12. London, Present Day
Chestnut Road, Norwood
Whoever Irene Guy was, she was certainly a hoarder. The room was carpeted with a well-walked-on beige shag and in the air was the distinctive smell of old lady. A suggestion of skin, pieces of person everywhere, hair, flakes, scalp and nails, all become dust and settled, now unsettled by Frieda. Once, Frieda remembered now, she had looked up the constitution of dust and saw that it was dead skin cells and the dried faeces and desiccated corpses of dust mites. Lovely.
The room was a heap of indistinguishable matter, so much of it that Frieda had the sensation of being ingested. A nut-brown sofa commanded the centre of the lounge, covered in magazines, papers, books, knitting needles and endless piles of debris. Hanging above a faux-marble mantel that rested over an alcove where once a fireplace might have been was a large print of a map. A river ran through the centre, leading off to a heavenly, celestial horizon. The tributaries were all labelled: ‘The River of Death’ running towards ‘The Desert of Eternal Despair’. Along the bottom was a quote: ‘Know, prudent cautious self-control is wisdom’s root.’
Frieda walked slowly around, both wanting to touch everything, and not to. She had asked a friend, Emma, to come with her, but she was busy, and so alone, like an absurd burglar, she began to look for clues as to who Irene Guy had been.
In front of the window she realised that there was a large brass birdcage and was disconcerted to see that inside it was an owl. Frieda looked at it, assuming it was stuffed, and then looked again. No. It was possibly breathing. Its eyes were closed. Tufts of feathers around its ears – were they ears? Its wildness was a shock. Tawny feathers. It was odd enough, to be allowed into a strange house, a stranger’s house, and Frieda felt peculiar, a trespasser, but she was not sure what she was supposed to do with a live bird.
The owl did not move and so she backed away from it and walked over to a bureau and opened a narrow drawer. It was stuffed with old Christmas cards. To Irene, Merry Christmas, love George and Rini, Xmas 1981.
The bedroom was a rush and clash of colour. There were throws, rugs, cushions and very bright purple curtains. Several rugs layered each other on the floor, with felt patterns and appliqué motifs edged with crouching stitches. Frieda sat on the bed, slightly oppressed by the burden of a stranger’s intimate space.
In the corner of the room Frieda saw a dusty glass dome. She bent down and swiped at the dust on the glass. Inside was an entire street scene in miniature at the centre of which was a temple, complete with a monkey on its roof. There was a shop with a hanging sign saying ‘money counter’ and a row of red flags with Chinese characters imprinted in gold. Next to the stall was a doorway labelled ‘opium den’ and in front of it a market stall where three upside-down chickens hung, tied at their feet, Peking style. At the end of the street were two figures in Chinese dress standing next to a donkey. There was a key lodged into a thick wooden base and when she turned it, clicking it round, gently, twice, a mechanical version of an oriental tune played out and the figures began to move, wonkily. The donkey raised its head up and down, in and out of a miniature water trough. It’s charming, she thought.
She wiped away more of the dust with the sleeve of her black woollen cardigan and, as she did so, a grumble came from what she assumed must be the airing cupboard in the hall. The heating seemed to be on. She walked back into the living room. A strip of late-afternoon light striped the carpet, cut across objects scattered all around the floor and climbed the wall at an angle.
The owl’s eyes were still closed. Only once, previously, had she seen an owl this close and that was in the foyer of a hotel in Moscow. That had been a tawny thing, magical, mainly because of its Russianness. She had looked into the eyes of that Russian owl before going to bed in the small, chilly room and dreamed all night of spiders and leaves. This owl was bigger, with more white feathers layered amongst the brown ones. It still did not move, though it seemed to be alive. Frieda began to calculate. If the funeral had been on the thirty-first of August, then it must have been at least a few days, or even a week, before that when Irene Guy died. The owl must not have been fed for – well over a week. Could that be possible? And what did owls eat, anyway?
