Angel Cake (23 page)

‘I can’t do Wednesdays,’ Alicia said quickly. ‘I have my home help.’

‘Wednesday
afternoons
,’ Miss Midgley said, with a touch of triumph. ‘You can manage that.’ She scribbled. ‘I’ll fix you an appointment.’

Alicia’s brain worked quickly; the appointment card could be mislaid, the date and time forgotten. When the council minibus came to fetch her for the clinic, she could lie low. If Miss Midgley only knew that Alicia furiously rejected every single thing she had ever provided for her: her large print books were returned to the library disdainfully unread, her ‘meals on wheels’ finished in the dustbin. Except, of course, for Alison, but then Alison had long ago stopped being anything at all to do with Miss Midgley.

She had well and truly come out on top that time, Alicia thought, as Miss Midgley retreated in disarray to the front door. She was giving off a strong smell of embarrassment. Alicia hobbled after her and kept up appearances by stopping dead when Miss Midgley turned round so that she shouldn’t see how painfully she limped.

‘Hopefully you’ll get an appointment card in a week or so,’ Miss Midgley mumbled. Pens and a pill bottle fell from her bag as she scrabbled in it.

Alicia watched her bend down to pick up her bits and pieces, exclaiming, ‘Oh, clumsy me!’ She expected to feel nothing but triumph as Miss Midgley squatted awkwardly in her hairy skirt and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why she should suddenly feel something almost like pity for that unfortunate blind and well-meaning bottom.

She could sit at her window in comfort much later, now that the evenings were growing longer. It stayed light until after seven. She had her viewing all arranged. Instead of standing watching between the curtains, she drew her armchair over to the window and sat and looked out in comfort. Sometimes she treated herself to a peppermint or a plain biscuit. It was like having her own personal television serial.

‘If you go and see the chiropodist,’ Alison said to her on Sunday, ‘you’ll be able to get about again, won’t you, and perhaps we could go on a day trip somewhere together?’

‘We
what?
’ exclaimed Alicia.

‘We could go on a day trip. I’ve been thinking about it
quite a lot recently. I think it would do you the world of good to have a change of scene when the weather gets a bit warmer. We could go into the country, visit a stately home or something. Or go to the seaside, maybe, if you’d prefer it.’

A monstrous suspicion crossed Alicia’s mind: could Alison be in league with Miss Midgley after all? It hardly seemed possible, yet here they both were, inside of the same week, trying to get her out of her house. She gave Alison a steely stare.

‘Whatever put that idea into your head?’

‘Me going to Paris,’ Alison answered simply. ‘I felt so mean when I got back, telling you all about it while you were cooped up in here.’

Alicia scrutinized her face suspiciously. It looked innocent enough. She played for time. ‘And pigs might fly! How would I get there? It’s bad enough getting up to the corner shop, let alone the back of beyond.’

‘I’d come and pick you up,’ Alison assured her. ‘We could get a taxi to the station and then some sort of transport at the other end. Wouldn’t you like it?’

‘Like it?’ Alicia tried to imagine, just for a moment, what such an extraordinary day would be like. It was so far beyond anything that she had imagined remained for her that she felt quite put out. It was unfair of Alison to taunt her with things that could never be.

‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ she snapped at her. ‘Gracious, Alison, sometimes I wonder what you’ll come up with next!’

The mornings smell of spring as I speed to work on my bike. It is not true at all that you do not notice the seasons in the city. The trees on either side are smudged with their first blur of green and the smart front gardens are bright with blossoms and bulbs. But, above all, it is the change of smell that you notice; something sweet and soft, which strokes the angular façades of the houses and the hard closed city faces with a suggestion of surprises in store. Old, old women come out in bright, bright hats.

Rob is immersed in contracts and negotiations. He is
simultaneously fixing up a deal for
Print-Out
and working out the arrangements for the new play which has been commissioned. He talks to me about it all in bed in the mornings. He is always full of energy and hope in the spring, he says. Looking back, he can see that he has always begun on the projects which counted in the spring. He goes out running every morning, as if he had too much energy and hope even for everything he has to do, and needed to expend the extra.

When I got into work yesterday, Mr Charles was in my ‘office’ waiting for me. He was sitting at my desk, in fact, looking around my room. He said he liked what I had done to it. It was a nice touch too having flowers on the desk. While I stood in my coat and worried what I might have done wrong for him to be there, he spent a few more minutes on polite niceties. Then he asked me to have lunch with him.

