The name was familiar, but the details were lost in a welter of letters about Pats and Teensies and Allans and Basils. It seemed to be easy to make friends in London. Or at least it seemed to be easy for Jordan, who was trusting and gregarious. We strolled off to a restaurant, Jordan in front with the children and me behind with Pat. Bill had stayed in the office, sipping moodily from his blue cup. “Look out for American tourists,” he called after us. “They’ll jostle you off the curbing.”
“What do you think of all this?” Pat asked, gesturing vaguely.
“Oh,” I said, “it’s very exciting. I’ve always loved England.”
“Jordan will have you living here yet,” he said, chuckling.
“Well,” I said doubtfully.
There was a long pause. “I can’t get used to no screens on the windows,” I said finally, having thought of something to say. “I keep expecting mosquitoes.”
“Skeeters?” Pat asked. “I think the time is past for skeeters.”
“You do have them here then?” I asked, surprised.
“Skeeters? Oh, I expect so.”
“What?”
“I’ll ask,” Pat said.
We went into the upstairs room of a restaurant filled with Victorian atmosphere. It seemed fitting: in spite of the heavy traffic, all the streets had a touch of Victorian ambience. Workmen wore large caps and long aprons; each office had a snub-nosed boy to run errands. To my surprise, I did not find this exhilarating. Despite my romantic predilection for the past, I felt a little strange, a little out of place. And I didn’t feel hungry; that was proof that something was wrong.
I sampled Bruce’s steak and kidney pie: to my vast disappointment, it tasted like liver. “Bring cokes for these young Americans,” Pat said expansively to the waiter. The cokes came with lemon and no ice.
“It’s got lemon in it,” Eric said loudly. “And it’s warm.”
“I suppose you want ice,” Pat said. He turned to me. “And you want ice water, I suppose.”
“I’d like some gin with anything,” I said.
“Ice water is what makes Americans effete,” Pat said, joking.
“I hate this coke,” Eric said.
“Wait until you meet my little girl,” Pat said to Bruce and Eric. “You’ll love her.”
He slouched back in his chair. “She’s beautiful,” he said. “I haven’t seen her for a while, but I’m going to see her Friday, I think.”
I drank my gin and thought about Mrs. Stackpole’s kitchen. I was thinking I would have to cook something in it and I didn’t know what to cook or where to get it, and I didn’t remember anything Mrs. Stackpole had said about the stove, which I was trying to forget anyway.
Suddenly lunch was over and Jordan stood up. “Well, I’m going back to the office now,” he said.
We looked at him dumbly. It occurred to the four of us simultaneously that we were sitting in a room in the middle of an enormous city full of strangers. It was raining mistily outside and the rest of the afternoon stretched before us.
“I’ll stay in the office and help you, Dad,” Mark said.
“I want to help too,” Bruce said.
“I want to help too,” Eric said. “I want to see Jane.”
“You can help later,” Jordan said. “Mark will help today.”
Mark looked relieved.
“What are we going to do?” Bruce asked. It was the very question that had occurred to me.
“Sightsee,” Jordan said, avoiding my eyes. “Look around. Go to a museum. The Victoria and Albert is right near the house.”
“I’ll go off with you,” Pat said. “Show you round.”
We went off in a taxi toward Knightsbridge. “Take them round Buckingham Palace and all that jazz,” Pat said to the driver. He took us round Buckingham Palace and then round Westminster. Pat pointed out the statue of Abraham Lincoln and remarked that Englishmen never assassinated their leaders. I accepted this: all my life I had believed in the Englishman’s sense of Fair Play, his sturdy honesty, his good nature, his instinctive good taste, his intellectual endowments, his aversion to violence. Pat himself was not only slender and handsome, but friendly, and he had a beautiful accent.
After we had seen all the jazz, he took us to Harrods in the Brompton Road, very near Baldridge Place, and led us through the food halls and the bank. Then he left us, reluctantly, because he had an appointment. We roamed the food halls and then walked outside for a while, but it was raining. There was a Wimpy’s across the street. Since I had not nerved myself to buy anything in the food halls, I decided on take-out hamburgers and fries for that night. Only as a stop-gap, I thought sternly, because after all Wimpy’s was part of the Americanization of London which God knew all right-thinking people deplored.
