A Short Walk from Harrods (3 page)

I nodded. I was busting for a pee and would have to ask her where to go. I sat still containing myself because she was off again. ‘I say to them, look, I say. There are just wonderful compensations. You have your husbin, you have your children. That is so right, so traditional, so American. The Family. Right? Together, united. They love you and that is one helluva deal today. To have a loving family around you.
Love.
You want proof of that love. Well: the very first proof of that love is the very first gift which your child will offer you. You, the giver of life. You, its mother. And you know
what this gift is? It is shit!' She sat back in her chair, her glasses glittering with triumph. I asked her where the lav was and she looked bewildered. ‘Oh! That! The john? It's right up there, on the left. Okay?'

When I returned she was refilling her mug. ‘Defecation … To continue … defecation is the very first “Thank you” from your child. It is just automatic. I think it is kinda marvellous, don't you? Uplifting. Of course in our terms we would say it was just an automatic reflex, but I say no! It is a deep psychological desire, buried way deep down in the subconscious of the new-born, that just insists on giving thanks for its life. I tell my women that: somehow I feel that it helps them. Comforts them. It gives them a new angle on their lives. Are you sure you won't take some peppermint?'

But I managed to get away. Slightly overwhelmed. I didn't get this kind of stuff on the hill. Perhaps being back in London was going to be altogether rather exhausting? I hadn't seen Mae-Ellen for years. And then only twice at parties in Los Angeles. The risk of collision in the Kings Road was worrying. I had hoped not to see her again. Breathing air, however much it was polluted, was better by far than sitting in her dreary little room.

The Kings Road was still the same road that I had first walked in wonderment at seventeen and now, at seventy, it still had the same effect in spite of quite disastrous architectural changes and the ones which had taken place among the people who now thronged and jostled in it. But it all
felt
the same, and I still
felt
seventeen. I was surrounded by ‘familiars', altered, of course, but still recognizable. I have said, earlier, that I walk with ghosts. And so I do. Not all of whom I knew or ever met. But they must still be about. Their shades?
Comforting me. Oscar Wilde coming from Tite Street, Lily Langtry going up to the Cadogans', Carlyle walking slowly to his tobacconist, Augustus John in sagging dressing-gown and slippers off to the Five Bells. My parents were here too – when they were young and I just born. Off they went to the Good Intent, or to the Embankment to the Blue Cockatoo. Henry Moore bought his packets of vine charcoal from Green and Stone's, and Kathleen and Graham Sutherland, elegance and beauty beyond anything I had ever witnessed in my life before, and known among us students at the Polytechnic as ‘The Beautiful People', long before that phrase (coined then) was so debased later for far less glorious creatures. But they had all been here. And Danuta! She
must
be around somewhere. Heavy Polish breasts bouncing under her cheesecloth shirt, broad feet in lattice-leather sandals, striding with swinging Percheron hips into the little studio which she rented in a crumbling Regency house where the fire station stands today. I well remember her removing my virginity there, before a plopping gas fire on a runkled rug, and casting it, and finally myself, aside as contemptuously as an old jacket. In 1939 she went home to Krakow for the summer recess. And that was that.

So I am not unfamiliar with my area. Bewildered perhaps, but it fits me. Even though the players on the stage have altered beyond recognition, the play, as it were, remains much the same. Same format. Different sets and players. There are black faces now among the white. Bedraggled girls in Doc Marten's, black tights, black velvet pull-on hats, flowing black shifts to their calves. In mourning for youth? Shaven-headed young men in leather and floral prints, headbands or baseball caps, arrogantly astride glittering motorbikes the size and splendour of Cadillacs.

There is a stink of greasy food now, of mushy pasta and pizza, of cheap coffee and pot, the thump thump thump of heavy metal music from the open doors of tacky shoe shops. All around, the nasal whine of adolescent life, wandering idly up and down, sucking ice creams, chewing gum or hamburgers, laughing, and squawking like apprehensive parrots. All on the edge of things. Waiting. Moving. Oddly different in so many ways, but
familiar.
Different from the people that we were at their age. But, remember, at their age I was making a bird cage for a linnet.

