The Seven Sisters Read Online Free Page B
Author: Margaret Drabble
under the motorway. It’s a double gauntlet. I don’t like the pigeon mess, and the old mattresses, and the broken bottles, and the people who lurk near the
bottle bank. My heart beats a little faster as I walk under those two bridges.
There was a black girl standing on the corner at the bus stop. She was wearing a black leather jacket and a short black skirt and high boots, and her hair was dyed that unnatural tawny colour that you see a lot around here. And her shoulder bag was like a grenade. I’m not joking. It was circular, and covered with long plastic or rubber spikes about three inches long. Like a mine or a grenade. Street warfare. Battle dress. And standing in the overgrown privet-hedge bottom was a pallid-faced, overweight child of about six years old, smoking the stub of a cigarette. He didn’t seem to be with anyone. He certainly didn’t belong to the black girl.
Indoors, in the Club, it’s another world. It’s all lightness and brightness and politeness. Hello, they say, using my name. Sometimes it’s the only time I hear my name all day, the only time I speak to another person all day. I know they know my name only because it’s written on my Club Pass, which they have to swipe every time I go in, but hearing it does remind me of who I am. It reminds me that I have a name. Sometimes they pronounce my name a little oddly, making me sound more like an illness than a woman, but I can’t blame them for that. It’s not a very common name. Or not in these parts. It may have been popular once.
They use – or try to use – my full name, not my nickname. They treat me as a grown woman. To them, I am an old woman. They do not know that I was once a child. The receptionists are very Smart Casual. They are well dressed and polite.
There are some beautiful women in the Club. Tonight there was one I don’t think I’ve seen before. She looked like a painting by Gauguin, or a statue. A solid woman. A wide face, carved wide lips, like a wood sculpture, large breasts with large dark nipples and aureoles, and broad fertility hips. They’re not all skinny, or even trying to be skinny.
I haven’t seen that girl with the lipoma-lump for a week or two. Not since I first tried to describe her, in fact. I hope she’s not in hospital.
I can’t get used to all these nationalities. In Suffolk, we were all very white. We had some coloured people at the School, because all
schools with very high fees take coloured people now, particularly schools like Andrew’s that can dress exploitation up as multicultural philanthropy. But you don’t see many coloured people in the streets of Woodbridge and Martlesham and Aldeburgh. There are Chinese and Indian restaurants, of course, and plenty of them, but there isn’t what I’d call a community. Or if there is, I haven’t seen it. It may be different in Ipswich. We didn’t go to Ipswich all that often. Sally Hepburn knows Ipswich much better than I do.
Now I am going to write about my old friends Janet and Julia. I will begin with Janet because she is less interesting and easier to name.
Janet Milgram was a nice girl.
Yes, Janet was a nice girl. When she was twelve she had thick brown plaits and a centre parting and freckles. She was good at netball, and became team captain. I can’t think of much more to say about Janet. She became a prefect. So did I. Julia did not become a prefect.
But a strange fate overtook Janet Milgram. She married a farmer who took to the bottle and died of drink. She became, for a while, a battered wife. She still lives in Lincolnshire, with her daughter and her son-in-law, on the very same farm where her husband worked, failed, beat her up and died. This is not what any of us would have expected. She had seemed set for a completely steady, unsurprising happy married life of sober industry. Her husband, Dick Parry, on the few occasions when I met him, seemed a regular, hardworking, sober kind of man. It just shows you can’t tell what the
bottle bank. My heart beats a little faster as I walk under those two bridges.
There was a black girl standing on the corner at the bus stop. She was wearing a black leather jacket and a short black skirt and high boots, and her hair was dyed that unnatural tawny colour that you see a lot around here. And her shoulder bag was like a grenade. I’m not joking. It was circular, and covered with long plastic or rubber spikes about three inches long. Like a mine or a grenade. Street warfare. Battle dress. And standing in the overgrown privet-hedge bottom was a pallid-faced, overweight child of about six years old, smoking the stub of a cigarette. He didn’t seem to be with anyone. He certainly didn’t belong to the black girl.
Indoors, in the Club, it’s another world. It’s all lightness and brightness and politeness. Hello, they say, using my name. Sometimes it’s the only time I hear my name all day, the only time I speak to another person all day. I know they know my name only because it’s written on my Club Pass, which they have to swipe every time I go in, but hearing it does remind me of who I am. It reminds me that I have a name. Sometimes they pronounce my name a little oddly, making me sound more like an illness than a woman, but I can’t blame them for that. It’s not a very common name. Or not in these parts. It may have been popular once.
They use – or try to use – my full name, not my nickname. They treat me as a grown woman. To them, I am an old woman. They do not know that I was once a child. The receptionists are very Smart Casual. They are well dressed and polite.
There are some beautiful women in the Club. Tonight there was one I don’t think I’ve seen before. She looked like a painting by Gauguin, or a statue. A solid woman. A wide face, carved wide lips, like a wood sculpture, large breasts with large dark nipples and aureoles, and broad fertility hips. They’re not all skinny, or even trying to be skinny.
I haven’t seen that girl with the lipoma-lump for a week or two. Not since I first tried to describe her, in fact. I hope she’s not in hospital.
I can’t get used to all these nationalities. In Suffolk, we were all very white. We had some coloured people at the School, because all
schools with very high fees take coloured people now, particularly schools like Andrew’s that can dress exploitation up as multicultural philanthropy. But you don’t see many coloured people in the streets of Woodbridge and Martlesham and Aldeburgh. There are Chinese and Indian restaurants, of course, and plenty of them, but there isn’t what I’d call a community. Or if there is, I haven’t seen it. It may be different in Ipswich. We didn’t go to Ipswich all that often. Sally Hepburn knows Ipswich much better than I do.
Now I am going to write about my old friends Janet and Julia. I will begin with Janet because she is less interesting and easier to name.
Janet Milgram was a nice girl.
Yes, Janet was a nice girl. When she was twelve she had thick brown plaits and a centre parting and freckles. She was good at netball, and became team captain. I can’t think of much more to say about Janet. She became a prefect. So did I. Julia did not become a prefect.
But a strange fate overtook Janet Milgram. She married a farmer who took to the bottle and died of drink. She became, for a while, a battered wife. She still lives in Lincolnshire, with her daughter and her son-in-law, on the very same farm where her husband worked, failed, beat her up and died. This is not what any of us would have expected. She had seemed set for a completely steady, unsurprising happy married life of sober industry. Her husband, Dick Parry, on the few occasions when I met him, seemed a regular, hardworking, sober kind of man. It just shows you can’t tell what the