‘You want to put the past behind you. Get out and live a bit. You want to join some Societies. Get yourself a new girdle.’
Florence didn’t speak. She came away from the window; she never admitted it, but the antics and the shrieking of the children got on her nerves.
‘The trouble with you is that you don’t make the best of yourself,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’m not running you down, I’m only telling you out of the kindness of my heart. You’re no beauty queen, but you could do yourself up.’
‘What for?’ Florence sat down by the tea-trolley.
‘For the fellers,’ Sylvia said conspiratorially.
‘I don’t know any fellows.’
‘Well, and you never will, will you, if you keep mouldering in the house? What’s stopping you now? Your mother’s been put away, you don’t have to stop in and mind her any more.’
‘I wish you would not use that expression,’ Florence said. Any of those expressions really; redolent of your time at the cooked meats factory. Sylvia laughed; she patted her hair, puffed out and lacquered in a style that had passed its apogee some years before. It was impossible to imagine her without this hairstyle; like a helmet, it covered her weakest point, the head. She was, Florence thought, a strange blend of savage self-assertion and abject dependence; pathetic and ferocious by turns. Florence knew so little of the married women of her generation that she imagined Sylvia to be unusual.
‘It is a home for the elderly,’ Florence said. ‘A sanctuary for the twilight years.’
‘Get away,’ Sylvia said. ‘Your mother’s off her rocker. Colin doesn’t keep any secrets from me.’
‘Really?’ Florence said. ‘By the nature of a secret, you would not know if he did.’
‘You’ve room to talk, about the folks round the corner.’
‘It wasn’t idle gossip. I haven’t seen them for some time. They are old neighbours, though they are not people whom we have known. I am concerned.’
Sylvia yawned, leaning back and allowing her fingers a token flutter before her mouth.
‘You want to be concerned with yourself. I’m telling you. Smarten yourself up and get out a bit. The trouble with this family, it’s too introvert.’
‘Oh, is that Colin’s trouble?’, Florence asked.
‘Well, he was introvert.’
‘But you remedied it.’
‘What kind of a life is that?’ Sylvia asked. ‘I had other offers. I could have got married four times over.’
‘That might have been unwise,’ Florence said gently. ‘You know, you’ve changed, Sylvia. You will have your opinions now. I remember when Colin first brought you home.’
Sylvia blushed furiously. So she remembers too, Florence thought. Father had been alive, of course, quite hale and hearty. Mrs Sidney wore a new Crimplene suit in powder blue with bracelet-length sleeves. She herself put on a beige jersey wool. There were fruit scones and a Victoria sandwich. Mother’s gimlet eyes spotted a traycloth insufficiently starched, and (although often they were not starched at all) she whisked it off. As she waited to meet the girl her son intended to marry, one pointed finger rubbed and rubbed at a spot on the wooden arm of her chair. It had been summer, a day very like this. Sylvia’s substantial black brassiere had shown clearly under her short cotton frock, and she had emitted great guffaws of nervous laughter whenever she was addressed. Father had been exquisitely civil. Colin had not known where to look. Florence and her mother had agreed later that, seeing her in the setting he was used to, Colin would be sure to see that he was making a mistake. But he hadn’t.
‘I let your blasted mother put on me,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’d know better now.’ From upstairs came the sound of the lavatory flushing.
‘Unfortunately it isn’t given to any of us to have our opportunities over again. Or what would you do if you could? Perhaps since you are now so dissatisfied with your life, you ought to have looked the other way when you saw Colin on the tram.’
‘I can assure you,’ Sylvia said, ‘that I didn’t meet Colin on any tram.’
‘It would be nothing to be ashamed of if you had.’
‘I assure you.’
‘She couldn’t have,’ said Colin, coming in. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘I understood you met on a tram. I’m not saying anything against it.’
‘Couldn’t have been on a tram,’ Colin said. ‘I’m not saying we wouldn’t have been on a tram, either Sylvia or myself, but I happen to recall that the trams had stopped running some years previously. It was on the railway station that we met.’
‘I knew public transport was involved somewhere,’ Florence said.
‘And what have you got against it?’
Florence smiled faintly. ‘Nothing.’
‘Only I was going to say, your father made his living out of it, didn’t he, people falling off buses.’
‘Yes, my love,’ Colin said. ‘We are all staunch supporters of public transport in this house. Perhaps that’s why you caught my eye. You so clearly approved of it too.’
‘You were a while,’ Sylvia observed, ‘in the toilet.’
‘Allow me a few moments’ privacy,’ Colin said. ‘Confine your interest to the children’s bowel movements, not mine.’
‘The topic of romance on trams has worn thin,’ Florence said. ‘I see that we must have something else. Sylvia sees it too.’
Defiantly, Colin took out a cigarette and lit it. Love is blind, Florence thought: for a year or two.
‘Unhygienic habit,’ Sylvia said. ‘I gave it up when I was pregnant with Suzanne. I read it in a magazine. Smoking and Pregnancy.’
‘Sylvia takes magazines devoted to housewifery,’ Florence said. ‘Does she have recipes making use of frozen chicken which are both tasty and economical?’
‘I know what you eat,’ Sylvia said. ‘Bread and jam.’
‘In its place,’ Florence murmured.
‘Tea,’ said Colin.
‘I know. And tomato sandwiches. I don’t think Colin had ever had a proper meal in his life until we got married.’ She got up. ‘We’ll be off, Florence.’ She went out through the kitchen to the back door. ‘Come on, you lot, we’re off.’
An argument ensued. Florence could hear the protests of the children overridden by Sylvia’s firm flat voice. It made her nervous. If they wanted to stay, it probably meant that they were engaged in some form of covert vandalism. ‘The roses,’ she said nervously.
‘Roses.’ Colin put his head in his hands. ‘You ought to get some cabbages in. The cost of living being what it is.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. They were Father’s roses.’
‘Grub them up,’ Colin said. ‘That’s it. Grub them up.’ He groaned quietly, then stood up, stretching himself. He was a man on poor terms with his clothes—his shirt always coming out of his waistband, his trousers shooting up around his calves as he sat; it was difficult not to see this as a symptom of a more general failure of control. He had once been remarkably good-looking, but now his looks had faded, as if his features were doubtful of their application in his current circumstances. His habitual expression was one of anxious astonishment, like that of a man who has been stopped in the street by a policeman and finds he has forgotten his name. ‘Where’s my pullover?’ he said, looking about. He hauled it over his head