Eleven Lines to Somewhere

by Alyson Rudd

  ‘Hey, he’s a nice bloke, is Ed,’ he said, ‘sounds a good plan to me.’

  Grace thought, for a second, she might start shaking. The room had suddenly become chilly as the sun disappeared behind a slow-moving thick grey cloud and the joy of being out to tea with her beloved offspring curdled into a meaningless gesture. She had wished for nothing more than for both of them to find happiness, to find love, and now that they were close, on the brink, she was full of trepidation, selfishness. Grace sat there, in her new ‘Dogs Welcome’ café, and wondered at her own character. I am, she concluded, too needy. This, I have to be curbing and quickly.

  ‘You OK, Mam?’ Hana said, blinking with alarm that she might have delivered the news too abruptly.

  Grace took her hand.

  ‘I’ll not sit here and lie to you, my darling,’ Grace said. ‘I am an old woman who doesn’t know how lucky she is to have children as wonderful as you two and I’ll miss you but they could pay me a million pounds and I wouldn’t ask you to stay here. I’ll just need a few days to adjust, that’s all it is.’

  She gazed out of the window at a lonely world.

  ‘I knew anyway, didn’t I just?’ she said. ‘It’s why I have Jarvis.’

  Neither Hana nor Ryan knew what to say. They wanted to point out that a far-from-old Grace was free, now Grandpa had gone, to do as she pleased when she pleased, but they were silently computing that most of what their mother might wish to do would entail one of them doing it with her. Grace had many acquaintances but no close friends. She was a mother bunny for whom the outside world was full of pain and so she had burrowed deep into family life.

  Hana had, many years ago, been in a field rampaging with rabbits and she had lain flat on her stomach to peer down a warren, hoping to see a Beatrix Potter world, to spy miniature beds and a tiny stove upon which was a pot of steaming carrot soup. She did not see these things but had tried so hard to and then dreamed so intently of them that if she was to be hooked up to a lie detector even now and asked if she had seen a rabbit in a pink-striped pinafore holding a rolling pin and answered that she had, then the detector would reveal that she was telling the truth. In the years after seeing her little girl peering down the rabbit hole, Grace had told her bedtime stories full of the fun had by the rabbit family as they hid from hungry foxes and cruel cats. At the time Hana had not spotted any parallels but the rabbit family she fell asleep imagining huddled by a little stove was, really, her family – a family under threat from the memories of a dead father and a little boy who would never grow up, a family who were different from other families because they had known tragedy and would rather not be asked questions that required sanitized answers.

  Grace did not want to say she had two children when she had three; Hana did not want to say she had one little brother when she had two; and Ryan did not want to say his father had passed away when he was child when in fact his father had chosen to be crushed by a truck, leaving behind some, but not all, of his children. Heart attack was the assumption, closely followed by cancer. Then came the notion that it might have been a terrible accident, a car crash or a fall from a ladder. Electrocution perhaps or drowning while on a family holiday on the Algarve. They had never been abroad as a family, not even before Ryan was born, and he recalled how cross he had become – after a friend’s mother had suggested the Algarve as a location for the tragedy – that he would never go on holiday with his father, never know if he would have taught him how to surf, raced him across the sand, placed him on his shoulders while they queued for an ice cream. Now, sat in the gleaming new café, he realized how carefully Grace had constructed their childhoods to compensate for the lack of a father; that maybe Grandpa was there so much until he was there all the time as a deliberate ploy to give the home a father figure, the smell of masculinity, a gruff voice, a cantankerous sense of humour leading, eventually, to the gruff adoration of Tiffany from the shopping channel.

  For the first time, Ryan was forced to contemplate the ways in which his character had been forged by Grace. He had assumed he was on the quiet side and in search of ethereal perfection in his love life because of Ellen but he had not known Ellen well enough or long enough for her to carve his soul. He had known the dead Ellen far longer and far better than he had known the living one.

  Grace, though, had always been there, the brother and father he could not remember had always been there too, but Grace was warm and tactile and fussed and flapped and smiled and laughed, and Hana had been standing in the shadows, somehow appearing when he could not make head nor tail of the poem by John Keats that his English teacher loved so much that she would blank, actually blank, any student who dared question its beauty or, in the case of Ryan, its accessibility.

