Finding a boy-friend, which I’d originally thought of as priority number one, didn’t matter any more. Just as well, because there didn’t seem much prospect of making friends with anyone, male or female. The Canadian couple who lived in the room opposite were very pleasant and we smiled and said ‘Hi,’ if we met, and I exchanged a few ‘Hallo’s with the journalist, and said a polite ‘Good evening’to the Indians, but that was all.
I received several letters, redirected from home. The announcement of Dad’s death had appeared in the local paper, and the news had evidently circulated. My school friends, Caroline and Sue, wrote to say that they were sorry, and to tell me what great times they were having at York and Essex, and to say they hoped I was having a great time in London. I wrote back to thank them and assured them that I was.
Miss Dunlop used the official school writing-paper to send me a formal letter of sympathy, which I had no reason to keep. Mrs Bloomfield wrote me a sympathetic letter which I would have liked to keep, but I couldn’t read it without crying so I tore that up too. I was sorry afterwards, particularly as she’d finished it ‘Yours affectionately’. I was deeply in need of whatever affection anyone could spare.
Except from Mum. I simply couldn’t fancy it from her. She wrote to me twice a week, first class, her letters overflowing with maternal love. It wasn’t what she said, exactly, because she wasn’t much of a letter-writer, but I knew what she meant. And she would keep sending me things. The regular food parcels were an embarrassment, except that I was very glad of the contents. Having to thank her for them made it difficult to tell her I was never going back, so I postponed the telling and wrote short stiff letters in reply, irregularly, second class.
Dear Mum,
Thank you very much for the cakes. They are very nice. I am
still enjoying the jam.
I hope you are getting on well at the shop. I expect the journey is a nuisance in this wet weather.
I am glad the hens are laying well, but please don’t try to send me any eggs, they will only get broken in the post.
I have settled down nicely, my room is comfortable and I am sharing it with a very pleasant girl.
I was writing the letter in my usual place in the library at college. The main reading-rooms were always full but I’d discovered the periodicals room in the basement, where a few tables and chairs were jammed in among the racks of back numbers. Very few people ever read down there because it was gloomy, but it suited me. It was the only reasonably private place I’d found since I’d been in London. That was where I spent most of my time in college, reading and writing and thinking about Dad, staying there until the library closed so that by the time I got back to our room Libby would have gone out.
That evening, as I was writing to Mum, the swing-doors swung and a girl from my tutorial group walked to the far end of the room and back. I looked up as she passed. We smiled and nodded, but we had nothing to say. And then I heard her reporting to someone else just outside the door.
‘No one there except that Thacker woman. You know.’
‘Oh, her. Don’t let’s go in, then. She’s so dull, never stops working.’
‘Perhaps someone will give her a medal.’
The door swung behind them. I finished my letter:
College is very interesting and I have made a lot of friends.
I hope you are keeping well, from Janet.
I walked almost to Oxford Street, limping a bit in my boots, then caught a bus for Notting Hill Gate. I’d bought an Evening Standard (PRINCESS ANNE – SHOCK! the placard had screamed, but I’d already been in London long enough to know that it probably meant she’d got a cold) and skimmed through the To Let columns. Plenty of choice, but nothing I could afford unless I shared, so I might as well stay with the Libby I knew.
I turned to the Sits Vac. I was seriously wondering whether to try to get a job rather than stay at university. It was an uncongenial half-life and I didn’t think I could stick it for three long years. Better to give up my place to some eager schoolkid …
I was sitting on the sideways seat just inside the bus. A girl got on at Marble Arch and sat opposite. I looked at her without seeing her, and was surprised when she gave me a friendly smile.
‘We do know each other,’ she said when I didn’t respond. ‘Kate Bristow – we share a kitchen and bathroom, remember?’
I started, blushing because I hadn’t recognized her as the journalist from the single room. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s all right. You were miles away.’
