When the World Was Steady Read online

  ‘Gorgeous! Good morning!’ he called from the shadows of his lair. On her way to the lift, Rosemarie heard him and ruffled her poodle ringlets; but Virginia knew, after all these years, that the call was for her, purely to embarrass, and it did.

  ‘Simon?’

  ‘Give us the time of day, won’t you? I haven’t had a word, not a word! Have I offended?’

  ‘It’s been a hectic morning, in, out, in, out, the revolving door of temporary.’ She could see her hands trembling so she clasped them firmly on the back of the visitor’s chair. ‘What about you? You haven’t exactly made a point of visiting me.’

  ‘You’re in my dreams, Virginia, I see you day and night.’ Simon winked.

  ‘Simon, please!’ She felt a little dizzy at the insinuation, but she was still harbouring irritation underneath and recovered in time to make a barbed point in return—not for the first time either. ‘If I’m dancing through your dream life, Simon, do you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Racy, Virginia. A little racy even for me.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘I’m telling you to sack that boy next door before he tears this department apart. And I mean it.’

  Simon stopped grinning. ‘For a Christian, that’s pretty un-Christian, Miss Simpson.’

  ‘God hasn’t come into the office before. This isn’t about God, and you know it—that boy’s a sinner, fine, so are you and so, for that matter, am I. But he’s an evil influence.’

  ‘He’s very good at his job.’

  ‘So would thousands of others be. He chats up Mandy. He’s rude to my prospectives and—’

  ‘Familiar, not rude. They like it. Mandy likes it.’

  ‘And I’ve said this before, Simon, he’s got something against me. He wants my job.’

  ‘Of course he does, Virginia. More to the point, he wants my job. Be worried if he didn’t. Brains enough, ambition, someday maybe he’ll get it. You and I won’t be kicking around this corridor forever, you know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about you and maybe you don’t care about me, but I like to think my job is safe for a few more years at least. And he’s doing his best to gnaw away at it. At me.’

  ‘You know me. You know I care. It’s just that … I’ve got to consider the future, what’s best for the future. I hardly see Mandy in this chair.’

  Virginia smoothed the pleats in her skirt and spoke very slowly. Part of her wanted to say ‘Why not me in that chair?’, just because she knew it had never occurred to him; it hadn’t really consciously occurred to her before now, not even when she joked with Mandy about Martin. But she didn’t. What she said was more difficult than that, more embarrassing. She hissed, in a rasping, tight voice, ‘If you care, make him stop doing the newsletters. They’re mine.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  She didn’t look up. She looked at her fingers and her pleats and the pulled threads in the ancient olive carpet.

  ‘You’ve always hated those damn newsletters. And the boy needs to learn. I thought—he thought—it was doing you a favour. This can’t go on, you know. From today, those newsletters are officially his. I’ll send round a memo. You’re behaving like a child. I would never have expected it. Jesus, Virginia.’

  She glanced at him. He was bobbing and swivelling slightly, visibly upset. Even amid her rage and nerves she felt the twinge of her attraction. He was perhaps not beautiful when angry, but he was quite sweet.

  ‘You know I don’t like it when you take the Lord’s name in vain,’ she said.

  ‘That’s more like it, V. But I mean it about the newsletters. It’s beneath you. Not another word, OK?’

  ‘Beneath me! Beneath me! Not another word! We’ll see about that!’ As she crossed the hall to her office, Virginia’s internal monologue was in a fine lather, and she was convinced the day could not get any worse. Then she heard her mother’s voice—a warbling echo from a couple of doors down. A warbling, but authoritative echo.

  When Virginia dashed out of the door in a morning panic, Melody Simpson consciously lowered her shoulders and sat very still at the table, listening. Her hearing was unaffected by age. She heard chattering sparrows and starlings in the trees along the block, mingling with the passage of cars and footsteps; she heard phrases of classical music from the flat upstairs; she heard Bella whistling in her feline sleep; and she heard beneath it all the faint, rhythmic hum of blood in her ears—the movements of her heart. It was only recently that she had started to listen in this way, until she felt she could catch the gurgling of inner workings right down to her toes. The sounds were reassuring; she knew she was alive.