  ‘Thou hast thy music too,’ Ryan had said, despairingly, adding, ‘But no one speaks like that any more,’ and Hana had suggested he do what she had done with the same poem and the same teacher, which was to read it a hundred times until the words became his words, his language, and he could feel the sumptuousness of them, until he could whisper, five years later, the phrase ‘the soft-dying day’ and it would bring tears to his eyes, blurring his vision so that the girl alighting from the bus or the girl serving him in the bakery or the girl facing him on the escalator was, for a few seconds at least, his Ellen.

  He held up his finger.

  ‘Autumn,’ he said and Hana shook her head.

  ‘“To Autumn”, “Toooo Autumn”, dearest brother.’

  ‘Well, that was his biggest mistake,’ Ryan said. ‘He should have kept it simple. “Autumn”. Much better.’

  The three of them looked outside at the yellowing leaves and the soft sun which had just that moment reappeared. Hana pictured a Christmas tree in Ed’s high-ceilinged living room; Ryan pictured Sylvie, waiting for him in Cotton Lane; Grace pictured Jarvis running through mud, chasing a stick she had managed to throw an impressive distance.

  ‘Let’s go home via Gladstone Park,’ Grace said. ‘Bet you haven’t been for ages, either of you – and it’s nice and clear now, so we’ll be able to see the City skyline from the hill.’

  It was true, neither of them had been there for some years, having used up all the magic it had to offer in their childhood, but they were happy to go now, to see for themselves how their mother would be spending her days now they were empty of the need to bake, to wash, to worry.

  They took it in turn to throw sticks for Jarvis and all three of them were surprised at how natural it felt, as if they had always had a dog. A boy, aged about five, started running after him and tripped. He was closest to Grace when he did so. She put her hands under his arms and lifted him to his feet as his father jogged towards them.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ the man said. ‘He runs after dogs all the bloody time.’

  Grace was speechless. She had become pale.

  ‘My son used to do that too,’ she said but the man had hoisted the boy onto his shoulders and was striding off towards the playground.

  Grace turned to Ryan and Hana.

  ‘I’d like us to go home and look at some family photos,’ she said. ‘I think there’s one of our Tom and a puppy in a park.’

  The siblings looked at each other, eyebrows raised, but smiling. Leaning against the nearest tree was a young woman who stared at Ryan and then slowly slid against the bark until she was sat among the dead leaves, her legs outstretched. It was Ellen’s way of telling him he ought to bring out photos of her.

  He leaned in towards his sister.

  ‘I don’t have a single photograph of Ellen,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ she said and the three of them walked home in slight trepidation, but also warm anticipation, of the reminiscences that lay ahead.

  Sylvie was with Theo at the shop when Ryan reached Cotton Lane. It was Naomi who was waiting for him.

  ‘Just like the old days,’ she said. ‘Remember when you didn’t know Sylvie’s name and I lusted after Cappi?’

  Ryan snorted.

  ‘That
was, actually, very recently on the reminiscence scale,’ he said. ‘Er, did you know my sister was back with Ed? Didn’t you date him for a bit? I wasn’t sure how serious it was with you two.’

  Naomi did not know that Ed was back with Hana. In fact, Naomi was not entirely certain that it was over between her and Ed. She had wondered if they were at a juncture – that he might come to realize that he liked her more than his bucolic high-rise cottage, that a few weeks or months apart might be something they one day chuckled about as they peered through their living-room window at the black cabs, red buses, neon theatre lights and late-night bistros. Not for one second had she wondered if Ed would need time to realize he liked Hana more than he liked her. Hana had been collateral damage but someone they had treated with respect. Naomi wondered what Hana had done to reclaim him, this mesmeric man who was much too tall for her.

  ‘I have to pop out,’ she told Ryan and she grabbed her jacket and tried not to slam the front door, particularly as Jenny had told her she had a recognizable way of leaving Number 4 and Naomi had found that slightly creepy – that it was a bit sad that Jenny would even notice and sadder still that she felt the need to tell her about it. But she ended up slamming the door anyway. ‘Theo and Jenny sitting in a tree,’ she muttered to herself, ‘Ryan and Sylvie, all kissy and cosy, Ed and Hana laughing at me.’

