How It All Began (2 page)

“There’s a lunch before your lecture—they’d like you there by twelve-thirty.”

“Inconsiderate of them. Oh—there was a phone call for you. Someone from a hospital. Can you call them back—here’s the number. About your mother, apparently. Unwell, is she? And, Rose, I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”

She thought about the mugger. Her mugger. This faceless person with whom she has been in transitory, intimate relationship. Him. Or possibly her. Women muggers now, no doubt; this is the age of equal opportunities. Person who was here one moment, gone the next. With my bag. And my packet of Kleenex and my Rennies and my comb and my bus pass and my rail card and three twenties I think and some change and the Barclaycard. And my keys.

Keys.

Oh, Rose has seen to that. She said. Changed the locks. And the card. Stopped. Goodbye to the three twenties and the change.

What will he/she buy with the sixty-odd quid I’ve so kindly given him/her?

A handful of Three for Two’s at Waterstones? A ticket to Covent Garden? It’ll have to be Upper Circle, I’m afraid. A subscription to the Friends of the Royal Academy?

Drugs, they say. Day’s supply of whatever is their particular tipple.

No. I prefer to imagine my mugger as a refined soul. Just a rather needy refined soul. Our brief relationship is more tolerable that way. Maybe there’s a
Figaro
on offer—that would perk him up. Him or her. German Expressionists at the Academy, I think. Hmmn. The new Philip Roth is good. And there’s this book on Shakespeare.

Hip. Hurts. Despite painkiller. Does not kill. Makes you woozy. As though hallucinating. No—sod you, mugger. Why didn’t you just ask nicely? Sod you. Go and slurp your heroin or whatever it is. No
Figaro
for you.

Rose had had to call Henry from the hospital to say that she would not be back that day. He did remember to inquire after her mother, when she arrived the next morning.

“They’re looking after her well, I hope? No joke—broken bones at our age. Now…we’re drowning in paper, Rose. Two days’ post not dealt with.”

She explained that it was possible she would not be able to accompany him to Manchester. It would depend on the date of her mother’s release from the hospital, not yet decided. “I’ll need to bring her home and settle her. She’ll be coming to us for a while.”

Consternation. “Oh dear. Well, let’s face that when we come to it. I suppose at a pinch Marion…”

Rose’s spare room.

“For a month or two, Mum. At least till you’re off the crutches.”

“I’d manage…”

“No. And anyway, the hospital is quite firm about it. So there.”

So. Just what one didn’t want. Being a burden and all that. What one had hoped to avoid. De-railed. Thanks a lot, mugger.

Sorry, Rose. And Gerry. And bless you. Let’s hope this won’t blight a beautiful relationship. It’s the classic situation: tiresome old mother moves in.

Old age is not for wimps. Broken hip is definitely not for wimps. We are crutch-mobile now. Up and down the ward. Ouch. Sessions with delightful six-foot New Zealand physiotherapist. Seriously ouch.

Of course before the hip there was the knee, and the back, but that was mere degeneration, not malign external interference. The knee. The back. And the cataracts. And those twinges in the left shoulder and the varicose veins and the phlebitis and having to get up at least once every night to pee and the fits of irritation at people who leave inaudible messages on the answerphone. Time was, long ago, pain occasionally struck—toothache, ear infection, cricked neck—and one made a great fuss, affronted. For years now, pain has been a constant companion, cozily there in bed with one in the morning, keeping pace all day, coyly retreating perhaps for a while only to come romping back: here I am, remember me? Ah, old age. The twilight years—that delicate phrase. Twilight my foot—roaring dawn of a new life, more like, the one you didn’t know about. We all avert our eyes, and then—wham! you’re in there too, wondering how the hell this can have happened, and maybe it is an early circle of hell and here come the gleeful devils with their pitchforks, stabbing and prodding.

Except that life goes on in parallel—real life, good life with all its gifts and graces. My species tulips out and blue tits on the bird feeder and a new book to look forward to this evening and Rose ringing up and a David Attenborough wild life program on the telly. And the new baby of Jennifer next door. A baby always lifts the spirits. Rose certainly did, way back. Pity there were no more, despite trying. But her own, in due course, thanks be.

Charlotte views her younger selves with a certain detachment. They are herself, but other incarnations, innocents going about half-forgotten business. One is not nostalgic about them—dear me, no. Though occasionally a trifle envious: physically spry, pretty
sharp teacher, though I say it myself, all my lot got A’s at A level, no question.

