Bad Girls Good Women (39 page)

Julia soothed her. ‘You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be a big success. A sensation.’

‘Please, no,’ Mattie moaned.

‘Shall I come and watch the dress rehearsal? If you know I’m there …’

Mattie’s fingers tightened around her wrist like iron rings.

‘No. I don’t want you to see it. I don’t want anyone I care about to see it.’

The tickets for the first night were in Julia’s drawer. Everyone they knew was coming, and Bliss was even bringing China. Julia hadn’t met his mother yet.

Julia stroked the bright mass of Mattie’s hair. ‘All right. That’s all right. If you don’t want us to be there, we won’t be. Look, Mattie, it’s time for you to go now. It’s only the dress rehearsal today. You can get through that, can’t you? Isn’t it supposed to be terrible? Just think of one thing at a time.’

Mattie nodded. Her face was so pale it seemed transparent.

Julia helped her into her coat and Felix came down the stairs with them. He found her a taxi and put her into it. They had a last glimpse of her wan face as they watched it drive away. Julia exhaled a long breath. They were like fond, anxious parents waving a child off to do an exam. Felix felt it too and they both laughed.

‘She’ll do it, won’t she?’

‘Of course she will.’

Companionably they walked once round the square. The day was frost-sharp and the noise of the traffic was amplified in the stillness. The grass inside the railings of the square garden was still silvered in the hollows, and there were tufts of startling wet emerald where the weak sun touched it. When Julia gripped the iron railings, looking through them at the green and silver, her bare hands seemed to freeze to the metal. With her senses sharpened by her anxiety for Mattie, she had a sudden sense of the exquisite, orderly power of the physical world.

Felix’s hand brushed her shoulder. ‘Sensualist,’ he said.

Not really
, she might have answered.
I would have been, but not without Josh
. It occurred to Julia again that she was getting older. She felt it in her heart, and in her cold hands.

They went inside again, up the familiar stairs.

In Jessie’s room Felix prowled silently to and fro, turning a picture to catch the light, lifting the heavy folds of the curtains and letting them fall again in looser ripples. Watching him, Julia felt her forlorn longing relax its hold a little. She had missed Felix, too, and now he was home. She sat down on the plush sofa and drew her knees up so that she could rest her chin on them. She wanted to draw him closer, to fill in the space between them. Felix was easier company now, but Julia was clearly aware that he guarded his feelings even more carefully.

‘Tell me about when you were away,’ she asked.

Felix turned abruptly. In the silence he heard the whisper of dry needles falling from their Christmas tree. Julia wouldn’t allow it to be taken down before Twelfth Night.

He had been waiting for a question that he could put an answer to. He had never done so for Jessie, and in a sense what he wanted to tell Julia was for Jessie too.

‘Julia. You know that I’m a homosexual, don’t you?’

Her head didn’t jerk up. She didn’t even catch her breath. She went on looking at him, her expression not changing. He loved her, then.

Julia said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I did know. Without really knowing it.’

‘I wanted to be sure.’ His voice was expressionless. ‘Because of what happened between us.’

She nodded quickly. They were remembering the day of the funeral, and the wet petals glued to the soaking earth. The party that Felix had wanted to give for Jessie afterwards, and the quiet grief that the bottles of whisky had failed to dispel. And after that, Felix’s bedroom with the pictures of Mattie and herself and Josh pinned over the mantelpiece. Felix had turned off the light, leaving the darkness full of silence and empty spaces.

What would Jessie say
now? Julia thought. It was imperative to make the response that Jessie would have made, to be able to offer Felix some of his mother’s broad understanding. She was afraid of her own inadequacy, but it occurred to her that it was easier for her than it would be if she really were Felix’s mother. She smiled, faintly. Felix saw it and came to sit beside her, the old plush sofa creaking in protest. Julia held out her hand, palm up, and Felix covered it with his own. Their hands clasped.

‘Did you always know?’ she asked simply.

‘No.’ And then, ‘If I did, I didn’t admit it for a long time.’ Felix was thinking,
That doesn’t change. I can’t admit to you now that when I took you to bed, all that time ago, I was thinking of Josh. Wanting to think of Josh, and then despising myself for it. Subterfuges, and learning to live with the need for them
.

