As Time Goes By

by Hilary Bailey

  Polly, now sitting at an old Remington portable she had picked up for five pounds in Portobello market twenty years earlier, smoked one of the bitter cheroots she had bought to put herself in the mood and heard familiar sounds boding no good, first the doorbell, then the voices, then more voices raised in agitation, then, worst of all, another ring at the bell, meaning that the first party was being joined by someone, or others, who would probably add to the confusion. She heard Rufus crying, then another ring at the bell. She had only got to page 10, and the next day she had seven calls to make to collect items for the stall, another lot of leaflets to put out, the rates were unpaid, Christmas was in seventeen days’ time and there were only two more Fridays and Saturdays trading in the market before the holiday and she had to make as much money out of the stall as possible, just to get the tree, the Sony Walkman, the dump truck, the turkey.

  Feeling gaunt, drained, sapless, a child’s puppet kept going by levers connected to wires in her arms and legs, she left the room and leaned over the banisters on the landing. Below the hall looked like a public meeting where disparate people had come to discuss a common complaint. Harriet was crying, Pam and Sue were consoling her – all wore black, Sue’s blonde hair was spiked, Val, in a pink tracksuit with Rufus in her arms, had evidently joined in and was addressing the group rigorously, Max was folding up Rufus’s pushchair and trying to reply to something Joe Coverdale, wearing a thick-knit sweater and middle-aged jeans, was saying to him, while a pale pregnant woman holding the hand of a small child looked on, and seemed to be making efforts to get Coverdale to leave. Joe, who had come round to demonstrate his connections in the neighbourhood, would not go.

  Polly, seeing all this, looked round and tried to sneak back into the sitting-room. But Joe saw her, so did Pam; one shouted ‘Polly!’, the other ‘Mum!’

  ‘What’s happening here?’ Polly called down. The Coverdales were coming upstairs. Polly went into the room and fell on the sofa. They’d have to go, she thought.

  ‘I brought Caroline round to introduce her.’

  ‘This isn’t really the best possible moment,’ Polly told him. This phrase, code for a state of serious disorder, was received by Joe with an indulgent, ‘Well, I can see that,’ but Caroline, who was about thirty, with a pale bun and maternity dress which made her look like an earnest schoolgirl, captain of the Remove, showed some sense and said, ‘I wasn’t sure Sunday evening was the best time to call. We’ll go now – I’d love to see you one day, when you’ve more time.’

  Max came in and said, ‘Sorry to interrupt. Mum, we’d better stay possibly until after Christmas. The Council’s just started pulling asbestos out of all the flats. Even the workmen haven’t got proper protection. I’m getting on to the local paper and the councillors, but in the meanwhile we can’t stay there, especially with Rufus. I’m really sorry. I’ll look round for somewhere else –’

  Polly said, ‘Yes. Look on the bright side. Perhaps the asbestos will give the rats cancer.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Max declared.

  ‘I know. I know,’ his mother told him. ‘But I’m sorry, I’m in no position to join the protest committee. If you get some posters organised, I’ll put them in the window. You break it to Pam that she’ll have to go in with Sue. Sort out who gets that futon, but don’t involve me in Hirohito’s revenge.’

  ‘Already done,’ said Max. ‘Can I pinch the corner by the french windows downstairs? I’ve got to organise my thesis.’

  ‘Well, don’t expect me to mind Rufus a lot. I can’t. The situation’s grave here.’

  Caroline Coverdale, Polly was impressed to see, had stood up. She was looking startled, concealing it politely, and on her way. Polly felt that she was not the kind of neighbour Caroline Coverdale would want to know, anyway, nor would she be a neighbour much longer, a fact to which Coverdale referred as he, too, stood up, asking, ‘What’s the news on the sale?’

  ‘What?’ Max said. ‘Selling up?’

  ‘Got to,’ his mother told him.

  Max nodded philosophically. ‘You’ll get a good price these days anyway.’

  ‘Some friends of ours at UCLA are thinking of moving here,’ Joe persisted. ‘I said I was sure you wouldn’t mind if I put them in touch with you. You might be glad of some lovely fat dollars.’

  ‘Best if they ring the house agent,’ Max said.

