Babycakes (18 page)

He’d lost touch with them years before, so he couldn’t help wondering if they were still watching their beloved telly in that snug little house off New End Square. Even if they weren’t, the thought of seeing Hampstead again was wonderfully exhilarating. There was nothing quite like going back to an old neighborhood.

Leaving Simon’s house, he wound his way through the vegetables and bric-a-brac of Portobello Road until he reached the ragtag commercial center of Notting Hill Gate. The familiar circle-bar brand of the London Underground beckoned him to a hole in the sidewalk, where he pumped coins into a ticket machine that listed Hampstead as a destination.

An escalator carried him still deeper, to the platform of the Central Line, from which he caught an eastbound train to Tottenham Court Road. Disembarking, he strode as knowingly as possible to the platform of the Northern Line, where a once-dormant signal in the back of his brain advised him that the Edgware train,
not
the High Barnet, would take him to Hampstead.

He loved the particulars of all this: The classic simplicity of the Underground map, with its geometric patterns and varicolored arteries. The warm, stale winds that whipped through the cream-and-green-tile pedestrian tunnels. The passengers—from skinheads to pinstripers—all wearing the same mask of bored and dignified disdain.

When the train stopped at Hampstead, his next route was indicated by a sign saying
WAY OUT
, a nobler phrase by far than the bland American
EXIT
. Since Hampstead was London’s most elevated neighborhood, the lift to the street was London’s deepest, a groaning Art Nouveau monster with a recorded voice so muted and decrepit (“Stand clear of the gate,” it said) that it might have been a resident ghost. He remembered that voice, in fact, and it gave him his first shiver of déjà vu.

The streets of the borough were mercifully unchanged, despite the encroachment of fast-food parlors and chrome-and-mauve salons specializing in “hair design.” He strolled along the redbrick high street until he came upon the hulking redbrick hospital that stood by the street leading to New End Square.

Four minutes later, he was hesitating in front of the house that had been his home for three months in 1967. The chintz curtains that had once shielded the living room from the gaze of passersby had been replaced by Levolors. Did a gay person live there now? Had the Mainwarings retired to some characterless “estate home” in the suburbs? Could he deal with the changes, whatever they were? Did he really want to know?

He really didn’t. Returning to the high street, he ate lunch in one of the new American-style hamburger joints, a “café” decorated with neon cacti and old Coca-Cola signs. Once upon a time, he recalled, Wimpy bars had served the only hamburgers in London, but they had hardly qualified.

He downed several ciders at an old haunt in Flask Walk, then considered his options for the afternoon. He could stroll over to the Spaniards Inn and down one or two more. He could look for the house where the inventor of the Christmas card had lived. He could wander down to the Vale of Health and sit by the pond where Shelley had sailed his paper boats.

Or he could look for the bricklayer.

Another cider settled the issue. Shelley and the inventor of the Christmas card were no match for the memory of a hairless scrotum. He breezed out of the pub and ambled along the pale green crest of the city toward Jack Straw’s Castle and the Spaniards Road.

The heath was much as he had remembered it—rolling reaches of lawn bordered by dark clumps of urban forest. There seemed to be more litter now (which was true of London in general), but the two-hundred-acre park was still rife with the stuff of mystery. On his last visit, the sound of the wind in its thick foliage had instantly evoked an eerie scene from
Blow-Up,
a movie which meant London to Michael in the way that
Vertigo
meant San Francisco.

He entered the heath from the Spaniards Road, following a broad trail through the trees. When he reached Hampstead Ponds, he stopped for a while and watched a trio of children romping along the water’s edge. Their mother, a freckled redhead in a green sweater and slacks, smiled at him wearily as if to thank him for the tribute he had paid her offspring. He smiled back and skipped a stone on the water, just to get a rise out of the kids.

It was here, he remembered, that a road led down to the south end of the heath and the street where the bricklayer had lived.
The street where he lived.
He laughed out loud at his gay rewrite, then began humming the tune from
My Fair Lady.

The street was called South End Road. He remembered it because it intersected with Keats Grove, the street where the poet had lived, and Keats had been one of the things they had discussed after sex, along with Paul McCartney, motorcycles and world peace.

He found the place almost immediately, recognizing the nightingales in the Edwardian stained glass above the door. This was no time to think, he decided. He threw caution to the winds and rang the bell of the ground-floor flat. An old man in a cardigan came to the door.

“This is kind of unusual,” Michael began, “but a friend of mine lived here a long time ago, and I was wondering if he still does.”

The old man squinted at him for a moment, then said: “What was his name?”

“Well … that’s the unusual part. I don’t remember. He was a bricklayer … a big, strapping fellow. He must be about fifty now.”
Come to think of it, I believe he did have a hairless scrotum.

The current occupant shook his head thoughtfully. “How long ago was this?”

“Sixteen years. Nineteen sixty-seven.”

A raspy chuckle. “He must be long gone. The wife and me have been here longer than the other tenants, but that’s just eight years. Sixteen years! No wonder you’ve forgotten his name!”

Michael thanked him and left, accepting the futility of the quest. It didn’t really matter. What would he have said, anyway, had he found his savior? You don’t know me, but thanks for being there first?