‘Yes.’ I looked at her properly for the first time. She was several years older than me, fashion-aware but casual, with a fringe of brown hair that flopped into her eyes, lashes that were definitely her own, a nicotine stain on her thin fingers, and one of her coat buttons hanging from a thread. She looked human and approachable, so I said, ‘You’re about to lose a button.’
‘Oh, Lord – typical …’ she said ruefully, pulling it off and putting it in her pocket. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said, and we both laughed, radiating goodwill across the bus. I knew that it was stupid of me to sit there with a grin on my face but I’d suddenly realized how lonely I was, how much I needed company.
The bus charged the Bayswater Road traffic and eased into Notting Hill Gate. I stood up reluctantly, not wanting to cut our acquaintance short, but Kate got up as well. ‘I always use the delicatessen here,’ she said. ‘Are you shopping too?’
‘No – I walk from here because it’s cheaper.’
We paced along together, much of a height though she was thinner than me. The shop fronts we passed were brilliantly lighted, their multi-coloured neon signs reflected on the greasy wet pavements.
‘How are things?’ she said. ‘Are you enjoying being in London?’
I’d have liked to tell her the truth, but we had reached the Italian delicatessen. Half-past eight in the evening and the shop was full. I wondered what Dad would have thought of that.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘It’s super.’
‘Even sharing a room with Libby?’ She laughed. ‘Better not answer that. Look, you must come and have a cup of coffee with me some time. Only not tonight I’m afraid – deadline tomorrow.’ She hitched a document case under her arm. ‘See you.’
‘See you,’ I said, and we parted.
When I got back to the room, I found that I was humming. Feeling cheerful for the first time since I’d come to London, I stuffed my accumulated dirty clothes into my grip and took them to the coin-op. There was the usual mix of customers: two children in charge of the family washing, a young white woman with a baby in a sling, a black couple folding their sheets, a seedy-looking man reading a paper while he waited, a group of hippies making use of the warmth, an old woman ditto. Unusually, I felt quite benevolent towards them all.
I fed my clothes into a machine and sat watching them churn past the porthole. I could see my life revolving in the suds. There was the big bath towel, colour-fast cotton, that Dad had ordered specially from the drapery traveller; the fun pyjamas I’d made out of some jazzy material, slightly imperfect, that I’d bought from a stall in Breckham Market; the striped hand towel, a mothball-smelling contribution from Mum’s bottom drawer; the Snoopy tea-towel that Caroline had given me for my birthday; and my Marks and Spencer underclothes. Almost as good as the telly. I hummed as I sat watching, irrationally pleased because I’d been given an unspecific invitation to drink a cup of coffee with someone.
After I’d returned to the room and put away my clean clothes, unironed because I wouldn’t ask to borrow Libby’s iron, I decided to make some Nescafé. I hoped I might see Kate Bristow on the landing, but one of the Indian medical students was there, cooking a pungent mixture over a gas ring.
‘Ah, Miss Thacker –’
‘Good evening.’ It seemed discourteous just to say ‘Hallo’when he was unfailingly polite. I felt ashamed that I didn’t know his name. He was the smaller and darker of th
e two.
‘Miss Thacker, will you please have some of my vegetable curry?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, putting the kettle on the other ring. ‘I just want some coffee.’
‘But I do most honestly and sincerely beg you to share my curry, Miss Thacker. I assure you there is plenty.’
‘Thank you, but I don’t want it, really.’
He smiled, infinitely sad. ‘Ah, Miss Thacker – I had the temerity to hope that you would not be racially prejudiced.’
Damn it all, it wasn’t racial prejudice not to want to eat curry at ten-thirty in the evening. Racial prejudice was something we’d often discussed at school, and we’d all condemned it without ever having any opportunity, in deepest Suffolk, to put our beliefs to the test. Now I was caught. I didn’t see how I could refuse without offending the man, so I allowed him to spoon a little on a plate for me.
‘Would you care to come to my room to eat it, Miss Thacker? It is a very comfortable room and I have a fine collection of Beatles.’
‘Yes, I know, I’ve heard them. But really, I’m just going to bed. Thank you very much, this is delicious.’
