That Was Then Read online

  But Ben liked babes. They never seemed to me to be quite good enough for him, and he accepted this traditional mother’s point of view with equanimity. ‘So whaddya think?’ he’d ask sometimes when the teen-angel of the moment had just left the house.

  ‘She’s very pretty.’ I always tried to be positive.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘No, she’s fine – I liked her.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘No buts. And anyway, it’s none of my business.’

  This was usually his cue to give me a squeeze round the shoulders and say something like: ‘ Take it easy, Ma, if I want my mind expanded I’ll read a good book.’

  I wasn’t bothered. Not one girl so far had had enough about her to seduce Ben permanently from the comforts of home. I knew serious competition when I saw it, and it had not yet broken the horizon. While the babes ruled, he’d stay.

  Ian, my estranged husband – we were still married, though drifting quietly towards a permanent dissolution – took a dimmer view. He lived in London, and tended only to meet the babe of the moment when visiting.

  ‘What on earth’s he doing with her?’ he would ask, baffled.

  ‘I’d have thought it was obvious.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not in his league.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s the way he likes it.’

  ‘What does Mel think?’

  Ian had a great respect for Mel’s opinion, probably because it tended in most matters to coincide more directly with his own. In the circumstances I was usually able to report that she couldn’t see the attraction, but then we wouldn’t expect her to.

  This comforted Ian. He was a painstaking achiever, without his daughter’s buccaneering streak, who suffered from the perfectionist’s complaints of migraine and, from time to time, peptic ulcers. Muddle and make-do made him feel physically ill. But he had always been an adoring father, more idealistic in many ways than I, who considered that his offspring, even at their least promising moments, were simply gathering themselves before sprinting towards their goals. When Ben had dropped out of his degree course, Ian choked back his disappointment and rationalised the failure to his own satisfaction.

  ‘I suspect he was bored.’

  ‘Bored?’ I gaped. ‘Don’t make me laugh. He’s been turning night into day for two solid years.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m going to have a word with him about that. But there simply isn’t the rigour and quality to the teaching in these places that there was even in our day. All these people want to do is be on television, or write contentious lightweight books that will make them a mint. There’s no real desire to engage the interest of the students. Ben’s bright, and they failed him.’

  It was useless to argue. And anyway, Ben was undeniably bright. But my husband could never accept how different his son was from himself: that for Ben, the pleasure principle was not ancillary, but pivotal. I once had the misfortune to come across Ben’s diary. Misfortune, because once happened upon I could not resist a peek, and those who peek see only what is unwelcome. On the Saturday in question were scrawled, in red biro, as if deliberately to shock the unwary snooper, the words: ‘GOT TROLLIED – GOT LUCKY – GOT LAID.’

  The entry made me laugh, a trifle nervously, but it would have shocked Ian to the core.

  Predictably, Pearl showed up again at the weekend with an aggressive ‘Just-don’t-ask’ air.

  ‘He’s still in bed,’ I told her over the intercom. It was eleven-thirty a.m. on Saturday, and Ben didn’t have to be at HMV till two.

  ‘Ri-ight …’ she said sarkily, ‘mind if I come up?’

  When she arrived in the flat I said, ‘I’ll go and stick my head round the door.’

  She stood in the middle of the hall lighting a cigarette. As I went along to Ben’s room I was aware of her shaking the match and wondered, pickily, what she’d do with it.

  I knocked. ‘Ben …?’ There was some sort of grunt, so I went in and addressed the mound of purple duvet. ‘Ben, it’s after half past eleven and Pearl’s here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s twenty-five to twelve. Pearl’s in the hall.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, quite placidly, and threw off the duvet. I flinched, but he had on boxer shorts.

  I withdrew discreetly and went back to Pearl. ‘He’s on his way.’

  That, it appeared, was her cue to join him. The dead match, I noticed, was in the bowl with my Christmas cactus.

  I turned the radio on in the kitchen as a cover, and after a few mintues ventured with shameful stealth out into the hall. The reggae was still jogging away in there, but there was no accompanying sound of voices, so I assumed they were using the music for the same reason I was using mine – disguise.

