London Transports (6 page)

It was morning coffee time, so she gathered from the smell of fresh coffee coming from the kitchen. She was right, they assembled on the balcony, and had coffee from lovely china cups.

“I’ll be sending to Leicester for my real furniture this week,” she said.

“We’ll be dying to see it,” said Marigold, her china-blue eyes lighting up with excitement.

“And I must give you some money and everything,” blurted out Pat. “I’m not much good at this you know, not having shared a flat before.”

“Oh, Joy will look after that,” said Marigold. “She’s so good with money, working in that office where there’s a lot of accountancy. She should have been a solicitor from the start you know, it’s so silly to have waited until she’s twenty-seven before starting her indentures.”

“I’d never have done it at all if it weren’t for you,” said Joy gratefully. “I’d still be working on there and taking my money each week.”

“It would have been pointless,” said Marigold. Her blue eyes looked out over the park, where people who weren’t in wheelchairs jumped and played and ran about.

Pat sighed happily. It was so peaceful here and she had the whole week-end before facing the bank again. Nobody ever told you how easy it was to find a flat.

“Would you like me to do any shopping or anything?” she asked helpfully.

“Joy does that on Friday nights, we’re very well organized,” smiled Marigold. “We have a small deep freeze as well. It helps a great deal.”

While the rest of London sweated and fussed and shopped and dragged themselves through traffic jams or in crowded trains to the seaside, Joy and Marigold and Pat sat peacefully reading, listening to music, or chatting. By Monday Pat felt she had been on a rest cure. She and Joy had done a lot of the washing up, and preparing of things, rougher jobs like peeling potatoes and cutting up meat, and taking out rubbish.

Joy was friendly and eager to do everything, Marigold was gentle, serene, and calm. Pat began to think that she couldn’t have found two more perfect flat-mates.

On Sunday night she telephoned the people in Leicester and asked them to arrange to have seventeen pieces of furniture, some huge, some tiny, collected and delivered to London.

Nobody had telephoned the flat, nobody had gone out. Pat wondered what happened if you invited a friend in for supper. Would they all eat as a four-some? She saw no other way.

She gave Joy £80, and asked what to do about the tenner for food.

“I’ll spend £20 this week, and you spend it next week,” said Joy cheerfully.

Pat wondered where Marigold’s tenner came into it but said nothing. Why upset things? Things are not always so peaceful in life, it’s silly to question just for the sake of questioning.

On Tuesday she rang Joy at work to say that she was going to the theatre so would not be home for dinner.

“Oh.” Joy sounded upset.

“But that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Pat. “Marigold won’t start to cook until we get home anyway, so it’s not a question of letting her know in advance. I’d ring her at home but I…well, I just thought I’d ring you.”

“Oh yes, it’s better to ring me,” said Joy. “No, no problems. I’ll pop home at lunchtime and tell her, it’s not far. Don’t worry.”

It all seemed very odd to Pat, but she put it out of her mind.

On Thursday her furniture arrived. Marigold was delighted with it. She whirled around in the wheelchair, stroking this and patting that.

“Lovely inlay,” she said.

“We must strip this down,” she said.

“What a magnificent curtain. Wouldn’t it look lovely on the balcony?” she said.

So of course Pat, flattered and pleased, hung Auntie Delia’s bead curtain up on the balcony, where indeed it looked lovely.

That night she asked if they ever heard from Nadia how she was enjoying Washington.

“No, we’ve not heard,” said Marigold.

“Nadia doesn’t write many letters,” said Joy.

“What did she do, I mean what job had she?” asked Pat. Her slight jealousy of Nadia had disappeared, now she had only curiosity.

“She worked in an antique shop,” said Joy.

“Managed an antique shop,” said Marigold.

“Well, she worked there first,” laughed Joy. “But Marigold told her she knew much more than anyone in it, and gave her confidence, so she ended up managing it for Mr. Solomons.”

“She knew twice as much as Mr. Solomons from the start,” said Marigold.

