by Helen Harris
All I remember of my father is a shape, but I loved that shape deeply. He used to come home late, when I was already in bed and bend over me and croon, ‘Bye Baby Bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting,’ every night, a tall, thin, stoop-shouldered shape, which sometimes had a smelly pipe sticking out of it. (And my mother’s voice calling in the background, ‘Oh, Edward, don’t puff your vile smoke in the child’s face!’)
I forgave him totally for having left my mother and me because really we were not that interesting. Through all the long seasons of my childhood, I quite saw how confined and circumscribed our life was, in our cluttered little house; just my mother and I, two old maids, one who had gladly adopted old maidhood and the other who was being reared in its ways. I imagined my father far away in Brazil, tanned and stoop-shouldered, smoking his pipe and cutting down forests to make fine furniture – he dealt in exotic timber – and it wasn’t until Rob told me in horror what people like my father were doing to the forests in Brazil that it stopped seeming a grand and glamorous activity.
Sometimes I wonder what it was about Rob that had such a strong and immediate effect on me. We are so unalike, so unsuited I would say, if it wasn’t working so wonderfully well. Apart from the indefinable magic – what Rob calls the chemistry – I think it must have been his solidity which appealed to me, his rock-solid certainty.
Whatever it was, everything happened remarkably quickly between us. Our first dinner was at a small Indian restaurant. I remember, with still vivid embarrassment, how I had got all dressed up for a smart evening. I had a clear idea of the kind of restaurant which a glamorous television writer would choose for a first date: it had a metallic decor, multi-coloured lighting and cocktails with preposterous names. When this didn’t materialize and we went instead to Rob’s favourite Tandoori Mahal, I immediately assumed it must be because I wasn’t up to it: an unglamorous restaurant for an unglamorous date. I added this grudge to my nerves and my overall distrust and it became a pretty unstable combination. It was clear, if I had only cared to notice, that Rob was treating the meal as an occasion; he objected when the waiters tried to seat us in the less pleasant ground-floor area and said that no, tonight he absolutely insisted on eating upstairs. He asked for the wine list, which caused momentary consternation among the waiters, since the Tandoori Mahal is not the sort of restaurant where the customers frequently drink wine. He ordered the dishes. He did offer me the option of choosing, but I was ashamed of showing my craven preference for the least spicy dishes.
Rob is omnivorous. Not only is he naturally omnivorous, he cultivates his taste for odd and unusual foods whose very mention makes my jaws involuntarily clamp shut: unspeakable organs, seaweed, raw fish. He has the soundest of stomachs. The only food he will not touch in fact is that which bears the hallmark of English gentility; quite ordinary everyday items like white sauce and Rich Tea biscuits and custard. This isn’t cosmopolitan snobbery; really workaday dishes like pie and beans he eats without a second thought. But anything which smacks of bland respectability, he spurns.
We talked about Rob’s writing. He has written three plays for television – I should call them screenplays – and he was starting work on a fourth, the one about computers which had brought him to the museum. His first, no one was interested in and he now disowns it, but his second was produced by the BBC; I had even heard of one of the actors who was in it. His third one was being looked over by various people and things sounded quite hopeful. He also writes documentaries. They are on the sort of urgent, important issues which provoke instant discomfort in me because I know so little about them – like the forests in Brazil – and I know also that I will not make the effort to find out more. One of his documentaries quite recently had been much discussed and had won an award. A columnist on a Sunday paper had devoted his column to it. It all sounded very impressive to me and it did seem quite wrong that we should be sitting in the seedy Tandoori Mahal, rather than somewhere at the flashy hub of fashionable London.
In time, of course, I came to appreciate the honesty with which Rob had taken me straight away to one of his favourite restaurants: ‘This is what I like. Do you?’ No wasteful beating about the bush in places in which neither of us would have felt comfortable. No beating about the bush at all, in fact; at the end of the evening, Rob asked me at the tube station if I would like to come and see an interesting-sounding new South American film with him the following week. I may have hesitated, but by that stage it would already have been a purely contrived hesitation. As soon as I said yes, Rob put his arm round me and gave me a quick squeeze. ‘Great,’ he said, ‘I’m really pleased about that.’
