap of difference. ‘Who else have you told?’ I was indignant. ‘Are you sure? Who is she?’ I had to know everything, immediately. ‘You’ll be lonely. You’ll never have children. It’s all very well being an art school trendy but there’s a real world out there and it’s not a very tolerant one, you’ll be isolated, ostracised. For pity’s sake Robin have some sense, you’re pretty, talented, don’t throw it all away for something that’s probably just a ….. you could have………’
I’d done it all wrong. All Robin’s life I’d encouraged her to be honest – tell the truth and shame the devil, those that mind don’t matter: those that matter don’t mind – those were my mottos – or so I thought. SHe had a trembling, embarassed smile, somewhere between tears and laughter but her eyes, her eyes were pure joy, glowing like they did the day she’d shown me how she could open the front gate on her own. The road was busy where we lived then and she wasn’t allowed out front on her own so what business did she have learning how to open the gate? My bright, beautiful, talented daughter wanted to step out into the world without me. I felt bereft as I swam the fifteen years back to the present.
She told me who and when and probably even why but my ears were stopped so all I could hear was my own mother pouring out from my lips a litany of warnings, instructions, rules, restrictions.
‘I’m sorry Robin. I’ll have to go now.’ I wanted to leave before I made anything worse. ‘I’ll ring you in the week.’ We hugged and I clung to my little girl who was swimming away from me. I felt I might drown.
Anlaby Road was crowded with women alone or in groups flooding into the bingo hall: they were arm in arm, smiling, laughing, thrilled to be together, oblivious to me. This afternoon all the women in the street looked different, odd. I caught one’s gaze and she smiled at me and I blushed and looked away. It was as though Robin’s bombshell had caused a landslip, everything had tilted, even the trees looked more than usually crooked. Bent. Oh my God I’m turning into a bigot. Images of the past flashed and turned, her childhood, my childhood, familiar scenes but strangely skewed.
On the crossing two women held hands and laughed into each other’s faces, they were so engrossed in each other they nearly bumped into me: two middle aged women in jeans and jackets pulling faces and jostling, fooling around like a pair of kids. A solitary youth standing on the kerb shouted at them.’Lesbians.’ He yelled.
‘Yes that’s right.’ They laughed. ‘Aren’t we lucky.’ And they strode past him, still laughing.
I was sure I’d seen them before. At a Labour Party meeting perhaps, or the French class I took last year or was it at step aerobics? I looked at them again. They looked so ordinary they could’ve been anybody. Had the point of focus just moved or had I always missed the point? I had always prided myself on my visual acuity, it was the quality that strengthened my talent, lifted my art out of the ordinary. My paintings of domestic interiors had been well received for just this quality. ‘A fine eye for detail, acute
observation, remarkably perceptive.’ These had been some of the comments on my show, ‘revealing’ had been another. Why hadn’t I seen this coming. Or had I seen and refused to see. Robin and her best friend locked together in her room for hours at a time. Robin getting stuck up a tree at Grandma Ware’s. Robin competing in the school sports. Robin helping her Dad in the garage. Robin freckled and filthy on that camping holiday in France. Robin in my arms, sleepy and milky but gripping my finger. And now she was holding the hand of another woman.
As I crossed the Community Centre car park a ball rolled to my feet and I picked it up. A group of girls nine or ten years old were playing out after school. I held the ball and as they all fanned out to catch it I was ten, one of the gang and they were all shouting for me to throw. One girl stood back. I chose her and threw, hard and high and as she jumped to catch it it could’ve been 1958 and she could’ve been Janet Skinner or Susan Longthorne or Margaret Rawe. Where were they all now? Married, children, grandchildren some of them. Not all though. I’d seen Liz Wilson a couple of years ago. Very trim. An office manager with North Sea Ferries. No wedding ring. Was she? I walked on.
The fair was coming soon. Trailers and chrome and cut glass caravans had begun to appear and there was that smell in the air and drifts of leaves in the park. Two sturdy, elderly women, one blue rinse, one mauve rinse, camel coat and felt hat sat facing the empty paddling pond. They were there often when I made this trip back from Robin’s – but today blue rinse had her hand on mauve rinse’s knee.
At the end of Walton Street a crowd had gathered to watch a huge, sparkling trailer be manoeuvred into the forecourt of the car showrooms. The woman from the corner allotment was watching too. I had seen her before, green wellies, corduroys, quilted green waistcoat, rampant white hair and a tie. I had seen all this before, she’d been there thirty years that I knew of. The first ten years I hadn’t seen that she was a woman, it wasn’t until the very hot summer of ’76 that she’d unclothed enough for me to recognise that she had breasts. Today she stood, hands on hips among the last of the dahlias, smiling to herself, shifting from foot to foot on her own patch of land. I must have stared at her for a long time for she gestured her thermos lid at me, the crowd, the sky.
‘Nice day for it.’ She laughed.
‘For what?’ I asked as though she might have the answer.
‘For anything. Anything at all.’
Gftfrnsh
Marisa carried the tea tray up to her study, edged past an overburdened bookcase and kicked open the door. She set the tray on the floor while she cleared a space on the low table by the fire: not an easy task. Ruth would be here soon, no doubt bringing a gift from her holiday. Marisa sighed. She loved beautiful things and Ruth, more than any of her friends, knew it. Marisa’s life was a clutter of objects, many of them gifts, her gratitude for which often weighed her down. Whether this weight was a millstone or an anchor she could never decide.
Marisa lived surrounded by lovers, friends, children and animals in a house that was held firmly to the ground by the weight of the things it contained. It was said of Marisa that she possessed many things of beauty, this was said by friends who declined to take responsibility for the care and maintenance of these lovely objects. And so Marisa was possessed by their silent but implacable demands: dusting, a place to be displayed, careful wrapping and transport when she, like an overburdened snail, moved from life to life.