And further back yet, young Charlotte. Gracious, look at her—stepping out with men, marrying, pushing a pram.

All of which—all of whom—add up to what we have today: Charlotte washed up in Ward C, learning laboriously how to walk again. Ward C is full of breakage—legs, ankles, arms. The elderly fall off steps, trip over curbs; the young pitch off their bikes, exercise too carelessly. People are grounded, heaped up here together, an arbitrary assortment of misfortune: middle-aged Maureen who borrowed a neighbor’s stepladder to put up her new curtains, with disastrous consequences; young Karen who tried to overtake a bendy bus on her scooter; old Pat who braved an icy pavement, and should not have done. Ward C is exhausting—noisy, restless, you don’t get a lot of sleep—but also perhaps in some ways an expedient distraction. You don’t fret so much about your own distress when surrounded by other people’s. You endure, but also observe; you become a beady eye, appreciating the spectacle.

“Like watching
Casualty
,” says Rose. “Only you’re in there too.”

They are in the patients’ Rest Room, to which the crutch-mobile shuffle, to receive their visitors. They have had the spare room conversation, Charlotte and Rose. The thing is settled; Rose is firm, Charlotte resigned. Charlotte is leaving the hospital next week; Rose will fetch her and install her in the spare room, which is being prepared, her clothes and other necessities brought from home.

“It’s the day I was supposed to be going with Henry to Manchester,” says Rose. “I’ve told him I can’t.”

“His lordship will be put out.”

“He was.” Rose is unperturbed. “It’s all right—he’s roped in his niece, Marion. The interior designer. She’s got to do duty.”

“Is she the heir?” demands Charlotte, who calls a spade a spade.

Rose shrugs. “No idea. Well, someone has to be, I suppose.”

“Nice girl?”

“No girl, Mum. She’s my age.”

Charlotte sighs. “Of course. Talking of heirs, when I hand in my
dinner-plate I want you to give a little something to Jennifer next door for her baby—a couple of hundred for his piggy-bank.”

“
Mum
…”

“Not
much
…”

“Don’t talk like that. You’re not going to…”

“Well, not this afternoon, or indeed tomorrow, probably. But bear it in mind. Is she competent, this Marion? Will she get him there and back in one piece?”

“She’s very organized. Runs a business. Doing up rich people’s houses. She’s got this showroom in her house—all too elegant for words. You can see her shuddering when she comes to Lansdale Gardens.” Rose grins.

Charlotte has never been to Lansdale Gardens. “I thought it was quite grand?”

“There are some nice
things
. And the house is. But it’s all a bit seedy, too.”

Charlotte shifts in her seat, grimaces. Hip is giving her stick. Marion what’s-her-name is a distraction. “People
pay
to be told what color their curtains should be? I’m on his lordship’s side. Mail order ready-made always did me fine. Is she rich?”

“Nice clothes,” says Rose. “But I really wouldn’t know.”

Marion is doing money at the desk in her office next to the showroom; she is also awaiting a call from her lover, and remembering that she has a client due in half an hour. Marion is good at doing money—careful, efficient, numerate—but is not in fact rich. Comfortable, yes, an adequate sufficiency, but one needs always to keep a sharp eye on the figures, on that irritating but manageable overdraft. Right now she is checking suppliers’ bills and running through last month’s bank statements and hoping that Jeremy will ring before she has to put the phone on answer while the client is here. Her mind is flicking also to Henry, and this tiresome matter of the Manchester trip next week, when she really cannot spare the time.

Thinking of money, she considers for a moment Henry’s resources.
He is of course well off. That house. The lifestyle—his club, the pricey restaurants to which he goes from time to time. The minions—Rose, Corrie, who cleans and shops and does some cooking. Henry is…getting on. And has no relations except for Marion. Eventually someone has to inherit, unless all is destined for Oxfam or a cats’ home.

Not that Marion considers this. Of course not. She has an affection for the old boy, he is after all her uncle, her only uncle. She respects him, too, he is something of a grand old man, no question; she has not been above dropping his name from time to time. If only he would let her do something about the Lansdale Gardens house; every time she goes there she shudders at that fearful old chintz sofa, those leather armchairs, the murky brown velvet curtains. As for the kitchen…But Henry dismisses the least proposal of change; Marion has not been able to infiltrate so much as a cushion.