Julia couldn’t decipher what he must feel. She was only aware of wanting to offer him what he needed, as Jessie would have done. ‘Tell me,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Only if you want to.’

They had both changed, Felix realised, Mattie and Julia. They had acquired reticence, even with each other. Their exchange of confidences was less raucous, the atmosphere of femaleness surrounding them less exclusive. They had turned into women, Felix thought. The realisation touched him.

He told her what had happened. Not everything, not even most of it, but at least the truth at the heart of it.

Felix had survived his National Service; had almost, perversely, enjoyed it. He soon discovered, however, that he was better equipped for the struggle to survive each day than most of the other recruits in his squad. He was older, he was self-contained and used to the necessity of being so, and he was dexterous and efficient. It was Felix who discovered that the thick, shapeless khaki uniform trousers that they had all been issued with could be made to hold creases that would satisfy the NCOs if the nap was shaved off along the crease line with a razor blade. He could mix Green Blanco to just the right consistency and apply it to his webbing in the correct quantity so the smooth surface didn’t crack. He could polish his brasses to a mirror shine, and he was the barracks champion with the heated spoon that was the only way of removing pimples from the leather surface of standard issue boots. He could also execute the intricate regulation folds in the rest of his kit when laying it out on his bed for the daily inspection, and he learned to stuff the empty pockets of his laid-out kitbag with newspaper to give it the correct square proportions.

Almost all of their non-soldiering interest and conversation centred on sex. As soon as they were allowed Saturday night off-barracks passes, the squad’s two loudest studs had fresh encounters to boast about. Almost all the others had their own stories to tell, true or – as Felix suspected – mostly invented. Not a detail was spared. Only the grammar school boy with glasses blushingly admitted his virginity.

‘Get in the boozer with us Saturday night and we’ll find yer a tart,’ one of the others roared. ‘We’ll lose yer cherry for yer, won’t we, lads? Just as long as we can watch, mind.’

Felix had nothing to contribute. He was popular enough for no one to rib him about it, any more than they would have done about the colour of his skin, except to joke mildly about it, but one evening around the Blanco tins someone asked him, ‘You got a girl, Lemoine? Must have, a looker like you.’

‘Bet they get their knickers off and wave them at you, don’t they? All those old wives’ tales about what your lot can offer …’

‘There’s a girl, yes,’ Felix said, to cut off the flow.

‘What’s her name, then?’

‘Julia.’

Sitting beside him on the sofa, watching the incandescent crimson of the gas fire, Julia laughed.

‘I should have sent a photograph for your locker.’

‘One of Miss Matilda in full regalia would have been more impressive.’

The worst, the very worst social crime that stalked the barrack-rooms was to be queer. It was the most pointed accusation, the direst insult in the soldiers’ extensive repertoire of abuse. ‘Fucking queer’ was the last epithet in a confrontation before the fighting broke out.

Felix heard it all. He also knew that most of his colleagues adopted their attitudes of swaggering potency more from fear of being thought effeminate than from real sexuality. There was rumoured to be enough bromide in the NAAFI tea to dampen any genuine ardour. He thought, with relieved amusement, that he certainly felt none himself.

Amongst the regular NCOs there was a stores corporal referred to by everyone as Maisie. Maisie was very slightly camp, but he also had a sharp enough tongue and enough authority for the nickname only ever to be used out of his earshot. Felix had looked at Maisie once or twice, but only for long enough to speculate on how the corporal managed to exist in this society if he really was queer. He was an ungainly little man with a red, lumpy face and hair cut so short that it shadowed his skull with colourless bristles.

One Saturday evening Felix was in the ablutions, shaving.