“Anyway Mr. Solomons fancied her enormously, so that it didn’t hurt,” said Joy with a giggle.

“Did she fancy him?” asked Pat with interest.

“Not until Marigold told her to have some intelligence and fancy him,” giggled Joy again.

“Oh,” said Pat.

Marigold seemed to think some clarification was called for.

“It always strikes me as silly to go to bed with half-drunk people, who forget it, or who feel embarrassed by it, or who do it so often that it’s meaningless, and then refuse to go to bed with someone like Mr. Solomons who would appreciate it, would remember it with affection, and would advance Nadia because of it. It just seems a foolish sort of thing to have a principle about.”

Put that way, thought Pat, it was unanswerable.

“But she left him all the same?” she probed.

“Oh no, she didn’t leave Mr. Solomons,” said Joy laughing. “Mr. Solomons left her. He had a heart attack and went to live in the country, so she managed his place for him, and took a share in the profits.”

“And had a very nice cut and first refusal on everything they stocked,” said Marigold, stroking the little mahogany cabinet beside her, almost sensuously.

“So why Washington?” asked Pat.

“She’s running a little antique shop in George-town now,” said Marigold distantly. “Very different kind of stuff, I’m sure.”

“She got sort of unsettled, and took the first job she heard of,” said Joy artlessly.

“Some silly business with a chap who used to restore paintings, very silly really,” said Marigold. And the conversation about Nadia stopped there. It was as clear a break as if “End of Episode One” had been written in fire in the air.

Out of sheer curiosity, Pat stopped in Solomons’ antique shop. There was no elderly owner type about, so she supposed that the good proprietor’s heart could not yet have recovered from Nadia’s exertions.

She asked how much they would give her for Aunt Delia’s inlaid cabinet if she were to sell it. She described it very carefully.

“About five hundred pounds,” said the young man. “Depends on what condition it’s in, of course, but not less I’d say.”

That was odd. Marigold had said it was pretty but without value. Marigold said she should take great care of it because it might be worth fifty pounds. Imagine Marigold not knowing how much it was worth. A flaw in the lovely, graceful, all-knowing Marigold. A flaw no less.

“Is Nadia still here?” she asked on impulse.

“No, why, you a friend of hers?” the man asked.

“No,” said Pat. “I just know people who know her.”

“Oh, she left here a few weeks ago. Kevin would know where she is.” He pointed out a young and very attractive bearded bending figure, who was examining the frame of a picture.

“It doesn’t matter really,” said Pat hastily, thinking this might be the silly young man of Marigold’s description.

“Hey, Kevin, this lady’s a friend of Nad’s.”

Kevin stood up. He was very handsome in a definitely shabby, ungroomed way. Pat could see that his nails, his unwashed hair, wouldn’t have fitted into the elegant furniture back in the flat.

“I was just looking around, and I remembered that this is where the girl who lived in the flat where I’ve just moved in used to work…” said Pat apologetically.

“Have you moved in there?” asked Kevin flatly.

“Yes, a few days ago.”

“Have you moved all your stuff in?” he asked.

“Well yes, yes I have,” Pat’s voice trailed away. She felt unreasonably frightened.

“Did she tell you it’s worth buttons, peanuts?”

“No,” said Pat defensively. “Marigold said it’s very nice furniture and I must take care of it. Why, anyway?”

“Will you tell her you’ve been in here?” he asked very unemotionally.

“I might, I might not. Why do you ask?” said Pat. She was definitely frightened now, which was ridiculous. She also knew that she would never admit to Marigold that she had nosed around Nadia’s old place of employment and nosed out Nadia’s silly young man.

“I don’t think you will,” he said. “Nadia never told her anything towards the end, she was absolutely terrified of her. So was I. It’s her eyes, they’re not human.”

“They’re just too blue,” said Pat. “She can’t help that.”

“No, but she can help a lot of things. Do you know that she hasn’t polio at all?”

“I don’t believe you,” said Pat, feeling her legs getting weak.