When we opened the door to Baldridge Place the telephone was ringing. I approached it with caution. “Hello?” I said.
“Anita!” cried a friendly voice. “This is Cynthia!” Cynthia was a friend of mine from Chicago, an English girl, married to an American, who had returned to London for two months to visit her parents. We had telegraphed her our phone number because her parents did not have a phone.
“Oh, Cynthia,” I said, beginning to babble. “Oh my goodness, how are you, Cynthia? My goodness, it’s great to hear your voice. Where are you?” She was about an hour away, but she said she and her daughter Sydney, who was Bruce’s age, were coming to see us and spend the day. “Cynthia and Sydney are coming here tomorrow,” I announced. “And we’ll spend the whole day together!”
“Oh, boy,” Bruce said. “That’s great.”
6
Cynthia
THE NEXT DAY was dull and gray. We were enlivened by the prospect of the visit with Cynthia and Sydney, and by the arrival of the man to install the rented television set.
“Oh, I can hardly wait,” I said to Jordan, who was putting on his coat in the hall. “English television must be really marvelous.”
“Well,” Jordan said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, annoyed. “It must be great. The BBC and all that. Those actors and everything.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jordan said. “But I watched it a lot last winter….”
“And?”
“Well, I don’t know….”
“You must have been tired,” I said firmly. “It has to be great. The BBC and all that. Drama.”
“Well,” Jordan said. He left under a slight cloud with Mark.
The children and I dressed quickly. I had seen a great deal of Cynthia during the past few years. She couldn’t drive and I enjoyed taking her shopping, and to lunch. I knew that she missed England, and I sympathized with her. Besides, in addition to being pretty, she was always friendly, polite and good-natured—qualities which I always felt were at least partly due to her early environment and upbringing.
“In many ways she’s my closest friend,” I said to Mrs. Grail, who was washing the breakfast dishes.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Mrs. Grail said. “Where are the sheets?”
“Well,” I said.
“It’ll soon be time to change them,” Mrs. Grail said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m afraid there aren’t any other sheets, Mrs. Grail.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean there aren’t any others because Mrs. Stackpole doesn’t have any. I mean she has another pair but if she leaves them all, then she won’t have any clean ones when she gets back.”
“How’s that?” Mrs. Grail wiped her hands on her apron and turned to face me.
“I’m not sure,” I confessed.
“You mean she only left you the one pair? And them twisty things on the boys’ beds?”
“They’re nylon,” I said faintly. The bell rang at this point. “Oh, there’s Cynthia,” I said thankfully, and headed for the basement stairs.
“And no frying pan,” Mrs. Grail called after me. I went hastily up the stairs and opened the front door to find Cynthia and Sydney on the stoop.
“Oh, Cynthia,” I said. “How are you?”
“Well, well,” Cynthia said. “So this is the town house.”
“Yes, it’s charming,” I said.
I showed her around the house. She seemed particularly interested in the nursery. “Where’s Mary Poppins?” she asked. I noticed a certain ironic edge to her voice that seemed new. I couldn’t remember hearing it before. “Aren’t you feeling well, Cynthia?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know how I can be expected to feel,” Cynthia said. “My mother and father are getting older and I can’t be here to take care of them.”
I began to prepare cheese sandwiches. “I suppose that is upsetting,” I said, getting out the bread.
“Well, I don’t know what else you would call it,” Cynthia said.
I served the cheese sandwiches and then we all went for a walk through Knightsbridge. “Knightsbridge is very posh, I believe,” Cynthia said.
“Yes, it’s close to everything. And the shops are nice.”
“Oh, it’s posh,” Cynthia responded. We stopped on the street so that Bruce could buy some peanuts from a vendor. “Oh Sydney,” Cynthia said, “I hope you’re not going to eat those dreadful peanuts.”
“What’s wrong with peanuts?” I asked.
