Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

  I still want to distract myself from lists and things I don’t want to do, so I go to her Friends list and have a nose. There are lots of men and women her age: people drinking and at meals and smiling in sunglasses and posing for the camera. Young mums holding babies. Blokes atop mountains and in pubs and running in marathons. All going on with their lives without her. I scroll down, the faces all beginning to blur into one, when I stop at a photo of an older-looking man. He looks forty-something, his mouth is wide open and laughing; he has cropped hair, even teeth and a slightly crooked nose – broken, maybe? I stop because he is wearing a striking red and black Venetian mask. Clicking on his profile – Salvi Russo, he’s called – Italian? – it says he’s a performer. There’s a photo of him wearing black and balancing precariously on a beam in front of what I’m sure is St Paul’s Church at Covent Garden, and it has over a hundred likes. Indeed, he has over 3,000 friends – that’s a lot, by anyone’s standards. His posts are sporadic – photos of pints of beer on tables, a grinning selfie (sans mask, nice face, sort of cheeky) with a view of the Thames behind, a cat on a cushion – littered with comments like ‘Nice one mate’. I wonder how this man knows Philippa. If he’s an entertainer, perhaps they met at Ultra Laser; perhaps he dresses up as a clown, or something, and does kids’ parties there.

  Three thousand friends … how does that even happen? Everyone’s got more friends than me, I think. I have none – in real life – but that’s OK. Friends have not been a good thing for me. Either they betray you or you betray them – or they steal your heart, without even knowing it, and refuse to give it back.

  I come off Facebook and go to help Dad set the table. I don’t want things to change. Despite Verity Holmes and Dad’s list and other people living their best lives with millions of friends, and others ending theirs because they can’t see a way forward, except into the path of a speeding train … I want things to stay as they are, as stagnant as the algae on Camden’s waterways. I want unwanted memories to be swept from my mind like stubborn weeds from the brickwork of the canal. I want stillness and calm, and for my blank heart to remain undisturbed.

  I wander into the kitchen to get the salt and pepper and I chuck a little prayer out to the un-listening universe.

  Can’t things just stay the same?

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘Primrose Hill,’ said Dad, over a breakfast of fruit and Greek yoghurt this morning.

  ‘What about it?’ I replied, suddenly studying the contents of my plate like I was a forensic scientist.

  ‘It’s the first place on my list,’ said Dad. ‘Shall we go this morning?’

  ‘What time?’ I muttered.

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘Ten? That’s a bit early.’

  ‘What else do you have planned?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Ten it is, then.’

  I couldn’t muster faking any enthusiasm. I couldn’t fake pretending I wanted to walk the sweltering fifteen minutes to Primrose Hill with my father on a Friday morning while he grunted and uttered monosyllabic complaints; while he asked me to describe what I could see and I told him that I could see posh shops and nice trees and people sitting outside cafés on Regent’s Park Road nursing coffees and pains au chocolat. I attempted to become his eyes, again, but I couldn’t fake enthusiasm for this miserable jaunt when I want to hide, safe and unseen, in the flat and not put myself out there for inspection from the world and reflection in faces more normal than mine.

  There’s a bloke staring at me now. He’s sitting on the bench closest to us at the top of Primrose Hill and staring at my face, despite its robust cover of make-up, like there’s something about it that doesn’t sit quite right with him. I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him or, worse, alert the other inhabitants of Primrose Hill this morning – with a yell, possibly – that yes, he may have a normal face, unlike mine, but he also has a monstrous beer belly and a terrible haircut. Maybe he doesn’t sit right with me.

  I am looking down on the London skyscape and Dad is sitting next to me and working his way through a packet of Fruit Polos, which he peels carefully from the wrapper – and swigging from a bottle of water. I have chosen a bench in dappled shade; others are already out enjoying the full sun. Despite the early hour, there are people sprawled on picnic blankets, half dressed; pretty girls in bikini tops and cut-off shorts; a man with his shirtsleeves and his trouser legs rolled up; clusters of mums with buggies and babies and bottles and snacks; and a homeless woman, spread-eagled on the grass, a sparse grey blanket over her, despite the heat, and two discarded bottles of beer by her feet.

