Feeling rather shaken, I went down to the kitchen to calm myself with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Jordan had originally ordered the London Times for me, but I found it less than interesting, so he switched to the Daily Telegraph. I sipped my instant coffee and read a review of the television play that Mark and I had seen the night before.
“I do not know where these elegant kitchens come from that one sees on these television dramas,” the reviewer wrote irascibly. “I certainly do not have one. I should like to make it very clear that I would under no circumstances have such a kitchen even if it were offered to me. We are being pervaded by a pernicious materialism, most probably from across the sea.”
8
Dr. Bott
ON SATURDAY MORNING we were awakened about eight o’clock by a pounding on the door. I hurried down and, mindful of Mrs. Stackpole’s warnings, called, “Who is it?”
“Telephone,” a voice said.
I opened the door a crack and peered out into a sunny Baldridge Place.
“We have a telephone,” I said.
“This is for the attic,” the man said. “To be installed. I have to leave this cable here.”
“What for?”
“I have to leave this cable here, to be installed at a later date.”
I stood aside reluctantly, and he clomped down to the kitchen, dragging dirt and bits of fluff over Mrs. Stackpole’s impractical red hall carpeting.
“Waking us up,” I said to Jordan. “Mrs. Stackpole never mentioned it. She said her lodger was going to bring some things to the attic one afternoon. Do you suppose that was a burglar?”
“He wouldn’t have all that cable with him if he was a burglar,” Jordan said reasonably. He looked out the window. “The sun’s out,” he remarked, in an awed voice.
After lunch Jane came with a friend named Tom and took Eric and Bruce to Hyde Park. Feeling quiet and peaceful, Jordan and Mark and I went to sit on folding chairs in Mrs. Stackpole’s small but charming back garden. Paved in red brick and edged with flowers, it was surrounded with a ten-foot-high fence of wooden palings fastened together tightly and sharpened to murderous fangs all along the top.
“I don’t think anyone could get in here,” I said. “Why do we have to use all those burglar locks on the garden door?”
“I think Mrs. Stackpole is odd on the subject of locks,” Jordan said.
We sat in the sun. I never sat in the sun at home; here I felt starved for sunlight. It had been gray and raining all week. The ground was very wet; the heat brought out huge black flies, and bees which hovered over the brilliant flowers. Steam rose around us.
“It’s like a jungle out here,” Mark said. He listened a moment as we sat stiffly on our folding chairs, our knees touching. A stillness pervaded everything. “Where is everybody?” he asked, nervously.
“It’s quiet on Saturday afternoon in Knightsbridge,” Jordan said. “All the shops are closed.”
“Quiet!” Mark said. “I’ll say it’s quiet. Aren’t there even any little kids?”
A ghostly sound of childish laughter floated through the air. Jordan rose and tried to peer through the fence palings, standing on tiptoe.
“How … old … are … you?” he called, in a high, lingering, eerie voice.
“I was ten …” Mark called back, “in eighteen fifty-six …”
We discovered that we were becoming rather depressed.
“I’m supposed to go to Battersea with Vincent,” Mark said. Vincent was one of Jordan’s employees: he was fifteen, the same age as Mark and vaguely Asian in appearance.
“That’s nice, dear,” I said, pleased that my boy had made a friend. Mark went off in the general direction of the Knightsbridge Underground station.
“Let’s take a walk,” Jordan said brightly.
I don’t normally drink, except at parties, but I said that I really thought I could use a drink.
“You can’t be served for an hour or two,” Jordan said apologetically.
We went into the house, which was cold and damp, and locked all the windows and the French door with the little black and gold keys that Mrs. Stackpole had left us for this purpose. There were four locks on the French door alone. Luckily the sun was still shining when we emerged into the street. We walked slowly toward the square. Children were playing in the little gated private park.
We paused and stared over the iron fence. “Listen, our kids could play with those children there,” Jordan said, becoming excited.