I spent the whole morning getting worked up. Within ‘living memory’, Mr Charles has never asked anyone out to lunch. I suppose I am his first research assistant, but nevertheless it seemed to me a significant development and by lunch-time I had worked myself into quite a state of nerves.

I went off to the cloakroom far too early to get ready and as I was standing in front of the mirror, combing and recombing my hair, a funny expression came into my head. I don’t know where I picked it up from. ‘No one ever died of nerves.’ I repeated it to calm myself down as I sat at my desk, all perfumed, waiting for him.

Of course we had a very calm, civilized lunch. I cannot imagine a lunch with Mr Charles being anything else. He took me to a plain old-fashioned English place in South Kensington, which looked as if it had been there for years and its clientele as if they had been staunchly ordering the same dishes for as long. Mr Charles said, ‘The lamb is good. Or the steak-and-kidney.’

I suppressed the thought of how Rob would hoot with laughter at the restaurant and I dutifully ordered the lamb. The waitress had a sad dropped bosom, which seemed to cast
a long shadow as she bent over the table, and I noticed how courteous and gallant Mr Charles was to her.

‘Dear old Vera,’ he said. ‘She’s been here for donkey’s years.’

‘Do you usually come here?’ I asked him. ‘Is this your regular lunch spot?’

Mr Charles laughed. ‘I do. It’s the perfect place for a solitary diner. Look around; almost everyone’s eating on their own, aren’t they?’

I tried to bring the conversation round to his book, out of politeness. I asked him what he thought of the latest batch of pictures I had given him to look through. But he gave an airy wave of his hand and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Alison,’ he said. ‘Our lunch is pleasure, not business.’

We had pudding and coffee. We didn’t get back to the museum until nearly three o’clock, and I didn’t get much done in what remained of the afternoon, because my thoughts kept drifting back to Mr Charles.

I have often tried unsuccessfully to visualize what his home and private life are like. I imagine him taking something frozen from the fridge for a solitary supper, which he eats with a book propped in front of him. I imagine him sitting afterwards under a reading lamp in a living-room which is no different from his office.

Milton dropped in to visit me, which he has taken to doing fairly often now I am no longer available to all comers at the Enquiries Desk. He makes fun of my new status, calls me ‘Teacher’s Pet’ and ‘Egg Head’ and pretends to knock timidly and be scared to come in. He ribs me about the way I have done up my little cubby-hole ‘with everything just so’. But, at the same time he seems almost concerned for me, as though he thought I was getting too cut off in my lightless green aquarium and too immersed in my fuddy-duddy work.

He asked after ‘the writer’. ‘How come we never see him round here any more? You ain’t parted company?’

I said that Rob was very busy working.

Milton snorted. ‘You can have too much of a good thing, you know.’ He giggled and gave a dismissive gesture, which included my green haven.

I must say, it is lovely coming out at the end of the day
and it still being light. In the winter, I sometimes felt I was becoming a myopic night-time animal, for I never seemed to see the light of day. Only I can no longer tell from the street whether Rob is in or out. He’s usually out to be honest, these days, now that he’s between projects. He’s planning his research trips for the new play. He’s going to be away a good deal over the next two or three months, researching youth employment on Merseyside and in Scotland.

I told him Mr Charles had taken me out to lunch. He said, ‘Well, I hope you didn’t stint yourself.’ He still sees Mr Charles as just a stereotype of an old-fashioned employer, who exorts loyalty from his little band of staff thanks to a disgracefully exploitative system.

Imagine what Eastbourne must be like these days, full of trippers and all sorts. She didn’t for a moment suppose it could have stayed miraculously unchanged all these years. It would have gone downhill, of course, like everywhere else. There would be juke-boxes and one-armed bandits all over the place and doubtless they’d have put up concrete monstrosities on every spare bit of ground. But they couldn’t have done that much to the front, her front. The sea would have seen to that, after all, and the town council surely, which took such pride in appearances.

Ever since Alison had put the idea of going back to Eastbourne into her head, it had been preying on her. Of course, Alison had not actually mentioned Eastbourne. She had said, ‘… into the country
or
to the seaside’. But once she mentioned the seaside, it was perfectly obvious where they would go. Last Sunday, Alicia had raised the subject of her own accord.

