My Other Life (56 page)

Eight o'clock on a winter morning in London, the forty-watt bulbs burning so feebly in the foyer they cast no shadows. An Indian in a sort of teller's cage signed me in, took my money in advance,
and welcomed me. A plastic nameplate gave his name as R. G. Pillai.

Then he said, "Room twenty-two. It is not ready."

"Do you have any that are ready?"

"Not available."

"I've just flown all night."

"Check-out time is noon. Maybe then."

Interrupting me in my protest, he said, "Take breakfast in lounge."

It was not a lounge. It was a drafty rear room on the second floor, colder than the foyer, with velvet drapes, tables too close together, and an electric heater in the fireplace. A flickering red light on the plastic ornamental log had been switched on, but not its burners.

The waiters were Indians in stained white jackets. I sat for a while, watching people at other tables being served. Soon the paraphernalia was brought to my table—an empty jam jar with a dusty lid, a saucer of two butter pats, a toast rack (two slices), a sugar bowl, milk jug, teapot, pot of hot water, tea strainer and tea-strainer holder, spoons, forks, tongs for sugar cubes. It all had the look of what was left of the family silver and the last cracked crockery in the family, and it filled the table like the clumsy old tools of a barber-surgeon. The waiter apologized as he set this stuff out, and by the time he had finished, the tea had gone lukewarm and the toast was cold and damp. Elsewhere in the room the rattle-clink of silver and porcelain took the place of conversation.

A heavy-faced Englishwoman scowled at me as she walked past. This was Betty, Mr. Pillai's wife. Her false teeth were very white and slightly crooked in her mouth. She wore a hair net, and when she saw me she chewed and worked her doggy jowls.

"Yes?"

"Is there any jam?"

"If you don't see it, we don't have it."

That was the commonest catchphrase in shopkeeping England, yet I knew it to be untrue of English life: what you did not see existed profoundly in the society, the whole culture was its invisible essence. Nothing showed—not attitudes, nor texture, nor feeling. It was enigmatic in an almost Oriental way. In other words, there was raspberry jam but you had to know how to ask for it, in the English world, where everything important was hidden.

I envied the people at the other tables, the way they sat, quiet couples, man and woman together, reading the morning papers or silently communicating—smiling, that wordless intimacy of marriage that was mine no longer. This subtle affection depressed me, the handholding, the meaningful looks, the familiarity. I did not want that. I wanted savages and strangers.

I sat alone, nibbling at my awful breakfast, regretting the life I had lost, hating the effort I had made in coming all this way, on a fatuous errand, just another desperate remedy for my loneliness.

At last I was led to my room by a wordless Indian, up a stinking staircase, down a passageway. Every footfall squeezed a creak from the loose floorboards under the worn carpet. Passing a bedroom door, I heard a furious accusatory woman's voice.

— I don't want you here!

After that was a man's inaudible murmur, then the woman again.

— You've done nothing but complain since the minute I entered this room!

It startled me, but the Indian leading me showed no sign of having heard it. Five doors on, he slotted the latchkey into an old lock, played with it a bit, and pushed the door into a narrow room. He gestured, he did not enter, he was like a guard showing a new prisoner to his cell. I drew the drapes and lay in the semidarkness, and fell asleep.

My reverie was shattered by a sudden shouting from the next room, so loud it penetrated the plaster.

— I don't want to hear any more of this!

That was a woman's voice, shrill and almost hysterical.

A man's voice said,
If you'd only let me explain
—and he was quieter, even reasonable-sounding.

Was it that women in such arguments yelled because they faced the physical threat of a man? In these walls, women screamed, men grunted. Neither of these voices matched the voice I had heard down the corridor.

— I don't want that bitch in our marriage! You wouldn't have done it if you cared for me. And her, of all people!

— She's not the problem. Don't you see it reveals a deeper—

— That's all bollocks! Go get your little whore. You'll be sorry. You'll see that it's the biggest mistake you've ever made.

The man murmured. It was not audible, he was hushing her.

The woman then cried out,
Don't touch me!

In a low, severe voice the man said,
Pack it in—

— Leave me alone, you bastard!