  This morning a man on the radio said the heatwave is expected to go on for at least another three weeks.

  ‘How’s the view?’ Dad asks. We’ve been here about twenty minutes.

  ‘Good,’ I say.

  ‘You can still see the whole of London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘New elements to the skyline, though,’ he adds. ‘The Shard, the Gherkin …’

  ‘The Shard’s on your list,’ I say, hoping we don’t get that far.

  Dad nods. I feel guilty that he can’t see the view. I feel guilty that I don’t really want to be here and I don’t want to go to the other places on his list. For some, the thought of a father and daughter wandering round London together would be rather wonderful; charming, almost. For this father and daughter, it’s a challenge and a pain in the butt. At one point on our walk up here, Dad stumbled against me when he hit a bumpy paving stone and we both nearly staggered into the road like drunken rugby players on a pub crawl. And we’re not exactly having fun or anything, are we? We are anti-fun. We are fun repellents.

  We sit for a while, saying nothing. Eventually, Dad says, ‘You can breathe up here. Is it busy? Are there lots of people here? I can hear children.’

  ‘Yes, Dad, it’s quite busy.’ I describe as best I can the loungers and the sun-sprawlers and the gambolling toddlers.

  He nods. ‘People like to get out,’ he says. ‘In the summer. It can be so stifling indoors.’ Why do you never open the window, then? I think. ‘It’s good to get away from the day-to-day,’ he adds.

  I don’t agree with him about the day-to-day. I like the day-to-day. Doing nothing. Going nowhere. I like being in the flat so I can distract myself with the internet and social media and TV and music and movies. I don’t want to breathe and think too much, out in the open air, but, ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘We sit in that flat too much, you know, you and me,’ he continues. ‘We should force ourselves to go to every place on that list, even if it kills us.’

  It might well do, I think. ‘Of course, Dad,’ I say. ‘Whatever you want.’ Why isn’t he grumpy today? Why isn’t he saying, ‘Let’s go home now’? Is it simply because he wants to try again, like he said?

  He takes a big breath of non-stifling, fresh air. ‘This is quite nice,’ he adds. ‘Primrose Hill. Being amongst nature is nice.’

  ‘Do you want to hug a tree?’ I ask him.

  ‘No, I don’t want to hug a tree,’ he says. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  I don’t even want to be here.

  There’s a blast of music in front of us, as a woman in shorts and T-shirt – mid forties, recovering from the school run? – accidentally turns her radio up too high. She turns it back down and waves a quick apology to us, before flipping on to her back and putting her face in the full, scorching sun. A basking iguana.

  We carry on sitting for a bit. I look at the woman with the radio. She has wrinkles she has probably enjoyed gaining. She looks ordinary for her age. How I’d love to look ordinary.

  ‘Are you too hot?’ asks Dad.

  ‘No, you?’

  ‘No.’ He unscrews the nozzle of silver paper he’s twisted the Fruit Polos wrapper into and offers me one, which I take.

  ‘People,’ he says. ‘People always say the same things to me.’

  ‘Like what, Dad?’

  ‘Like,
“Bless you.” Like, “How long have you been like that?” “How many fingers am I holding up?” And they’re waggling their hand in front of my face – well, I presume that’s what they’re doing … That sort of stuff.’

  ‘People are bloody idiots.’

  ‘Or they talk too loudly, as though I’m deaf as well, or they say stupid things like, “You’re my hero.” Did people stare at us in Camden?’

  ‘All the time, Dad.’

  ‘Did you mind?’

  ‘No,’ I lie.

  ‘You can’t control other people,’ says Dad. ‘The only thing you have control over is yourself. How you react. How you deal with life.’

  We haven’t dealt with it very well, I think. I’ve never felt like I have any control. We have lived a life half lived. I don’t know what to say in response to Dad’s comment. All this time I’ve wanted to talk to Dad – about real things – and now I don’t know what to say.

