Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Oh, Prue.’ He is shaking his head. ‘I have friends. I realized a long time ago I didn’t want to live life on my own any more …’ Well, that’s evident, I think. He’s had women, he’s had girlfriends, of course he has … but at one time I was his only friend, I’m sure of it. It was just me and him, for a while. ‘But you were the best friend I ever had.’

  ‘Even more than David Somebody?’

  He looks puzzled, then laughs. ‘David Hopkins? My Geography buddy? Yes, even better than him. It’s great having you back in my life.’

  ‘Am I?’ I enquire. ‘Am I back in it?’ I am looking into his eyes even though I don’t want to. I am searching his face for answers when I’d rather be running away, away from here and him, across the immaculate lawns and over the walls of Kenwood House. To home and safety. To a place and time where I had never bumped into him again.

  ‘Would you like to be?’

  I place the screwed-up napkin on the table and watch it unfurl. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You suppose so?’

  Yes, I suppose so, I want to say. Yes, I suppose it’s OK for me to start seeing you – a lot – for you to keep turning up on my doorstep and appearing places, and bringing lost socks and forgotten memories and making me feel really terrible that you were the best friend I ever had but I had to let you go. Yes, I suppose I can stand it, but I can’t. Not really. When have I ever?

  I don’t say anything. Kemp hesitates for a moment, pushes a hand through his hair. ‘Does your dad still like Blondie?’

  ‘I guess so, why?’

  ‘They’re playing at the Roundhouse next Friday night. I’ve got a few comps – tickets – my mate works for the promoters. Would you like some?’

  I look at him. What is he asking me here? Is he going to this concert? Is this Kemp asking me to be in his life another day, on another trip out? Or is he just giving away tickets?

  ‘He used to really like them, didn’t he?’ he presses. ‘And it’s so close to you, I thought …’

  I look at him and all I can see is eyes and smile. He’s just giving away tickets, isn’t he? In a friendly gesture. As friends do.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ I say. I remember Dad’s photo, him and his mate, Jack Templeton, at the Roundhouse, where he saw Blondie before. In 1978. I think about how I have never been, despite all the events that have been held there, over the years, and all the times we have shut the window on the music that escaped from its conical slate roof. I wonder if Dad would like to go. Now we were on our walkabout streak. Now he was – unlike me – being brave.

  ‘How many would you like?’

  Kemp looks bemused at how long I’m taking to answer. I’m still thinking. I’m thinking about everything. Then I think of Salvi. If Dad and I go, I could take him as well, maybe. Lord knows I need him in my life more than ever if I’m back in Kemp’s, somehow. My distraction. Thank goodness for our upcoming lunch date at The Monastery on Sunday. Thank goodness for this man, Salvi – this charismatic, slightly bewildering man – who seems to like me. If Kemp’s at the concert, too, I will have Salvi as an emotional balustrade. ‘Three?’

  Kemp slightly raises one eyebrow. ‘Three? OK, done! Great. I’ll drop round with them at some point.’

  ‘OK, great, thank you.’

  We sit in silence for a while, after this rather random and unclear exchange. Eventually Ted and Annie get up from their table. Ted is a little wobbly on his feet and Annie has to steady him before they set off. They take each other’s hands and hold them fast as they walk through the café garden and out of sight, with Kemp and I both watching them go.

  ‘Prue, I—’

  ‘Oh look, Dad’s back.’

  Here he is with the nice chef woman and they are laughing at something and Dad has a great bundle of herbs in his left hand and she is carrying some sort of trug also full of leafy delights. She places Dad’s other hand on the back of his chair, and he navigates it to sit down.

  ‘Hope to see you again sometime,’ she says, touching him lightly on the arm.

  ‘Me too, Maria,’ says Dad genially.

  ‘Well, that was nice,’ he says to Kemp and me, after she has disappeared back into the café. ‘I’ve smelled about twenty-two different herbs and get to take some home for tonight’s dinner.’

  ‘And met your future wife,’ I add cheekily. ‘Maria.’

  ‘Ssh!’ Dad puts his finger to his lips. ‘She might hear you! And I haven’t met my future wife!’ Dad protests, but he is grinning, really grinning.

