No. 4 Imperial Lane

by Jonathan Weisman

  Phone calls to the States were out of the question. My parents had been sending updates on thin, crinkly aerograms that would inevitably tear around the edges as I struggled to get them open. Their contents were like messages beamed to me on radio waves from distant galaxies. “We’ve installed a new, self-cleaning pump in the pool,” my mother wrote. “Dad is horrified at the price but thrilled at how well it works. Now all we have to do is fish out the leaves after a storm.”

  “Your brother is taking his LSATs. He’s looking at law schools and is leaning toward the University of North Carolina. Your father has fallen in love with the idea of UNC basketball games. He hates Duke as much as he hates the Yankees. Your brother says law school isn’t about basketball.”

  I couldn’t share any of this with Maggie. I could imagine the scorn she would heap. She’d mock the pool cleaner for sure. The worst part was, I couldn’t mock back. For all their affectations, the students of Buxton Road had made it through their O levels, their A levels, scored grants from their government and secured a place at a university. Not Oxbridge, but Sussex, which was still pretty damned good. That showed infinitely more ambition and resourcefulness than most of the white, suburban kids I knew, who had gone on as a matter of course to higher education, be it Georgetown or Georgia Southern.

  When I was at Maggie’s, I’d lay my head in her lap, moderately stoned, and feel her fingers in my hair. She had a double futon on the floor, very innovative for the times. Her housemates had old mattresses. Her turntable was some strange Japanese brand I had never seen. It stood up on its side, so the records spun perpendicularly to the table. They spun invariably one of the four pillars of her spiritual existence: Julian Cope, New Order, the Cure, or the Cocteau Twins.

  Maggie had taken it upon herself to educate me on musical taste. She made me cassettes, one after another, genre mixes but also the most important songs of the most important artists in her library. Her innovation was the tape case cover; she would paste a collage or find some paper print that captured a mood of, say, Dead Can Dance or the Teardrop Explodes, and then cover it with a sheet of translucent paper to complete the effect. It was a show of love, and the cassettes with their delicate cases piled up quickly.

  “What is that?” she gasped one night, walking in on me listening to Bono croon “Bad” from The Unforgettable Fire, my own face contorted with the emotions of the singer. It was as if she had caught me masturbating.

  “Isn’t he embarrassed,” she asked, her face twisted with scorn, “exerting himself like that?”

  If the house on Buxton Road felt far from No. 4 Imperial Lane, it felt in some ways farther from the university outside of town where I had spent my first year in the UK. In its apocalyptic state of utter disregard, Buxton Road was a refuge from the overbearing, comical politics of Sussex—politics, I must admit, I fell into almost immediately. It seemed like the thing to do, like backpacking at the University of Washington or skiing in Boulder.

  The University of Sussex was built at an unfortunate period in British architectural history, one of the first and best of the new universities, more accessible than Oxford or Cambridge, and more brick—a lot of brick, arranged in variations of the rectangle. The students lured to the south coast of the UK for the university’s arcane academic strengths gathered in the smaller brick corridors around Jacqueline Rose to hear her disquisitions on female sexual fantasy and the hauntings of Sylvia Plath. The brooding shoe gazers, attracted to the languor of Sussex’s social scene, would linger in their cramped flats to find meaning in the feedback reverberating from the Jesus and Mary Chain. The political groups, though, dominated, and at the student union, one of the larger brick blocks, they would argue endlessly, plotting the next assault on the Barclay’s Bank branch on campus for its neocolonial investments in South Africa, on the science labs to release whatever innocent animals were being tortured that day, on the visiting Tory politician, on the weekend foxhunt on the South Downs, or on the administration building for, well, administrating.

  The balkanization was enough to make Josip Tito proud. There was the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Spartacus Youth League, the International Committee Against Racism, and the Socialist Workers. The one thing they hated more than each other was the Labour Students, but that was understandable. While the communists plotted revolution, the Labour Students—scions of progressive London—had more important aims for their disruptions. They were venturing into Politics earnestly, not as a passion but as a career, not as a cause but as a job in Parliament, maybe a seat in the House of Commons someday. For the more committed leftists, job Number One was to convince the Labour Students how ridiculous they were and what a wanker the current Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, was.