“I am beyond the reach of good taste, my dear.” A chuckle; good taste itself is in question, it would seem.

Marion rejects the term, of course. Hackneyed, meaningless. Effective decor is a matter of surprises, coordinations, contrasts; the unexpected rug, those interesting colors, that mirror. But no point in trying to explain this to Henry, for whom her trade is an amusing diversion, something with which she fills her time, an activity beyond his horizon. Henry is interested in powerful people, past and present, in good claret, in academic gossip, in writing his memoirs, and perhaps still, marginally, in eighteenth-century party politics, his original field of study. All of these are the central and seminal issues, so far as Henry is concerned; anything beyond can be a matter for idle and transitory comment but nothing more. Searching for conversational departures, Marion has sometimes talked of her clients; if they are prominent in some way Henry will be intrigued, even if their prominence is in areas unfamiliar to him. “Goldman Sachs? I’ve heard of it.
What
did you say this man earns? Outrageous!” Actors catch his attention: “The name rings a bell—not that I get to the theater so much these days. Of course I knew Alastair Sim at one time—did I ever tell you that?”

Henry has known many people. His conversation is laced with
names, most of them unknown to Marion, though there pops up the occasional recognizable celebrity. Henry has hobnobbed with leading politicians, has consorted with men and women of letters, he has known everyone who was anyone in the academic world.

Macmillan consulted him, as did Harold Wilson; he has tales to tell of Stephen Spender; Maurice Bowra was a chum. Oh, there is fuel enough for the memoirs, even if Marion’s eyes glaze over, periodically, during tea or one of Corrie’s rather awful lunches (Scotch broth, steak and kidney pie, treacle sponge pudding—Henry is a culinary conservative; Marion used to wonder how he managed in those posh restaurants to which he goes, but it seems that he knows the ones that cater for gastronomic retards). The names flow forth, and are rubbished or extolled, while Marion declines a sandwich or asks for a small helping, and wishes she could sneak in a new tablecloth. Sometimes, with Henry settled into cathartic discourse, she wistfully designs the entire room, sources wallpaper and curtain material, installs a lovely old Provençal table.

Marion has her own style, of course, her signature style, but where clients are concerned she is flexible—she wants to know what sort of thing they have in mind and then infuses that with her own suggestions and ideas. And of course they will have sought her out in the first place because they fancy the sort of thing she does—that fresh, appealing marriage of New England simplicity—the blues, the buffs, the painted floorboards—with French rustic and a touch of Kettle’s Yard: the Arts and Crafts chair, the clever arrangement of shells or stones on a sill, an intriguing painting above the mantelpiece.

Marion’s own house is the expression of all this. It is also her showcase: clients come there to be shown, and also to wander around the big ground floor room which displays fabrics, wallpapers, paint colors, objets d’art that Marion has picked up, the odd chair, table, lamp that nicely tunes in with the house style. Henry has seldom been here; when he has come he appeared to notice nothing. He would ensconce himself in one of the pretty pale linen-covered armchairs in the upstairs sitting-room, and hold forth as if in his own habitat. Henry does not see what does not concern him.

As someone who sees compulsively, Marion finds this both irritating and incomprehensible. Her mother shared her own interest in domestic interiors—home was elegant and considered. How can her brother be so entirely impervious? His own childhood backdrop was rather imposing—a Dorset country house stiff with antique pieces, good rugs, silver, the works. Not especially considered or contrived, but effective in its way. A few objects from there have fetched up at Lansdale Gardens, looking out of place: the seventeenth-century Italian cabinet amid the sagging leather armchairs of the sitting-room, the Regency mirror against the floral flock wallpaper of the hall. They are there not because Henry particularly appreciates them but because they are furnishings.

Marion’s clients are people who furnish as an occupation. They have become rich by one means or another, they may as well spend the dosh, and their surroundings are of prime importance to them. They change house frequently, each new abode will require dressing from top to toe, and even if they stay put periodic make-overs will be necessary. Prime spenders will lay out many thousands on a single room; even Marion is sometimes surprised at their capacity, while grateful. She will find herself supervising the disposal of a whole lot of stuff not that long installed because the client got tired of swagged curtains and urban chic and likes the idea of Marion’s calm palette and elegantly casual compositions. Sometimes sofas, chairs, hangings can be sold back to the original suppliers, who will be unsurprised. There is a cargo of interior adornments forever on the move, filtering from one mansion flat or bijou Chelsea terrace house to another.