Alice might have said more.
She could always say more. She had made an art form out of being
discreet. She couldn’t help it, it was
due to her English upbringing, and unlike many of her contemporary expatriate
Brits, she was not about to apologize nor make excuses for her use of
tact. Everything, in her opinion, was
too vulgar nowadays, too open, too in-your-face. She had always loathed vulgarity. “Oh, you are so Jane Austen”, Derek had often
told her. She received this as high
praise. Though having affairs with young
men nearly half her age was not exactly the Jane Austen thing to do. And there he sat, looking and not looking at
her—they had scarcely exchanged a single word with each other, though both were
being civil, composed in each other’s presence, and hardly discomfited. Derek seemed different somehow, a bit older,
or more mature. More handsome? Perhaps his affair with Carol, who was much
nearer his age, had been just what he needed.
They were, she had heard, no longer seeing each other, though clearly
they were still friends. She didn’t
really believe that there was anything to the age difference. On several occasions, since Alice’s break-up
with Derek, Carol had met with her. It
had not been so difficult as she’d expected, their getting over the initial
hurdle of hostility, jealousy and suspicion.
The two women discovered that they quite liked each other and became
allies, if not intimate friends. Alice
was shocked and dismayed to learn of the perverted nature of their relationship
and advised Carol to end it as quickly as possible, she did not want Derek
endangering her too. She phoned him
herself, and spoke to him in strong and uncompromising terms. Simply, she wanted him to suffer for what she
had had to endure from him, and Carol stood in as a most convenient instrument
for Alice to vent her umbrage.
She lived now,
confirmed in her celibacy, fully committed to cronehood. Having lost all interest in sex, none of the
graceful young men in her current round of classes did anything to spawn her
interest. She actually found them
faintly repugnant. She quite enjoyed
spending time with Doris these days.
They had lived in the same terrace in South Kensington during the war,
near the girlhood home of Virginia Woolf.
They hadn’t known each other, having only discovered their mutual
proximity during the war when Alice began to rent from Doris and Sam
Goldberg. From the beginning it was
clear that this would be no ordinary landlord-tenant arrangement: first of all
because they were already teaching colleagues at Langara College. Doris had informed her of the vacancy in her
building. Also because of the nature of
their mutual bond. With Doris alone, as
with no one else since her childhood, Alice felt that she’d come home. From the beginning there was no mutual guard
between them. It was all openness,
respect and fondness. Doris was England
to her. Sam had remained a distant
reality, rather like the retaining wall of the secret garden her friendship
with Doris had soon become for her.
Shell-shocked from the end of her marriage and the loss of her
daughter—she had only Glen left—Doris became to them both the family they had
lost. So she welcomed into her care
these two survivors, mother and son, having open always to them both her home. Even Sam, taciturn and surly as he was,
provided them a welcoming silence. She
had been intrigued with the way Doris had bonded with her son; perhaps, at
first a little jealous and uneasy, until it became clear that her rule as her
son’s mother was not under scrutiny, and Glen seemed all the better for her
influence. It was as though he absorbed
from Doris her virtue, drawing it into his own being, and making it his. She never lost her son to anyone. They had remained close, as dear
friends. And now Marlene was part of
this tender fellowship, yet with a difference.
So recently had things changed between Alice and her daughter, but this
she knew: that the femaleness they shared in common together was now no longer
a cause for enmity, but a source of mutual strength. As mother and daughter, as intimate friends,
yet also as two women, they now loved each other. Without fear, though there remained between
them a certain nervousness, a shared self-consciousness. At this moment, now, Alice was seeing why. Gavin.
Marlene looked exactly like her father in female form. How could she have missed this, not realized
the problems this would cause between them.
Her future son-in-law was a very handsome, hungry looking man. At times this evening, Alice had caught his
eye, and she knew that gleam well; but she shot him back a look that said, that
all may be very well and fine, but I’m past that sort of thing now, I am long
past that, and you’re not going to fool me.
It’s not going to happen again, I have learned, and I will be to you a
mother-in-law and that’s all I’m going to be to you. I will be the wise crone, the aged spinster,
and the eternal virgin. I will be your
own personal Jane Austen, and that’s all I will ever be to you.
She wondered what
next she might say to Derek, who was being unusually quiet. Alice was surprised to see him looking so
comfortable in this sort of gathering.
She wondered when dinner would be ready.
She had never tasted her son’s cooking before, though it did smell
awfully good to her. She couldn’t recall
having ever felt so acutely hungry.
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