I felt an odd doubt. “We haven’t got a key,” I said.
“Dr. Bott will have one,” Jordan said. “He lives right over there, across the square—didn’t I tell you about Dr. Bott? He’s awfully nice. I went to him with my knee, and when I burnt my hand…”
“But …” I said.
“Good old Dr. Bott,” Jordan said fondly. He began to move toward the row of houses on the opposite side of the square.
I hung back. “Let’s not,” I said. “I don’t want to ask him.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jordan said testily. “You don’t know him.” He mounted the steep stairs. “He’ll be delighted to help,” he said, and rang, or pulled, the bell.
“Nobody’s home,” I said hastily, and began to back down the steps.
“Someone’s coming,” Jordan said. “What’s wrong with you?” The red door opened, and a man with fair hair stood before us. He stared blankly at Jordan through protuberant blue eyes.
“Yes?” he said coldly.
“Dr. Bott!” Jordan cried jovially. I turned and went hastily down the stairs. “Are you busy?” Jordan said. A note of hesitation crept into his voice.
“Yes,” Dr. Bott said, lifting his upper lip in what could only be described as a snarl. “I’m afraid I am.” By this time I had reached the pavement and was heading for the Brompton Road. “Wife,” Jordan was babbling, “family … here … visit….” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dr. Bott smiling at me.
“What!” he called, “All the way from America?”
“Yes,” I called back, using his favorite word, and hotfooted it down the empty street. I waited for Jordan at the corner. He appeared shortly, with a peculiar expression on his face. “Good old Dr. Bott,” I said.
“He said he wanted some time with his family,” Jordan said. “‘I’d like some time with my family, you know,’ was the way he put it.”
“How did he know we didn’t want medical help?”
“He didn’t. He didn’t ask me what we wanted.”
We walked through the empty streets, holding hands, and staring with unseeing eyes into shop windows. Finally we had some coffee and then we went home, and Jordan began writing letters, all beginning “My dear Dr. Bott …”
Bruce and Eric came home. They said all they had done in the park was lie on the grass while Jane rubbed Tom’s back. Then they went on lying in the grass and Tom rubbed Jane’s back.
We turned on the television set, but the only thing on both stations (there were only two) was Harold Wilson going in and out of Ten Downing Street. A Commonwealth Conference had started. The children played checkers; Mrs. Stackpole’s glass curtains stirred in the breeze. It occurred to me that it was the middle of June, and that if we were home the children would be out riding their bicycles or swimming at the beach, but I pushed that thought away.
After a while, Mark returned, looking annoyed. He said Vincent didn’t have any money, so he shared all his money with Vincent, and then when all his money was gone except his carfare, Vincent called him selfish. He said that since Mark was the son of an American millionaire, he had to be lying when he said that all he had left was carfare.
“Vincent’s an idiot,” Jordan said.
Our Saturday ended with a trip in a cab to a delicatessen in South Kensington where we purchased goodies for dinner and for the next day, when Jane and her mother and brothers were coming to tea.
9
Liz and Jane
THE NEXT DAY being Sunday, we all had a leisu
rely breakfast together, consisting of eggs from the Woolworth frying pan, and toast made under the broiler, one piece lifted by fork every three minutes. I piled the chipped mismatched dishes and glasses in the dish drainer to dry cloudily, and thought about my old electric dishwasher at home. For years I had complained about machine civilization and life in the wasteland of materialism: now I felt a subtle change taking place in me. Henry James was being replaced by Buckminster Fuller.
I shoved twelve or thirteen of Mrs. Stackpole’s blanket and linen layers into place on our oversized bed and got dressed shortly before the doorbell rang. Descending, I found the eight-by-ten-foot sitting room bulging with people in t-shirts and blue jeans.
