London Transports (8 page)

Lisa felt like shouting it out aloud this very moment. She had an urge to tell the boy with the red hair that her father had been a local government official, that her mother had been a nurse, that her mother’s father had owned a chemist’s shop. She wanted to say it in a voice so clear and loud that he would hear it, before he left for his checkup, so that he would realize how lucky he was to have gotten a girl from such good stock who was so willing to play along in a shabby game with him. That it was against her training, her background, her…well her kind of people. She wanted him to know, without having to spell it out, that she was better than he was, better in the way that older people valued things, that she had come from respectable people. His father had worked in the potteries, that much she knew and only that.

Of course he had married into money, and why shouldn’t he, a bright boy like him? Any family would have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law. Would her own family have liked him? Yes, her father would have admired him, her mother would have been a bit boringly embarrassing about stock, but she would have accepted him. However, she’d have liked him to know, if only there were some way of telling him indirectly, that her family wouldn’t have fallen over themselves in gratitude…that he’d have had to make an effort to be accepted.

Lisa’s head cleared and she looked at the boy again.

“I don’t feel very well,” she said, feeling she owed him some explanation of why she was standing there looking at him wildly.

“Do you want to sit down, darling?” he asked kindly, and pushed out a stool for her. He looked a bit worried and even embarrassed. His customer had turned out to be a nut case. That’s what he must be thinking, Lisa told herself miserably.

He gave her a cup of very sweet coffee from his little orange flask. Over the rim of the cup she looked up at the hotel. Was there any chance that he would be looking out the window and would see her sitting down, drinking coffee there? Would he be worried, would he rush down to know if she felt faint? What would she say if he did? But as the hot sweet coffee went down inside her chest, Lisa had another feeling too. No, he wouldn’t be looking out the window, straining for a view of her crossing the road.
She
did that kind of thing, he didn’t. She was the one who would look hopefully out the window of the flat at home to see him turning the corner in the evenings. If she was the late one home, he was always reading or looking at television. He never stood at windows. He wouldn’t be looking down.

“I feel much better, thank you ever so much,” she said to the red-haired boy.

“You still look a bit shaky, love,” he said.

“Could I sit here for a little bit?” asked Lisa, more to please him really than because she wanted to. She thought he would like to feel he was doing her a service. She was right, he was delighted. He moved the stool back against the railings and lit her a cigarette while he talked to two Americans and sold them a wall hanging with Big Ben on it.

“When they get home they’ll probably have forgotten what city Big Ben is in,” he said. He didn’t think much of Americans, he told her. Scandinavians were educated people, Americans weren’t. He asked her if she was going to be in London for long.

“My husband is going to Harley Street for a checkup today,” she said cosily. “It may depend on what he’s told. But I think we’ll be here a week.”

She wondered whether she was going mad, actually mad, at the age of thirty-five. It did happen to people, they started telling the most fantastic, unreal tales and nobody noticed for a while, then they had to go and have treatment.

“Harley Street today, a Saturday?” said the red-haired boy cheerfully. “Meeting some bird more likely. You won’t find any doctors in Harley Street today. You’d better keep an eye on your old man, my darling, he’s with some blonde.”

He smiled a big cockney grin, full of quickness and good humour. He liked most people he met, this boy did. He didn’t particularly fancy her probably, he was like this with old dears of a hundred and with fellows as well.

“It’s possible,” she said. “Quite possible.”

The red-haired boy looked alarmed. She must look as if she were going mad again; he must be regretting his little pleasantry.

“He’d be mad if he was,” he said. “Lovely woman like you, no blonde could be any better. No, he’d need his head examined he would, if he told you he was going to a doctor and went off to hold hands in a park with a blonde.”

His face had a kind of transparency about it. It was watery somehow, with pale eyes set far apart from each other. It was a very simple face. It wouldn’t disguise things, and look differently to the way it was feeling. It wasn’t the kind of face that could smile and tell you that its health needed a checkup if it wasn’t true. That face could never become troubled and talk about its marriage having been a sad sort of thing, better not spoken of, if in fact his wife was pregnant and he was planning to try and get the marriage revved up again.