Frieda wrapped the entire birdcage, complete with the owl inside, in two bin liners that she had fished out of one of Irene Guy’s kitchen drawers. She strapped the cage into her bicycle basket – luckily, an old-fashioned large one – using string found in the same drawer. She had looked through endless books, cards and picture, but was still unclear as to who Irene Guy was. Trudging, invasively, through a lifetime of ephemera proved to be tiring, and eventually Frieda decided to come back the next day to look for photographs. But how could she leave a living owl?
Rain came at her like small knives. She cycled carefully along the route that went past one of Nathaniel’s favourite pubs in Brixton. London traffic has neither heart nor compassion for a cycling woman and particularly cruel are the screeching black cabs that skirt up against her wheels. Glowing ahead was the pub, shining potently like a castle on a hill in a fairy story, and Frieda knew that there was a high chance that Nathaniel would be in there. The poor owl hadn’t made a noise and she could only presume that a detour at this stage wouldn’t hurt it. Dripping with rain, she poked her head through the door.
‘Is it OK to bring my bike in?’
The barman nodded. Balancing the bike against the wall, Frieda left the cage in the basket covered in its bin liner and stood damply at the bar examining the wine list. Within a minute a hand pressed flat against the small of her back.
‘Frie’,’ Nathaniel said, ‘naughty of you but marvellous.’ He was several glasses in and less conscious of onlookers than usual. He grabbed at her hand and pulled it towards himself.
‘I’m exhausted to my core, no help in the shop, just me,’ he said, holding out his oil-stained fingers. ‘What do you want, Pinot Grigio?’
Frieda smiled at him. ‘I’d love one. Yes.’
‘Good girl,’ he said. She was about to tell him not to good-girl her, as if she were a Girl Guide leader, but didn’t bother. He had some difficulty balancing himself on the bar stool next to her, but once done he immediately put his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. The pores on his nose were open and more visible than usual.
‘You’re looking delicious,’ he said. ‘Windswept.’
‘Hmm. You’re not.’
He put his hand up towards her lips, as if to shush her, but lurched forward and accidentally jabbed her cheek instead. She pushed his hand away.
‘What brings you to my humble office?’ He cast his hand around like an estate agent demonstrating the width of the kitchen. He put his hand back on her leg, this time further up her thigh.
‘Know anything about owls?’
‘Only stuffed ones. Taxidermy. Tried it once, pretty gory.’
Frieda very much wanted to talk to him about the letter, the flat, the owl, the hotel and the estrangement of being back here. She had a list in her head. The police and military vans, for one. The rules from the Sheikh. The cutting of the hair, already a lifetime away and also, a growing frustration with her job and a sense of wanting to do something else. Just the thought of the fluorescent-lit boardrooms aflutter with earnest interns caused Frieda a migraine. From unfortunate sandwiches eaten under an umbrella whilst wandering along the Strand to losing hours to an inadequate phone system, Central London office life with its persistent slipping away of time was gently barbaric, and this barbarism was highlighted by the surreal contrast of the assignments abroad: she came back sun-blinded from foreign colours to sink down into English grey.
She looked at the grey in Nathaniel’s black hair and realised that she had not noticed it before. When did that arrive? Everything she had to say, about where she was currently, slipped on to the floor beneath the bar stool. She sipped her drink.
She had met him, Nathaniel, five years ago now, as they both stood droopily in a dripping marquee at a fol
k concert. A young woman was singing terribly as she hacked at violin strings. He had turned and said, ‘This is one of the most awful things I have ever witnessed. You must have a drink with me in the beer tent, now.’
Cider with chips followed and the night ended in his tent, both of them trying to squeeze into one sleeping bag, he miraculously discarding her clothes as she wriggled in. Rain on the tent all night, and in the morning Frieda awoke naked except for a pair of woolly socks, with him running his finger in circles around her belly button saying, ‘You’re like something from a film.’
Breakfast was an extortionately priced omelette and bacon baguette and, as Frieda ripped open a packet of white sugar and tipped it into her tea, he had said, ‘This is the kind of breakfast my eldest loves.’
Of course. Children. Wives. All of that.