  The lovely Labour Students couldn’t care less. They laughed and tossed their hair and were all reasonable, once they had crawled out of the beds they shared, and since they were popular and numerous, they’d invariably win. It was galling.

  I fell in briefly with a Revolutionary Communist, Mary Brewster. She was a flatmate of mine, and I suppose that’s why I got into the revolutionary politics that infested Sussex. As I fraternized with known or professed communists, I became aware of my own Americanness. I would show up to meetings, talk gamely of the manifest injustices of capitalism, just two years before the truly manifest collapse of communism, and crash in some dingy flat for the weekend in the East End of London. I even spent a long four days in Manchester that November for a conference on the Irish Problem.

  “You cannot be truly committed to revolution in the UK till you’ve taken a side on the Ireland question,” the main speaker intoned in a church hall, his northern accent thick in his throat. Since he never said exactly which side we were supposed to be on, I was certain the Irish Republican Army had sown doubts even here. The Brighton bombing was one thing—targeting Tories. But the series of bombs in London had gone too far—and gummed up the traffic something dreadful.

  My relationship with Mary ended before winter break, and with it my flirtation with communism. I had a quick fling with a Labour Student who brought me back into the mainstream. Though an avid attender of the endless political discourses, Natalia Weston didn’t seem to care a lick about the discussion of the day or the politics of the era. She laughed a lot, whispered in the supple ears of her beautiful friends, and smiled this broad, toothy smile that soon became an infatuation of mine. Her buckteeth only added to her appeal. Otherwise she was perfection: long, wavy black hair that flowed down her back; creamy, light, impossibly smooth skin; legs and arms that glided through space like a dancer’s. She approached me as a curiosity, the American who kept showing up, and once her curiosity was satisfied, she told me flat out to leave her life.

  That was how I came to Maggie, a friend of a friend in a squat brick flat in Park Village, on the other side of campus. I knew her already. She made me laugh, was bright, interesting, had great taste in music and no politics whatsoever. She hated Thatcher, but at the University of Sussex, that went without saying. Otherwise, her opinions were distinctly unorthodox.

  Her friends, Big Steve, Little Steve, Astrid, and Suze, were mercifully removed from the Sussex I had known. What passed for conflict came when Little Steve nailed a baggy to the wall above the sink in his flat with a yellowy, waxy remnant and a note, “Who ate my cheese, you fucking bastards?”

  They welcomed me with no expectations, just as Maggie had that first night we made love.

  “You’re lovely,” she had said, her nose crinkling with her irrepressible smile. She held my hand in hers and softly kissed my fingers. I sunk into the bed sheets, my relief and gratitude immeasurable, and smiled.

  Now it was time to repay a few of those favors, to cheer up Little Steve and reconnect on a bit of a house outing. We were convinced Little Steve’s weeks in the hospital, marooned somewhere between the university and London, had to have dragged him down. Maggie had the idea of brightening him up with homemade hash truffles. “Big Steve’s got the hash. I c
an handle the truffles.”

  So that Saturday, freed from the Bromwells and No. 4, I joined in as we meticulously shaved Steve’s stash of Lebanese black tar into flakes to mix with Maggie’s chocolate confection. Then Maggie, Big Steve, Astrid, Suze, and I climbed aboard the London-bound local train, our candy offering tucked discreetly into a canvas bag.

  By Hassocks, we were getting a little nervous.

  “We don’t know the medications Little Steve is on,” Suzy said, her voice squeaking anxiously. “What if there’s a reaction?”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Big Steve said. “There’s not much hash in there. He’s probably on stronger opiates than this anyway.”

  “That’s the point,” Astrid rejoined. “What if he OD’s? What if we’re piling drugs upon drugs?”

  “Blimey, what if he OD’s?” Big Steve sniffed.

  The train rumbled on with us biting our lips. By Burgess Hill, we were sampling the wares, reasoning that maybe we should hold Little Steve’s portion down. By Wivelsfield, we’d figured we’d keep Little Steve to one truffle. By Haywards Heath, the truffles were gone.

