children werenât around. This was presumably because she was the oldest and a girl; they thought it was time she began to pick up on such things, just as a year or so ago it had been time for the sanitary pads and belt that Lil had slipped without explanation into her drawer. After the dishes were washed up, the sisters sat at the table and drank milky instant coffee; when the light faded one of them would light the paraffin lamp and pump it up until the mantle glowed. The children would still be calling back and forth outside, their voices resonant and remote in the near-dark. Joyce squeezed herself inconspicuously with her book onto a little stool by the wall, picking at the black rubber flooring Uncle Dick had laid over the cold flagstones (it was made out of machine belts from some factory in the Docks that had closed down).
âIt happened with Peter, and then again down here when I fell for Kay, said Vera. Not that you want them near you when youâre off-color. But you expect some consideration: not having the blame for it thrown up in your face.
âMen donât like it, said Lil. Ivor didnât want anything to do with it. âLet me know what weâve had when youâre all tidied up,â he said, when things got started. Though he was always as good as gold afterward; he loved the children.
âDick hated the sight of me. If I ever came out of the bath in my dressing gown when I was in that way heâd make a face as if Iâd shown him something nasty. I knew he didnât like to touch me, those times, even accidentally. He doesnât even like to be near me when Iâm coming unwell.
âI suppose itâs natural. We get used to it, donât we? It must seem strange to the men.
âIâm sure he used to talk with her about what would happen, if I died having Kay, said Vera. There was something he said once, he didnât mean it to come out, something like âif there are any complications.â And when I looked at him I just knew. And he knew I knew.
âYou showed them, then.
âOh, I wasnât going to remove myself for anybodyâs convenience. Iâm not now. Whatever she may think.
It was always difficult for Joyce to take in that only four years ago Aunt Vera must have been pregnant. She tried to imagine her wearing the sort of coyly pretty maternity frocks over discreet bumps that you saw in the magazines or smiling over tiny garments for her layette. But Aunt Vera didnât seem to have the necessary feminine attributes: she was too tall, too decided, too old; her body had entered into the phase of those lumpy stolidities that didnât suggest the things that had to do with making babies. The pregnancy had happened after the Trowers moved down from the North. Joyce had heard Lil and the other sisters talk about this baby as Dickâs âlittle peace offering.â
Joyce noticed that when Lil and Vera talked about men, even Ivor, they often used this language of mock conflict, as if there had to be a war between men and women. Listening, soaking it up, Joyce thought how differently she would do things. She thought how much better she would handle Uncle Dick, if she were them. âIf he were mine,â she thought to herself, her face heating up at the illicit form of words. If she had been Aunt Vera, she would have made an effort to make the place nice when he came home, instead of complaining to him about the children or the smoking stove or the stinking privy the moment he walked through the door. She would have talked about things he might be interested in, rather than going on about âyour beloved Churchillâ or making sarcastic remarks about the Masons if she knew he was going to a Lodge meeting.
Even Lil somehow managed better than Vera. You could see she was in awe of Dickâs authority in the wide world, granting him absolute superiority in all the mysteries she was defeated by. She was furious if