“You want to get down the chemist’s,” said Fran. “It can’t be very comfortable, or healthy.” She sat back in her seat thinking: or clean. “They’ll know what to do about it.”
“You’re right,” said Elsie and it seemed possible, somehow, that this could be dealt with. The worst thing with itching, she wanted to tell Fran, was that you could never be sure it was really there. Even if you had a red, sore rash to show, it didn’t prove much. Even that could be — what did they call it? — psychosomatic.
They were standing up to go. “It’s funny what you can catch, isn’t it?” she said, as they left the last of the clean-smelling corridors.
Then she set about begging Fran to come with her to visit Tom. After the last, disastrous visit there was no way she was going alone.
“It’ll only be an hour or so,” Elsie said. “You’ll be back for the kids being home. I can’t go up there by myself.”
Fran gave in. They crossed the road outside the hospital to catch the bus that went to Sedgefield. What am I doing? Fran thought. She didn’t want to get caught up in the lives of Elsie and Tom any more than this. Yet here she was, on the bus to Sedgefield. Elsie sat beside her trying to chat brightly. Fran stared at the fields, on which the old, crusted snow was starting at last to thaw. She was only too aware of the press of Elsie’s overcoat and the rest of her clothes against her.
When you live together all the time, there are a million things to do. You neglect each other, that’s what Tom’s said before, and I suppose that’s true. We never made the time to sort things out. We had so much to do! I like my house nice and he was good with his hands. Paint this, Tom! Sand this down! Put this new unit up! And he was good, he was, he was meant to be an architect and so he was always good with things about the house.
What he hated, though, and this was the hard bit, what he hated most was the way I would let Craig get away with things. When Craig would take to his room and stay there, Tom would get at me and say I’d brought him up funny. He hadn’t turned out right. I’d go round the house, doing my chores, and Tom would follow me round, telling me all this about my son. How I had spoiled him for the rest of the world.
Once, when Craig was out — when he first started hanging about with that gang of his — I found Tom poking about under the boy’s bed. Hundreds of comics were pushed over all the carpet. I said, “But Tom, what are you looking for?” And he looked up furious to be disturbed like this.
“It isn’t fair,” Tom would rant at me, “that I have to paint the hallway, do all this, be the master of this house, and that son of yours doesn’t have to do a stroke of work.”
So Tom would remind me that Craig wasn’t his and that would make me ache inside. At mealtimes we would eat round the kitchen table and the two of them wouldn’t speak a word. It would set all my nerves on edge. I could hardly eat. I’d jump up halfway through my dinner and have to throw it in the bucket. I’d put on the radio to drown out their silence as they ate. TFM, where they play the hits of the seventies.
Tom said all our time was ruined by my son and the things I wanted doing to the house. I just wanted it decorated. I thought he enjoyed decorating. He took such a pride. I knew Tom was sinking into depression the first time because the dining room took such a long time to finish. He slowed to a rate of one strip of paper a day. He did one, very slowly, and you could see him fret over how straight it was. Then he would go and watch Sky Sports for the rest of the day. Then he stopped leaving the house, and that put more strain on the rest of us. He said he thought he was anaemic and he had gone very white. I said, “Have you gone off the church? Because you used to love going there, you couldn’t keep away before.” And he loved running the club for the kiddies, but that was all finished with now. He didn’t get out much at all and it took him two months to get the dining room ready.
“Talk to me about something, woman,” he begged me the night he finished. I’d come in to see how the new room was.
“What do you mean?” I admired the wallpaper.
“Talk to me about something that isn’t your house or your son. Tell me something.”
He looked strange and like he wanted something else off me. I was scared almost, except that it was only Tom. I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I look back now and I think, that was the moment things could have been different. If I’d known what to say to him then. But what was the right thing? And what do I know? Compared with Tom and his grammar-school education, I’m an ignorant woman. I told him I was doing chops for his tea and he laughed in my face. He laughed high-pitched, like a boy.
The last time I went to
