Without Reservations (14 page)

I
 arrived in London in early July, just after the hot dry weeks of Wimbledon, when the summer had turned rainy and cool. Cold, actually. The shops up and down Sloane Street were filled with tourists buying sweaters and wool blazers. “First the heat and now the cold,” said an American woman trying on jackets in Harvey Nichols, the fashionable department store. Everyone, including me, had been hoping to put off purchasing anything until the mid-July sales, but it was just too cold.

Why was it, I wondered, searching through racks of coats, that no matter how carefully I packed for a trip, I never had the right thing? It was only my second day in London, but already I knew my unlined raincoat wasn’t going to work, no matter how many layers I wore beneath it. What I needed was a heavier coat. But a quick look at the price tags stopped me in my tracks; clearly this was not the store for bargains.

Actually, most of the shops along Sloane Street were out of my price range. Chanel, Gucci, Armani, Valentino, Hermès—many of the pricey one-name designer shops were located here, just south of Knightsbridge. Still, it was fun to window-shop.

As I neared the Hermès boutique I passed a young Japanese couple. Immediately my thoughts went to Naohiro. He was in Tokyo now, probably going to bed or waking up; I wasn’t sure which. In Baltimore I knew how to calculate the time difference so
that I avoided waking my son with a phone call in the middle of the night, but here in London I was slightly confused about the arithmetic involved. I decided to picture Naohiro the way I had last seen him: waking up to the Parisian morning sun.

When I reached Hermès, I decided to go in on the pretense of actually intending to buy something. It was a device I used occasionally to check out shops that were way beyond my price range. I considered it my duty as a reporter to observe how the Other Half lives so that, when the occasion arose, I could report on their lives with accuracy.

“I’d like to know the price of the gray snakeskin bag in the window,” I said to the formidable-looking saleswoman standing guard over the locked-up Hermès handbags. She looked me over, always a decisive moment between clerk and client in shops such as this. But I had taken care to dress for just such a situation, in what I liked to think of as my “I’m so wealthy I don’t have to wear clothes that scream MONEY” outfit: a ten-year-old pale gray silk suit, pearls, and a soft, pleated-leather Fendi handbag I’d bought secondhand at a Paris thrift shop.

I stood my ground. The moment passed. Or more precisely,
I
passed the moment.

“Ah, yes, one of our most popular items,” she said, unlocking the case to remove a bag similar to the one in the window. “It comes in a variety of leathers and colors. But I must warn you, there is a waiting list for some of the bags.”

I asked the price. She told me they ranged anywhere from £1,200 pounds to £5,000. I made a mental effort to convert £1,200 pounds into dollars. Eight hundred dollars? Eighteen hundred dollars? Either way, I wasn’t walking out of the shop with any bag other than the one I came in with. After telling the saleswoman I needed the bag immediately so a waiting list would not suit, I
thanked her and left. Outside I headed for a store where I planned to do some real shopping: the Safeway supermarket on the King’s Road.

I had taken a flat in nearby Chelsea, a few blocks from the King’s Road and Sloane Square. Although I’d been told of a charming “villagelike” shopping area just minutes from the flat, I knew there were cheaper supermarkets dotting the King’s Road. I even had a specific market in mind.

Actually, I knew the neighborhood around my flat quite well. Twenty-five years earlier, along with my husband and our two-year-old son, I had lived in an apartment on the other side of Sloane Square. My mother had joined us for a time, renting a separate apartment in the same house, making it very much a family affair.

By the time I neared the square at the bottom of Sloane Street, a light rain was falling. All along the street umbrellas began unfurling, their bright colors dotting the gray day like flowers in an urban meadow. At the corner I spotted a familiar sign:
THE GENERAL TRADING COMPANY, EST.
1920. I remembered this shop well. It was filled with sumptuous English-country-house furniture and floors brimming with fancy culinary equipment and antique silver. When we lived nearby I had spent many rainy afternoons there poking through rooms of antique tables and expensive bed linens. I also remembered it had a delightful café. On a whim I decided to go in, look around, and have lunch.

After a quick tour through the gift department, I headed downstairs to the small café on the ground floor. At the café entrance a line had formed; about a dozen women stood waiting to be seated by the
hostess. This could take a long time, I thought, trying to decide whether or not to wait.

Suddenly the hostess’s voice called out: “Anyone single?”

Caught off guard, the question puzzled me: I was uncertain whether this meant single as in not being married, or single as in dining alone. However, since I fit into both categories, I raised my hand with confidence. “Would you mind sharing a table?” the hostess asked. “Not at all,” I said, following her into the café.

She led me to a table where three women were seated. Two of them seemed to be together; they were engrossed in conversation and barely looked up. The third woman, seemingly a “single” like me, was sitting with a book, waiting to be served her lunch. I looked at the menu, ordered lasagna and salad, and, feeling uncertain about the proper etiquette in such a setting, turned my attention to a map of London.

