had a vivid dream.’
‘Hmm!’ was her sharp retort. ‘If they were they’d stand a better chance! Men stay out at the pub instead of –’
‘Oh,
Shee!
’ He leaned towards her coaxingly, proffering the first spliff, neater-rolled than those he would make later. ‘We’ve been over that, and I told you I got held up by the new doctor and the girl from the
Chronicle
–’
‘And I still don’t think you have any right to call her a girl! Would you call a man of the same age a boy?’
Proffering a match, Stick chuckled inwardly. They had been this road before, and every time it had concluded with them intertwined in bed. He looked forward.
It worked out. There was only one false note, and that a strange one. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Sheila said, gazing past his shoulder at the ceiling, ‘Did you ever dream of being a girl?’
‘What …? No, not that I recall. But if reincarnation is true, next time I want to come back female and find out what I’ve been missing!’
Seeming not to have got the point, she said, ‘I never dreamed of being a boy. Why should Hilary and Sam? Has their consciousness been raised that far already?’
‘We can ask them in the morning’ – his breath hot in her ear. ‘Or on Saturday …
But not right now!’
The phone rang. They ignored it. And again later.
Ursula Ellerford sat in the high-backed leather chair that had been her husband’s. Her sweat-moist fingers were clenchedon its arms and she was striving not to cry.
All around her – and she knew it, she knew it, because she could hear phone-bells ringing either side of this poky narrow house, and across the road as well – all around her was flying the information, the gossip, the
news
that should have kept her in touch the way the other members of the Weyharrow Society were kept in touch, so that at each monthly meeting they were in the swim while she, who was the voluntary secretary, who organized their visiting speakers and made sure expenses were met and told the publicity group how much they could afford for posters and reminded them to mount their fund-raising wine-and-cheese parties when the bank account was low and cleared up the mess after the members’ sons, drunken louts that they were, had upset glasses and dropped lighted cigarettes or even vomited …
She
was left high and dry, ignorant of what was going on, because of course if anybody invited her, a widow, to one of the almost nightly get-togethers in this village, any wife might imagine she was out to snatch the said wife’s husband, so it was safer not to ask Ursula.
Even if they did call her ‘poor’ Ursula …
And tonight was intolerable.
Her
phone was ringing now and then, maybe because some kind soul or other – Phyllis Knabbe, for instance, who had not a grain of malice in her body – was trying to bring her up to date.
But she was being forbidden to answer!
Her two man-tall sons were glowering at the TV, watching a programme she didn’t want to look at and apparently not one they would normally have stayed in for, either. But each time the phone rang one or other ordered, ‘Leave it alone! It’ll be about us. The yobs are after us again!’
Ursula had asked over and over, ‘But what have you done?’
So far the answers had always been simultaneous: ‘That stupid git of a teacher!’ and ‘That lying Eunice!’
It had taken her some time to make sense of the overlappingwords. Once she had done so, she requested further details, and was met with grunts and curses.
In the end she cowered in her chair, realizing by slow degrees how afraid she was of her sons. Even more slowly, but with the inevitable grinding of a glacier, she began to realize she had been equally afraid of her husband …
And what her sons were doing was treating her as he had.
She decided that the only safe thing to do was remain absolutely still. Even though the phone was clamoring again, and more insistently, she must not betray that she had
‘Hmm!’ was her sharp retort. ‘If they were they’d stand a better chance! Men stay out at the pub instead of –’
‘Oh,
Shee!
’ He leaned towards her coaxingly, proffering the first spliff, neater-rolled than those he would make later. ‘We’ve been over that, and I told you I got held up by the new doctor and the girl from the
Chronicle
–’
‘And I still don’t think you have any right to call her a girl! Would you call a man of the same age a boy?’
Proffering a match, Stick chuckled inwardly. They had been this road before, and every time it had concluded with them intertwined in bed. He looked forward.
It worked out. There was only one false note, and that a strange one. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Sheila said, gazing past his shoulder at the ceiling, ‘Did you ever dream of being a girl?’
‘What …? No, not that I recall. But if reincarnation is true, next time I want to come back female and find out what I’ve been missing!’
Seeming not to have got the point, she said, ‘I never dreamed of being a boy. Why should Hilary and Sam? Has their consciousness been raised that far already?’
‘We can ask them in the morning’ – his breath hot in her ear. ‘Or on Saturday …
But not right now!’
The phone rang. They ignored it. And again later.
Ursula Ellerford sat in the high-backed leather chair that had been her husband’s. Her sweat-moist fingers were clenchedon its arms and she was striving not to cry.
All around her – and she knew it, she knew it, because she could hear phone-bells ringing either side of this poky narrow house, and across the road as well – all around her was flying the information, the gossip, the
news
that should have kept her in touch the way the other members of the Weyharrow Society were kept in touch, so that at each monthly meeting they were in the swim while she, who was the voluntary secretary, who organized their visiting speakers and made sure expenses were met and told the publicity group how much they could afford for posters and reminded them to mount their fund-raising wine-and-cheese parties when the bank account was low and cleared up the mess after the members’ sons, drunken louts that they were, had upset glasses and dropped lighted cigarettes or even vomited …
She
was left high and dry, ignorant of what was going on, because of course if anybody invited her, a widow, to one of the almost nightly get-togethers in this village, any wife might imagine she was out to snatch the said wife’s husband, so it was safer not to ask Ursula.
Even if they did call her ‘poor’ Ursula …
And tonight was intolerable.
Her
phone was ringing now and then, maybe because some kind soul or other – Phyllis Knabbe, for instance, who had not a grain of malice in her body – was trying to bring her up to date.
But she was being forbidden to answer!
Her two man-tall sons were glowering at the TV, watching a programme she didn’t want to look at and apparently not one they would normally have stayed in for, either. But each time the phone rang one or other ordered, ‘Leave it alone! It’ll be about us. The yobs are after us again!’
Ursula had asked over and over, ‘But what have you done?’
So far the answers had always been simultaneous: ‘That stupid git of a teacher!’ and ‘That lying Eunice!’
It had taken her some time to make sense of the overlappingwords. Once she had done so, she requested further details, and was met with grunts and curses.
In the end she cowered in her chair, realizing by slow degrees how afraid she was of her sons. Even more slowly, but with the inevitable grinding of a glacier, she began to realize she had been equally afraid of her husband …
And what her sons were doing was treating her as he had.
She decided that the only safe thing to do was remain absolutely still. Even though the phone was clamoring again, and more insistently, she must not betray that she had
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