Colouring In (3 page)

It was lovely discovering we had lots else in common, too. My previous lady (Mrs. What’s-It – I can never remember the double-barrelled bit) in Holland Park, she and I came from different planets. I only stayed the five years because her husband was so ill. But Mrs Grant, she likes a polish and a shine, just like I do. She likes things done nicely. She likes the day to start with a tidy, though she never wants the place to look unlived in like a waiting room. Course, I know just what she means. I never go into her studio, except once a month to hoover: she says it’s far too much of a mess and she keeps it as she wants it herself. This may seem peculiar, but I believe it’s a good idea to fall in as much as possible with your employer’s ways: it must be difficult for them. It didn’t work, my method, with Mrs. What’s-It and I took a lot of rudeness from her. But with Mrs. Grant, from the very beginning I tried to make relations between us easy for her, and we’ve never looked back. I said ‘Mrs. Grant, if there’s anything I do not to your liking, you only have to tell me. I’ll not take offence, like some’, I said. Turned out she doesn’t like the cushions on the sofa standing on their points – like a chorus line of ballet dancers, was how she put it, which made me chuckle. She also doesn’t like objects – ashtrays and boxes and so on – placed on the diagonal. She said it disturbs her sense of symmetry. For myself, I’ve always rather fancied an ashtray put
not
quite straight – gives it a bit of character, I always think. That’s what I do in my living room at home. But of course at the Grants I do what Mrs. G likes. I’m so used to it now I rarely make a mistake.

I’ve got to know them all pretty well, now. Nine years: you do. In a way I think of them as my family, what with Ernie hardly ever home and Jan up north – not that we were ever close, mother and daughter. Mrs. Grant I know best of course. Sometimes I feel I can read her like a book. She’s very quiet, and kind, and, my, she’s considerate. A little vague, perhaps – but aren’t we all? Forgets things, gets a bit panicky when she’s a long list of things to do. When she comes down for her morning cup of coffee is the time she’s most abstracted. It’s almost as if her mind’s still on her business upstairs and she doesn’t want the spell to be broken. She never talks about her work, mind. I’m just sometimes shown the finished product before it goes off and I can see what a talented lady she is. Modest with it. I don’t think she ever believes my compliments, or anyone’s. And then she does move so well, so gracefully. You should see her coming down stairs, a pleasure to watch. Rather stately somehow, even when she’s only wearing jeans and a shirt. Very straight back. She once told me that at her school they had lessons in deportment. They had to walk about with a pile of books on their heads. Don’t suppose there’s much of that around now. She only met Ernie once – he was home on leave and came to pick me up from work in his car, but they got on beautifully. He said I was very lucky to have such a good employer. I said don’t be stupid, Ernie: I know that. Jan she’s never met and I don’t suppose ever will. Jan’s not one for making an effort to come and see her mother, and I’ve only had one invitation to Yorkshire in ten years. But I think Mrs. Grant feels she knows them all, and that includes Bill, though he passed away two years before I came to the Grants. She listens to me chattering on, doesn’t say much herself, but always sympathetic. Always interested. The way I know about her is not so much from what she says, but from her body language, as they say. She’s very expressive eyes and she’s very calm. But just occasionally she frowns, and her fingers play up and down on her mug. Once – I was very late on account of the dentist – I came in and heard her playing the piano. I know she never likes to play to anyone, and she stopped as soon as she heard the door. But my goodness was she storming away! Very loud. Angry, like. I was quite disturbed. I realised later it was about the time she heard her father had cancer.

Mr. Grant I know less well, of course. But from what I can tell he’s the sort of man the English do best. A lot in common with my Bill. Very upright, dignified, charming, always a twinkle in his eye. As courteous as you could want. He’s not old-fashioned, exactly, but always nicely turned out, none of those T-shirts on a week day that so many men fancy these days. And it’s my private belief he’s something of a passionate man. Passionate at the desk, passionate in the bed as they say – well, as Bill used to say. I’m never quite sure what it is exactly Mr. Grant does in his office – though it must bring in a certain wage – but up in his study it’s my guess he’s a passionate at his desk, writing away. When I come on a Monday morning his waste-paper basket is overflowing with bits of screwed up typing paper. It’s all over the floor. As for his desk – well. Mrs. Grant says he writes plays, and they’re very good. To my knowledge he’s only had one put on but he keeps at it. Very determined. Sometimes I go for days without seeing Mr. Grant, he’s off so early. But when we do run into each other he’s always full of appreciation. ‘No one like you for polishing the fender, Gwen’, he’ll say, ‘and definitely no one like you for ironing a shirt’. He’s promised that on my next birthday (I think they’ve guessed what it is – God forbid!) – we’ll all go for a meal and see
The Mousetrap
, something I’ve been wanting to do for I don’t know how long.

