by Helen Harris
Sylvia could not believe her ears. She had brought a library book with her to the park – not that she was really up to reading yet – and she held it open on her knees and every now and then she turned the page to give the impression she was reading but she was actually simultaneously riveted and revolted by the girls’ conversation.
They were comparing the attractions of various men of their acquaintance, maybe colleagues at work.
“Well, I think he’s fit,” said Girl One. “And he’s got a lovely bum too.”
“Yuk,” Girl Two replied loudly. “I’d never go with him. Have you seen his teeth?”
“What’s wrong with his teeth?” Girl One asked, indignantly.
Girl Two shuddered. “They’re all in the wrong place and he don’t clean them that often either.”
“You mean he’s got bad breath?” asked Girl One. “You been that close?”
“No-oh!” exclaimed Girl Two. “I wouldn’t. I told you; kiss him and I’d be gagging. You don’t need to get that close to notice.”
Girl Three, who had lain quietly up to this point, piped up, “The one I fancy is Mark.”
“He don’t half fancy hisself,” Girl One replied quickly.
“Yeah,” added Girl Two. “He’s so up himself.”
After a moment, Girl Three said proudly, “He’s asked me out.”
Her companions both sat up and screeched. “Oh-my-God! Shut up! Are you going to go?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“’Cos you know what’ll happen, that’s why,” said Girl Two menacingly. “You remember him and Zara?”
“Zara’s a slag,” said Girl Three.
“Well, if you don’t mind everyone hearing afterwards how rubbish you were in bed and what your boobs look like close-up,” Girl One jeered. “That’s what he did to Zara. That’s why she left.”
Girl Three was silent for a moment. Then she answered, “I’m not Zara.”
“No,” Girl Two told her loyally, “You’re not. But still. I wouldn’t go with him, no way.”
“Ooh yes, you would,” Girl Three said sharply. “If you was asked.”
A sulky silence followed this exchange until Girl One, who seemed to be the ringleader, exclaimed, “I’m dying for an i c. Anyone come with me to get one?”
Girl Two sat up. “I’ll come with you.”
They both got up, put on some – but not enough – of their clothes and walked towards the cafe, leaving Girl Two alone on the grass, her legs splayed, beginning to burn.
Sylvia’s gaze wandered. Nearby lay a couple of indeterminate colour and origin; Sylvia supposed they were what she had recently been told to call “mixed race”.
Jeremy and Smita had had a go at her one Sunday lunchtime on account of her outdated vocabulary on this topic. It was funny though; Jeremy had been far more exercised on the subject than Smita. Bossily, they had banned from Sylvia’s vocabulary a number of perfectly harmless expressions which she and Roger had used unthinkingly for years: “coloured”, “dusky”, “swarthy”, “touch of the tar brush” and so on. Instead, they instructed her prissily, there was a new set of approved terms for all the different shades of humanity and her old-fashioned vocabulary had apparently become deeply offensive. There were also new names for people who were handicapped and an absurd complicated one which she couldn’t remember right now for people who were backward.
Sylvia had found the whole thing frankly ridiculous and had said so. Smita had shrugged but Jeremy had got very red in the face and told her if she wasn’t careful, she would end up being called a racist. Sylvia was outraged and she had told Jeremy that in that case he had better make a “Colour by Numbers” chart for her with all the right names for the right shades since otherwise she would never be able to remember such nonsense. She hadn’t meant to upset him of course but afterwards he had got into one of his states and had barely spoken to her for the rest of her visit.
The couple on the grass, whom before Jeremy and Smita’s lecture Sylvia would probably have called “café au lait”, shocked her even more than the plump girls. They appeared to be at an advanced stage of foreplay; lying almost on top of one another in full view of all the people including a number of small children. The man had his hand inside the young woman’s blouse and, even worse, it seemed to Sylvia, the young woman had her hand inside the young man’s trousers. They were undulating embarrassingly. Sylvia looked away. But all across the lawn similar scenes were being played out, indifferently interspersed with family groups, fat mothers with fat children – when had everyone put on so much weight? – and here and there a solitary oddbod like herself gawping at the spectacle. A few outsized pigeons, approximately the size of small hens, waddled here and there among the people, pecking indiscriminately at their litter.