“No, she hasn’t, that’s why none of them ring her at home. She goes out, you know, when everyone’s at work.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, I saw her several times running down the stairs, and taking a taxi. I took a photograph of her once to prove it to Nadia, but she said it was trick photography.”

“But she’s paralysed,” said Pat.

“So she says. It’s nice being paralysed if you get everyone else to do all the work, pay all the bills, and live in fear of you.”

“Don’t you think that someone would have to be mad to pretend to have polio, just to get out of carrying out the rubbish?”

“Marigold is mad, very mad,” he said.

Pat sat down on a reproduction sofa.

“Didn’t you guess?” he asked.

“I don’t believe it,” said Pat.

“Nadia doesn’t to this day,” said Kevin.

“Is that why she went to Washington?” asked Pat.

“She’s not in Washington, she’s back in my flat. In Clapham,” he said. “She told them she was going to the States, that was the only reason that Marigold let her go.”

“You mean she has no job, and just lives in your flat because she’s afraid of Marigold?” Pat said. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Go down there and see,” he said. “She’ll be sitting there complaining about the noise, and saying how little light there is, and how cramped the place seems to be. She doesn’t even bother to get dressed properly, she hangs about all day complaining. That’s what Marigold has done to her.”

“Does she want to be back in the flat?”

“She wants it so much I think she’s becoming as mad as Marigold. ‘It was so peaceful. We were so gracious. We had such lovely music, not the neighbours’ trannies.’ That’s all she says, day in, day out.”

“Why did she leave it if she liked it so much?” asked Pat, almost afraid to hear the answer. Everything Nadia said about the flat was so true, there might be some truth in Kevin’s whole terrible tale.

“She left it because I told her that she had given all her lovely furniture to this woman, that she had turned herself into a prostitute for her, that she had cut off her whole life for her, that she was working to support her. I told her to examine all these statements and if she thought they were true to move out. So she did and they were and she moved. But not without tissues of lies of course about Washington, which that nice silly Joy believed but Marigold saw through at once. Marigold didn’t mind anyway, she had loads of stuff, hundreds of pounds’ worth, from Nad over the years, and she’ll always get other slaves.”

“But Joy’s normal.”

“She used to be, when she had a bit of a life of her own, and boyfriends, and big plates of spaghetti with the girls from work. She should have been married years ago and have three nice fat children by now, instead of trying to become a solicitor and earn more money for that Marigold.”

“You’re very bitter about her.”

“I’m bleeding obsessed with her, that’s what I am. She’s ruined Nadia totally, she’s turned Joy into a zombie, there was another one there, too, I can’t remember her name, but she had to go out to bloody Africa as a missionary or something to get over it all. Having left some very nice lamps and some very good old cut glass thank you.”

Pat’s heart missed something of its regular movement. She remembered admiring the lamps, and Marigold had said they were from a dear friend who went to Africa and didn’t need them.

It was the end of her lunch hour. She walked out without saying anything. She knew where to find him if she needed to know any more. He would take her home to meet Nadia if she wanted confirmation of it all. She was a free, grown-up woman, nobody could keep her there against her will.

On the way back to the bank she passed an expensive flower shop. It had unusual little potted plants. One of them was very, very blue. It had a long name but Marigold would know it anyway. It would look lovely on the balcony table. It would be so peaceful there this evening after work. It was like a dream-world really. It would be such a misery trying to get everything out of the flat now that she had just got it in. Anyway, why should she? Kevin was just a silly young man. Jealous obviously because Nadia had been so happy in the flat. Anyone would be happy in that flat, it was so very, very peaceful, you didn’t need anyone else or anything else in the world.

Lancaster Gate

I
t was funny the way things turned out. If she hadn’t made that huge scene, and cried, and nearly choked herself crying, and admitted all kinds of weaknesses, she wouldn’t be here now. She would be back in the flat, cleaning the cooker, polishing the furniture, ironing his shirts, so that he would think it was wonderful to have all these home comforts and value her more.

