Harriet had looked after the stall for three hours that afternoon, getting £35 for a lamp clearly marked £25 and shifting a nasty fur coat which had spent weeks lying in Polly’s back room like a sick animal. Pam and Sue had considered, obviously, that producing Harriet released them from any obligation, Val had an essay to write, Margaret had gone off at eleven o’clock to see an old lady in Bedford Square who had, she said, promised her something if she came back. She had not returned, which was worrying Polly. She began to pack up the stall. ‘Look, Mum!’ Margaret cried out. She was dragging up a tapestry Victorian nursing chair with one arm, while under the other she carried a small matching footstool. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she reported, ‘the old lady gave me some lunch. Then two conductors wouldn’t let me on to the bus with this lot. Finally one took pity on me – he said his brother dealt in old furniture.’
Polly stared at the chairs. ‘I’ve told you not to go into people’s houses,’ she said, realising the risk she was runing in sending a fourteen-year-old girl out to collect for her, even in daylight, in respectable areas. She must be mad.
‘I rang to tell you I was stopping to lunch,’ Margaret said. ‘I told Sue to come up and tell you only she was going out and she wouldn’t. Well – I wanted a hand back from somebody but all she said was she was late. So I said she’d better leave a note on the kitchen table. I wasn’t going to leave this lot behind, so I decided to get it here somehow. Course,’ she said, looking round disappointedly, ‘it’s too late now. Plus, of course, when I got on a bus there had to be a hold-up while the conductor had two drunks arrested. We were stopped in Ken High for a good half-hour waiting for the police. I couldn’t get off because of the chairs.’
‘I’ve turned my daughter into a totter,’ thought Polly. Then she remembered that at Margaret’s age she’d been serving in her mother’s sweet shop and couldn’t see why she expected her own daughter not to help out – she must have some post-war feeling that each generation would naturally improve itself in terms of status and education until in the end everyone in the country would be a brain surgeon.
‘You’ve got to promise me you won’t ever go into a stranger’s house and start accepting meals and God knows what,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if she was a nice old lady. I don’t care if it’s Mother Teresa. These things are antiques – they’re in perfectly good condition. I can’t understand it. I’ll have to check it’s all right. I don’t want the son or daughter coming down on me because I’ve robbed some old lady who doesn’t know what she’s doing –’
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Margaret, nearly as tall as Polly and extremely impatient, ‘you must think I’m barmy. You act as if I was nine. The old lady said she knew you, that’s why she was giving you the chairs. That’s why I was livid when Sue wouldn’t come up here with a message – it’s her granny, Lady Kops.’
‘Bedford Square,’ said Polly. ‘Of course – I never thought. That’s where they went to live, years ago.’ She said, ‘I wonder why she wanted to give me anything. She never liked me and we haven’t kept in touch. I’ll have to thank her. It’s very kind.’
Alexander’s mother had always thought Polly a disastrous wife for her only son and Polly had done little to impress her by having twin daughters six months after a register office wedding to which Alexander’s parents were invited at the last moment, and which had been attended by hundreds of people in jeans and kaftans, including an entire heavy metal band. She had not been any more impressed when Polly took up again with her cousin Clancy and bore him another child. The only compensation, from her point of view, was that this affair ended the marriage. Perhaps she had forgiven and forgotten, thought Polly.
‘She sent her best wishes,’ reported Margaret. Polly, imagining the items in the centre of her new shop, was profoundly grateful. She gave her daughter a fiver and said, ‘Thanks, Margaret. It was nice of you to get them back. Let’s put them in the van – I want to decide what to do with them. They’re too good for me really.’
‘Time you went up-market,’ Margaret said. ‘You can’t make any serious money this way.’
‘Marks and Spencer started with a market stall,’ Polly said.
‘Started, yes,’ said Margaret.
‘Come on,’ said Polly. ‘Consider this stage one. Tomorrow, Rome, Paris, New York and Dallas, Texas. One day, all this will be yours.’
