Your contribution is theory, Miriam reassured her. Have you finished that essay on Lawrence yet? Sarah told me she was waiting for it.
Louise thought of the word processor screen still empty of anything but the little winking cursor, and the van in her orchard. How can I work? Every time I look out of the window I see this huge blue van and this mad woman in it with her horrible dog.
Miriam glanced at her. The linked topics of madness and women were as taboo as the Unipart calendar. Do you mean she is ill? she asked rather stiffly. Has she been released for care in the community? Is she alone and unsupported?
I didnt mean mad, I meant independent. Louise retreated rapidly. She wears something like fancy dress. She seems to be alone. And I cant help but dislike the fact that she seems to know the neighbourhood and she has parked on my land without permission. There are plenty of other places she could go.
If shes not doing any damage
Shes invading my personal space.
Miriam shot her a quick mocking smile. I didnt know your personal space went as far as several acres.
Louise felt herself smiling guiltily in reply. Well, you wouldnt like it if it was your front garden, she said.
Miriam sighed. It virtually is. The phone never stops ringing. I seem to be out every night at one meeting or another. If they all came and lived in a caravan in my garden it would be easier to manage.
They turned in the gate of the tall terraced house. Miriam glanced up at the illuminated windows of the top flat. Oh, Hughs in, she said. He might eat with us.
She opened the front door. A thin watery smell of cooking pulses greeted them. Lentils again, Miriam remarked without pleasure. Toby has bought a New Age cookbook. We havent had meat for weeks.
Louise dumped Miriams box files on the hall table and went through to the kitchen. Toby was stirring orange porridge in a casserole dish. Louise put her arms around him from behind and hugged him, resting her cheek against the smooth blade of his shoulder.
Im starving, she said. It smells wonderful.
Toby did not disengage himself as Miriam came into the kitchen. He smiled at her. Hello, darling, three phone messages for you.
Miriam nodded and went out to the telephone in the hall. Toby heard her pick up the phone and dial a number. Only then did he turn to Louise and kiss her deeply on the mouth. While his left hand stirred the lentils his right hand smoothed down from her neck across her breast and down to her buttock.
Lovely, Toby said. With Miriam and Louise under his roof again he felt wealthy as a polygamous sheikh.
Hugh was not invited to join them for dinner. Toby said he had not made enough. Hugh stayed upstairs, eating baked beans with a spoon from the saucepan, tantalised by the smell of hot food and by the sound of popping corks and laughter. Hugh was Miriams choice of lodger. She and Louise had together decided that another woman would not be suitable. Tobys faint, unexpressed hope, that a second woman lodger might invite him into her flat and into her bed in the morning and at weekends when Miriam was working, was disappointed before he had even acknowledged it to himself.
Hugh was researching into marine life and kept strict office hours at his studies. On Friday and Saturday nights he would go out to a modern jazz club with friends from work and get seriously but quietly drunk. Toby in his heart rather envied these bullish excursions. Toby had no friends. Colleagues at the university feared and envied the speedy progress of his career. Women tended to pass through his life, not stay. The Mens Consciousness group which he led on Thursday nights was an area of conscientious work rather than spontaneous pleasure. Too many of the men had sexual problems, too many of them would weep over their relationship with their father. Toby would facilitate their tears and their worries over the size of their genitals but he could not grieve with them.
He knew that Mens Consciousness groups were a pale shadow of the real thing. In this area the women had the edge. Female consciousness had the pulse of an authentic revolutionary movement. Women had so much more to say. They were angry with their mothers, with their fathers, with their kids. They had issues to challenge about social treatment. They had two thousand years of repression to cite. Every week, every day, almost every moment they suffered from inequality and had to evolve a revolutionary response. Male consciousness was nothing more than a bandwagon attempt by the left-out kids somehow to join in the game. All the unconvincing inventions of male bonding and tenderness could not conceal the fact that men were solitary, rather stupid individuals while women were spontaneously sensitive and collectively minded. Female sexuality was Tobys delight. Male sexuality held no interest for him whatsoever. Indeed he had to conceal distaste when his brothers wanted to hug him. Except for Miriam and Louise, Toby was a solitary man.
