‘Francine! Francine!’
‘I’m here.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I was listening to you talking about your class.’
‘I told you, I didn’t go this week. I’ve hurt my back — as if you were interested!’ She gave an unbecoming snort of laughter. ‘Francine, it’s very rude to just go off when a person’s talking to you. I don’t know what gets into you sometimes. Your father and I sometimes sit for hours trying to remember what terrible thing it was that we did to you. I know you think my aerobics is boring, but it’s very important to me and—’
‘Sorry,’ said Francine.
‘— and you haven’t even asked how your father is yet.’
‘How is he?’
‘He’s been unwell, as a matter of fact. We thought he had cancer.’
Such excursions into tragedy were a frequent feature of Maxine’s conversation.
‘Really?’ said Francine. She lay back on the sofa and examined her freshly shaven legs.
‘But the doctor said it’s just a bit of constipation. He’s got to cut down on his fats. Not that I ever give him fatty foods, mind you. I learnt that lesson long ago with my own problems. Still, we’ll get by.’
There was a clamour on the line as the extension was picked up.
‘I’m fine,’ bellowed Frank. ‘Just a bit bunged up is all.’
‘Good,’ said Francine.
‘And what’s madam been up to? Out all night, I don’t doubt, causing trouble.’
‘Catting about!’ interjected Frank helpfully.
‘Oh, I’ve been busy,’ sighed Francine, relaxing into a cushion. ‘I’ve got a new job.’
‘The last one didn’t last long,’ said Maxine suspiciously. ‘Why can’t you seem to hang on to anything?’
‘It was only temporary, Mum. This one’s much better. The agency thinks it’ll be permanent.’
‘What’s it involve?’ interrupted Frank.
‘It’s with an investment bank in the City, working with the director.’
Francine enjoyed their bewildered silence.
‘Make sure you hang on to it,’ said Frank finally, hanging up.
‘How’s that Janice? Frank and I think she’s a very nice girl.’
‘She’s fine.’
Maxine had a habit of drawing unshakable conclusions about people from the way in which they comported themselves on the telephone.
‘You’re still getting on, are you?’
‘Of course we are.’
‘There’s no “of course” about it, Francine. You’ve quite ruined my new address book, what with all the crossings out. You can be very difficult to live with sometimes. Believe me, I’m the expert.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You say you’ve been busy,’ said Maxine after a pause, her manner warmer now after the exercise of her resentments.
‘I’ve been out a lot.’
‘I’ll say you have. I’ve got to know that machine of yours so well it invited me round for tea.’ Her laughter shrilled down the phone.
‘I went to a party in an art gallery.’
‘Very grand,’ said Maxine, catching her breath. ‘Anybody nice there?’
‘Oh, I met a lot of people. Journalists, mostly. Everyone was really nice.’
‘So nobody special.’
‘I just said, lots of people!’
‘I suppose they don’t have names.’
‘Well, there was a journalist I liked called Stephen, and a friend of his called Ralph.’
‘What sort of friend?’ said Maxine darkly.
‘Just a friend,’ said Francine, exasperated. ‘He invited me to dinner at his house.’
‘And what does the friend do for a living? He’s the arty type, I suppose.’
‘He works in television.’
‘I see. You’re going to tell me next he’s going to put you on it.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Watch your mouth, young lady. I suppose he can cook, too.’
‘He made risotto,’ said Francine. ‘He owns a flat in Camden.’
‘Well, that’s what he says,’ said Maxine. ‘But you never know, do you? He might have it mortgaged up to the hilt. Why didn’t he take you out? Is he tight?’
‘You don’t know anything,’ sighed Francine. ‘Everyone has dinner parties these days.’
‘Pardon me for living,’ said her mother.
Afterwards, Francine felt dissatisfied by the conversation. She wished Janice would come home. Eventually she got up and walked restlessly around the sitting-room for a while. She wondered if Ralph would call again, and realized that he might have been trying all that time she was on the phone to her mother. Finally, she sat down on the sofa and picked up a magazine.
Eight
Camden Road was a flooded river of cars and from the top of the bus Ralph had watched the traffic jam take on the irremediable, erupted look of a disaster. For a while the packed chain of dirty, disparate metals had been forcing itself thickly through the gates of the traffic lights in a unified triumph of will, but suddenly it was as if the crowd of cars had lost faith in the principles of their community and people had begun breaking from lanes in an attempt to escape, skewing themselves across the white lines and nudging into other hostile queues to a rising clamour of horns. Ralph knew that he should get off the bus and walk the last half-mile to the office, but he was hindered by a strange paralysis, an inability to free himself from this vision of chaos in which he seemed so to belong. Unchained and let loose in the streets, who knew where he might wander? On a Monday morning such as this, when his membership of the city was an imprisonment and the emergent self the weekend had allowed to roam must be forced back into its cell, it was better that he should be delivered defeatedly to his door.
His patchy performance in the closing stages of the previous week made the proper execution of the day imperative. He had been distracted on Thursday, his mind crowded with what proved to be unplayed scenes, his body bent on leaving early, and on Friday he had been morose and unwell. He had run into debt and must use today to replenish his reserves of good conduct. Once their taste was acquired, such disruptions of routine could, he knew, lead to larger rebellions. Ralph feared the prospect of his own disobedience, and although he had never really detected in himself any sign that he might one day decide, for perhaps no reason other than perversity, not to follow the path that necessity had laid down for him, still he remained vigilant against the possibility of his insurrection. He couldn’t afford to entertain ideas of his own freedom: once admitted, he could not be sure of ever persuading them to leave. It was not that he judged himself particularly prone to being led astray, but he had always ascribed the right to build fantastical, foolish plans as belonging to those whose foundations were secure. He didn’t regard the people he knew as dependent, exactly, but he felt sure that they would never be permitted to slide into poverty or destitution: there would always be someone, some relative who could be dug up and appealed to, someone who would feel pity or guilt at their demise. Ralph was alone, and although sometimes he could go for weeks without really thinking of his solitude, some deeper instinct always remembered it. It was a mercy not to think of it too often, in fact, because when he did he would often grow angry or morose at the relentless contingency of everything in his life; and what was the point of self-pity if there was nobody to pity you for it? He had learned to accept certain things: the inescapability of work, regardless of whether he enjoyed it or not; and the possibility that no one might care if he lost everything. Stephen would mind, probably, but he couldn’t be counted on really to care in any useful way.
Ralph supposed that his situation carried within it the danger of relying too much on love to swaddle him in illusions of security. That had been the problem with Belinda, really, because he had somehow got the impression that his orphaning, his terrible aloneness, was one of the things for which she loved him. She used to ask him about it all the time, wanting to know exactly when each beam had rotted and given way and how he had felt as the sky and ground came terrifyingly into view; and he would enjoy watching her face soften with sympathy as he told her, knowing that his subscription to things he hadn’t really felt, but knew none the less to be tragic, would make her care for him. In the end, though, the feelings gave him no pleasure, for they were impersonal, humanitarian things, and Belinda had grown tired of it as her love curdled to pity and then, he feared, contempt. He suspected that the lack of visible evidence of how he had come to exist made people uncomfortable with him. For a while, certainly, he was unusual, but eventually he was only odd and difficult to fit into the scheme of things. He had come to regard his solitude as a principle by which people felt it correct to act, a feature which generated its own response: he had been deserted, therefore it was possible, necessary even, to desert him.