  Half an hour later I went as noisily as possible up to my room and got changed into shorts and a polo shirt, with much thumping of drawers and cupboards. On the landing I called: ‘I’m going to play tennis!’

  ‘Have a good one,’ replied Ben in that bright, we’re-not-up-to-anything-in-here voice which didn’t fool me for a second. The voice was slightly over-projected, to compensate for coming from the horizontal.

  Sabine, Desma, Ronnie and I played on the municipal courts down near the prom, twice a week, winter and summer. This time of year was easy street, but our winter games had become a point of honour with us. Like Christian martyrs we endured the exigencies of the snarling coastal weather, the vulture-like wheeling and crying of the storm-tossed gulls and the jibes of the local yobbery as we played the best of three short sets in several layers of clothing. We told each other we were completely mad, but if we were mad we were also smug. Our reward, if not in heaven, came in the spring of the following year when we astounded fairweather players on neighbouring courts with our accuracy, consistency, and fitness.

  These things are all relative, of course. Three of the four of us weren’t that good, and by mid-June of any given year the really flash players had long since drawn level and were beginning to pull away, leaving us middle-rankers still struggling with our unsound service grips and dodgy backhands.

  Still, we were addicted to tennis, that most psychologically testing of games. We played for fun, but also to win. Our cries of ‘Sorree!’, ‘Shot!’ and ‘Bad luck!’ were a thin veneer covering both our determination to grind each other into the dust and our fury when we failed to do so, either through their superior skill or our own unforced errors.

  The only one of our number who didn’t care about winning was Ronnie, who was also, unsurprisingly, the best player. As Veronica Toozey she had been tennis captain of one of the biggest, smartest girls’boarding schools in the home counties. As Ronnie Chatsworth, married to local solicitor Dennis, she was still the woman to beat, not least because she was so maddeningly impervious to the ignoble pleasures of victory. A tall, square-shouldered, fresh-faced natural athlete, she had all the strokes, including a serve so venomous that she could actually come in on it, and the speed to do so. But she played with a smile and a shrug – Desma and I would speculate as to whether she laughed when having sex with the dry and serious Dennis, and concluded that she must, because if she didn’t she might cry. The Chatsworths’ was one of Littelsea’s more curious unions, but it had lasted twenty-seven years and given them two grown-up sons, so we allowed fair play to them.

  Sabine was the one who most wanted to win, which was unfortunate because she was never going to be quite as good as Ronnie. Sabine was French, and married to a rich, likeable landowner, Martin Drage. A state-of-the-art astro-turf court was at that moment being built to accompany the heated pool with retractable cover in the garden of their splendid house, Headlands. She made no bones about the fact that Martin’s bank balance was a major part of his charm. Martin had a daughter by his first marriage, but he and Sabine enjoyed a brisk, affable, child-free accommodation. I suspected that, Sabine’s svelte femininity notwithstanding, theirs was a low-level sex-life held together by a fidelity based on indifference rather than conviction.

 
; Sabine had a franchise for a home-sales clothing company, Chic. She was one of their least active but most successful agents, motivated not by the need to make money – Martin made more than even she could spend – but by a steely Gallic urge to impose her will on her customers. Sabine didn’t so much sell you a garment as imply that you would be untouchable if you failed to buy it. Unlike the rest of us, she had private coaching, read books on tactics, and adopted an unusual stance to receive – racquet held out to one side, and aloft, the other arm outstretched, like a lion tamer approaching his charge with a whip and a chair. She alone belonged to the local posh club, protected from the hoi polloi by extortionate fees and impregnable green canvas windbreaks. I think that, but for the presence of Ronnie, she would have judged our game quite beyond the pale.