She would have gone to the cinema maybe, but maybe not. Films were so full of other people’s relationships, and she kept identifying, and saying “If I behaved more like her, would he value me more?” or wondering why some screen woman could be so calm when everything was collapsing around her. Lisa could never be calm. She could pretend at calmness very successfully, but deep down it was churn, churn, churn. Sometimes she was surprised that he couldn’t hear her heart sort of hitting against her bones, she could hear it thudding as well as feel it from inside, she could actually hear the wuff wuff sound it made. But fortunately he never managed to hear it, and she could always fool him into thinking she was relaxed and at ease. Sometimes the nights that had started with her heart thudding very seriously had turned out to be their best nights, because she acted out the calm role so well. Lisa had often thought how extraordinarily easy it was to fool someone you loved and who loved you.

Or who sort of loved you. But no, no, don’t start that, don’t start analysing, worrying, your heart will begin the booming thing again, and you’ve got nothing to boom about. Here in London, staying in a big posh hotel, signing the room-service dockets with his name, putting the Mrs. bit in casually as if you had been doing it for years and it was now second nature. She wondered how long it took married people to forget their single names. Brides were always giggling about it. She supposed it would take about three weeks, about the same time as it took you to remember each January that the year had changed and that you must write a different date.

And it was what they called a glorious day on the weather forecast, very flowery indeed for the Met Office, but that was the word the man had used, and she had run to the window to see if he was right, and he was. There were railings across the road and people were putting up pictures, and postcards, and souvenirs, to sell to the passing tourists. And they seemed to be shouting to each other and laughing. They must know each other from meeting every week-end here, and they didn’t sound like rivals or enemies. They didn’t look as if they’d mind if a passing tourist bought from one rather than another. They were unpacking little canvas stools as well, and some of them had flasks. They were old and young. Lisa thought it was a funny kind of life. She wouldn’t be able for it, her old anxiety would show. People wouldn’t buy from her because she would have an anxious face wanting them to buy, and the more they passed her by because of her anxious face the more anxious it would become. But then that was the same kind of vicious circle that everyone kept getting caught in. It was like the whole problem with Him. If she felt unsure of him and thought that he was losing interest in her, she became strained and worried and not the carefree girl he had once fancied, and so he
did
start to lose interest, and because she could see this happening she became more strained and worried, and he lost more interest.

But stop, stop. Not today, today is glorious. It has been defined as such by the weatherman on the radio, than who there must be surely no saner, soberer judge. And today you don’t need to act at being relaxed, you are. He’s there in the bathroom shaving, he’s happy, he’s glad you’re here. You’ve made love half an hour ago, he liked it, he’s humming to himself. You make him happy or happier than he’d be if you weren’t here. You’re fine really. Remember that. He didn’t have to take you with him to London for the conference, now did he? He couldn’t have been planning something else, something awful like meeting someone else, if he took you so readily.

Lisa smiled happily, thinking of how readily he had agreed to take her with him. She hadn’t meant to ask at all. She had packed his case yesterday morning…was it only yesterday? Friday, it must have been. She had been polishing his shoes.

“You don’t need to do that,” he had said, a bit embarrassed.

“I was doing my own,” she had lied.

“They’re suede, funny face,” he had said, laughing.

What was it? It couldn’t have been funny face, he called her that a lot, it was meaningless as an endearment, it wasn’t even special. He called his daughter funny face on the phone…often. He called his secretary funny face. Once she had been holding for him on the phone, and she could hear his voice clearly as he crossed the office. “Get me a cup of coffee, funny face,” he had said. “I’ve got a bugger of a day.” It was probably because he knew she wore suede shoes. Idiotic, it couldn’t have been that. Put baldly it was really madness. What was it then? Why did two tears fall down onto the shining leather shoes in her hand? She could have hit herself with rage. It wasn’t as if she knew it was going to happen. You always sort of know when you’re going to cry but not this time. It was automatic, as if someone had tinkered about with her tear ducts when she wasn’t looking. And once started there was no stopping. She dropped the shoes and said a hundred times that she was sorry, she didn’t know what was wrong. She tried to laugh through this appalling shower of tears, and that made her worse. She would sort of catch her breath and cough, and then it would get worse, and there were actual whoops coming out of her at one stage.