Miriam concluded the last of her telephone calls and came into the kitchen. The table was laid, Toby and Louise were drinking wine. A glass was standing ready for her at her place.
Thanks, she said, dropping into her chair. That was about the council again.
The lease on the womens refuge was due to expire within six months and the council were reluctant to renew. Miriam had launched a lobby campaign on councillors but battered wives were not a priority in a tourist town where income depended largely on an atmosphere of carefree perfection.
Theyre such bastards, Miriam declared.
Toby and Louise nodded, looking suitably grave.
Help me serve, Toby said to Louise.
Together they arranged the soufflé on the plates and took them to the table. There was a green salad with Tobys special salad dressing and his home-made brown bread. They opened another bottle of wine.
How was the meeting? Toby inquired.
Bloody awful, Miriam replied.
Toby smiled and helped himself to more bread. Miriam might be irritable now but after more wine and some fruit she would become sleepy and pliable. He would not make love with her, he was tired after groping with Louise in the car, but he enjoyed the reassurance of knowing that his wife and his mistress were sexually available to him. Tomorrow morning, after Miriam had brought him a cup of coffee in bed and gone to work, he would make love with Louise if he felt like it. He was a fortunate man and he knew it.
Thursday
LOUISE, driving back to her cottage after teaching a morning tutorial, had every hope of seeing an empty orchard. Instead, as she rounded the bend that Mr Miles had found so treacherous, she was greeted by the irritating sight of the big blue van and a washing line strung between two of her apple trees. Brightly coloured blouses and shapeless grey underwear were bobbing among the blossom. Louise swore, turned her car down the drive, jerked on the handbrake and marched purposefully towards the orchard.
Anyone home? she demanded truculently.
The van rocked. First the dog put his head around the door, and when he saw Louise wagged a welcoming tail. Then the old lady herself emerged. She was wearing a mans smoking jacket in deep plum patterned silk and midnight-blue silk pyjama trousers. You again, she said.
I think you should move on today, Louise said clearly. This is my orchard and you have been here now for more than twenty-four hours. I think its time you went. If you want a nearby site I can telephone Mr Miles at Wistley Common Farm for you. He sometimes has a vacant field.
The woman observed her from under the mop of hair. Out all night, she said. Did you go to a party?
Louise found herself blushing. Of course not. I was at a meeting and then I went on to dinner with friends.
Ill trouble you for some fresh water, the woman said. She reached inside the van and brought out the empty jug again. She jumped lightly down from the steps and strolled towards the gate, the dog at her bare heels. Louise took the jug and marched into the house. A couple of letters were pushed to one side as she opened the door into the porch. She filled the jug and stalked back down the garden path. The old woman was leaning on the gate.
Beautiful day, she commented. You must enjoy the birds at dawn.
Louise, who never woke until long after dawn, said nothing.
I was born here, you know, the old woman said conversationally. In this very cottage.
Louise could not help but be interested but she remained sulkily silent.
The trees were younger then, the old woman sighed. The trees were so much younger then.
She put out an old mottled hand and rested it against a tree trunk as an owner might stroke a favourite dog. There was a strange familiarity between her and the tree, as if the tree were responding to her touch. Louise found herself trying to picture her orchard as a field of saplings, like girls ready to dance. I think you should go today, she said, but her voice was no longer angry.
The old woman nodded. As you wish, she said. Whatever you wish.
Louise felt suddenly deflated, as if she had triumphed in some small act of malice.
What was your meeting? the old woman asked.
Louise shrugged. Its a committee I belong to. Were trying to encourage older women to go on university degree courses. Every year we organise an open day and then for those that are interested we run introductory courses. This year were focusing on women in science and industry. Louise heard her voice sounding flat and indifferent. Its a very important issue, she said.
And where did you go for dinner?
To my friends house Toby and Miriam. I used to rent their flat before I came to live here. Miriam and I were at university together. Toby and I Louise abruptly broke off. Toby is her husband, she said.
Drives a white Ford Escort car, does he?
Why?
Ive been past a few times. Quite often there was the white Ford Escort parked outside.