  Desma was a relative latecomer to the game. Short and stocky, she was a natural ball player who had taken up tennis when age halted her involvement with the local women’s hockey team. She had the convert’s zeal and what she lacked in technique she made up for in strength and an alarmingly high work rate which resulted in her getting almost everything back. She was about ten years younger than the rest of us, but had married late, so although she was in her mid-thirties she had a two-year-old daughter. Richard ‘Rick’ Shaw was a couple of years younger than her, shy, handsome and devoted. Our theory concerning the Shaws – and you’ll have gathered that we had theories on everyone – was that Rick was one of those men who couldn’t handle being gorgeous, so jolly, unthreatening, tomboyish Desma represented a safe haven. Blissfully happy with his lot, he was not only adorable but a new man and a treasure, who happily toted Bryony around the shops in a backpack while his wife worked up a sweat on the courts.

  And that left me. Like my French, my tennis was what I’d learned at school, good and bad habits more or less unchanged, but rendered passable with practice. In the pecking order I came below Ronnie and Sabine, and officially above Desma, though here my temperament let me down. My strokes were superior to hers – they should have been, I’d been playing since I was twelve – but I lacked her bull-dog qualities, her never-say-die perseverance and gnat-in-a-paper bag agility about the court. If I was having an off day, my head, as they say, went down. I got cross and frustrated and defeatist. I lacked self-belief.

  We four of us played at midday on a Saturday because everyone else seemed to be at superstores, garden centres and DIY emporia, or perhaps just eating lunch. Not to be left out on this score we always went to the Esplanade Hotel afterwards, for wine and the special in the Cutter Bar.

  On this occasion Desma and Sabine were already there, knocking up with Sabine’s fluorescent pink balls. Sabine wore a tiny, scarlet pleated skirt and a red-and-white striped singlet. Desma’s chunky thighs were encased in the usual grey marl cycling shorts, topped with a Littelsea LHC sweatshirt.

  ‘Hi there!’ she cried, swiping at a penetrating Drage forehand in such a way that the swipe effectively became a lob and sent Sabine (who had charged the net) scampering back to the baseline. ‘How are you? You look terrific!’

  ‘Thanks.’ I let myself in and unzipped my racquet cover as Desma and Sabine came over to join me.

  ‘What a tan,’ said Desma admiringly. ‘I wish I went brown.’

  Preferring hypocrisy to Sabine’s lecture on skincare, I said quickly: ‘You won’t in ten years’ time when you’re a peach and I’m a prune.’

  Sabine gave both of my cheeks an approving air kiss. ‘How was your daughter?’

  ‘Very well. Working hard but being well paid for it.’

  ‘Did you manage to play at all?’

  I didn’t tell her I hadn’t even taken my racquet. ‘ It was a bit hot for tennis.’

  ‘So,’ said Sabine, giving her own racquet – which had a newfangled triangular head – a threatening twiddle, ‘you need the practice. We’ll let you go on your own till Ronnie gets here.’

  ‘She rang me to say she might be late,’ explained Desma. ‘ They were driving back from London this morning.’

  I managed about five minutes knock-up on my own before making way for Desma. When Ronnie arrived she joined Desma, and called:

  ‘It’s so good to have you back, Eve! News over lunch, right? Sorry to hold things up, I don’t need a knock-up.’

  She didn’t, either. Their skill and our combined temperament problem ensured that she and Desma made hay with us. It had to be said that I didn’t play well, and Sabine’s wasn’t a forgiving nature. As we approached the net to shake hands I could sense, if not actually see, the gritted teeth behind the smile. She let down the net in a manner that suggested she was trying to ease her own tension.

  ‘Sorry everyone,’ I said as we returned to the bench. ‘Not one of my better efforts. That’s holidays for you.’

  Ronnie laughed. ‘Don’t apologise, we won.’

  Sabine opened the gate to usher us out. ‘Did you have a good evening in town?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ronnie. ‘ Do you know I was dreading it but it was actually rather fun.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Desma.

  ‘Dennis’s old boys do. Every other summer they include wives and girlfriends.’

  The thought of Dennis and his fellow old boys silenced Sabine and me, but fortunately Desma was up to the job.

  ‘Was it a dance?’

  ‘No, a dinner, but they had music – a little combo sort of thing, twiddling away in the background.’

  ‘Lloyd Webber?’ enquired Sabine, nostrils flaring superciliously.