Jane was there with her friend Tom and several of her brothers, all with long bangs or fringes, and her mother Liz, a rather paunchy lady with orange hair and fingernails, who was wearing a green silk print blouse, a tight red wool skirt, and blue high-heeled shoes. After effusive greetings, we went down to the kitchen where we ate little sandwiches I had prepared, and drank tea. Mrs. Stackpole, incredibly, had left only a small teapot, and Jordan had had to buy a larger one. Jane stopped me when I was about to put the leftovers into the refrigerator. “Silly old cow,” she said to me affectionately. Liz wrapped them all carefully in aluminum foil, put them into two large tin cookie boxes and put the boxes in a drawer in the dresser. I had noticed this aversion to the refrigerator in Mrs. Grail, who unfailingly placed milk and butter on the hutch shelves and asked me whether I wanted to put unopened cans of soup in there, pointing with distaste to the refrigerator. This distrust of refrigeration probably explained the rich aroma of sour milk I had frequently encountered. Anyway, after Liz had disposed of the little sandwiches, we decided to walk to Hyde Park, because it was a lovely sunny day.
Liz and I sat primly on a bench while Jordan and the young things leapt gaily over the grass. Jane at one point dashed for a ball and fell heavily to the ground, where she remained, rubbing her leg.
“Oh, dear,” I said, “she’s hurt herself.”
“Yes,” Liz said. “She does try to do too much.”
Jane continued to sit rubbing her leg, while Jordan and Tom hung over her, looking concerned.
“We can’t all be athletes,” I said.
“Everybody loves Jane,” Liz said, responding instantly to something in my tone. “Everybody that knows her is just wild about her.”
“Eric loves her,” I said, after a moment.
“Everybody does,” Liz said firmly. “And Jane expects that. She expects that everyone will love her.”
I began to feel that I had failed Jane.
“She and Jordan are very close,” Liz said. “She wants to take care of Jordan.” An icy wind blew across the grassy plain of the park. I was wearing a coat over my sweater, but my ears began to tingle, and I noticed that Liz’s lips matched her shoes. “Shall we take a walk?” I asked. “It’s getting chilly.”
“It does get cold sometimes in the summer,” Liz said defensively.
We began to stroll slowly toward the sidewalk, or pavement.
“Jordan is so brave,” Liz said, “and so likeable. Coming all the way over here alone, to start a business the way he did.”
“Yes, he’s very brave; he—”
“And Bill,” Liz said, referring to Bill Dworkin. “Bill Dorking. He’s such a gentleman. He even sounds like a gentleman. He sounds English.”
“That’s the way they talk in New Jersey,” I said.
“Do they? Well, he sounds English to me. I think he speaks beautifully.”
We strolled a little farther, in silence. The London Hilton came into view.
“There’s the London Hilton,” Liz said. “Don’t you think it’s horrible?”
“Well,” I said.
“Everybody feels it spoils the park. American structure spoiling the park. You can see it, right from here.”
“Oh, you can see it all right,” I said.
“I’m so fond of Bill,” Liz said. “Jordan is lucky to have him. He’s so gentle. English people understand that, being quiet, you know, and a gentleman. Sometimes I would like to tell Jordan that one really needs to be a restrained sort of person to succeed here in business. One needs to be quiet to be accepted. More like Bill.”
“Oh, you really should tell Jordan that,” I said. “He’d be so grateful.”
“A lot of push doesn’t go here, you know,” Liz said gently. “You’ll find it’s different here from America.” I said that I had noticed that it was different. “Of course,” Liz went on, “that’s all right. You shouldn’t mind. We’re five hundred years ahead of you, you see. We’ve had more time to become civilized.”
I looked at her, speechless.
“You can’t catch up with us, you know,” Liz said. “But don’t worry, in five hundred years things will be different in America.” After the ensuing pause, she asked, “What do people think about us in America? What do American people think about the English?”
I said that everybody thought I was very fortunate to be able to come for the summer.
