‘Don’t make it worse! I’m glad it happened to you both. Why shouldn’t we be fond of each other?’ Pam stopped herself going too far, though it would never have occurred to her to say much, being so close to Tom, for it would seem like betraying him. She expressed this to Judy, who said: ‘You’ll have to stop thinking like that. I suppose he wonders the same about you. It’s only natural. No man is a cabbage. Nor any woman, either.’
They finished the cigarette. ‘How’s your life?’ Pam asked.
‘Personal, you mean?’
She nodded.
‘Smashed. My prissy little civil servant girl-friend took umbrage when she saw me with a woman I used to know, and imagined the worst. Or the best, except that there wasn’t any best about it, and the worst didn’t happen, not with her, anyway. But I’m too busy looking after Sam and Hilary to go in for much philandering. We’d better change back into our everyday rags.’
‘Oh no, keep yours on. You really do look marvellous.’
‘It’s nice to be praised.’ She went to the mirror. ‘I’ll play the drag queen today – but what a let-down when I get home. Do you fall in love easily?’
Pam sat on the edge of the bed, and felt obliged to say: ‘I sometimes see a man in the street I think I could go for. But I’m attached to Tom, and that’s love, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t have affairs when I was married, so I feel a bit lost regarding experience, though I don’t really feel a lack of it.’
Judy sat at her feet. ‘I’ve had quite a bit, but I’m not sure it’s done me much good. I suppose it’s better than not having had any. It’s impossible to have just enough to equip you emotionally for getting the best out of life, but not sufficient to ruin your feelings.’
In her new dress Pam saw Judy as if she were younger, calm, without children, and able to talk properly instead of swear like a villain, almost as if they had met in some hotel far from their normal lives. It was restful to talk to someone in this inconsequential way, and she wondered if it could happen with any person other than Judy. The distance between them narrowed. She felt far closer to her than when she had been with ‘normally married’ women in the past. With them she would turn stand-offish, especially if the acquaintance threatened to go in the direction of a heart-to-heart talk, as if there was something shameful in their similarly closed lives, much like two prisoners talking in jail and forgetting that a free life existed.
The narrowing gap generated more intimacy than she seemed to want. A resonance in Judy’s voice was pleasant yet disturbing, at times irresistibly caressing. She looked down on elegantly piled hair, at the flushed face pressed against her thighs. ‘My feelings weren’t finally spoiled,’ Pam said. ‘As soon as I left my old life they began coming back, though it was so painful that I thought once or twice I wouldn’t be able to make it.’
Judy looked at her. ‘I know. It’s like a diver coming up for air from a long way down, after the air-pipe’s not been working properly. You get the bends. But gradually the agony goes, so I understand.’
Who but another woman would acknowledge that she had been right to abandon a man? To her, such understanding could only be termed affection, and she laid a hand against the side of Judy’s warm face.
Judy looked up in pleased surprise. Her larger hand took Pam’s, and she kissed the opening palm, her tongue warming across. They stayed silent for some minutes, then Judy’s long fingers went slowly under her skirt, and though Pam’s face burned like fire she could not turn them back.
15
After Tom had put five .22 bullets into the black circle, Hilary wanted a go. The man in charge of the rifle range said that children had to be fourteen, though he would stretch a point if she could get on tiptoes and stand high enough to lean on the counter at least. Tom opened the breech and drew back the bolt so that she could slide the round in. He pulled the butt tightly into her shoulder. ‘Now, squeeze the trigger, here – but gently.’
The sharp noise of firing startled her. Then she blinked, and pushed her hair back. ‘Did I get the bull’s-eye?’
He pulled the bolt open, and the empty case came out. ‘Fire the other four, and we’ll see how you did.’
Sam waited. Each bullet cost five pence, and he trembled at the amount being spent. Hilary fired more quickly. Between the noise Sam heard waves coming through the pier supports and shouldering against the beach. He collected the empty shellcases for trading at school. Money flowed like water into the hands of the attendant, for he and Hilary had thirty shots each before Tom reckoned their smarting shoulders might tell them it was time to leave. But Hilary’s headache came first, and she had to get out. Sam was so pale it seemed he would be sick either from excitement or the peculiar powder-like smell of the airless place. They took their cardboard targets, to compare scores at the end of the pier.
He watched their zigzag antics on the Dodgem Cars. There was no straightforward life for them or anybody, even though they were looked after to the top of Judy’s ability. He supposed there was intelligence on the father’s side as well, yet they were being brought up as if they would one day have to function like bandits in the hills. They weren’t getting what they deserved. It wasn’t easy to say exactly what they lacked. A father, most likely, though he found it difficult to believe there was no better solution than that. But it was also true, as he had occasionally found in life, that the most obvious solution was often the only one possible, and in many cases the best.
He bought them ice-cream with a stick of flaky chocolate. Flickering cold rain made them fasten their duffel coats as they trekked against it to the road, each holding one of Tom’s hands as if they would belong to him for ever.
16
Pam closed the door, no click to the latch, unwilling to feel guilty or ashamed. She had forestalled Judy’s pleading. Did I? Was that how it happened? Impossible for her to have initiated it, or to deny such a thing with her, so out of an exquisite regard which was now a vital matter to them, and of no concern to anyone else, she had let her.
They had their secret, and she was not unhappy. No one could know how much pleasure they had given each other, and as for having a secret from Tom, what love had value which was without a secret to give it depth and solidity? It could not wreck their love, though if he knew, would he consider it a danger? If it had been with a man he no doubt would, and if he didn’t she would be hurt and amazed. She could only hold back those thoughts which threatened to bring shame, guilt, and self-condemnation on every count. She’d had enough of that.
Surrounded by dresses, skirts, blouses and underwear, Judy slept as if she hadn’t rested for months. Among scattered clothes she seemed dismembered, though her spirit, reflected in her face, was as calm as if set in stone. She needed peace, love, money, or a job she liked, Pam thought, unable to break the gaze at her whose transposition to calmness was more complete than that given by a change of fifty-year-old clothes.
There was a noise as if a sack of apples had been thrown against the front door. She opened it at the bell, and the children fell in, pink-faced and breathless. ‘We shot bullets,’ Hilary cried. ‘Real bullets from a rifle, Pam. Look at my card: you can see the holes!’
Tom took off his overcoat. ‘There’s a shooting gallery on the pier. The only thing that would keep them quiet.’
‘I’m frozen,’ Hilary said. ‘That rain had needles in it.’
Pam pulled her close, a smell of wet clothes and soapy scalp. ‘Go in the kitchen then, where it’s warm.’
But she wouldn’t. ‘I’m starving-hungry, as well.’