In Between the Sheets

From outside Stephen heard his wife moving from one room to another. He lifted his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, careful not to touch her breasts, and hugged her to him.

“Are you coming to stay with me when the holidays begin?”

“Charmian too…” She spoke childishly, but her words were delicately pitched between inquiry and stipulation.

“Charmian too,” Stephen agreed. “If she wants to.” Charmian let her gaze drop and said demurely, “Thank you.”

During the following week Stephen made preparations. He swept the floor of his only spare room, he cleaned the windows there and hung new curtains. He rented a television. In the mornings he worked with customary numbness and entered his achievements in the ledger book. He brought himself at last to set out what he could remember of his dream. The details seemed to be accumulating satisfactorily. His wife was in the cafe. It was for her that he was buying coffee. A young girl took a cup and held it to the machine. But now he was the machine, now he filled the cup. This sequence, laid out neatly, cryptically in his journal, worried him less now. It had, as far as he was concerned, a certain literary potential. It needed fleshing out, and since he could remember no more he would have to invent the rest. He thought of Charmian, of how small she was, and he examined carefully the chairs ranged around the dining-room table. She was small enough for a baby’s high chair. In a department store he carefully chose two cushions. The impulse to buy the girls presents he distrusted and resisted. But still he wanted to do things for them. What could he do? He raked out gobs of ancient filth from under the kitchen sink, poured dead flies and spiders from the lamp fixtures, boiled fetid dishcloths; he bought a toilet brush and scrubbed the crusty bowl. Things they would never notice. Had he really become such an old fool? He spoke to his wife on the phone.

“You never mentioned Charmian before.”

“No,” she agreed. “It’s a fairly recent thing.”

“Well…” he struggled, “how do you feel about it?”

“It’s fine by me,” she said, very relaxed. “They’re good friends.” She was trying him out, he thought. She hated him for his fearfulness, his passivity and for all the wasted hours between the sheets. It had taken her many years of marriage to say so. The experimentation in his writing, the lack of it in his life. She hated him. And now she had a lover, a vigorous lover. And still he wanted to say, Is it right, our lovely daughter with a friend who belongs by rights in a circus or a silk-hung brothel serving tea? Our flaxen-haired, perfectly formed daughter, our tender bud, is it not perverse?

“Expect them Thursday evening,” said his wife by way of goodbye.

When Stephen answered the door he saw only Charmian at first, and then he made out Miranda outside the tight circle of light from the hall, struggling with both sets of luggage. Charmian stood with her hands on her hips, her heavy head tipped slightly to one side. Without greeting she said, “We had to take a taxi and he’s downstairs waiting.”

Stephen kissed his daughter, helped her in with the cases and went downstairs to pay the taxi. When he returned, a little out of breath from the two flights of stairs, the front door of his flat was closed. He knocked and had to wait. It was Charmian who opened the door and stood in his path.

“You can’t come in,” she said solemnly. “You’ll have to come back later,” and she made as if to close the door. Laughing in his nasal, unconvincing way, Stephen lunged forwards, caught her under her arms and scooped her into the air. At the same time he stepped into the flat and closed the door behind him with his foot. He meant to lift her high in the air like a child, but she was heavy, heavy like an adult, and her feet trailed a few inches above the ground, it was all he could manage. She thumped his hand with her fists and shouted.

“Put me…” Her last word was cut off by the crash of the door. Stephen released her instantly. “… down,” she said softly.

They stood in the bright hallway, both a little out of breath. For the first time he saw Charmian’s face clearly. Her head was bullet shaped and ponderous, her lower lip curled permanently outwards and she had the beginnings of a double chin. Her nose was squat and she had the faint downy grayness of a moustache. Her neck was thick and bullish. Her eyes were large and calm, set far apart, brown like a dog’s. She was not ugly, not with those eyes. Miranda was at the far end of the long hall. She wore ready-faded jeans and a yellow shirt. Her hair was in plaits and tied at the ends with scraps of blue denim. She came and stood by her friend’s side.

“Charmian doesn’t like being lifted about,” she explained. Stephen guided them towards his sitting room.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Charmian and laid his hand on her shoulder for an instant. “I didn’t know that.”

“I was only joking when I came to the door,” she said evenly.

“Yes of course,” Stephen said hurriedly. “I didn’t think anything else.”

During dinner, which Stephen had bought ready-cooked from a local Italian restaurant, the girls talked to him about their school. He allowed them a little wine and they giggled a lot and clutched at each other when they fell about. They prompted each other through a story about their headmaster who looked up girls’ skirts. He remembered some anecdotes of his own time at school, or perhaps they were other people’s time, but he told them well and they laughed delightedly. They became very excited. They pleaded for more wine. He told them one glass was enough.

Charmian and Miranda said they wanted to do the dishes. Stephen sprawled in an armchair with a large brandy, soothed by the blur of their voices and the homely clatter of dishes. This was where he lived, this was his home. Miranda brought him coffee. She set it down on the table with the mock deference of a waitress.

“Coffee, sir?” she said. Stephen moved over in his chair and she sat in close beside him. She moved easily between woman and child. She drew her legs up as before and pressed herself against her large shaggy father. She had unloosened her plaits and her hair spread across Stephen’s chest, golden in the electric light.

“Have you found a boyfriend at school?” he asked.

She shook her head and kept it pressed against his shoulder.

“Can’t find a boyfriend, eh?” Stephen insisted. She sat up suddenly and lifted her hair clear of her face.

“There are loads of boys,” she said angrily, “loads of them, but they’re so stupid, they’re such show-offs.” Never before had the resemblance between his wife and daughter seemed so strong. She glared at him. She included him with the boys at school. “They’re always doing things.”

“What sort of things?”

She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t know… the way they comb their hair and bend their knees.”

“Bend their knees?”

“Yes. When they think you’re watching them. They stand in front of our window and pretend they’re combing their hair when they’re just looking in at us, showing off. Like this.” She sprang out of the chair and crouched in the center of the room in front of an imaginary mirror, bent low like a singer over a microphone, her head tilted grotesquely, combing with long, elaborate strokes; she stepped back, preened and then combed again. It was a furious imitation. Charmian was watching it too. She stood in the doorway with coffee in each hand.

“What about you, Charmian,” Stephen said carelessly, “do you have a boyfriend?” Charmian set the coffee cups down and said, “Of course I don’t,” and then looked up and smiled at them both with the tolerance of a wise old woman.

Later on he showed them their bedroom.

“There’s only one bed,” he told them. “I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing it.” It was an enormous bed, seven foot by seven, one of the few large objects he had brought with him from his marriage. The sheets were deep red and very old, from a time when all sheets were white. He did not care to sleep between them now, they had been a wedding present. Charmian lay across the bed, she hardly took up more room than one of the pillows. Stephen said good night. Miranda followed him into the hall, stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek.

“You’re not a show-off,” she whispered and clung to him. Stephen stood perfectly still. “I wish you’d come home,” she said.

He kissed the top of her head. “This is home,” he said. “You’ve got two homes now.” He broke her hold and led her back to the entrance of the bedroom. He squeezed her hand. “See you in the morning,” he murmured, left her there and hurried into his study. He sat down, horrified at his erection, elated. Ten minutes passed. He thought