Nathaniel coughed loudly, banging his fist on the bar with each bark, in time, as if the force of his banging contributed to the dislodging of whatever solids were causing the blockage in his internal system. Frieda turned away until he had finished coughing. She wanted so much to explain to him how she’d been feeling – dislocated, rootless – but here he was, drunk, so it was pointless. She kept looking at her bike, worrying about the owl, but it wasn’t making any noise.
‘Margaret’s been re-filing all of her payslips in plastic wallets and, for some totally unknown reason, bulk-buying bikinis off the internet – about fifty different versions of the same ones, at twenty quid a pop – and the house has been full of those hideous NCT women waving organic celery sticks at me.’
Frieda stared at the bottles on the wall behind the bar. Nathaniel looked at her, catching her hand in his.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I didn’t actually want domestic details, funnily enough.’
‘I know, I am sorry. You are right.’
It used to be that the thought of his wife heightened it. The visits to his bicycle shop on Broadway Market. Frieda popping in, pretending to be a customer, and sometimes, there she was, Margaret, on the phone. She was always inordinately well groomed in an earthy, functional sort of way with short hair and homespun clothes, a casual, arty tastefulness. Frieda running her finger along the handlebars of a Pashley bike, smiling a small smile; hearing the sounds of his blood shooting and smelling his skin from across the shop floor. The bell of the door ringing. Looking in from outside, a slight nod. Coming back later when she was gone. It was vile. They were disgusting. Hands up her skirt in the back room, thumb circling her, thigh pushing between her legs. A wife could come back in at any minute; the twist and tug of a nipple and Frieda, slowly kneeling in front of him, breathing on him, not looking up yet, mouth close.
Frieda had been taught that all love was valid and boundaries were for the sullen, the half-dead and the half-wit. Marriage was an anachronism, outdated and dead. It was her duty to pull it apart, unpick its edges and bring out the real. She had, after all, walked in on her mother, when she, Frieda, was what, aged six? A year or so before she left. In bed with the American Arthurian specialist who was living in one of the caravans: Frieda’s mum’s legs sticking out of the bed and American Bill’s legs wrapped around them. Later her mum said, ‘Love is free, Frieda sweetheart. It’s better that way. I love Daddy too.’
This was when Frieda had first discovered that it was possible to run away on a bike. Cycle, wheels fast, move fast, keep moving, go go go until you are far away. She had been taught that she should be above the crass rules of those who troop along in lines, getting married, pretending at monogamy, falling apart, getting divorced, starting again. Her mother and American Bill and her father’s subsequent collapse had fully illuminated the important life lesson that marriage was a farce. Frieda remembered answering the phone, standing barefoot on the cold kitchen lino early in the morning, everyone else asleep and a woman’s voice: ‘Who’s your mum in bed with?’ But there was something unconvincing about this free love idea, and Frieda was left with a feeling that they were all in a wilderness somewhere, and it seemed important – her survival depended on it, in fact – that she get away from it, to find some shelter.
Keep riding, riding away. If you cycle fast enough you fly.
Frieda locked her bike to the railings next to the Peabody entrance and untied the string. It was sevenish in the evening. Gently, she pulled the birdcage out of the basket and holding it in front of her, arms wrapped around it, she walked towards her building. Wine-warmed and flushed, she had let Nathaniel kiss her just outside the door of the pub, even though the distance between them was getting as swollen as the Thames.
Now, at the top of the staircase, she wondered what she was doing with this owl. She had things to get on with. Her career; reports; expense claims. When, at the age of eighteen she had told her dad that she was going to university to study International Relations and Politics he had looked at her in horror.
‘But surely you would rather be a poet in Paris?’
She had seen something in his eyes that looked distinctly like shame. It didn’t even taste so good in the end, to have become so proper, her own pathetic rebellion. But she was stubborn, and she kept at it. Working hard for years at real and concrete and meaningful things, understanding issues that were important and relevant, embracing various causes (the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Tibetans, the Saharawi tribes and so on) with the full vigour of the ardent young, leaving her parents’ cosmic radiations behind. She did not need to be rummaging through an old woman’s memories. She should hand the owl over to someone, the RSPB.
