The Men in her Life

Tom arched his back and peed like a putto in a fountain. Then he insisted on watching her get into the bath, and since she’d seen him pee, she didn’t feel able to refuse, and so she lay soaking and listening to him telling her about someone he knew called Ted Glen, while Clare went down and made them a cup of tea.
    ‘He’s quite a conversationalist,’ Holly said, when Clare returned.
    Clare put down the toilet lid and sat on it. They both listened to the stream of consciousness issuing from the child’s mouth.
    ‘Is Granny Dryden Joss’s mother?’ Holly asked, trying to keep up.
    Clare threw back her head and laughed.
    ‘Not exactly,’ she said, ‘she’s a character in Postman Pat. You’ll know all the inhabitants of Greendale by the time you leave.’
    And Holly was surprised to find herself thinking, I don’t want to leave. I like it lying here up to my neck in Warm water, a cup of tea in my hand, and my family around me.

    The weather had improved overnight. The surface of the tarmac road steamed gently in the silver sunshine. For the first time since she arrived, Holly could see the horizon. It was a fantastic view. She stood on the doorstep taking in the vast expanse of sea and sky while Clare wrestled Tom into his buggy behind her. He had to be bribed with a cardboard steering-wheel that Clare had obviously made for such occasions and for the entire walk into town their conversation was accompanied by revving and brmming sounds as Tom maintained a Grand Prix-style commentary on his drive.
    ‘I’ll show you round town and then, if it dries out, we’ll go for a proper walk this afternoon,’ Clare suggested.
    It was the first time she had walked down the street with a friend who was just hers, she thought, glancing sideways at Holly and feeling rather proprietorial about her. She had left her old schoolfriends behind in London along with the rest of her life. When you were married and in a new place, you made friends as a couple. They had chosen other like-minded couples such as Pepe and Vivienne, Jeremy and Olivia, Richard and Joni, all poets and poets’ wives. Richard was the reason they had moved to Penderric in the first place. He had been a colleague of Joss’s at the college. They had come down here to stay with him one weekend soon after Clare had discovered she was pregnant, and he’d mentioned there was a dilapidated cottage just outside the town that was up for sale. Joss had been flattered. Richard had already published several volumes of poetry. To be invited to move to Penderric was like being asked to join an exclusive club. The men worked out that the mortgage on the property would be less than the rent Joss was paying on his flat, while Joni and Clare cooked the Sunday lunch. That afternoon she and Joss went along to see it alone. The ramshackle little house with its fenced front garden had reminded her of the Wendy house she had played in at nursery school. She felt safe there.
    ‘What do you think?’ Joss had asked as they stood in the flagstone kitchen with its dripping standpipe. She could see by his expression that he meant to buy it.
    ‘I think I’m dreaming,’ she had replied, smiling at him, and as if to seal the decision, Joss lifted the dress she was wearing and fucked her standing with her back against the woodwormed ladder that led upstairs. At the time she had thought the silent urgency with which he had freed his cock from his jeans and pushed it up inside her passionately Lawrentian. She had only just finished A level English.
    After Joss’s affair with Joni, Richard moved away to another remote grey stone village somewhere in Scotland . His cycle of poems entitled Cuckold had been shortlisted for a number of awards. Joss ran into him occasionally at poetry festivals. They seemed to get along fine again now. Joni had since married a German with a caravan business. It gave the men something to laugh about together.
    All the women whom Clare had befriended in the town had fallen to Joss for a night, or a fully-fledged affair over the years, except Amelia, who was too fat for his tastes.
    ‘What’s the point of espadrilles?’ Holly asked, kicking at an empty Coke can that had fallen out of a full litter-bin, ‘I bought these to go on Simon’s boat and I thought they’d be great for the seaside, but they’ve soaked right through, so I’ve got wet feet and they weigh about a ton...’
    ‘I think they’ve got rope soles to grip the deck,’ Clare