He was astounded. He thought he was to blame.

“What did I say, what have I done?” he had said over and over. “You knew I was going away today, you
knew
,” he had repeated. He felt cornered, he felt she was blaming him. She couldn’t even stop this terrible heaving to assure him that of course she knew, and that today wasn’t any worse than any other day. He looked very wounded.

“The conference starts on Monday. I want to get into top form for it, I don’t want to arrive exhausted. I want to be there and rested, and to have made my own tour of the hotel. I don’t want to be thought of as your typical northern hick who arrives all impressed by everything. It’s important, Lisa. You said you understood.”

The use of her name maybe. She stopped for a moment. She actually had breath to speak. But instead of saying what she meant to, something like
of course
she understood, she heard her own voice betraying her, ratting on her. She actually said, “
Why
do you have to go away? We could have had this weekend together, just the two of us. Nobody would have known we were here, it would have been lovely.”

When the words were said she decided that she had now lost everything, that the whole hard uphill race had been lost. She didn’t know to whom she had lost, but she had lost. He couldn’t stand people who begged, people who made demands. He had told her that was why he had left his wife, why the great love of his life (which had not been his marriage) had ended, because these women made demands. They wanted more of him than he could give, they saw something wonderful in a forced intimacy, they thought that the phrase “just the two of us” was safe and reassuring. He thought it was threatening and claustrophobic.

And because Lisa had thought that she had lost him, she abandoned herself to the tide. It was a great luxury, like getting into a warm bath when you’re tired and cold. She had said all the unsayable things, the whines, the moans, the loneliness, how hard it had all been on her. How she had given him, if not the best years, then all the fun hours of her life, and for what? Nobody could know they lived together. Nobody could see them out together. It was clandestine and anxious-making, and leading nowhere, and she, Lisa, who was free, was abandoning every other man, every other chance of happiness, and for what? For someone who didn’t give two damns about her. Well all right, it was all right. She kept repeating the words “all right” as if they were a magic charm. She had no idea what she meant by them, but they were safer and less final than saying something even more hackneyed like “it’s all over.”

He hadn’t seemed relieved that it was all over or all right or whatever she meant; he hadn’t seemed distressed, either. He looked interested, like he would have been interested in a farmer telling him about spraying crops, or a news vendor explaining what margin of profit there was in selling papers. He sounded as if he might like to hear more.

“Come with me then,” he said.

He had never taken her anywhere before, it was too dangerous. He had always said that in his position he couldn’t afford anyone to point at him about anything. Times were too tricky, things were too rough. He couldn’t mean it now, he was just saying it to placate her, he knew she’d refuse for his sake. It was another ploy, another bluff. He had once explained to her why he won so much at poker. She had realized even then that the same rules that he used at the card table he used everywhere.

As suddenly as he had asked her she accepted.

“Fine,” she said. “I will. Where shall I meet you?”

No backtracking, no well-perhaps-not-this-time. He was on as well, that was one of the rules of the game. If you offer, you must follow through.

“Nowhere near the office, too likely to be seen. Take a bus to the big petrol station on the London road. I’ll meet you there at…ten past four.”

“Right,” she said. He kissed her and said it would be great, he’d like showing her London.

“You hardly know it any better than I do,” she said.

No tears, no joy, no excitement, no gratitude. He looked at her approvingly. It was almost as if he thought she had gained a few housepoints. She had faked grief, she had got him to take her to London. Well done, Lisa. He said jauntily that he wouldn’t wait a minute after a quarter past four, and she said equally lightly that that was fine, and he left, suitcase in his hand, and she heard the car starting as he went off to work and to talk to the office funny face.