We had dinner, I think, twice more. We went to a concert of Indian music and to an exhibition of distressing photographs of the war in Lebanon. During our third dinner, I remember I said something terrible. I was so nervous, the further things went with Rob, the more nervous, and still so suspicious as to why someone so desirable should be showing an interest in me, that at the risk of wrecking it I had to test my luck. Over the dessert, I took one final gulp of wine too many and I blurted out, ‘Could you tell me, please, what exactly is going on?’
Rob raised his eyebrows. I would have preferred it if he had blushed. But he raised his eyebrows and, taking a quick swallow of wine himself, he answered smiling, ‘You mean, what are my intentions?’
‘Please don’t be sarcastic.’ I said tautly. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Well, I think I do,’ said Rob. ‘What do you want me to say? Frankly, I’ve got no idea. I’m fascinated. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you before.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you before.’ We went to one more film, Algerian, and to an exhibition of holograms by a friend of his. Barely a month after I met him, I spent my first night here in his bedroom.
Earlier this week, I plucked up my courage and suggested to Rob that we have a party on his birthday. I had been at home all day with a cold. With Rob’s encouragement, over the past few months I have got into the habit of staying off work with the slightest ailment. Rob’s reasoning is that since they expect me to do such a dreary and unfulfilling job, it is only just that every now and then I reclaim some fruitful time of my own. It wasn’t a very fruitful day; I spent most of it dozing. In the late afternoon, Rob came into the bedroom with a tea-tray. He had not had a good day’s writing either, I knew. It distracted him to have someone else in the flat. Even through two shut doors, absolutely silent under the blankets, my presence bothered him. I heard him, more than once, going into the kitchen, boiling the kettle, opening and closing the fridge door. Half an hour earlier, I had heard him go out.
He came in carrying a tray with the teapot, two mugs, milk, sugar and a plate of gaudily golden cakes. He had been out to the patisserie. Rob very rarely makes gestures like that; he disapproves of them. When he does, he does so with such self-conscious care that he looks like a small boy conscientiously doing a ‘Good Deed’. His movements are formal and exaggerated.
I was convulsed with extreme love for him as he came carefully round the door and across the carpet, his beard pushed down into his shirt collar with the effort of concentration.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked.
I answered, truthfully, ‘I’m fine.’
He steered the tray successfully to rest on the bed beside me. ‘You don’t look fine,’ he said conscientiously. ‘Your eyes are like an albino rabbit’s.’
‘Is that genuine concern?’ I asked playfully. ‘Or just encouragement to stay off work for one day more?’
‘Genuine concern,’ Rob said in mock indignation. ‘Genuine, selfless concern. Even though having somebody around interferes with my concentration. Look what I’ve brought you, you poor sick rabbit!’
I raised myself on the pillows and clapped my hands with exaggerated glee at the cakes. ‘You’re a marvel,’ I cried. ‘A miracle worker.’
While we ate them and drank the tea, I worked out what I was going to
say to him. It was the perfect moment, now or never, with the room getting dark and only the bedside light and the fragrance of the tea and the almond croissants.
I put down my mug abruptly. ‘Rob,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
Rob looked startled by my suggestion and, almost immediately, embarrassed. He pretended to be thinking it over, but I knew at once that he would say no. And I was angry, angry in spite of the tea and the croissants and the gentle light. It had taken quite an effort of courage to make my suggestion and now the effort was wasted. Worse, Rob was going to turn me down. I stopped chewing and swallowing while he pretended to be deliberating and kept my eyes on his face, to make it as difficult as possible for him. Normally, I would have had the good sense not to do that, not to put crude pressure on him. But the implications of his refusal seemed so important; I chose to forget that probably I would not have enjoyed the party anyway.
Rob cupped his hand thoughtfully round his beard. ‘Let’s hang on for a bit, shall we?’ he said. ‘It’s a great idea of yours, but I think perhaps it’s early days yet for a party.’
