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СКАЧАТЬ accusation. While Harold was staying, several days, Ian had to stay home, and Tom too, in his own house, and none of the four liked this. Harold was conscious they wanted him to leave; he was not wanted. He was uneasy, he was uncomfortable, and said to Roz that surely the two boys were too old to be so often with the older women. ‘Well, we haven’t got them on leashes,’ said Roz. ‘They’re free to come and go.’

      ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Harold, in the end, defeated. And he went back to his new family.

      Tom enrolled for theatre management, stage management, stage lighting, costume design, the history of the theatre. The course would take three years.

      ‘We’re all working like dogs,’ said Roz, loudly to Harold on the telephone. ‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about.’

      ‘You should get married again,’ said Roz’s ex-husband.

      ‘Well, if you couldn’t stand me, then who could?’ demanded Roz.

      ‘Oh, Roz, it’s just that I am an old-fashioned family man. And you must admit you don’t exactly fit that bill.’

      ‘Look. You ditched me. You’ve got yourself your ideal wife. Now, leave me alone. Get out of my life, Harold.’

      ‘I hope you don’t really mean that.’

      Meanwhile, Saul Butler courted Lil.

      It became a bit of a joke for all of them, Saul too. He would arrive with flowers and sweets, magazines, a poster, when he had seen Lil go into Roz’s, and call out, ‘Here comes old faithful.’ The women made a play of it all, Roz sometimes pretending the flowers were for her. He also visited Lil in her house, leaving at once if Tom were there, or Ian.

      ‘No,’ said Lil, ‘I’m sorry, Saul. I just don’t see myself married again.’

      ‘But you’re getting older, Lil. You’re getting on. And here is old faithful. You’ll be glad of him one day.’ Or he said to Roz, ‘Lil’ll be glad of a man about the place, one of these days.’

      One day the boys, or young men, were readying themselves to go out to the big ocean for surfing, when Saul arrived, with flowers for both women. ‘Now, you two, sit down,’ he said. And the women, smiling, sat and waited.

      The boys on the verandah over the sea were collecting surfboards, towels, goggles. ‘Hi, Saul,’ said Tom. A long pause before Ian’s, ‘Hello, Saul.’ That meant that Tom had nudged Ian into the greeting.

      Ian resented and feared Saul. He had said to Roz, ‘He wants to take Lil away from us.’ ‘You mean, from you.’ ‘Yes. And he wants to get me too. A ready-made son. Why doesn’t he make his own kids?’

      ‘I thought I had got you,’ said Roz.

      At which Ian leaped at her, or on her, demonstrating who had got whom.

      ‘Charming,’ said Roz.

      ‘And Saul can go and screw himself,’ had said Ian.

      Saul waited until the two had gone off down the path to the sea, and said, ‘Now, listen. I want to put it to you both. I want to get married again. As far as I’m concerned, Lil, you’re the one. But you’ve got to decide.’

      ‘It’s no good,’ said Roz, and Lil only shrugged. ‘We can see how it must look. You’re just about as good a bargain as any women look for.’

      ‘And you’re talking for Lil, again.’

      ‘She’s often enough spoken for herself.’

      ‘But you’d both do better with a bloke,’ he said. ‘The two of you, without men, and the two lads. It’s all too much of a good thing.’

      A moment of shock. What was he saying? Implying?

      But he was going on. ‘You are two handsome girls,’ said this gallant suitor. ‘You’re both so …’ and then he seemed to freeze, his face showed he was struggling with emotions, violent ones, and then it set hard. He muttered, ‘Oh, my God …’ he stared at them, Lil to Roz and back again. ‘My God,’ he said again. ‘You must think me a bloody fool.’ His voice was toneless: the shock had gone deep.

      ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said. ‘So, that’s it.’

      ‘What?’ said Lil. ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was timid, because of what he might be talking about. Roz kicked her under the table. Lil actually leaned over to rub her ankle, still staring at Saul.

      ‘A fool,’ he said. ‘You two must have been having a good laugh at my expense.’ He got up and blundered out. He was hardly able to get across the street to his own house.

      ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lil. She was about to go after him, but Roz said, ‘Stop. It’s a good thing, don’t you see?’

      ‘And now it’s going to get around that we are lezzies,’ said Lil.

      ‘So what? Probably it wouldn’t be the first time. After all, when you think how people talk.’

      ‘I don’t like it,’ said Lil.

      ‘Let them say it. The more the better. It keeps us all safe.’

      Soon they all went to Saul’s wedding with a handsome young woman who looked like Lil.

      The two sons were pleased. But the women said to each other, ‘We’re neither of us likely to get as good a deal as Saul again.’ That was Lil.

      ‘No,’ agreed Roz.

      ‘And what are we going to do when the boys get tired of us old women?’

      ‘I shall cry my eyes out. I shall go into a decline.’

      ‘We shall grow old gracefully,’ said Lil.

      ‘Like hell,’ said Roz. ‘I shall fight every inch of the way’

      Not old women yet, nor anywhere near it. Over forty, though, and the boys were definitely not boys, and their time of wild beauty had gone. You’d not think now, seeing the two strong, confident, handsome young men, that once they had drawn eyes struck as much by awe as by lust or love. And the two women, one day reminding themselves how their two had been like young gods, rummaged in old photographs, and could find nothing of what they knew had been there: just as, looking at their old photographs, they saw pretty girls, nothing more.

      Ian was already working with his mother in the management of the chain of sports shops, and was an up-and-coming prominent citizen. Harder to make a mark in the theatre: Tom was still working in the foothills when Ian was already near the top. A new position for Tom, who had always been first, Ian looking up to him.

      But he persevered. He worked. And as always he was charming with Lil, and as often in her bed as he could, considering the long and erratic hours of the theatre.

      ‘There you are,’ said Lil to Roz. ‘It’s a beginning. He’s getting tired of me.’

      But Ian showed no signs of relinquishing Roz, on the contrary. He was attentive, demanding, possessive, and when СКАЧАТЬ