  ‘You’re a writer?’ suggested Caroline Coverdale, seeking a respectable explanation for the collapse. It might be Bohemian disorder.

  ‘No, no,’ said Polly, standing up. ‘I’m just helping out a friend.’

  ‘Well then,’ Joe Coverdale said, adding to his wife, as if she’d kept him waiting, ‘Come on darling. We ought to be getting Sam to bed. I’m a sharing, caring parent,’ he told Polly quizzically.

  ‘Good,’ said Polly, showing her teeth like a chimpanzee.

  Caroline Coverdale said, ‘Goodbye. I expect we’ll meet soon, one way or another.’ She led out the child. Polly pulled Joe Coverdale back into the room and said in a fierce undertone, ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to see you again for a long, long time, if at all. I admire your act, but I know all about you. So fuck off.’

  ‘Caroline and I have no secrets –’ he began.

  ‘Clear off,’ said Polly, her voice getting louder.

  ‘Joe?’ came Caroline Coverdale’s enquiring voice from the stairs. Joe Coverdale was angry now, and all the angrier because his wife’s presence meant he couldn’t argue anyone into confessing their attitudes to him were a mistake. Looking perfectly calm he left the room. He spoke to his wife on the stairs, she replied. Before the front door closed Polly relit her bitter cheroot and flung herself on the sofa, raking her hair with her hands.

  ‘The bugger,’ she said. ‘The stinker. He comes dragging round here, without phoning, to see what’s going on, bringing his wife and child as if he was taking them to the pictures. While he’s here he starts trying to sell my house off to friends of his. My God – talk about bloody awful neighbours – and it’s not the first time. What the hell does he want to come back here for? He’s like What’s-his-name – Christie – this is his Rillington Place. What a nerve! What a little shocker!’

  ‘I wouldn’t let him upset you,’ remarked Max. ‘Listen – I’m sorry about staying.’

  ‘Don’t want asbestos in the family,’ said Polly. ‘We must have had everything else. Well – I’m going to make a cup of tea.’

  In the kitchen she said to Harriet, ‘I dare say your Dad feels even worse about this row than you do.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Polly, who had sometimes seen Geoffrey Lombard’s face as he went off to work or came back. He stooped a little and his briefcase, which had earlier on seemed a shiny badge signifying worth and status, now looked like a big stone he was forced to carry about with him.

  The next week was terrible. A summons arrived for £700 in rates, the gas was only not cut off thanks to a man from the Gas Board who said to her in a friendly way, as she stood on the step, ‘I suppose you’re denying me access.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I am,’ said Polly. He looked doubtful so she added more firmly, ‘Yes, I am definitely denying you access.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said. ‘But you’d better pay it, or it won’t be so easy the next time.’ He looked at his piece of paper, ‘£193,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in there, welding?’

  ‘Just living,’ she said. ‘It costs, these days.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ he said, turning round and going to find someone worse off than she was. In the meantime, the fridge was full of juice and jars of home-made babyfood and plates of things left over from meals Polly was planning to recycle to provide more meals, although she never found time to manage it. Even Margaret began to complain about the constant jacket potatoes, ‘It’s like living in a Spud-U-Like,’ she told Polly. Max took pity on them and started cooking at night, but he stuck to a regime in
volving expensive purchases of tofu, nuts, Vecon, vegetable pâté and vegetarian margarine from the health food shop. Polly helped to pay, moaning to Sue, ‘We’re not well off enough to be vegetarians,’ while Sue moaned back, ‘I need meat. There are scientific reasons why people need meat. I’ll have to take turns with Max or I’ll start biting people.’ From then on they had vegetarian meals and sausages or spaghetti bolognese alternately. Polly didn’t care. She was too nervous to eat. She just ate currant buns from the breadshop.

  Meanwhile, Arnold, Clancy’s friend, who had got her the scriptwriting job, phoned: ‘Jay Honeycutt’s a little bit uneasy –’ ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Polly told him. ‘Look – I’ve got my stall, my house is up for sale –’

  ‘If there are too many problems …’ he said warningly.

  ‘I’m telling you, I’m doing it.’

  ‘Well, for Christ’s sake, get some priorities worked out,’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What are priorities?’ she asked wildly. ‘It’s all priorities.’