  During the war, her husband gone, Melody would stand in the doorway of her daughters’ room and listen in this way, her face forward, her nose and eyes listening too, all recording the soft soughing of their infant breaths and the innocent, infrequent rustlings when they rolled or shifted. Then, despite Melody Simpson’s early knowledge of loss—of her husband, of the future she had wanted—hers was a defiant listening, as though simply absorbing the sounds of her children’s sleep could protect them forever, as though she alone, by doing this, kept them alive.

  But now, listening for herself, she was much less confident: she did so because she feared that one morning she wouldn’t hear anything. Her veins and arteries and lungs and bowels might simply cease their music, and were she not attentive, she might not even know it. Melody Simpson, who had not even been truly afraid when the surgeons hacked off one, and later, the other breast (she had known all along the tumours would be benign)—Melody Simpson was afraid of death.

  She could find nothing perceptibly wrong with herself, no aches or illnesses, no loss of memory or coordination, but something had changed since the night a month or so before when she awoke unreasonably from a sound sleep, heard the bedside clock ticking in the blackness and thought just this: soon I will die. She felt it as certainly as she had felt her invincibility for so many years and there was no arguing with this knowledge, no point in talking about it to Virginia or to anyone else.

  In the subsequent weeks, Mrs Simpson had resolved two things: not to do any more anything she did not want to do, and to go to the Isle of Skye before the summer was out. The former decision was behind the basket and the winch, behind her suggestion of a picnic (she wanted one, after all), and the latter, she knew, was driving Virginia crazy. But Melody Simpson was known for her strong will, and to Skye they would go. That’s all there was to it.

  She cleaned up the breakfast dishes and wiped the table with special care: such tasks had become quite exciting, now that she could so easily have eschewed them, as she had the shopping, on the grounds of Resolution Number One. Cleaning was now a choice rather than a duty, a secret pleasure. She sometimes joked to herself that if she had known it would be so simple to relieve the aura of burden around housework, she would have done so years ago.

  Today she did not even mind the shopping, because it was for her picnic. She bought plump cherry tomatoes and scrubbed potatoes from the stall at the bottom of the hill; she bought a Viennese loaf from the baker, still hot and reeking deliciously of dough; she bought slices of baked ham and coarse, foreign smoked sausage from the surly Italian grocer; and she took at the last minute a small container of spiced, cracked black olives from the same man, insisting before she did so that he offer her one to taste. She spent the morning making a potato salad in garlic mayonnaise, a dish she and Virginia both loved. She packed the food in plastic boxes and placed it, along with the cutlery and two of her finest plates, in a large plastic bag from John Lewis.

  After some thought she wore an old summer dress of flowered cotton, and a lilac cardigan with scalloped edges over her shoulders. She made certain that her foam bust was even and firmly secured. She combed and fussed over her hair until she was certain that the thinner moments in her scalp were spanned by sufficient curls. Like spun sugar, her hair did not move once it had been sculpted, but she wore a hairnet anyway, just in case.

  It was not pure altrui
sm that had Melody Simpson taking such care over lunch with her daughter: she had more complex motives than a delightful déjeuner sur l’herbe. Her plan was to let her needs be known to the University—that is, to the executive enclave of Directors of Personnel, Permanent & Temporary: she was going to make damn sure that she and Virginia got to Skye. To this end she even rouged her cheeks and splashed her wrists with toilet water. And as she set out to find a taxi, her best china clanking in her large plastic bag, Melody Simpson felt a full surge of her old confidence.

  It was only a quarter to one when she greeted the large, bald guard at the entrance to Virginia’s building. He, surprised by such good humour, accompanied her to the third floor and pointed a route through the warren of passages that would take her to Personnel.

  Peering into cubicles as she wound around the building, Mrs Simpson’s mind was twitching so fast that she almost bypassed the department—which looked the same as it had on her last visit five years before, only slightly more worn. The offices on the left—where Virginia’s was, she knew, but not which one—were closed to the corridor, so she stepped into the first on the right and almost bumped into a freckled youth in tinted glasses.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked, unperturbed. ‘I don’t suppose you’re looking for a job?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Martin Evans, at your service. Older than I look.’

