but it was not a word yet in general use. There not being a word for it, the feeling stayed elusive, flitting.
Nancy stretched out her hand to touch Brian, where it dangled, rather like Saffron’s from her pushchair, limp and soft. She stroked the back of his hand with her forefinger. ‘You could move in here beside me, Brian,’ she said. ‘We could lock the door.’
Brian moved his hand gently away. He would have preferred to snatch it – she could tell from the tension in the muscles, but he managed not to. He was all control. She liked that. So much the better, she anticipated, when he lost it.
‘People do these days,’ said Nancy. ‘Especially if they’re engaged.’
‘We’ll wait for all that till after we’re married,’ said Brian.
‘Quite a nymphomaniac you’re turning out to be.’
He was joking, but only just.
‘It’s just everything’s so kind of exciting, and abroad,’ pleaded Nancy, i want something amazing to happen. Don’t you feel it, everything buzzing out there? Colour and light and sound and change?’
‘People take drugs,’ said Brian, ‘if that’s what you mean. They get out of control.’
Nancy pushed down the blanket to expose naked breasts. ‘My face may not be up to much,’ she said, ‘but I have beautiful breasts. My doctor says I have the most perfect breasts he’s ever seen. Please look.’
But he wouldn’t; he merely hoped she’d change her doctor.
‘Nancy,’ he pointed out, ‘the best way for a girl to keep a man is not to give him what he wants before marriage. And I suppose you do want to keep me?’
‘Of course I do,’ she said.
‘Then cover yourself up,’ he said, ‘and go to sleep and don’t tempt me.’
She covered herself up. He closed his eyes but she could tell he wasn’t sleeping.
‘You say “what a man wants”,’ she observed, ‘but supposing the truth is he doesn’t want it? What sort of marriage would it be then?’
‘Marriage is about the begetting of children, not sex at every opportunity,’ said Brian. ‘And abstaining from sex before marriage is a sensible convention. Supposing you got pregnant?’
‘For the last ten years,’ said Nancy, ‘there hasn’t been a problem. The pill makes you fat, makes you sick, makes you die sometimes, but at least you don’t get pregnant.’
‘The pill’s for bad girls,’ said Brian, ‘not good girls. Bad girls like sex. Good girls want babies. Can’t you leave it alone, Nancy? A man likes to do the pursuing, not to be pursued. He’s born to be the hunter, not the hunted.’
Nancy sat upright in bed, suddenly.
‘I’m not going to marry you, Brian,’ she said.
He opened his eyes.
‘What did you say?’
‘That’s it,’ said Nancy. ‘I shan’t repeat it. You heard well enough. I’m not going home either. I’m going to stay here, find a job, make my life here. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.’
She lay down again.
‘I’m tired now. I’ll leave you in the morning.’
And she went to sleep dreaming of fish and bicycles. Brian dreamed he was on a ship, slipping further and further into cloud, waving to someone on the sunlit pier, who was Nancy.
Over in Primrose Hill, in the boys’ room, the TV mouthed its way silently on. The boys had turned off the sound and climbed into their beds, still fully clothed. They sucked their thumbs, like babies, in their unwashed, unkempt, unfed sleep.
Downstairs music was playing. The night was hot. The window had been opened. Layla had taken off her T-shirt. She wore a white bra. Now she was taking off her jeans, sitting on the sofa, easing the fabric off one leg with the foot of the other.
‘But the fact is,’ said Zoe, ‘there isn’t any great female literature. All the best stuff is written by men.’
‘Not if we define what’s great and good,’ said Layla. ‘Not any more. I’m in charge round here. You’re such a wet blanket, Zoe. I don’t want you anywhere near our publishing house, ever.’
‘I wouldn’t dare join you,’ said Zoe. ‘I’d just like to be asked. I can feel Bull’s anger. I can feel it. Male anger shakes the world.’
And it certainly did if wishing made it so. Half a mile away, Bullivant, aware of his wife and child’s absence, suspecting their whereabouts, left the marital home, a substantial house in then unfashionable Belsize Park. Bull was thin, tall, and personable; an angry ectomorph.
‘Men use their anger as a way of controlling women,’ said Alice. ‘As they see us uniting, their rage seems to know no bounds, but in truth they are frightened, scared out of their wits. What we do seems to them unnatural, dangerous, powerful enough to put out the sun, stop the planets in their revolutions. Man has the race memory of Orpheus imprinted in his being, Orpheus the poet, pursued and torn to pieces by the Maenads, the mad women who in religious ecstasy hunted down and destroyed men. Orpheus looked back to see his love, to make sure that Eurydice followed him out of hell. In other words, in rescuing her, his lover, from the dark place, he tried to understand her – and thus he lost her. Not only that, the women had their revenge. Orpheus was destroyed. Women won’t rest till they have victory; they want triumph. In their hearts they want not just equality but the death of man: they cry out for vengeance for past wrongs. This is what men fear. That the oppressed in turn will become the oppressor. So man fights now for his own survival. Becoming conscious of female anger, he ups the ante; now he can hardly endure his own rage.’
The music was loud: they weren’t really listening; and Alice scarcely understood herself, as often happens to oracles, what she was saying. Meaning flows from the Maker through the minds and mouths of Prophet or Priestess, but has only an imperfect human vessel to work through. Listening to her own words Alice felt garish and vulgar as a seaside spiritualist, and downed some more wine.
‘Maenad,’ Layla was saying. ‘We’ll call our publishing house Maenad. Let men tremble.’
‘We’ll have the suffragette colours on the spine,’ said Stephanie. ‘Purple and green.’
‘We’ll have no such thing,’ said Layla. ‘Far too murky. You have no taste, Stephanie. Leave such things to those who have.’
‘We can’t possibly be called Maenad,’ said Stephanie. ‘It’s far too threatening. We don’t want to intimidate men before we even begin.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Zoe.
‘Because no one would take us seriously,’ said Stephanie.
‘Money makes everything serious,’ said Layla. ‘Even women. I want angry women to buy our books. You want victim women to read them. I want women to glow with confidence and be as glossy as men: you want their moans to get a hearing.’
‘It is not so,’ said Stephanie. ‘I’m just saying I will not be involved with a publishing house called Maenad.’
‘Then what?’ asked Layla.
‘Artemis,’ said Alice. ‘Let her be called Artemis. The hunter, not the hunted: Diana of the chase, cool and fair. Lucina is her other name.’
‘Artemis is dull,’ said Layla. ‘If we can’t have Maenad, I’ll settle for Medusa. One look at her face and men turn to stone. You’re such a fucking stuffy, Stephie.’
‘And you’re so foul-mouthed, Layla, and a bully,’ said Stephanie.
‘I hate confrontation,’ said Zoe. ‘And why have you taken off all your clothes?’