“Are you married?” she asked him.

“No, darling, never met a lady that was worthy of me,” he said.

“Neither am I,” she said.

She didn’t care what he thought. She tried not to look at the flicker of puzzlement and irritation that came over his white, transparent face. It was because of his face that she had decided to tell him the truth, even though it would have been better in the short encounter between them if she hadn’t.

She got up, folded the stool together, and placed it very precisely beside the railings.

“I really do feel a lot better, thank you. I might come back and buy something from you later on,” she said.

“You do that, my darling,” he said, relieved that she was going. She felt that even here she had stayed too long, talked too much, revealed a dependence. Was she ever going to be able to stop?

There was an opening into the park and she walked in. The grass was yellowish, there hadn’t been any rain for a long time. A series of glorious days probably. She looked at the people. No delegates to the conference, nobody from back home had arrived yet; there was no danger of being seen by anyone. And even though he was careful about his health, it was funny that he hadn’t said anything about the checkup before. And why had they got a “Mr. and Mrs.” card with the fruit and flowers? He must have said all along that he was bringing his wife with him. And the room had already had a double bed in it, before he had planned for her to accompany him. And what kind of fool did he think she was to believe he was having an executive checkup all bloody day? Or did he care what she thought? Was it just a case of it being more comfortable to have an undemanding fool of a woman who paid her own way and wasn’t any extra trouble than not to have one, or to leave her at home sulking?

She strolled around idly, noticing that everyone in the park seemed to be with other people. There were groups of girls, and there were families, and there were a lot of pregnant women walking with that proud waddle they develop, hands folded oddly over the bulk in front, managing to look frail as well as huge, so that husbands had protective arms around shoulders.

And she wondered, did he have his real wife in London for the week-end, and was he in fact going to go back to her, and was it she who was pregnant or someone else? Maggie would say anything to get her nice friend Lisa out of this thing. Or did he have some other girl, who also had to be fobbed off with lies and hurried telephone calls? She knew how real his excuses could sound. She wondered whether any other woman in the whole world would have gone to live with a man who was not divorced and who went home every six months to see his daughter, but apparently didn’t talk to his wife except about business matters.

She wondered if it was worth going back to the hotel to pick up the case. She thought not, really. It had cost £12 and that was a pity, but what was £12 compared to other things she had spent? She had her handbag with her and her money, there weren’t many clothes at the hotel. She hadn’t brought much with her in order not to appear too eager, not to look as if she was assuming that she was staying for the whole week.

She didn’t make any plans about what was his and what was hers in the flat. She’d sort that out tomorrow or the day after when she got back, and she’d take what she felt like taking. She wouldn’t take lots out of viciousness, or too little out of martyrdom.

She didn’t even start fussing and worrying about what stations the trains went from and how to get there, or what times they were at, and how much they cost. She didn’t even know whether she would go in to work on Monday and say her aunt hadn’t died in London after all. It was strange, but she didn’t even seem to be imagining how he would react when he came back at six o’clock and she didn’t turn up. Would he contact the police? Would it embarrass him with the hotel and with everybody? Would he think she was dead? It didn’t matter.

She always thought that things ended suddenly, that people had a big row, or they parted with clenched teeth and noble smiles like they did in old movies. And she stood still beside a seat which had a lot of old people sitting on it, and she took some deep breaths one after another as if she was testing to see how her heart was feeling, whether it was thudding, or if it was surrounded by that awful, horrible, empty feeling of fear like it so often was, when she thought he was angry or bored with her. And funnily it didn’t seem to be in a bad state at all.

She wished she had someone to tell, someone who would congratulate her, someone who would be interested. If Mother was alive…no, of course she couldn’t have told Mother about it, what was she dreaming about? Mother had been interested certainly, but you didn’t tell Mother about having affairs, that wasn’t something people from our stock did, people who were busy holding their heads up with the best of them. And Father, he might have liked the story if it had been about someone else. He used to listen to her tales about other people, and say, “Fancy, aren’t folk strange?” Maggie would treat it lightly, and probably come out with new stories about him, things she hadn’t liked to tell Lisa at the time. And there was nobody in the staff room she could tell, and Bill, well Bill and Angela would just have one of their worried conversations about her. She really had very few friends.

