For the Time Being (7 page)

So, at seventeen an art student; at nineteen I was scrubbing out the vats and pots in the tin wash at Catterick camp; at twenty-seven, after a good bit of voyaging, I was back again, became a ‘film star', and at fifty, deciding to take stock and readjust the seasoning of life, I left England for Provence and sat up on a mountain among my olives and sheep very contently until I was sixty-seven, when the heavens all of a sudden fell.

So I came back here. To the area in which I had begun to grow up. It was familiar territory: I walked among ghosts, pleasant ones, and felt not so strange, and people were initially very kind until I decided, quite by myself, that solitude was better by far than being ‘in demand'. I cut adrift and went my way. A simple life again.

Victoria said: ‘Darling. Now put it in your little book. Dinner on the 20th. We'll dine at eight. Too thrilling now that you've become a spare pair of trousers! Wonderfully in demand you'll be. Swamped.' I didn't, in all truth, feel elated. However.

Sheraton gleaming, silver, the usual orchid in that bloody twig
basket, clink and chink of cutlery on fine plate. Served by three sullen Filipinos, decent food. Always is at Victoria's.

At dinner I sat between Phillida and Margot. Margot had recently had a brutal nose job and in consequence wore a becoming black lace mask. When I say ‘becoming' I wish to differentiate between Margot with a mask and without one. With was far more acceptable.

Opposite me sat Sir Timothy Deadend. Deaf and cross, but apparently brilliant at advising someone or other in the Cabinet. Beside him the Hon. Constance Pullinger, a little high on pot and smiling vaguely into space, crumbling a bread roll, nodding pleasantly at no one. There is no one to nod to here under sixty-five.

‘Trodden on a marble,' says Deadend suddenly, blank blue eyes moving slowly in a head as bland, pink and shining as a porcelain doll. ‘Who, darling Timmy? Who has trodden on a marble?' Deadend helps himself to salmon mousse, a generous scoop. ‘Old Tin Knickers.'

Margot whispers through her black lace to me. ‘Who does he mean?'

‘Tin Knickers! Seen her run? Trodden on a marble this time. It'll bring her down this time. Splat!'

Phillida asks me if I went to someone's memorial service and I admit that I had avoided it. Apologize.

‘Oh, don't apologize! Same old business. Same lot. Those awful songs! That one about building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant … you know? I believe they sing it in the Women's Institutes, a sort of national hymn, and then that actor who always reads a bit of John Donne, and the fat one who looks like a farmer and blubs, and that silly idiot Meredith Dunwiddy sobbing out her heart as if she had
liked
the deceased. “Deceas-ed,” they say. Too tiresome. Who was Timmy being vile about?'

‘I rather think Mrs Thatcher again.'

Constance Pullinger suddenly came back from wherever she had been to and leant anxiously across the table.

‘Who did a hatchet job? Oh, do tell!'

Victoria, behatted as was usual at her suppers, adjusted her
little veil, clutched her pearls to prevent them swinging into the mayonnaise. ‘Not a hatchet, darling.
Thatcher.
Mrs Thatcher. You know.'

Constance nodded obediently, like a child instructed on going on an errand. She waved the mousse away and then returned to wherever it was she had recently been.

Deadend wiped fleshy lips. ‘Tripped on a marble. Mark what I say. Always something trivial that brings them down. Trivial. They all do it, that class. Can't carry corn. Easy to spot ‘em. No fibre.'

Phillida was chasing morsels of mousse about her plate as if they were ruby chips; she nodded towards him, mouth full, crumbs of fish falling.

‘Oh dear. The grandmother business. Too awful. And the breathless insincerity of it all. Can't someone tell her, Timmy? Shaking hands with all those poor foreigners in front of the fireplace … a headmistress at the end of term.'

Then Margot suddenly turned to me from her partner on her right. Cyril Dillford Pryce. ‘Cyril tells me that you're living permanently in London. A flat? Sold up in France? Too sad … but divine for us poor hostesses! One can always find a
mass
of single women, the place is littered with them … but you'll be wildly in demand. Where are you?'

I told her and she nodded agreeably. Apparently I had passed whatever test she had set and I was certain there had been such a thing.