The sun was quite warm now and cottony clouds were scudding across the sky, so he crossed the heath again and headed for the wooded mound that locals knew as Boadicea’s tomb. No one really believed that the ancient queen was actually buried under the hillock, but the name endured nonetheless. He had gone there once at midnight, upon reading in
The Times
that the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids would gather at the site for their Midsummer’s Night ritual. The intrigue had vanished like ectoplasm when he saw for himself that the “Druids” were bank clerks in bedsheets and grandmothers in harlequin glasses.

As another chunk of the past slipped away from him, he sat down on the grass and tilted his face to the sun. Fifty yards below him, a large black sedan crossed the heath slowly, then came to a stop. A woman got out—blond hair, white blouse, gray skirt stopping at midcalf—a striking figure against the endless green of the landscape. She turned in every direction, apparently searching for someone.

He observed her idly for a moment, then sprang to his feet, his mind ablaze with conflicting images.

“Mona!” he shouted.

The woman’s head jerked around to find the source of his voice.

“It’s me, Mona! Mouse!”

The woman froze, then spun on her heel and climbed back into the sedan.

It sped out of sight into the trees.

Off the Record

T
HE DELUGE OF PUBLICITY THAT HIT SIMON AFTER THE
broadcast made Mary Ann begin to wonder if it had been too much for him. He
seemed
to be all right, but he was a funny bird in many ways, and she could rarely tell what was really on his mind. The last thing she wanted was to alienate him.

When the weekend came, she waited until the time was right (Brian had gone to the laundromat) and invited the Englishman to join her on her shopping rounds in North Beach. Half an hour later, all she had to show for it was a pint carton of Molinari’s pickled mushrooms.

“This is your
weekly
shopping?” Simon asked. They were walking up Columbus toward Washington Square.

She laughed, abandoning the pretense altogether. “I just needed an excuse to get out of the house. I’ve been feeling … cooped up lately.”

“Shall we walk somewhere?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” she replied.

“Where? You’re the local, madam.”

She smiled. She liked it when he called her madam. “I know just the place,” she said.

She walked him up Union Street to the top of Telegraph Hill, then down Montgomery to its junction with the Filbert Steps. “The penthouse directly above us,” she explained, “is the one that Lauren Bacali had in
Dark Passage. ”

He craned his muscular, patrician neck. “Really?”

“The one where Bogart has the plastic surgery that makes him look like Bogart. Remember?”

“Of course,” he replied.

“My friend DeDe used to live there.”

“Ah. Do I know about her?”

“The one who escaped from Guyana.”

“Right.”

She led him halfway down the wooden stairway, then brushed off a plank and sat down.

“This is not unlike Barbary Lane,” he remarked, joining her.

She nodded. “There are places like this all over the city. This is technically a city street.”

“The garden is magnificent.”

“The city doesn’t do that,” she told him. “A precious old lady did that—this used to be a garbage dump. She was a stunt woman in Hollywood years ago, and then she moved up here and started planting this. Everybody just calls it Grace’s Garden. She died just before Christmas. Her ashes are under that statue down there.”

He looked faintly amused. “You’re a veritable font of local color.”

“I did a story on her,” she explained.

“I see.” He was teasing her ever so subtly. “Do you do stories on everyone you know?”

She hesitated, wondering about his motives again. “Has it been too much?” she finally asked him.

The smile he offered seemed genuine enough. “Not at all.”

“I hope not.”

“I’m
astounded
there’s been such a reaction. But it hasn’t been unpleasant.”

“Good.”

“As long as you don’t let any other journalists know where I am.”

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “I want you all to myself.”

He smiled again and bent a branch so that a large blossom touched the tip of his nose.

“They don’t smell,” she said.

He released the branch, catapulting the blossom toward the sky.

“It’s called a fried egg plant,” she added, “because it looks like …”

“Don’t tell me, now. Let me guess.”

She laughed.

“A bowling ball? No? A loaf of bread, perhaps?”

She shook his knee. “Stop teasing.”

A silence followed. She felt awkward about her hand on his knee, so she removed it.

“Who lives in these houses?” Simon asked.

She was glad to take refuge in her role as tour guide. “Well … they’re squatter shacks …”

“Really? I thought that was peculiar to England.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “Are you kidding? During the gold rush …”

He cut her off with a brittle laugh. “We’re in different centuries, I think. I meant
now.”

Thoroughly confused, she retraced her steps. “You … have squatters now?”

He nodded. “London is crawling with them.”

“You mean … people just claim land?”

“Houses, actually. Flats. The hippies started it, back when the city allowed empty council flats to fall into disrepair. They moved in, fixed them up a bit … claimed them for their own.”

“Well,” she commented, “that sounds fair enough.”

“Mmm,” he replied, “unless you’re the chap who goes on holiday and comes home to a family of Pakistanis … or what-have-you.”

“Has that happened?”

“Oh, yes.”

“They just move in? Take over the furniture and everything?”

He nodded. “To evict them, one must prove forceable entry. That’s bloody difficult sometimes. There can be months of mucking about before they’re booted out. It’s a complicated issue, mind you.”

“I can imagine.”

“There are squatters in my building,” he added. “They took over the vacant flat above me.”

“You didn’t see them do this?”

He shook his head. “I was on the royal honeymoon at the time.”

“What are they like?”

“The Prince and Princess?”

She smiled. “The squatters.”