Within minutes the waitress reappeared to ask if I’d ordered hot tea or iced tea. “Iced, please,” I said, looking up from my map and, in the process, locking eyes with my “single” lunch-mate.

She smiled. “You’re on holiday?” she asked, nodding in the direction of my map. Her voice, in just three words, conveyed a confident, lively attitude. Her accent was resonant with British history.

“Yes, I am.”

“So am I.” She hesitated. “In a manner of speaking.” She told me she had come down from Scotland, her home for the last twenty years, to visit her daughter. “She’s thirty. Just received her degree in economics. But now she’s decided to go into publishing.” She laughed. “But then that’s the way nowadays, isn’t it? Young people spend most of their lives gathering up degrees in one field only to end up doing something entirely different.” Her son had done the same thing, she said: “Started mathematics, then went into veterinary medicine.” He was twenty-eight and now lived in Australia.

I told her about my sons, adding that the one in Japan, who was now a translator, had just decided to go to law school. “It seems to me we didn’t have so many choices at that age, especially as women,” I said, launching into a bit of a lecture about women and choices and the kind of work that was hospitable to us then.

She nodded, seeming to agree. “It’s the same with marriage and motherhood. It was simply what was supposed to happen in a woman’s life. Quite likely though, it was that way for men, too. Something expected of them.”

“Do you think you’d make a different choice today?”

The woman smiled. “No. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”

I laughed. I liked her directness, the way she said what she meant. I also liked the look of her, her expressive face and mischievous eyes.

Her name was Victoria and she was in town alone, staying for the month at a nearby residential hotel. She explained that her husband was away on business and she preferred a hotel to staying in her daughter’s small apartment. “We like each other better with some distance between us,” she said, smiling.

Victoria was an interesting woman with interesting opinions and we stayed, talking about our lives and politics and the differences between British and American newspapers, until the café was almost empty. After paying the bill we walked outside together, where we stood talking about what was going on in the London theater. Finally, we said our good-byes. Then, just before she turned to leave, Victoria asked if I’d like to join her for lunch later that week. “I’m meeting an old friend. I think you’d like her. She’s a writer, too. Does pieces on gardening for magazines, mostly.”

“That sounds like fun,” I said. We agreed to meet back at the café on Friday, and, finally, I headed for the supermarket.

It was a short walk from the supermarket back to my flat. Still, the two bags filled with bottled water, All-Bran cereal, skim milk, tea bags, coffee, yogurt, packaged biscuits, and paper goods seemed quite heavy. It had been a long time since I’d walked home from a supermarket carrying all my groceries. It reminded me of the daily treks I made as a child to the neighborhood store, Mother’s handwritten list tucked away in a purse along with a two-dollar bill.

I was eager to settle into my flat. Although I’d spent only one night there, I liked everything about it—the tree-lined neighborhood, the gracefully proportioned white limestone building, the pleasantly decorated living room and bedroom, and, most of all, the tiny balcony overlooking Cadogan Street and Sloane Avenue.

I’d found this gem of a place quite by chance, while reading the classified ads in
The New York Review of Books.
A call was put in to the telephone number listed, a quite reasonable rent was quoted, photos were sent. And although I’d learned the hard way that photos of real estate often bear little resemblance to the actual property—I’d once taken an apartment in Paris owned by a Harvard professor who sent me glorious pictures and glowing descriptions of what turned out to be two tiny rooms in an attic overlooking a hotel service area—I immediately engaged the London flat.

Finally
, I thought as I approached my new digs,
all those years of reading
The New York Review of Books
has paid off.

When I entered my building a porter inside greeted me, then took my shopping bags and placed them in the elevator. “Seventh floor, is it?” he said, pushing the button before I could answer. The elevator was one of those old, slow numbers that took forever to
get from one floor to the next. But who cared? I had nothing but time. When it finally lurched to a stop, I stepped off, turned the corner, and unlocked the door to my flat.

The late afternoon light was coming in through the kitchen- and living-room windows. Instantly I put down the groceries, walked to the balcony, opened the door, and stepped outside. Below me was Cadogan Street and to my left, tree-lined Sloane Avenue. I hung out as far as I could over the railing, looking first in one direction, then the other. After a few minutes of this I returned to the living room and turned on the lamps. The room was as pleasant as I remembered: the furniture stylish and comfortable, the white walls softened with framed prints and drawings.

I put away the groceries and fixed myself a drink. A special-occasion drink: Cutty Sark, with ice. I carried the glass with me into the bedroom, where I set out the family photographs I’d brought along on the trip. Then back to the living room, where I kicked off my shoes and sat down to watch the evening news.

How nice, I thought, sipping my drink, to hear the news in a language I fully understood.