‘Well. Not quite SWI, but not far off, and only a short walk from Harrods. Wonderful for you.' Satisfied, she turned back to Cyril.

Constance Pullinger suddenly wrenched open a small silver box, took a small pill, swigged it down with half her glass of white wine and shuddered as if she had taken cyanide. Perhaps she had.

She smiled wanly at me. ‘Did someone say Harrods?'

‘Yes. Margot asked me where I lived. She seemed pleased that I was so near Harrods.'

‘Ah, I see. Yes. Frankly, I never go there now. Who wants to shop in a souk?'

Cyril Dillford Pryce (ex-colonial of some years, his accent all but obliterated except in moments of excitement or anger when errant vowels escaped his control) leant behind Margot's back and nudged me.

‘Saw you on the box on Sunday. Simply frightful! Such tosh! I suppose you saw it, can't remember the name. Ages old, black and white.'

I assured him that I never watched myself perform on television. The Filipinos were starting to clear the mousse and re-lay for the next course. Victoria repinned her Cartier clips.

‘Thrilling!' she said, one supposed to Cyril. ‘I adore really
ancient
movies. We were all so naïve then. What fun it was.'

‘Never watch yourself?' Cyril was persisting as his plate was removed.

‘Never.'

‘How odd! I never do, normally, but my man had it on in the kitchen, so I couldn't resist a peek.'

‘A long time ago,' I said.

‘Ah ha! I know. Only a dog returns to its own vomit. That it?'

He squealed with pleasure. Beaming around the table. I so hated him that I wished him violently dead.

Perhaps Margot recognized my hatred, for she placed a firm hand on my wrist. ‘Look!' she cried happily and a little too loudly. ‘Here come those delicious little quails' breasts which Antonia does so brilliantly.'

Suddenly the room was noisy with dishes and service.

I realized, with a thud, that I was actually sitting among the living dead, and I made a silent vow, there and then, never again to put on a dark suit to dine in a cemetery.

I gave up that kind of frivolity, preferring my own company and a large Scotch. No demands were made on me, I wasted no effort, nothing was taken from me, whatever energy yet remained to me was for my own use and pleasure. Far wiser. And so I went off and shopped for food; one has to.

It had not really hit me at first that shopping for one was a
consuming business. One chop? One cod fillet? I had not the remotest idea how to cook such things; and I soon found out that in supermarkets things were packaged for two or more. At home, in France, it was far easier in the local market. You could buy one egg. if so you wished. One slice of pizza, a leek, a carrot; and one slice of ham was wrapped up with as much respect and reverence as if one had ordered breast of peacock. I was to learn in time. But just at the beginning it was a bit rum. For a while I existed on frozen packets of junk, on boiled things in bags. It was easy. I could understand the instructions. There was almost no washing-up. And I almost began to enjoy ‘walking to the shops', as my sister Elizabeth used to say.

Along the pavement which ran beside the private gardens there was an ill-parked line of cars, looking for all the world like a scattered desert convoy. Mercedes, Jaguars, here and there a modest Volvo, two or three dashing Range Rovers, a Rolls or two. Beside the cars, scatters of women in little groups, chattering.

All the significant signs of moderate and immodest wealth were there. The Hermès scarf, the Chanel bag with chain, Armani pants (these women were waiting for their brats to emerge from the junior school) and sunglasses, heavy gold jangling on wrists, cockatoo-cries of recognition. ‘Jessica! All well?' Hope, Trisha, Diana, Caroline, Tessa, Lucy, and on it went. The only ones silent were the raven-locked Lebanese ladies, hair flowing, magenta lips, haze of heavy scent, high heels, leather minis, arms a percussion of crashing gold and platinum.

Under the tree, where the crows nested, the paving stones were marbled with their evil black droppings. A boy of perhaps eight was dragging enormous feet through the muck, satchel slipping from hock-bottle shoulders, tie awry. A woman, possibly pretty although anger had soured her face, dug about in her Chanel bag by a meter. ‘Jonathan! Don't do that! What did Miss Jessop say? Tell me?'

The child remained sullenly silent, sniggered only when his mother's car keys fell to the pavement. She cursed, I bent to retrieve them, she took them absently, concerned with Miss Jessop, I began
to move off into the starling-chitter of the waiting mothers.