Sylvie: Sylvie is something else. A nice enough girl, but moody, headstrong. Not particularly spoilt, though she’s got every toy and gadget you can think of. Eighty three stuffed animals in her bedroom – I counted them. As for her bedroom itself, it’s a tip. I can only hoover when Mrs. Grant has insisted she clears up, about once a month. She’s stuck things all over the walls, too, so you can hardly see the pretty wallpaper which she told me was soppy. Over her desk she’s stuck up a list of words. I can’t help reading them because they’re in such big letters. Apparently they are her made-up words. Mrs. Grant told me she slips one occasionally into her school essays to see if her teacher will notice, and she hardly ever does.

There’s no denying Sylvie’s a charmer, like her father. One of her smiles, with her head tipped on one side, and she can have anyone eating out of her hand. At the moment she’s got those train tracks on her teeth, but I reckon she’ll be a beauty like her mother one day, and go somewhere in the world. She’s got all these scatty ideas, and more than her fair share of energy and imagination. I reckon Mr. and Mrs. Grant will have trouble on their hands in a few years time, once she’s in her teens, just as I did with Jan. But she’ll come through. She’ll be all right in the end. Once she ran down stairs and flung her arms round my neck and said I was the
best
. You can’t help being won round by something like that. I said to her mother, I said ‘One day Sylvie’ll have her name in lights, mark my word’. Pity she didn’t have any brothers or sisters, really. I believe there was some trouble, though I didn’t enquire. Still, they’re a good family. I’d like to think I can keep working for them till my bones force me to stop.

God it’s good to be home. Can’t think why I dithered for so long. New York’s all very well for a while. Exhilarating in a way that London isn’t. But for real life…

Was a bit depressed when I came into the house. The tenants have taken their toll. Nothing specific – just an air of acute shabbiness which wasn’t there when I left. Though I suppose, nearly ten years ago, that’s not unreasonable. There was an unpleasant smell – a clash of old smoke and chemical air freshener. I opened all the windows, looked through all the cupboards. In the kitchen everything appeared out of date, overused. I suppose I’ll have to re-equip the place: new machinery, new curtains and covers. In fact the whole house could do with re-decorating. And I’ll have to buy a car and apply for residents’ parking, all very tiresome. It’s not that I haven’t the money – I’ve more money than I need to spend. It’s just all very boring when there’s no one to help, to advise. All the same, I’m overwhelmingly glad to be back.

The first morning home, not a thing in the fridge, I behaved like a New Yorker and went out to breakfast in the King’s Road. It was a warm sunny morning so I sat at a minuscule table on the pavement with my cappuccino and indifferent croissant, and felt a bit bleak. I took out my engagement book – nothing but empty pages, of course, since landing in England – and looked at the list of people whose telephone numbers I transfer every year, no matter for how long I haven’t seen them. Dan was at the top, his permanent place. He was the one I most wanted to see, I thought. My oldest friend. Great stretches of absence never made any difference to us. We’d just take up the reins again. He was always good at précising the time lost between us. I was never much good at that. I find it difficult suddenly to describe the most important thing that’s happened in the last few months, let alone years. So I just murmur about still being a bachelor, hope fading, well-paid job in air-conditioned Manhattan, and he gets the picture. I wouldn’t want to bore him with the ins and outs of strategic marketing for the oil company. So from me he gets merely tiny flashes of illumination in my life – an amazing weekend in the Hamptons, or the skiing trip in Colorado. His apparent deep interest sometimes spurs me to a few details.