And that was the one cloud on her new freedom, she realized. That’s what she’d miss, having him for a friend. In a few ways and some of the time, he had at least been a friend.

Marble Arch

T
hese days she felt that the flower sellers, the men with piles of things that had fallen off lorries, the policemen, and the road sweepers were her friends. She felt they were all part of some kind of club, the only remaining English people in a sea of foreigners. It was a racist kind of thought perhaps, she said to herself, because if you started noticing how many people there were who smelled of garlic, or who wore face veils, or head-dresses, then the next step might be to wish they weren’t there. It would be better not to notice differences at all, to think that everything which walked on two feet was a fellow human.

Anyway she had no right to be anything but grateful to all the tourists. She reminded herself of this as an Arab thrust a piece of paper at her with an address down the Edgware Road on it, and she pointed him in the right direction. He was going to a chemist’s shop, she noticed. She wondered whether it was for a prescription or to buy boxes of soaps and talcums. Without the Arabs her own business would have folded long ago. She sold handmade handbags in a shop within a shop. They were quite expensive. Young Londoners didn’t have the money young Kuwaitis did.

Sophie unlocked her little shop and started to hang up the bags. She then got a stool and sat out in the morning sunlight waiting for customers. It was much more expensive to have a street frontage, but it trebled business. She was glad she had such a good head for business. She really needed it because nobody around her seemed to understand the first principles of earning a living. She frowned with the beginnings of a headache, and moved out of the sun. It had been a very late night.

It hadn’t been night when she finally got to bed, it had been four o’clock in the morning. Eddie had brushed the hair out of his eyes and half raised himself on an elbow as she left, but he was now back in a deep innocent sleep again and here she was sitting with a headache, trying to trap the tourists who came to Marble Arch, trying to keep awake and make a living for Eddie and herself.

She never thought of herself as earning a living for both of them. That wasn’t the way the words or the ideas fell together. Only sometimes, when she had a headache or when they had talked long and without direction during the night, did she think wistfully how nice it would be if he was the one who got up in the mornings, and she was the one who could raise herself on an elbow and say “Good-bye, love, take it easy.” But that wasn’t really considering an alternative, it was only thinking about things that would never be, like the way you sometimes imagined what it would be like to be a sea gull when you saw one swooping backwards and forwards over a harbour.

Sophie thought a bit about last night’s discussion. It hadn’t been any different from the ones that had gone before, just longer. Eddie’s dark brown eyes and their long black lashes looked dull with the pain of the world. They had lost all the flash and brilliance they had when he wasn’t talking about the cruelty of the world. Dead they sat on his face as he spoke on bitterly about the producers who were pansies, the agents who were fairies, the script editors who promised the moon, the misguided advice of friends who said, “Well, why don’t you just
go
to Framlingham or Fraserburgh or some ridiculous place and see what happens?”

Eddie wasn’t going to just go anywhere. At thirty-seven he was too old now to just go to a stupid group of overexcited students or experimentalists and help them out with their productions. He had been in acting too long, learned too much, was too professional to give in, to sell the past. What had all these years been for if he was going to give in now? What would his love for Sophie mean if he was to allow that painted Jeffrey to feel him up and take him to that queers’ pub as a possession, just in order that he could get a part? No, life was cruel, and rotten, and the good people always lost out, and it was a plot, and you couldn’t fight the system hoping to win, but at least you could try.

Sophie had never seen life as being cruel and rotten before she met Eddie, but she had always seen it as fairly difficult and tiring. She thought if you worked hard you made money, and then you had leisure time and you enjoyed that. If you were very lucky indeed you worked at something that wasn’t awful, and then you enjoyed both work and leisure. She thought it must be very strange and sad to work in a world where there seemed to be steaming clouds of sexual desire and frustration, mostly homosexual, and that this was governing who got jobs and who played where and who succeeded or who failed.