The rest was murmurs, then tears, and a slammed door. I was fully awake now, but I soon subsided into sleep, until I was woken by voices from the other wall, egging each other on.

— You're always doing that. Well, two can play that game.

I thought: Apologize and this will end. Say, Yes, I am sorry I hurt you. I will never do it again.

But the man said,
You're pathetic. Look at yourself. You don't know what you're talking about.

I thought: Say, I've suffered. It made me miserable. But we can overcome this.

But the woman said,
I hate you. God, do I hate you.

I covered my ears and shut my eyes. There was a quality in the darkness that gave the room a terrible smell—of fur and flesh, and not feet but hooves. It was like being in hell. I slept again. There was more of it in the night—shouts, accusations, a struggle, a man on the phone, thumps, and pleading; but by morning—I woke early, remembering that this was the day of my dinner with the Queen—there was silence.

Morning again, the lounge again, breakfast again. But these words were all approximations; they did not really describe the day, the room, or the meal. The gray sky seemed to hover a few feet from the chimneys on the next roof, and electric lights in old wall fixtures—sconces, as I now knew them to be—burned yellow in the shabby dining room, casting unhelpful shadows. There was jam today, but the light was so poor it was impossible to tell what flavor it was. In this bad light all the jam was black.

The same tea ritual, the same paraphernalia looking like obsolete science, the cluttered table, the lukewarm tea, the damp toast.

Betty served. She carried a bowl on a brown plastic tray. She said, "Fruit compote?"

I said yes. The answer was prunes.

The silent couples in the room ate neatly, and their silence was like hunger and gratitude and obedience. Two read newspapers, no one spoke. The nighttime darkness had been full of voices, mumbled accusations, obscenities; the closets shrieked, the pipes gushed with collapsing water. When I had switched on the dim bulb beside
my bed, my room was lit, and the picture on the wall spoke: it was the Yorkshire Dales, a rushing stream, a bare mountain, some pines, a glorious landscape inhabited by an angry quarreling couple. But here in the pale light of day the spectral residents of Sandringham House ate in silence and read the papers, and once again it was like being in hell—not a Catholic hell of bonfires and molten lava and cackling devils, but the secular English hell of stinks and shame and narrow clammy rooms. Rattle-clink.

Walking to the bus stop after breakfast, I was almost run down by a large green Range Rover.

It was she again, the bony-faced woman I had always encountered in London traffic—lovely hair, neck scarf, sleeveless quilted Barbour jacket. Dressed for the country, impatient in the West End, she did not glance at me, didn't have to—she knew I was stepping off the curb. It was not merely that she was in a hurry to get to the motorway; the point was that she was on the phone, the thing clapped to the side of her face while she steered the vehicle with her other hand. She had been doing this to me for years. She muttered under her breath, she drove on, still talking on the car phone. She missed but managed to splash me.

I took a bus to the King's Road, then walked down Beaufort Street to the river. I was heading for Clapham, but halfway across Battersea Bridge I realized I did not dare to look at the family house. I knew in advance there was no one home, but more than that I did not belong there. I could not go in. I would be on the sidewalk staring at the bricks, my old windows. My London had been my house and my family; I'd had nothing else. And now, an unwelcome ghost, haunting this place, I had no friends, and no longer a family. I had never really lived here. I had pitched my tent in London, and now it was folded, and I had stolen away.

So, walking in the rain, I lost my nerve, but out of curiosity I went to the Fishmonger's Arms for a drink. The licensing hours had changed, and pubs in London were now open all day. Cigarette smoke, a damp carpet, the gluey smell of spilled beer, the underwater honks of a spinning fruit machine. A man sat at the bar, smoking over his pint of beer. A boy stood next to him in a school uniform, probably his son.

It pleased me that I knew the barman's name—Dermot. He smiled at me.

"You've been scarce."

"Been away."

"Good trip?"

"Some hassles."

"Fuss is better than loneliness," Dermot said.

That was all, after my year's absence. It was an Irish pub, everyone was friendly, but it was no more than alcoholic bonhomie. He didn't know me well enough to ask me anything else. I ordered a half pint of draft Guinness.

"Let's go, Dad," the boy said to the man drinking next to me.

