by Libby Page
“Well, that was a waste of money.”
“What do you mean? I loved it!”
“I didn’t see that ending coming, did you?”
“That bit that made me jump.”
“I jumped because you jumped!”
People walk mainly in pairs, some in larger groups as they talk together. Among them is Rosemary, alone in the crowd.
“Sorry, excuse me,” says a woman as she bumps into her, pushed by the wave of people.
“That’s okay,” says Rosemary, thankful of something to say. She smiles at the woman, about to ask her if she liked the film, but she has already gone. Rosemary makes her way slowly through the crowd.
Rosemary loves the cinema. She goes once a month, stuffing her pockets with sweets and propping herself up with a cushion that she brings from home. She likes sitting beneath the big screen, looking up at the huge actors and feeling the sounds vibrate around the whole cinema and up through her feet. It doesn’t even matter what she sees—she picks the films by their names and without reading the descriptions. If the title sounds interesting enough, she buys a ticket.
She chooses a seat near the front so she doesn’t have to tackle the stairs. She always arrives on time but only feels truly comfortable when the lights dim and everyone joins her in being lost in the film. She cranes her neck up to the screen and watches whatever romantic comedy or thriller or spy film she has chosen this month, joining the rest of the audience in laughter or tears. Emotion flows through the room like the wave at a sporting event. When she watches the films she is not alone, she is part of something bigger, one nameless face in a large audience of nameless faces.
It is only when the film is over and the audience breaks off and she is left behind that she misses the company.
A man holds the door open for her; he is smoking with a friend, and Rosemary nods at him then turns right out of the cinema. As she walks she watches the buses, checking the numbers and testing herself by remembering their end destinations. 59: Telford Avenue. 159: Streatham Station. 333: Tooting Broadway. 250. What is 250? It begins with C. It’s not Clapham, or Crystal Palace. 250: Croydon Town Centre. She never travels to Croydon, or any of the other end destinations in fact, but it is important that she remembers.
She wonders if George would have liked the film. She enjoys most films—she goes for the atmosphere and the big screen and the music. But George was more particular. He had certain actors he loved (Sean Connery, Michael Gambon, Judi Dench) and would watch anything they starred in, but other than that he said the old films were the best films. Sometimes the cinema puts on screenings of the classics—he would always want to go to those. No, he probably wouldn’t have liked this one, she thinks as she walks. It was too gory.
Rosemary continues down the road toward the underground. Tonight she doesn’t want to go home to her empty flat just yet. There is somewhere she wants to visit. She turns right onto the station road.
The street is quiet: the shops under the arches have their metal shutters pulled down. Some of the shutters are painted. One is covered with the Jamaican flag but most are painted with slogans. “Save our arches,” “Stop the evictions,” “Say NO to rental increases.” The signs make her think of her lido and she pictures its doors closed and the pool completely empty of swimmers. The thought makes a shiver run through her body.
She walks halfway down the street, passing a group of teenagers huddled in the entrance to the station smoking and playing music from a portable stereo. They are wearing a uniform that they would never acknowledge as one; she wants to laugh and tell them they are just the same as every other group of teenagers she has seen here over the years.
For most of her life she has never felt frightened walking alone in the street. Even during the war she enjoyed the freedom of being one of those left behind. She was young then, too: she had survived and she felt certain she would survive again.
When the riots of 1981 hit she was much older and age had chipped away at her teenage confidence as though scraping the solid mortar out from between bricks. It was early April, and walking home from the library she saw the half-burnt shells of cars parked in one street as flames rose into the sky and a wall of police officers huddled behind plastic shields. Behind the blaze and the smoke she couldn’t make out quite what was happening, but she heard shouting and saw people facing the line of police, their arms raised as though about to throw something. She walked home quickly and told George what she had seen. He didn’t want her to leave the flat and on the worst day he shut the shop. From their balcony they could see clouds of smoke rising over the Brixton streets, reminding her of the war. Their living room was piled high with boxes of vegetables. He was worried they’d loot his shop. “Who’s going to loot a fruit and vegetable shop?” she said. “I think they’re after televisions and things, not piles of potatoes.”
She ignores the teenagers and keeps walking until she reaches the arch she is looking for. It is the only one that is not closed; it glows with light and noise, crowds spilling out onto the street and sitting outside on benches. Paper lanterns hang from the entrance and a plastic flamingo stands guard outside the fence that runs around the outside seating area.
“Excuse me,” she says, struggling to make her way through the crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings.
Groups sitting at tables pull their chairs in to let her past. They watch her with raised eyebrows and then go back to their jugs of cocktails. The room is loud with laughter and music that Rosemary can’t quite hear apart from the regular thumping of the bass. The crowd gets denser closer to the bar. A young man spots Rosemary and elbows his friend in the ribs, pushing him off his barstool.
“Hey, dick, give this lady your seat.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see her. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” he says, turning to Rosemary and giving her his arm to help her into the chair. She climbs in slowly.
“You can apologize by telling me what you young people are drinking these days. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a cocktail bar.”
“Got it—I’ll order for you.”