It was so different to her own world. She had managed to leave the very dull, very depressing place where they had trained her how to sell cosmetics so well that she firmly believed she could sell lip gloss to men with beards. She had always wanted to be in business for herself but with no capital it looked impossible. Her father hadn’t wanted her to leave the cosmetic people. He thought she should thank her lucky stars day and night for the good luck she had got in life. Her father had never had much luck, there were more weeks when he collected money from welfare than from an employer. Her mother had worked regularly and quietly in a restaurant. She said that her one ambition was that Sophie should never have a job which meant walking and standing, and dealing with dirty plates and difficult customers. She was happy when Sophie was selling nice, fresh, good-smelling oils and paints for people’s faces. She was worried when she seemed to become a person of no account sitting in a little stall shouting her wares to the public.

Sophie sighed, thinking how little everyone around her knew about business. If she had been her father, she would have kept a steady job; if she had been her mother, she would have demanded to be a cashier in that restaurant, where she could have sat in a little glass box near the door, rather than get varicose veins by walking and standing; if she were Eddie, she would take any acting job anywhere if she wanted to act, or more probably she would decide that if acting didn’t want her among its ranks, she would take some other job and act in her spare time. Really she had made very little impression on anyone, with her own businesslike attitudes. Nobody realized that it wasn’t easy to be organized and disciplined, and to make money. It took a lot of time, and worry, and ate into all those hours you could be sitting around and enjoying yourself. Nobody ever got drawn into her little belief that people might be here on earth to work hard. Nobody but Peggy. Peggy was her one success.

Peggy had been a mess, and Sophie thought she would always be one, but she was so warm and friendly that you looked through all this bamboo curtain of rubbish and saw a lovely, big, responsive soul inside. Peggy had been to the same school, had done the same useless meaningless course in “business administration.” Well, hardly done it, Peggy had barely attended a class there. She had been in chip shops and coffee shops, and places with plastic tabletops where people ate ice creams and drank fizzy drinks instead of learning business administration or delivering bundles of dresses from the wholesale house to the retail, which was what they were being paid for.

Peggy had a year of liberty, then came the storm. Her mother couldn’t understand why she wasn’t fitted for a wonderful job, some high business post. Gradually the tales of the chip shops emerged, and Peggy left home under the darkest cloud you could find, a cloud of ingratitude.

Sophie had seen her from time to time. Usually she came to borrow a few pounds. More often than not Sophie got them back. Sometimes she came to grumble. This man had let her down, that man hadn’t told her he was married, the other man had been perfectly nice for a fortnight and then it turned out that all he wanted was to beat her and for her to beat him. She worked in Woollies for a while and was sacked for stealing. She thought that this was unfair. Sophie thought it was also pretty unfair to steal from Woollies, and Peggy only grudgingly agreed.

She worked for a while in one of the coffee shops of her youth. Sophie always had coffee there just to have a chat. Sometimes she thought it mightn’t be such a good idea. Peggy looked weary, and dirty, and beaten, she seemed to resent Sophie’s smart looks, essential for her trade, and her smart little car, essential for bringing her trade from door to door.

But still Peggy didn’t have anyone else, and when she was arrested the first time and charged with being drunk and disorderly, Sophie was the one she sent for. She sent for Sophie when she was in hospital, too, suffering, they told her, from malnutrition. Sophie came when she was charged with soliciting, and when she was finally sent to prison on her third charge, it was Sophie who waited for her three weeks later in the little car and drove her back home.

When Peggy immediately retrieved a bottle of barley wine that she had hidden in the hallway of the depressing house where she lived, Sophie decided she had had enough. Quite enough. There they were sitting in this filthy room, and she was refusing a glass of cloudy, muddy-looking drink with the excuse that it was a bit early in the day. Her old friend Peggy had become a prostitute, a thief, and a near-alcoholic.

The years of dragging herself up and away and onwards were looking useless, if she could be dragged down again so quickly by Peggy. She lost her temper, and said all this and more.