"Can't you bloody wait, Kevin?" the man said. He was drunk and irritable. He sipped at his beer—the sipping was his way of showing that he would not be hurried.

I said to the boy, Kevin, "Where do you go to school?"

"Emmanuel."

"Studying for exams?"

"A-levels are next year," he said, sounding weary.

"What subjects are you doing?"

"English, history, and French."

As he spoke, his father squinted at me, sizing me up.

"I've got a history question," I said. "What do you know about the divine right of kings?"

"It's Jacobean—well, James the First wrote about it. The French monarchy had more developed ideas of it than the English, but the English believed it. You know about 'the king's touch'?"

"Tell me."

"The king could cure certain diseases," Kevin said. "Scrofula. That's the one they always talk about."

"Whatever that's supposed to be," his father said.

"It's inflammations." Kevin smirked. "Also, it means degenerate."

"I was just wondering—say, the present Queen. Isn't she supposed to have a little bit of divinity?"

"She's head of the church," Kevin said.

"Bloody black Protestant church of Anglican bloody England," the man said, and spat on the floor.

Kevin went on, "The idea is that she does have a touch of divinity. Look at the Book of Common Prayer. There are prayers for the King and prayers for the royal family. 'King of Kings, Lord of Lords,
the only ruler of princes.' That sort of thing. It's an aspect of monarchy."

"It's an aspect of bollocks," his father said.

"Does anyone ever say those prayers?" I asked.

"We were saying one at chapel last week."

"Don't let me bloody catch you," his father said.

"Come on, Dad. Let's go."

Kevin winked at me as his father went on resisting.

What there was left of the drizzling day I spent walking through Clapham Junction. I bought a pair of black socks and a black bow tie at Marks & Spencer, then walked down to the river again, through the churchyard of St. Mary's in Battersea. Hunched over, bent against the bad weather, I spotted a bus at the Fulham Road and caught it back to Earl's Court and the Sandringham House. There had been no dawn, only a porridgy sky that had lain low and gray across the rooftops, and the day that had begun late in darkness now ended early in quickening dusk, like a dropping curtain of blackness that became cold slimy streets and wet pavements and drizzling bricks and roof slates shining in the glare of street lamps. The dim lights had burned all day, less as illumination than a reminder of the undefeated dark.

Passing through the hall again, I heard new voices.

— I don't know why you love me. I'm awful.

— Don't start that!

I had preserved my dress shirt and tuxedo in a box that was bound with string. I had bought the socks and tie that I had forgotten, but when I put on the shirt I realized I had no cufflinks. I called downstairs.

"Executive offices."

"Mr. Pillai, I seem to have left my cufflinks at home. Do you have any I might borrow?"

"You looked in room?"

"No."

"If you don't see them in room, we don't have."

"Do you know what I mean by cufflinks?"

"No. Not knowing."

"Then why do you say you don't have any?"

"Not available," he said, and then I heard Betty shriek, and he hung up.

A female voice in the next room said,
I don't want to have this conversation. I don't want to see you. Do you understand? I want you out of my life.

She wasn't interrupted. She must have been on the phone.

—And yes, I want you to fail. I want you to be as miserable as I have been. I want you to know what it's like.

It was too late to buy any cufflinks. I managed to fasten my cuffs with paper clips from a drawer. That held them and, poked into my sleeves, they were invisible.

My tux made me look seedier, not better. I could see that in the foyer mirror. A woman walked past me, smiling. Was she the one who had screamed into the phone upstairs? Setting out from Sandringham House to hail a taxi, I had a feeling this was not going to work—and why should it? I was obviously posturing. I had flown from Boston to London to have dinner with the Queen, and I had agreed on the desperate pretext that it might cheer me up and give me something to write.

No. My hotel was awful. It was inhabited by angry and treacherous people—their accusations came out of the walls. I was sick with jet lag. You could not see that my shoes were wet, but they were, from my walking. Dinner was not going to happen, and even if I got to Birdwood's house in time, there would be no dinner and no Queen. This was all paranoia and misunderstanding, not a bad dream but the average dream of humiliation and pursuit. At any moment I would wake up in my bed on Cape Cod, and I would groan and listen to the wind lisping on the cedar shingles and making sounds of a push broom in the juniper boughs.