And how could suing be better than falling in love, dropping out, running away together?’
‘It seemed so womanly and grown-up – or no – old-fashioned. That’s what surprised me. Because we were all such tomboys, you know? The romance between you and Lawrence was something someone would do who wore skirts to class, or who wasn’t in college at all. Like something out of the 1950s, or even the nineteenth century.’
Gwen was a little stunned, irritated even. ‘Why? Because he was English? I’m still a tomboy. Look what I’m wearing.’ It was true; she had on men’s track shorts made from heavy, dark blue cotton, probably ten years old, a once white T-shirt turned grey with washing, holes under the arms and along the edge of the neck band where the material had disintegrated with use and with sweat. It was all far too big for her. ‘Not exactly a gym bunny’s exercise outfit. Not a stitch of Lycra. I’m out here to sweat, not to vamp anyone.’ She turned her head and looked Hilary up and down as they passed the Barn Elms boathouse.
Hilary was wearing a shirt she had borrowed from Mark and never returned; she looked at it now, smarting with dismay. And she had on skintight black stretch leggings, cropped at the knee, about which she self-consciously observed, ‘I think the high-tech stuff is OK if you actually exercise in it. I know people go around in sports stuff as a fashion thing, at least in New York they do, and it looks like a state of undress. Running around town in pyjamas. But if you sweat in them and ache in them, you get to love them, like anything.’ Next she said, ‘Maybe I just never got the difference between a tomboy and an actual boy.’
‘I found out the difference when I had Will – what a shock – that made me realise I was a girl. Man, I fought it – needing help. Needing anything at all. Maybe you’ll be better prepared than I was. But sometimes I think our whole generation is confused about it. Did we think we were boys? I swear. Do you remember how, when all the schools in the States were going co-ed, it felt like we could go to college anywhere we wanted? And the real girls went to the women’s colleges where they could be girls together, but the ones of us who went to the men’s colleges – we went as boys. Hiding our femininity. Why did we do that?’
‘Because the women’s libbers were so goddamned embarrassing.’ Hilary coughed up a laugh. ‘So political, so filled with vengeance, so covered with hair. And because the only company they were ever going to have was each other’s.’
‘But if we wanted to pull men, why didn’t we just become cheerleaders?’
‘Didn’t you have to be from the Deep South to do that? Surely it never crossed your mind? Anyway, pulling men – on purpose?’
‘You’re right. Never.’
‘So you see what I mean about you and Lawrence … ? It looked like the real man-woman deal. Like something in a French movie. Adult. Or I guess it would have to be an English movie – one of the Michaels, Caine or York, or Charles Dance – with the wounded, pale-eyed glamour and the Shakespearean voice.’
‘Lawrence has been telling me you have a thing for Englishmen.’ Gwen smiled, thinking of Roland, dark as he was, his shambling brilliance.
‘You and Lawrence started a whole mythology. We were awestruck. I was anyway.’
There was a little pause, their outbreaths whinnying, their shoes skiffing more lightly over the paved road as they passed the long row of boathouses at Putney: Vesta, Westminster Boys’ School, Dulwich College. There were flags fluttering, powerboats and dinghies on wooden trailers outside open doors, boats moored along the waterfront, a jaunty, maritime air.
‘But we were adults then, on the verge of it,’ Gwen said at last.
And Hilary asked, ‘Do you think we’re getting too old to be tomboys?’
‘Jeez. I haven’t got any other self-image handy. Can’t start primping now. I don’t have time.’ Gwen’s tone was arch. After another pause, she said, ‘Besides, Hil, the sort of guy we were interested in wasn’t attracted to a woman already spit-shined and curled on a tray, fully cooked. Maybe we were embarrassed. Maybe we were being defiant. Or maybe we were saving the potent thing – like for a rainy day. For a man we really wanted. The gem in the rough – do you really want it cut, faceted? Cool was wearing the most disgusting clothes you could find because you knew you could dress up if you ever wanted to.’
‘If you ever met a man you really wanted,’ Hilary said sardonically. ‘But, yeah. Maidenliness – it’s girl macho, isn’t it? Too easy if you use sex to get a guy. Any girl can use sex. Maybe even love is too easy. I got stuck there for ever with Mark – good friends who have sex on the side. The best I can say about it now is that it was completely reliable.’
This observation produced a brooding hiatus. They became a little separated as they threaded their way among the passers-by on the narrow pavement leading up on to Putney Bridge. The traffic swelled and crashed remorselessly; then they ran down on the other side among the faded roses at the edge of the grounds of Fulham Palace.
Gwen started in again with something bland and positive. ‘You look better anyway than you looked then. I guess you know that. Your hair looks better, too.’
‘We didn’t have haircuts in those days, did we?’
Gwen laughed. ‘I still don’t have a haircut.’ It was loose brown strands around her shoulders, some straight, some wavy, no obvious parting, fairly tangled, not even tied back to go running, wind-whipped, dark with sweat underneath.
‘Mine doesn’t cut anyway, even when the hairdresser uses scissors.’
‘But among ourselves, we were comrades, hey, Hilary? That was a good thing about those days. How we were friends?’
‘Not a lot of girls around, really. You had to be comrades.’
‘And no rivalry.’
‘Competition,’ Hilary objected.
‘It’s not the same. Remember the girls who came from wherever on the weekends? They had haircuts. Hairdos, even. How they were desperate for dates – to get engaged before they graduated. And only the pretty ones had a prayer. That was rivalry. Completely poisonous.’
‘It’s funny, though, how when you left –’ Hilary paused.
‘When I left?’ Gwen was waiting for a revelation, which she thought might be something funny; maybe Hilary and their classmates had all begun to pay great attention to their hair or to their dress during senior year. But what she got was more of a spear thrust.
‘It – felt like the ultimate move. That’s all. Finished us off.’
Just then, under the long canopy made by the old London plane trees lining Bishop’s Park and spreading without restraint over the paved embankment towards the river, they came up behind a woman walking with a baby in a pushchair. The baby was five or six months old, bright-eyed, alert, sitting up facing the woman with a little white blanket tucked up to its chest, its arms free and waving about sturdily with the joy of its ride and the excitement of the dappled golden light moving before its eyes. The pushchair bounced and lunged, its wheels catching against the blocks of the pavement, which were lifted at harsh angles here and there. The baby lurched forward then back, laughing and gurgling, as the woman strode steadily, wearily on along the green-railinged river.
‘Hello,’ said Hilary, stepping
