Mandy said that when her story came out in March, she would come to London and see me at last. In April her baby ought to be ready to drop.
The Professor’s hold over her was by no means complete. She pitied him now. He was a Sultan only in his own house, masturbating over her nightly tales.
That winter and Mandy’s letters seemed so clear to me now. Yet that was a time when none of us yet knew her daughter, Lindsey, who still hadn’t been born. Mandy wasn’t yet published, she was waiting. Those facts make it seem a very long time ago. What also makes it seem an ago to me, is that I still hadn’t met my Joshua, my eventual husband, and his daughter. That was all about to happen.
Mandy hadn’t yet had her reviews for her story in March. Those reviews, I remember, drove her crazy. It was very full of meaning, they said, it was laden with a—big breath—superfluity of meanings, resonances, allusions. And so it was a success. Her story was called ‘Me in the Monster Museum’ and that was to be the name of the novel too: a sprawling, compendious book, written and finished off during that winter.
“Allusions? What fucking allusions?” our Mandy asked when she read the reviews in London. “They’ll say I was cheating next.” And, like many a successful woman, they wanted to know about the man they felt sure was behind her. Sure enough, they turfed out the Professor, her hirsute beaming Professor, although the Professor didn’t need much turfing.
They thought she was Collette and he was her Willy.
‘What?!’ Mandy shouted.
When she arrived at King’s Cross that March she didn’t think to ask for a porter to help with her bags. Down the platform she came, her face in a rictus. I went running through the oncoming crowd to help her. I hadn’t seen my sister for most of a year and the changes were alarming. I hadn’t reckoned on seeing her big like this, with the baby virtually poking its head out of her. She was still Mandy to me, Mandy who would never get caught, Mandy who knew a thing or two.
Still drinking and smoking though, even with the lump in front of her. We dragged her cases into the pub at King’s Cross that was meant to look like a country pub, with flock wallpaper and horse brasses. She looked very pale and her face was luminous with sweat. It was two in the afternoon and she made me fetch two pints of lager for us. “I’ll never get on the Tube with this little lot,” she said numbly, taking in her lump with her baggage.
“We don’t have to, do we?” I said. We hadn’t said much to each other yet. We were still testing the waters. She looked at me dubiously, as if I was something that had fallen out of her nest and been returned to her.
“I know what you’re thinking, Wendy. I always did.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re looking at me funny because I’ve made myself look stupid, taking up with two stupid men, one after another.”
“I never said a word.”
“But it’s just the way it ended up. I loved Daniel, I really did. The way he used to read that woman’s books. Maybe I just wanted to be her and get all of his attention.”
I looked at her.
“Ok, it’s trite, but it’s my life, right? Anyway, he lost interest when Lindsey came along.”
“It’s going to be a girl? You’ve already named her?”
“Yep. And the Professor... just happened. But you can’t cut yourself out from the disastrous relationships, Wendy. The things that aren’t quite right. You can’t hold yourself up pure and separate.”
“And that’s what I’m doing, is it?”
“You’re looking at me funny. Judgemental.”
“No I’m not! And I’m not trying to be separate about anything.”
“This money of yours is a problem, you know.” She swished the remains of her pint. “If it means you’ll never have to compromise or depend on anyone. It’ll be trouble if it means people only ever depend on you. You’ll get too far out of ordinary life.”
“No I won’t. I haven’t yet.”
“Hm.”
When Mandy arrived and said all this, like a list of things she’d prepared on the train, she disturbed me. Because just that week I had met Joshua for the first time. He came unexpectedly to Serena’s house while I was there. This was the rare, bold Joshua whose appearance she had built up to, fearing him lost to her. He came in laughing (a good sign) and treated Serena like his oldest, best friend. She became twitchy and animated and her house took on a new atmosphere that afternoon. She felt included again.
I heard him moving about downstairs and listened a while before coming down. He was turning off music and replacing it with his own choice—Rimsky-Korsakov, I think—all heady and Arabian Nights-ish. He was saying, “Serena, anyone would think you had a teenager living with you. Or that you’d discovered a second, a third, a fourth youth of your own.”
“I have,” she said, laughing.
“You’ve become the good mother at last, have you? Taking in this girl?”
“Don’t make her sound like a waif and stray, Josh. She’s hardly that.”
“Well.”
When I came into the William Morris room I found him sitting indolently on that settee that sucked you in and made it very difficult to move again. Joshua, though, was out of it in one movement that was meant to be sinuous, but he faltered at the last moment, dropping his cigarette on the African coffee table and swearing. He shook my hand and smiled and sank back down. “I’m Joshua,” he said.
He was then