‘You weren’t really serious, were you, about us going off somewhere together on an outing? I worried afterwards maybe I’d disappointed you. But you must see it’s an impossible notion.’

But Alison had become all eager again and insisted that she was absolutely serious, that it was perfectly possible if they waited a bit for the better weather – and had Alicia thought of anywhere that she would like to go?

Alicia didn’t say Eastbourne. She said angrily, ‘But what about my bad foot? And my chest? And who’d keep an eye on the house? You know what this area’s like nowadays.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ cried Alison. ‘The house would be all right for a day. And, anyway, you’re going to the chiropody clinic next week, aren’t you? You promised me.’

So Alicia went, although not without a protest delivered in lieu to the ambulance driver, who arrived to collect her half an hour late.

It was years since she had been out of the neighbourhood and although the hospital wasn’t far away, the drive there felt like a proper journey. Once she was over the indignity of being driven in a vehicle provided by Miss Midgley, and the glazed stupid expressions of her travelling companions, she enjoyed the ride in spite of herself. In fact, it gave her a taste for travelling further afield and in the days following her hospital appointment, she felt unusually restless and cooped up.

It had been especially upsetting of course to end the journey in a hospital, even if it was only the chiropody outpatients clinic. She had felt a sense of medical foreboding, made worse by the choking smell of disinfectant and boiled blankets which caught in her chest and made her cough. Maybe from now on her only journeys would be to hospital? If she didn’t look sharp.

Pearl came to clean the day after her visit to the clinic and Alicia welcomed her with open arms. She had always had a soft spot for Pearl really. She ushered her into the kitchen and made them both a pot of tea. She asked Pearl if she had any travel plans for the summer.

Pearl laughed, a great deep hoot of derision. ‘Travel, Mrs Queripel? That’ll be the day!’

‘Not going anywhere on your hols?’ Alicia insisted. ‘With the children?’

Pearl gave her a funny look. ‘How could I? Have you any idea how much it’d cost to take all of them off somewhere? Anyway, they’re too grown-up to come away with they parents; they go their own ways now.’

‘I’m thinking of getting away,’ said Alicia.

It was rewarding to see Pearl’s lips fall ajar.

‘I rather fancy a day at the seaside,’ she continued.

‘Uh huh?’ said Pearl. She took a big swallow of tea and she didn’t say anything else.

‘I haven’t been anywhere for over fifteen years,’ Alicia said aggressively. ‘I reckon it’s my due.’

‘You’re right,’ Pearl said agreeably.

‘So when the opportunity arose, I said to myself, “Take it.”’

‘That’s it,’ said Pearl. She looked into her teacup as if she thought she might perhaps find an explanation inside. ‘So where are you off to, then?’

Alicia said airily, ‘Oh, to the seaside or into the country. Just for a change of scene, you know.’ Then, as if it were a casual afterthought, she added, ‘I thought maybe Eastbourne. Have you ever been there?’

Pearl shook her head.

‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ Alicia told her. ‘Lovely. Or at least, it used to be.’

Pearl said unexpectedly, ‘Sometimes I think about going home on a visit. But it’s just a dream really, you know.’

Alicia brushed this odd remark aside. ‘There’s no saying what they might have done to it, of course. But, once upon a time, it was perfection.’

‘How do you plan to get yourself there?’ asked Pearl.

Alicia gave her a condescending smile. ‘Oh, my young friend will take me,’ she said, as if explaining something perfectly obvious to a simpleton. ‘You know, young Alison.’

‘So when are you thinking of going?’ asked Pearl.

Alicia felt sorry for Pearl, really she did: struggling to make ends meet and to bring a little colour into her life with her outfits and her hats. Alicia saw her off at the end of the morning with a cheery wave. Poor Pearl! She remembered that once, years and years ago, a coloured lady had wanted to stay at the boarding-house, a theatrical lady too, but Alicia had lied to her that it was full. It was October. She and Leonard were rattling around the empty rooms of Regency Villa, listening to the stormy autumn sea on the shingle and their overdraft rising, but she had lied that it was full. She remembered the black lady’s face, grey with cold, looking back at her and repeating without any apparent anger, ‘Full,
huh, full?’ She felt an odd sort of queasiness as she turned away from the front window, Pearl in her shimmering blue mac still swaying for a moment on her retina, and it took her a minute or two to realize that it was a pang of conscience.