‘I want to be a vet,’ said Margaret.
‘Let’s get the stuff into the van,’ said her mother.
All over the neighbourhood coloured lights and Christmas displays were going up in the shops. Women were carrying home bulging plastic bags through the darkness; they were queuing in the Post Office, pulling toddlers away from displays of toys and sweets, pushing wire baskets of groceries, crackers, boxes of chocolates up supermarket aisles.
Later she said to Kate, who had brought round a bottle of wine to escape from the excitement in her own home, ‘I think Adela Kops has had a change of heart – decided to treat Alexander’s wives and girlfriends like relations you have to try and get along with, instead of deadly rivals and personal enemies.’
‘People’s attitudes have had to change,’ said Kate, ‘with the rise in the divorce rate. Can’t go on any longer treating every broken marriage like Henry VIII’s, chewing over the bones, starting feuds in court, everybody blaming everybody to their dying day, and so forth. I suppose it’s getting institutionalised.’ Her tone indicated some regret that she was barred from this cheerful, barbaric party.
‘All right, as long as no one refers to the realities,’ said Polly. ‘Women bringing up their children in poverty and so forth. There’s a deep and profound silence about the fates of the first wife and her children. It’s all right as long as they go away and bury themselves silently on some Council estate on social security. It’s a bit too easy to pretend that every first wife’s got some way of earning a decent living, if she asks for money she’s just too lazy to go out to work – fact is, in any situation like this there are quite a lot of people who wish the woman and her children would go away and die decently, leaving Harry a respectable widower – nothing to explain and nothing to pay, flowers placed on the grave annually, respectful mentions of the departed in pubs and clubs. “Cholera, was it? Frightfully bad luck, old chap. We’re all so pleased you met Muriel.” Don’t envy us our customs too much, Kate – we call yours cruel and hypocritical, but the same can be said of ours. No one should join in the first place. That’s why I’m backing Val.’
‘Sue said Clancy’d left,’ said Kate.
‘And the whole neighbourhood failed to mention to me he was dealing in heroin,’ Polly said bitterly. ‘Did you know?’
‘Well, I’ve only been back a little while –’ said Kate.
‘So they sent a message to Heathrow saying if you wanted any stuff try No. 1, Elgin Crescent, and you didn’t let on either?’
‘Polly – I’d only just worked out you didn’t know –’
‘People must think I’m very strange –’ Polly said.
Kate said: ‘Polly – women do anything where men are concerned. You know that. You know why –’
‘I know. I know,’ said Polly. ‘But I must say it hurts to have people assuming you’ve got no feelings just because – oh well, never mind. Here’s to us all, then. Happy Christmas.’
Kate smiled. Her calm, pale face looked happy.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Polly said. ‘It isn’t as if you didn’t feel uncertain about everything. No one else round here looks like that. The poor are too poor and worried about how to get through the festival of commerce without money and all the kids asking for something else every day and they can’t get treatment on the National Health and they’re shutting down the old folks’ home, and the rich are just their usual malaise-full selves with their wives running away and a leaky roof in the holiday cottage and a nasty feeling somebody over there is doing better – what’s your secret?’
‘Satisfying work, reasonably all right children,
a regular income and the love of a good man,’ returned Kate.
‘Oh well –’ said Polly. ‘Oh well, never mind. Still – if we can get over Christmas – God, here he is.’
Betrousered legs and a briefcase were coming up the steps. The doorbell rang.
‘Who is it?’ asked Kate.
‘Moore-Biggs of Arbuthnot Sims, house agents,’ Polly told her. ‘Phase one of the sort-out – sell house.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ sighed Kate.
‘I won’t be far away,’ said Polly. As the doorbell sounded again she realised there was no one to answer it, so she went up herself. ‘Can you go round on your own?’ she asked the striped-shirted young man. ‘I think it all speaks for itself.’