Embarrassed, conscious that the unaccustomed spiciness was bringing me out in a sweat, I ate the curry with my teaspoon and then made a mug of Nescafé. The Indian stood watching me, polite but disconcerting.
‘Where’s your friend?’ I asked, feeling obliged to make conversation.
‘He is going out. With a nurse from the hospital.’
‘There must be a lot of other nurses,’ I said, trying to be encouraging.
‘Miss Thacker – would you perhaps come to the cinema with me one evening?’
‘Thank you,’ I said faintly, and retreated to my room. I didn’t see that going out together would help either of us. I needed someone to whom I could explain everything, and how could he possibly understand? And whatever he needed in the way of sympathy and understanding, I felt totally inadequate to supply. Now I should have to try to dodge him as well as Libby. It was a ridiculous situation. And four long weeks to go to the end of term. And then, where could I go for Christmas?
The euphoria I’d felt after speaking to Kate Bristow evaporated. I’d hardly seen her before and I didn’t see her again. Her invitation had obviously been a polite formality, and I was as much alone as I had been before. I started room-hunting in earnest, cutting lectures to tramp round agencies and hunt down addresses, but anything I could afford was either unbearably squalid or snapped up before I got there.
Inevitably, I had a row with Libby. One evening I went back to our room early, soon after she had returned from college.
‘Yours, I think,’ I said, picking up a skirt and a sweater and some unwashed tights from my bed and tossing them on to hers.
‘You needn’t throw them.’
‘You needn’t put them on my bed.’
‘Why not, for God’s sake? What’s so special about your bed?’
‘I’d like to keep it to myself, thank you.’
Libby laughed. ‘Well, nobody seems eager to share it with you! You haven’t heard from that rustic boy-friend since you’ve been here, have you? I’m not surprised. I didn’t think you would. You’re a real drag, do you know that?’
‘I don’t get in your way.’
‘You just irritate me. I saw you in college today, wandering round looking as though you were a thousand miles from home. Why the hell don’t you make some friends, or go out and try to enjoy yourself?’
‘I’m looking for somewhere else to live, if you want to know.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Amen,’ I snapped, and grabbed my poncho and stamped off, up Holland Park Avenue to Notting Hill Gate, down Church Street, along Kensington High Street, up Addison Road. Bloody Libby, bloody college, bloody London. It was icy cold, and my boots hurt. My feet felt as tortured as though they’d been put through Gran Bowden’s great mangle, cast-iron frame and wooden rollers and all.
I went to bed early, and was woken by Libby coming in and putting on a reading lamp. Only she wasn’t alone, she was giggling with Ed.
‘Ssh,’ she whispered. ‘Mustn’t wake the sleeping beauty.’
‘I’d better not stay,’ he muttered.
‘Come on in, it’s all right.’
Libby crept to my bed and leaned over it. I pretended to be asleep. No point in making a fuss if she wanted to bring Ed in for coffee, as long as they weren’t too noisy and didn’t put on too many lights.
‘It’s all right, she sleeps like the dead. Come on, Eddy –’
They didn’t put on any more lights. There was a shuffling and rustling, then a scrunch from her mattress, and lot of heavy breathing. Then a gasp from Libby and a grunt from Ed, and a creaking from the floorboards under her bed. The creaking and breathing intensified, rhythmically, and I suddenly realized what they were doing. The shame and indignity of my being there overwhelmed me. I pulled the blankets over my head and stuffed my fingers into my mouth and wept in bitterness and desolation, while my own bed creaked in time with theirs.
Chapter Nineteen
Tuesday. Letter-from-Mum day. She wrote every Sunday afternoon and posted the letter on her way to the shop on Monday morning, so I knew that when I got back from college every Tuesday it would be waiting for me on the hall table, a square envelope covered with big childish writing, my name half-hidden by the stamp.
No rush to read the letter. I started to cook my supper first, scrambling three eggs because they were small and I was hungry, and at the same time keeping a look-out for Indians.