My local grocer's is still open. I take a wire basket and wander in wondering what to eat for my supper. A fraught business. A tin of soup? Easy. No mess. One dish to wash. Perhaps some ham? Cold ham and boiled potatoes. Perhaps with a bit of chutney. I was, I realized, muttering aloud to myself. One reaches such a state when approaching a pressing decision on one's own. And, because I had momentarily deflected myself through my anxious preoccupation with supper, I tripped over one of those blasted shopping-trollies, usually tartan, which elderly ladies drag behind them in supermarkets. The woman, in a plum-cloth coat and pudding basin hat, glared at me as if I had attempted to snatch her bag, shrugged off my apology and turned back to her companion, a thin woman in a knitted beret. ‘You was saying?'

‘Well. I said to ‘im, well then I said, what's that lump doing there? Wasn't there lunchtime. Very nasty it looks. Very nasty. You watch your bleedin' mouth 'e says to me. Don't meddle! Well, I says, you go to Boots cash chemist and get something to put on it. Get lorst! ‘e says. Silly old cat. My own child! Own flesh and blood. Flabbergarsted I was.'

Considering ham or pie at the counter, listening with curiosity to the conversation behind me, I was all unaware of mounting irritation from the woman next to me. She started to push hard at my wire basket with her own.

‘Do you
frightfully
mind?' Her voice was cold with disdain.

We had crossed the Great Divide. This was no lady from the Dwellings, this one was bent on battle. There would be no democratic encounter here between her mushroom hat, well-cut silk dress, tight grey hair and my aged anorak, dirty jeans and trainers. I was ready for the sacrifice, and armed with this reassurance she pressed forward.

I did not budge. Not a millimetre. I willed her to have another bash at my basket and this she did, swinging at mine like a demolition ball and chain.

‘I did ask you to move. I am trying to shop.'

‘And I, madam.'

‘Here before you. And I know exactly what I want. So.'

‘And I do. Exactly.'

A youth hovered about behind the glass counter. She raised a jewelled fist to summons him.

‘Young man! Smoked salmon. Scottish not farmed. Eight ounces.'

She turned to me once again and demanded that I move. I said that I would.

When I had been served.

This unseemly, trivial squabble had reached the point where I thought she might see fit to swing her basket at my head, her eyes burned with such dislike and contempt; but at that instant Mr Collinson, crisp in white apron, eyes sparked with mischief behind thick glasses, was quite suddenly in attendance.

‘Ah! M'lord! There you are. What can we do for you today? Gala pie?'

The mushroom hat and the silk dress moved swiftly away. She stared at me, white with hostility.

Mr Collinson, beaming at a minor victory, clasped his hands. ‘The tongue, m'lord? Of course. Can I tempt you to three slices?'

Behind me in the queue a woman's voice said, ‘Oh my dear … Gerald and I had to dine with them at their place on Tuesday. They really won't do, you know. I mean, Christmas cards from Kensington Palace stuck all over the room.
In June!
Quite impossible …'

Takes all sorts in my manor. A goodly mix, as my father would say.

At the check-out plum-coat had beaten me to it.

‘My own flesh and blood, Chrissie. Did you ever?'

Walk up to my square, sunlight freckling through the plane trees.

But no dogs leaping in idiot welcome, no scent of freshly cut hay, no scuttering lizards on the stone walls, no quick ‘plops!' from suddenly disturbed fish in the pond. No pond. No voice from the terrace calling, ‘Were the London papers in yet?'

Emptiness sighs. Perfectly all right. No problem.

How the hell did I get here?

Memory seems to come to me in snatches: I suppose because one suppresses so much that was untenable. Is it that? Or is time somehow altogether too vast to hold in detail? Or am I merely getting old? The latter most probably.

I can remember that evening pretty clearly. I cannot pinpoint much in the immediate days before it. But that evening, that last dreadful evening, is as clear to me now as if it was yesterday evening. Clearer in fact. But apparently etched on to glass. It has a strange transparency about it, like a Lawrence Whistler goblet. Vision, through space, to vision.

It was about six. The time when, normally, I'd be pouring my first glass of wine and, depending on the season, settling into the big chair by the stove or my ‘place' in the deep striped chair on the terrace under the vine. But this particular evening was unlike any others. Time was wrenched.