She was, she said, attached to the presence of this array of pieces of metalwork, pottery, jewellery, embroidery, lacework and glass. Each piece had a history, it represented a holiday, a jumble sale, a lover, a friend rarely seen.
‘Yes,’ she would explain, ‘we found this in a little market in the Dales, one weekend when we were camping. This is lovely too isn’t it? And only slightly chipped. I was given it by the old lady who lived next door when I was four. And this? It has a curious design, had you noticed? It was the first antique I chose for myself.’
Ruth knew all about Marisa’s love for objects of beauty and so took great care in selecting the right gifts for her. It wasn’t easy to give Marisa things she lacked for seemingly she lacked little. Year after year friends had added to the array of metalwork, pottery, jewellery, embroidery, lacework and glass which decorated the surfaces of Marisa’s life.
This day Marisa was reading and eating toast when Ruth called to see her. Ruth loved Marisa and so had chosen with scrupulous care and acute knowledge of her character and taste, a small china vase. While Ruth loved Marisa she did not share her propensity for accumulating bric-a-brac, but she still gave her many objects to join those which had already insinuated themselves into Marisa’s life. Ruth did this because she loved her and thought to show her love in an acceptable form through a steady downpour of gifts.
‘Look,’ Marisa would say, ‘Ruth brought this back from France for me, it was a glorious afternoon and the man who made them was selling them by the roadside.’ and Ruth would glow gratefully.
Ruth loved Marisa and so gave her many small, beautiful objects, each fixing on her sense of responsibility and concern for their senseless, inanimate state. This Easter Ruth had gone on holiday alone for Marisa would not go with her: she had a duty to her children. Marisa had changed her mind at the last minute, Charlotte and Emily Ann needed her. Since Richard and Marisa’s separation he had used the girls relentlessly, alternately threatening to take them to Guernsey to live with his mother (Marisa had had a slight nervous breakdown which fuelled this threat), or ignoring them for months while Marisa would pretend on his behalf that he was busy or working abroad. Right now Richard was in a new relationship and had no need for two adolescent girls in order to enjoy his Easter holiday, so Charlotte and Emily Ann spent the holiday with their mother, making a Sunday afternoon visit to their father before they returned to school.
Ruth was used to holidays alone. Marisa’s conscience was dauntless, a never-tiring source of duties which she would not ignore, many of these duties prevented her from seeing Ruth, particularly at festive times, or on occasions where respect for the given order of things was a priority. For example, Ruth had never accompanied Marisa to the staff Christmas social, always someone else would claim her loyalty. On these occasions Ruth would buy Marisa earrings of exactly the right shade to complement her dress, or perhaps a scarf of such vibrant beauty that all evening Marisa would feel Ruth’s presence, draped as she was around Marisa’s neck. And so Ruth strove to be part of Marisa’s life, to be with her, to be ever-present, to exist through her, to inhabit her life like a thread in a woven fabric.
Easter was late that year and so Ruth enjoyed clear blue skies with light-hearted clouds which chased lambs across fields on the Northumberland coast. The air was sharp: the light penetrating. It was a whole wintersworth of dust-laden net curtains had been banished in one joyous flourish: a flourish of promise for the birth of a new season. Ruth also basked privately in the security of Marisa’s promise that this summer they would holiday together. So it was in this vein of exuberant hope that Ruth selected her last gift for her friend.
The craft fair was much like any other. Lumpy handthrown pots, witty pokerwork holders for keys, sturdy jumpers and determinedly ugly examples of flower pressing, and worse, the practice of embedding small creatures in perspex. Amidst all these unlovely displays was a stall selling ceramics. The beauty of these was so subtle they were nearly lost between the macrame plant-holders and the blown egg-shells with their minuscule depictions of hunting scenes.
Rather to the left of the stall, not too near the front lest it should be demolished by a careless sleeve, there stood a small, white vase. It was about five inches high and stood tactfully on its own price ticket. It was porcelain, neither matte nor gloss, but with a texture that implied the feel of skin held lightly against the palm of one’s hand, yet chill and quite aloof. It had curves, not bulbous or overblown, more freesia than tulip, delicately sensuous: the promise of spring, not the ripeness of summer. The overall appearance of the vase was that it was plain, a classic piece whose slender neck extended from its shoulders, arching up and opening a little. A closer look revealed that it was not in fact white at all. True, it was magnolia in places, but to one side (the left) it had a purplish tinge, lavender or heather, while the other side seemed green, viridian hinting at deep seas but with a hint of sage, or maybe rue. These colours were delicate and unobtrusive, a rumour not a statement. Nor were they uniform. If viewed in one light the swirls and gradations would resolve into a depiction of two cupped hands with the fingers extending on to the neck of the the vase as if to support or caress it. But if one inclined one’s head, or perhaps one’s thoughts, these same swirls indicated two women curling towards each other, each a reflection of her counterpart. It may only have been a trick of the spring sunshine after all, stained as it was by the light from the windows of the Wesleyan chapel which housed the craft fair. An illusion maybe, but Ruth could always conjure up the women and the hands.
After Ruth had gone Marisa looked at the vase which stood unhappily on a pile of magazines while its tissue paper wrappings overflowed the ashtray. Marisa’s room, in fact her whole home and life were a cornucopia. Things nudged each other and vied for attention. Shelves sighed beneath books, papers, letters, and catalogues, while chairs held clothes, cats, records, screwdrivers and bags containing half-knitted jumpers and skirts in need of mending. The floor was rather more of a problem. The carpet was patterned but this fact was not always self-evident. In some inexplicable way Marisa’s study would persist in silting up. No matter how assidiously she swept back the clutter it would reassert itself, first filling the corners and then eddying around the chair legs until walking across the room required both agility and determination. It was true that on some days the carpet was clearly visible but, inevitably, an accretion of things would slip down off the windowsill and desk and out from behind the sofa and once more they would hinder her life. It was into this room that the vase had been introduced.