  We both fall silent. I gaze out over the London skyline, mesmerized by the top of the Shard catching the sun, like King Arthur’s sword rising from the lake. I chomp noisily on my Fruit Polo, splintering it with my teeth, which I know will infuriate Dad as he likes to make his last, but he is pretending not to notice. The woman on the blanket flops on to her front again and fiddles with the dial on her radio, turning up the volume just enough so we get to endure Heart FM, and songs from the charts and a quiz where people have to guess sound effects. People come and people go, gathering up their belongings or plonking them down to create a little place for themselves, on this grassy hill that overlooks the whole of the city.

  We sit for another forty-five minutes then we make our way back down, and home.

  CHAPTER 10

  It’s a truth occasionally acknowledged that a father and a daughter who haven’t been out of the house for years, or even much spoken to each other in the last thirty, will not necessarily re-bond over mung bean and Madagascan vanilla pod vegan gluten-free ice-cream.

  ‘It’s artisan, Dad,’ I say. It’s the following Monday and we’re at Little Venice, place number two on Dad’s London list. We’ve been here for what feels like days, although it’s only 2 p.m. and we left the flat at twelve.

  ‘It’s revolting,’ says Dad.

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ The hipster with the enormous beard who just sold it to us from a hatch cut out of a tiny tin caravan can probably still hear us.

  ‘What would Nonna and Papa say at such an aberration?’ complains Dad, as we walk away. ‘Even the cone is inedible.’

  ‘They would say it’s not real ice cream,’ I say. ‘They would say, “Come to Papa Alberta’s if you wanta da real ice cream!”’

  ‘Yes, they would – but not in that terrible accent. And I asked for vanilla; heaven knows what this junk is!’

  ‘It’s not junk. It’s the opposite of junk. It’s super-healthy.’

  ‘It’s junk,’ says Dad. ‘Let me know when we pass a bloody bin.’

  It’s not going too well. The tube journey here was a nightmare; the crowds have been a nightmare. We have been jostled and bumped into; three people have tripped over Dad’s cane; one has trodden on my foot; and a small child scooted between us on a pair of Heelys (which I’m not sure are even a thing any more) as we walked, Dad holding on to my arm, as though we were some kind of human arch at a skate park. We’ve walked up and down and looked at the boats. We’ve had a lunch of falafels with tahini sauce from a market stall. We’ve trudged backwards and forwards along a row of identical white-stucco four-storey mansions while I’ve made a fist of describing them to Dad and he’s corrected me on my naming of several architectural features. Actually, that bit was all right. We were in the shade and there were fewer people gawping at us like constipated guppies.

  We’re now walking, with our ice creams, away from the hipster ice-cream seller in his shiny metallic food cart and towards an area of shade on the walkway adjacent to the canal. My scoops are wobbling precariously on their gluten-free cone. I remember, when I was a little girl, I was always dropping ice creams, often in the middle of the street, and Dad would never get cross with me but always buy me another one, and when I finished eating he would pull a big blue hanky from his trouser pocket and wipe my face laughingly with it.

  ‘Let’s sit here,’ I say, guiding Dad to a picnic table that is half in mottled sunlight and half in the shade. I take the shade and both ice creams, depositing them in a nearby bin.

  Dad sits down and exhales, stretching his legs in front of him. The waterway is busy this afternoon. Multicoloured houseboats are lined up along the edges of the canal. Dozens of them – I try not to think about houseboats, or friends with green scarves, or Polaroid pictures. Instead, I concentrate on a pleasure cruiser gliding down the centre, people in hats and sunglasses gazing out of its windows. Barges creep along the water, owners at their stern or bow looking as happy as people ever might. An approaching vessel startles by, sounding its horn. A woman sitting astride a barge that is coming the opposite way and heading languidly into its path shouts for a ‘Cliff’ and a Cliff appears from below deck with a rope in one hand and a beer in the other, and springs into action with what I believe to be a rudder and a do-or-die spirit. The two barges are saved from near collision with nary a cry of ‘Easy mate!’ and a couple of sharp intakes of breath between their owners.