Yes, Louise said shortly.
The old woman smiled at her benevolently. Quite a friend you are! she observed.
Louise could think of no response to make at all.
And what dyou teach, at the university? the woman inquired pleasantly.
I have an experimental post. Im a specialist in womens studies seconded to the Literature department on a years trial.
The old woman nodded. Well, I must get on, she said as if Louise were delaying her with gossip. She started towards the van.
But you are leaving today? Louise confirmed.
The old woman turned and waved the gaudy jug. Just as soon as I get packed, she said. As you wish.
Louise nodded and turned and went into the house. She picked up the letters and went to read them in her study. The van, solid and blue, obscured the view of the common which she usually found so soothing. She opened the letters without needing to tear the flaps, glanced at them and put them under a paperweight. She switched on the word processor and picked up the phone to speak to Toby.
She says shes leaving.
Toby, collecting books for a seminar for which he had failed to prepare, was rather brisk. Good. End of problem.
I feel like a bully.
Napoleon!
Napoleon?
You cant make an omelette without breaking eggs, he said bracingly. Napoleon said it.
Shes so very old. And she was born here. She says she was born here.
She probably says that everywhere she goes. Look, I have to go. Im supposed to be taking a seminar on industrialisation and Ive put Das Kapital down somewhere and I cant find it.
Call me later, Louise urged. I feel a bit desolate.
Do some work! Toby recommended. Sarahs waiting for your Lawrence article, she told me this morning. Ill call you later. I might be able to get out to see you this evening Mens Consciousness group is finishing early.
Oh! The half-promise was an immediate restorative. Louise often dreaded being alone in the cottage. On cool summer evenings when the swallows swooped and chased against an apricot horizon the cottage seemed too full of ghosts, other people whose lives had been lived more vividly and more passionately than Louises. They had left a trace of their desires and needs in every sun-warmed stone, while Louise flitted like a cold shadow leaving no record. Louise felt half-invisible, looking out of the window across the common. She would pour herself a glass of wine and go out into the garden, sit in a deck chair on the front lawn and read a book, consciously trying to enjoy her solitude. Then she would turn around and look at the little cottage which seemed more lively and vital than herself.
It had been built as a gamekeepers cottage, part of a grand estate of which Mr Miless great-grandfather had bought a small slice. Louise thought of a man like Lawrences gamekeeper, Mellors, letting himself quietly out of the gate that led to the common and walking softly on dew-soaked grass to check his rabbit snares. Impossible for Louise to speculate what a man like that would think as he walked down the sandy paths between the ferns, a dark shadow of a dog at his heels. Impossible even to imagine him without the gloss of literature on him. Louise was not even sure what a gamekeeper did for his day-to-day work, she was far better informed about his sexually gymnastic nights. But that was fiction. Everything she knew best was fiction.
The gamekeeper had left when the big estate was sold up. Mr Miles had told her that the cottage was used by his own family and then housed farm labourers. He knew one of his fathers workers who had lived there with his wife and their seven children. Louise had protested that they could not possibly have all fitted into the two little bedrooms.
No bathroom, Mr Miles had reminded her. So three bedrooms. Girls in one room, boys in another and parents in the third. I used to come down for my tea with them sometimes. It was grand. He smiled at Louise, trying to find the words. A lot of play, he said. Like foxcubs.
Louise sometimes thought of that family as she went to sleep alone in her wide white bed. A family where the children played like foxcubs, with four boys in one room and three girls whispering in another and a great marital bed which saw birth and death and lovemaking year after year.
She pulled up her chair and sat down before the word processor.
Nothing came.
Outside in the orchard, the blossom bobbed. The blue van was as still as a rock, planted like a rock, embedded in the earth. The old woman was clearly not packing, she was not moving around at all. She was doing nothing and Louise feared very much that when Toby visited in the evening the van would be there still, and the old woman, who guessed so quickly and knew so much, would see Tobys white Ford Escort car pull up the drive and watch him get out and let himself in the front door with his own key. Louise thought that with the old womans bright eyes scanning the front of the cottage she would not feel at all in the right mood to go upstairs with Toby if he wanted to make love.