Polly sat down again with Kate in the kitchen. ‘Now he’s banging on the water tank, now he’s found all the knickers under the bed, now he’s found Margaret’s old stuffed rabbit and he’s throwing it up against the wall in disgust, the stuffing’s coming out all over the place, he’s poking a pencil into the rotten floorboards on the landing at the top. It’s going through the wood like putty – Oh God, this place may not be much, but it’s my home. Why don’t they just buy the places themselves and then sell them to other people? The transaction is only just beginning. Now we’ll have to have an imaginative conversation about who might buy it. Then they’ll all start coming. It could go on till spring – people coming round just as the cat’s been sick.’
Now she saw a pair of big legs in dark stockings and practical shoes ascending the steps outside. The doorbell rang. She went upstairs to find Ruth Fevrier, Val’s mother, outside. She said, ‘Can I have a word?’ Polly said, ‘Of course,’ and knew it was not a social call. Ruth Fevrier had been furious when Val insisted on having the child and not marrying the father. Later, once Rufus was born, her attitude had softened but she was still unhappy about the situation and without the formal link of a wedding or a christening no relationship had been struck up between Polly and Ruth. Polly suspected that in addition Ruth Fevrier disliked the fact that her only grandson’s father was white, and so, naturally, was his other grandmother. Downstairs she introduced Kate to Ruth and added, ‘She’s backing me up while the house agent goes round. I can’t face him alone.’
Ruth Fevrier, sitting there looking tired, said, ‘That mean you’re selling up?’
‘I can’t afford it any more,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t earn enough. I should have hung on to my money when I had it. I don’t think my mother told me about all this – either she thought I’d never have any, or she’d never had any, or she was too socialistic to like to mention it.’
‘Don’t the children help you?’ asked Ruth.
‘They’ve got no money,’ said Polly. ‘They’re still studying. Anyway, it’d take a big income to keep this place going.’
‘And Mr Kops?’ asked Ruth.
‘Mrs Fevrier –’ Polly said, appealing to other women’s common sense and knowledge of the world.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she said. ‘I came to ask if you’d take in Val and the baby. That place, Pendennis Tower, she’s in, is horrible. One of the rooms is so damp. The rats are winning. People break into the flats all the time. She shouldn’t be there.’
‘I’d like to,’ Polly said. ‘Mind you, even if I weren’t selling up I think she’d tell me to mind my own business. She wants to be independent, and, horrible as that place is, I suppose she thinks at least it’s hers.’
‘She won’t come to me,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m worrying about the baby. He has a cold all the time. Even she can see that.’
‘God knows what the Council thinks it’s doing,’ said Polly. ‘Round here there’s soft Victorian lighting. Those estates are pitch black and full of rubbish.’
‘It’s the tenants – they don’t care,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ve pleaded with her. It’s no good. Your son should do something.’
‘He can’t afford to have her in Cambridge and she wouldn’t go anyway. She wants to finish this course she’s on. You can’t really blame her. You can’t blame him. You can’t blame her for being independent.’
‘I suppose that’s right,’ said Ruth Fevrier, not wanting to make a quarrel about Polly’s son or her daughter’s legendary independence. ‘But none of that will help if Rufus gets any more of these colds and bronchitises. A woman can’t afford to be too proud in this world.’
‘More’s the pity,’ agreed Polly. ‘Look – I didn’t want my son to have a child so young, before he’s got a proper job, and you certainly didn’t want Val tied down this way, but what’s done is done. I’ll talk to Max about it when he comes back for Christmas but he can’t tell Val what to do.’
Ruth Fevrier said much what she’d said when the row broke out about Val’s pregnancy. ‘If your son does something for Val, that’s a little bit better than nothing at all.’ Polly had the idea Ruth Fevrier saw men as a graceless, irresponsible lot, a barrel full of rotten apples where a woman was lucky to find a sound one.