  ‘Argy bargy?’ asks Dad.

  ‘Almost,’ I reply, and we are both in grave danger of cracking a smile.

  ‘It’s very busy,’ says Dad. ‘I came here a lot as a boy. And your mother and I used to walk here from Clerkenwell.’

  ‘Did you?’ I can’t imagine him and Mum walking round here, looking at the boats. I can’t imagine them doing anything I haven’t seen in photographic evidence or viewed through the prism of my own memory.

  ‘Yes. She liked it a lot here.’

  ‘Right.’ I don’t want to talk about her. He never usually does either. But maybe he is flicking through the photo album of his memory, selecting images he likes. Does he like it here? I wonder. He hasn’t really said. There has been a lot of grumbling and complaining. A lot of sighing. Still, we’re here. We’re out again. Without accident or incident, so far. Except revolting ice creams.

  Another barge sounds a jovial horn. A child shrieks with delight at an over-enthusiastic dog. And a dragonfly levitates into view and hovers over Dad’s thigh.

  ‘Oh, a dragonfly,’ I say.

  ‘A dragonfly?’ says Dad. ‘Describe it to me please, Prue.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Well, it’s blue and it has four wings and—’

  ‘What shape is it?’

  ‘It has a long thin body, like a pipe – it looks too long for its wings to ever be able to hold it up. The body is bright blue with black markings. Its wings are almost see-through. They have veins in them, like leaves.’ I’ve never looked this closely at a dragonfly before. It really is beautiful close up.

  ‘What else?’ Dad is frowning, like he is trying to imagine.

  ‘Well, it has a blue head like a motorbike helmet and a bulbous sort of blue body underneath and … that’s about it, really.’

  Dad listens and nods. The dragonfly hovers for a minute then helicopters off, back to the canal.

  ‘It’s gone now.’

  Dad nods again. ‘That was a good description. You did a lovely picture of a butterfly once,’ he says, ‘when you were a kid. Didn’t you win a prize for it?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I say. I liked art. As well as the benefits of it being a quiet activity in school – heads bent over desks, less bullying jibes – I liked the pencils and the charcoals and the pastels and the paints. I liked the way a brush wet with cobalt blue or vermillion red felt when it was stroked on to cartridge paper. How colour and lines transformed a blank paper into something new.

  ‘You were a talented kid. So was Angela. All that craft stuff.’

  ‘That was mainly her. All that terrible jewellery we made from those sets she got for Christmas,’ I say. ‘That weaving l
oom …’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Some of that stuff was good!’

  ‘Ha, hardly.’

  ‘Well, I thought so. Remember that necklace you made me wear for a week, with the purple diamonds on it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I can still remember the smell of the glue. How we pushed those plastic ‘jewels’ into their metal clasps and folded the tiny claws around them. It was a necklace we would have made for Mum, had she still been around, but we gave it to Dad and he accepted it with laughter and good grace. He even wore it on the school run.

  ‘Remember how every Christmas, you girls would go to Nonna and Papa’s a few weeks before Christmas and plough through her Grattan catalogue? Write huge long lists of all the things you wanted?’

  ‘Yes. Angela’s lists were always way longer than mine, though.’

  ‘She wanted a lot out of life.’

  ‘Still does.’

  We both smile.

  ‘Great kids,’ adds Dad, shaking his head.

  ‘Yeah, we both used to be all right,’ I said, and we were back then, when we were young – despite the abandonment, the sadness, the motherlessness … We all used to be a kind of all right.

  ‘And you’re not now?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’ Well, I do. Angela is both remote and imperious and I am a damaged soul, aren’t I? An ugly adult, no longer able to hide behind whatever cuteness of childhood I could once muster. A flattened survivor of things I hadn’t asked for. A willing and stupid victim of unrequited and unreturned love, with a cupid’s arrow still sticking out of her back. Someone who is guilty of things both big and small.

  I’m being dramatic, I know. It’s a gift.

  ‘You should take up art again,’ says Dad. ‘You were good at it.’