Ruth had gone, leaving once again a little bit of herself to keep Marisa warm and now she was alone with the vase. She hid the magazines on the floor under the table and washed the ashtray. Next she took the tea tray and toast plates down to the kitchen. She put away some clothes and carried the ironing out onto the landing. The vase stood alone on the table now, but even so the room was an affront to its beauty. It was so lovely, clear, clean, uncluttered, everything that the room was not.
Marisa frowned and moved the vase to the mantelpiece. She put some letters and postcards in the desk drawer, then quite deliberately put the jar of pens, combs and safety pins in the waste paper basket along with the clock, which did not work except that it prevented some papers from falling into the fireplace. The vase now stood alone on the mantelpiece. Marisa sighed and moved the vase to the desk where she threw away an old theatre programme, put some books back on the shelves and swept everything else into the desk drawer. The vase was now the sole occupant of the desk top; the pen holder having been dropped into the waste paper basket in company with some unfinished embroidery and some broken earrings.
She was confused. She owned and loved beautiful things but this vase made them seem so crass: it shone through the multiplicity of forms and materials with a lucidity that dispelled any suggestion of comparison. With a sudden burst of resolve she moved the vase to the shelves and began emptying them. Boxes of brass, glass, papier mache, pottery, cane, all were swept, without ceremony or regard for contents, into a large wicker log basket which she dragged to the head of the stairs. Soon the vase stood between rows of books which she then tipped painfully into cardboard boxes and carried to the front door.
The books gone it all became much simpler. The three piece suite in particular fitted perfectly in the front garden. The wardrobe however, presented certain difficulties as it was a portly, cumbersome object and quite as overstuffed as one might imagine. These difficulties were shortlived however for the wardrobe was peremptorily disembowelled then levered out of the attic window into the back garden where it lay, surprised, with its doors open, upon a litter of its former contents. A fine drizzle heaped ignominy on its sensitive, Edwardian soul. The vase was once more alone, this time in the centre of a completely empty room.
The doorbell rang and there stood Richard, delivering Charlotte and Emily Ann from the afternoon he had ‘given’ them. He stared thoughtfully at the carpet neatly rolled beneath the privet hedge and then at the framed aquatints which stood, uncomfortably, on the outside of the windowsill. He pushed the girls forward past the mahogany writing desk, hesitated, and held onto their coat sleeves.
‘No thank you.’ Said Marisa firmly. ‘They are a gift which I can’t accept right now. You see I have just been given something very precious, something which requires a great deal of space.’
She smiled brightly at them, then closed and double-locked the front door. She walked purposefully through the echoing house, listening with unforseen pleasure as her footsteps fell on bare, resounding boards. She paused only to pick up her coat and bag, then briefly into the morning room for a last look at the vase before letting herself out through the kitchen window and over the garden wall into the maze of alleys behind the house.
Makyrmnd
‘What do you want to do tonight Bren?’
‘I dunno Ali, I don’t mind, what do you want to do?’
‘I want you make a decision for once, come on, make up your mind.’
‘No, you decide, I’m not bothered.’
It was Thursday night; Ali and Bren had just finished their tea; Ali leafed through the listings page of the local evening paper.
‘Hey Bren, have you seen what’s on at the Film Theatre?’
‘What?’
‘The Well of Loneliness’, can you believe it, a Lesbian film and it isn’t even the Gay film season. This is the blurb about it , it says ‘Based on the famed book by Radcliffe Hall, this is an award winning film and a sensitive treatment of a groundbreaking novel.’
‘Sensitive’ sniffed Bren ‘You mean miserable.’
Ali laughed ‘Probably, lets face it, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s never going to make it into a musical is he?’
‘How long, how long does it say it is?’
‘Dunno, hour and a half I think, yeah an hour and a half, it’s on with a Czheckoslovakian animation special.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’ Said Bren ‘You mean they’ve compressed the entirety of the Well of Loneliness into an hour and a half and they’ve done it sensitively. How have they managed that, missed out everything that happened before Stephen joins the army or after she goes to Paris?’
‘Do you mean you don’t want to go Bren because if you don’t…’
Bren sighed and turned away from the TV. ‘I didn’t say that I just said they must’ve rushed through something to get it all in in an hour and a half, that’s all. And sensitive probably means they’ve got someone acceptably feminine to play Stephen, no one too butch, don’t want to frighten the horses.’
‘If you’re going to pick on about it Bren I’ll go with someone else. I’m looking forward to it, I never did actually finish reading the damn thing it’s so bloody depressing.’
‘Me neither. I got as far as Paris where she gets in with that Natalie Barney, Renee Vivien crowd and they all hang around being unhappy together.’
‘Well you did better than me Bren,I didn’t get that far, I couldn’t stand that stuff about Stephen’s childhood, how she was treated like a boy.’
‘I suppose going to watch it means I don’t have to read the bloody thing.’
‘Listen Bren, I want to see this film, if you intend to talk all the way through it like you did when we went to see Fried Green Tomatoes you can sit on your own.’
‘I didn’t talk all the way through it,’ Bren flustered defensively, ‘I just made one or two comments about how they’d taken out all the overtly Lesbian bits.’
‘Yes,’ said Ali, ‘and then you made detailed reference to Spielberg’s treatment of The Colour Purple.’
‘Well it’s true, he did take all the Lesbian stuff out of The Colour Purple.’