At this point the active members of our group signaled defeat in the face of the rising wind, and we went home, walking close to brick walls whenever we could, for shelter. We descended to the basement again, opened the drawers to get the little sandwiches out of the cookie tins and the aluminum foil, and brewed more tea. Everybody was animated, except me. I was thinking about what Liz had said, and wondering why she had said it. Finally our visitors departed, much to my relief.
We turned on the television, to relax for a few minutes. There was a thing on called Mystery Theatre. The camera circled constantly, up and down staircases, and people poured whiskey out of decanters while the camera crew kept clearing their throats and occasionally there was a loud crash; otherwise nothing much happened. We noticed it was over when credits began to travel down the screen.
At about ten-thirty, a clergyman appeared, in a very close close-up, and told a little story about an old lady who wrote to the bishop for groceries and then sat in the living room near the window and waited for him until she fell asleep. In the meantime, the bishop had come in through the back door and left the groceries on the kitchen table. The point of this story seemed to be that a lot of us sit in the front room when we should really be in the kitchen. Or something like that. We discussed the point of this parable until “God Save the Queen” was played while the screen showed us a portrait of the Queen in evening dress before it went blank and silent. We hauled ourselves up, feeling very tired indeed, and suddenly a jolly voice came out of the dead set. “You won’t forget to turn it off, will you?” it asked kindly. So we turned it off.
10
Sightseeing and Shopping
ON MONDAY we were awakened very early by another telephone man; this one brought several hundred yards of cable into the kitchen and left it there.
“The tenant was only supposed to come one afternoon,” I said to Mrs. Grail, when she arrived at ten.
“Well, they’ll do you, you know,” she said. “Every time.” Her voice dropped. “I saw her this morning,” she said. “In Knightsbridge.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Stackpole. I saw her this morning. In the Knightsbridge Road.”
“But she’s in Scotland.”
“Ah, she never is. I saw her this morning, the same blue skirt and that sweater. I’d know her anywhere.” She gave a rather creepy glance at the windows. “She’s staying somewhere here, close by.”
The phone rang and Jordan answered it upstairs. I excused myself and joined him; I could hear Mr. MacAllister’s boiled voice shrieking through the receiver. It didn’t sound good.
“No sheets,” I said, when he hung up.
“He says he’s been on to her. And she was very upset, about the sheets and the frying pan and all that. She said no linens and I said what about human decency, but he didn’t seem to know what I meant. He said we could leave if we didn’t like it.”
“Well,
what did she say about sheets when you rented the place?”
“I can’t remember,” Jordan said sheepishly. “I remember thinking it was all right.”
I looked moodily out the window. “Mrs. Grail said she saw her today, in the Knightsbridge Road. She says she’s staying here somewhere, spying on us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said briskly. “What would she want to do that for?”
I shrugged.
“Well, have a good day,” he said hastily, and set off with Mark for the bus. We had decided to spend the afternoon enjoying the local sights. Jordan had suggested we walk through Knightsbridge to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“You’re going out?” Mrs. Grail asked. She looked around nervously. “It’s so quiet here without the boys,” she said. “And that damn clock ticking.”
“Well, we want to see a few things,” I said brightly. It was a relatively mild day; we were comfortable with sweaters under our raincoats. The sky was gray and threatening, but it was not raining. We walked along for several blocks. Bruce kept saying that we were lost. “It’s too far,” he said. “There isn’t any museum. It’s the wrong way. My feet hurt.”
Finally we found it, huge and gray, dark gray. I went boldly up to the desk. The lady sitting there looked alarmed. “You ought to go to the Children’s Museum at Bethnal Green,” she said. “We haven’t anything for children here.”
I had no idea how to get to Bethnal Green. “Haven’t you anything?” I asked.
“Well, there’s the armor.’’
“Oh, armor!” I cried, beaming at my charges, “Oh, good! You’ll love the armor. Where is it?”
“Well, you walk through the Church Plate …”
We walked through the Church Plate, cheerfully discussing it, and eventually found the armor.
Tea & Antipathy Page 4
