once a week, sometimes twice
and on the weekends they took Rachel and Karen to the seaside to give Shirley a break
while the toddlers slept, they took advantage of the double bed
they never spoke of what they did
Lennox had urges, it was better she satisfy him than he left her daughter
for another woman
and then he left her, or rather he stopped it
no explanation, no discussion, no excuses, no compassion
did he come to his senses at sleeping with a middle-aged woman? was he guilty at sleeping with his mother-in-law? was Shirley making love with him again? had she even stopped?
or had he found someone else?
Winsome never got an answer because she couldn’t bring herself to ask
for a long time afterwards Lennox didn’t look her in the eye, if he could help it, he didn’t even look at her in the face
Shirley noticed she wasn’t as pally with Lennox as before
don’t be silly, you know how fond I am of him, Shirl
Winsome wished he hadn’t awakened a longing in her that he wouldn’t satisfy
he’d given her a taste of himself and then withdrawn it
she didn’t hate him for it, she wanted him more because of it
he became fantasy materiaclass="underline" they spent erotic afternoons in exotic hotels, she wore sexy underwear, looked younger than her age
in a fantasy anything was possible
even now, so many decades later, she feels the old attraction stir when he arrives for the summer, and when she catches him in a certain light
Lennox and Clovis are sitting on the white bench on the veranda with Madison nestled between them
Rachel sways on the stripy hammock Clovis hung up for his afternoon naps, they’ve all burst out laughing at something, not at what Shirley’s said, her daughter has no sense of humour, probably at something Madison has said, something cute, because she is
Lennox glances up, catches Winsome’s attention on him, waves warmly, innocently
not a flicker of acknowledgement in all of these years
Shirley boasts that Lennox will never cheat on her
Winsome always replies she found one of the good guys
you lucky, Shirl, you lucky.
Penelope
1
Penelope’s parents were dull and dispassionate automatons crawling towards their deaths
she wrote in her diary at the age of fourteen
it was unfortunate
because she herself was brimming with vivacity and racing towards a marvellous life that stretched gloriously ahead of her
as she also wrote
in her diary
her father, Edwin, was a surveyor, born and raised in York and, Penelope wrote, a slave to routine: rising on the dot, leaving on the dot, returning on the dot, dinner on the dot, bed on the dot, life on the dot
my father has never said anything remotely of import, she wrote, that has not been regurgitated from the Daily Telegraph he reads every evening when he comes home from work
the only interesting thing about him, she noted, was also the most seedy: a thick envelope of pornographic postcards hidden inside his tool trunk in the shed, never imagining that his daughter didn’t need a penis to nail her own picture frames to her bedroom wall
Penelope’s mother, Margaret, was also a dreadful dullard, although her background was somewhat more exotic
she’d been born in the newly created Union of South Africa after her English parents sold up their failing barley farm at Hutton Conyers in Yorkshire to take advantage of the Natives Land Act of 1913
which allocated over 80% of land ownership to the only people capable of looking after it, her mother told her
the white race
us
her mother said the natives had to surrender their land to the inevitable charge of economic progress for the betterment of society as a whole
and as they were now desperate for employment, labour was cheap
my father bought a barley farm there, Penelope, but failed to make a success of it because his farm workers were idle, resentful and thieving
he was advised by his fellow farmers to tie the worst offenders to a tree and flog them
thereby setting an example
it seemed to do the trick when he began to carry out the same punishment for crop theft
the workers seemed to settle down and get on with it after that
until one day when he was doing the rounds on horseback, a group of wayward field hands appeared out of the woods like a pack of frothing animals and set upon him
before he knew it, he was on the ground, his whip was in their hands, and they were using it against him
the poor man didn’t stand a chance
your grandfather’s mind never recovered, Penelope, he sold the farm for a song, brought the family back to England, we moved in with relatives and he never worked again
I was relieved to relocate to England away from the hatefulness of the natives who’d done such a terrible thing to my father
nor was it a place for a white girl to grow into womanhood
I didn’t like the way native men looked at me
Penelope’s mother came of age in civilized England, she said, enjoyed dances, made friends, cycled into the countryside on Sundays with a group of them, including a few bounders who were nevertheless such fun, had picnics, got merry on gin from their hip flasks
she’d sneak out at midnight to bathe naked in the River Foss with them
hitched her skirts above the knee when she was far away enough from home
flagrantly smoked in public when women who did so were considered vulgar
only decadent sapphics who cut their hair short and wore male clothing got away with it in those days, Penelope
I met your father at a hop, he was somewhat older than me, very handsome before he lost all his hair, called for me every Saturday evening at seven o’clock on the dot of the grandfather clock in my grandparents’ hallway
he started attending my church on Sundays, met me outside the haberdashery where I worked
I’d wanted to go to a training college to become an elementary school teacher, one of the few professions open to women in my day, except there was the marriage bar, Penelope, which meant I’d have to stop teaching as soon as I became a wife
there was really little point in training for something I’d have to give up
unlike the cads I’d known, your father was sober and sensible, which is what I needed in a marriage
my father had by then tragically died in an asylum
it was another terrible time for my family and your father easily slipped into my life as a source of companionship and comfort, he took me rowing on the River Foss, although never swimming or dancing, never drinking
all of which he regarded as unattractive pursuits for ladies
after three years’ courtship, we wed
I do miss dancing, Penelope, the great pleasure it gave me, I often think of the past, of the person I used to be
I don’t know where she went
Penelope’s mother stopped talking, returned to her knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning, ironing or any of the other activities that filled her days
leaving the conversation dangling
Penelope found it hard to imagine her mother had once been so rebellious and gregarious
she felt sorry for her having to choose between a career or a family which seemed terribly unfair
and just as her mother couldn’t wait to escape the savages of South Africa, she couldn’t wait to go to college, have a career and leave her parents’ straitjacketed lives behind
then came the moment they told her she was a lie and any compassion she felt for her mother sank without trace
to be replaced by a groundswell of bitterness
the lie was bad enough, although in years to come she came to understand their reasoning, rather, it was the cruelty in their telling of it