‘I know Bren but don’t you think drawing a comparison between taking the Lesbians out of the Colour Purple and not taking the Jews out of Schindler’s List was pushing it a bit?’
‘No I don’t actually, I…..’
‘Never mind Bren, all I’m saying is if you want to come with me, great, if you want to talk all the way through about how badly it’s been done, then go with someone else.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m saying don’t shoot your mouth off all through the film or this really will be the last time we go to the pictures or anywhere else together. Do you understand?’
‘You told me you loved me because of my big mouth.’
‘I did, and I do, but not in the cinema. Save your arguments for when we get Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on the door.’
‘Okay Ali, point taken, I’ll behave. Anyway, it’ll make a pleasant change: watching something written by a Lesbian about Lesbians. It’s got to be more satisfactory than listening to the Archers and fantasising that Caroline Bone’s going to drop that dozy vicar and sweep Shula Archer off her feet. What night do you want to go.’
‘Tonight Bren, it’s got to be tonight, one night only, get your coat or we’ll be late.’
Ali and Bren bickered comfortably all the way to the cinema, while ostentatiously holding hands so everyone could see they were Lesbians. Privately Ali thought you only had to take one look at Bren to figure it out but if Bren wanted to believe that she was in the closet that was OK. As for Bren, she knew that wherever she went people stared at her and muttered as she passed but ‘what the hell’ she thought ‘if Ali wants to make a statement let her.’ They bought their tickets separately to demonstrate their status as two people rather than one couple then, political points scored, they settled down with popcorn, M&M’s, and a programme. The titles flickered up on the screen, with a brief outline of Radcliffe Hall’s life and works.
‘Radcliffe Hall was greatly influenced by the writing of Havelock Ellis, the eminent sexologist who first propounded the theory of the existence of inverts, a third sex of which Radcliffe Hall, known to her intimate friends as ‘John’, regarded herself as a member. In The Well of Loneliness she makes a plea for society to tolerate those who, through no fault of their own, are doomed to a tragic life on the margins: women who, in particular during the First World War, showed exemplary courage and moral virtue and who should be regarded with compassion, not censure. In Stephen Gordon, the heroine of The Well of Loneliness, Hall presents to us a person, for we cannot say woman, who embodies all the qualities required in a gentleman of that time, one whose moral stature is beyond reproach.
‘What is this?’ groaned Bren,’I thought we came to see a lessie film, not listen to a lecture about moral values.’
Ali elbowed her vigorously and shushed her then threatened withdrawal of popcorn privileges. Bren grinned her most captivating grin, squeezed Ali’s arm and settled down in her seat, dangling her Doc Martens over the edge of the empty seat in front of her.
The film opened with soft focus sepia scenes of the young Stephen, growing up in fin de siecle luxury, dressed as a boy to appease the whim of her father, being taught the manly virtues: adventurousness, not being a sissy when hurt, the proper handling of servants and how to treat a lady. Ali was outraged.’Can you see that? That is outrageous. If a parent did that now you’d have Social Services involvement before you had time to say ‘pass me my monocle’, she’s being taught to despise women, that’s what’s happening.’
‘Do you think so?’ Bren teased, ‘It looks pretty good to me, freedom from those stupid frilly dresses, shooting, riding a horse, better than having to play with dolls and do embroidery any day.’ Bren smiled ‘I always went out with my dad if I could, if I stayed in the house I got lumbered with housework, I made myself scarce.’
‘But she’s being encouraged to despise femininity, she’s being brought up to be a man. Anyway, I thought she was supposed to be part of some ‘Third Sex’, she isn’t, she’s just got a gender dysfunctional family.’
‘What’s wrong with despising femininity? It’s a load of nonsense, it limits women all the time, you wouldn’t catch me dressing up in ribbons and frills, looking like an overdone wedding cake.’
‘So why do you like it when I wear dresses Bren if it’s so despicable? This is supposed to be an equal relationship but you’re saying it’s OK to despise women for wearing women’s clothes. What’s wrong with me wearing women’s clothes, I’m a woman, a Lesbian, not a transvestite or a transexual.’
‘Ali I’m not saying you shouldn’t wear dresses or anything like that, just that I wouldn’t want to, I’ve never worn stuff like that, you know I haven’t, I wore shorts when I was little and jeans ever since.’
‘You’ll be telling me next that you believe you were born a Lesbian.’
‘I’m not saying that Ali but I’ve been a Lesbian since I was old enough to know what one was, and before that I always knew I was different, yes I’m a…’
‘Yeah Bren, you’re a real Lesbian, well if you’re a real Lesbian what am I, a pretend one? Don’t bother to answer that, just hand over the popcorn and watch the bloody film.’
The narrative moved swiftly on into Stephen’s adolescence and it was Ali’s turn to taunt. ‘God isn’t she beautiful? Do you think my hair would suit me like that. I love those trousers. Who’s the actress who plays her, do you think she’s a dyke? I’m going to start a fan club, do you think she needs a groupie?’
‘I don’t care.’ was Bren’s response. ‘Look at her.’ The evilly seductive neighbour’s wife sauntered into the Gordons’ drawing room and cast an appraising glance over the gauche and blushing Stephen. ‘I’d go like a lamb to that particular slaughter any time she asked,’ groaned Bren. ‘She is gorgeous, more, she’s downright bloody edible. She can wrap her legs round my shoulders any day of the week.’ Then she chuckled at Ali’s furious glower. She could always get Ali going like that, she’d say something outrageous and Ali would get all uptight about the objectification of women and Bren would always win the argument with the ‘When you’ve been a Lesbian as long as I’ve been a Lesbian THEN you can tell me what I can and can’t say about women.’ line. Bren didn’t really mean the half of what she said but Ali’s brand new Lesbian seriousness was so funny she couldn’t resist needling her sometimes.