Suddenly, Sylvia felt disgusted. Thank goodness she would have to leave soon anyway; it was nearly time for her tea with Mrs Rosenkranz. As she stood up, Cynthia’s letter, which she was using as a bookmark, fell out onto the ground. She stooped to pick it up and as she stood straight again, her tiredness suddenly overwhelmed her and the letter, ridiculously, seemed to weigh a ton. She sat back down heavily. She shouldn’t of course, it would only upset her, but she felt compelled to re-read the letter for the umpteenth time, making herself endure the lash of Cynthia’s tongue all over again like rubbing salt into an open wound.
“Dear Syl,” it read in Cynthia’s furious jagged handwriting. “I don’t know how you expect me to feel frankly. You move back to London without informing me or consulting me. You wait almost Three Months to deign to tell me that you are here. Then you invite me to come up to London for Lunch?! Yet again, your arrogance takes my breath away. Or rather, it would if I were at all surprised by it. Coming as it does, after years of such abusive behaviour, of course it doesn’t surprise me one bit. But let me tell you, I won’t be coming up to London, not for lunch or dinner or breakfast for that matter either and here is the reason why; I made a major effort when your husband died. You may not have noticed but I did. Putting aside my own feelings towards Roger, I dropped everything and prepared to fly out to Dubai, a place which, as you know, does not agree with me, so as to be with you in your Hour of Need. But just as I was about to leave the house – in fact I had already made arrangements for a neighbour to feed the cat – I received a curt phone call from Jeremy telling me in the coldest of terms that I was Not Wanted. You chose to interpret my absence at Roger’s funeral as a slap in the face but, in fact, although a slap in the face would have been perfectly justified, the Truth of the Matter is that I was kept away by illness (a flare-up of trigeminal neuralgia) and had to stay at home on Doctor’s Orders. My letter of condolences (sent 7.2.04) went unanswered. I have heard nothing from you since until I received your bizarre and wounding letter last week, informing me tersely that you are now living temporarily in Kensington, awaiting the birth of your first grandchild. Frankly, I do not know what you want of me Syl. You reject me cruelly Time and Time Again and then you expect me to come running when it suits you. Well, no, Syl, I’m not playing. If you sincerely want to see me and let Bygones be Bygones, which I doubt, then you will have to come down to Lewes and visit me. You have never been to see me here although I have been living in Lewes as a well-respected member of the Artists’ Colony for more than twenty years now, exhibiting my work annually and regularly receiving favourable reviews in a number of prestigious art periodicals. I realise that Roger no doubt preferred the fleshpots of the metropolis to Lewes and that probably made it difficult for you to come. But you have no excuses now and I shall expect to see you here before the summer is out. Otherwise you may as well consider all communication between us At an End. As ever, Cyn.”
Sylvia was drenched in sweat. She felt all trembly too and on the verge of tears. Why did things always seem to go wrong between her and those closest to her? It wasn’t only Cynthia although Cynthia was, everyone agreed, quite uniquely troublesome. It was also Jeremy, Smita, it used to happen all the ti
me with her own mother and her own mother-in-law. Why even with Roger there had been crossed wires and fallings-out. Never for long though and, now that Roger was gone, she preferred not to think about their bad patches but to concentrate steadfastly on the happy times. What was the matter with her that she couldn’t seem to communicate smoothly with those around her? Why did life have to be like this?
Shakily, Sylvia gathered up her bits and pieces and set off again. Thank goodness for old Mrs Rosenkranz who was so easy to talk to.
As Sylvia walked towards the gates onto Kensington High Street through the lower reaches of the park, she passed a young Indian woman pushing a baby in a pram. With a vivid spurt of happiness, Sylvia remembered her grandson-to-be. She had not thought about him for at least an hour. Impetuously, she stopped and blurted out to the startled young mother: “Oh, may I take a look at him? My daughter-in-law’s Indian too and she’s expecting her first baby in just a few weeks.”