  Naomi had nowhere to go so she strode with exaggerated purpose to the Tube station, sat on the first train to arrive and simmered, but not without boredom, which allowed her to calm down. The commute between Plaistow and South Kensington had been deadly and almost every time she travelled it wondered at those poor people who were coming in from Hornchurch or Dagenham, much further back along the District line. It took her just under ten minutes to reach Hammersmith, where she alighted, determined to use the news about Ed as a catalyst for her to find her urban nirvana. She mooched through the streets, some dirty, some tree-lined and pretty, stopping at the windows of letting agents and gradually realizing she could afford neither a river view nor a bin-lined alley vista.

  This was topsy-turvy pricing, she grumbled. There must have been a time when to live amid the fumes and bustle and noise would have been the cheap option but no, Ealing was more affordable, Plaistow was more affordable. She would have to quit academia and find work that paid enough for the life she craved. The thought of heading back to love-nest lane was unappealing and so she hopped on the nearest Tube – now Shepherd’s Bush – travelled along the Central line to Tottenham Court Road and then walked to Chinatown where she treated herself to a sat-all-alone lemon chicken with egg fried rice while she watched the tourists scurry past her window or stop to survey the menu. As she waited for the bill from the scowling waiter she saw a silk scarf slide from the neck of a distracted woman and land on the pavement. Naomi waited for someone to pick it up for her but no one did and the woman failed to notice she was missing her scarf. Naomi tutted, ran out onto the street, scooped up the scarf and raced to catch the woman who, in her long cream knitted cardigan coat, was distinctive even now at the far end of Gerrard Street.

  The woman turned as Naomi tapped her shoulder, saw the scarf and frowned.

  ‘You dropped it back there,’ Naomi said. ‘And it looks too nice a scarf to leave it to be trodden underfoot.’

  She did not wait for thanks but ran back to the restaurant in case the scowling waiter thought she’d run off without paying, which indeed he had assumed her to have done – but he assumed most customers were out to rip him off in some way so was not particularly upset. Naomi settled her bill and returned to the street to be faced by a woman in cream knitwear and a scarf patterned with a cityscape, its orange-lit windows shining out against a blue-grey sky.

  ‘Hello, again,’ the woman said. ‘Let me buy you a cocktail.’

  Naomi felt this invitation to be faintly ludicrous but, even so, a better option than the claustrophobia she had now decided Cotton Lane had become. The woman, tall and elegant, strode purposefully across Shaftesbury Avenue and led Naomi into Kettner’s, which was busy but there were two bar stools empty and the woman glided towards the grey leather chairs as if she had reserved them weeks ago. She wriggled free of her cream coat but kept on her scarf.

  ‘What do you think? Two champagne martinis?’ she said, confusing Naomi with her air of them having met before – been long-time colleagues – for the woman was at least fifteen years older than her, maybe more.

  ‘Why not?’ Naomi said and she noted how the slender, handsome barman responded immediately when the woman lifted her hand towards him.

  ‘You don’t have a bag,’ the woman said. ‘I have to say I find that rather liberating as I have never left any house without one.’

  Naomi smiled and opened her phone wallet, which contained, as well as her phone, her credit card, her house key and a few notes and coins and, then, as if she were a table magician, she tapped her faded satin bomber jacket and revealed an inside zip pocket which held a tissue and a small tube of lip salve.

  ‘You should try it sometime,’ she said as the woman threw back her head and emitted a peal of expensive laughter.

  ‘I’d like to, really I would,’ she said as though Naomi had asked her to come skydiving over the Namib Desert. ‘In the meantime, I’m Donna.’

  She held out her hand, which Naomi noted was smooth and elegant with fingernails painted a pale shade of pistachio, which she suspected was either trendy or about to become trendy.

  The barman placed their cocktails in front of them without a flourish to let them know that these were not two women for whom a Sunday-evening cocktail was anything other than passé.

  ‘Let us toast a rare example of public-spirited kindness,’ Donna said. ‘You wouldn’t have known, but this scarf is…’ She paused and ran a pistachio-lit finger along the edge of the cityscape. ‘It is valuable. Emotionally valuable. Designed by my dear friend, boyfriend, lover, whatever. Designed by him for me – and look.’