They sniffed together as Stephen suffered the inevitable betrayal and humiliation. ‘See, married women, can’t trust them. Millions of dykes the world over have had their hearts broken by bitches like that. And they always go back to their husbands.’
‘That’s not true, I didn’t.’ Protested Ali.
‘Not yet.’ Bren replied with a degree of venom that surprised them both and they turned in silence to watch the film.
Time had moved on, it was nineteen sixteen and Stephen was having a wonderful time being fearfully brave, noble and stoical and looking dashing in jodhpurs and puttees, giving crisp white nurses a hand up into the front seat of the ambulance and gazing moodily into the distance. Mary, a sweet young thing, fresh out from Blighty, sought comfort in the arms of Stephen who by now had perfected the art of twitching a muscle in her jaw, at the sight of this the couple on the back row of the cinema erupted into a roar of approval.
‘Go on do it, give her a snog.’ Someone shouted from behind them.
‘Oh that’s so crude.’ Said Ali curtly, ‘No better than men.’
‘If we’re no better than men then why don’t you sleep with one of them?’ Was Bren’s reply. ‘We’re Lesbians, we fancy women, why shouldn’t we say so. We’re not good little girls who have to wait to be asked, if we see a woman we want, we say so. What’s wrong with that?’
‘It’s just copying masculine attitudes, that’s what’s wrong with it.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Bren countered ‘if this is a Patriarchy like you keep telling me then men decided how the attributes got shared out and, surprise surprise, they kept the most useful ones for themselves. So by being outrageous Lesbians we’re just reclaiming what should have been ours in the first place. If we go along with some prissy little nice girl idea of what a woman should be we’ll be stuck at the back of the queue whatever’s being given out.’ Bren had shocked herself, she usually disdained politics and teased Ali when she tried to talk about them. This was the longest speech she’d ever made as far as she could remember.
‘So are you saying that sexual roles are socially constructed? because if you are….’
‘Watch the film, we’re coming to a good bit,’ said Bren ‘I got this far in the book, she should kiss Mary soon.’
‘Yes.’ More cheers and ribaldry from the back row. Stephen and Mary moved to Paris where they, or rather Stephen, rapidly assimilated into chic Lesbian society.
‘She treats Mary as though she’s a wife, and a dim one at that.’ Protested Ali. ‘She’s a snob and a racist as well as a misogynist.’
‘Don’t be stupid Ali, how can she be a misogynist, she’s a woman.’
‘But she didn’t think she was, that’s the point, she thought she was something else. She thought she was a real Lesbian and Mary wasn’t.’
‘Well if you want the truth Mary wasn’t a real Lesbian, she was just sleeping with one, Mary could go back to men any time she wanted to, Stephen couldn’t – that’s the difference between them. It’s there Ali and you can’t pretend it isn’t.’ In the past Bren and Ali had talked about the differences between their past lives, their respective childhoods, but this was an area they had looked at rather than stepped into. By silent consent they returned to the fiction that was unrolling before them.
There were lush scenes of decadent Lesbians reclining on divans in the stifling salons of the demi monde; Stephen gaining literary acclaim which she was unable to share with Mary; her lover but so much her intellectual inferior. Then there was the poignant death of the doomed Jamie, exiled from her native Scotland by her unnatural passion for her young lover, driven away from a healthy life in clean, British air and into the dreadful miasma of continental depravity. A life of shadows, poverty and disgrace. Stephen was sickened, disgusted with herself and those around her, wilting in her self-imposed exile.
‘They’ve missed out her mother,’ Bren jolted Ali, ‘there’s a whole bit where her mother finds out about her and can’t bear to be in the same room as her. I wonder why they missed that bit out.’
‘Probably because it seemed a bit farfetched.’
‘Don’t you believe it Ali. Just because your family are so fearfully right on that they know they’ve got to hide their homophobia don’t think it isn’t there. I didn’t speak to my mum for six years after she caught me in bed with Jenny. Yes I go home now but don’t think it’s been easy. And while we’re on the subject, why do you think it is that you never take me home? I know and so do you. Your family’d have a fit if you took me home. Oh yes, it’s fine for me to look like this here, but you wouldn’t take me home to meet your mum so don’t pretend you would. I’m too butch to be the acceptable face of Lesbianism’
‘That’s not fair Bren, every time I’ve suggested you coming with me you find something else to do, it’s you that’s scared not me so don’t try to dump your shit on me. You always try to duck the issue like that and it’s not fair. Just the same as you always go on about how I might go back to Jonathan, that’s your stuff not mine too.’
‘Watch the film.’
The handsome Canadian, friend and equal of Stephen, turned up in Paris and offered a refreshing respite from the heady delights of the inward looking and self-obsessed Lesbian scene. He brought with him the smell of leather, shaving soap, the great outdoors, essences which only served to emphasise Stephen’s loneliness and dissatisfaction. She also contemplates Mary’s situation, isolated, cut off from decent society, denied the normal womanly pleasures of childbearing and childrearing and decides that her love for Mary requires the ultimate sacrifice. She must make loyal, devoted Mary stop loving her. In this most noble and manly of endeavours she resorts to an almost feminine level of trickery: she throws Mary and the handsome Canadian together while pretending to an affair with another, dissolute member of the third sex, another true invert. Mary is distraught, turns to the Canadian who first comforts her and then proposes. Mary, devastated and facing destitution without Stephen to support her accepts and is spirited away to a pioneer life in the wilds of Canada.
‘God she was hateful.’ Ali exploded as the credits rolled and the audience stuffed streamers of sodden tissue back into pockets and bags.
‘Yeah.’ Agreed Bren, ‘It’s disgusting, how could she turn her back on Stephen like that, and for that…..prick.’
