‘Is it some kind of stupid ad for something?’
‘I think it means women could exist without men,’ says Nancy.
‘But why would they want to?’ asks Brian. He’s genuinely puzzled. There will always be women waiting for Brian, with his powerful shoulders, bronzed skin and blue eyes gazing out at the white-topped, non-existent mountains. It is hard for any of us to get beyond our sample of one; namely, ourself.
Stephanie drives her little Mini home. Layla goes too. There is to be a consciousness-raising meeting at Stephanie’s house at No. 103 Chalcot Crescent. The drive takes only ten minutes. Traffic flow is half what it is now, and there are lots of parking places, even down the pretty, narrow, Georgian street which curves between Regent’s Park Road and Chalcot Square. In those days you could get a house in Chalcot Square for £30,000. Today, expect three-quarters of a million. So it goes. Everyone has a property story. Look right from the porched windows of No. 103 and see the green of Primrose Hill, look left to the double-fronted green and white curved house at the end of the Crescent, which was once a brothel. Ancient taxi drivers would report that years ago, in his youth, a royal scion would be wheeled by giggling girls up and down the Crescent in a pram, dressed in baby clothes. Whatever changed, except the status of certain roads in certain areas? Primrose Hill, now so salubrious, used to be known as the Coalblow, so much soot drifted over from the King’s Cross marshalling yards; here was the highest bronchitis rate in the entire Western world. Not that a man in a pram would suffer much, in the time it took to get to the end of the street and back. It would be worse for the girls who lived and worked there, but they were two a penny, then as now.
At this time the Crescent was a home for artists and Bohemians: the academics were moving in: soon it would be the bankers’ turn. Stephanie’s husband Hamish lived in the Crescent and owned an antique shop around the corner in Regent’s Park Road. He was an artist by talent and temperament, but made an allied living buying and selling the artefacts of the past. In those days few could tell a Victorian handsaw from an Edwardian fire-tong, oak from pine, or Roman glass from Woolworth’s. Now everyone knows.
As Layla and Stephanie unpacked the Mini they saw Zoe approach, pushing little Saffron in a buggy. She was crying: Zoe, that is to say, not Saffron. Zoe had a degree in sociology, and staying at home to look after her child depressed her. She found the company of children boring and her husband difficult. He was an engineer and talked mostly of bridges, and occasionally slapped Zoe, which was not the sin it nowadays is. And which she could have prevented had she really tried, but she enjoyed occupying the moral high ground.
‘Zoe,’ asked Stephanie, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘Bull wouldn’t baby-sit,’ said Zoe. ‘I had to bring Saffron along. I hope you don’t mind. You can’t blame Bull, I suppose.’
Zoe’s husband’s name was Bullivant Meadows.
‘Can’t you?’ asked Layla. ‘Why not?’ She had the plank tucked under her arm again. Zoe stopped crying and looked at it warily.
‘It seems a bit much,’ said Zoe, ‘excluding men from a meeting and then expecting them to baby-sit.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Layla. ‘Men have babies too. And what is playing squash but a club from which women are excluded?’ Bullivant played squash for his county.
Zoe looked baffled and Stephie observed, ‘One day we will live in a world in which men aren’t called Bull.’ And they all went inside.
Now, inside there was all the generosity, jumble, untidiness, and the over-regard for the past and lack of regard for the future which typified those years. While only too anxious to do away with the social and domestic restraints of the present, everyone’s ambition was to retrieve the junk of the past and live with it. Dusty old kelim carpets covered the floors; old oak chairs collapsed under you, too worm-eaten to function; cracked glass paintings covered the walls; ships in bottles and matchstick palaces collected dust on every available shelf. Newness in objects had no value: only what was old and craftsman-made was accorded respect. In this ambience Hamish, buying cheap from little old ladies and selling dear to young professionals, made a good enough living. It was Stephanie’s misfortune to be earning her living in an advertising agency, which of all new trades was the newest, and the most ungentlemanly, being so concerned with commercial success. Hamish found Stephanie’s job difficult to accept. He came from Glasgow where his mother worked in a betting shop, and should, as his wife observed, have been accustomed enough to women working, and to frivolous and anti-social ends at that: nevertheless, he was troubled. He had hoped for finer more artistic things. And as their two little boys, Roland and Rafe, played with their Victorian toys upon the dirty floor, who was there ever at hand to take out the wooden splinters which so frequently pierced their poor little fingers? Only the au pair girl, whose face and accent kept changing, and whose nature and skill with a needle was unpredictable, and who had left last week, anyway.
Hamish, who is in his mid-thirties, muscular, glowing from within with a tawny, sexy flame, black Zapata moustache as was the fashion of the day, hiding an over-sensitive – or was it cruel – upper lip, stands in the conservatory beating a refectory table with a length of chain. Bang, bang, crash, tinkle, over and over again. Zoe comes to see what’s happening, dragging Saffron behind her in the pushchair. Saffron, disconcerted by the sight and sound of a man beating up furniture, sets up a wail.
‘All Saffron ever does is bawl,’ complains Zoe to Hamish, by way of conversation. ‘She’s so ungrateful. I’m doing this for her future not mine. She doesn’t realise the risk I’m taking. Supposing Bull throws me out?’
‘Bull, Bull, Bull,’ says Hamish. Zoe comes round quite a lot, to talk about Bull and eye Hamish up. All women eye Hamish up. They seem unable to help it, and he doesn’t even particularly encourage it. Hamish goes on banging.
Zoe goes on into the room where the meeting is to be held. It overlooks the street.
Stephanie and Layla put their pots of paint and paste and left-over posters with the other junk under the stairs. In this recess also find a Venetian glass goblet with a broken stem, an Etruscan vase in two pieces, half a Roman head with the nose eaten away, and other treasures. Two small dark boys with narrow faces and almond eyes sit impassively on the stairs and watch the grown-ups; Rafe and Roland. Both suck their thumbs and wear pyjamas.
‘Go to bed, boys,’ says Stephanie. They rise obediently and go.
‘Are they frightened of you?’ asks Layla.
‘No,’ says Stephanie. ‘They just want a quiet life. They will do anything to avoid a conversation with me, even obey me.’
Layla’s turn to go in and stare at Hamish. Bang, bang, bang.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Hamish?’
He doesn’t deign to reply. Stephie follows after to offer an explanation.
‘He’s giving it a bit of age. Antiquing it up. It’s made from new wood, but in an hour you’d never know it. Old tables fetch more than new.’
‘I’m surprised your principles allow you to tolerate this,’ says Layla.
‘Morality is a relative when it comes to antiques,’ says Stephanie.
‘A man has to make a living somehow,’ says Hamish, banging away.
‘He’s not in a good mood,’ says Stephanie, I got promotion at work today. Now I earn more than he does.’
‘Women earning more than men upsets the natural order of things,’ says Hamish. ‘Anyone can make money in advertising.’
‘You only make money in advertising or anywhere if you’re shit hot, Hamish,’ says Layla. And she enquired as to how the kids ever got to sleep in this house: she was sure she never could.
‘God knows,’ said Hamish, but he gave up banging with his chain and offered the two women the glimmer of a smile. He was not without politeness. He even enquired as to how the bill-posting had gone.
‘We’d