I opened my mouth to argue with him, but instead I began to cry. A cold is not a romantic illness, but I was in bed. Rob bent over me. ‘What’s the matter, baby? Stop it.’
At first, I hated it when Rob called me ‘baby’; it sounded so glib and insincere. But I came to realize that it is an expression of his greatest affection and now I welcome it.
‘That’s just an excuse,’ I cried. ‘You don’t want to have a party with me because you haven’t really accepted me into your life. I’m here on probation, that’s all.’
Rob sat back. He looked put out. He deliberately lifted my plate, with my half-eaten croissant, out of the way of my crying, as if to remind me of what a generous thing he had just done.
‘I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ he answered. He spread his hands to show me the bedroom. ‘Does this look as though you’re here on probation?’
I got angrier with him for remaining so reasonable and with myself for weakly crying. ‘You know quite well what I mean,’ I sobbed. ‘You won’t have a party because I don’t fit in with you and your friends.’
To my surprise, Rob answered calmly, ‘Well, no, you don’t. But does that really matter?’
I was surprised enough to stop crying. I looked up at him to work out what he meant. He just looked irritated, because he’s sensible and he can’t stand scenes.
‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter to you,’ I sniffed. ‘It’s fine, my just being an … an extra. But how do you think I feel, always kept on the sidelines?’
‘Oh, rubbish, Alison,’ he retorted. ‘You know perfectly well you’re not kept on the sidelines. You’re just different in a lot of ways from most of my friends. What can I do about that?’
His sympathy was receding, now that I had stopped crying. I could have started again, easily, but I had another argument. ‘It’s not fair to relegate me to that position,’ I said pompously. ‘I don’t want to be just an appendage, you know.’ I knew that argument would stir his conscience but it was dishonest, for an appendage of Rob’s is all I want to be.
Rob looked at me so searchingly that I felt my dishonesty exposed by his stare. Then he said patiently, ‘Alison, if you were just an “appendage”, I would have said “yes” like that – you can see that, can’t you? You could have got all dolled up in one of your party frocks, high heels, and teetered about looking decorative.’ He frowned. ‘You’re clearly trying to tell me something else, but I’m not sure what it is.’
He folded his arms and waited. In the face of such justice, I didn’t know what to say. ‘Why don’t you want to have a party then?’ I asked feebly.
Rob sorted his thoughts. ‘You’ve as good as said it yourself. You wouldn’t feel comfortable; I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Why push it? Why not just stick to what we’re good at?’
‘Rob,’ I said in a panic. ‘You do understand why I cried, don’t you?’
He put my cake plate back on my lap. ‘You wanted to give me a birthday present; I didn’t like your idea. You’re in bed with a stinking cold. You feel lousy. Do you want some more tea?’
When we had finished, he took out the tray. For an unrealistic moment, I hoped he might come back into bed with me. We could have cancelled our argument. But I heard him on the telephone. He arranged to go out for a drink with Andy Ellis.
The next day, I went back to work. Rob and I hadn’t really forgiven each other for the previous day’s disagreement. At least he would have a quiet day’s writing.
I brooded on the argument all week at the museum and then on Sunday I went off again to see my old lady, doubly pleased to have a private project of my own from which Rob was excluded.
My old lady turned out to be an absolute fright. Serves me right, I suppose. She wears bold theatrical make-up on a shrivelled face; bright scarlet lipstick which bleeds into the deep folds of her crinkled lips and orangey-pink powder which wobbles on the hairs of her chin.
She wouldn’t let me in at first. No one had let her know I was coming and she was obviously deeply suspicious of my motives. It turns out that she was in the first time I went round after all, but because she didn’t know who I was, she didn’t dare answer the door. Eventually I did persuade her to let me in, but it was only for the briefest of visits, during which she sat perched on the edge of her chair the whole time and didn’t take her beady eyes off me, as though I might pinch her ornaments. (They are in such breathtakingly bad taste.) In these circumstances, conversation was hardly possible and we only exchanged enough short questions for her to be sure that I was indeed who I claimed to be.
