A Short Walk from Harrods (2 page)

One happily peaceful evening she telephoned me. Her voice, light, warm, only very slightly inflected by distant Philadelphia, coaxed me. ‘Now, sweetie,
don't
be tiresome. Put this down in your little book. The 17th. Supper here, eight-thirty, come about 7.45. There will be eight. So exciting that you are back
at last!
What an abberation that all was! A peasant farmer in the hills!
Madness.
Abroad is so “alien”, don't you think? Not black tie. I have two Socialists coming. They write books but aren't at all vegetarian, which has pleased Mario enormously. Oh! It's exciting that you are back again! A delicious “spare pair of trousers”. You'll be
swamped
with offers. But I have got you first, haven't I? What huge fun it is to have you home!' I didn't in all truth feel elated.

Sheraton table gleaming, silver, crystal winking in soft light. An air of comfort and old-fashioned elegance and riches. Served superb food by three sullen Filipinos. It always was at Victoria's. Whatever else you might have to put up with, the food was glorious. Mario was the best private chef in London at the time. Eight of us at table, the silk-covered walls spread with Piranesi engravings, Colefax and Fowler swags at the windows, candles sparkling in Georgian silver. I sat between Phyllida and Margot. Margot had informed us in the drawing-room that she had called a taxi one evening to go to the Savoy and, in her anxiety not to be late for dinner, crashed straight into a lamp-post, smashing her nose. She now, in consequence, was forced to wear a black frilly lace mask. It was very becoming. I wish to differentiate here between Margot with a mask and without one.
With
was far more acceptable.

Across the table, separated tactfully, were the two book-writing Socialists. Perfectly acceptable as it would appear: she in sprigged voile with puffed sleeves, her hair braided across her head like a Viennese loaf, he in, predictably, a red tie worn with a white suit and a very high collar in the manner of Tom Wolfe. She was quiet, rather nice, asked if I missed France and did I ever make jam from my figs? I said no. He said that the theatre should be an ‘event'. Last from nine a.m. until eleven p.m. Not just ‘a pathetic two hours with arrogant, overpaid property developers and their women only longing for the interval and the bar'. It should be for the working man. Elevating, enriching, a form of subsidized ‘feeding for
the mind'. Pretty unworkable, I should have thought, but I said nothing.

Between them poor Constance Pullinger sat toying wist-fully with a little silver box. ‘My pilly-pill-pills.' She opened and closed the enamel lid with one finger, urgently. Smiling sadly across at me, she rattled the box like a castanet. ‘I'd be lost without these.
Too
awful to be sent to prison or a concentration camp and not be allowed them. I'd
willingly
die then.'

Margot suddenly turned from her partner, a plump middle-aged man called ‘Bunny' Dilford-Pryce, prodded my arm to deflect me from Constance opposite. ‘High as a kite,' she hissed in a whisper, and then aloud said, ‘Bunny says you now live permanently in London?' She was what she would have called ‘twinkling' encouragingly behind her froth of black lace. ‘Sold up in France? Too sad … although I simply
loathe
the French personally, but one has to remember Elizabeth David and Cézanne and that clever Mister Proust, and all … but even so. You
will
be in demand! Where are you exactly? Victoria said a flat?' I told her, she crumbled a piece of her bread roll, nodded agreeably, head bent towards me listening. ‘I know! I know
exactly.
Nanny has a dentist there. Perfectly acceptable …'

Obviously I had passed some sort of private test which she had set, for she was still smiling, lips pursed in a roguish smile. ‘Not
quite
SWI but not far off and only a short walk from Harrods.
Wonderful
for you!' Satisfied that she had filed me away in her memory bank, plus my district, she returned to ‘Bunny' on her right.

Constance, meanwhile, still listening blankly to ‘Tom Wolfe', quietly opened her little silver box, took a pill,
swigged it down with a gulp of Sauternes and shuddered as if she had bitten into cyanide. Which as far as I could tell, she might have done. Catching my curious, kindly eye, she smiled across, hand to throat. ‘Sometimes they catch in one's gullet. At the bendy bit. Did you know? And don't
quite
go down. So they don't take effect for simply ages. Not the idea at all.
Instant
oblivion is all I ask. I dote on oblivion. Did Margot say Harrods?'