‘What do you mean? I meant Stephen was hateful, she just decided what was best for Mary and did it, never asked Mary what she wanted to do with her life, just handed her over, like a possession.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong Ali. Stephen loved her, she made a grand sacrifice, she knew Mary would never be truly accepted into the Parisian Lesbian community so she gave her up. It was for Mary’s benefit, not Stephen’s. Mary was just a brainless little.. ‘
‘What Bren? Brainless little what? Hetero, not a real Lesbian, is that what you’re trying not to say? She didn’t fit in because they were a bunch of class-ridden snobs, she didn’t fit in because Stephen never let her be a person in her own right, she was only ever Stephen’s appendage, a chattel – and that’s why Stephen felt she could decide for her, because she’d never treated her like an equal in the first place.’
‘No. Stephen was a Lesbian, Mary wasn’t a Lesbian she just happened to fall in love with someone who was, they were different. Like us. You’ve been married, I never could. Different.’
‘You mean you’re a real Lesbian and I’m not. So what am I?’
‘Ali, you’re beautiful, has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’
‘No they haven’t. Nobody would be so stupid as to try to smarm out of it with a pathetic line like that.’
Ali and Bren walked silently out of the cinema as though on parallel tracks, close, but not touching, they both knew that the slightest bump now and they could diverge, their relationship could split right open, peel them apart.
‘You treat me like that.’ Ali announced as they waited at the crossing.
‘Like what?’ Bren was confused, defensive. ‘I treat you like what?’
‘Not what, who. You treat me like Stephen treated Mary. Don’t you see that? Stephen Gordon didn’t believe in Mary, didn’t really trust her.
‘But what’s that got to do with us Ali?’
‘What it’s got to do with us is that when you say we’re different what you really mean is you don’t trust me. That’s not good enough Bren.’
‘I do trust you Ali but you’ve got to see it from my side. I’ve been a Lesbian all my life, you could walk away from this any time, I can’t – and I’m scared of losing you.’
‘I’m not a bloody object, something you can lose: I’m your partner, why should I walk away from you – unless you gave me good reason? And even if I did, that doesn’t mean I’d stop being a Lesbian. You’ve got a nerve, I’m a Lesbian because of me, not you. Don’t flatter yourself.’
Bren and Ali walked towards the bus station.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Bren asked, she was devastated, in the last two hours her world had been picked up and shaken and she didn’t know where the bits would fall.
‘I don’t know Bren, but I think you’d better make up your mind.’
Prsnroad
‘Tony.’ I screamed and waved from the small casement window over the front door but he rounded the corner of the building and was gone.. ‘Tony.’ I cursed him as I ran down the two broad flights of carpeted stairs. Which way? Through the kitchen and the gate into the paddock and catch him that way? No. Too slow. Front door and stop him on the drive. Get a lift into town to the bank and then catch the afternoon bus back. ‘Damn you Tony.’ I wrenched at the front door handle as though I had hold of Tony’s ear. ‘Why don’t you ever listen to me, I said I had to go to the bank.’ The handle moved but the door didn’t. ‘Damn this door, damn this house and damn you Tony’ I hissed as I accepted the immovability of a locked eighteenth century door. ‘Anachronism’ I snarled. Recently I had taken to insulting the house – but only in Tony’s absence.
The door was locked. But where was the key? ‘Fliss, where’s the key?’ I demanded tersely of myself (I had also taken to asking myself unanswerable questions during Tony’s frequent and lengthy absences). ‘The key Fliss, do you know where the key is?’ ‘Yes’ I responded tartly. ‘Of course I know where the bloody key is, you can’t lose something eight inches long and made of wrought iron now can you?’ I turned confidently to the hall stand… the hook by the door… the telephone table… Stupid bloody key.
‘Unique,’ was Tony’s word for it. ‘We couldn’t possibly put a modern yale lock in such a lovely door.’ Then it turned out that replica keys weren’t so easy to find, at least ones that could be used for more than just gathering dust on the wall of a countrified pub, you know, ones that could be used to lock and unlock doors, that sort of key was hard to find. So I got a back door key.
‘Are you joking Tony?’ I had yelled when he suggested it. ‘ Have you got completely lost in your gentleman farmer fantasy. You, the master of the house get the front door key and I get the bloody servants entrance. I don’t think so.’ But I did get the servants entrance. He pointed out, perfectly reasonably, that the back door key was so much smaller, so much easier to carry around so it made perfect sense that he should take the front door key but only if he needed it. ‘After all.’ He smiled. ‘You’re here all the time anyway so I won’t need a key, you’ll be here to open the door for me and if we go out, we go out together. Look I’ll put it on a hook by the door when I don’t actually need it. Is that better?’
What had happened to me? Here I was, unreasonably demanding a key to my own front door.
‘Stupid Bloody Door.’ I chanted as I gave it a rhythmic kicking. ‘Where’s your bloody key?’ I demanded. ‘Tony, when you get home you are dead.’ I knew where I had last seen the key, it was on Tony’s key ring. He did that sometimes despite our agreement. He liked showing it off, encouraging people to ask what it was for so he could describe the house to them. He would take it if he was meeting new clients or, like today, he was going away on a course. I knew then there was no point in playing ‘Hunt the Key’, the key was dangling from the ignition of Tony’s car and by now, quick look at the hall clock, it would be on its way over the Humber Bridge and not coming back till Tuesday.
*
‘You’ve seen a house where?’ I had asked although I knew I’d heard clearly the first time. ‘Sunk Island? That’s the back of bloody beyond. No wonder it’s a bargain, no one in their right mind lives out there. It’s a deadhole. I don’t want to be stuck out there when I can’t even drive?’
