The Northern Clemency. Philip Hensher

in not by Ajanta’s heavy-lidded mother, smoking away on the telephone, but by the tiny Meena who Anne, irretrievably, had mistaken for her – before the subject of Ajanta had taken over Jane’s conversation at home. What she said, what they ate, what Mrs Das had said about the standard of teaching in the West, as she confusingly called Sheffield, the games they had played and what Bombay was like, all a substitute for talking about Ajanta herself. She hadn’t been aware of it; it was only when Daniel and, amazingly, Tim had launched into a derisive chorus of ‘Ajanta says, Ajanta says,’ that she realized she’d been talking about her for days, weeks. It was something you ought to keep to yourself, whatever the something was you were immuring. She knew that now, at the cost of her besotted friendship – because, of course, you couldn’t go on as you had before, even in the playground where Daniel and Tim weren’t watching. The observation followed you even there. Ajanta herself hadn’t seemed all that bothered, or even to have noticed. But it was something you had to discover. You just didn’t talk like that. She’d found that out now.

      But her mother, apparently, had never found that out. Here she was, night after night, talking about the flower shop, the day she’d had. It was like an itch in your nose, and you didn’t want to watch someone picking his nose over dinner. It was worst on Saturdays and Sundays when she didn’t work: she kept at it all day.

      ‘That’s looking nice,’ she said, coming up behind Malcolm, down on the lawn in kneepads. He was tugging at some weeds with a gardening fork, his gardening shirt on. It was a sunny day. Jane was sitting at the table on the patio with a book, the Chalet School; it was getting to an exciting bit, the new girl trapped by a sudden avalanche in a mountain hut with the strict history mistress and nothing but a few dry biscuits to see them through. Her dad had gone out early, and was working round the beds steadily, anti-clockwise, like a battery-powered machine. He’d got to about ten o’clock on the semi-circular dial. She paused, and paid attention.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The hostas, they’re doing well this year. Kept the slugs off for once. That trick with the orange peel seemed to do the trick.’

      ‘That’s a good job,’ her mother said. ‘It looked terribly untidy, all those bits of peel scattered all over the place. At least it’s serving a useful purpose. That’s lovely, too, isn’t it?’

      ‘The clematis? Yes, it’s had a good year. You never quite know with clematis.’

      Her mother hummed a little tune. She was on the verge of saying something. She ran her fingers through the climbing plant growing over the fence, the foaming purple; she raised it to her nose, and let it drop. There was no scent. Jane knew that.

      ‘Did we never think of growing lilies?’ her mother said.

      ‘What’s that?’ her father said. Her mother repeated herself.

      ‘No,’ he said shortly. His voice was harsh with physical effort; his face, turned down, was flushed. ‘I never did. They come up, and they die off. Not much of a show, unless you’ve a lot of them, and nine-tenths of the year they’re nothing much to look at.’

      ‘I love them,’ her mother said. ‘Nick does very well with them.’

      ‘Who does?’

      ‘Nick,’ her mother said. ‘They’re very popular – they have a lovely scent for the house. Or there are gorgeous ornamental grasses you can grow now. Or honesty – you know what I mean by honesty? Even tulips. I love a big show of tulips.’

      ‘We have tulips,’ her father said. ‘Over there. Can always put some more in, if you fancy.’

      ‘I’d forgotten about the tulips,’ her mother said.

      ‘It’s not the time of year for them,’ her father said. ‘They were doing well six months back. I’m surprised you forgot.’

      ‘We’ve got such a lot of tulips now in Nick’s shop,’ her mother said. ‘You forget about when things bloom naturally.’

      ‘They’ll be forced,’ her father said.

      ‘I suppose that’s right,’ her mother said. She stood, irresolute. Jane’s father carried on tugging at the perhaps non-existent weeds, never having turned to look at her; and in a moment she went back into the house. She’d find nobody to talk to about Nick in there, Jane thought. She patted Jane’s head absently as she passed.

      Jane thought the situation through, and decided the best way to deal with it. Anne was still sort of her best friend. A week or two later, after school, they went round to Anne’s house. She lived in Lodge Moor, in a modern house, brick-yellow, surrounded by innumerable stunted shrubs planted by the original builders. The ill-fitting windows rattled all year round with the ferocious wind. They went up to Anne’s bedroom: she was allowed to put posters up with sellotape, and her walls were lined with images of big-eyed brown horses, on which Anne was mad, and two or three pop-singers, just as glossy in their brown big-eyed gaze.

      ‘My mum’s having an affair,’ Jane said, once the door was closed.

      ‘An affair?’ Anne seemed frightened but impressed.

      ‘It’s happening everywhere, these days,’ Jane said, and sighed. ‘I only hope it won’t lead to divorce. It would break my heart if my parents split up.’

      ‘Who would you live with?’ Anne said.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. She hadn’t thought things out this far.

      ‘It’d be your dad,’ Anne said. ‘Your mum’d be off with her fancy man. It’d be all her fault – you wouldn’t let a woman who’d done that walk off with the children too. It’d not be fair.’

      Jane let the full, lovely tragedy wash over her, its forthcoming bliss. She’d practically be an orphan, her and Daniel and Tim, coping bravely after a family tragedy; how they would look at her, when she moved up to Flint next year! ‘I don’t know,’ she said, honesty cutting in. ‘I don’t know that it’s come to talk of divorce yet.’

      ‘What’s your dad think?’

      ‘I don’t know that he knows,’ Jane said.

      ‘Well, how d’you know, come to that?’ Anne said. ‘You’re making it up.’ Then Anne got up, apparently bored with the subject. ‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘I got it down town on Saturday.’

      She opened her white-painted louvred wardrobe doors. That was one of the things about Anne, along with her horses and her snappiness, her incredible wardrobe: there were things in there she’d grown out of, she having no small sister or cousin to pass things on to, all pressing against each other stiflingly. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for Anne’s clothes, suffocating each other in that breathless wardrobe. ‘Look,’ Anne said, and from the bottom of the wardrobe, she fished out a scrap of cloth, white and glistening, its price tag still on it even though it had been tossed to the bottom of the wardrobe, and a pair of strappy white shoes. ‘I got a halter-top and a pair of slingbacks from Chelsea Girl. The shoes were three ninety-nine.’

      Jane didn’t know whether that was a lot or not. ‘Your mum go with you?’

      ‘Course she did,’ Anne said. ‘She paid. I’m going to put them on.’

      She shucked off her school shirt. Jane looked, with envy, at her starter bra. Anne’s mother had bought it for her the first time she’d asked. No one else in their class had managed it, and Jane certainly not. But Anne didn’t have an older brother who’d overheard and laughed his head off. She put on the halter-top, twisting and fiddling with the strings behind. She slipped off the heavy brown school shoes, not untying the laces, and pushed on the slingbacks, squashing them on in a hurry, and then, striking a pose, the price tag dangling from her waist over the grey school skirt, she pushed forward her left hip and pouted. She twirled, the strap of her starter bra across her bare back.

      ‘Nice,’ Jane said.

      ‘Go on, you try them on,’ Anne said, and so they started to play, the lipstick coming