‘What did she say?' and then calling to me: ‘Oh. Thank you. Jonathan! For the last time…'

‘Said I was a rotten little bugger.'

The strangled cry of ‘Jonathan!' reached me at the same time almost as her follow-up cry of ‘I say! Do you have change for the meter? I'm absolutely done for.'

She looked distraught, bag hanging open. Jonathan, scraping birdshit thoughtfully, said: ‘I'm a disgrace to the school, she said.' There was a gleam of malice on his pinched face.

I set my plastic bags on the pavement and sorted out my small change.

‘Don't I know you?'

I handed her a five pence piece.

‘I don't think so. Will this do?'

She took the money, still looking at me intently, disturbed.

Jonathan kicked at the crow droppings.

He was being left out. ‘That's what she said, Mum. To the whole class.'

She suddenly struck him swiftly; he ducked, sniggering. ‘She
did.'

The woman's face cleared. ‘Brilliant! I know! You used to be Dirk Bogarde. Years ago. That Dickens thing at school.
How
we blubbed!' And as I turned away with my plastic bags, she said furiously: ‘Don't call me
Mum!
Mother or Mummy if you must. Never Mum.' She called her thanks for the five pence as I became lost in the jabbering mass of small idiot children. I used to be someone. Who the hell was I now?

The next afternoon was a little different: I had promised to go and see Mae-Ellen. I was not passionate about the idea, but felt that the walk, almost to Sydney Street, would be good exercise, which I had promised my physiotherapist to attempt.

Mae-Ellen had freckles and red hair, cut in what she terms a ‘bang'; she wore white stockings and neat little lace-up shoes. The stockings, which seem to be a favourite with certain kinds of American women (leaning to intellectualism) gave her legs the
unhappy impression of upended milk bottles. She was very warm and welcoming. Offered me herbal tea which she was about to infuse, but I declined, and sat me down in a wickerwork chair while she moved about purposefully with teapot and kettle.

‘It was so great to see you! Just bumping into you like that. When was the last time? At Ruthie's on Delfern Drive … that was just years ago. And you really haven't changed. I mean, we're
all
getting old but I still swim four lengths every day … I'm with the embassy right now. It's so worth while …' She poured water into the tin teapot. Caught up a mug. ‘I counsel Army wives out on the bases. You know? I won't say
where,
but I guess you know … they really have a time, you know? It's lonely on the bases; they feel kinda trapped, you know? I suffer for them. I really do.'

I rather suffered for myself, as it happened. I hated where I was almost the instant that she had opened the narrow door. Seeing me look about the dingy room, she chattered off again.

‘I just borrow this place from a girl I know. She's great. She's gone off to Uttar Pradesh or somewhere; there's a famine or a war, something, and Arlene can't resist offering her services. She's wild. Sure you won't take some mint tea?'

The room looked out over St Luke's churchyard. It was a dismal day, but it was equally dismal in the house. Bamboo and wicker furniture, dragged blue paint walls, a stark bunch of dried pink larkspur bound with twine, decaying in a basket. Mae-Ellen stirred her mug with a pencil.

‘What I'm doing is really essential, I just talk to these women and they talk right back and we have a conversation and that releases them, you know? Stuck on that base, hostile women in the woods … well, they have the PX and movies and the medics and so on … but they don't feel at home in the United Kingdom. They never go out. It's spooky and sad. Those hostile people just outside the wire.'

I nod and agree. What else?

‘I say to them when I visit, now look: there are so many wonderful compensations you got. You have your husbin, you have your children. I mean that is just so right, so traditional, so wonderful.

Now then. You have your husbin, you have kids, and they all love you, and that is one helluva deal. Do you know that? You want proof of that? Well, the very first proof of that love is the very first gift your kid gives you. Know what? That gift which the child will offer to the giver of life. You, its mother. And you know what that is? It is shit.'

She sat back and glittered at me in the dim room, triumphantly.

‘Defecation is the very first “thank you” from your child. It is just automatic. I think it's kinda marvellous. Uplifting. Of course, in our terms we'd say it was an automatic reflex, but I say that it's the deep psychological desire, buried way deep down in the subconscious of the new-born, that insists on giving thanks for our life. Isn't that a marvellous thought? Sure you won't take mint tea? I'm making a fresh pot.'