  “We did the right thing,” Astrid said, with a little giggle. “Better to not take any chances. I’m sure Little Steve just wants company.”

  Maggie let out a huge laugh at that.

  Big Steve asked directions to the hospital, an easy walk. I was impressed by his initiative, since I was next to him shouting out, “Con-tsen-trat-sion Camp? Con-tsen-trat-sion Camp?” in a thick, ridiculous German accent. That was a faint echo of a trip I had taken the year before to the Austrian town of Mauthausen, where I arrived at sunset and gamely asked the locals with those two words and the same ludicrous accent which direction I should head to see where they had slaughtered my forefathers. Of course, none of my fellow stoners understood the reference. I barely did. Astrid and Suze were pretending to be zombies bumping into each other and stumbling into the gutter.

  “Take me to Pigeon Street,” Astrid cried out, which I think was another of her endless references to English cartoons that I had never seen. Suze mused she had read that the show was a vague reference to Pakistani immigrants.

  “Here are the people you could meet. Here are the people who would say, ‘Hello, good-bye, hello, good-bye, every dayyyyyyyyy,” the two scream-sang.

  “Wha’ about Seaman Stains and Master Bates?” Big Steve interjected.

  By the time we reached Little Steve’s bedside, the world seemed soft and pastel, a cloud of memories and possibilities all at once.

  “Company!” Astrid shouted, laughing uproariously.

  His leg was in a thick, primitive-looking plaster cast, elevated in a sling. His corona of rock star hair was plastered down against a greasy face drained of color. His reddened eyes looked miserable. Nothing could be funnier.

  “’Ey, ya li’l wanker, you look ’orrible. You gonna die on us?” Big Steve asked earnestly.

  “He’s not gonna die. He’s just gonna limp, poor little man,” Maggie scolded. “You poor, little, little man,” she cooed, touching his face.

  “Why don’t you give it a go, Mags, ri’ ’ere? We won’t look, promise,” Big Steve said.

  “You cad,” she said, laughing.

  “What is wrong with you people?” Little Steve demanded, as we ringed his bed, giggling.

  He looked at us intently. Then the muscles in his face relaxed with recognition.

  “Oh,” he sighed.

  We burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  Hours later, the buzz mellowing but far from gone, Suzy sat cross-legged, drinking a lemon squash in a living room more dingy than usual with the approaching exams. “That was a really rotten thing to do to Little Steve,” she said.

  “Better than plying him with hash and watching him go to code,” Big Steve said.

  “You can’t argue with that,” I offered helpfully.

  “Big Steve did,” Astrid said, shooting him a look. “Now I see you’ve come round to justify your appetite.”

  He got up and wandered toward the kitchen. He came back with two Newcastle Brown Ales in Britain’s standard, absurdly tall cans, one of which he tossed to me.

  After nearly two years in Britain, I still sipped my ales and bitters. How Brits put so much of the thick, yeasty liquid into their bellies I never figured out.

  “So what are you two gonna do when it’s time for David to go home?” Astrid asked, looking at Maggie and me. “You’re not just breaking it off, are you?”

  I gave Maggie a searching look. She shrugged. It dawned on me that she had been a little cool all day. We were too stoned for me to draw any conclusions, but I listened to her answer.

  “Dunno, really. Maybe I can earn some money this summer and join David in the States in August,” Maggie said without much conviction. “I’ve got a job lined up at Sainsbury’s in Leighton. I’ll be thinking of him every time I check through a courgette or cucumber. I’ll give them a little squeeze.”

  “You mean a gherkin,” Big Steve chimed in.

  “Funny, that,” I said.

  Big Steve’s head lolled to one side, his still-stoned eyes resting on my face. “I dunno, David. I really want you to be my friend, a real friend.”

  “I am your real friend.”

  “No, I wanna be close, but there’s somefing about you, somefing ya can’t break through.” He paused, his mind in thought.

  “You know, I once had this friend, my best friend from primary school back in Luton. One day we were up in my attic, high on hash, and you know what we did? We touched each other’s willies.”