I opened the envelope while I waited for the eggs to thicken. Mum always wrote on lined paper, and so did I when I wrote to her. It was much cheaper than unlined Basildon Bond which I knew you were supposed to use for polite letters.
‘Dear Janet,’ Mum wrote, and I recalled how some hang-up from her schooldays made her write with her left hand always cupped over the paper so as to hide her laborious words:
I hope the apples arrived safe I know how much you like them. I rapped them up separate so they should not get brused. I am sending a Parcel with a cake Im afraid it is sad in the middle Im afraid I don’t bake like your poor Father. I am glad your getting on so well and I shall look forward to seeing you Xmas. I am doing alright at the Shop your Gran is worried about the new Decimal Money and so am I but I dont let on, we shall have to manage. Well Janet I am sorry to tell you some bad news Miss Massingham died Friday of Lung Cancer poor old soul. Tom Billings found her when he took the milk.
Well no more now I must close.
Your loving Mother.
PS Dont eat the sad bits of the cake you will get indigestion.
The eggs caught on the bottom of the pan. I snatched it away from the gas and stirred conscientiously, concentrating all my attention on what I was doing so that I didn’t have to think about Miss Massingham.
Before Dad’s death I wouldn’t have been affected by Mum’s news. Miss Massingham was old and it was natural for old people to die, they were doing it all the time. I hardly knew her. She was just an eccentric old lady who’d once been kind enough to give me two pounds. I’d have thought, ‘Poor old Miss Massingham,’ felt sad for a minute or two, and then I’d have forgotten her again.
But Dad’s death had raised my emotional dew-point. I’d been too shattered to cry over him, but instead I’d started to cry over the most unlikely things, bands playing in the streets and newspaper reports of cruelty to animals. I knew that if I let myself think about Miss Massingham I should cry my eyes out, so I stirred the eggs, scraping the flakes off the bottom of the pan and thinking hard about nothing.
I heard footsteps on the stairs but didn’t bother to look up, so I nearly dropped the pan when someone took hold of my shoulder. I jerked my head to see who it was and found myself eye-to-eye with Kate Bristow. Her eyes were green-brown, glassy, and I could see myself reflected in her pupils.
‘That shook you,’ she said with a lop-sided grin, and she didn’t let go,
and I realized she was using me for support. Her words were slightly slurred, and though she didn’t smell of alcohol I was sure she must be full of either drink or drugs. I felt that I probably ought to do something for her, but I didn’t know what.
She took the problem out of my hands. ‘Food! Marvellous. Come on, let’s eat at my place.’
Holding the pan in her other hand, she fended herself off my shoulder and made for the door of her room. Mesmerized, I picked up the plate I’d been warming and followed her. As an afterthought I ran back and turned off the gas.
Kate’s room was about the size of mine at home, very small, and not even Libby could have created such a mess. It was difficult to tell whether her bed was made or not. She had a clothes line instead of a wardrobe, and coats and skirts and dresses hung suspended across the room. But drunk or drugged, she parted the clothes accurately to reveal a tallboy and she knew which drawer to rummage in for a couple of forks.
I stood holding my plate like Oliver Twist, except that I hadn’t had anything yet. Kate helped me to some egg, and started to eat her own share straight from the pan. ‘Mm, this is good. Thanks, love, I was starving. Were you making some coffee?’
I went out and made two mugs of Nescafé, Kate’s extra strong. When I returned with it, she was sitting on the floor in front of the gas fire. The single armchair was occupied by folders and a typewriter, with my plate balanced on top. After a moment’s hesitation I sat down beside her, ignoring my share of the egg which by now had congealed. After reading Mum’s letter I wasn’t hungry any more.
‘Thanks for the coffee. You’re a friend in a million,’ Kate said, and I felt absurdly gratified. She took two cigarettes from a packet of Gauloises, lit them both, passed one to me, then leaned back with her head against the side of the chair and closed her eyes.
Cross My Heart and Hope to Die Page 19
