Sex and Stravinsky Page 3

  ‘Isn’t this heaven?’ Caroline says and Josh has to agree.

  Then they bike back to the ghoulish pair, who are up, dressed, and waiting for their breakfast with foot-tapping impatience.

  ‘About time too,’ says Caroline’s mother. ‘Don’t mind us, will you, Caroline?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’ Caroline says and off they go to a café in Holywell Street, where – doctor’s orders cast aside – the matriarch tucks into eggs and bacon and toast.

  ‘And now you can show us the sights,’ she says, neatly placing her knife and fork at twenty-five past.

  ‘Yes, Mum. Of course, Mum,’ Caroline says.

  ‘If Janet feels up to it,’ she says.

  ‘A-tish-oo,’ Janet says.

  ‘You get a fantastic view of the city from the cupola of the Sheldonian,’ Caroline ventures. ‘It’s just a stone’s throw from here.’

  ‘No thank you,’ her mother says. ‘Not if it’s going to mean climbing umpteen stairs. You might be as strong as a bull, Caroline, but I think you might show some consideration for your sister.’

  ‘OK, Mum,’ Caroline says. ‘Sorry, Mum. What about a walk through Christ Church Meadow? It’s just off the High Street and you come out via a cobbled lane just opposite –’

  ‘A meadow?’ says her mother. ‘And what makes you think we packed our gumboots?’

  It transpires that what the pair really have in mind is to dawdle round various retail outlets, acquiring armfuls of clothes.

  ‘This way we get the fashions a season ahead,’ says Caroline’s mother, doing a girly gaiety voice in the aisles of M & S. ‘Janet’s always had a really good eye. Haven’t you, Janet? And what on earth is that thing you’re wearing, Caroline – just by the way?’

  Caroline is wearing her immaculate Levi’s with a simple white cotton top, delicately pleated at the yoke, like a cropped choirboy smock.

  That night, since mother and daughter have plans to spend a second night, Josh and Caroline, once again, bike up the Abingdon Road. Then, next morning, the pair, whom Josh by now has inwardly dubbed the Witch Woman and the Less Fortunate, announce their intention of travelling by train to Aberdeen, in pursuit of a maternal cousin, several times removed; a cousin who has had no hint of her relations’ imminent arrival.

  ‘I don’t like to stand on ceremony,’ the Witch Woman says. ‘I like to be informal.’

  ‘A-tish-oo,’ says the Less Fortunate.

  And then, at last, they are gone. And then; and then.

  And then the Iranian revolution is happening. And then, alas for the country’s long-suffering progressives, it is taking an unfortunate turn. Bearded mullahs are staging public executions in sports arenas and city squares. Black chadors are transforming the female population into a flock of faceless crows – and Caroline’s research trip is, of necessity, placed on hold. Josh, meanwhile, has planned to spend the next five weeks in Paris.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Caroline says. ‘I’ve got plenty to be getting on with. I’ll make a plan.’

  The plan she makes during his absence is somewhat unexpected and it casts a black cloud over his return. It also has the long-term effect of binding them grimly together. Because Caroline, unbeknown to him, has received another of those letters, and this one contains a bombshell.

  Dear Caroline

  I’m afraid we lost Dad ten days ago. He had a heart attack while driving back from work and just had time to pull over. I would have sent a telegram but as you will appreciate Janet was very upset and she needed me at home so it was difficult for me, you people should get a phone. There’s bad news as well because it looks like Dad has bonded everything away to his creditors so Janet and I will have nothing to call our own really. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us because Uncle Julius says he can’t help. He says we should sell the house and move to a small flat and that I’ve got typing and clerical skills and Janet is sixteen so we should both go out to work. But I’ve got my health to consider and Janet as you will appreciate is much too frail, she needs to stay on at school and get herself a higher education. After all, you had your chance at uni, didn’t you, so it’s only fair that Janet should have the same, that’s if her health will allow.

  Love Mum

  Again she’s added a postscript.