  ‘Martin, may I sit?’

  He waved at the chair where Simon’s interviewees waited to be seen. ‘Rest your young self. Refresh your beauty.’

  ‘Young?’ Melody Simpson trilled with laughter. The lad was cocky, and she liked him. ‘Aren’t you a charmer! A recent addition to this dull corner?’

  ‘Dull? Not dull here! A laugh a minute.’

  ‘I think my daughter finds it dull.’

  ‘You? A daughter? Who might she be?’

  ‘That isn’t quite right. She wouldn’t think to find it tiresome. I find it tiresome for her. Virginia Simpson, and she needs a holiday.’

  ‘Don’t we all! You’re Mrs Simpson, then?’

  ‘That’s been my name since before you were born. I don’t know what you do. It’s not in your power to dole out holidays, is it?’

  ‘Not even jobs, yet, let alone holidays. But I’m working on it. Tell me what you’re after.’

  ‘Just a couple of weeks for the poor lamb. She’s over-tired. A couple of weeks in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘That’s pretty short notice, Mrs Simpson. I gather she wants a holiday?’

  ‘She’s never known what’s good for her. She wouldn’t have ended up an old maid if she had. She wouldn’t have ended up here. Her sister was always much more sensible, although even that’s backfired. Divorce, you know. Very distressing.’

  ‘Of course. Very.’ His smile now was something Mrs Simpson didn’t quite recognize, or approve of. Perhaps she didn’t like him after all.

  ‘Mother, you’re early.’ Virginia emerged from behind a filing cabinet. Mrs Simpson realized that there was a second door to the corridor she had not noticed when she came in.

  ‘It’s bad manners to eavesdrop, Virginia.’

  ‘I’ll be right with you. It’s not one yet. Now, Martin, about the newsletters—’

  ‘I’ve actually just—’

  ‘About the newsletters, Simon and I have discussed it and we think it’s best if you take them over officially. I don’t really have time any more. He’ll send round a memo this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Mrs Simpson, piqued by her daughter’s brusqueness. ‘Less work, more chance of a holiday. Go on, Martin, I’m sure you can do all of Virginia’s work. You look capable enough.’

  ‘No doubt, Mother.’ Virginia’s hands were making and unmaking little fists. ‘Let’s go now. I can leave the rest till after lunch.’

  Martin, whose eyes were not wholly clear behind their brownish glass, was grinning again. As they walked out, Mrs Simpson could have sworn he winked at her.

  Virginia did not speak until they reached their picnic spot, a bench beneath a copper beech in the communal garden opposite. The lawn was dotted with other university employees, all of whom looked more cheerful about their lives than Virginia felt. She was immensely tired.

  ‘What exactly are you trying to do, Mother, lose me my job?’

  ‘Honestly. I’d swear that when you found God you lost your sense of humour, you crabby thing. It was a joke.’

  ‘You don’t know who you were talking to. You think it’s funny, you don’t do battle with him every day.’

  ‘Martin seemed perfectly charming to me. If he weren’t so young I’d suggest him as a prospect.’

  Virginia glared. At her mother, at the plastic boxes, at the china. ‘I’m not sure I’ll stay for lunch.’

  ‘I’ve made potato salad. And brought the best plates.’

  ‘I’m surprised they didn’t break.’ Virginia was grudging, but when presented with a cherry tomato she popped it in her mouth.

  ‘I thought I might take the bus to Marks after lunch,’ said Mrs Simpson between bites. ‘I’d like to buy a new dress.’

  Virginia nodded, a small glob of garlic mayonnaise on her lip, her jaws champing in time with her nods.

  ‘I thought,’ Mrs Simpson went on, ‘It would be useful for our holiday. For the trip to Skye.’

  It was hard to tell whether Virginia had heard. She kept nodding and chewing for a moment and then settled into just chewing. She was scanning the lawn as if checking the horizon at sea, as if everything were blurred and far away. But she didn’t say anything, and Mrs Simpson knew they would go after all.