Elizabeth said quietly, ‘He's late.' Meaning the taxi from Nice.

She was standing at the edge of the terrace, toes hooked over the rim, looking down across the little lawn, beyond the terraces to the gate in the lane. The gate was wide open. We would see the roof of the taxi glittering in the last of the sun running past the hedges, flickering through the olives.

I think that I said, ‘Yes. He said six o'clock precisely. But maybe the traffic was heavy … he has to come right across the town.' Something like that.

Forwood was sitting perfectly still in one of the big striped chairs, his stick with the greyhound's-head between his knees,
hands clasped over the handle. He was perfectly still, contained, except that one foot trembled gently.

Up the track towards Titty-Brown Hill, in the orange light of the evening sun, Christine and Alain had wandered away from us. She was playing with a sprig of rosemary she'd pulled from the hedge. They were being mercifully tactful.

I went into the Long Room to the corner cupboard where I had, purposely, left half a bottle of Haig and a litre of Evian and some little mustard glasses. I took a brimming glass and downed it. Lost my breath, refilled, added a little water.

Apart from the fact that there were no flowers, no green plants, no pictures, no books, the room was still recognizably mine. As it had been for over twenty years. Christine and Alain had bought nearly all the furniture.

A cushion on one of the big arm-less chairs I'd bought in Milan bore a body dent. I automatically took it up and ‘plumped' it. A perfectly idiotic gesture. It was no longer my cushion to ‘plump'. Or my chair. Or my room. I'd never see it again in my life.

On the terrace Elizabeth went over to her modest pile of luggage, checked it. I looked at Forwood, he looked at me. We smiled.

‘Having your drink?'

‘Sun's over the yard arm.' Banality. I'd only ever laughed at people who actually said it.

Elizabeth called, ‘Here he is. Awfully late …'

Up at Titty-Brown Hill, Alain and Christine had seen him too. They turned and came slowly, reluctantly, down towards us.

Forwood eased himself up from his chair, I put the glass
back in the bar cupboard. I did not look round again. Elizabeth had slung her shoulder bag over her arm.

The wheels of the taxi crunched into a swerve as he took the corner of the drive beyond the
porte d'entrée,
a door slammed. I called out, ‘Jacques?'

‘Oui, monsieur. Ouf … mon dieu! Le traffic … à l'aeroport. C'est complètement fou
'. He lifted the lid of the boot, we started loading up.

Christine was standing in the centre of the terrace, the vine leaves casting trembling shadows like torn lace across her face, her hands twisting the sprig of rosemary.

Suddenly she burst into agonizing tears, buried her head in her hands, bent forward sobbing. I hurried to her, put my arms round her shoulders.

‘Don't cry! Please don't cry. I should be crying, not you. Don't cry, for God's sake, on the first evening in your new house.'

I shook hands with Alain in silence. We got to the car. I helped Forwood into the front, which he preferred. Elizabeth and I got in at the back. Jacques slammed the boot. I settled my hand-grip and the bundle of walking-sticks and umbrellas.
'Allez vite!'
I said and we reversed, turned, crunched slowly across the
parking
past the pond, past the bay thicket, left down the track. We none of us spoke or looked back. At the gates I got out, the car eased into the lane, I slammed the gates just as I had slammed them every evening for so many years. But this would be the very last time. Final. Finished. Closed.

The gates clattered together, the chain and padlock swinging, scoring an arc in the waggon-green paint. There was rust on the tin sign, ‘CHIENS MÉCHANTS! ATTENTION!' But there were no
chiens méchants
now.

I got back into the car, slammed the door, we moved down the lane slowly past the three big plastic dustbins brimming with junk. A battered brass lamp that I'd never been able to fix, but always meant to, lay in thistles. No one spoke, not even when we got to the T-junction at the main road and turned left up towards the village. There were some people crossing the road going towards the Mini-Market, but I couldn't tell who they were.

Jacques cleared his throat softly. ‘
A Saint-Paul, eh?'

‘Saint-Paul,' I said.

That's how it ended.

Rather dragging along the lane with two full baskets, I was shoved into the rough grass verge by a rusting Citroën. It stopped with a lurch and groan of brakes, a window was wound down. A grey-haired woman called out in French, ‘Do you want help? They look heavy.'