*
When we were little Dad used to pack us all in the car and we’d head out of Hull, bound for the Mysterious East as he called it. It was his joke and we always laughed even though we had no idea why it was supposed to be funny. Hedon Road was a road full of danger, not mystery. The first thing was Drypool Bridge, a cast iron swing bridge that might, at any moment, start to lift and tip you into the molten chocolate mud that the low tide revealed. When you walked across the bridge you could see down through the gaps between the boards, gaps that could, without warning, split open and drop you down into the swirling liquid where you would be swept along, past Sammy’s Point and out into the Humber where nothing lay between you and oblivion. Once, when I was in town with my Mum, we’d crossed the bridge into East Hull and I had dropped into the river a discarded shoe that I found on the pavement. The shoe lay on the mud which paused briefly, then swallowed; and the shoe was gone. From that day on the journey into East Hull was an expedition, terrifying and uncertain.
Dad would drive slowly, he prided himself that, should he wish to do so, he could place a jug of water on the front bumper and it would be there, intact, not a drop spilled, when we reached Withernsea. I wanted to know what the jug of water was for and why it couldn’t be a bottle so we didn’t have to go so slow but I never asked, we all knew what Dad would say. We would murmer appreciation of the steadiness of his driving and then we would set off; it was a tradition, like touching wood or like Mum double checking that she’d locked the front door. Another tradition was that, at my brother’s request, Dad would slow to a crawl as we passed the prison so he could experience the dread-thrill of the wall, the lights and the wire. ‘Some of the most dangerous men in Britain are locked up in there.’ Dad would announce with pride as though the importance of Hull was somehow enhanced by their residence. I had no idea what depths of naughtiness they had gone to, what bad things they had done to be punished by the journey into East Hull and their confinement there. There was a kind of expectancy about the building, the awareness that hundreds of people lived behind that wall, waiting to get out, seemed at odds with the fact that you never saw anybody. We strained for a peep through the doors, a sight of someone in leg irons like the slaves in Ben Hur, a sign that there really were hundreds of dangerous men who had been sent to their rooms for a very long time and it wasn’t just one of Dad’s stories made up to add interest to the journey or to make Hull a more interesting place to live although either ploy would have been believable. Whatever the truth of it the prison loomed hugely in my imagination, it glowered by the road as if it might stretch out and grab us and drag us in and keep us there and even my Dad wouldn’t be able to get us out. We never called the prison ‘Hedon Road Goal’, we called Hedon Road ‘The Prison Road’ as though there was nothing else on it. As though the timber yards, the docks and Newtown Buildings didn’t exist.
Further down, after the prison and not as important, was the maternity hospital. For years I thought it was called the eternity hospital and that, like the prison, people had to stay there for a very long time. Once I knew what it was called and what it was for I somehow assumed that it was connected to the prison or was the same kind of thing but for women. Perhaps I got that idea because being inside either was called confinement, or maybe I’d got muddled over labour and something I’d seen about hard labour in a prison film on telly. Anyway, I never thought of one without the other popping into my head alongside it. Maybe that was why I never wanted children.
Once you got to Paull, past the glittering, terrifying lights and steam pipes of the oil terminal at Saltend the houses thinned out dramatically. There would be huddles of perhaps three or four stood defensively in little patches of grasss, or one on its own, staring blankly at the road from behind its wall. You never saw any people outside these houses and children never played in the gardens. To me, the people who supposedly owned and inhabited these buildings were no different to and no more real than the men in the prison or the women in the hospital. The further you got from Hull the further from the road were the houses until you couldn’t tell the colour of the curtains or anything else about them so far were they from the flat grey ribbon that we drove along. Withernsea was such a relief at the end of that journey. Not just because I got car sick but because in Withernsea there were people, real people, Hull people out for the day with rugs and thermoses and pacamacs, crowds of them, noisy and jostling, herding each other around the pubs and amusements, it was dead exciting, I loved it.
*
‘You’ve seen a house where?’ I asked again, dreading the answer and the rational overriding of my wishes that was sure to follow. Long Marsh Farm, off the road from Ottringham to Sunk Island, half a mile of driveway, plenty of land, plenty of privacy, out buildings, garden, paddock, lots of scope for home improvement, room for a swimming pool if we wanted one, nearest neighbour two miles away at Far Marsh Farm. It didn’t matter whether I faked enthusiasm or not, Tony’s eyes were shining and he was looking way into the distance over the top of my head, picturing himself coming home from a hard day’s insurance selling and sitting on the terrace of his little demesne, looking at his paddock and orchard and well-established garden in the company of his wife, the mother of his children, the tender of his pond and pruner of his roses. I didn’t know which I hated more: the thought of playing chatelaine to Tony’s patrician delusions or the endless gardening, unavoidable jam making and deep freezing.
There was an awful inevitability about it all, we had no trouble getting a mortgage, after all we were first time buyers and the vendors were keen to make a sale. ‘No bloody wonder.’ I muttered when Tony told me, ‘They probably want to get out ahead of the local satanist branch annual dinner dance or before the entire family go crazy and start talking to the philodendrons.’
‘It’s not like that Fliss, the family want to sell because the old lady’s gone into a home. Flissy, it’s beautiful, hasn’t been touched for years, its got loads of original features. You’ll love it.’
‘Tony be practical, how am I going to get to work? Rural bus services are appalling and the only work I’ll be able to get locally will be plucking turkeys or planting cucumber seedlings.’
‘We’re managing fine now without you working and you left the building society because you said you hated the job and……..’ He dimpled at me in what he imagined to be a raffish manner and allowed the sentence to end pregnantly.
‘Tony, do you ever listen to me, I don’t want kids and if it comes to it neither do you – you just think they’d make attractive garden furniture. Forget it Tony, we’re not having brats and we’re not living out there. Did you know there are more pigs than people in East Yorkshire and more cucumber frames than both put together. No Tony. No.’
