Janet thought about Christmas, how Ray had gone off for a whole two nights and not told her where. How he’d come back stinking of perfume and got foundation on the bathroom towels. Now that Bridget wasn’t there to blame, she’d have thought he’d have been more careful.
Kate looked at the kitchen clock as if it was her who had a job to go to. “I mean, it’s wonderful they’re both so engaged, but they’re just kids. I worry for them. But that’s what got us there, isn’t it, worrying for their future, that’s the whole point, and if the young aren’t engaged then what hope for us oldies?”
Speak for yourself, thought Janet.
Kate took a sip of her tea and made one of her faces. “Peggy says there’s no point in getting O-Levels. I’ve told her she can kiss university goodbye. And Simon -” she broke off as if she’d said too much already. The Hilperton’s had one of those marriages which everyone said was so progressive and isn’t it amazing and how do you make him do such a lot, I couldn’t get mine to wash a cup let alone cook the dinner while privately they felt sorry for him and said it wasn’t right. Janet felt sorry for Kate. All that modernness and still she wasn’t happy.
When the papers had come out on New Year’s Day with those pictures of the women holding hands in a ring and said they’d been dancing on top of where the bombs were going to be stored, Janet had got Paul’s magnifying glass out of his bug set and tried to see if one of them was Bridget. They were all black outlines, like the strings of paper dolls the little ones learnt to make in nursery. Bridget’s face when Janet had shown her the first time, when she’d folded the paper this way and that and cut it carefully and held each end and hey presto, as she’d widened her arms a string of stars. She’d always been good at art, Janet had. That was where Bridget got it from, not Ray who wouldn’t know a Reubens from a Rothko. She’d have done something with it if Ray hadn’t told her she was too pretty to waste. And her little Bridget’s face had been so full of wonder. It made Janet cry just to think of it and she’d left the magnifying glass aside and gone and finished the laundry.
Kate continued, “I’ve said, and Simon agrees, she’s to get her O-Levels and then we’ll see.”
“It’s Bridget’s birthday tomorrow,” said Janet. She’d left the tea bags in too long. A scum covered the surface and dragged down the side of her cup. She’d poured in too much milk as well. All day she’d been crippled with period pain, the kind that made her crawl into bed with a hot water bottle, the kind she’d suffered all her life. It had woken her up in the early hours, a tearing that made her cry, she’d taken enough aspirin to knock out a horse and succeeded in taking the edge off but the thrumming ache distracted her from the finer points like getting the tea right. Hers was practically cold. “I’ve got her a present.”
“It’s the human chain link tomorrow.”
“Only Ray won’t take me.” As far as Janet knew it was April Fool’s Day and her daughter’s sixteenth birthday and whatever a human chain link was, she wanted nothing to do with it.
“I really wanted to go,” said Kate.
“I’ve got her a pair of gloves and a scarf. Probably a bit late for that now.” The daffodils had come out in the garden. Ray had taken the cover off the trampoline.
“But I promised Simon I’d take the girls ice-skating.”
Oh spit it out, thought Janet. Kate had that look of a woman in need of confession. If it was anything about how boring her husband was it wouldn’t be news to anyone. At least Ray was a laugh. From what Janet could gather, all that happened round the Hilperton’s house was brown bread and Panorama.
“Though if it’s Bridget’s birthday then maybe I could take you. I mean I’d like to. I feel responsible.”
Not enough, thought Janet. You don’t feel responsible enough.
“I’m sure Simon’s mum can have them and I could join the chain there if you didn’t mind waiting around.”
“Ray’s got it into his head that she’s too old for presents.”
Kate gave one of her looks to the table that said she had an awful lot to say about Janet’s marriage only she wasn’t going to say it. Janet had an awful lot to say about Kate’s marriage too, only she wasn’t going to go busting in on someone else’s privacy the way Kate Hilperton thought she could, helping herself to a bit of kitchen, spreading her views all over the floor as if she was Esther Rantzen. What did she know about compromise, her with a husband who did the washing up? Five kids, well, all right there was work there, but it wasn’t as if they didn’t have money. Ray had sold them that house, he’d talked up the price like it was now or never. Gentrified, that’s what he said when types like the Hilperton’s moved in with their carry cots and Volvos.
“It’s such a big day tomorrow. They’ve talked of nothing else at meetings. Simon should know what it means to me.”
The bloody CND meetings Kate was forever trying to get the whole street to go to. As if they didn’t have enough on their plates.
“I’m sure your husband would let you if he knew.”
As far as Janet was concerned, Kate Hilperton had no business being sure of anything. With her mother-in-law on the end of the phone and her husband’s salary, the most she got to worry about was pretending to the street that she didn’t iron her husband’s trousers.
“What with his shelter and everything.”
Kate had tried to use the downstairs toilet. Janet had had to explain.
“I should think he’d be more concerned it was his daughter’s birthday, wouldn’t you?”
“I am sorry,” said Kate.
Kate didn’t know the half of it.
“brown bread and Panorama”. Perfect.
The microscopic view of class differences. From afar, either from the POV of the rich or the poor, the households of Kate and Janet would seem the same. But of course Janet is concerned with the differences she is confronted with on a daily basis.