  ‘Not that I recollect. Gershwin, Berlin, that sort of thing, it was nice.’ Ronnie opened the boot of her car, which was closest, and we dumped our racquets and balls before walking on in the direction of the Esplanade.

  ‘What did you wear?’ I asked.

  ‘That purple dress – the one I’ve had for ages. The one I wore to your last thing.’

  ‘Good choice, you look smashing in that.’

  ‘You know,’ said Sabine, ‘you should try something short, Ronnie. You have the figure for it.’

  ‘If I had your legs I would.’

  ‘You have good legs.’

  ‘I only display the bits that are good. And that means below the knee.’

  ‘Fifty per cent more than I can manage,’ said Desma, glancing ruefully down at her rounded knees and sturdy calves.

  ‘It’s all a question of proportion,’ explained Sabine.

  ‘Telling me.’

  ‘No, the proportions of what you wear,’ went on Sabine, addressing herself to Ronnie. ‘Some kinds of short clothes look like mutton dressed as lamb, other kinds are superbly elegant.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ replied Ronnie, pasing the rest of us a look, ‘that the other kinds are also wickedly expensive.’

  ‘Not necessarily!’ said Sabine. ‘The new Chic range, for instance.…’

  We jeered affectionately as we went through the hotel’s revolving door.

  The Esplanade was a once grand Edwardian seafront hotel which had fallen on hard times since the war, and been rescued ten years ago by a chain with the money – and the good sense – to restore its fortunes in a way which did not alter its essential character. The Cutter Bar was the only real innovation, and one which we applauded. It was a pleasant, long bar with a conservatory overlooking the sea. Anywhere else in the hotel our tennis clothes would have been in violation of an unspoken, rigorously maintained dress code, but the Cutter was a meeting place, more comfortable than a pub but with a pub’s relaxed, democratic atmosphere. Also, the Esplanade’s management had hired a chef who was a disciple of Rick Stein, so the fish and seafood were wonderful.

  Clay, the barman, greeted us in his usual way.

  ‘How was it this morning, ladies?’

  ‘Well up to our usual standard,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Sabine.

  Clay – whom nature had intended for precisely this job – clicked his teeth as he poured our usuals. ‘Who won then?’

  ‘They did,
’ I told him.

  It was a measure of Clay’s interpersonal skills that he gave the impression of knowing exactly what I meant.

  ‘I see. The game’s the thing, though, isn’t it?’

  Ronnie said ‘Absolutely’ and the rest of us ‘You’re joking’ – or something like it, all at the same time.

  We retired with our drinks to the corner table in the conservatory upon which Clay had thoughtfully placed a ‘Reserved’ sign. Littelsea having preserved its reputation as a resort of the old school, there was nothing on the promenade opposite to interrupt our view of the sea, except one or two people walking dogs. In the gardens of the Esplanade a Union Jack stirred flaccidly atop a tall flagpole. The channel swell gleamed in the early afternoon sun.

  I took that first tinkling, sparkling sip of gin and tonic than which there are few more intense pleasures. There was a special charm about this drink, on this occasion, in this company. In the sun-baked luxury of the UAE I had consciously missed it, and it was good to be back. I often wondered if the others, with husbands, so to speak, still in place, set as much store by it as I did. Probably not, though instinct told me that only Desma always rushed back to her family with unalloyed delight.

  Ronnie lifted her glass. ‘Welcome back, Eve!’

  We clinked, the four musketeers. Sabine lit a cigarette. ‘You’re never going to believe this, but I am going to be a parent.’ We gaped, and she fluttered manicured fingers to dispel our misapprehension. ‘No, no – please! How could you think such a thing of me? No, Martin’s daughter is coming to live with us for a while.’

  ‘I’d forgotten Martin even had a daughter,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Had you, Sabine, that’s the question,’ said Desma.

  ‘No, I have been fully aware of her, always. Martin has paid for her education. But since for nineteen years she has been perfectly happy with her mother in Yorkshire I’ve not given her a great deal of thought.’