  Melody Simpson chose nylon against her better judgement. The saleswoman, a buxom girl with a lank pony-tail, insisted that the cut was flattering, and Mrs Simpson allowed herself to be convinced. The print was red and blue stripes on white—‘Vertical,’ said the girl in a Liverpudlian accent, ‘Very nice. I wouldn’t advise horizontal stripes, but vertical … Looks very nice indeed.’

  And Mrs Simpson was so pleased to hear this, as well as quite taken by the matching red leatherette belt, that she bought it almost at once. She was halfway home when she realized that she had abandoned her John Lewis bag in the fitting-room at Marks & Spencer, and that inside the bag were the two china plates, now smeared and greasy but her very best plates nonetheless. It wasn’t easy to force herself off the bus and across the road to the stop opposite, but she did, and so didn’t get back to Chalk Farm until well after six.

  It was a surprise to see Virginia already sitting at the kitchen table, with the Evening Standard in front of her and the late mail unopened in her lap. Mrs Simpson was not by nature demonstrative, or even eminently sympathetic, but she could see that Virginia was in some distress and she wanted to do the right thing.

  ‘Lovely dress, I’ve got,’ she said. ‘You can have one just the same if you’re nice to me.’

  Virginia smiled weakly. ‘Show?’

  ‘In a minute. In a minute. Such a fuss, all this wrapping. My dear, but aren’t you home early!’

  Maybe it was because Mrs Simpson, usually so gruff, called her daughter ‘dear’; maybe it was because Virginia was so very tired; or maybe it was just bound to happen. Virginia put her head in her hands and burst into noisy tears.

  ‘What on earth is wrong?’

  Virginia shook her head. ‘Everything. Everything’s wrong.’

  Mrs Simpson too behaved in uncharacteristc fashion: she stood next to her daughter and pressed Virginia’s trembling head to her foam bosom. She stroked her daughter’s hair as she hadn’t done for years, and worried about who might do so when she herself was gone. ‘There, there, dear, it can’t be so bad. You can tell me. Tell me everything.’

  Virginia didn’t want to, but at the same time, she did. She struggled against an inner weight that wouldn’t let her speak. It had been so many years, after all, since she had confided in her mother. ‘Everything,’ she said again, muffled against her mother’s cardigan. ‘It’s jus
t …’

  ‘You weren’t attacked, Virginia? Or hurt? Were you?’

  ‘No.’ But the shuddering sobs worsened. ‘It’s everything. It’s last night and Angelica … and my Bible and today.’

  ‘Today? We had a delicious lunch, didn’t we? Should I not have come? Did I spoil it?’

  Virginia’s torrent of tears gurgled on, unabated, louder.

  ‘Is it today? It’s this afternoon, isn’t it? What’s happened? Something this afternoon—what is it? You must tell me, force yourself.’

  Virginia began to make a high, keening sound, like a medium in a trance. In between the pure moaning, Mrs Simpson heard her daughter say, like a faraway truth in a language not her own, ‘They’ve sent … me, sent me … away.’

  Guilt was on Mrs Simpson at once, heavy, clouding the room. ‘Virginia, Virginia, don’t tell me you’ve been sacked?’

  She gave her daughter the words and Virginia used them. ‘I’ve been sacked,’ she wailed. And again, ‘Sacked. I’ve been sacked.’

  The full story, or as much of it as Virginia could bring herself to tell, was a long time coming. She had not, in fact, been sacked; her own words were more accurate: she had been sent away, for a month at least, six weeks, it wasn’t clear.

  When she came back from lunch, there was a note on her telephone in Simon’s squat, messy handwriting. ‘V,’ it said, ‘Come and see me when you’re free.’ She decided she wasn’t. She got on with the requests for temporaries that had come in that morning, sorting them into types of skilled and unskilled work and then making small piles of possible candidates for each one, drawn from the sectioned file-cards in the boxes on her desk, each ‘possible’ pile containing at least one person who had worked successfully for the University before, and preferably one with a red star on their card that meant they had been highly thought of. But, distracted, she put a typist in with the security staff pile, and failed to find a tried worker for the gardening post, although she could conjure the faces of at least two temporary gardeners not already in use. Her inefficiency annoyed her, and when Simon poked his head around her door, she was jittery and ready for a break.