‘If Rufus gets really sick,’ she said, ‘Val’ll have to give up this degree to look after him’
‘If it’s as bad as that,’ said Kate, ‘they can have a room in my house. It isn’t a room, more of a cupboard, but it’s dry and safe.’
‘Better than nothing,’ said Ruth. ‘She might go somewhere if it wasn’t with me or Polly.’
‘Tell her,’ said Kate.
‘Trouble is, she wants to stick it out with this Council tenancy,’ said Ruth. ‘Then when she’s got the degree she can transfer somewhere else.’
At this point Moore-Biggs, the house agent, tapped tentatively on the kitchen door and came in, looking intimidated by the group of women or, perhaps, merely staggered by the state of the house.
‘Well,’ said Polly, ‘what do you think? You can speak freely, we’re all involved.’
He coughed. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well – obviously we’d be delighted to put the house on the market –’
‘How much?’ asked Polly.
‘Obviously, a lot of attention is needed –’ he said.
‘That’s obvious,’ said Polly.
‘I think – I think we’d be looking for something in the region of £350,000, given the condition. I’ll discuss it with my colleagues and perhaps I could telephone you tomorrow –’
‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘Fine. How long do you think it’ll take to sell? I’m in a hurry.’
‘Impossible to say. It’s not a good time of year, of course, but if the right client comes along – it could take months or weeks.’
After he had gone Ruth Fevrier said, ‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘I owe a lot,’ said Polly. ‘And my ex-husband is getting ready to sue for a proportion. It’s pure meanness, but there you are. I want to get a little shop with living accommodation over the top. I can’t go far because of the children’s education, if you can call it that. I’d willingly include Val and Rufus but I can’t see there’d be enough room, unless I’m very lucky.’
‘Hullo,’ said Coverdale from the doorway. ‘Moore-Biggs let me in as he went out. We bought our house from him – pity, I like yours better but ours didn’t need anything doing to it, so we were able to move in immediately. I came round to see you yesterday,’ he told Kate, ‘but you were out. You must have changed your phone number.’
‘I did,’ said Kate, who had changed it years ago to avoid the pain of listening to her lover, Coverdale, saying he loved her and making excuses about his relationships with other women. She thought he might have remembered this. He was, however, the same old psychopath and showed no sign of recollection. ‘Siobhan’s grown up into a lovely girl,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the young Jacqueline Bisset.’
Polly quite enjoyed the expressionless face of Ruth Fevrier, turned to Coverdale, her eyes recognising the gone-to-seed plantation owner who has had the mother and now, without wondering who her father might be, is beginning to eye the daughter.
‘Caroline’s dying to get to know the neighbours,’ he told her. ‘
I was wondering if your lot, and yours,’ he said, turning to Polly, ‘would like to come round for lunch on Sunday.’
‘Not the way things are,’ said Polly.
‘I don’t think I can,’ said Kate.
Coverdale, who had not been welcomed or asked to sit down, and whose offer of hospitality had been refused unceremoniously, was no more prepared to remove himself without a bit of news than a child is prepared to leave a birthday party without a going-home present. ‘Where are you going after this?’ he asked Polly.
‘The Lebanon,’ she told him.
‘The Lebanon?’ he said, staring. As his mouth opened the phone rang.
‘Mrs Kops,’ said the voice of Moore-Biggs. ‘Quite amazingly I have an offer for your house from a client who rang just as I got back to the office. They’re prepared to go straight to the asking price. I’m sure you’ll want to consider – they’re prepared to go ahead immediately and I gather there are no problems over finance.’
‘They haven’t even looked at it,’ Polly said.
There was a slight pause before Moore-Biggs said, ‘They’re very keen to move into the area.’
‘Well, this is welcome news,’ said Polly, as she was meant to, ‘I’ll think it over carefully.’
‘Perhaps I could give you a ring tomorrow –’ he said. ‘I really think this is a good offer, but they do want a decision quickly.’
As Time Goes By Page 9