“I’m not just dumping you because I’ve become all up-in-the-air,” she shouted eventually. “Stop telling me that I have ideas above myself. I’ve no ideas for God’s sake, I just work bloody hard, and it isn’t easy and everyone around me seems afraid of work or…or sneers at it and at me. So now I’m telling you I’m sick of it, sick, sick, sick. I have no more pity for you. I haven’t any more words, any more ‘Poor things’ to say to you. You can go whatever bloody way you like, I don’t care if I never hear about you again, because every time I hear from you you want something, money, help, someone to take you home from gaol. If you don’t want something at the beginning, you end up wanting something. You drain me, and make me feel weak and feel nothing. So to hell with you Peggy, to hell with you, I’m sick of you.”

And then it was Sophie not Peggy who cried. Peggy was amazed. Not upset, just amazed.

The great cool Sophie was sitting there crying, the calm Sophie had shouted. The mask had slipped. Peggy was transfixed. Instead of the list of excuses, explanations, and life’s miseries that normally fell out unasked for, she heard herself say quite calmly:

“What would you like me to do?”

“I’d like you to look after yourself for a change and not rely on me to look after you. I’d like you to do something quite extraordinary for you, that’s go out and earn a bloody living like most people in the world.”

Sophie gathered up her bag and her car keys and banged out of the dirty room in the depressing house, and went off and sold cream that took lines from under your eyes to women who ran small dress shops. In and out of her car she got, dragging display literature, explaining that people who bought dresses would like to have unlined faces to wear with them. She went on and on until the last late-closing shop had closed, then returned to her flat and worked on reports until midnight and went to sleep.

Next day Peggy was at her door. A tidier Peggy, not drunk, not hung over, not pleading.

“Can I come with you on your rounds?” she asked simply.

Sophie was tired. “Yes, if you don’t talk,” she said, and the day was much like any other, except for the vaguely comforting feeling of Peggy sitting silently beside her. They hardly spoke a word to each other until lunchtime. Then Sophie offered her a drink.

“I’ll have a coffee,” said Peggy.

During the coffee Peggy had asked intelligent questions about the kind of stores, shops, and boutiques they had been visiting. She wanted to know how much credit they got. Since Peggy couldn’t have had a pound note to her name, Sophie wondered at the drift of the conversation. Surely Peggy couldn’t see herself as a shop owner, even if she were going to pull herself together? But anything was better than the kind of thing Peggy normally talked about, so Sophie answered her sensibly. Sophie was also relieved that no malice seemed to be directed towards her for yesterday’s outburst.

Peggy came silently in the car with Sophie for about a week, except for the day she had to go and see a probation officer or social worker. She didn’t have any tales to tell about these visits, no theories about how women in such jobs were sadists. Sophie began to feel quite optimistic about her, but didn’t want to rock any boat by saying it was a useless way to spend your days, sitting in someone else’s car. Perhaps Peggy was just desperately lonely, she thought.

Then Peggy came up with her suggestion. She wondered, would these women in the shops buy handmade bags?

Sophie’s first thought was that Peggy was planning to steal the bags, but no, she said, she had learned a bit of leather work once, and it turned out she was quite good at it. Would Sophie like to come and see some of it that evening?

The dirty and untidy bedroom was still untidy, but not with clothes, makeup, and empty barley wine bottles. This time it was with bits of leather and cord. Sophie stood transfixed.

Because the bags in all sorts of shapes and sizes were beautiful.

Some of them were soft pinks and blues, others were bold blacks and whites. They were made on a patchwork system, because Peggy had only enough money for scraps, she said. She looked shyly at Sophie, and blushed with pleasure at the evident delight and surprise she saw.

“I was wondering, could I earn a living selling them?” asked Peggy as timidly as a child. Sophie’s heart was so full of pride and delight and resolution that she hardly trusted herself to speak. This must be the way teachers feel, or nurses when their patients get better, she thought; and they sat down and made plans for Peggy’s new career.

Things moved very quickly after that; the only problem was that Peggy couldn’t keep up with the demand. One boutique took a dozen, and rang up three days later for three dozen more. Sophie spent a whole Sunday with Peggy working out what they should do. If she were to get someone else to help her, they would have to halve the money. They had already seen the huge markup that shopkeepers put on the bags. It was time to define them as “luxury items,” as “specialist work.” They got labels made with “handcrafted by Peggy Anderson” on them, and they charged three times the price. They got it. And Peggy was in business.