On Saturday nights almost every soldier had an off-barracks pass and the camp emptied itself for several hours. Felix preferred to stay put. Solitude was a rare luxury in the overcrowded huts and he used the little, precious time to read or to draw. On this Saturday he had cadged a tin of boiling water from the mess and carried it over to the ablutions. The water there was almost always tepid or cold, and tonight he was looking forward to the comfortable ritual of a peaceful shave. He was whistling softly as he rubbed the soap into a lather over his cheeks. Water hissed and dripped in the overhead pipes and the steam from his can of hot water clouded the dim fragment of mirror, He rubbed it clear with his wrist, and reflected over his shoulder he saw Maisie. The corporal was standing in the doorway. As Felix watched him he closed the door quietly and looked up and down the length of the ablutions room. The doors of all the cubicles stood open, and there was silence except for the amplified dripping of water. He came across and stood at the next basin, looking at Felix’s soapy face in the mirror.

‘Best bloody time of the week, eh?’ Maisie chuckled.

Felix nodded and deliberately carved the first path through the white foam with his razor.

Then Maisie reached out and put his hand on Felix’s backside.

It was a gesture so completely natural and direct that Felix almost responded to it. He put his razor down and it clanked awkwardly against the tin basin. He looked into Maisie’s eyes in the mirror. Their expression was imploring, shaded with defiance. The man’s hand moved appreciatively, cupping Felix’s buttock under the thick khaki. Felix looked down. He knew every crack and pockmark in the brick floor. He had scrubbed each brick, his shadow lengthened by the naked bulbs overhead as he worked, ready for inspections. He followed one particular crack that ran right across the floor to the urinals. As his eyes reached the wall, without warning, fear spilled and washed all through his body. It gripped and twisted in the pit of his stomach and it cut off the breath in his chest. He tore the towel from round his neck and rubbed the soap off his face. As he reached the door he heard Maisie say coldly, ‘Who are you trying to fool? It’s as plain as the nose on your fucking face, laddie.’

Felix didn’t look round.

He reached his own section of the hut and sat down on his bed. He rubbed his face mechanically with the towel. He was thinking,
Is it so obvious, then?

And as he grappled with the question he realised that for the first time, in full consciousness, he was admitting the whole truth to himself.

Felix sat on his bed for a long time, unmoving. He knew that Maisie wouldn’t come looking for him here. When his thoughts were orderly again and the fear had gone, Felix was left with a last, unwelcome realisation. The red-faced corporal’s touch had aroused him physically. Felix stood up. He went quickly across to the recreation block and into the washroom there. He locked himself into one of the stalls and dealt with himself, using short, vicious strokes.

Afterwards, he went into the recreation hall and found a group of men who were confined to barracks, playing cards. They greeted him cheerfully, and Felix sat down to join in the game.

Maisie didn’t single Felix out again, but whenever he saw the corporal he asked himself the silent question:
Is it so obvious?

By the second half of their sixteen-week basic training programme, Felix and the rest of his intake were more skilled at getting through the work assigned to them, and the NCOs’ withering attention had passed to the new recruits coming up behind them. There was more time for off-duty pursuits, and the possibility of friendships outside the immediate barrack-room circle.

Felix met David Mander because they both used a little box in the recreation block officially known as the hobbies room, although it contained no hobbies equipment except for a crumbling dartboard fixed to one wall. The light in the room was good because it had windows all down one side, and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons Felix used to sit and draw at a metal table. In camp he mostly drew London scenes, from memory, filling them with obsessive detail. He drew Berwick Street market and Shaftesbury Avenue, and the square shaded by plane trees with the windows of the flat showing over the tops of the trees. Drawing the places seemed to bring him closer to being there.

In the swarming world of the camp Felix had never even seen Mander before. He was just a silent figure at a table at the other side of the room, someone who made accurate but uninteresting models of famous buildings out of scraps of balsawood. They began to nod to each other, and one afternoon Mander strolled over and stared at Felix’s drawing.

‘That’s very good,’ he said, sounding surprised. He had a drawling, affected voice that sounded almost shocking after the rough obscenities of the other conscripts. Felix glanced at him, irritated. Mander had black hair and a red mouth. ‘Better than that rubbish, anyway,’ he added, nodding at his own model.

‘Why do you do it?’ Felix asked. Mander grinned, showing his teeth. He looked pleased with himself.

‘I started doing it at school. Important to have something to concentrate on besides rugger. Model-making was the least taxing option. But it’s curiously compulsive, you know. I’ll probably be doing it into my dotage. God, what a prospect.’