  ‘You never know,’ I laugh.

  We finish our tea and leave the café and the grounds of Kenwood House and wend our way to Hampstead tube station. Kemp gets off at Belsize Park, saying he needs to buy more film for his camera. He missed me, I puzzle, as he waves cheerily at our departing train from the platform. I don’t know why. He’s glad I’m back in his life. Do I want him to be back in mine? I honestly don’t know.

  When we get back to Chalk Farm, I tell Dad we need milk and some more bread. Dad asks for the key; he is tired and wants to go ahead. He can manage by himself while I go to the Stop n’ Shop.

  There’s a queue. Some bloke is arguing about cigarettes and alcohol. When I finally get to pay for my bread and milk, the same bloke is ranting to himself in the doorway, a bottle of vodka in his hand he is struggling to get open. He stares at me as I walk past, as though there’s something wrong with me he can’t quite fathom. I don’t hang around for him to find out. As I come out of the shop and turn the corner of Chalk Farm station’s apex, I hear music.

  It’s loud. Melodious. Familiar. It’s the Kinks, ‘Waterloo Sunset’. I look up, and the music is drifting down from the wide-open window of The Palladian. Dad has put it on. Dad must have lifted the creaky duck-egg-blue lid. Taken a record from a small stack on the little shelf underneath. Slipped it from its sleeve and placed it on the turntable. Felt for the edge of the record and lowered the needle. He must have felt the need for music. For melody. For the soft melancholic sound of Ray Davies’ voice and his lyrics about the sweet, sweet end to another London day. And for it to fill our flat and drift through the open window and down to the street below.

  CHAPTER 28

  There is a dress. A dress I saw last time I came to Loved Before. A dress so floaty and romantic I would never have dared buy it, even to keep at the back of my wardrobe, unworn, for some unknown and never-arriving event. It’s pale buttercup yellow, it has big white flowers on it, it is off-the-shoulder and mid-calf length and has ruffles and a low sexy wrap front – a bit English Rose meets Flamenco. It’s in my size, I know, because I’ve looked at the label. I think it might be perfect for my lunch with Salvi.

  It’s busy at the dress agency this morning. Excited women of various ages are rifling through the racks and flicking nimble fingers between the necks of clicky hangers. There are rainbows of colours on the rails, teasing novel slivers of beads and sequins and gossamer fabrics, catching the light. A lot of new stock has come in. I hope my dress is still here. I’ve let the silky rayon slip through my fingers. I’ve failed to imagine any scenario where I could wear this amazing, seductive, sublime miracle of a dress, but now I have one, I need to find it.

  I head to the rail. I can’t see it, but the rail is concertinaed with rippling waves of dresses of all colours. I rifle through … yes! There it is, three dresses from the end, dragged wall-wards by two more robust beauties so I couldn’t see it. I pull it out and wonder at its gorgeousness; I wonder where its previous owner wore it and how she could ever have said goodbye.

  As soon as I put it over my head and zip it up, in the tiny changing room, I just know. It swings when I twist in it. It makes my boobs look great. The colour lights up the decent side of my face. It’s perfect. I smile at myself, knowing this is the kind of romantic, summery froth of a dress that might just make Salvi want to rip it off with his teeth.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ says Maya, as I carry it like a precious child to the counter. She has escaped from t
he back room and is standing behind me. ‘Please tell me you’re getting it.’

  ‘I certainly am.’ I smile. I’m flushed, I know, from the over-warm changing room and the anticipation of me in this dress.

  ‘Another hot date? Same man?’

  ‘Yes, same man. We’re going for lunch on Sunday. To The Monastery.’

  ‘Ooh, fancy. Well, that’s exciting. Shoes?’

  ‘Shoes.’ Ah, I had nothing that would go with this dress. The wedges wouldn’t cut it. And Loved Before doesn’t sell shoes.

  ‘You’ll have to go into the West End,’ says Maya.

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Yes, treat yourself to something gorgeous! Harvey Nics, Selfridges … beautiful shoes.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say. I never go shopping in the West End.

  ‘That dress needs amazing shoes,’ says Maya. ‘Go to the West End and fall in love with some!’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, looking into her kind smiling face. ‘Maybe I will.’