  Dad’s health had been going downhill for about six months but I didn’t like to mention it on your ‘big day’. Do you have any photos, by the way, because Mrs Dodds keeps asking about it even though I’ve told her that it wasn’t much of a wedding. Mum.

  So Josh returns to his London student house to find that Caroline is not at her Oxford college. She is billeted in his room. It’s his room, but minus any speck of dust and with his books arranged in alphabetical order. She has been there for a month. Having spent the first days of her husband’s five-week absence weeping for her father, she has then picked herself up, a little paler and thinner, and she’s embarked upon a plan. Caroline’s grief, as he observes, has already been converted into her own special brand of try-hard action.

  ‘Oh Caroline,’ he says, attempting to embrace her. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Oh Christ, why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve come back.’

  But Caroline is from a family not much given to communication and, in his absence, she has taken some bold, unilateral decisions. Decisions that now appal him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he says, once he’s heard her out. ‘Just wait, Caroline. Wait, for heaven’s sake. This is all much too hasty.’

  Caroline, without consulting him, has put an end to the sweet privilege of her graduate student life. She’s given up her scholarship and has got herself a teaching job in history and French. The job is in a small private school just outside Oxford.

  ‘The pay is better,’ she says. She has signed herself up to complete, concurrently, a one-year postgraduate Certificate in Education as an external student through London University. ‘The head has agreed to up my salary once I’ve got the certificate,’ she says. ‘She watched me give a lesson, Josh. She knows that I’m damn good.’

  He has no doubt that she is good. She has withdrawn her name from the married-student accommodation list, for which, of course, they are no longer eligible, but she’s got some ‘good news’ on the housing front, she says.

  ‘Sam and Jen have taken jobs in Leeds and they’ve offered us the bus. We can buy it from them in monthly sums over three whole years and for only four hundred pounds. That’s incredibly cheap, Josh. It works out at less than twelve quid a month. Anyway, it’ll be such fun. Much better than some crappy breeze-block student flat with no garden and smelling of fish fingers. I need you to say you’re pleased.’

  Pleased. Josh has been feeling really high these last five weeks and now his heart is somewhere inside his shoes.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he says. ‘It’s stupid, Caro. It’s too drastic. You’re upset. I can’t deal with it. I need you to slow down.’

  ‘It’s done,’ she corrects him. ‘I’m not “doing” it, Josh. It’s done.’

  ‘We should’ve discussed it,’ he says. ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘It’s done, precisely because I know that it’s our only option and I know that you would’ve tried to stop me,’ she says. ‘This way we can both live on your grant and I can give all my salary to Mum and Janet.’

  Josh says nothing. Absolutely nothing. His life experience in the household of his adoptive parents has predisposed him to respect personal sacrifice as an honourable thing, and once again he’s amazed by Caroline’s ability to cut a swathe through every obstacle and emerge with workable solutions. Nonetheless, he has a queasy feeling that this particular solution is an insult to Caroline herself as an unusually talented person; a case of casting pearls before swine. But Caroline, as he’s had the opportunity to observe, is clearly devoted to her unlikeable mother and sister. And maybe unlikeable is an irrelevance? Maybe need is simply need?

  ‘I think it’s all a bit drastic,’ he says. ‘First of all, is it reversi
ble?’

  ‘It’s done,’ she says. ‘Of course it’s not reversible. Josh, it makes sense. I’ve had my chance at uni and why shouldn’t Janet have the same?’

  ‘You got funded,’ Josh says. ‘And aren’t you quite a lot brainier than Janet? Caroline, you’re brainier than anyone I know.’

  ‘And you think that I should use my brain to abandon my mother and sister?’ she says. ‘They’re my own flesh and blood.’

  This is true, he’s reflecting ruefully, and not for the first time. By some bizarre, inexplicable twist in that doubly twisting DNA, the Witch Woman and the Less Fortunate are Caroline’s flesh and blood. But then his own flesh and blood would be that pair of weirdos he’s never known and never much bothered about. The puny Greek fraudster and the catatonic convent girl. God Almighty, why should he care? It’s Bernie and Ida Silver who have always been his nearest and dearest – and they don’t believe too much in flesh and blood. They believe in the human race. And wasn’t little Jack, the housemaid’s boy, more brother to him than the wretched Janet could ever be sister to Caroline?