The young woman looked taken aback. Grudgingly, she stopped and let Sylvia peer beneath the lightweight crocheted blanket which was shading the baby from the sun. “It’s a girl,” the young woman said sullenly. “Her name is Daisy.”
“Oh,” Sylvia said brightly. “Not an Indian name?”
The young woman frowned. “Why on earth would I give her an Indian name? She’s going to live her life here, isn’t she, not in India.”
Sylvia beamed at her conciliatingly to make up for what seemed to be yet another inexplicable faux pas. “It’s a very pretty name,” she said gushingly. “And she’s lovely.”
As she carried on her way, she reflected that what she had just said was in fact not true; Daisy was a common or garden name and the baby wasn’t lovely at all. She was a very hirsute baby actually with a surprising quantity of thick black hair and beetle brows. She frowned just like her sullen mother.
For the umpteenth time, Sylvia tried unsuccessfully to imagine what her grandson would look like but somehow she couldn’t manage it; Jeremy’s face but Smita’s colour, Smita’s face but Jeremy’s colour, how would it work? Puzzling over this conundrum, she made her tired way back to Overmore Gardens. She thought of Smita and Jeremy lying on a beach in Sardinia, irresponsibly exposing the baby to the risks of air travel and gippy tummy. How very selfish they were. Well Smita of course only ever thought of Smita but surely Jeremy, who was in such a frightful tizz about the baby, should have known better. Smita had doubtless bullied him into going and he, spineless as he was, had given in to her. After all, it wasn’t as if they needed to get away to see the sun. Really, this heat was unnatural for England; she would need to have a bath before she went to see Mrs Rosenkranz.
Thinking about baths reminded her of toilets or rather their lamentable absence. The England she had left all those years ago had been plentifully supplied with public toilets where you could, literally, spend a penny. She remembered the ubiquitous reek of disinfectant, the worry that you might not have the right coin for the little brass box on the door, the occasional kindly soul who would in a principled way hold the door open for you as they left so you wouldn’t have to pay. What had happened to all the public toilets? What merciless bureaucracy had got rid of them all without a thought for those with weak bladders, especially older women who were prone to urge incontinence, for whom a dearth of toilets could have the most awful consequences? There was not a single toilet the whole length of Kensington High Street and hurrying in this heat was out of the question. She would just have to hope for the best.
Mrs Rosenkranz had invited Sylvia back to tea about a month after her first visit and then a fortnight after that and then, without anything apparently having been said, it had somehow turned into every Thursday. So Sylvia, still adrift in a bafflingly transformed country, now had two fixed points in her week: Sunday lunch with Jeremy and Smita and Thursday tea with Ruth Rosenkranz. To Sylvia’s surprise, she and the old lady seemed to be in some unfathomable way kindred spirits. What was simply astonishing was that Ruth Rosenkranz, whom Sylvia found so very interesting and different with her Continental background, seemed, incomprehensibly, to feel exactly the same way about Sylvia.
Sylvia was not used to being considered interesting. Every week, the old lady questioned her avidly about her life abroad. She was interested in every little detail and sometimes, frankly, in the strangest things. Hong Kong: how many of the Chinese spoke English and how many of the English spoke Chinese? (Not many.) Was it true that in the colonial past the British had put up signs forbidding entry to certain places expressly to the Chinese and dogs? Were any of the signs still to be seen? Did they keep them in museums as a shameful memory or had they all been destroyed? Delhi: could Sylvia please explain the Indian caste system? (Not really.) On what was it based exactly and what symbols did they use to identify those on the bottom rung, the untouchables? Did they have to wear anything in particular to mark them out? Mrs Rosenkranz had apparently never travelled much beyond Europe and she found Sylvia’s ex-pat experiences fascinating. Which was in a way a pity because Sylvia would have loved to ask her about the big unspoken gaps in her life story but she was so busy chattering away about trips to the silver market in Delhi where you bought jewellery by weight like meat or fish and the scandalous antics of the younger expats in Dubai that there was never any time. Sometimes Sylvia wondered if the old lady was doing it on purpose.