He raises a hand and catches the barman’s eye. A few minutes later a short, wide glass half filled with orange liquid and ice is put on a paper napkin in front of Rosemary.
Outside a group of workers in suits, wearing loosened ties, turn out from the station and scatter into the night, some going home and some heading to the pub. As they walk down the station road they see one glowing arch where an old woman sits at a bar drinking an old-fashioned. Around her crowds of young people laugh and drink from jugs filled with ice, sipping brightly colored cocktails with retro paper umbrellas. She is flanked by two couples in deep conversation, their backs to her. If they looked up they would see a faded green sign above the cocktail bar that says FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLES: PETERSON & SON.
CHAPTER 24
After Kate’s first article about the lido runs Phil gradually gives her more assignments, this time not just planning notices, but proper stories. First is the story about the tenants being evicted from their homes to make way for the Paradise Living high-rises, which she pitched after meeting the man at the town hall. The next stories take her all across the neighborhood and show it to her from all angles: pretty and ugly.
She writes about a new bar opening and an old fishmonger closing, about a primary school raising money for charity and about a teenage boy who overcame his upbringing among drug-dealing parents to become a local sports star set to compete in the next Olympics. She suddenly finds herself busier than she has been since starting work at the Brixton Chronicle—heading across the neighborhood each day for interviews and research.
Each time she sees her name in print she feels a glow of pride. One evening her phone buzzes: it’s a text from Erin.
“Loving your articles K. I’m so proud. E x.”
Kate reads the text again. Although the Brixton Chronicle does have a website, not all of the articles go online.
“I didn’t know
you’d read them? It’s a local paper! K x.”
A moment later her phone buzzes again.
“I get it delivered! E x.”
Kate pictures the Brixton Chronicle, delivered from South London to Bath, landing on Erin’s doormat each week. How much must that cost her? She didn’t even know it was possible to get it delivered that far. Perhaps Erin has an arrangement with Phil—although he has never mentioned it. She imagines her sister reading her words, tucked up on her sofa, and she wishes some magic could transport her instantly to Bath so she could give Erin a hug. Instead she sends a reply, “Thank you—that means a lot. Hope you are ok. K xx.”
The next day Kate is sent on assignment to the Norwood and Brixton food bank, where she meets local volunteers and families who use the bank to stock their empty cupboards. She interviews a woman, Kelly, not much older than herself, who is relying on the food bank to feed herself while her daughter is unwell and in hospital.
“She’s only six and she is really frightened of hospitals,” says Kelly as she sits at a table inside the hall where the food bank is operated, drinking a cup of tea she has been handed by one of the volunteers. “So I’ve been going to see her every day. But it means I haven’t been able to work for a few weeks. I’ve gone through our savings, and I have thought about trying to go back to work but she cries so much every time I leave and I’m just so exhausted all the time too. And I need to be around in case anything gets worse.”
Kelly’s eyes fill with tears and Kate wants to reach across the table and take Kelly’s hand. Instead she focuses on taking notes, trying to remain professional.
“One day after visiting her in hospital I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day. But there was nothing in the house. There’s nothing worse than that feeling—suddenly realizing you are starving and there is nothing there to eat. It terrified me and there was nothing I could do. So that’s why I’m here.”
Kelly looks around her as though she can’t quite remember where she is. A volunteer smiles at her, gives her a gentle wave. As Kate watches Kelly, exhaustion and sadness knotted on her forehead, she feels a sinking sense of shame. She remembers all the nights she has gone to bed without dinner, all the times she has skipped a meal rather than bothering to go to the supermarket and buy food. She has felt plenty of fear, but never that specific, horrifying fear that Kelly just described.
“It feels like the biggest failure,” says Kelly, looking up and meeting Kate’s eyes, “not being able to feed yourself. That’s the most basic, important thing, isn’t it?”
Kate feels a lump invading her throat and her eyes filling with tears that are dangerously close to spilling over. She forces them back and thanks Kelly with what she hopes comes out as warmth and sincerity, for doing the interview.
“I hope things work out for you, and that your daughter gets better soon, I really do.”
That evening, back in her flat, Kate cooks for herself again. Nothing complicated—just pasta with chicken and pesto—but she focuses carefully on preparing it, thinking about Kelly as she does. A feeling of helplessness washes over her—a helplessness to change any of the big things in the world or to make a difference in any meaningful way. On her worst days it is not just her own worries that consume her, but a gnawing fear at the state of the world, a terror at the huge sadness she knows is out there. In those moments it is as though she is a black hole and all the anxieties in the world around her are sucked inside until she is completely filled with darkness.
As she eats she avoids the rising tide of worry by thinking about the lido, focusing on the upcoming meeting and what else she can do to help Rosemary save her pool. Perhaps that’s why the lido has become so important to her, she thinks. It might just be one thing, but it’s something. And the darkness, although still there in the background, retreats.