And then we were there. Tony’s family came up for Christmas and absolutely loved it, from the stone-flagged pantries where two deep freezes hummed to the low-ceilinged attics – ‘nurseries?’ – my father-in-law archly enquired and all marvelled at the opportunities we had for ragrolling and spongeing, stripping and stippling, stencilling and varnishing, soft furnishing and every other way of messing about with things that a d-i-y fanatic could conceive of. ‘So many original features.’ my sister-in-law marvelled as she hauled on the servants bell pull and clapped her hands in delight as it jangled distantly. ‘It’s just as well you stopped working when you did Fliss, there’s so much to do.’
*
I walked through the hall, ran my fingers through some dust on the banisters and went into the kitchen. It was a beautiful morning, the best so far that year and, for once, I felt like having breakfast in the garden. I made some coffee and went to the door. Locked. Locked! I knew instantly what had happened, Tony had gone out to the garage through the kitchen door, locked it behind him (he’s so thorough) and taken the key. I was locked in. A prisoner in my own home. ‘So what’s new.’ I muttered as I glowered at the door. What was I going to do. Tony wasn’t due home until after the weekend and I couldn’t ring anyone and tell them what had happened. ‘Hi Mum, it’s Fliss, fine, how are you. The thing is (light laugh), Tony’s gone away for the weekend and locked me in.’ No, not possible. It sounds so bloody wet. I’m too old for the NSPCC or Social Services to come and get me and I haven’t got enough legs for the RSPCA to be interested in my plight. Besides, I’m not some bloody Rapunzel, locked in a tower waiting for a prince in a white Ford Escort van to drive up, hack through the hedge, sling me over his shoulder and carry me to freedom. I’d get laughed at. ‘Tony’s done it on purpose.’ I thought furiously. ‘He’s trying to drive me crazy but do it in such a way that when I tell people what he’s up to they’ll believe him and not me. What am I going to do? Stage a break out? How?’
I looked around me. Locked doors, security window bolts on the ground floor (they made the insurance premiums cheaper) and not another two-legged creature in miles. The postman wouldn’t be here again until Monday, no, bank holiday, Tuesday. The simplest thing to do was just sit it out, and murder Tony the minute he walked back through the door, I could bludgeon him to death with the front door key, make him eat it, stick it…… I smiled at the thought of Tony’s politely pained expression as I impaled him on the precious key to his kingdom. ‘Show that to a prospective client, Tony darling.’ I grinned savagely at the thought, ‘Point out the original features of that.’ I could wait, we had freezer stocks copious enough for an extended siege, I’d fed Tony’s family at Christmas hadn’t I? I wouldn’t starve before Tuesday, I just wouldn’t have anyone to talk to except me and all I could think about was revenge. ‘I suppose that’s what it’s like when you’re banged up, you sustain yourself by hating the person that put you there.’ Funny, I used to think the prison was at the other end of Hedon Road. Right now I could fancy porridge if it was laced with conversation. ‘Fliss you’re being silly. This isn’t really any different to any other day. You’re stuck in this house, which you hate, where you’ve got no one to talk to, nothing to do but dust. It’s no different, you’re just locked in, that’s all.’ ‘Just locked in!’ I argued back, ‘I’m under house arrest, trapped in the married state penitentiary and no time off for good behaviour. Fliss, you’ve got to get out of here before you start doing flower arranging in your recreation periods.’
What was I going to do? Striking dramatic poses in the conservatory wasn’t going to get me very far. It never crossed my mind to break a window, it wasn’t my house you see, it was Tony’s, as was the food on the table and the clothes on my back. Everything in that house belonged to Tony and that included me as I realised with a stunning certainty. I had to free myself. If I could get outside I could arrange stones from the rockery to spell out a message – but who would see it? The house was low-lying and next to no one came down the road anyway. Smoke signals? No. The roof! I could climb out of one of the attic windows, stage a rooftop protest, spread out a bed sheet listing my demands and perhaps the air-sea rescue helicopter would come over and lift me out and Tony would see it on the six o’clock news. No, sitting on the roof was no nearer to freedom than sitting under it, that was the problem. Perhaps I could tunnel out, those antique fire irons would come in useful after all. What was I talking about? I had a lovely home, a loving husband, no money worries, with all this why did I want to escape? Because it felt like a prison, that’s why. The Geneva Convention says that it’s the right of every prisoner to try to escape, all I wanted to do was exercise my rights.
I took the stairs two at a time, burst into the master bedroom and, with my bare hands, tore the entire duvet set into strips, knotted the bits together and tied one end to the bed leg. I pushed the window open and dropped my impromptu rope out, where it dangled above the drive. This was it. The big moment. I sat on the windowsill and looked down. No, not that way. I got back in and thought about it. Back to the window sill, this time I stood on it, faced in and wrapped the duvet rope over my shoulder and round my arm like they did on the mountaineering programme I’d seen. I leaned backwards, tugging on the rope. ‘Glad I insisted on hundred per cent cotton bedding.’ I thought, ‘I could suspend Tony out of the window quite safely with these if I wanted to.’ I edged down the outside of the house, I was scared but it was really exciting, ‘Well you certainly get a different perspective on your world from this angle,’ I told myself, ‘I think I might do this again some time.’
I came to the end of my rope and looked down. ‘Careful now , a broken ankle could ruin the whole thing.’ I bent my legs until I was all but crouched against the wall then I slithered down and, eventually, let go of the rope and landed on the gravel drive. I felt like crouching and running for the cover of the trees but I didn’t. I dusted myself down, waved goodbye to Tony’s domain and started walking towards the road. ‘Tomorrow.’ I thought. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to learn to drive.’
