‘Me too,’ said Sam, to be in competition.
‘They’re packed tight with ice-cream,’ Tom told her, ‘so they can wait for dinner.’ He looked: ‘Where’s Judy?’
‘She fell asleep. I left her among all the clothes. She certainly looks a picture!’
‘She’s always falling asleep,’ Hilary said. ‘She’s got sleepy sickness.’
Sam held out his arm. ‘Can I look through your binoculars again, Tom?’
Raindrops flecked the window panes. ‘You won’t see much at the moment.’ He hung them round his neck. ‘Sit on that chair, and tell me if you see a ship coming towards us. Then we’ll take evasive action!’
‘I’ll wake Judy.’ She left him opening the wine. Impossible to disturb her. She closed the door and knelt by the bed. There was hardly a breath, only a faint tremor at the breast, and at the closed eyes. She moved to kiss her lips, but held back. She could only go so far, must be met at least half-way before she would dare such sweetness. A kiss would wake her, and Judy would know why. Kisses that didn’t waken were impossible. There might be a reason, if she were seeing her for the last time. And she didn’t want that. Friends in her new life affected her profoundly. Her brain had turned about. She smiled at the difference in consciousness. If Judy were awake a kiss would be easy. Or would it? She had never kissed a woman on the lips before today, at least not when it meant so much. She stroked her forehead, unable to believe such gentleness could be felt through the curtain of Judy’s sleep, the pad of her finger ends going backwards and forwards along the faint lines.
It was hard to regain control of her feelings so that the experience could be put behind her. She wanted to look back on it, instead of being ever-worried by its implications, which was the only possibility of keeping it as marvellous as she had found it, and the one way she wanted to think about Judy when they faced each other again – without guilt, as the only moments of freedom in her life, if freedom was the time when what you did had not only no connection whatever to the thought within but advanced your consciousness in a direction you never suspected was possible, in such a way as to allow you the choice as to whether or not you wanted to go there at all.
The idea expanded, and warmed her. She felt a more malleable affection than before, as if she had been inside the moon and was still glowing from its heat, though she assumed that Judy would think nothing of their encounter, and that they would probably not meet in such a way again.
Her eyes opened. Neither spoke. Judy looked, as if wanting to know where she was before trusting herself to say anything. ‘I haven’t enjoyed it so much for a long time,’ she said.
Pam nodded.
‘I didn’t expect it.’ She held her hand. ‘And so quick!’
‘Secret?’
There was mischief in her glint. ‘Yes, sure.’ She sat up. ‘I slept ten hours in one. You’ve changed back to your own clothes.’
‘I know. But keep yours on. You look grand in them.’
Judy stood. ‘I need a wash. Now I know why you asked me to come down!’
‘That wasn’t the reason.’
She laughed. ‘Have the children been good?’
‘Tom says so.’ She watched her fasten her skirt and blouse, then tidy her hair at the mirror. ‘I can’t believe how different you look.’ When Judy kissed her on the lips she stiffened.
‘Relax,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘I won’t hurt you. Or eat you!’
‘It isn’t that. But we’d better go.’
She was held firmly by the waist. ‘If you come to London I’ll ask you to stay with me.’
She would never be there again, she supposed. At least not alone. ‘All right.’
Sam and Hilary played on the floor with the colour supplements and a packet of felt pens, elaborately vandalizing the advertisements, while Tom read an article in the Sunday paper by a Member of Parliament who began by calling himself a friend of Israel and then went on to consider it right and proper that Israel should surrender its provinces of Judaea and Samaria (and therefore its secure borders) as well as Jerusalem the capital city, as a mark of goodwill to the Arabs, for the sake of international peace, not to mention oil supplies to a Europe which, Tom reflected with disgust, had never been reconciled to the existence of a Jewish State.
A feature on how to decorate houses seemed genuine because it made fewer demands on credulity and credibility, but he was diverted by someone coming into the room whom for a moment he did not know.
The sky turned dark outside, and with only wall-lights on, the shadows lengthened Judy’s pale face. Her features were stilled at his gaze. The long skirt and high collar turned her statuesque, made her severe and formidable, an apparition until she spoke. She had stepped from one of his memories, as if an acquaintance of his mother’s or aunt’s had reappeared with a disturbing suddenness that would silence any speech.
She sensed the unwanted effect, deciding she had been foolish to dress up and that Tom regarded her transformation as either an act of thievery, deception, or cheek. Hilary got up from the floor and ran to fasten her arms around her mother. ‘What’s the matter with you, mummy? What happened?’
‘Stop crying, and don’t be so bloody silly.’
She smiled at Tom, and was again recognizable. Hilary’s octopus grip was hard to break. ‘I hope you don’t mind me having looted your family’s rag-trade heirlooms?’
‘I said you could.’
‘You look as if I’m back from the dead, though.’
Such clothes enhanced her beauty. ‘I did wonder, for a moment.’
The oil-painted face above the mantelshelf seemed to be observing her deliberate pose. ‘Almost feel it myself,’ she said.
‘You look splendid.’
She rested a hand on the piano, a distorted reflection filling the polished top, broken when she turned savagely on Sam for his continued stare. ‘Never seen a woman before?’
‘Take them off,’ Hilary whimpered.
Judy walked over and stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘At least you’re normal. But don’t worry. I’ll be back in my old drag-clouts soon. Then you can feel safe again.’ She turned to Pam. ‘That’s the trouble with kids – you never know what to do for the best!’
‘Perhaps if you take to wearing such clothes,’ Tom suggested, ‘you might civilize them.’ Yourself as well – but he wanted peace while they were here, and said nothing.
‘I told her how marvellous she looked.’
Pam wished she had kept silent when Judy scoffed in reply, piqued perhaps because everyone seemed determined to undermine her: ‘You should be the last person to want to straighten me out.’
Her attack, veiled as it was in her own sort of humour, was noted by Tom, and also by Sam who had turned pale at this apparition in unfamiliar dress. The seriousness of the insinuation was marked by a twitch of alarm on Pam’s lips. Judy relied on her reputation for outlandish remarks in order to evade the responsibility for what she said, whether it had been true or not, but this time she knew she had gone too far, and tried to make amends, a move which to any acute person, which Pam thought meant everyone in the room, could only confirm the truth of what she had implied.
‘After all,’ Judy added with a laugh, ‘you said I ought to try something on.’
‘I’m glad you took her advice.’ Any words from Tom were better than none, relevant or not, and he spoke only to break the lull following Judy’s assertion which, open to more interpretations than could be fitted in now, was most likely a jocular comment that meant nothing to anyone except herself. Certainly, Pam’s frown vanished as soon as he turned to pour drinks for the three of them.