  He concluded, ‘Polly, I don’t know where you’re coming from.’

  ‘Who cares where I’m coming from? Where am I going?’ she said and put the phone down.

  Rufus got bronchitis. Val was distracted. Moore-Biggs, the house agent, was pressing her hard for an answer for the client he had so luckily found less than an hour after he had looked round the house. Polly said, still believing the client was Alexander, ‘I’d like some other offers first.’ He sounded reluctant and she realised her house agent was Alexander’s man, charmed, bribed, or probably just so impressed he was doing his dirty work for nothing. At much the same time she had another letter from Alexander’s solicitor, restating Alexander’s claim that as the house was in his name also, he was entitled to a percentage of the sale. She went to the Law Centre, where they told her she would have to produce her accounts for several years back in order to get legal aid. Polly knew it would take her weeks to produce a sensible statement of her financial position, if she ever could. She imagined Alexander leading the hunt as it closed in on her.

  All the others in the house were on breaks from school, college or university. She didn’t notice they were worried about her and trying to help. To her it seemed she had assembled her entire family under the cracking roof at Elgin Crescent, where they would all be killed when it fell in.

  Clancy also rang up, sounding conciliatory. Polly spared him nothing. He said, ‘You need some help there.’ ‘I’ve got as much as I can handle,’ she told him bitterly. Margaret, doing some ironing, had fused the electricity. She couldn’t go on typing until Val had repaired it. It was nobody’s fault, but it was dark.

  A postcard arrived from Lady Kops, showing palm trees and wishing the family a happy Christmas.

  Finally, there came a call from the producer, Jason Honeycutt himself. She told him copies of the script were in the post to New York and California, but there was a postal strike in Britain, then sat up all night finishing it. She was on the last pages next morning when Margaret said her hamster had died. Polly said she wasn’t surprised. Margaret said she had asked Polly for money for the hamster’s bedding and Polly had said she’d give it to her but hadn’t and she thought the hamster had died of pneumonia. Polly said anyone with £15 a week pocket money ought to be able to save up and provide their hamster with a handmade pine bed, sprung mattress and a personal duvet. Margaret cried and said smart talk wouldn’t bring the hamster back to life. Polly felt ashamed of herself and went on typing. The ribbon on the typewriter faded as she hit the phrases. ‘But what about us?’ ‘We’ll always have Paris.’ ‘And I said I would never leave you. But I’ve got a job to do, too, and where I’m going you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of –’ Sod this, remarked Polly to herself. Who does he think he is, anyway? She changed the lines around, so Bogart said ‘But what about us?’ and Ingrid said ‘I’ve got a job to do. Where I’m going you can’t follow.’ She’d changed it all, but she didn’t care.

  She posted the scripts on the way to an old house in Kilburn where an elderly Irishman was getting rid of things belonging to his mother. In the dark hall, with its faded wallpaper and the smell of cats she gave him £100 in cash for items she could hardly see, pictures, crockery, old clothes, a tin box full of buttons, a load she thought would probably fetch only £100 when she sold it, but by now she was reeling with tiredness, afraid of the man’s hall, the darkness, the funny smell and of what might come out of the door on the left. She drove the van home, went upstairs and lay down. She slept, dreaming of old houses. She was being pursued. She woke, now afraid of herself, what she was doing, what she had become. She looked in the glass – she was gaunt, lined, her eyes stared back at herself in fright. Her hair, a bad mix of brown and red and grey, hung round her pale face like a lunatic’s. She thought, at least Clancy isn’t here to tell me what I look like. Was there any man in the world, when you were in a bad state, who wouldn’t find himself mentioning your broken nails, crow’s feet, lank hair, nervous, unsoothing manner? She sat down to drink a cup of tea in the, for once, empty kitchen. She looked out of the window and saw that the van had gone. Stolen. She felt panic, then the relief of knowing there was now nothing she could do. She couldn’t collect any more. She couldn’t even get what she had to the market. She couldn’t make any more effort. Two minutes later the relief had evaporated. She rang the police. She rang Julie Thompson to ask if her boyfriend Alan, who was a builder, would lend her his van over the weekend. This kind of thing gives you cancer, she thought. When Val came in carrying Rufus, who was coughing, she generously shared this idea with her. Val said, ‘Who knows? Maybe it’s what prevents it. Why don’t you go to bed, Polly? The script’s in the post. You can’t do any more without the van. I’ll take care of anything that crops up.’