From him I get a great deal more. Much of it concerns whatever is his current play. It’s astonishing, his tenacity and determination. Ever since we left Oxford Dan’s been writing plays. Boosted by his stupendous success of
Forward
, he was convinced that he was a born playwright. The fact that not a single play has been produced since doesn’t seem to have daunted him. He spends months and months waiting for replies from theatre companies and producers, probably knowing in his heart that the news, if and when it ever does come, is not going to be good. Once or twice there’s been a flicker of hope: some director – perhaps out of kindness – suggesting there is a future for a play. But in fact that future is always a return to the bottom drawer. No matter, says Dan. He never blames the state of theatre in general, or changing fashions, or lack of willingness to invest in plays: he blames only himself. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that one obviously wasn’t good enough. So on to the next one. Must do better.’ Thank God he doesn’t rely on writing for a living.

I admire his persistence so much. The pathos he exudes moves me frequently, though God forbid he should ever be aware of such thoughts. In the same circumstances, I would have given up years ago. I haven’t seen any of the most recent attempts, but he sent me three scripts a couple of years ago. I read them very carefully, wondering what it was that meant they didn’t work. I’m no expert: couldn’t quite put my finger on it. They’re well constructed, witty, usually an original slant on some issue of the day. And yet … they never quite come alive. In the way that
Forward
most certainly did. So what happened? Is it that some people have within them just a single work? Or, at least, a single work of lasting and profound effect? Like Salinger? I asked Dan about that once. He thought the idea wasn’t up to much. ‘If you can write one excellent thing,’ he said, ‘you have the capacity to write another. It’s just a matter of unlocking the magic door again.’ He always asks my opinion, and I try to be constructive in my answers. He doesn’t care that I’m not a professional critic, just wants to know if I
like
a play. That’s easy enough to answer. I always enjoy Dan’s plays: I can tell him in all honesty. What I can’t ever bring myself to say is that I see why they are not put on, though my reasons are so amorphous it’s hard to elucidate them even to myself. Whenever I’ve sent back a manuscript, with some carefully worded letter of appreciation of the good things, I then get to worrying about the whole problem of how honest one should be with a friend about his work. God knows the encouragement of friends is vital to one’s life. But is false encouragement or praise a form of betrayal? Would they rather know that something they have produced, in your humble opinion, isn’t really very good? It would be patronising, not to say arrogant, to tell a friend you think they have little talent but should carry on enjoying themselves producing whatever it is – painting, writing, composing, whatever. Skilful weighing up, between hurtful truth and hollow compliment, is always called for. When it comes to Dan, I resort to evasion of absolute truth, but my praise for selected parts is genuine. What I always fear is that he knows – as close friends instinctively do – what I really think. I often pray to God that one day, before he’s so exhausted by failure that he gives up, he will have another success.

Whatever disappointment he feels, he keeps mostly to himself. I believe I’m the only friend to whom he ever mentions the plays, and when he does it’s always with a lively sense of deprecation, thus warning me of what I’m in for. My admiration for his courage and determination is inestimable. I love his company more than anyone else’s. He always sees the quirky side of life, the slant on the straight. It was good of him immediately to ask me round when I rang. But it won’t be the same, with others. I must get him round for lunch at the club very soon.

I don’t really know Isabel. I was posted abroad at the time of their marriage – couldn’t get back for the wedding, which I know was a blow to Dan. After the Gulf War I was only in London for a very short time before leaving for New York. I took them out to dinner a couple of times: they asked me round. Sylvie, a winning child as far as I could see, is my goddaughter. Isabel seemed very unlike Dan’s previous girlfriends. He used to go for the noisy ones. I remember endless girls tossing long hair into his face and clutching at him in a proprietorial way. But he eluded them all, never declared himself in love except with the wonderful Magda. And she ditched him in a pretty nasty way, once she got the lead in
Forward.

No: Isabel, in the little I know her, seems to me to exude a kind of calm and peace: perfect foil to Dan’s sense of frenzy. And she could look rather beautiful in a sort of timeless way. Rossetti would have liked to have painted her. Dan has never been one for putting his feelings under a microscope – he once said he thought it the height of bad manners – but it’s quite plain he loves his wife and they’re happy. He would have alerted me if anything was amiss. Be interesting to study everything tonight.