to hospital. What concerns are these of mine, she thought tiredly. The Education Welfare office had been ringing. And Mr. Sidney. This year social workers had become “generic.” It was a new dispensation, for everybody to know everything about everything: and how to heal it.
“What’s this?” she said to the secretary.
The woman looked up resentfully. “Your messages.”
“This last one—Mr. Sidney. Who is Mr. Sidney?”
“A personal call, that was.”
Oh yes, Isabel thought. Colin. Who’s going to leave home for me. She sat down at her desk and took the evening paper out of her bag. She read of a car-crash and a dog that had drowned. She did not want to go home, did not relish the evening ahead of her. But then she did not look forward, either, to the next working day. There is something radically wrong with my life, she thought, that I have fallen to such vicious amusements; and such stretches of emptiness between them.
It was almost seven when Isabel arrived home. The house was a brick-built bungalow, ten years old, of a solid and uninspired design. The lamps burned at each side of the wrought-iron gates, but Mr. Field had not drawn the curtains. She put the car into the garage, and let herself in at the front door.
There were no lights on in the hall, and before she found the switch she caught her foot against something soft, lying beside the telephone table. She bent down and explored it with one hand. It was a plastic carrier bag, a small one full of laundry. A tablecloth—which had been clean, she thought—a few pairs of socks, one shirt. Token laundry, this. Damp blue powder clung to her fingertips. She flicked it off. Her heart began to beat faster. Anger and fear, she thought, fight, and flight. If only we could ever do either. She tried to calm herself, standing with one hand against the wall. Mr. Field appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Is that you, Bella? You’re very late.”
“Just as well, it seems to me.”
He cringed at her tone.
“Come down here,” she said.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea. Oh Bella, please don’t work yourself up.”
He came down and stood before her, blinking and contrite, a man of seventy.
“You’ve been drinking,” she said.
“Just a nip.”
She kicked out viciously at the bag of laundry. “There’s nothing wrong with the washing machine.”
“Bella, I have to have some life. Your mother left me.”
“The launderette. Why?”
“Meet someone.”
“Anybody in particular?”
“No,” he mumbled. “But you can always find someone at the Washerama.”
Her mouth was dry. She could picture them, loose-mouthed women with bare blue legs, buttons hanging off their coats. It was in the autumn that you noticed them. Had they any homes to go to?
“I suppose you brought her back with you. Do you have to bring them here?”
“It’s too cold for the park. Be human, Bella.”
“Oh, I feel sorry for you, I really do, having to get a bundle of washing together. I suppose otherwise the attendant turns you out, does she?”
“They watch you. They’re mean old cows. But they can’t stop people talking to each other, can they? Lonely people, Bella, like your father.”
“Oh, don’t start with that pathetic tone. You nauseate me. What happened to Woolworth’s cafe? That was favourite last year, wasn’t it?”
He turned away, moving slowly towards the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said.
“You disgust me,” she shouted after him. “Take the sheets off your bed and put them in the machine. I’m not going into your room.”
I always say that, she thought, but I shall have to go, and look at his clothes for lice. What can I do to stop him, whatever can I do? Unshed tears were choking her. She blundered into the living-room, snapped on the TV and slumped in front of it, staring without seeing, biting her lip till it bled.
“London Bridge is falling down,” Muriel sings, “bawling round, trolling frown.” One word is as good as the next. Her mother tells her she is going to have a child. She is making plans to sing to it.
When is it going to be born, Muriel wants to know. Tonight? You stupid, stupid girl, Evelyn says to her. She glowers. You should know that, not me. Despairing, she reminds herself how little comprehension Muriel has ever shown of past or future. Look, she said, you count, nine months. Nine months from the day you…got it.
There are two things she can do. Take Muriel to a doctor, or go to the Welfare and tell them what has happened. Lay the blame at their door, where it belongs. If she had stayed in the house with me, Evelyn thinks, she would have come to no harm, or comparatively little. If she does either of these things, it will be in an extremity. She is afraid that Muriel will be taken away. “Taken away,” she says. “There are places for people like you. There are places for girls who have babies and no husbands.” She thinks of the uniformed guards taking Muriel away, to shave her head and beat her. It is something she has often imagined. But then she imagines closing the door, finding herself alone; alone with her companions. When Muriel follows her up the stairs at night, and she feels them creeping up, creeping up snapping from the bottom stair, she always plans that if they get too close she will put her hand on Muriel’s chest and push her slithering down to them, fat bait, something to lick their lips over.