  ‘Alan’s going to phone – the police might come and ask what was in the van –’

  ‘I can talk to Alan. I can talk to the police. Jot down what was in the van,’ Val replied. She put on the kettle for Rufus’s drink.

  It can hardly be said that, as she lay in bed, Polly Kops’s life suddenly flashed before her eyes. It was in the habit of passing before her eyes regularly, not in flashes but in long, slow-moving episodes which bored even her. Now she saw herself, young and energetic, at university on a river bank with friendly young men and women; then in Clancy’s arms, at night on a boat, moored at some steps by the Thames; in hospital, bearing her first child, with Clancy away with the band, his brain in flight from the reality. Then marriage to Alexander, the births of Pam and Sue, the night when her father had died falling off her own balcony – birth and death, scandal and outrage, this, that the other – it had worn her out, she thought. She was like some ship of the line, once trim and brightly painted, which had fought too many engagements. Now battered and patched she was just a hulk full of convicts now, moored and fog-bound off the Kent coast. Oh Christ, said Polly Kops to herself, look what it’s all come to. Just look. Then she fell into a long and dreamless sleep. Outside in the big gardens trees rattled and the black and white cat stepped on the frosty ground.

  I felt much better on Monday. Geoffrey had said it would be a nice idea to go to his uncle’s for Christmas. I’d phoned my mother and she’d been a bit upset and said Daddy would miss me too, but luckily my brother and his wife were coming over from Holland to join them. There was some prospect of the two of them going back with Rob and Liz at the New Year, which relieved my conscience and I must say, when I heard they were coming I felt even more grateful I wasn’t going to be there. The thought of Christmas with Liz going on and on about her terrible women’s art gallery in Amsterdam was absolutely awful. It isn’t as if she had to do it – with her private income and Rob’s salary they must have been twice as well off as Geoffrey and me. It gave me an idea, though, Liz being a vegetarian. I decided to go to see Dr Robertson and ask him to give me a prescription for an allergic condition which meant I had to cut out all dairy products in my die
t, that way I could evade half the heavy food at Geoffrey’s uncle’s and not put on any weight. With that I popped down to see the dreaded Julie. What a mess – dying flowers and toys everywhere, and I’m sure the place is damp. It made me cringe when I thought of the effect on the building. I’d spotted her boyfriend leaving so I just sat down and offered her £10,000 to get out. It was a bit risky, because of course I didn’t have all of it, but I knew even if Daddy wouldn’t let me have the rest Geoffrey could easily borrow it from the bank because having the whole house, instead of just part of it, would be a wonderful investment. I thought Julie’d be just a little bit pleased or grateful, but she just sat staring at me, with this child in a matted jumper on her knee, eating an apple, while the other watched the TV. Her skin was very dry. I noticed little lines round her eyes, although she’s only thirty. ‘But where could I go?’ she said. That staggered me. I’d offered her a very large sum of money, and she was asking me what to do with it, silly fool. I just said, ‘Well, that’s really for you to decide. But with all that in your pocket you’ll have plenty of choice.’

  The child who was watching the TV turned round and gave me a blank stare. ‘Wipe your nose,’ said Julie automatically. She looked blank. I could see she wasn’t concentrating. I talked for a bit then said, ‘Is it nice working for Jacquie Eberhardt?’ I’d happened to find out I was right, she did have a little job, cleaning for a friend of Cynthia Webber’s, who’s the chairperson of the garden committee. She told me one Saturday morning, when I mentioned my problem with Julie while we were on communal leaf-raking duty in the garden. It’s not a job I like, but it’s fun to meet the neighbours, and their friends, all kitted up in their wellies and so forth, with rakes. There are people like Sir Hugh Browne, from the Department of the Environment, and Roger Brabham the playwright, all lending a hand – anyway, now I knew Julie was getting social security and doing a job, and she knew I knew. I saw her flinch. She said, ‘Yes. I do occasionally. She’s a nice lady.’ I let a long silence go on, then I stood up and said, ‘I expect you’re busy. I’ll leave you to think it all over.’