Her house is grim. It smelled so awfully of unopened windows and unaired rooms that I was worried Rob would smell it on my clothes when he came back from his sitar lesson. I felt grubby enough, what with the bicycle ride, to have a bath and change. Of course Rob probably interpreted that quite differently, if he registered it at all.
I noticed two intriguing things while I was there, which I shall keep in mind in case we continue to have as much trouble with conversation. One was that she has the most fascinating-looking collection of theatrical mementoes which, with a bit of luck, I will be able to persuade her to tell me about. The other was that her living room and hall are dominated by photographs of one man, presumably her late husband, in an astonishing variety of poses and costumes. He must have been in the theatre too. He has a long, lean face, which would be classically handsome if it were not for his sharply twisted nose. If she has got over the grief of her widowhood, it might be interesting to talk to her about him too.
*
But, at last, she had it all worked out. She put the cruets back where they should both have been in the first place: in the kitchen. She put the yellow ‘Gift from Torbay’ jug, which held extinct pencils, on the mantlepiece. No, she was going to put it on the mantlepiece when it occurred to her to sit down halfway in her armchair and tip all the contents on to her lap to see what they were: the clutch of cracked pencils, a souvenir paper knife and, in the bottom, an ancient blue cellophane-wrapped boiled sweet, furry with dust. She arranged the old newspapers on the floor beside the magazine rack. The magazine rack was more than full, so she couldn’t put them in it. She put the TV Times by itself on the table where she could quickly find it. She put her reading glasses, opened, over the broad arm of her armchair. How dreadfully blind the matt green material looked beneath the magnifying lenses. She had long ago lost their case and she needed to keep them on a series of glaringly obvious perches. All that was left to tidy then was a handful of bits and bobs – buttons, safety-pins, some Free Offers – and it was infuriating that it took her the rest of Sunday morning to find the right places to put them. Among the bits and pieces she found a strange contraption; it was small and made of yellow metal, twisted into an indefinable but obviously once functional shape. She looked at it hard for a long time, turning it in different directions, but for the life of her she could not rec
all what it was. When the table mat was finally clear, she took it off and folded it away. The unaccustomed empty surface of the coffee table disturbed her. With the flick of the floral mat, the familiar objects were all gone and she wondered how on earth would she remember what they had been?
She put the best mat on the table. It was embroidered with a pattern of blue and purple flowers, made up of delicate pieces of other fabrics. She admired it for a minute with nothing on it, and she appreciated the knobbly silken stem of a sweet-pea with the tip of her finger. She chided herself for dawdling; goodness knows, there was more than enough to do. She put out the saucers and the spoons, the tea-cups and the plates. She put out the sugar basin and the tongs, the milk-jug and the tea-strainer. Each one took a separate, slow trip from the disordered kitchen. She put out the special napkins which went with the mat. At that moment, when it was time to put out the highlight, what she had bought for tea, Alicia suddenly felt that her heart was about to stop pumping. She had not had such an exhausting week for years.
Every day, she had deliberated whether or not she should go ahead and have the girl to tea, and on different days she had come to different conclusions. On Monday and Tuesday, when the dubious event was still sufficiently distant, she had decided that she ought to. On Wednesday, when Pearl came, she had deliberated out loud and with the beginnings of enjoyable anticipation. But because Pearl, with typical fecklessness, had also been in favour, she had decided, merely to contradict her, that she ought not to. On Thursday and Friday, when the tea was nearly on top of her, she had changed her mind several times each day, alternately aghast at the imminent interruption of her routine and full of regret at the prospect of missing it. In the end, she had decided to take the necessary steps anyway and leave her final decision until the final moment. She had begun to prepare for it. She had stood inside her front door and tried to imagine what the house would look like to a visitor. So many preparations turned out to be necessary in the light of this examination that she had had to get to work on them straight away and they had drained her. Naturally, once she was preparing for it, she had begun to look forward to the tea more and more. Indeed, she had got so happily excited as she pottered about that she had once or twice forgotten who it was she was preparing for and imagined another visitor entirely. Yesterday had been the last straw.