  I step out into the sunshine and hop straight on a bus that’s heading to Oxford Circus. I head up to the top deck, sit about six rows back and look out of the window. London is sunny and sticky and in full-swing this morning. People are sauntering, jackets off, smiling at each other: things that don’t happen in the winter. The bus stops at traffic lights. Another pulls up alongside us, very close. I look down into the gap between the two buses and see a woman in an A-line denim skirt, sandals and an orange T-shirt squeeze through it, almost completely swivelled sideways, her tasselled beige bag tucked on her shoulder behind her. I watch her get on the other bus, through my viewfinder of thick, dusty dual glass. She looks like my mum, circa 1975 – pre-flight. Same shoulder-length hair, fashionable then, unfashionable now; that Farrah Fawcett flick. I watch her as she taps her Oyster card then she disappears and I see her reappear moments later on the top deck; she takes a seat halfway down, inches away from mine.

  I thought I saw my actual mum once, getting on a bus, not long after her final visitation. There was some tatty cycling shorts and a perm; a confidence that looked chemical. I was crossing Oxford Street to the giant Topshop on the corner, alone – when once I would have gone with Georgina, for trying-on sessions and some light coerced shoplifting – but instead I stepped on to the bus behind the woman I thought was my mother and followed her up the stairs to the top deck. It wasn’t her. She was sitting three rows from the back and when I got there, I realized she had the wrong nose, the wrong chin, the wrong face. She wasn’t my mum. I turned round and I got off the bus at the next stop, so angry with myself for thinking it was her, for that tiny part of my heart that let me down by hoping it was.

  ‘Sorry, love.’

  A big man with a small dog in his arms squeezes on to the seat next to me. I budge up. The woman on the other bus, even closer to me now, through the glass, is also nothing like my mother. Nothing at all. The man next to me shifts in his seat. He smells like bananas. The dog stares at me, doleful and suspicious.

  Kemp says he misses me, but the fact that I don’t miss my mum was another thing I told him, another black spot on my soul that I helpfully pointed out for his perusal. Another reason I could never expect him to be more than my friend. That’s not normal, right? To not miss your mother? It hardly makes me someone to get romantically involved with. It makes me strange, off-kilter, someone to be suspicious of. Unlovely.

  I uttered my confession the night of the skiffle band, when I got way too drunk. It was just before I threw up in Kemp’s chemical toilet. Not long after, I think, I told him about Jonas, in Tenerife. Not all of it, but some of it, and I was so drunk I don’t know exactly what I said, and I have no recollection of his reaction. But I said something, and I never dared bring it up again and when he tried to, I shut him down. I shut him down as quickly as when he tried to take a photo of me once, sitting at the tiny table in his houseboat, eating late-night sour cream-and-onion Pringles. His view of me in real life was bad enough; I didn’t want it recorded – for him to witness my face and all that lay behind it when I wasn’t even with him.

  All these confessions were black marks against me. Cherry, how I felt about my mother, Jonas … They were my bad deeds, my unnatural thoughts, my shame and my errors in judgement. They were the dark and ugly waters of my past. The reasons – more reasons – that he could never love me. And I never even told him about Finsbury Park, where the black deeds all started, where I received my tainting, as a fourteen-year-old girl; where what happened to me became more indelible than my birthmark, more difficult to hide, more impossible to pretend it isn’t still here.

  The bus belches me out on to the street at Knightsbridge. I don’t go to Selfridges or Harvey Nics; I don’t have that much courage. Instead, I head into Zara, and I’m intimidated as soon as I’m through the doors. They are all here: the mirrors and the beautiful ones – customers, shop assistants – and it’s far too shiny and bright in here for me, so I keep my head down. I’m on a mission, after all. I walk past the line of changing cubicles to get to the shoe section – trying not to think about all the beautiful young girls, like dolls in boxes, inside them. The shoes twinkle under diamond lights and it doesn’t take me long to find the perfect pair: pale gold, strappy sandals, high.