“Eating peanuts in the street,” Cynthia said. She kept looking around nervously.
At this point the children announced that they were thirsty. It was getting on for teatime anyway, so we went into a large tea shop in the Brompton Road.
“I imagine it’s quite elegant in here,” Cynthia whispered to me. I didn’t see why she thought so: the tablecloths were not clean, the walls were a bilious yellow and the chairs had a hard institutional look. We took a table anyway, Cynthia sidling along in a peculiar obsequious manner like a clerk ushering Scrooge into an inner office. We ordered mineral water and teacakes.
There were two people at a table in the front of the shop, about a quarter of a mile away, and the usual hostess with sausage curls wandering about, but Cynthia kept addressing Sydney in a constrained whisper. “Oh, stop eating those peanuts, Sydney. Straighten your collar. Don’t slump.”
No one seemed to be paying any attention to us. The people at the front table were looking out the window, the hostess had gone into the kitchen, and Sydney and Bruce and Eric went on eating peanuts and drinking warm mineral water.
“Oh, this is disgraceful,” Cynthia said hoarsely. “I forbid you to eat those peanuts, Sydney. Oh, how terrible this is.”
Cynthia was casting a pall over teatime. Her personality seemed to have undergone a transformation of some sort. Apparently an old feeling of social inferiority had been fanned into violent existence by the Knightsbridge atmosphere. I decided I liked Cynthia better when she was in Skokie.
After tea we went shopping. I paused in Woolworth’s to buy a frying pan because that was where Mrs. Grail had told me to get one; then we went into a large supermarket so that Cynthia could help me choose groceries. Still speaking in an unusually low voice, and casting self-conscious glances left and right, Cynthia pointed to shelves and bins and freezers.
“Of course Australian beef is cheaper,” she said, “but as you can see it’s frozen and Mummy always buys British beef. There’s nothing like it, or English lamb either. English tomatoes are certainly the best and we only use Danish butter at home. I think you ought to taste real fish for a change, I doubt if you’ve ever had it.”
I tumbled everything obediently into my cart and was jolted, when I reached the checkout counter, to discover that I was expected, after emptying the cart, to bag my own groceries. It wasn’t what I was used to. I asked the clerk whether they delivered. “Certainly,” she said. “In the morning only.” I began to bag everything; the clerk checked out others behind me who pushed and shoved and fell against me while they were stuffing their purchases into their bags. Cheeses rolled on the floor as Cynthia and I worked, sweating, and the clerk kept giving us annoyed glances. Finally we staggered out, loaded with sacks and the frying pan, and walked Cynthia and Sydney to the bus stop.
“I’m inclined to follow you around all day, holding your skirt and sucking my thumb,” I said, making a joke out of it.
Cynthia smiled coldly. “I’m terribly depressed, you know,” she said. “I really don’t have time to think about much because my parents are getting older and I can’t stay here to take care of them.”
Eric was sucking his thumb. “When will we see you again?” I asked Cynthia as the bus appeared.
“I’ll keep in touch,” Cynthia said firmly, and hauled Sydney onto the bus.
We went slowly home under our burdens, and I fried fish for five people in the Woolworth frying pan. It took me an hour. The fish was delicious, although some of it got rather cold waiting for all of it to be fried in the one pan. We ate slowly, watching people’s legs passing the kitchen window. It was raining.
7
Sheets
IN THE EVENING, we removed the sheets from our big bed and Jordan took them in a cab to the launderette where he spent the evening washing and drying them. Mark and I stayed home and watched television after Bruce and Eric went to bed.
“It’s too bad your father is missing this play,” I said to Mark.
The play was about a young man with long hair who lived in an elegant apartment and kept talking to a young woman with bangs. “My God, these Americans,” the young man said. The girl sighed. “They’re always talking about relating,” the young man said. “How awful,” the girl replied.
“What’s this play about?” Mark asked.
“It’s too early to tell,” I said evasively. “But you know it’s on the BBC.”
We watched it a while longer. “I don’t understand who keeps coughing,” I said.