  “Steve,” Maggie tittered. “Are you trying to shag David after all this time?”

  “No, no, nuffing like that,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not a hot grod, if that’s what you mean.” I swore I saw Maggie and Steve exchange quizzically hostile glances. I figured it was just one of those British exchanges that were beyond my comprehension. Big Steve got up, teetered on his black leather boots, then retreated to his room.

  I lay that night with Maggie on her bed, both of us on our sides, facing each other, our bedside arms sticking upward toward the wall, fingers entwined. She seemed a thousand miles away.

  “That was a fun day,” I said softly.

  “Hmm.” She was looking at some point over my head.

  We lay in silence for a long time. Julian Cope crooned quietly on her funny vertical turntable. “The greatest imperfection is love, love, love, but I can’t keep the fire away.”

  “I’m tired, David. Could we just go to sleep?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  I kissed her on the forehead. She smiled, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. I watched her for a few minutes. Then I headed home, to No. 4 Imperial Lane.

  Sitting alone in the kitchen the next morning, I realized this was my world now, tiny and drawing in. Haversham had come around the day before to cart off a weathered, five-drawered dresser on finely bowed legs. The base above the legs flared outward with three smaller, oddly shaped drawers forming an arch over a patterned fringe cut in the mahogany.

  “I liked that dresser,” I told Elizabeth when she informed me of the latest sale. She smoked a cigarette impassively. “I liked those weird drawers at the bottom, and the bowed legs.”

  “Cabriole legs. It was a highboy.” She didn’t look up. Her Silk Cut bobbed dangerously in her lips. “It’ll take some work, but I’m sure Haversham will get ten thousand quid once he’s done. The dentil cornice is quite fine, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen slipper feet on a piece like that.”

  “A highboy,” I repeated dumbly.

  “Yes, a highboy,” she said absently as she left me alone.

  Highboy. I mouthed the word as I ate Weetabix for breakfast. The buzzer jolted me from my depression like an electric shock. I glanced at the oven clock—just past ten thirty. I went to Hans.

  “Oh, David, I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

  “You didn’t, Hans. What’s up?”

  “I haven’t seen you
r Maggie around lately.”

  “Studying. She studies a lot these days.”

  “Good for her. My taxes are sending her to university, you know.”

  “Hans, really, I think you’re a drain on the government, not a supplier.”

  “Well, yes, David, at present, but you have to look at the totality of the Bromwell existence, not just its closing chapter.”

  Dear Bet,

  Or should I say Mrs. Goncalves? Mrs. Joao Goncalves, better still. How on earth do you pronounce his name?

  Well, little sister, you do have a way of breaking news. I have always said it is best not to stray too far from home. Activity tends to cause trouble, whether you’re looking for it or not. I for one am avoiding both at all cost, activity and trouble.

  Despite my inefforts, I suppose I have some minor news for you. Nothing so dramatic as your own. Don’t worry. Her name is Segolaine Chouinard, and she appears to be sharing my bed. In one of those rare forays beyond the alleys of my corner of the Rive Gauche, I found myself at a nightclub where Miss Chouinard was, let’s say, dancing. Wasn’t wearing very much, to tell you the truth.

  We talked. She danced. I shuffled. I suppose I’ve taken her in, saved her from the occasional forays she was making into the oldest profession on the planet. I know, hardly a doctor trying to save Africa and Empire, one African at a time. But she is soft. She dances well, and she acts like she likes me.

  Simon’s father has procured us a nice flat here, all odd angles, loose floorboards and draughty windows. It is tucked away enough to avoid those dreadfully dull student protesters and striking workers. Really, sometimes I think Paris perused the oddities of the ’60s and acquired only the most earnest of offerings, Segolaine excepted. Simon is doing his level best to extract as many creature comforts as he can from the old man. We eat well. I’m growing fond of cooking. If I ever see you again, I’ll filet and truss a duck for you and broil it in my orange sauce. Remind me some day to tell you the exotica I’ve learned about, especially the various, seemingly inedible parts of the pig, and I am not speaking of le pied de cochon, mind you.