Lots of famous people were at the party, mostly writers the firm published, but she wasn’t good at picking them out, and anyway so what if they were famous? She supposed those who were there and didn’t work in the office must be writers, except that there were so many unknowns from other departments that as far as she was concerned a lot of them might be writers as well. You couldn’t tell. Writers, she found, dressed like everybody else, and other people got so togged up that they might also be writers.
A man in a three-piece gravy brown suit and a cravat for a tie, crinkly grey hair, and stinking of whisky and aftershave, pinned her against the door. He told her he was a novelist, with the sort of leer not beamed in her direction since living in Yorkshire.
‘My name’s Norman Bakewell. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.’
The titles he ran off reminded her of the names her mother used to read aloud before going up the street to put bets on them at the bookies. Glittering eyeballs winked through heavy glasses that must have cost a bomb but looked dirt cheap.
‘I’ve read every one of them,’ she lied.
His lips were too close. ‘I only came to this firm because they said I could go to bed with any lovely woman who worked here.’
‘Written in your contract, is it?’
‘I insisted: a fat advance, twelve free copies, and any girl I fancied.’
‘And what part of the world do you come from, crumb?’
He winced. ‘Norman, if you please. A place near Wakefield. The name’s on the jacket of my latest bestseller.’
The village wasn’t far from hers, so he didn’t need an interpreter to understand the argot telling him to put his head in a bucket of cold water and keep it there for fifteen minutes. He moved to another girl, who had been at the firm long enough not to shove him away so abruptly.
She was getting undressed for bed, and couldn’t understand why Tom had been so attracted as not only to blab for half an hour, though mostly about himself and what a big shot he was, but even to fetch her another drink and, later in the evening, ask if he could see her home. Her no to this bumped his self confidence into paralysis, but she couldn’t bear him to see the slummy house at 24 Dustbin Grove where she lived.
Her put-down hadn’t been unpleasant, though however well she behaved she was always aware that her inborn mannerisms might give her away. The split drained her, but now she could feel the beautiful all-powerful woman because even Tom was interested in her. While settling into bed she was sorry not to have come back in his car instead of by the packed Tube. He was sure to be good at making love, certainly better than the deadbeats she’d so far tried it with.
She had held him off for so long that he became dead set on marriage, though not more keenly than she. He had made as good a husband as he was capable of, and while that seemed all right most of the time for both, it didn’t entirely come up to par for her. Something was missing which he was incapable of giving, a limit he couldn’t pass, unless what she sensed lacking wasn’t really there. Perhaps it was something in herself, though she didn’t see how.
He thought the fact that he could fuck well covered a multitude of sins, and much of the time it did, but at her most discontented she wondered whether the deadness in him was what stopped the uxorious devotion she craved from coming out. Even so, she supposed she was as much in love with him as she could be with any man, his only fault being that he gave too much time to his work.
A year after marrying she had a miscarriage. No, they had a miscarriage. For no known reason, the great event of their lives never happened. Did he wish it on her because he wondered if he was the father? He had no reason to, but every insane notion came to mind, to such stony country had the loss driven her. All talk was loving while she was expecting: Saul for him and John for her, or Rebecca for her and Mary for him. They discussed the matter for days and weeks, filling a chest of drawers with clothes for either sex and any age up to ten.
Her laugh was acidic. Toys and trinkets, tuckers and bibs, cups and a silver spoon, stashed and no longer looked at, the trunk locked. Lavender was powdered between cot blankets and cot sheets, as her mother had shown. The stupefaction lasted months. Maybe it was still going on, when she thought about it. She’d had tests but nothing was wrong — fuck-nothing was her anguished cry. Tom’s ebullience reasserted itself, telling her they could only exist and let the pain evaporate, and that nothing could part two people who had suffered such a blow.
She sat on the bed, and the sad resonances of Elgar’s music put her in mind of a motor excursion up the Wye Valley and into the Malvern Hills. Tom had arranged the trip to divert her from the miscarriage, but it only expanded the wilderness of loss, for how could anything other than going deeper into yourself find a solution as to what had gone wrong?
Such music indicated that she had done well for herself since leaving Yorkshire with a cheap and overfull suitcase, all that time ago. She had often thought of slinging the case away — a treasured memento in the attic — but pictured the dustbin men footballing it into the van with a laugh, wondering how such a shoddy item came to be in her opulent house.
Tom soon had a firm of his own, and travelled the world for business, a big man in it, youngish though he still was. She gave up her job, since more money was available from his gaudy books than they could throw about on everyday expenses. Habits of thrift from Yorkshire made her unwilling to spend unless for something essential.
To be lavish with his money would make her feel unequal, parsimony a counterweight to remaining herself, and not being completely taken in by a man who could give himself more cash in a week than many earned in a year.
And what an efficient little wifey I’ve turned into, she thought, grooming and mooning, entertaining and chatelaining. She supposed she’d hoped for it on running away from home, because didn’t you always achieve what you dreamed of in your ignorance, and even get that bit of romantic extra you never quite admitted to wanting for fear it wouldn’t happen?
Twice a year she loaded the Volvo with whatever pressies her parents might like, and ferried them up to Yorkshire: a hamper from Selfridges, a video and some James Cagney movies for her father; a camcorder in case they felt like making a memento of them staring at each other and saying nothing week after week.
Tom told her he loved Fred and Janice, and Angela laughed at how they behaved with their language and fussed to make him comfortable. He was too busy to go more than twice, but liked to choose their gifts, once sending a box of chocolates so big they joked about roping it to the luggage rack.
On the Great North Road she always stopped for lunch at The George in Stamford. She liked the old fashioned place, because Tom once booked them a room on their way to the Edinburgh Festival. She sat in the lounge afterwards for coffee. Feeling herself to be a woman of mystery and elegance, she surprised herself when, seeing a man come in who she fancied, she wondered whether she would go away with him for the weekend if he asked.
‘Fell off the back of a lorry, did they?’ her father said, seeing the gifts. ‘I hope the police won’t be round in the morning. We don’t want to upset your mother, do we? Do we, Janice?’ he bawled.