‘She asked where I lived now. I told her and she seemed pleased for me that I was just a short walk from the place. I gather that's a good area in which to be?'

‘I simply wouldn't know. I never go to Harrods now. Really impossible, all those guided tours with miserable Americans and bespectacled Japanese, and dreadful young women spraying one with the maid's scent.
Perfume,
they call it! Who wants to shop in a souk, after all? Too fraying. I think my little pill went down. Peace descends.' She smothered a tiny yawn, blinked, smiled at me, turned away to listen to ‘Tom Wolfe', wearily.

Bunny Dilford-Pryce suddenly leant across Margot's wide bosom and whispered to me as if we were in some conspiracy together. ‘I saw you on the box the other day! Simply dire. Did you see it? Terrible bunk … something about India? I know there was an elephant. Ages old. You were
indecently
young. Black and white, of course.'

I assured him that I never watched myself on television. The Filipinos had started to remove the first course and re-lay for the second. Victoria busily repinned her Carrier clips at her breast, eyes darting about her table. ‘Fascinating!' she said, I supposed to Bunny. ‘I so adore really
ancient
films like that. We were all so naïve then. And what fun it all was.
Was
there an elephant?'

‘Never watch yourself? Really?' Bunny probed diligently. ‘Not
ever?
Surely yes?'

‘No, never.'

‘Well normally I don't. Ever. Detestable thing, television. Should be in the staff quarters. Written and made by, and for, housemaids. That's where
I
saw it. Just a peek. My man was doing the silver, so I took a look. Too
eerie.
You were so boyish!'

‘It was a long time ago,' I murmured helplessly. I mean, what do you say to that kind of idiot chatter? But he suddenly cackled with delight, finger raised so we should all attend. ‘Ah ha! Ah ha! I know! Only a dog returns to its own vomit! That it?'

‘Something like that,' I said.

Bunny squealed with delight at his quip and Victoria very speedily came to my rescue, adjusting her little black veiled hat (always worn at her dinner parties), smiling sweetly to defuse any possible irritation.

‘Bunny dear!
Not
at my table. Frightful word to use before one's food. Vomit!
Really!
And look' – she placed a very firm restraining hand on my arm - ‘Here come those delicious little quails' breasts that Mario does so superbly. Brilliant! What a
lovely
evening you are all giving me!'

The room was suddenly noisy with the clatter of dishes and service. ‘Tom Wolfe' was barking with laughter. Constance was happily blank.

I realized, with some amusement, that far from coming out to join the living, as I had thought, I was actually sitting among the living dead. I made a silent vow there and then at Victoria's table never again to put on a dark suit to dine in a cemetery.

*

In a pretty short time I gave up that sort of exhausting frivolity, preferring my own company and a large Scotch. Or two large Scotches. I didn't have to shave and struggle into a clean shirt at seven o'clock, to drag myself off and be bored witless, lost and floundering. No demands were made on me on my own. Nothing was taken from me. I could just please myself. It was rather attractive. Whatever energy still remained to me was not dispersed and exhausted by talking inanities with the lost. So I hung the dark suit up in the wardrobe and let it be known, gently but firmly, that I was no longer about to give ‘evening performances'. Simply ‘matinées'.

And it worked. I began to enjoy being by myself and to that end, trying to revert to the shade of a life long ago ended, I bought a cheap pair of jeans, a pair of trainers, never wore a tie and hunched myself comfortably into my worn, and pretty filthy, anorak. I felt all at once happy
dans ma peau,
a French saying which means exactly what it says: ‘in my skin'. To exercise, which I now had to do twice a day at least, I made extremely brave efforts to walk quite long distances in order to stretch my ailing leg and to get plants and things for my terrace, which now had to become my summer living-room. There was also the vexed question of food, food that didn't need cooking. Because of my not being able to at first. So that meant marketing for one. A worrying business. One chop? One cod fillet? One piece of steak? I had not the least idea what to do with the things, should I buy them. In supermarkets, I was quick to discover, things were usually packaged for two or more. And had sell-by dates so that one was forced to wear glasses just to buy a tub of yoghurt … No cooking. Nourishing. Easy. Like tinned soup.