CHAPTER 25
At first they didn’t have enough furniture to fill their flat. To begin with they used a table made from a piece of wood balanced on wooden vegetable crates. George’s parents gave them two chairs. They didn’t match, but it didn’t matter. For a while they were the only things in the living room aside from piles of books that they stacked against the walls. They would get to the bookshelves later. Both of them had a large collection of books, books that had nursed them through their childhood and comforted them as they became teenagers. They eagerly read through the titles as they unpacked together.
“When we get the bookshelves how shall we organize the books?” Rosemary asked. “Shall we have a shelf each?”
“No,” said George, “I want to mix them all up.”
When the bookshelves eventually arrived they took great pleasure in mixing up their books: his Dickens cheek to cheek with her Brontë.
George saved up any spare money and used it to buy things for the house. One day he came home from work with a potted rose that he bought from the market. He put it on the windowsill and put crosses on the calendar in the kitchen to remind him when to water it. For their first Christmas in the flat they both chipped in for a gramophone. Their record collection started with just one: Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa,” which they listened to over and over.
Rosemary liked seeing their two toothbrushes next to each other on the bathroom shelf. They brushed their teeth at the same time, both standing barefoot on the bathroom rug, he with an arm around her waist and she looking at him in the mirror and wanting to smile but being too full of toothpaste and toothbrush. He pulled faces at her in the mirror, trying to make her laugh. They took turns spitting into the sink. Once they were finished they wiped their mouths with the same towel and kissed each other, the mint making each other’s lips tingle.
For the first few months of their married life they slept on a mattress on the floor with curtains made from spare sheets and hung up with pegs. They went to bed straight after dinner, sometimes when it was still light outside, sometimes leaving their dishes on the table, waiting until the morning to wash and dry them. They had to scrub the plates extra hard the next day but they didn’t mind.
Their bed was the only place where they stopped their constant chatter, preferring silence but having whole conversations with their bodies. Their bodies whispered as they touched each other gently and screamed while their tongues met inside each other’s hot mouths. They understood each other’s language and knew how to reply.
Sometimes they were polite, sometimes they were bold, but they always kissed. Soft kisses, hard kisses, kisses on eyelids and cheeks and collarbones and at the soft skin behind the back of ears.
Once the sex was over they collapsed into the mattress, loving the feeling of not knowing whose arm or leg was whose. Her leg flung over his stomach, his head cradled in her arms. His body heaped over hers, heart to heart and his face in her hair. Side by side, with his arms around her stomach and cupping a breast, hers resting on his backside. They lay quietly, separate in their thoughts but knotted together with their bodies.
“I love you,” said George, on a cool summer’s night several months after their wedding. They lay in each other’s warmth on the mattress and beneath tangled sheets.
“And I love you,” said Rosemary. She tucked her body under his arm, curling her head into his armpit and putting an arm across his stomach.
“I’m sorry we haven’t got a real bed yet,” he said. “I promise we’ll get one soon.”
She would have slept on a stone floor every night if it meant sleeping next to him. She thought she told him that, but perhaps she fell asleep before the words could come.
CHAPTER 26
Rosemary and Kate meet at the lido at seven a.m. Ahmed unlocks the glass door to the noticeboard and helps them pin up posters about the hearing, moving the advert for ukulele classes to make room.
“Who actually plays this thing anyway? It’s basically a children’s guitar,” he says.
Once the posters are up, Rosemary and Kate go for a swim. Rosemary invited her, and Kate had been surprised by how pleased she was at the invitation
. She can’t remember the last time someone asked her to do something with them.
In the changing room Kate takes her clothes off to reveal her swimsuit underneath. When she turns around, Rosemary is naked, talking to another woman whom Kate guesses is in her late sixties. This woman is naked, too, except for a pink swimming cap. Rosemary and the woman start to laugh, holding on to each other’s arms as their wrinkled naked bodies shake with laughter.
They see Kate watching them, hugging her arms awkwardly around herself.
“Sorry, Kate, this is Hope,” says Rosemary. “We used to work together.”
“Lovely to meet you,” says Hope, reaching out to shake Kate’s hand with both of hers.
Kate never thought she would find herself shaking hands with a naked sixtysomething woman. She doesn’t know where to look.
“Rosemary has told me all about you,” says Hope as Rosemary turns to change.
“It’s lovely to meet you too,” says Kate.
She waits while Rosemary gets ready. Eventually she turns round in her swimsuit, holding her cap and goggles in her hand.
“Come on, we’d better go.”
“And I’d better get dry and dressed,” says Hope. “Enjoy the water, it’s cool this morning but lovely.”
“See you soon, dear,” says Rosemary. Kate says goodbye to Hope and follows Rosemary onto the pool deck, making sure to stay at Rosemary’s side.
“You don’t need to wait for me,” Rosemary says.
“I sprained my ankle recently, I can’t walk any faster.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then don’t believe me.”
They arrive at the edge together. Rosemary holds on to the ladder for support.
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t watch,” she says.
There is a creaking, a pause, and a slight splash. When Kate turns around Rosemary is in the water, putting her cap and goggles on and splashing water onto her shoulders. Kate climbs down and joins her. Hope was right: the water is chilly but deliciously so. As the cold surrounds her body Kate takes a deep breath and feels something inside her stretching and coming to life.
