The lights were on when they got upstairs. Lorna, still in her coat, was slumped in front of the gas fire smoking Senior Service through a silly jewelled holder Suzy had left by the phone and sipping unhappily at a toothglass of neat gin. There was a new half bottle of Gilbey’s and a fresh pile of shillings on the mantelpiece. Brighton had not been a success.
Lorna was really quite pretty (for a redhead) but she obviously wasn’t the glamour type: patch-pocketed tweed skirt; Viyella blouse; hairslide. Suzy had once persuaded her to let her do her make-up. Big Terry had put all that ginger hair into a wormy fat mound on top of her head and Glenda had lent her a frock – green strapless taffeta. She didn’t look half bad but Lorna thought she looked like a tart and said so and the Egyptologist was so unnerved by this sudden nasty rash of glamour that he couldn’t get it up until she’d washed her face and stripped down to her knickers (navy-blue school leftovers).
That was months ago and the professor had obviously not been having too much trouble in that direction because Lorna was now three weeks late and had spent the weekend in the hotel room either crying her eyes out or being enthusiastically comforted by lover boy, who had decided to take full advantage of the fact that there would be no need to withdraw.
Lorna had always known he would never divorce Aileen – charming woman, apparently, head of modern languages at a girls’ grammar school in St Albans – but she didn’t ever want to have it proved conclusively. He hadn’t even mentioned the possibility of divorce, just fretted uselessly about how One went about arranging, ahem, Such Things and wondering if any of his colleagues had any idea what One did in these situations – and whether he could trust them to keep the whole Sordid Business to themselves.
‘It might affect his chances of promotion, apparently. Selfish pig. It didn’t occur to him that I might actually want to keep the rotten thing.’
The careful curve of Suzy’s eyebrows jumped nearly to her hairline.
‘Of course it didn’t, you dozy cow. What would you want with a baby, for Christ’s sake? They’d only make you have it adopted anyway. Imagine your mother with a bastard grandchild.’
This hit home. Suzy had only met Lorna’s mother once. She’d worn flat shoes specially. They hadn’t dared show her Suzy’s flat: they’d shown her round the one downstairs that belonged to a sweet old queen who worked in a wallpaper showroom in the next street. It was very nicely decorated – him being in the trade – but Mrs Lorna was still appalled by the idea of a lavatory on the half landing. Couldn’t understand why the darling daughter couldn’t travel in from Haywards Heath every day. Plenty of people did. Gaynor Charlesworth took the train to the P & O office every morning. What would people think?
People would probably think that poor Lorna was better off out of it: finally free of Mummy and her doilies and her musical doorbells and her koi carp and her vols au vents and her hostess aprons and the ludicrous bright brown nylon wig she wore to the shops on Wednesdays and Thursdays while she was holding on for Friday’s shampoo and set.
There was a Mr Lorna, back in Haywards Heath, but he hadn’t featured in the whole no-daughter-of-mine nonsense when Lorna had first moved into the flat and Suzy had never met him. Mr Lorna worked late whenever he possibly could and spent summer evenings and weekends in the greenhouse, faffing about cross-pollinating fuchsias and potting up dahlias or mixing composts in the nice warm shed he had built (at the very far end of the garden behind some trellis, as far away from Mrs Lorna as possible). There was a primus stove, an old armchair and, slid down between its sagging seat cushions, a small collection of rather dirty, dirty magazines. Not Playboy or anything like that. They were too clean. Too wholesome. Like a prettier, nuder version of the girl he’d married. No. Something grottier, and slightly hairier was more his cup of tea. Ginger if at all possible. It was finding one such grubby little photo in her father’s stash of reading matter that had made up Lorna’s mind to leave home.
She had stopped crying now but she hadn’t cheered up. Suzy poured her glass of gin down the sink, rinsed out a cup and made her some black tea. Lorna thanked her, ruefully wiping a half kiss of old lipstick off the rim of the teacup with her thumb.
‘Have you still not washed up?’
‘Not on your nellie. That’s your department. You can hardly get into the kitchen for mouldy plates. What must poor Janey think?’
Lorna smiled wanly at Jane.
‘Sorry about this. Are you moving in?’
Suzy looked slightly uncomfortable.
‘Well, yes. Moving out is nearer the mark, Lorna-my-darling, as you can probably tell from all the tea chests. The ever-obliging Mr Swan has a friend with a flat lying empty in Curzon Street who’s looking for two house-trained females to mind it for him and so Janey and I are moving in. Probably tomorrow. Janey’s boyfriend was at school with Henry’s kid brother, you see. Don’t worry about the rent. I’m paid through to Easter and you’re bound to find someone by then.’
The lies rattled past Lorna who sat, nursing her cold, bitter tea, glummer still at the thought of being left alone in the flat.
Suzy read her mind and immediately tried to sell her the idea of flat-sharing with some of the girls from the department. Surely they’d be queuing up? Only round the corner. Dirt cheap. Whether they would or not, Lorna was more worried about the next few weeks.
‘Will he leave the wife?’ Suzy only really asked out of politeness.
‘No. Didn’t even come up.’ Lorna’s tears streamed soundlessly down her face and into her cup.
Suzy might have made tea but there was no sympathy. Married men didn’t leave their wives and even if they did leave their wives (which they didn’t) they didn’t leave them for pregnant girlfriends with stubbly armpits. No chance of granny minding baby back in Haywards bloody Heath. No sense going through all that ugliness and agony just to save some other bitch the trouble. Which left Dr Tom.
Dr Tom couldn’t be telephoned. You had to put an ad in the evening paper and then he rang you. Suzy chatted on matter-of-factly about how long it all took and how Lorna could probably come and stay at the new flat for a couple of days – there was a tiny maid’s room up in the roof of the block, Henry said. And while Suzy was speaking Lorna’s face dried and hardened and she drained her cup and went to her bedroom without saying goodnight.
‘Mmm,’ wondered Suzy, ‘I get the feeling Lorna’s going to make her own arrangements. Silly cow. Do you like babies, Janey?’
Jane summoned up a picture of wailing, wet Georgette, bib crusty with crumbled rusks, face sticky with rosehip syrup, angry pink bum stuck in an envelope of smelly grey towelling.
When Georgette wasn’t in her high chair she was in her pram, a creaking pre-war wickerwork number, and left in the garden ‘to exercise her lungs’ or left outside the Spar for a bit more such exercise. Doreen preferred the Co-op really but the Spar gave Green Shield Stamps and Doreen was saving up for one of the clocks in the catalogue.
Doreen had raised Kenneth on strict Truby King lines: four-hourly feeds; no sweets; regular habits and now look: a spotty berk who collected bus numbers. Doreen had thrown her Truby King book away, thinking she’d done with all that, and so Georgette had no regular habits at all – unless you counted crying and shitting.
The Croydon area health visitor was very keen on routine. So much so that she always made her calls on the second Thursday of the month at eleven in the morning, enabling Doreen to regularly meet her at the front door in her hat and coat on her way out for some ‘pure fresh air’ for baby’s little walk (actually Doreen’s little walk to post Doreen’s little pools coupon). The woman – interfering stuck-up bitch – would then have to struggle to do the weighing in the front passage and mutter something about ‘baby’s routine’ and she’d be back on her bike.