  Donna removed the scarf and told Naomi to hold out her hands. She laid the scarf over her new friend’s outstretched arms and pointed to a black-framed window at which stood a woman with sleek golden-brown hair just like Donna’s.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, ‘and I feature in no other scarf. So. So, this is why we are having cocktails. Thank you.’

  Naomi raised her glass.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I was in full-on-avoidance mode, on the possible verge of self-loathing, and so this is really lovely in an unexpected and crazy sort of way and a middle-of-London sort of way, which is what I want so much I threw away my own lover for it.’

  The two women looked at each other, both wearing a half-smile as though in the middle of a John le Carré plot.

  ‘Am I to surmise you do not need to dash off anywhere right now?’ Donna asked.

  ‘You deduce accurately,’ Naomi said.

  ‘Me neither,’ Donna said. As she ordered a second round of champagne martinis, Naomi mentally tapped her stomach, glad she had lined it for what promised to be a booze-laden evening. Donna led her through a heaving Soho to an art deco labyrinth about to serve a dose of cabaret. She ordered a bottle of house champagne and some olives and sat back as if in her own sports car. Naomi decided to relax and enjoy the ride – even though she still knew next to nothing about her host; but it was possibly on the verge of trendy not to ask her anything personal and vice versa. It would emerge naturally, in an uptown manner. This was sophisticated and urban and every bit as seductive as the downtown Hammersmith version, much better than Ealing and in a different universe to Plaistow.

  Just after 11 p.m. Donna led Naomi back into Soho and to a patisserie that was still open. It held just two small tables and they sat down to eat crème anglaise donuts accompanied by the most flavoursome filter coffee the younger woman had ever tasted. On the adjacent table sat two plump pink-cheeked middle-aged men – clearly in love – for whom the late-night gorging of pastries seamed a regular habit. Naomi wondered if she and Donna made a m
atch or looked incongruous. Or perhaps intriguing.

  ‘Are we intriguing?’ she asked Donna sleepily but they were so close to the other couple that it was unavoidably a question for them too.

  ‘You are so intriguing,’ the less plump one said.

  ‘In what way?’ Donna asked lightly and they took turns to explain.

  ‘In every way.’

  ‘Attractive, stylish, tall.’

  ‘A small age gap.’

  ‘Monied and less monied.’

  ‘Maybe gay, probably not.’

  ‘But devoted.’

  Both women giggled.

  ‘We only met this afternoon,’ Donna said.

  The men pouted as if they had been deliberately tricked, wiped their mouths on their napkins and left. Donna laughed her expensive laugh.

  ‘Take out your phone,’ she said. ‘Now, put in my number and don’t send me a message until tomorrow evening. You’ll know what I mean by that but you won’t know before tomorrow evening. Now, I’m putting you in an Uber.’

  The car arrived ninety seconds later and Naomi waited for a hug or a peck on the cheek but none came and suddenly she was heading back towards Ealing. She had Donna’s number and Donna had her address and that was that.

  Cotton Lane was in darkness. The Mizwa family was asleep, as were Theo and Jenny, as were Ryan and Sylvie. This time Naomi was quiet with the door even though her head was beginning to feel clogged and her arteries felt parched. The ceiling spun as she lay down so she fell asleep sat bolt upright, bolstered by every pillow and cushion she could find, and in the morning she sat on the floor by the fridge drinking glass upon glass of chilled water until she remembered that in spite of being as drunk – if not more than usual – after a night of booze, she had neither babbled nor stood and swayed while with Donna. She was convinced she had not embarrassed herself at all for she could remember every moment, beginning with the sight of the scarf slipping elegantly from around the neck of a tall and fascinating woman in a long cream cardigan coat.

  It was 7 p.m. That was tomorrow evening, wasn’t it? Or perhaps in Donna’s world it was late afternoon. Naomi had begun a new strand of research and was supposed to be preparing a briefing on her plans for the upcoming year but instead she spent the day doodling and dozing and dreaming of living elsewhere. It was now 7.15 p.m. What had Donna meant anyway about knowing about the evening deadline? Naomi had not a clue so she decided it must be too early and she climbed the stairs to the living room to find Ryan and Sylvie curled up and watching what sounded suspiciously like Breaking Bad.