  ‘They’re stunning,’ says a leggy brunette, all of about eighteen, with perfect skin, who is head-tilting at a pair of silver wedges. ‘You should defo try those on.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. And when I do, sitting next to this ethereal creature on a faux-leather footstool and feeling like an absolute gargoyle, I smile. These are my Cinderella shoes. I have my Cinderella dress. I can be that girl. That woman. That woman who is going on a third date, ready to blow Salvi’s mind. Gargoyle can scrub up, I think, with a little confidence and the right attitude. All you have to do is put it on.

  When I let myself into the flat, I am surprised to see Ryan sitting in my chair talking to Dad.

  ‘Hello, Ryan,’ I say, failing to keep that surprise from my voice.

  ‘Hi, Prue.’ Ryan has grown a little bum-fluff moustache since I last saw him. He has an open file on his lap and is holding a biro. Taking notes.

  ‘You answered the door?’ I ask Dad.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not knowing who it was?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  He’s saying ‘yes’ again, I think. He’s opening the door to himself and other people. I’ve said ‘yes’ too, though, haven’t I? I’ve said yes to new shoes and Salvi. I can take opportunities. The ones that I want to.

  I go and put my handbag on the console table by the window. I start to unpack my bags. I want to describe my purchase to Dad. Talk about my new shoes. Talk about what it was like being in the West End …

  Dad coughs. ‘If you don’t mind, we’re rather busy here. Ryan’s come for a bit more information on Leslie Green.’

  ‘Wow, OK. Well, great.’ I collect my bags up again. ‘Kemp didn’t come this time?’

  ‘He knocked with me,’ says Ryan. ‘Now he’s gone to a disused print works.’

  ‘Of course he has.’

  ‘Your dad makes amazing pasta.’ He gestures at an empty plate to the right of him.

  ‘I know. Doesn’t he just?’

  Dad coughs again.

  ‘Well, have fun!’ I say. I know when I’m not wanted. Ryan sits in my chair like Goldilocks and I am a grumpy bear – baby bear, probably – exiled to my bedroom by my own father. But, as I throw my bags on my bed and close the door, I am smiling. Dad has opened the door wide. Dad has let someone in. Dad has played music and now he is sitting with Ryan and talking about architecture. He’s come a long way.

  CHAPTER 29

  ‘You look lovely.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  It’s nowhere near two o’clock. It’s Sunday. I’ve already got the dress on and the man seeing me in all its buttercup, Flamenco glory is not Salvi but Kemp, who is at the door brandishing three Blondie tickets in his hand. I’ve been ready since eleven. M
y make-up is done. I’ve just been waiting for the clock to tick round.

  ‘Three tickets,’ Kemp says, holding them out for me to take. ‘You off out again? You and Vince?’

  ‘No. Well, I’m going out. Not Dad. I’m going out for lunch.’

  ‘Oh, anywhere nice?’

  ‘The Monastery, at the Embankment?’

  ‘Yes, I know it, interesting place.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you’ve been burrowing around underneath it, sniffing at old habits or something.’

  ‘Old habits die hard … Ha, no. Not yet, at any rate. Hot date?’ he asks, eyebrows slightly raised.

  ‘Well, it’s a date,’ I say. ‘The temperature is yet to be determined.’

  ‘I see. What time are you going?’

  ‘Not until two.’

  ‘Two o’clock?’

  ‘Yes, two o’clock …’

  ‘That’s late.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. OK.’ He shuffles on to another foot. ‘Look, do you fancy a quick drink before then, with me?’

  ‘A drink? What for?’

  ‘To catch up properly.’

  Haven’t we caught up enough? I think. You’ve been round the flat, I’ve had tea and cake with you, you’ve brought me back a sock, you’ve said ridiculous things like you miss me …

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, go on.’

  Kemp has an almost pleading look on his face. Childlike. Plaintive, with that ever-present touch of mischief. Do I want him in my life again? Do I want him as a friend? He was a very good one, when I wasn’t secretly lusting after him, in the moonlight. And I have a man in my life now – in the romantic sense – so I don’t need to be yearning for Kemp to fulfil that role. I’m over all that now, aren’t I? I have to be. I need to be. Perhaps I need a friend, too. Perhaps it would be nice.

  And I’m nervous.

  And I have time to kill.

  And a drink would be good.