A clubbable woman

'Hello, Jenny,' said a voice from a side-table.

'Excuse me,' said Jenny to the man, who now obviously recognized her and was recomposing his face to a rubbery concern. But he couldn't quite get the mouth right and traces of the leer still showed through. By the time he felt able to add sound effects, Jenny was sitting down at a table with two girls and three youths. 'Hello, Sheila,' she said, 'Mavis. How's the world wagging?' 'Fine,' said Sheila. The other girl in contrast to both Jenny and Sheila was so heavily made up that it was like looking at someone behind a mask. She nodded carefully as though afraid of disturbing it.

The three boys rearranged themselves rather selfconsciously.

'You know these creeps, do you? Joe, Colin. And the gooseberry's Stanley.'

Jenny smiled.

'Hi. I've seen them around. How's your dad, Stanley?'

'Fine,' mumbled the boy.

Jenny smiled again, feeling a kind of desperate brightness sweeping over her, a need to avoid silences. 'Stanley lives in our road. It used to be his main ambition to see my knickers. Stanley the Watcher I used to call him.' She laughed, the others smiled politely. Stanley went very red, then very pale. That's a lie. That's a stupid thing to say. I don't know why you…' He trembled to a stop as the others looked at him in mild surprise. 'You mean you didn't want to see her knickers?' said Sheila. 'That's not very complimentary. Why don't you make yourself useful, get Jenny a drink or something? You can't expect her to get them in on a student's grant.' Miaow, thought Jenny as young Curtis stood up awkwardly and set off for the bar, turning after a couple of steps to ask, 'What do you want?'

'Bitter, please. Pint.'

'Female emancipation,' said Sheila. 'I can remember doing that for "O" level history.'

'So?'

'Well, so old Wilson used to tell us that lots of men opposed it because they felt it would lead to women in trousers sitting in pubs drinking pints of bitter. It was one of his jokes. He'd laugh if he could see you.' 'Perhaps he can,' said one of the two remaining boys. 'He's dead, so he might be watching.' Something violent happened under the table, and the boy looked startled, then apologetic. 'Look, Jenny,' said Sheila, 'we were all dead sorry to hear about your mother. That was rotten.'

They all nodded agreement, Mavis carefully as ever.

'Yes, it was. Thanks,' said Jenny. 'But life goes on.'

'That's one way of looking at it,' said Sheila.

'No, that's two ways of looking at it,' answered Jenny. 'One way, my life goes on despite my mother's death; the other way, someone else's life goes on because of it.' 'My, college has made you even sharper,' said Sheila with a thin smile. Jenny sensed she was losing a friend, or rather, cutting the last few strands which held their friendship together. She and Sheila had been very close at school up to the Fifth Form. They had both planned to stop on in the Sixth, then at the last moment, half way through the summer holidays in fact, Sheila had announced she was getting a job.

That had all been more than two years before. They'd seen each other fairly regularly since, but more and more competitively as time went on.

Now it didn't matter who won or lost.

Thanks, Stanley,' she said, taking the pint which had been deposited rather ungraciously before her. 'Cheers.' She took a mouthful, coughed and grimaced wryly at Sheila, who smiled back with something of their old affection. In fact Jenny was really very fond of beer, but she recognized that while an attempt to show off could be tolerated, careless expertize would only antagonize further.

'What're you all up to, then?' she asked.

'We, that is Mavis and me (or I, should I say?) are being entertained by these young gentlemen. Lavishly, as you can see.'

'What about you, Stan?'

'He's waiting,' interjected one of the boys quickly.

Tor what?'

They all laughed. Stanley shrugged and tried to look unconcerned. He made quite a decent job of it too.

'Cheer up. She might be along later,' said Sheila.

'He fancies Gwen Evans.' It was Mavis who spoke. Jenny remembered that the joke had always stopped at Mavis.

'All the men fancy Gwen,' said Sheila.

But not all the women, eh? thought Jenny. She knew Gwen Evans only slightly; she had seen her at the funeral, and previous to that a couple of times, but the memory stuck. 'I'd have thought she was a bit old for you, Stanley,' she said.

Sheila wrinkled her nose scornfully.

'It's all in the mind anyway. This lot read about all these teenage orgies and think they're missing out somehow.'

Joe and Colin grinned unconcernedly.

Now you don't look as if you're missing out, my lads, thought Jenny. 'Anyway,' Sheila went on, 'it's all happening at the universities and colleges, isn't it, Jenny? The intellectualsexual bit.'

Here we go again.

'Yeah,' said Colin with some enthusiasm, 'all those wild birds. It's all wiggle-waggle and jiggle-joggle at those places.' 'We have our moments,' said Jenny. She looked around the room. She wasn't quite sure why she had come here at all, but it certainly wasn't so she could sit and chat with this lot. They were too young for a start. Whoever it was that was menacing her with letters (a letter, she corrected herself, but feeling certain there would be more), whoever it was that had anything to do with her mother's death, that person, or those persons, would belong to her father's age group. What do I want anyway, she thought. To find out who wrote that letter? To find out if there was any truth in it? He could have denied it, he could have been positive, but all he did was tell me he loved me, that it didn't matter. Not matter? Something matters. If it doesn't matter, that matters. Miss Freud, that's me. Shortly to be Miss Sherlock Holmes. But how to start? What do people like Fat Dalziel and Popsy Pascoe do to get things moving? On the telly they just talk to people and find things out. But how do you know who to talk to in the first place?

'There she blows, Stanley,' said Joe.

Jenny turned her head. Her first impression was of an exotically beautiful woman lightly covered in a very revealing dress. But this was only for a second. Gwen Evans wore neither less nor more make-up than most other women in the room, her skirt was by no means the shortest there, her dress zipped up the front right up to the collar and she had a cardigan draped casually over her shoulders. It was the way she moved, the animation of her face, the way she held herself that made her presence so electric, not any ultra-daring revelation of flesh. Her husband was in close attendance at the moment but Jenny knew he was due at the meeting. The man behind the bar said something to him, probably a reminder, for he nodded, spoke to his wife, then with a quick look round the room, he left. Gwen too was looking round the room, more slowly, deliberately. Her gaze met Jenny's and paused. Then she smiled an acknowledgment and dropped an eyelid in half a wink. Jenny was surprised to feel herself flattered by this hint of intimacy between them.

'What're you waiting for, Stan?'

Stanley stood up awkwardly. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'I've got some work to do at home.' He moved across the room and out of the door without a glance at Gwen. 'My!' said Sheila. 'Perhaps he's got delusions of grandeur and is playing hard to get.' Jenny suddenly didn't care for her in the least. She downed the remaining beer in her glass in one easy draught. T think I'll circulate a bit,' she said. 'It's been nice having a chat.'