  ‘Look, Josh, I’m all they’ve got,’ Caroline is saying. ‘And face it, my DPhil’s screwed. I’ll never get to Iran. Not now. Both of us know that. This way is good. I’m fine with it. The world needs teachers. Who needs another person with a doctorate in something or other?’

  There’s a long pause.

  ‘Caroline,’ Josh says. He’s thinking of the wonderful days just past that he’s spent poring over the set designs and the scores for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, his hands clothed in archive-issue white cotton gloves. ‘I’m not giving up my PhD. I can’t. I hope you don’t expect it of me.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘Go for it, Josh, please. If we live in the bus, then you can give up this place. Getting to London will be an easy commute for you and you’ve got your travel allowance.’

  This is true. Josh has got his travel allowance, for which, mercifully, he is required to submit receipts. There is no way, thank the Lord, that this money can be spent on Caroline’s mother and sister.

  And Caroline is right, as usual, at least in respect of the bus. The old bus in the Abingdon Road is a smashing place for two young childless people to live. Every morning early Caroline wheels her tall Dutch bike along the stepping-stone path and proceeds to the Woodstock Road, where she catches a bus to her school. Three times a week, Josh takes the nausea-inducing Oxford-to-London coach from Gloucester Green to Baker Street, in order to use the libraries, or to attend and sometimes give seminars. And Josh is lucky because, just as his research funding is being threatened by the decline of the rand against sterling, he submits his thesis and lands a job in the drama department at Bristol University; a manageable commuter distance from the old red bus. This time he buys a season ticket and commutes by high-speed train.

  Four years into their marriage; four years during which she’s watched several of her same-age friends have children – Caroline, having kept it nobly to herself, is still harbouring longings to have a baby. She has sustained her family through her sister’s last years at high school plus two out of three years of higher education. So maybe the time has come? Janet, having been turned down for law school, will soon have completed a teacher-training course and will then be eligible for work. So Zoe is born, a dainty, easy baby with Josh’s chestnut curls, whose existence provides Caroline with yet another outlet for her creative talents, because, for all her parents’ pared-down income, Zoe is always beautifully attired.

  Her jumble-sale Babygro suits have been dyed dark plum, or bottle green, or chocolate brown. Zoe has a quilted toggle jacket made from scraps of Liberty lawn and another made from the edging strips of a large Madras-check tablecloth. She spends her first months sleeping in an antique wooden cradle, rescued from the council dump – Caroline having first padded the interior with sheep’s wool gathered from the farmer’s fences, and covered the padding with sky-blue pleated silk.

  Josh finds he loves to take care of Zoe on his stay-at-home days and sometimes, during her first twelve months, he takes her with him on the train to Bristol in a sling across his chest, and with a Moses basket in tow so that she can sleep through meetings and lectures, which she always reliably does.

  They have even started saving to buy that little terraced house.

  ‘It’s all going to work out fine,’ Caroline says, on the occasion of Zoe’s first birthday, as they munch on celebratory slices of home-made almond cake. ‘You realise that Janet graduates next month? Then, as soon as she can get a job, it’ll make for one less dependant. And with Mum and Janet living together, they can share the household expenses. Plus my sister and I can start to share the cost of Mum’s personal needs.’

  Caroline has moved on from the small private school to become head of history in a somewhat challenging city comprehensive. It’s a job that makes greater demands on her, but it earns her the extra money to place Zoe in the crèche run by her old college.

  ‘We’ve done it, Josh!’ she says. ‘We’ve very nearly done it! Say, one of these days – like in about a year – I could take a cut in salary and see about working part-time. Then we could have another baby. And, I mean – well – the bus is lovely, but it could be that we should try now for a proper house. I mean go for it right away, before they get even more expensive.’

  Caroline, alas, has spoken too soon, since Janet duly graduates, but, after teaching for three days in a leafy suburban school, has seen fit to pack it in. The information is relayed to them via another of the matriarch’s letters.