Lisa had felt light-headed, like the time she once went out in a speedboat, and nothing had been real. She sat down to steady herself. She must make a list. Obviously she wouldn’t go to work. So what excuse this time? She didn’t know how long she’d stay with him in London. The conference lasted four days, Monday to Thursday. She’d have to invent something that would take a week. Quick, she’d have to telephone in the next few minutes and alert the Head’s secretary before assembly began and someone started looking for her. A death. Exactly, a death in London. Better than flu, a woman’s disease, or a heavy cold. She dialled, she spoke, she waved her hands around in the air as she told the weary Miss Weston, the Head’s tame dog, that an aunt, her nearest relative, was dying. She even got a bit sad about it as she filled in the form and details of this mythical aunt. No, there simply was nobody else, nobody at all, she had to go. She’d ring from London next week to tell them what was happening. She knew how terrible it would be trying to find a substitute at this late stage, but she had heard only just now, this minute, and she was going to London this afternoon. “At ten past four,” she said meaninglessly but to make it more real in her own mind. Miss Weston said she would tell the Head, and implied that the job of telling the Head was far worse than saying good-bye to a favorite aunt. Miss Weston was never very good with small chat anyway.

Now, on with the list. Lisa had to get a smart case, she only had an old grip, not suitable at all, and what else? Take money out of the bank, get her hair done, ring her brother to make sure he didn’t call her at school. He hadn’t telephoned her for four months, but there was always the chance. Her brother was in his usual bad humour.

“You got me away from my scrambled eggs, they’ll be all hard. Oh all right. No, of course I wouldn’t telephone you, why should I? Oh very well. I don’t know what you think you’re doing. Have you read about the unemployment in this country? Where do you think you’re going to get another job if you’re fired? Sometimes I think you’ve no sense of responsibility. No, of course I won’t say anything to anybody, but Lisa, I wish you’d tell me what you’re up to. I was saying to Angela the other night that you are so secretive and you just ring me out of the blue to say the oddest kind of things. No, why the hell should I wish you a good time? I’m not able to run out on everything and everybody and dash off to London on some whim. Good-bye now, good-bye.”

No other friends to alert really. Funny after all the years of living in the same town. But she’d see Maggie at lunch and she’d tell her, and they’d have a bit of a giggle, and then Maggie would say, “Make sure he pays for you, I think he’s mean,” and Lisa would defend him to the hilt, he wasn’t mean, he was careful with money, and that’s how he got where he was and had all the things he had. She admired him for it.

It was a rush but it was a great day. There had been a few valleys. Maggie said she had heard that his wife was expecting another baby. Lisa said that it couldn’t be true, he hadn’t even seen his wife for six months. Maggie said it took nine months to produce a baby and this one was nearly ready to be produced. Lisa said it was all ridiculous, he’d have told her, and Maggie said sure, and anybody would tell you it didn’t have to be
his
baby just because it was hers, and Lisa brightened. She darkened a bit at the bank when she tried to take out £60 from her deposit account and the clerk told her she had only £50 in it. She was sure there was over £200, but of course things like avocados were more expensive than the things she ate when she lived alone, and she did buy lots of little things for the flat.

She bought him a Johnny Cash cassette that they could play in the car, the kind of music he liked. It was a new one, they assured her. She was there at three-thirty and by four o’clock she knew every car accessory that they make these days. She bought a chamois so that the assistant wouldn’t think she was loitering with intent. At five past four she got a horrible feeling that he might have been joking. She really should have rung him to make sure he meant it, but that would have looked humble and she didn’t want that. Suppose she saw his car flying past. Suppose just suppose he did stop there for petrol and saw her, and hadn’t meant to take her. That wouldn’t be merely humble, it would be pathetic. Lisa shook herself, physically, like a dog trying to get rid of drops of rain, but she was trying to get rid of these hauntings and fancies. She seemed to have them these days the way people got mosquito bites, or dandruff. And then she saw him pulling in and looking around for her.