At home in France, marketing was easy. You could always buy one slice of pâté, a leek, a carrot, one potato to bake. A
tranche
of ham was served and wrapped with as much respect and reverence as if one had ordered breast of peacock. But that was in the market. Not a pre-packaged, neon-lit immensity of harassed women clattering trollies about. I pretty soon learned that hanging around in the check-outs was not a good idea. I was, amazingly and disconcertingly, recognized a good deal. There was a lot of
'Yes it is!'
and
'No it isn't. He's getting bald',
or
'You ask him. Go on
…', and I got a bit tired of being asked if I ‘
used to be someone famous, whatchermacallit?'

So I gave up supermarkets and kept to the smaller, less frightening shops. Some of which I had found close to hand because anyway I was unable to walk very far. But now, exercising determinedly, I managed to get out on longer journeys. Once I actually got halfway up the Kings Road, scuttling along quite quickly for me, like an apologetic turtle, hunched, head down in the anorak collar to avoid recognition. But it didn't help much.

From a table in the courtyard of the Pheasantry I was hailed by a shout above the traffic. ‘Durk! Durk! I do not believe it. I just do
not!
I am in awe!' It was Mae-Ellen, a half-remembered friend from long ago in Los Angeles. I didn't really want to remember her. She was all right, but exhausting. She hugged me with obvious pleasure, insisted that I walk back with her to her place. ‘It's just right here. Sydney Street. Oh, come on …'

I said that I really was a bit jaded, had walked enough, was lame and all that stuff. She insisted, and I buckled and gave in. ‘It's right here! If you got this far you can get to my little house.' If I collapsed in the street, my name and address and
telephone number were in my wallet. It was always possible that whoever picked me up, if anyone should stoop to do such a thing, might not remember who I used to be. Mae-Ellen had a dusting of freckles, red hair cut in what she termed ‘a bang', wore white stockings, which seem to be a favourite with certain kinds of American women who lean towards intense intellectualism, which gave her legs the un-happy impression of up-ended milk bottles thrust into neat little lace-up shoes. She wore wire glasses, a Madras cotton skirt, a too-big Aran sweater and a rope of various tropical seeds strung on a thread round her neck. She was very warm and welcoming when we reached her place off Sydney Street, offered me herbal tea, which she said she was just about to infuse because I'd interrupted her cup at the Pheasantry, but I declined this offer, and sat in a creaking wicker chair while she hurled about with a kettle and teapot.

‘I just can't
believe
bumping into you like that! So weird! When was the last time? At Ruthie's place on Doheney? Aeons ago. My, how time flies. And here I am in Europe again! Can you believe? You haven't changed. Really. Well, we all get old, inevitably, but you look just great. It suits you. I'm with the embassy now. First Washington, now London. I'll be here for a while then I get to go to Frankfurt, Germany. It's so worth while.' She poured hot water into her pot. ‘I am a counsellor. You know that? To army wives on the bases. I can't say exactly where, but you know … they are real lonely those wives. They suffer.'

I was beginning to suffer myself. She was being kind but boring, I felt trapped and wanted to pee anyway. I had felt instant claustrophobia the moment she shut us into the narrow hall of her dark little house. ‘You want a cracker? Candy?
This isn't my place, you know, I just borrow it from my friend Cindy. She's great. She's in Uttar Pradesh or some place … If there is a famine, a war or an epidemic, Cindy's
off!
She is so caring! Sure you won't have some peppermint tea? It's refreshing.'

The dingy little room looked out over St Luke's churchyard. Bamboo and cane furniture, dragged blue walls, a dusty bunch of faded pink larkspur bound with twine in a twig basket. Mae-Ellen was stirring her tea with a pencil. ‘What I am doing is reely important, I just go along and talk with these women and they talk right back. They are just lonesome for conversation. They call me their new Avon lady! Isn't that adorable? It releases them: conversation. They are stuck on the base, with their kids, and then there are hos-tle women just outside, in tents and things, with placards, ‘Yanks Go Home!', and worse. It's not friendly, and they feel vulnerable. Lonely. They have the PX, sure, they get movies, there are the padrés, a rabbi as well, can you believe? And they get wonderful medical treatment for the kids. But they still feel lonesome. Stuck on a base. It's spooky. Unnatural. And with those awful hos-tle women … well …'