  Dear Caroline

  This is to let you know that your sister has had to give up teaching. The children of today are so badly behaved there is no respect and Janet can’t be expected to cope with all the rudeness and noise. As you will appreciate she is much too frail when it comes to stamina, she has always been less fortunate than you.

  Love Mum

  This time there is no postscript.

  ‘Caroline,’ Josh says darkly. ‘We can’t let this go on. We have to fly there and sort it out. We have to blow a chunk of our savings. There’s nothing else we can do.’

  Josh has recently agreed with Caroline that he should splash out and take a plane to Dar es Salaam – spurred on by Ida’s most recent letter, from which it has become obvious that Bernie is in serious decline. He suffers attacks of angina and has recently undergone a hospital procedure to improve upon his wobbly heartbeat. They have agreed that Josh will take Zoe with him to meet his parents, and both the prospective travellers have had their necessary jabs. Sadly, now he sees no option but to delay the visit to Tanzania, and to spend the money elsewhere.

  To his relief, Caroline does not reject the idea.

  ‘But let’s give it a little bit longer,’ she says. ‘I’ll write and suggest that Janet try for some less demanding job. Maybe in a library? Just give me one more try.’

  As it turns out, Caroline’s mother soon saves them the expense of buying airfares. She pays another of her unannounced visits, and this time she is toting a significantly larger suitcase. Josh is home alone with Zoe when he hears the ting-ting of the bus conductor’s bell.

  ‘Surprise-surprise!’ she says. ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Josh says. ‘Come in. Take a seat.’ But his mother-in-law remains standing, as she stares out of the window. ‘Really,’ she says. ‘Can’t the two of you do any better than this?’ Then she tries her hand at humour. ‘And who would have thought I’d have to come all this way to see a sheep farm,’ she says.

  This time she has no plans to take off for Aberdeen. She ensconces herself in the upstairs bedroom, while Josh and Caroline sleep downstairs on a camping mattress alongside the bus’s pretty pot-bellied stove. Zoe sleeps between them. Josh finds that throughout this time it is Zoe – his precious little Zoe – who keeps him safe from drowning.

  On her first night, in a mood of ominous skittishness, Caroline’s mother has pulled out bundles of ugly
canary-yellow hand-knits along with two polyester toddler frocks in harsh Mrs Thatcher blue.

  ‘Now you won’t forget to write thank-you notes?’ she says, going into a familiar routine.

  Thank-you notes, Josh is reflecting bitterly, to Mesdames Blah, Blah and Blah. Etiquette lessons from the Witch Woman, who, in five years to date, has never once thanked him or Caroline for handing over more than half their income.

  ‘Now for the photographs,’ she says, with a wink. ‘I’ve got the video as well, of course, but since you folks don’t have TV . . .’

  ‘Photographs?’ Caroline says. Surprise-surprise.

  Her mother’s pièce de résistance is a sheaf of professional wedding photographs that depict Caroline’s sister Janet, standing in full-length nuptial regalia beside a dark-haired man in a morning suit. In some, the bride is surrounded by a phalanx of female children in lemon bridesmaids’ get-up. There is one adult-size female, also in ankle-length lemon. In some, the couple are in the company of both mothers. One matriarch is in lilac ensemble, complete with lilac bag, shoes, gloves and hat; the other is in tangerine.

  ‘Uncle Julius gave her away,’ the matriarch says, before going on to produce what she refers to as the ‘informal snaps’; a stash of posed lovebird studies in which the bride has taken her shoes off and is dabbling her feet in a pond.

  ‘Gosh,’ Caroline says, visibly gulping down hurt. ‘You both look really great, Mum. What a fabulous hat.’

  ‘Well, you know your sister,’ replies Mrs McCleod. ‘Only the best will do. And, of course, Mark is a very successful accountant. Need I say more?’

  The couple met at an evangelical summer school. The Less Fortunate, as it transpires, has been Born Again.

  ‘So how long have you got with us, Mum?’ Caroline says, but Josh takes note that his mother-in-law is suddenly very busy organising the photographs back into their respective envelopes.