The swirls and seagulls were still there, of course. She opened the door, leaving her bag on the step and put the cage on the kitchen table. She pulled the bin liner off and two enormous, disconcerting eyes looked at her. Clear eyes. She peered into the cage.
‘Hello owlie,’ she said, ‘what do you eat?’
From the fridge she pulled out a cold sausage, cut it into pieces and tried to poke it through the bars, but it was too big so she opened the cage door. A draught curled around her ankle, and she realised that her bag was still holding the front door open. She went to kick the door shut but it resisted. A sharp pain shot through her toe and she hopped back into the kitchen and pulled off her boot to examine the damage. As she did, she felt a flap and a whoosh near her head: a flush of brown feathers, a flutter against the concrete wall. The owl was out the door before she could even think. She ran to follow it into the hall, spotting it perched up near the ceiling on an exposed pipe. It seemed entirely unconcerned, blinking once, twice, then once more.
What the Bicycle Does: Mounted on a wheel, you feel at once the keenest sense of responsibility. You are there to do as you will within reasonable limits; you are continually called upon to judge and to determine points that before have not needed your consideration, and consequently you become alert, active, quick-sighted and keenly alive, as well to the rights of others as to what is due yourself.
13. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes
June 26th
Great excitement this morning: two Kashgaris on horseback arrived carrying three sacks of mail. Our first post since Baku. Even Millicent sat happy as an infant, tearing open the packages. They were in a pitiful condition, ripped or emptied and some nearly destroyed. Most date back at least three or four months and I marvel to think of the journey they have been on. There are such complexities, limits on weight, additional costs, not to mention censors at various points. Bibles emerged, along with posters, books, newspapers, Inland Mission reports, articles. Lizzie held up a number of copies of The Times, completely out of date, of course, but a joy to read none the less. I held the paper to my nose and fancied I could smell England.
A good many packages had nothing inside, their contents long-since looted. A letter from Millicent’s friend in Moscow had been so brutally censored with scissors that it was now an unreadable paper-doll chain. Lizzie sorted everything into piles and I was pleased to see that there was a small pile for me.
The first parcel co
ntained uncontaminated Allenbury dried milk and dried food packages for Ai-Lien, an estimated eight months’ worth, although a handful of the packages appeared to be destroyed and milk powder covered everything. Equally importantly, I saw that Lizzie has received her supply of medicine. I watched as she carefully put the medicine tins to one side, so that Millicent, who was engrossed in a long letter, did not see them. I hope this will mean an end to the vagueness that has come over her.
Joy: two letters for me, one from Mother. I stood up, leaving the others to sort through the enormous pile for Millicent and went to the courtyard and sat under the shade of one of the knotted fig trees. The paper is thin, ripped in places, but mostly intact. She writes of Father and of the terrible weight of missing him; of Elizabeth, her health, her medicine, her strength. Unlike you, Eva, dear, I do not think that Lizzie has the constitution for travel. In the spaces between the words it is possible to see Mother sitting with Aunt Cicely, a widow of thirteen years – two women with nothing in common living together next to an unfriendly sea.
Poor Mother. Even after the liberal and continental childhood we enjoyed – the artists who came to stay, the anarchists, suffrage women, painters, musicians – two of her three daughters have chosen the Church, and a life of service. She expected something different, that one of us might bring poetry into the world, art or music. She wanted beauty, always more beauty. Perhaps this is why she agreed to buy the most expensive camera for Lizzie? Or why little Nora, our youngest sister who stole our mother’s love, has been allowed to live in Dublin where we hear that she has become a liar who cavorts with artists and consumes gin.
Just before leaving I almost confided in Mother about my pretence, the real nature of my so-called faith, but ultimately I decided not to. She wanted so very much for us not to go that if she had known my secret I am sure that she would have convinced me to stay. My supposed calling was my only weapon. As we prepared for our journey she looked at me, puzzled. Lizzie she could understand, she had always had a transcendental element to her personality, but me? She was suspicious, but I pushed on, to be away, to keep running. Those men who visited her, contesting for her attention, who brought her gifts, who listened to her talks at the university in Geneva, none of them would be with her now.
A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar Page 9