“I think it’s the cameraman,” Mark said.
The play ended when the young man and the young woman got married. Jordan returned with clean sheets just as a clergyman came on the screen to deliver a sermon. “They sign off with that,” Jordan said. I found this surprising, because it was only eleven-twenty.
“You missed a swell play, Dad,” Mark said, going up the stairs.
The next morning I was able to assure Mrs. Grail that we had clean sheets on the bed. “But they’ve never been aired,” she said. I didn’t know what that meant; it had a pleasantly archaic sound. “And how long can you keep it up?” she asked. “Him running about with them sheets, and them twisty rags on the boys’ beds, and you without a frying pan. And all that rent.”
I walked musing from the kitchen.
“I’ll never get used to it, never,” Mrs. Grail called after me. “Twenty-five years I’ve been here, and I’ll never get used to it.” I went upstairs where Jordan was dressing to leave for the office.
“I think you should call Mr. MacAllister about the sheets,” I said. “No frying pan, and them twisty rags on the boys’ beds. How long can you keep it up without an airing?”
“Well, I’ll try,” Jordan said. “Mr. MacAllister is an awfully nice guy, you know, I met him when I signed the lease. He lives in Belgravia.” He dialed a number. After a while I heard a boiled sort of voice through the phone, screaming with laughter above the telephone noises, the wheezes and clicks and ghostly interruptions.
Jordan hung up with a pleased smile. “He is a nice guy. He said, ‘Gone off to Scotland with the sheets, has she? Ha ha, how very like her. Go and buy the sheets and the frying pan and take it off the rent!”’
“I’ve already bought the frying pan,” I said. “It cost eight shillings.”
“Well, we’ll take it off the rent,” Jordan said. “He’s a reasonable person. He can’t help it if Mrs. Stackpole is a little eccentric.” I went downstairs to report to Mrs. Grail. “Well, I certainly should buy them sheets,” she said, “and new ones for the boys too. I never heard of such a thing. Sleeping on them rags. So he’s the boyfriend, is he? And little children in the house.”
“He’s a reasonable person,” I said
. “He can’t help it if Mrs. Stackpole is eccentric.”
“Eccentric is it? I’m telling you it’s the English, they’ll do you every time. You run out and get them sheets, before she tells him off.”
“How much do sheets cost?”
“They cost a lot,” Mrs. Grail responded promptly. “Everything costs a lot in this benighted place. Oh, I’ve been here twenty-five years and I’ll never get used to it, never. This Hoover is broken,” she added, in a more conversational tone.
“Oh, what shall we do?” The thought of attempting to get anything repaired was almost too much for me. I had tried to buy a can opener and no one would sell it to me. They all said that you could get them free in pubs, but the pub people wouldn’t give us one.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mrs. Grail said. “Blow it. Let her worry about it. I’ll use a broom. This old thing,” she said, kicking the vacuum cleaner. “It dates from the Ark. She hasn’t a penny. Oh, I’ll never get used to it, never.”
“If the phone book had yellow pages,” I said.
“Standing looking in a store window,” Mrs. Grail said, bending over to puff up the sofa cushions in their chintz slip-cover, “and a woman edges up and bumps into me, ‘Pardon me,’ I says. ‘Ah, go back,’ she says, ‘go back where you come from.’ ‘Yes,’ I says, ‘if the English will give us back our six counties,’ I says, ‘I’ll go back where I come from.”’
“That woman was probably an eccentric,” I said.
‘”Go back where you come from,”’ Mrs. Grail said, punching the cushion vigorously. “That’s what they keep saying. My husband’s from the North, from Yorkshire, and the men he works with, they tell him to go back where he come from.”
“My goodness,” I said.
“My Pat, those girls she works with, they mimic the way she talks.” She straightened up and brushed some lint off the back of the sofa. “They hate Americans too,” she said. “They hate everybody. You’ll find out.” She paused dramatically in the doorway, clutching the defunct Hoover. “Go get them sheets,” she said. “I should hurry up if I was you.”
Tea & Antipathy Page 3