Sylvia had managed to establish that Mrs Rosenkranz had been born in Berlin which of course explained the trace of an accent. She had come to England in somewhat unclear circumstances in the late Thirties and then there was a long silent gap until the early Fifties when she was newly married to Mr Rosenkranz who, despite his name, came from Sheffield and they were living in Maida Vale. From this time on, she spoke relatively freely about her life until another blank period in the early Eighties when her daughter had got married and something to do with the marriage had upset her so deeply that she could not speak about it. Well, Sylvia could certainly identify with that.
Whatever topic they lighted on, they always had plenty to say. In fact, Imelda had taken to going out on Thursday afternoons and leaving Sylvia in charge of the tea which made it easier to let their hair down. Although of course the truth was that Sylvia was letting her hair down much more than Mrs Rosenkranz.
Lying in the bath before her visit, Sylvia recalled that last time they had talked a lot about her years in India. She had described her house in Lodhi Colony and her beautiful garden and a particularly happy excursion to Naini Tal. Mrs Rosenkranz had listened, apparently enchanted.
Next door, Roger began to hum tunelessly: tum-pom-pom, pom-teedee-pom. After three months in the flat, Sylvia no longer started when she heard him. She lay in the bath and listened wistfully as the water cooled refreshingly about her and she went downstairs on the dot of four, feeling curiously comforted.
Mrs Rosenkranz seemed in good spirits too, despite the heat which was oppressive in her stuffy flat. It struck Sylvia as she made the tea in the airless kitchen that she could perhaps wheel the old lady up to the park one day; it would be a slog but there was that ramp for the front steps and you could certainly get a wheelchair into the new black cabs. Maybe she should experiment with somewhere nearer at hand first? A vision came to mind of the two of them sitting in the roof gardens of Derry and Tom on a sunny day, listening to the sound of the fountains gently splashing and both enjoying a strawberry ice cream. Goodness, Sylvia hadn’t thought of the roof gardens for years but she could still see them ever so clearly; colonnades, flower beds and palm trees and that startling illusion of a Spanish summer holiday. She wondered if they were even still there. Well, she would have to find out and, if they were and not turned in the meantime into something monstrous, she would invite her new friend to come along with her to visit them. Excited by her idea, Sylvia added the teapot to Imelda’s perfectly prepared trolley and wheeled it into the sitting room.
Mrs Rosenkranz looked up at her brightly. “I have an invitation for you,” she said, smiling.
“Meaning?” asked Mrs Rosenkranz.
Sylvia beamed. “I have an invitation for you.”
“For me?” exclaimed Mrs Rosenkranz. “An invitation for me? But I can’t get up the stairs to your apartment, my dear, not unless you and Imelda carry me there.”
“It’s not to my flat,” Sylvia said quickly. “I’ve thought of somewhere much nicer. And with a lift too.”
Unfortunately, Mrs Rosenkranz had no idea whether the roof gardens were still there either but that didn’t stop the two of them reminiscing about the gardens at some length as they drank their tea and Mrs Rosenkranz said that if the gardens still existed, she would accept Sylvia’s invitation with the greatest pleasure.
Almost as an afterthought, towards the end of the afternoon, she said coyly to Sylvia, “I haven’t yet told you about my invitation for you.”
Sylvia smiled politely. What could an eighty-something year old offer to rival Derry and Tom?
The old lady announced, “Siggy, my little brother, is coming from Northwood to visit me. Not this coming Sunday, but the one after. Would you care to join us for lunch?”
Sylvia felt a bump of disappointment. “Oh,” she said. “I can’t.”
The old lady frowned. “Why not?”
“I have lunch with Jeremy and Smita every Sunday,” Sylvia said forlornly. “They’d never forgive me if I didn’t come.”
“Really?” exclaimed Mrs Rosenkranz. “Are you sure? Maybe they might enjoy a Sunday on their own for a change? Maybe your daughter-in-law might be glad not to have to cook for once in her condition?”
